Dominican League Baseball and Tourist Markets 1/11/12

I realized today that the potential that I saw in Haiti was basically what the Dominican is.  I learned this at this huge market place thing but more on that later.

We went to an orphanage in the morning and met all the kids there. These kids are the children of Dominican prostitutes who either don't want the kids or can't afford them.  They spoke very good English so there was virtually no language barrier.  There was a young horse there as well as a few dogs we had to dodge while playing but it was fun. It was the first time in probably 10 years that I have seriously played on a jungle gym.  The kids sang for us and played games.  I gave my testimony because of all the groups, I figured they would be able to relate to it the best. I basically told my story of how I used to pretty much fake being a christian for most of my life then found true salvation.

When we got done with that we ate lunch at a basketball court and played a few mind games. We then went to this market thing. There was mostly just a bunch of touristy stuff, a few knives and machetes, paintings ect. I bought a necklace for Jill and a bracelet for Tara. On the way out this guy was kinda hounding me so I talked to him in Spanish for a bit. Because I did this he offered me a  necklace for a dollar. I didn't really mind so I gave it to him.  We walked from there to an out door mall thing with a fountain in the middle of it. There were more pigeons there than anywhere I've ever seen in my life. I bought some corn and we fed them from our hands. It was there we discovered that both Kenny and Mitch don't like pigeons, so naturally we threw corn at them for quite some time.

After finally successfully catching a pigeon, I let him go and we went to some kind of heroes mosuleum where this tour guide told us about the heroes of the DR.  I asked if the Trinitarios were there but he said no.  We saw Christopher Colombus' son's house and a fort and a really old church taking pictures all the way.

After eating at the Dominican version of a KFC we went to a Dominican league baseball game where the Escongido Leons (lions) played the San Pedro Aguilas (eagles). It was a great game all around. Miguel Tejada and Hector Luna were on the Aguilas, and Julio Lugo and Fernando Tatis were on the Leons.  The atmosphere was just electric there was a full brass band playing during the whole game not just in between plays. The whole crowd was going crazy the whole time.  It was awesome. The mascot was probably my favorite part though. The mascot could break it down, the cardinals need to recruit that guy to be fredbird. Anyway the game was fantastic, the Leons were down 1-0 until the 8th when in a last ditch effort they put up 6 runs. The whole place went crazy.

We got in really late and have an early morning tomorrow for Catalina, it should be a good time