Week #12 (Last week!)

December 12 - 18

Last week in Las Terrenas! Ahhh! I'm not ready to leave at all. It truly has been a great trip full of life lessons learned and new friends that we made. We really have adjusted to life in the DR and don't want to go back! It will be good to see everybody at home though.

Wednesday and Thursday Kira and I ended up going on a spontaneous trip to Gaspar Hernandez, a town a couple hours to the west of Las Terrenas. We went with our two surfing friends for the National Surfing Championship competition for the DR. To get there we woke up at 5 am and took a bus, which was more like a small van that they call a gua gua from Las Terrenas to Gaspar Hernandez. However, it wasn't as simple as just getting on one place and getting off at the next. First of all, somehow they managed to cram a ton of people into this van with four of us sitting in the front seat and people smushed in everywhere. The ride was also very hilly, and on the way there the van we were in couldn't make it up the hill so we had to switch gua guas and then get back in our original one at the top. All the mean while more people were getting on until people were standing up crouched over inside. As we got closer we stopped at a restaurant with Dominican food on the side of the road. Even though Kira and I couldn't eat the meat, we had really good eggs, yuca, pickled onions, and mangu (which is smashed up platanos). It was so good!! The trip was a very Dominican experience and it took twice as long as it was supposed to but eventually we made it!
Wednesday we spent the day hanging out on the beach and on Thursday we watched our friends compete! They ended up winning first and second place in the whole competition which was really exciting. Kira and I took the gua gua home (there was only one per day) and went straight to Playa Bonita to watch the sunset when we got back. It was beautiful and some of our other friends were also there which was fun.

Friday we worked at school in morning painting, and then in the afternoon we were able to do our two final dives for our advanced certification!! Kira and I both had to do just a low visibility dive and a navigation dive so we were able to go right in front of the dive shop. The visibility was horrible and disgusting, but it didn't really matter to us! Kira and I had to hold hands at certain points to not lose each other because it was so bad though. It was quite a good feeling to be done with our dives and to not have to go back to the dive shop! We both felt relieved.







On Saturday, Kira and I had a pretty lazy day to relax and spend time outside before leaving the tropics. We went to get our nails done again and then went to playa bonita and stayed for the beautiful sunset.






Sunday Kira and I spent time starting to pack and then went to hang out with our German volunteer friends to say goodbye before leaving. We went with Josh to playa las ballenas at sunset and to the apartments of the other volunteers after that.



On our last day, Monday, we did most of our packing and walked to punta poppy to watch the sunset. Josh made us one last goodbye hot chocolate at Fata Morgana and our close friends all came to say goodbye. Leaving is really really hard. I definitely hope to come back and visit Las Terrenas in the future as I feel like I almost have a second home here. I am sad to leave, but so grateful and lucky that I was able to have this wonderful opportunity and that I could spend it with my amazing almost sister Kira! We really learned so much and grew a lot as people. I know I won't ever forget this experience.