Eldon and Dawn Hurst's Travels: January 2018

November 2017

Another month has come and gone so I better update what we have been up to. Our temporary one week apartment has turned into a longer temporary apartment. We should be moving to smaller, cozier accommodations between the 15th and 30th of December. We can take any of the furnishings or inventory from this apartment with us to the other as needed. We don’t know yet what to take since we haven’t seen the new place. We do know it was lived in by a bachelor so....
Across the street from our current apartment is a lovely large park which is safe to walk in and has great exercise equipment. The US would be wise to adopt some of this sturdy non electronic stuff.

Castle turret in park.

Exercise equipment at the park. All use own
body weight for resistance

Knarly old tree.

Lovely safe place.

Eldon on the walkway.

Parrot on top of the tree stump

Nice fountain in the park

No idea what these cute buildings are used for. Eldon thinks
to practice in as this is a music/arts academy park.

We did a two day class for return missionaries on the 8th. They occur once a month apparently and we found out the morning we walked into the office that we were the instructors. Most of them spoke fair English so I was of some use. The kids come and stay overnight at the Casa de Huespedes on the temple grounds. They are fed breakfasts, lunches and dinners by a catering service and we take them to the temple for a session. The boys walked over and we drove the sisters back and forth to the temple. It is about a mile as the crow flies. As it turned out it was pouring rain the one day but it isn't that far to go and due to traffic the boys beat us!

The buffet for the missionary class

Since it was now the middle of November and all the stores were decked out in Christmas finery and playing Christmas music, I decided there was no time like the present to decorate especially since we would have to take it all down right after Christmas to move.

Our Christmas Tree

We weren't getting much direction from work so decided to take it upon ourselves to be self motivated and head out to the districts to introduce ourselves and start the ball rolling with this self sufficiency program. Off we went to Azua to meet the district people. Since there was no traffic to speak of Sunday morning, we arrived a little early.

Azua District Chapel

The committee met with Eldon and I went to Relief Society. I wasn't going to get much out of either meeting and the room the committee had to meet in was very small. They are in the process of reorganizing the committee and will get back to us when we can help them with training the new people.

Come Monday we and the Greers (new area Self Reliance--they don't know what they are doing either) went on a walk to a local attraction not far from us, the oldest settlement in the Americas. It is called Zona Colonial and is just a little spot in the city down by the ocean.

Altar de la Patria. Houses the remains of the founding fathers
of the Dominican Republic.

The three famous founding fathers. There is an eternal flame burning there.

Plaque at the feet of Juan Pablo Duarte

Cathedral of Santa Maria la Menor. Oldest Cathedral in the Americas. Built in 1504

I am going to ride in one of these before we go home.

We also visited the Hospital San Nicolas de Bari, the oldest hospital built in the Americas constructed in 1503. The design emulated European courts and they looked to Renaissance Italy for inspiration. It is believed to be modeled after the Hospital Sancto Spiritu in Rome. The lateral naves housed the sick so they were only steps away from the chapel. Although in ruins by 1908 it is still impressive.

Hospital San Nicolas

Another view.

The figures in the courtyard look very Mayan

Back side of Cathedral of Santa Maria la Menor

Bronze figure on the bench by the cathedral. Sister Greer is
making sure he doesn't move.

A lot of old impressive buildings in Colonia.

In our excursion around zona Colonial we came across a movie company that were filming some upcoming box office hit I am sure.

Actors getting make-up done etc.

Bathrooms and dressing rooms for the actors are in
the RV's and trucks.

Our next short explore was driving to Punta Cana for reconnaissance to see what fun things we could do on our "Preparation" days. We discovered several places that were not worth going and a couple that were.