Roosters and Sunburns

There are roosters in my dreams and in my waking hours.
I have written a song as an ode to them.
No, I don't live on a farm in Jarabacoa, it's just a regular neighborhood street, but roosters are apparently part of daily life here. Not only do they populate the day time, they also really like to scream loudly at each other from the hours of...10:30pm...to 3am...to 6 and 7am...to 9:30am....to ALL HOURS OF THE DAY. The worst time, obviously, is the middle of the night when I'm trying to sleep and all of a sudden the screeching, wailing, blood curdling cry of these stupid birds leaves me wishing it were traffic or party music or any other sound coming slamming through the windows of the apartment. But no, rooster screams. And man, they are so loud.

Today after church and a lunch of peanut butter and jelly, we went to El Gran Jimenoa, a hotel 7 minutes from the teacher apartments that we teachers can get into for free because we teach at JCS! It's a really nice complex with a relatively clean pool and a rope bridge over a beautiful river. My second newest facebook friend, Melisa Gomez (who is returning for her second year at JCS and is the 4th grade teacher) was kind enough to tote Elisabeth and I around on her sweet little moped bike motorcycle thing. Speaking of motorcycles...they're really more like mopeds or motorized bicycles, not Harleys or anything crazy, motoconchos are the best and most fun way to get around here. On Friday we bought a ton of groceries in town and got a motoconcho back to our apartment, easy as that. No, you don't have to wear a helmet and sometimes you can squeeze 3 or even 4 people onto one bike. This makes things even more exciting!

Apologies for the jumping all over the place, but I keep remembering things I was supposed to update on and haven't taken the time to. Actually, I wrote an awesome blog two days ago and something happened to it (as in, it got deleted) and then I was defeated and decided I should cool off before trying to blog again. So behold, this scattered entry. Maybe I should make it two entries? I will. Last thing though, sunburns. No, I don't think I got one at the pool today, but you can definitely feel that we're closer to the equator and the sun is so much hotter and more powerful. And all that stuff about "dry" heat and no humidity, psssh. Not true. It still gets humid here.

Lesson of the day: Never again turn down the opportunity to kill a rooster.