Stepping Out of the Boat

One of the things that we look forward to every day at 7:15 am when we walk into the school is... SPRING BREAK!!! Today, we made our plans for that wonderful week that is coming the first week of April... and it's not the beach.

We thought there was no possible way that we would be able to climb Pico Duarte, the tallest mountain in the caribbean because you have to have camping equipment. Well, we found this place called Rancho Wendy that is run by an American family, and they specialize in making treks up Pico Duarte - and they provide all the equipment. We're really excited about it. In fact, the people from Rancho Wendy are going to come pick us up in Santo Domingo since we have no other way to get there. If you want to check out Rancho Wendy online, here's the link:

http://www.ranchowendy.com/

School just seems to be getting more and more ridiculous as the days go by. Tomorrow, John's students have a "bake-sale" at which the main item is going to be tacos, but it's so disorganized that today for the morning announcements, nobody even knew what was going to be served or how much the food was going to cost.

In the high school area, apparently kids aren't keeping their lockers locked, and the administration sees that as a huge problem. In fact, the problem is so big in their estimation that they have decided on a way to deal with it: While the students are in class in the morning, the maintenance staff go around and lock up all lockers that aren't already locked so the students can't get any of their books, homework, projects, etc. for class for the rest of the day. This means that half of the students in my classes have nothing they need for class. I guess the lockers are more important than education, right?