Today was our travel day to the D.R. I got two hours of sleep last night and we were at the airport by 4:00am. There are 30 of us going from First Baptist. Checking in was tricky as "the machines go slower if a lot of people are checking in for the same flight, at the same time." -- That makes sense for group check in, right?!
Anyway, we had a three and a half hour flight from Minneapolis to Miami. Once we landed in Miami we had a little less than an hour layover to feed all of us. So we stationed Matt, Jim and Joelle at three different restaurants so that the rest of the group could choose one of them and they would pay. It surprisingly went rather smoothly. We all took our food back to our gate so we would be there in case they started boarding. We had plenty of time.
Our next flight was shorter. Maybe an hour and a half. They gave us customs paperwork to fill out on the plane. I don't know why but I wasn't expecting to have to fill out paperwork. Once we were off the plane, going through customs was surprisingly easy. They just checked our passports, stamped them (yay!) and kept the line moving. Once we had made it out of the airport I was hoping that our 'travel day' would soon be over. But, we still had a three hour bus ride ahead of us! We all piled on to two buses (We were now combined with a group of 20 from Tennessee). We also had one luggage truck following us with all our gear.
Riding the bus was definitely an interesting experience.
I have never seen such chaos. But, to our drivers credit, he was amazing! So much horn honking and close calls. He held his own.
The roads in the city seemed fine. Three lanes going one way - just way to crowded. But the further out of the city we got - the worse the roads were. We turned off a main road onto a road that was nothing but potholes. The next road was more of a rough cobblestone road. On this road, most of us had to get off the bus so that it could make it up a small hill without bottoming out. Once the bus made it up the hill and we were all back on board, not far down the road, we made one last turn. This road was the worst one. It looked like an off road trail! This was the road the camp was on. We twisted down the road a little and we were there!
Walking up the hill so the bus could make it.
There was one large building as sleeping quarters (women on the first floor and men upstairs). The other building was the dining area and the kitchen. We arrived at about 6:45pm. More than 14 hours of travel. Everyone was sweaty and exhausted. But, we still had to unpack the truck. As we were doing that they announced that "If we didn't bring our own mosquito nets - they had some that we could rent". Huh. Mosquito nets? An item that was not on our packing list. Excellent!
So Joelle decided to rent one for each member of our team. We each got one and then we were confronted with another dilemma - how do we hang them up in our 100% (and extremely humid) cement room? We tried throwing them up with duct tape, but they had fallen down by the time we got back from dinner. We needed another plan. As Joelle and I walked back into the 'dorm area' we saw someone else's mosquito net that was still hanging. It looked like they had shoved a string up between the cement blocks in the ceiling. We asked how she had done that, and found out that it was actually a wire coat hanger that she had found under the bed. I thought we had it! I was going to go out into the woods and looks for small sticks that we too, could stick between the cement ceiling blocks! Joelle quickly changed my mind... She said it was far too dangerous to go our into the woods at night. They apparently have spiders that size of dogs in the D.R. (I may be exaggerating a little, but I don't think so) :P
Joelle, was thinking... what could we use?.... Finally she came up with it.... "Bobby Pins!"
It was brilliant! And for some reason I had packed tons of bobby pins! I even questioned myself as I was packing them. Thank you Jesus!
But that's what we did. We used some string, so that we could still tuck the mosquito nets under our mattresses and used the bobby pins to hold the string up near the ceiling. It was amazing! We felt like MacGyver!
"We owned you, mosquito nets!" - Joelle Hassler
Our next flight was shorter. Maybe an hour and a half. They gave us customs paperwork to fill out on the plane. I don't know why but I wasn't expecting to have to fill out paperwork. Once we were off the plane, going through customs was surprisingly easy. They just checked our passports, stamped them (yay!) and kept the line moving. Once we had made it out of the airport I was hoping that our 'travel day' would soon be over. But, we still had a three hour bus ride ahead of us! We all piled on to two buses (We were now combined with a group of 20 from Tennessee). We also had one luggage truck following us with all our gear.
Riding the bus was definitely an interesting experience.
**TRAFFIC WAS TERRIBLE**
I have never seen such chaos. But, to our drivers credit, he was amazing! So much horn honking and close calls. He held his own.
The roads in the city seemed fine. Three lanes going one way - just way to crowded. But the further out of the city we got - the worse the roads were. We turned off a main road onto a road that was nothing but potholes. The next road was more of a rough cobblestone road. On this road, most of us had to get off the bus so that it could make it up a small hill without bottoming out. Once the bus made it up the hill and we were all back on board, not far down the road, we made one last turn. This road was the worst one. It looked like an off road trail! This was the road the camp was on. We twisted down the road a little and we were there!
Walking up the hill so the bus could make it.There was one large building as sleeping quarters (women on the first floor and men upstairs). The other building was the dining area and the kitchen. We arrived at about 6:45pm. More than 14 hours of travel. Everyone was sweaty and exhausted. But, we still had to unpack the truck. As we were doing that they announced that "If we didn't bring our own mosquito nets - they had some that we could rent". Huh. Mosquito nets? An item that was not on our packing list. Excellent!
So Joelle decided to rent one for each member of our team. We each got one and then we were confronted with another dilemma - how do we hang them up in our 100% (and extremely humid) cement room? We tried throwing them up with duct tape, but they had fallen down by the time we got back from dinner. We needed another plan. As Joelle and I walked back into the 'dorm area' we saw someone else's mosquito net that was still hanging. It looked like they had shoved a string up between the cement blocks in the ceiling. We asked how she had done that, and found out that it was actually a wire coat hanger that she had found under the bed. I thought we had it! I was going to go out into the woods and looks for small sticks that we too, could stick between the cement ceiling blocks! Joelle quickly changed my mind... She said it was far too dangerous to go our into the woods at night. They apparently have spiders that size of dogs in the D.R. (I may be exaggerating a little, but I don't think so) :P
Joelle, was thinking... what could we use?.... Finally she came up with it.... "Bobby Pins!"
It was brilliant! And for some reason I had packed tons of bobby pins! I even questioned myself as I was packing them. Thank you Jesus!
But that's what we did. We used some string, so that we could still tuck the mosquito nets under our mattresses and used the bobby pins to hold the string up near the ceiling. It was amazing! We felt like MacGyver!
"We owned you, mosquito nets!" - Joelle Hassler
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