weekend destination: santiagoooo

freeeeeedom! if i had to sum the santiago trip into a word, well, that would be it. robin, cara, jonathan, and i took off in a caribe bus to santiago after work on a friday in mid-november. we stayed with the whites all weekend which is really a treat in itself. what i didn’t know was that it would turn out to be absolutely what we all needed. oh God and His timing..

friday night with jim and teresa we were able to just play with their puppies, eat, and chill out.. good thing because the next day was PACKED.

saturday we went out to the old makarios farm. robin and cara wanted to visit ruben.. and teresa was like “you guys should take the car.” WHAT?! a car? a car we can drive? and go wherever we feel?? freedom. so we over-excitedly drove out to the farm.. to find ruben had gone into town. we hung out anyway, played cards, hiked around the land, explored jim and teresa’s new land.. ruben hadn’t come back by the afternoon and we were STARVING so we decided to go to the ol' “pollo victorina!” ate so much..

(walking around the land with ruben's daughters)

THEN we went to the grocery store- a real grocery store that has everything you want/need.. ahh. love me some grocery store time. after that adventure we went to a real mall. uh huh. shopped around a bit and then jonathan, cara, and i saw a moooovie while robin got her nails done. oh, and these places were all air-conditioned by the way- score!

(santi claus at the mall!)

review: ruben's house/old mak farm, pollo victorina, grocery store, mall, movie (at the mall)..

ok we get in the car and call teresa who tells us we can definitely keep adventuring.. where to next? the monument. we parked by a carnival and walked up the hill to the monument. from the hill you can see all over santiago. it was dark and the lights really were beautiful. we spied the lights of a baseball game in town sooo we “navigated” (pointing with our fingers) the way we should drive to get there..

(standing at the top of the hill at the monument)

after a few shouts out the car window for directions.. we made it! plaaay ball. this was my first real dominican baseball game- FUN. i pretty much lost control of my excitement.. oh it was wonderful. most exciting baseball game ever.

(cara, robin, me, and jonathan at the gaaame!)

sooo after all of that, we figured we should get back to the whites’. perfect day. we spent sunday relaxing with jim and teresa and ventured to the store for teresa, isaak along for the ride. it was definitely one of those weekends i’d like to do over and over. thank God for His timing and knowing exactly what we’d need.

(jonathan and isaak at the store)