concerts, beaches, friends, what more could I want?

Hello Avid Readers!

So much has happened since I last updated. Let's see...on Friday I went shopping and bought some awesome makeup in cool colors and these really high heels that are cute. Then that night met some friends for drinks and dancing, which is always fun.

Then on Saturday Allison and her program came to tour Santiago!! Luckily another girl on my program has a friend on that program too so we were able to go together (otherwise it would have been a lot more troublesome not to mention scary). We met up at el centro de león, which is an awesome museum and also site for cultural events. We took a tour of the museum and it was really cool, touched on a lot of factors of dominican life and many centuries. Then the upstairs was filled with wonderful paintings and sculptures that were very unique, it was cool learning about those (the tour was in spanish by the way heheh). After the museum we went around Santiago, they of course went to see the monument which is at the heart of the city and I have already put pictures of it on here. Then we went to this crazy awesome folklore museum (you will see the pictures at the end). It was chock full of cool stuff: lots of carnaval masks, tons of pictures, newspaper clippings, religious relics, I dont even know. Really interesting.

Then, sadly, me and Allison had to part...but THEN, I went home quickly to eat dinner and then it was back out on the town! I had made plans to meet with this girl who ran up to me and my friends walking home from university and was like "hey sorry I know this is awkward but I heard you speaking in english and ive been here since july, lets hang out!" Turns out, she is a graduate student doing research here and has done a lot of cool stuff. She was in the Peace Corps for 3 years and I dont know, has had an interesting life so far. So my friend and I met up with her for yogen fruz--its frozen yogurt that you pick what fruits you want to go in it (my fav flav is strawberry and apple it is SO GOOD), absolutely delicious..

After that I headed to the monument to meet up with other friends because there was a huge merengue concert sponsored by the fav beer, el presidente, happening. We get to the top and look over, there is seriously half of Santiago there! So many people!!! It was great. Whew!

Then Sunday, got up pretty early (after a pretty late night) and got on the guagua (bus) to Sosúa, a beach town!! Its about an hour and half ride and I literally blinked and we were there. The beach was beautiful, so gorgeous, but lots of dominicans trying to accost us. So we decided to explore the other three beaches we heard about. We met some dutch boys and they took us to their resort beach which was empty which was nice because we didnt have to worry about our bags getting stolen, etc. SO PRETTY!!

Yesterday first day of real classes, didnt start until 4 but went until 9, three in a row, so much spanish, but I think its going to be okay. I already have two presentaciones to prepare for though so eeek!

Well the pictures are in reverse time...but here they are:

The lovely beach at sosúa.
Monument concert at night. That green tent is one of many that was selling presidentes.
Th stage, lots of people.
Folklore museum, religious shrine.
Example of a carnaval mask.

Hasta Luego mis amigos!