Well my birthday was fabulous! I mean, we went out the evening of the 17th in Santo Domingo. I bought groceries for some guy asking for money for his mom in surgery, started a trend of drinking caiperiñas--I had one at the restuarant and it was excellent--and an english-speaking guy bought be a cranberry vodka at midnight. On my birthday we walked around in Santo Domingo--saw what I guess were some homeless people living on the ocean, talked to people in Spanish, and bought lunch for a couple of boys, and then we came to Jarabacoa! I have a super, super nice doña, and two brothers. I'll say more about them later.

So the lesson for the day is that I really suck at life! I could have sworn my deodorant wasn't in my backpack, so I went without it for the whole day yesterday. And it's not in Santo Domingo, and man did I stink at the end of the day.

And then when I talked to my doña last night, I thought she said I wouldn't be able to bathe until the afternoon when the water was warm. So I figured I'd better wash off--which I tried to do in the sink--when I realized I didn't have a towel! I'd left the stupid thing on the floor of the hotel bathroom, and since it's white, it got scooped up with the others. So I used my stinky shirt to dry off. Then when I bathed in the morning with the water my doña had heated up for me, I had to do the same thing! Gross. And then this morning, after I had made my doña take me to the supermarket and I had bought a new thing of deordorant, I realized I had had mine with me the whole time. So now I have one for the bathroom and one for my backpack--which is actually handy because it is hot here in the sun!