Holidays.... Already?

Ahhhh.... Days at the beach. So relaxing and beautiful... The weather was great, (as always) no one got burnt, (which is weird) and we found a spot where coral was washed up or showing through the sand. (as seen in the picture) And all of this is to blame on the elections. Why? You ask? Because elections is loud, exciting, and especially dangerous!!!
So school was canceled. Yippee! Isn't that a good enough reason to go the beach? We thought so too. But enough about the beach, we did other things this week, Caving!!!
This caving story is one told so many times that people are starting to get tired of it but it will be told anyway. Our class is studying caves in science, and since we are studying caves, why not go caving? On Wednesday we woke at six got to school at seven and left for a three hour drive on a gua-gua(hope thats spelt right) and got to the cave by 11. This particular cave is located by a German mine. A "ten minute walk"(inside joke) to the cave and we were on our way. I will not waste my time describing this cave because quite frankly I can't. It is extremely beautiful. Repel down a slope, repel down a cliff slide down some rubble, and enter a very large dome like chamber. It was so fun! Well that is basically it. We will post some pictures of in the cave soon.

Comments work again.

I dunno why but they didn't work for a while there.

Flat Top and the River

On Friday our dad decided we didn't have to go to school because it was his day-off so we, with a group of other staff with days off, went to hike Flat Top! (us on top >>>>>)
It was pretty dangerous though because of the slippery pine needles on crumbled stone at a angle so steep, that coming down we could slide on our butts!( not kidding we actually did:)
On Sunday we decided to go to the river. We have this spot, we call it "The spot with the rock." Which is funny because are millions of rocks all over the island but all is well and at least we still understand. Well, the river was where it was it at, there was a couple of parties all over but they left eventually and we met up with Terry and Jill at the river. We roasted weenies over a fire that we made out of driftwood. then we launched ourselves down the river and bruised our feet. THE END (of our weekend)

Birthday Gifts

Soaring high above the clouds, is it a bird? Is it a plane? No! Its Drew and Brodie para-gliding!

Guess what, it's true. For our B-Day (Bet you didn't know it's on March 16) we went to "Jamaca de Dios"Meaning "_______ of God"(I couldn't find the definition of jamaca anywhere because it's probably in "campasino-language" and sadly you won't even find the definition of campasino either because the word it's self is a campasino word.(campo=field, campasino=people of the fields\hillbillys.) Anyway back on track, the para-gliding "launching pad" was basically a small flat spot of land that leads to a steep decline to the valley where Jarabacoa is located. Brodie's crap above can be deleted if you want. Ok it's like this you run, get flung into the air, you sit on your backpack seat and watch the valley as it goes by. Joell my pilot(Brodie) had only three months of learning english but I understood the question he asked me. He said "Doo you wana doo some acro wit me,like de 360?" "sure" I say. Then we go left,right,left,right,left then"ready for de adrenalin"(pronounced adrenaleen) The goal of the 360 is to get the kite and you horizontal, we didn't get that far but still, have you ever rode the skymaster? Its kinda like that, you know with your skin flying behind you. Then after a lot of thermals, 360s, turns and dives next comes landing. Now landing might not sound easy but your more likely to land standing then falling on your butt then getting dragged along the ground actually the later happened to me. Came flying in and landed softly all looked good until I lost my balance and fell over... Well anyway (changes subject) after we packed up all of the gear we headed over to where they were going to pick us up.Oh ya and we had landed in this farmers field who probably didn't even know we did because we had to climb under the barb wire fence to get to the guys where we paid the guys and left. And that was our (late but very fun) birthday gift! (Don't know if you remember, Chris and Frank, but you chipped in with money from christmas!) Thanks!

More people out!

Wow, there has been more people out here than I can count! There has been Chris and Frank, Grandma and Grandpa, Derek and Shanna, and just recently our other Grandma and Grandpa! While they have been here we have been snorkling, surfing, boogieboarding, climbing waterfalls, playing in rivers, played dominican dominoes, gone exploring etc. Our Grandpa and Grandma are leaving on wednesday but other than that they have been very bearable ; ). We are hoping to have Jade come out soon (Some time in the summer holidays) and we are going to do lots of fun things with him like going to the ocean and some waterfalls. Time has gone so fast with all the people coming out. Sorry for such a straight forward post but I needed to get that post out;)

Sorry...

