Hola everyone. I'm back home in New York now, after a WONDERFUL trip to the Dominican Republic. After a really difficult 2 weeks before this trip, it was amazingly therapeutic. There's something about providing care to people who without you would have no possibility of getting anything that is not only very rewarding, but also very humbling. So I have three stories that stick out in my mind from this trip.
1. A 65 (or so) year old man came in for a dental check up. He was wearing a green hat that said "Billy Talent" on it, so from then on he was known as Billy Talent. He had all of his bottom teeth but on the top he was missing all but two, one on each side about half way back in his mouth. So he came in on Monday and our denture specialist fitted a mold of his mouth and worked for two days to put together a partial of front teeth. He came back on Wednesday, and let me tell you, when they popped that thing in and he saw himself go from toothless to a nice full set of teeth, I don't think I've ever seen a bigger smile.
2. We stay with families when we are there and for the past 2 years my cousin Trish and I have stayed at Cristina and Severo's house. We usually get home too late to get to chat much with them, but this year we had a bit of extra time one night and we were all sitting around talking. The conversation switched to dancing. So Severo said he wanted to dance, went upstairs and turned on some music. Then he came back and decided that his sandals would not do and went upstairs again to put on his "dancing shoes." So then we were all set. Trish danced first with Severo and then I danced with Cristina. Then the other gals who were with us grabbed their two sons and danced with them. It was a HOOT. I have a pic of that I'll post.
3. Although the bugs in january are not nearly as bad as they are in June, we had a few bugs this year, including an incident with a "Cacata" AKA Tarantula. So Trish and I have a ritual of checking our beds thoroughly for bugs and securely tucking in our mosquito nets before we go to bed. On the last night, we start our ritual and see a cockroach on Trish's net. No big deal, we knock it down and it's gone. Then we see another smaller spider (Arana) above the bed so we call cristina, she laughs at us for being afraid of it and squishes it. Trish wasn't positive that she had killed it, she thought maybe she just knocked it down so as we're looking for it, I see something from behind the rafters. I say to the girls "Step slowly out of the house, the small spider is no longer our main concern." There was a cacata in the rafters of our house and I had seen 3 hairy legs. So we call Cristina again and this time her response is "SEVERO!! SEVERO!!" The dominicans don't like cacatas either and kill them whenever they see them. So Severo come walking down from the other house looking stoic with a broom and a mop and he knocks it off the rafters and it scurries under Trish's bed. Then we hear a bit of a scuffle from inside and then silence. Then Severo and his broom proudly sweep the carcass from out of the room. Mission accomplished. After that we called him El Bencedor de Aranas which means, the defeater of spiders. It was a bit nerve wracking at the time but looking at it now, it was really quite humorous.
