Packing up...

Well, its finally here, we leave tomorrow. We've been packing all day and are just about done, just those little necessities that we need for tonight and tomorrow morning. We've got our appointment with our landlord to have the inspection to get our deposit back (lets just hope she shows up on time) and then friends are taking us to the airport about noon.

Later today, we are going to drop off some remaining items that we aren't taking back (food, cleaning supplies, etc) at a friends house and then its off to dinner with everyone for our last night here. We are hoping our airline tickets have finally sorted themselves out even though we can't view our seats or change them. Keep your fingers crossed for us tomorrow.

We are going to drastically miss our relaxed laid back lifestyle here but are looking forward to being in our home and skiing. It will be quite the culture shock to have to drive everywhere, to have one store where you can buy everything you want at one time and last but not least, to have to wear shoes!!!

I thought I'd share a few more observations from living down here:

• Its really bad when the electricity goes off before you've made your morning coffee.
• Washing clothes in a bucket in the shower for 5 months gets a little old.
• In the Dominican Republic, Santa arrives on a donkey instead of a sleigh.
• When doing dishes in a single round kitchen sink, you tend to come away wetter than the dishes.

We're not sure when we'll return to Cabarete, but we know we will at some point. Its been a great 5 months and we are already looking forward to our next trip even though we don't know when or where that will be. We have been so fortunate to have our time down here and to meet all the wonderful people that we have. We will truly miss them and look forward to meeting up with them again in the future. Thanks so much to everyone who has made our time here truly GREAT!!

Soakin up the sun...

Well, we've been busy soaking up the sun before our return to the states on Sunday. It has definitely been an interesting couple of days...

We had good wind on Tuesday so Matt took advantage of it to kite. It was going well until he came close to the shore and crashed. Needless to say, seeing your hubby coming out of the water with blood pouring from his face is not something you want to see everyday. He took a nasty spill in the shore break and his board came up and whacked him just above his right eye. He was bleeding and already had a huge lump on his forehead as he exited the water. I landed his kite, wiped the blood off and helped him look for his sunglasses that he lost. We never found the glasses but did finally manage to persuade him to go back to the house so I could make sure we didn't need to head to the doctor because of a concussion. Overall, he is fine, just earned himself the nickname "Lumpy". Yeah, I know, not nice but thats what he gets for scaring me to death.

Well, we hoped yesterday would be a bit less dramatic and it was... barely!! He was no longer banned from kiting (like he was on Tuesday afternoon) but he was definitely grounded with having to stay close to the beach and checking in with me about every half an hour. He had quite a few good sessions and then on his last run of the day, he crashed and the waves took his board. He came body surfing in on a big wave and then next thing I know, he is doubled over in pain. I'm yelling at him to land the kite (which he proceeds to do with a nice kite line over my ear) and then I run back to him to figure out what is wrong now. He hurt his back surfing on the wave. After a few stretches he was fine, but nothing like scaring me to death two days in a row.

Lets hope todays sessions are a bit less dramatic!!!

We are hoping for lots of beach and kite time over the next three days before its time to clean everything off and pack it all up for the trip home. We've had lots of problems with our airline tickets and Matt spent hours on the phone yesterday trying to get it all resolved so we are hoping we make it home!!! They changed our flight times with no notice (thank goodness it leaves an hour later instead of earlier). Overall, we'll be glad to get back to our home we haven't really seen in 7 months, but we'll be sad to leave the beach and relaxed life here.

Back home... at least for now...

Sorry for not posting in almost a week, but I've had a nasty flu bug and am just finally feeling almost normal. Matt didn't catch the entire thing, thank goodness, just some cold like symptoms. Lets just say that Matt has told me that there is not a need to share EVERYTHING and that I can keep my bugs to myself!!!

Lets see if I can get us all caught up here.

I last posted on Tuesday when we were waiting on wind in Las Terrenas. We planned on driving to Samana City on Wednesday to hopefully see the whales. Matt, Kim & Jay made the drive down to the southern tip of the pennisula while I stayed in Las Terrenas and slept as I felt awful. After a pretty rolly 4 hour boat ride, they did not see any whales as it seems they haven't really shown up yet. They heard lots of great stories and were told that in past years as many as 4,000 whales could be seen in the area, WOW!! I wish they would have seen the whales, but I'm also glad I didn't miss them.

