A list of recent happenings, in no particular order:

1. My sister is coming on Saturday!  She is staying a week, because she has spring break from her prestigious private college in the capital city of Minnesota.
2. My little brother is playing a handheld Tetris game right now.  He is holding it upside down, but has no idea how to play anyway.
3. I just had a tuna fish sandwich for dinner, and am about to go bowling with friends.
4. There was a student strike at La UASD (the big university) today, so no classes there.  These strikes happen frequently.
5. The last two weekends have both been Carnival events.  Last weekend was a big parade down the Malecòn (the waterfront, like Lake Shore Drive) of Santo Domingo.  There were lots of costumes, including some very not-PC ones of Spaniards beating black slaves.  There were the traditional costumes to, of people dressed in colorful baggy suits with masks with horns, carrying whips and/or inflated things attached to string to hit people with.
6. The weekend before that we went to the famous Carnival in La Vega, which is a smaller town in the interior.  This Carnival was crazier – more drunkenness, more people trying to hit you with inflated pig bladders, but otherwise the same as the one in Santo Domingo.
7. I went to Santiago, the second largest city in the DR, with my friend and explored the city, hung out with a Dominican family that my friend is close to.
8. Went to San Pedro de Marcorìs, a port town in the southeast.  Explored.  Bought French fries and shared them with a homeless boy.
9. My host dad thinks that all of the recent earthquakes have been happening because we are extracting oil and mining the earth, and when you take things out of the earth, bad things happen.
10. Got a haircut, bought some new clothes.

That’s all for now.  I must be off.  I hope you, the reader, are doing well.

Love,

Jonah