International Volleyball

There is a FIVB PanAmerican Tournament going on here in Santo Domingo, last night we went to the semi-finals.  The arena is in the Olympic Park area, recently spiffed up to host this group.  The stadia in  the park are for past Pan American games, they are getting run down in general, but this stadium was nice, and air conditioned, in fact it was too cold at first.

The crowd got a little bigger but not that full,
very loud for it's size!

The anthem is highly regarded, really it is a hymn. 
Some of our team didn't stand so straight for our anthem.



Blurry but they did exchange some trinkets.



Argentina upset Brasil in five games the first semi, then the US won in 5 games in the second, the crowd was almost exclusively Dominican, when they won the second and fourth game it got pretty loud. I had never been to high end VB before, pretty fast game. The US team was not the Olympic team, but a B or C team. Same with Brasil, don't know about Argentina, but they were young. It was fun to be out in the crowd, we got back to the Casa so late it was locked and security had to let us in.

What have we been doing?

We have been busy with Elders, and have had some fun too.  Sr. Glazier, wife of CCM Pres. Glazier had to go home for a ten days to get a pacemaker. This coincided with the arrival of 32 new latino missionaries. I knew that having her upstairs screened a lot of the small health troubles with out bothering me, but I really learned how busy a few persistent, and recidivist, elders could make me. Colds, tummy aches, headaches, sprained wrists, rashes all through the day. Thankfully she is back and this group has settled down.

Last week on the way to Santiago a semi tractor and trailer were tipped over in the road, we were lucky to scoot by before a back up developed. We came back this way in about three hours, the truck was gone but there was still a huge back up, must have closed the road to get it out of there.

The traffic and driving here continue to amaze, I try not to get frustrated but it doesn't always work. We have to be careful as anyone bigger than our Corrolla thinks we will get out of their way, I have to remember that. We haven't had an accident, though a truck scraped my passenger side mirror one day.

We celebrated our fortieth wedding annivesary with a trip to Guaycanes Beach, we had planned a nice day resort visit with lunch, but they weren't open when we arrived so we went to the public beach.  It was a nice day, we found some shade along a wall so we could read. I had some nice beach walks too.



Playa Guayacanes, one hour east of Santo Domingo.



This Saturday we went to the Beach with the Cornish's, Fords, McDermids, Buttons and Mahans. The Cornish's had four of their grandchildren visiting, so it was fun to watch them enjoy the beach.

Reid Cornish and the Fords