On Thursday, we made a very short (like minute long) drive to the point just outside of town and found a beautiful bay for them to kite in. It was a beautiful bay surrounded by lots of palm and mangrove trees. The wind was onshore so it had them kiting close to me so that I could take lots of great photos. Overall, the beach was beautiful and deserted but did not have the same safe feeling that we do here in Cabarete. Nothing bad, just felt like we really had to keep an eye on things to make sure they didn't "walk" off.

We decided to extend our trip by one day (Friday) to hopefully give everyone another day of kiting before making the drive back along the north coast. We drove up to the point called Portillo and were looking for a way to access the beach. We tried playing stupid tourists saying that we needed inside a gated neighborhood for "la casa de mi amigo" (my friend's house), but while the guards did let us in, they didn't buy it and proceeded to follow us around until we finally left the neighborhood. We decided to hop a curb in the rental car and park alongside the beach and walk up to the point. It was a beautiful bay but we had to watch the weather a bit as the wind was up and down and it looked like rain. Kim and I even built a fort out of old plywood, sticks & coconuts to protect the camera from rain since we were so far from the car and the sky was threatening all day. All in all, not a great kiting day but it did allow me to get some neat shots from my position on the beach.

We left Las Terrenas early on Saturday morning and returned to Cabarete just a bit before noon. Neither Matt or I felt good so we napped almost all of Saturday afternoon. We finally woke a bit before dinner and managed to eat a bit of pasta. Yesterday was pretty much a repeat although Matt did walk down to the beach with his kite gear only to return when there wasn't enough wind.

Today we actually managed to head down to the beach for a couple of hours and Matt took his 10 meter kite out for a sail. I worked on my tan while reading and relaxing on the beach. We made it into town tonight for some dinner on the beach so life is finally returning to normal.

We can't believe that our time here is almost at an end. We have less than a week before we return to the states and work. We're busy trying to clear out all the food from our cabinets and the cupboards are looking pretty bare so it will be lots of eating out for us this week. We are both ready for a change and are looking forward to going home but we will miss our wonderfully laid back life here and all of the wonderful friends that we have met.

Yeah... Sun & Wind!!!

Just a quick post to say that we are so happy that the sun and wind have returned today. Matt had a great day sailing his 14 meter kite early and then after a brief rest he took his 10 meter out. I had a quiet day reading on the beach and resting at home as I'm not feeling all that well today.

Also, please check out our photography & designs website... http://www.shetzers.com
Matt has been hard at work getting photos up and designing the entire website, I think he did a fantastic job!! Please leave us a comment here to let us know what you think of it.

Sunny skies have returned

Well, we haven't found the wind yet, but at least we found that bright yellow thing in the sky!! YEAH!!! We actually awoke to sunny skies and haven't had any rain all day.

I had a call with the company that I'm going to do some work for this morning and then we set off on foot down the beach to La Boca (the mouth of the river). It took us about 4.5 hours to make the walk to and from and to have lunch. Unfortunately lunch "looked" at me, so while Matt enjoyed the fish, I enjoyed some rice & beans. We had a great walk down the beach and enjoyed being outside. We collected some shells on the way back to add to our collection here.

We have been so amazed at the lack of shells that we have found here. All of the ones that we find here are pure white (we have no idea why) or are these little purple things. Matt did manage to find a conch shell near the reef today. It was in the water and he was a bit afraid to pick it up as he wasn't sure if it was still someone's "home" and might pick at him.

Rainy days are here again...

Well actually, they never left!! We keep hoping that the weather will clear and we can get some beach time again. We're getting a bit stir crazy. This is just like Tropical Storm Noel in October that decided to stick around forever!!

We've watched as wave after wave of dark storm clouds have rolled onshore and the pouring rain quickly follows. To quote Matt, it has been raining "Cats & Buckets". When I asked him if he meant "Cats & Dogs" he quickly replied "No, I mean Cats & BUCKETS!". Should give a visual, huh?

On the plus side, we've had lots of computer time so Matt has been working on the photography website and I've been working on my next digital scrap-booking kit. I'm still not sure what I'm going to do with all the kits other than give them away for now, especially as we return to Denver and to work.

As we get closer to the end of our trip, we've decided to explore Dominican a bit. We are planning a trip next week with friends to the Samana peninsula so we'll be a bit out of touch. The peninsula is on the eastern most tip of the island. We are planning on visiting the beautiful beaches of Las Terrenas to do some kite-boarding and then to watch the whales from Samana City. We had no idea that just a few miles from where we are living is one of the most fantastic breeding grounds of the humpback whale. We are so excited to be able to see this wonderful creature up close, however, I'll be on lots of dramamine!!

