i guess i should go back to october....

I must admit. i feel quite guilty. i haven't posted in months. each time something happens, i think about how i should post- and then just put it off- when i find myself in need of 4 or 5 blog posts. so, here we go, one major event at a time shall we? I guess one major thing that happened work wise is that we finished our 10,000th temporary shelter!



yeah! 10,000 families out of the rain. not too bad. we've been blessed with materials. so it's nice that other organizations are vamping up as we are slowing down.

so, in October- we had a couple of 3 day weekends. So, on Canadian Thanksgiving, a couple of friends and I decided to go to Dominican Republic and spend some time in Santo Domingo. We managed to get on the last UN plane (if UN employees don't fill the plane, they leave extra seats open for relief workers). and all 4 of us got on! It was my first UN plane ride, but it was so much nicer than riding a typical airplane. First, you just show up and get to avoid all the other stuff that seems to take up so much time. so, we get there and in line start talking to a guy that works for the UN. He's American and interested in our shelter program. So, I talk to him a bit about it and his family is coming to pick him up because he travels back and forth from the DR to Haiti. And he so kindly offers us a ride to where finding a cab will be much cheaper than from the airport. God Wink!

Then, we get to our hotel- in the middle of the Colonial Center in Santo Domingo, and it's beautiful! and they have the best coffee ever. Plus, they have a pool....on the roof! So, the first day was amazing. we went and saw probably every single thing that can be considered worth site seeing and even things that weren't. so, at one of our last stops, the ruins of San Francisco, we thought it was time to get creative....



and became probably my favourite picture ever. we hung out at night at the square, ate good food, and just had a BLAST. i have to say it was my favourite vacation ever too. our 2nd and last night, (we were all complaining about how much we DIDN"T want to go back) we ate at this cave.





okay- let me back up. Julie decided to come with this lonely planet for Haiti and the DR. the rest of us hated that stupid book- but i must say because of it, we ended up doing quite a lot in the book. so, "the book" as we came to call it recommended dinner in a cave and it was so cool as seen above. definitely worth it. but i guess something funny that happened was that on our way back, there was only one taxi. and he wanted to charge us something ridiculous. so we said no and kept on walking. the guy was trying to convince us that it was "dangerous". Dangerous? we said....please, we live in haiti. so we keep walking and Andrew is trying to flag down a taxi, while Julie is asking whether or not we should go back while I'm adamant about how we WILL NOT go back if we have to walk all the way back to our hotel. yet, the further we keep walking, we're thinking....hmmmm....we may never find a taxi- yet we can't go back. Literally....it was like something out of a movie.yet it was funny as about 4 minutes later we find another taxi for a reasonable price. so. yes. best. vacation. ever. with awesome people.

k. that is the update for most of october. hopefully november will come tomorrow