Year of Firsts....March

First red eye flight

 January and February were amazing and fantastic, and March was equally great....once again, don't want to make any other months jealous!

Let's flash back to several months prior.  I am sitting at breakfast with my "girls" (5 of us girls from the mission who have remained best friends).  We are getting together with Kristy one final time before she moves to Dominican Republic for her husband's work.  She invites all of us to come visit her for a girl's trip.  Immediately everyone gets excited and starts talking about when is good and who do I know with buddy passes, etc.  Spring break is in March, so that caters to those who are students.  Someone else knows someone who works for an airline and could probably get some buddy passes, but not enough for everyone.  Strategies are flying all around the table.  I sit there quietly, adoring and loving my "girls" but thinking that the reality of catering to 5 people's schedules and different lives is going to be near impossible.

I walk out of the restaurant and say to Kristy, "Despite whether or not everyone else falls through, I'm coming to visit you.  Im serious."  She smiled her sweet smile and said that she would love that!

view from the condo

 March came and my sister Shantell and I flew to the Dominican Republic.  I was excited!  Partly because Kim Kardashian frequents the DR for her vacays, but mainly because I was getting a tropical vacation in the middle of a cold Salt Lake City March.  I was also very excited to see my friend Kristy and her cute little family!  Our other friend Stacey had been living down there the past several weeks to help Kristy transition, so we would get to spend some good quality time

Our practically private beach

 with her also!  The view from their condo on the beach was amazing!  We could walk out the back sliding door, go down the side walk past the pool, and we had our very own uncrowded beach.  The waves were huge!  There were no tourists to be found.  The weather was hot but not scorching.  It was perfect!  It was everything that I wanted my Hawaii trip to be, that it wasn't.

One thing that is for certain about the DR is the crazy drivers and crazy streets.  I literally saw 2 guys riding a little motor bike, and the guy on the back of the bike was carrying a mattress.  Who needs moving trucks when you have motor bikes.  We, of course, had to get a ride on some!

One day we went on an excursion to 27 waterfalls.  It was a full day of stops and culture.  We went to some small villages outside the town and got to see a more simple life.  Little kids would run along side the truck yelling, "benta, benta."  I could totally be spelling and pronouncing that incorrectly, but basically, they wanted us to throw them candy.  Had I known I was going to be riding in the back of truck throwing candy like a parade, I would have come more prepared.  Much to the little kids' disappointment, they didn't get any candy from us..  At one point, we saw a little herd of piglets following their momma running down the path.  It was the first and only time I have found pigs adorable!

We also got to see a cock fight.  They put punching gloves on the claws so the cocks didn't actually hurt each other, but it was pretty intense.

 I don't have pictures of 27 waterfalls because we didn't have a waterproof camera, but that was such a fun time!  We had some tour guides that helped us.  We had to wear life jackets and helmets because we were literally swimming through ponds of water and hiking up the water fall.  I don't mean hiking along side the waterfalls while walking on a trail.  I mean treading water right below the falls, looking up with squinted eyes to avoid the water blurring you vision, climbing up the water while it is pounding you down....all with the help of the guides, of course.  Now, if you are envisioning a huge waterfall of 100+ feet, you are giving me way too much credit for my waterfall-hiking skills.  These were more like cascading waterfalls, each reaching the height of 5-10 feet.  We only hiked up the first 7.  If you wanted to do all 27, you had to hike on a trail along side the waterfalls.  I would rather do 7 and hike up them, than take the easy way out and stay and solid ground.  After we hiked our 7 waterfalls, we got to slide back down each one of them.  They were like natural water slides.  For those of you who know how much I love water slides and water parks, you can only imagine how much I LOVED 27 waterfalls!!

 We went to another place called Monkey Jungle.  They had little Capuchan monkeys that, as you can see, will come right up to you and make themselves at home.  This particular monkey decided to his its meal on my head and left a little sunflower seed for later.   They truly were adorable.

 I also got to hold a parrot on my shoulder....a little less friendly, but still eventually came to me.

As part of Monkey Jungle, they had a 7 zip line tour.  We had a group of about 12 people, 10 were from Canada who just happened to be there the same time as us, and 5-6 tour guides.  Each tour guide had a fun name that explained their personality.  Long story short, Bob Marley had become fond of me.  If you want details, you'll have to talk to me in person, but let's just say, he helped me accomplish yet another "first" for March.

Zip lining....LOVED it!!!!

Shantell and I posing for a picture with Eddie Murphy and Bob Marley