Semana Santa

I think today is our first regular day in a while. Between company and assorted national holidays we have been keeping relatively busy. Semana Santa or Holy Week just wrapped up this weekend. This meant that our boys were off of school.... pretty much Dominican spring break. We took the opportunity to do a little vacationing in the capitol as a final trip with Carrie's folks. We took in the colonial district and some of the old forts. Dominican tourism is cool in the way that you usually get to climb in and on everything!...very cool for kids. I'm not sure how many centuries these monuments to civilization will last under this torture, but for now it definately makes sight-seeing in Canada and the U.S. a little lame.

Another little surprise was the Zoo in Santo Domingo. If first impressions were to mean anything we probably have turned around at the parking lot. The smell of sewage, garbage, and other nasties was part of the welcoming committee as we walked up to the peeling front gates. Once inside we attempted to walk around and quickly realized that there wasn't much for animals around. We saw some flamingos, and a duck, but nothing more. Because of the absence of signs it took us a few minutes to realize that we had to board the zoo train to get up the hill to the zoo. We should have known......Dominicans would never walk around a zoo!!!

The enclosures were actually quite big, and the animals looked healthy. We all decided that for the $1.50 entrance fee it was actually quite a bargain. One huge bonus was that due to Dominican safety standards (or lack there-of) we could actually walk inside some of the enclosures if we so desired to. Just for proof I have a shot of Drew waving at us from the inside of the ostrich and white rhino enclosure. (Don't worry the animals were at least out of sprinting distance!) We sometimes wonder what kind of tourists we will be when we return.

Some other fun we had was throwing our kids off of the side of a mountain (para-gliding). This was still part of their birthday gift that had never quite materialized. They had a blast, but they both agreed it was too short. We wrapped up the week with a mini-marathon around Jarabacoa. Brodie and I had been "training" with some of the kids from school, and so we all loaded up on Saturday and gave it our best on the 11km run. Brodie ran a shorter race with the 15 and under kids. I managed the run not too bad, but I still have a few sore muscles today. Apparently I don't recover as fast as I used to. Part of the marathon excitement included a shooting that occurred at the first corner the marathon ran by. Apparently a few minutes before the start of the race somebody tried to take out a fellow Dominican in front of the local Pizza Pepperoni. Not sure what the issue was yet, but Carrie saw one of the wounded running across the street into the clinic.....but on with the race. We do have violence occasionally, but it doesn't really concern us. Either we are simply too naive, or we have started the process of becoming Dominican. Either way, we don't really have random violence, it is always parties that know one another. If you don't hang out with bad people....then the other bad people don't shoot at you! It was a nice ending to the "holiest" of weeks in the D.R.