Why do all good times come to an end?

Why do all good times come to an end?  I think I speak for the team when I say, we were not ready to come home.  Who would want to leave this lush, beautiful, hot climate.  The mood of our team was a little dismal, we were all disappointed to leave, the missionarys had stuff to do, we all had school to do, and it was time to leave.  Why, was the question going through our heads.  Why could we not stay another month. Why did we  have to fall in love with the place.  We sucked up every plant, person, animal, and house into our memory on the trip to the airport.  we knew that we would probably never return with the same great group that had begun this adventure together.  We had battled a hurricane, saw the world that traps many children to poverty, and lived with the stench that encompasses every person when we drive through the garbage lined streets.  We still would like to live here and make peoples lives more enjoyable.  Maybe it was the fried chicken, or the wonderful cooking that was provided to us.  I still think it is because we all were touched through and by the people and living conditions that surrounds every living creature.  We packed up, ate breakfast and headed to Santo Domingo for our flight.  Hearts are heavy as we walk through the door to the airport and wave as the bus leaves the sidewalk, never to return to the same group that it left.

Checking in was easy, the assistant was very nice but had to try reading all of the names on the ticket list, well, it was very comical but he did a good job on the ones that were phonetic.  We got through security, very minimal compared the bigger airports and made our way to the gate.  Some of our group wanted coffee and went to find a coffee shop.  There is a funny account of one members experience trying to talk with the Dominican airport assistant in the coffee shop, read his account here: Coffee Adventure.  We had pizza for lunch and calmly waited for our plane to leave.  Alas, it is never as easy as it is suppose to be, is it?  Two of the team were called up to the gate, they had pulled our luggage off, and wanted to search their bags.  Something suspicious had been spotted in the suitcases.  We think that they wanted the machete that someone had purchased.  They found batteries, but did not find the weapon, fortunately.   Finally, we boarded the plane and prepared for take off, the rest of the trip was uneventful, we played poker on the plane, read our books and listened to music.  We landed in Atlanta and had 1 hour to pick up our bags, go through immigration, recheck our bags, go through security and get to our gate in one hour.  Our bags  had priority tags on them so they were supposed to come to the baggage claim first, they did not.  We waited twenty minutes before our bags came.  We did get through everything else and back on the next plane with just minutes to spare.  The same activities took place on the way to Portland.  We got there by 11:00 pm tired.  We passed the original restaurant where the Evolution of Poker for our group began.  We got our bags, and loaded into the awaiting cars to take us home.  Stopped at McDonalds on the way home, ate, and fell asleep in the car on the way home.  It was the end of our adventure that i'm sure any of our team would be willing to repeat again.    

The mission

View of our living quarters

This is the table legs on the table in our living quarters

The kitchen, we got our food from that window

The reality of leaving is finally sinking in

Our group in the last group photo

writing in the guest book, most of the team members wrote in here

Want a banana with breakfast, anyone?

Mr. Klein in the bus

 

the archway in the middle, leads to Christopher Columbus's DR home  

Brick doorway in the background is his house

Views of Santo Domingo 

The last day

Sunday, sigh, our last full day here in this wonderful place.  Fortunately that is not the thought on all of our minds.  Today is tourist day.  We get to go shopping and swimming in the ocean.  First though we are going to go to the Haitians church for services.  It was interesting because they were talking in creole, the Haitian/French language.  Even the missionaries could not understand what they were saying.  This went for two hours, the time was spent singing and preaching, in a language we could not understand.  It was cool seeing how they worshiped the Lord and how different it is to what we do every week.  Lunch was very good, a fried bread pocket filled with meat and cheese, I believe they were called empinadas (if any of you have a different name for the food, feel free to let me know).  After lunch we went to bathe in the creek which after all the rain had just about doubled in size and speed.  We decided to hike up one of the smaller creeks that fed into the big one.  We hiked up three waterfalls before we decided to go back and leave the mission for shopping and ocean fun.  

We loaded up the bus, boogie boards and all and headed for town.  I don't believe we went to Santo Domingo, but a different town closer to our beach destination.  Unfortunately, with the mission 1-2 hours away from these places, it really sucked up time quite rapidly.  We left the mission around 3:00pm and got to a Wal-mart type store around 4:15pm.  We were allotted 45min to do our shopping.  Well, if you don't know, if you are in a large Supercenter type Wal-Mart type store, you don't know where anything is, and all the prices are foreign, and you can't understand any of the store employees or signs directing you, it takes quite a while to shop.  We rushed through the store, grabbed up what we wanted, paid, grabbed some ice cream, and darted out to the bus, 10min late.  

We could swim till dark, was the agreement.  Well, it got dark around 6:30pm and the beach where we swam at was another 45min away, we only got half and hour to swim.  Oh, well.  It was defiantly worth it though.  Warm water ocean as the sun is setting.  Picturesque scene.  After a day of being busy, (like we had any that were not), it was nice to relax on the bus on the way back to the mission.  Chicken dumplings awaited us on arrival back.  Yummm, Yummm, Yummm.  Packing took place after playing games and such, that was unfortunate, I mean, we played until ten and then we were told to pack all of our stuff.  The one night that we should go to sleep early we stay up till 11:30pm packing.  I on the other hand went to bed cause my stuff was mostly packed.