The Blaga Continues

The rest of our group has arrived! And with them comes important information about their travels that allows us to complete our fantastic Paint. Below is the crazy map of all the routes everyone took to get here to the Dominican

All of the flights are in blue, and the other colours are driving routes of our team members.

We also have an entertaining story for your own reading pleasure! Because of all of the plane difficulties along the way, only a small group of us arrived in the Dominican on the first plane from Miami to Santo Domingo. In that group were: Jessi Rieken, Craig Bielema, Jason Wyenberg, Lynae Walburg, and Steven Koning. Craig and I realized during the flight that we would be the first group to reach the island. Therefore we both wanted to be the first off of the plane to say that we beat everyone else.

It was an exciting battle. In the front of the plane, closest to the exit, Jessi was sitting on her own. Unaware of our competition, she had no idea of the value of her position. As we were getting off the plane, I called her over to the back, and asked her something like, "Hey Jessi, what did you fill out for number 4 on this customs declaration sheet?". She fell for it like lemmings off a cliff. Craig and I were in the lead.

We rushed past the passengers moving up the right aisle, but were stopped short at the end by the first class passengers. I doubled back and cut across a row of seats to come up the left aisle with the first classers. I smirked as I slipped past Craig. He boldly cut into the first class line right in front of me, the big jerk! We were both distracted by a beautiful Dominican lady who was barely wearing a denim shirt, but the race continued. We ran down the gangplank and rushed out into the open airport and (after going through customs, blah blah blah) lept forth towards the finish line. Unfortunately, Craig won, but we were both rewarded with a crowd of people cheering us on, reminiscent of a red carpet event, except that most of the people were trying to sell us taxi rides.

The End.

iNosotros Blogamos Juntos Para Uno! - We Blog Together as One!

Greetings fellow friends, and family, or, as they say down here in the Dominican Republic, Ola! Or, as my faithful hermano informs me it is correctly spelt, Hola! Or, as my faithful hermano informs me it is correctly written, spelled. We write to you from a great distance after a great duration of time. In all likelihood, you have probably already gone blind staring at the computer screen watching for some sort of update (ie. Jeremy Westra), but maybe your computer monitor displays in 1024i brail. Or, as my faithful hermano informs me it is correctly spelled, braille.

Las horas we have spent in the Dominican have been fantastico! After mucho anxiety and time spent in los aeropuertos we have finally arrived, and we have agreed es muy bueno! The pineapple freshness is unparalleled even in hyperbolic freshflavored dimensional space. We have plans to eat our weight three times over in delicious pineapple fruit.

Dogs are a big part of our life here in the Dominican. Though we are yet to touch one, we frequently see them in the streets lying beneath 1983 nissan pickups, that seems to be their shade truck of choice. Once we saw a very fat one, with engorged nipples, we suspect pregnancy, and will investigate further and keep you posted on the future family.

Pigeons have been an unexpected/unwelcomed surprise. Not only are the pigeons greedy for bread, and dirty, but they also have a serious attitude problem. When they arent nesting directly in our pathway basically requesting a swift kick in the tailfeathers, they are flying 2 feet overhead posing the ever frightening threat of fly by pooping. It is obvious that in the Dominican, pigeons have surpassed most other creatures on the evolutionary chain of dominance.

More pictures and blogidad to come soon....hopefully