Altagracia | Jordan

Jordan’s Blog Post

I know what you’re all thinking, “Finally! Jordan’s blog post!” Buckle yourself in boys and girls, this is going to be sort of slightly fun. Or not, anyways yesterday was Saturday, our final day of 6 days in a row of construction. (We now have done like 5 more) We were all pretty excited to not be doing construction at the base, instead we were going out to a small town called Altagracia in the middle of nowhere. We were going to spend the day leveling out a floor so we could pour concrete in it, and lugging buckets of stucco to the locals so they could stucco the walls. Thomas, Greg, Alex and I were assigned to level out the floor with the wheelbarrows of dirt other members of the group brought us. After half an hour it was clear this really wasn’t a four person job, while sitting on the ground I had a brilliant idea. Could Thomas and I go climb that mountain in the distance? We went to ask Ms. Weening but we honestly weren’t hoping for much. We were really surprised and fired up when her response was, “Sure you have 45 minutes. Go!” Whaat? No adult supervision? No bubble wrapped straightjacket? Sweet. Within 3 minutes we were booking it out of there so she didn’t have a chance to change her mind. We were having a great time just chatting and climbing barb wire fences until we realized, there were cows everywhere. All around us, I know what you’re thinking “Oh no, cooows so scary!” Well shut up imaginary sarcastic person, more people die every year from being trampled by cows then from shark attacks. Luckily, Thomas works on a cow farm during the summer. Apparently he can tell from a cows mooing when its about to try to kill us. I can also tell when a cow is trying to kill me, you see when a bull is charging at you at full speed you start running. We had a fantastic time climbing the mountain and avoiding angry bulls. Everything is more fun when you’re fearing for your life right? When we got to the top the view was incredible, pictures couldn’t really do it justice. Rolling green hills, mountains in the distance and tiny figures of our group playing baseball with the locals. We climbed down a much less eventful way and returned to where we were doing work. Ms. Weening told us they were on a roll and we could work later. We wandered down to the baseball diamond where we found Arie slowly clopping around on a horse. What do you know, there were two other horses without riders. Within 5 minutes the three of us were cantering around town like Aragorn, Legolas, and Gandalf. It was pretty sweet until, as we returned to the baseball field the local kids ran up and starting smacking my horses butt with a stick. He launched into a full gallop and I didn’t really feel like Aragorn anymore. As we burst through the middle of the baseball game at full speed apparently my face was funny enough to get the locals to laugh so hard they couldn’t stand up. And sorry mom now I want a horse. (coughwelcomehomepresent cough) When I finally got my horse to stop galloping I was pretty sure I would never have kids. Those were the highlights of my day, I’m pretty sure you guys don’t want to hear about my pickaxing and shoveling dirt. Oh and we also saw a local couple make coffee straight from the beans, grinding it by hand. It was really interesting and apparently some of the group got to taste it. I think I got distracted by a duck or something and I wandered away before they were done. But in my defense the ducks are WAY cooler here. We also played an intense game of baseball against the locals, I couldn’t play because of my finger injury but it was still cool to watch (my finger had a run in with a block wall. Long story short, I may lose a nail but the wall is gone). That was basically my day, it was really sweet I had a grand old time. Also Brian is the best, Bye Mom. Jordan

(The picture on the bottom was written by my seester during her trip in 2011, I thought it was funny.)