Summer time! Floods!

Soooo....almost a month since my last post. Its hard trying to remember back on all the stuff that happens here. Lets see.....its been raining a lot here. Since I live practically outdoors.......

......Its kind of difficult to keep the rain from coming in. That huge window is always open, there is no glass just iron bars. My house flooded 3 days in a row. Not too bad, maybe an inch of water, and thanks to my chic cement block interior design scheme, everything was already on blocks and nothing got wet. So, thats been pretty exciting.

In other news. I started my Small Business Class at the highschool to a rousing auditorium of 0 people. Despite the flyer promotions and myself passing by each class room to advertise this great new opportunity where you can win 70,000 pesos to start your own business....no one showed up. The first class i figured everyone forgot, so i went by the classrooms again to advertise and people still didn't come. If money wont motivate 3rd world countries, what will, ha. It was super depressing, but i'm lucky to have friends here that understand exactly what I'm going through :) So, now i am teaching 3 of my friends in my community who showed a strong interest. I think its better this way too. Each student has to write a business plan about their idea, this way i can spend more 1 on 1 time developing their ideas.

I completed a grant to complete the water system in a community next to mine.

So, hopefully that gets approved and i can start working on that. It is the community i was going to move to. Its very poor and needs a lot of help. I am going to a training session in Santiago next month about the possibility of Biosand Water Filters. There are a lot of people who could really use those here. It would allow them to drink their tap water, which is huge!

Sasha (my bike) has been having some problems. She is originally from Japan, which means she had to travel quite a distance to get to the ghetto pawn shop i bought her from. The pedal broke once already, and she's making some interesting noises, straining under the pressure of my legs of fury. Im afraid shes on her last legs, keep her in your prayers, ha.

May 26th! Thats when the Carol Morgan School from Santo Domingo is making a visit to my school here in Santiago. We have been keeping in touch and they are donating hundreds of dollars worth of science instruments so we can finally open our science lab! Im so excited about this. We have a science teacher who teaches the class part, of course, but she's never used the lab because there is nothing to use. This will hopefully change the science program in a positive way for some time to come.

On June 1st Im starting an engineers club, this time with the kids in my community. It will last the month of June and end in another boys summer camp, this time 5 days long in Los Bueyes, another epic mountain retreat near Santiago. We are gonna do things like build volcanoes, egg drops, exploding mentos, spaghetti bridges, all kinds of science projects. My friend Josiel is helping me out big time with this, and it should be pretty cool.

I have also been robbed again. Someone broke....well walked into my house and stole about 3000 pesos cash. I went down to the basketball court for 5 minutes and when i came back my wallet was empty. Granted, i should not have left it on my bed, but who would think someone would rob you in 5 minutes. So that sucked big time, i wont get reimbursed for that cash so thats a big loss. I have been pretty frugal lately so it hasnt been too bad.

Still waiting on visitors people! You all have the unique chance to have a super cheap (aside from plane tickets) vacation to the DR. My tour guide services run at the cost of buying me a cheeseburger. Stay at my place, meals run about 1 dollar a day, it'll be a good time!

School gets out at the end of this month so summer is near!

Adios!