Juan Dolio and Vayahibe

For the weekend, Joanna and her family picked me up in the morning and we went to Juan Dolio beach. It was really pretty. The water was clear and the sand white. The water was shallow for a good distance out and there were some parts that were mini gardens of seagrass and parts with big trees that must have come from previous storms.

I only was able to stay there for about an hour because Angel was coming to pick me up to go to another beach, Vayahibe. He had found an all-inclusive hotel for really cheap and so that is where we went. It was funny because all the guests were mostly Italian and French and I was thinking that most of them would be Dominican.

The hotel was huge and garden-like. The walk from our room to the restaurants, bar, pool and beach area was about a quarter mile and there were fountains and flowers all along the way.

The first day that we were there, there was a volleyball tournament going on and they were divided into teams by countries. I was put on the French team as there were no American or Mexicans for that matter haha. We won the tournament and they gave us a bottle of rum and a diploma as the prizes. Sunday, I played volleyball with everyone again for probably a good 3 hours. I had so many spikes and it felt really good to exercise after working so much during the week.

The beach there was awesome! All along the buoys, there were giant pots probably about 4 feet tall. When I went out there and stood on one, I saw a lot of tropical fish and even a sting ray. All I could think is, "I hope Curaçao is like this!"

One of the best parts of the week was hearing the same instructions in English, French, Spanish and Italian... for everything. As we were passing the pool to go to the beach, there was an Italian staff member doing trivia. He played a song and the teams had to guess what movie or TV show it was from. Sometimes he had people name the actors or directors etc. Everyone playing there was Italian and almost all the questions were about American movies or shows that they have over there. For me, the shows were pretty dated (for example Bonanza, Love Boat, Arnold) and so I didn't know a lot of them, but it was very entertaining seeing them getting really excited and screaming "Belín!" (well that is what I heard, I don't know if that is how you spell it) to tell the emcee to call on them. I was definitely reminded of Stefano and Francesco haha.

Angel participated in a beer competition and lost horribly. It was funny because 2 Dominicans came up to him afterward shaking their head, "You let us and your country down."