Nothing too much exciting here, just wanted to give you a quick update!

Stormy Weather...

Well, its stormy here again. Thank goodness it didn't develop into the Tropical storm that they thought it was going to. We've been getting lots of rain and wind since yesterday afternoon. The winds really picked up about a quarter til 6 yesterday evening so we ran to the beach with Matt's 10 meter kite. He pumped up the kite and I ran his lines and we had him flying in under 15 minutes (it was getting dark fast!!).

Here is a picture I took of the approaching storm - Gorgeous colors with the sun setting!!



Credits for Storm #3:
Based on a template by Traci Sims
All papers & embellishments from Chigger Lane Designs MEMORIES OF SPRING Kit
Photo by Angela
Font: Hobo Std
Special thanks to AtomicCupcake.com for her actions in creation of photo tear and colored glass elements

Downtown

After Spending the Week in New York, I wanted to send you some photos of Downtown Cabarete.

This is the only paved road in the town, and the major Hwy (the only road to connect the cities on the North Coast.)

In so many ways it reminded me of Manhattan, just a bit smaller, and more Chickens and Donkeys.

On at last photo, this is outside the hardware store. We don’t know whether the chicken are for sale, or for lunch (the place next door only sells grilled chicken)

New snorkeling photos!!

I wanted to share a couple of new layouts that I did using Gina's Fishy Tales Mini kit. I had so much fun with the water theme on this kit and matching our snorkeling pictures with it. We have been so happy with our little underwater camera and we take it everywhere down here. Its a great thing to have to capture little snapshots.

Credits for Snorkeling with Banana Fish:
Based on a template by Chris Greiser
FISHY TALES kit by Gina Arzaga at NDISB
Photos by Angela
Font: DymoFontInvers (special thanks to AtomicCupcake.com for Frosted Glass Action used in making title)

Credits for Sosua Snorkel:
Based on a Template by Patti Hutchinson
FISHY TALES MINI KIT by Gina Arzaga
Special thanks to AtomicCupcake.com for use of her actions in creating stiches, Scribbled outline & Stencil title
Fonts: Earwig Factory, Action is & Castellar
Photos by Matt & Angela

Kite Video!!

We had strong winds today so Matt took his 10 meter kite out for several rides today. I took our little pentax camera that does video to see how it would do. I caught several good rides and wave attacks.

Here is a link to one of the videos (Did I mention that we are trying to get our our website {http://www.shetzers.com/} ready to launch?) This is of Matt playing in the surf today and a great jump (& crash) at the end of the video.

Here is a picture of me on Christmas Day just as I stalled my kite yesterday (see how slack the lines look) just before the big YANK!!


Enjoy!!!

Hope you had a fantastic holiday!!

We hope everyone had a great Christmas. We had a very quiet couple of days (well as quiet as you can get with Dominican music blaring all around).

On Christmas Eve, we started out with a fantastic couple of hour walk down the beach from Cabarete to Encuentro. Then we headed over to our friend's home in the evening. As many of you know we don't have a car down here so we had to decide how to get to our friends home on the other side of town. We had wine, champagne, mashed potatoes, stuffing, ice cream, chocolate & a large toy golf club set to take with us so we needed two backpacks to carry it all in.

Well we decided to take a moto concho. For those of you not familiar with a moto concho, it consists of a Dominican on a motorcycle (who may or may not have an actual license) and you just hop on the back and off you go (and I do mean OFF you go). As soon as we approach the entrance to our apartments, we are constantly whistled at and harrassed by the moto conchos. We shook our heads yes and they arrived in seconds. Well, I climbed on first and then Matt climbed on behind me (keep in mind with two backpacks and a plastic set of golf clubs for Luna) on a one person moto.

The little town that we live in has had its roads completely torn up as they have laid sewer pipe so it was quite a bumpy ride through town and to make it worse, we could not see the bumps coming. So after hearing Matt say Owww many times (did I mention he was sitting on the luggage rack), we finally arrived at our friends community. We were very glad to make it to their house without having a backpack full of garlic mashed potatoes.

Well, Christmas day was a bit quieter with no wild moto rides just a wild kite ride. The wind was decent so we hauled our kites (yep, even mine) down to the beach to kite for a bit. Matt helped me launch my kite and I flew it on the beach for a bit. The wind was really gusty so my kite kept stalling (yep, gotta figure out how to make it stop that). Basically, it would be flying just fine, then get hit by a gust of wind to be followed by a huge gap of wind. Well, that means it falls out of the sky - NOT A GOOD THING... Well, one time, I didn't recover well at all and Matt and I both went flying. He was holding onto the back of my harnass and digging in his feet while I bounced multiple times before we both ended up in a pile on the sand. No injuries, but I learned my lesson and got much better at recovering the kite when it stalled. One wild ride was enough!!

