my adventures: perla's birthday

Though it seems that all my friends in the DR are families that I worked with closely, (which for the most part is true), I was able to branch out some. Two friends in Monte Llano that I got close to were Perla and Benjamin, and before I came back for a visit got REALLY excited to see both of them. I got really excited then when I realized that I would be here for Perla's birthday.

The BIG THING is to go to a movie theater and then eat pizza at the American chain pizza joint located right next to it. You can't get that anywhere near where we are though. So it was an evening in Santiago, the second largest city in the country located about an hour and a half inland.

Perla, Benjamin, and I caught a public car to Puerto Plata, and from there took a bus to Santiago. Once in Santiago, we took another public car to the apartment where her college roommate Sori lives. From there we took public to the mall where all things American are located.

Perla wanted to see Toy Story 3, but it wasn't playing anymore that night. We ended up seeing the last Shrek, I forget what it is called in English, or Spanish for that matter. It was dubbed in Spanish, so unfortunately the voices of Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, and Cameron Diaz were not heard. I'm pretty confident though that Antonio Banderas still did the voice for the cat.

We split a Hawaiian pizza and a Pepsi from Papa John's, realized how much I am going to miss fresh pineapple in this country.

Afterward, Sori caught a public car back to her apartment and we went to the bus stop. Since there are not as many passengers going, you completely fill up a small van before venturing off to Puerto Plata. Americans would say that the van would have held about 8 people, there were 14 of us. We got the worst seats- a bench right behind the driver facing the first row of seats. Our legs intertwined with the people sitting across from us for an hour and a half. Fun.

I didn't think anything of it, but it was one of those things that if your mom knew what you were doing she think you were crazy because here we were riding back with a van full of strangers through Dominican landscape in the pitch black midnight hour. It honestly made me chuckle thinking about it, my leg cramping up as it was pressing against another.

Again, such another fun night and I was so excited to get to spend time with these two!

Enjoy the pictures below just before and after the movie.