Haven't posted in forever. We went to Cabarete and went surfing again. While we were in Cabarete we went snorkeling. Actually we technically weren't in Cabarete we were in Sosua...anyway it was really cool, definitely not as colorful as you would hope, but still really cool. Near the beach it was just sand and rocks and a few fish but as you go out farther there are these trenches that you can swim over. In the trenches the "big" fish swim.(up to two feet long) :). You can't really stand, even if you could touch the bottom there are these giant sea anemones(larger then your head) that would poison you if you stepped on them. Some of the fish we saw included a trumpet fish, a flat fish,angel fish,and other assorted run-of-the-mill tropical fish. Also we saw huge brain coral and the "orange type" :) and....it's time to move on to...RETREAT. What? Retreat. What? RETREAT! WHAT! sorry...uh it's a semi-annual event when we do fun stuff at Escuela-Caribe (the school where Mom and Dad work). "fun stuff" being playing games, listening to a 1/2 comedian 1/2 preacher hybrid named Chris speak, and last but least the sick rock concert every day. The band being a Superchick, Casting Crowns wannabe religious-rock band called the Replacements. The band of 4 consists of; John Barben on drums, Kevin ____ on lead electric, "Mr T" on lead acoustic and the best of them all...flown in specially from Canada for this... Carrie Friesen! Ya I know...(Mr.T is my uncle) and ya well it was cool. Bye.

E.T.H.A.N News!

It's good to be nine! For my birthday we went to Kaskada Water Park! First we went to Konchy's island. It was good I guess until we went on the slides because the water was knee-deep! Than there was ALASKA. The water was freezing! Then there was the Twister. Just a plain-old water slide. After that the BLACK HOLE. You go down and everything goes black. Theres this one slide called the kamikazi witch is a slide that is basicly strait down and you reach a top speed 60km/hr. Then I got the exact present I wanted. Zoo tycoon extinct animals.

Christmas stuff

We just had the most "interesting" concert we have ever been to: Christmas Concert in the Dominican Blaring music, pitch black, hurlding rock hard candies,a little devil running around(i am not kidding), drunk eight-year olds, and swearing very loudly. It started with the drunk eight-year olds swinging their bottles of cerveza and slurring their words and crashing into each other. In which Ethan dies in the end by a drunk driver crashing into him. Next their was the little devil running around scaring the little kids. Finally there was the little angel's jumping and spinning, chucking rock hard candies in the dim lighting. In the end all that we got from it was a few bruises and some interesting memories.

Yesterday we went to a christmas caroling\giving out food to the poor kinda thing.
We hopped into the back of a Daihatsu (a large japanese truck) and drove into the country giving out bags of "Christmas dinner". We only sang two songs though; Alegro bango, and Feliz Navidad. We hardly knew the words to the first one. The Dominicans didn't really seem to understand what was going on but I still think they were thankful. As you can see in the picture, we went with Escuela Caribe. It was neat to do some more missionary-type things.

Comunity Service

If you thought that us so called "missionary kids" wouldn't actually make a difference in this country.... you were wrong... We were just sitting down for lunch when suddenly our mom appeared at school saying we should finish eating in the next 2 minutes and get in the truck.
We wolfed down our food and jumped in the truck and sped away. We drove in the direction of Manaboa until we spotted our uncle, Terry and a group of students from Escuala Caribe surounding a daihatsu filled with pickaxes and shovels. We split into two groups. One, emptying a flooded school. And the other building a driveway. We picked the driveway,so till 5:00 we shoveled,pickaxed and literally built him a driveway from the rubble.
You see, there was tropical storm Olga a while ago and there where a few houses that the river went through. So we went to help.
Now on Friday we are doing a program similar to christmas cheer board.
We're good kids. :)

The things I would do again

Out on the ocean waiting for the next wave we peer back and see it growing behind us, we start to paddle, it comes closer steadily it reaches us, we push forward feeling at pull us across water, we struggle to the kneeling position and lean forward feeling the rush of air and the relaxation of our muscles from the paddle out. We cautiously move in to the next position, standing. We carve the wave by shifting our weight to the other side of the board feeling something we have never felt- flying...

We will start from the begining. A few weeks back our family rented a house at Cabarete and we stayed there for three days. During those three days we did: boogieboarding, crabhunting, swimming, and Surfing! When we went surfing, my Uncle Terry taught us how to sit on the board and swim with it. We had to wear aqua shoes because we were surfing on a coral reef and there was sea urchins. When we actually got on the water, we saw how big the waves were: over 6 feet high! So we swam out and we learned the hard part the WhiteWater. It was so tiring, it kept on pull us around! By the end we were so tired yet so ready to go again.

After the beach we were ready for some less salty water so we packed up and drove to 27 WaterFalls. 27 WaterFalls is a tourist attraction where we literally climb up 27 waterfalls. You put on helmets and lifejackets and head out with a tour-guide. On some of the waterfalls they actually have to hoist you up some slipery waterslide-like waterfalls. It was SO beautiful. At the end we jumped down them. JUMPED! They were over 20ft! The only bad part was we had to go back half way because we ran out of time.

Those are a few things I would do again...