So maybe it wasn't so quiet but it was very good. We missed all our friends and family but managed to talk to our family on Christmas. And I still managed to watch my favorite Christmas movie, Christmas Story, on TBS multiple times.

And let there be light...

You know... There are just some things that we Americans take for granted... Most of you know that we struggle with power here in the DR and that the country regularly practices rolling blackouts because it can not afford to pay its fuel bill to Venezula.

I would bet a lot of money that we'll never see this promise from our power companies in our newspapers...

Edesur: There will be light
The power distribution companies are promising to do their bit for a bright Christmas. Edesur has announced that it will provide its customers with uninterrupted power service during the Christmas holiday. The continuous power service will begin on 24 December at 5pm, lasting until 6am 25 December. Edesur will provide the same service from 31 December through 1 January 2008.
www.dr1.com

Beach Time

The weather here today was beautiful although our quiet little beach is gone... We are starting to see the influx of tourists (yeah, like we don't fit into that category) for the holidays. The beach is busy and there are lots of new kite-boarding students so its "heads up" on the beach for crashing kites!!

We had a bit of wind so Matt took advantage of it to sail his 14 meter kite first and then he came back in to take his 10 meter out. He demoed a couple of boards today as well (why do I think these are going to be expensive demos????).

I wanted to share a new layout that I did today using another of Gina's kits called Springy Sprinkles!! It is such a cute kit and I love all of the wonderful flowered papers!!




Credits for Beach Time:
Template by Andrea Gold
Papers and elements by Gina Arzaga's SPRINGY SPRINKLES Kit at NDISB



Photos by Matt & Angela
Font: Duality

Sunny days have returned!!

Just a quick note to let you know how we are faring down here after the Tropical Storm. We are so glad to see our wonderful clear blue skies return. We really haven't had clear sunny days since October before Tropical Storm Noel moved through.

The last couple of days have been beautiful and almost chilly. Yeah I know, compared to most of you and your ice/snow storms its HOT, but for here it actually is a bit chilly. You really want the sun to be out otherwise you are a bit chilly on the beach in your bathing suit (Yeah, now I know that I am just rubbing it in). If its any consolation, we are going to FREEZE when we go home.

The winds have been rather light, but Matt has managed to kite the last three days. I'm hoping the wind comes up soon so I can get some more good pictures to share. Today, the wind was rather light so he took out a friends surf board with his kite (sorry I missed that).

We've started to collect a journal of our thoughts on living down here. I thought I'd share a few of them with you every now and then...

• I can't remember the last time I wore shoes out to dinner.
• Did you know that one individually wrapped Halls cough drop is equal to one Dominican Peso (their currency) and that they are frequently given as change when the grocery store does not have pesos?
• Did you know that the afore mentioned Halls cough drop comes in a Watermelon flavor (boy was that a surprise when red wasn't cherry)?
• Did you know that it is possible to live for months without an oven and a microwave? Possible but definitely not convenient.
• We can't remember the last time we woke up to an alarm clock.
  

I think thats all we have for now.

Happy Holidays!!!
A & M

My First Freebie Kit!!

As many of you know, I've been scrapping for quite a while. Well, I've decided to take the plunge and design a few kits. I'm still getting the hang of it and it takes forever, but I finished my first one!! I am so excited.

The colors come from the December Color Challenge at DSO. I thought they were just perfect for a great tropical theme so thats what I went with.

The kit contains 8 papers, a couple of ribbons, several brads & gems and a neat alphabet. Its my first kit and I hope you can use!! Just click on the image below to be taken to the download. I'd like to thank Atomic Cupcake and photoshopbrushes.com for the use of their actions and brushes in creating this kit.



Here is a layout that I did with it to test it out!!!


Credits for Sosua:
TROPICAL FLAVORS kit by ME!!!
Template by Traci Drane for Make it Scrappy template challenge
Font: Papyrus
Photos by Angela

Tropical Storm Olga Pictures

These are pictures from Tuesday during the storm and from this mornings walk around all the damage.

If you get this via a feed or email, be sure to come to the blog to view the slideshow. Click here.

Here is a link to the picasa album so you can view the pictures in a larger size.

And the cleanup begins...

