Volcanos, Valentines Day, and Dodge ball!

Well first of all I must say this post is for Tonya, She is the only one who took my advise and pestered me about updating it! Thank you T!! Anyway its been a hectic couple of weeks. I'll start from where I last left off, on the 30th(of January) Aaron and I went to Aba Wavine together. Aba Wavine was the first hike I did when I first came down here, and I loved it so much I told Aaron he had to go with me when we got the chance because its so beautiful.  It's a fresh waterfall that lands on a rock in the Atlantic ocean. We had a great time. The waves were huge that day so we had lots of fun jumping in them.

Ready for adventure!

Yay we made it! SOOOOOO beautiful!

The waves were so much fun!

Aaron had his first "Mini" of the semester on February 8th. Okay let me clarify, they call it a mini and I have no idea why, its a HUGE test over everything they learned in a month, and when you have class for 8 hours a day, thats a lot of stuff you have to know!  I think they need to change the name! But Aaron is smart and he did great on it! I am so proud! After the "mini" we went to the beach bash, which is basically a big party on the beach and you get a t-shirt if you are one of the lucky ones. We both got shirts and hung out with a few of Aaron's class mates and just relaxed. It was fun. Aaron really needed some down time after being in a constant state of stress for 4weeks, and it was fun to do something other than stay home and watch a movie.

I am so short!

All smiles :D

On the 12th I woke up and took Lily out and noticed the sky looked unusually hazy and there was a heavy gritty layer of dust all over. I thought it was strange, but just chalked it up to being crazy Dominica. Then got on facebook and found out it was volcanic ash from two islands north of us! The children at the day school were wearing surgical masks so they didn't breath it in, and Ross health clinic was giving masks to anyone who wanted one.  It was so weird! The locals joked about it, calling it Dominican snow!! Boy was that stuff a pain to clean up!

This is the pile I swept off my porch at the beginning of the day, there was a pile that big again the next day!

This is our landlord's van.

This is what the whole island was covered in.

Then came Valentines Day!!! I had a fabulous day with my two loves. That morning Aaron had some stuff to finish up at school so he left at about 8 and I cleaned and did laundry and got all that stuff out of the way and then he came back at lunch time and we had a quick lunch and decided we would take Lily to the beach. We have always wondered if she'd like the water and so we figured theres no time like the present. So I packed my puppybag (taking a pup places is like taking a child places, you have to have certain things with you at all times!) and we set off for the beach. The beaches close to us are on the caribbean side and they are normally calm and serene, not this day, not even close! If I didn't know better I'd have thought we were on the Atlantic side. The waves were crashing up on to the beach with no mercy. Now any good puppy parents would have probably said ok this is a bad idea for today lets go home and try again on another day, NOPE not us! Lily was a little scared of the noise the waves made at first but then she absolutely LOVED the beach she was running around jumping and just having a great time and she gradually started to get closer and more comfortable with the water.  She would run out into it and hop up and run back to the sand, it was hysterical! Aaron decided to get some video of it because it was so cute and really entertaining. Well this time she got a little more adventurous then we had anticipated and ran into the water pretty far as it was receding, because it wasn't deep at that moment, just then a wave came crashing over her head she was under water for maybe half a second, but let me tell you It felt like hours!  I was so close to bursting into tears and Aaron was just laughing his butt off, need less to say Lily didn't like that very much. She spent they rest of our time at the beach digging and sniffing around. When we were getting ready to go she was starting to venture out again towards the water so we'll try again on a MUCH calmer day!

She was running so fast...

...it was hard to get a picture that wasn't just sand!

 Then that night Aaron took me out to a restaurant called Riverside where we had a romantic candle lit dinner. It was wonderful. I truly am a lucky girl to have such a great man.

I had rack of lamb, it was delicious! Our mashed potatoes had heart shaped carrots on them, it was cute!

Aaron had steak.

We had our waitress take our picture. We dressed up and everything!!

The week after on the 17th, I went to Batibou Beach, which was a beautiful beach. It honestly looked like a postcard.

Batibou Beach

So peaceful

I think someone must have been living on the beach. I found this little hut. It reminded me of something off of Lost! 

It even had a small fire pit it looked like someone had used.

Then I went on an Aerial Tram through the rainforest on the 18th. It was really neat.

You can tell we live here and weren't from a cruise ship, because when it started raining we all whipped out our umbrellas...lol (you learn quickly that living on a tropical island means that it could rain at any minute, even it's sunny without a cloud in the sky, so you ALWAYS carry one everywhere!)

Off they go...

Thats the suspension bridge you have the option of walking on. Its 300ft above the Breakfast River...

So of course I walked over it! This is looking down 300ft at the river!!

The entire time I was on the bridge I was thinking about how much my Grandpa would hate it! (lets just say he's not a huge fan of heights ;))

HUGE tree roots!

 The 19th a friend of mine put together a trip to Sari Sari Falls. It was beautiful! I love all these amazing hikes to places that take your breath away when you get there.

It amazes me how powerful water is whenever I go to these waterfalls. It works and works until the rock and soil give away, and it never stays the same its always working to change.

Nature at it's finest.

When you are in the pond the fall creates the spray is so powerful you can barely see anything around you, let alone look at the fall its self.

Then that Saturday the 20th I was on a dodge ball team called the Student Spankers, which was composed of 4 spouses and a teenager. One of the clubs on campus had a tournament and we actually ended up winning the whole thing! We won 200ec (about 75usd) and got to sign a trophy. It was a lot of fun! I was sooooooo sore that sunday however! Turns out I'm not as young as I used to be!

Our team Me, Nick, Chrislyn, Charles, and Jacob

We are the champions....

 This is the trophy we signed, Student Spankers '10

The bracket, We ended up playing 7 games. we only lost once! Pretty impressive considering we were described as the team with "4 old people and a kid"

And this is the sunburn I acquired that day- yes I was wearing sunscreen, can you imagine what it would look like had I not?!