the amazing race

Last Saturday was great fun. The 3 of us girls here at the MAK house, plus a peace corp. volunteer, along with 4 other volunteers, Miguel (Jennie's finacee), all of his family and a handful of his friends split up into teams and had a carretera (race) starting in a village called Caraballo and finishing at a river several miles away. Each group left every 15 minutes or so and set out on the trek.

I was in the last group that went, the last 2 groups combined forces because the Dominican in my group didn't know the course very well. We set out running; down paths, over rocks, down streets, we passed a cemetery, several cows, a herd of pigs, men on horseback (the list goes on). We got a lot of looks as our group ran past the people we saw. Towards the end we had to jump into a river and swim across it, run a little more, then walk through another river (that was shallow enough to walk through it). The whole course took over an hour. It was great fun.

I was glad to combine forces with Miguel and Jennie's team because we were all really into it. We ended up finishing in 2nd place. I blame it on the size of our group. It was all in good fun though! :)

Once we got to the end, everyone jumped into the river. We tossed a frisbee and even tried playing baseball with a stick and a rock. Miguel's mom was at the 'finish line' all morning cooking lunch for all of us. (we all chipped in some pesos).

That morning we woke up at 6am to get out to Caraballo early enough for the race because it gets HOT early. We were out there literally all day. It was great to be able to hang out with other Americans, and at the same time Dominicans and Haitians. If the tv show 'The Amazing Race' is as fun as the race we had, then sign me up!