Just a quick note to let you know that the worst of Tropical Storm Olga has left Cabarete. I think we'll have some lingering rain but at about 5 am this morning, everything went completely silent. So quiet in fact that it woke me up!! Pretty weird after listening to howling wind & rain for 12 hours non stop.

We think our strongest gusts here were about 45 mph yesterday evening but the wind data has some huge holes in it because everything went down. We lost internet last night and it only came up a few minutes ago.

We ventured out this morning to look at the storm damage and Matt has been busy repairing everything from his crash yesterday (yes, it was quite bad). So far, the damage appears to be very minor here with the exception of the total annihilation of Marabu restaurant (Click Here for some photos of the inside of the restaurant on my Birthday and Click Here for some BEFORE pictures & more info). I'll post some pictures from today soon.

The beach is pretty dirty and there are huge drifts of sand everywhere. Our little pathway down to the beach is just covered with sand and all the plants along it are pretty storm damaged. Lots of the thatched roofs here are pretty torn up and several palm trees have seen better days. We haven't been into town yet to see what the damage is there, but we were in town the night that the storm came in and everyone was really putting things away in preparation for the storm so hopefully the damage is not too bad. We live across from the hardware store and once they managed to repair their font awning (to be able to open their doors), they opened for business and have had a steady stream of customers all morning.

I'll post some pictures this morning out to Picasa and post some more here as soon as our internet connection is stable.

Tropical Storm Olga Intensifies...

Just a quick update on how we are weathering the storm. We are seeing intermittent heavy rains and lots of wind. The winds have been gusting up to 45 mph, and the rain is going sideways. This is by far worse than Tropical Storm Noel back in October. The latest update (about an hour prior to this posting) the winds had gone to a maximum of 60+ mph and the center is located only about 30 miles to the south of us (the storm reaches over 200 miles wide) and we are in the path of the strongest part of the storm. They are expecting up to 10 inches of rain in the next 24 hours (good thing we are on the second floor), and the storm should be leaving Hispaniola by then.

WRITTEN 12/11/07 - 8:45PM

As I write this our internet connection is down so I’m composing an email that I hope will go up some time tonight. We have been up and down with electric all night (remember we have a generator), and it looks like the whole town is mostly without power.

We just took a walk down to the beach to check things out and were met along the way with huge palm leaves down and a coconut (glad we weren’t around when they fell). It seemed pretty windy here at the apartment, but as we neared the beach it was HOWLING!! And I do mean HOWLING!!! It was blowing so hard that we couldn’t walk more than about 20 steps before we had to turn around and seek shelter. The blowing sand and driving rain (and it wasn’t raining hard at all) were stinging our exposed skin. The waves are HUGE!! We watched huge waves crash ashore one after another. We think the waves are about 25 + feet crashing on the beach. Needless to say, there will be some damage from this storm.

We are all safe and dry in our apartment. We have the back door & window cracked and a window in the front cracked and the wind is cranking through. As a matter of fact, I tried to shut the bathroom door and it would not stay shut. Matt had to hold it shut with both hands in order for it to stay shut against the wind. We’ve had to move all the furniture off the balcony inside (Yes, Matt got really wet) because it was blowing around and we were afraid it would become flying shrapnel.

Matt did manage to go kiting this afternoon. The water wasn’t all that crowded, as only about 5 folks opted to sail. He used Angela’s small kite (8m), and did one huge jump (his biggest ever) followed by a crash (his biggest ever), and then crashing the kite in the water (his biggest ever) followed by Angela digging it out of the surf with the howling winds. It was an on-shore breeze, so he was quickly back on the land.

We’ll keep you updated as power and internet allow!!

Take Care,

Angela & Matt

Tropical Storm Olga

Well, Round 2 is here.

Just a quick note to give you a bit of an update on Tropical Storm Olga. We are currently under a tropical storm warning here along the north coast of DR. (At least we aren't covered under inches of ice!!!)

So far, we are just seeing rain bands and wind bands and Matt is trying to figure out when he can go kite-board so I'm sure I'll have some pictures later on today. The seas are rough, but so far, not as rough as when Tropical Storm Noel came through. We do expect the weather to worsen a bit today and tonight but overall we're just hanging out watching it (inside when its pouring rain and on the beach when its clear).

Here is a link that will give you all the public advisories and the latest info. We did well with power and internet during Noel so hopefully we'll have the same luck again. I'll try to update the blog as much as possible during the storm.

Summer Lily

And the last one for tonight... I just finished my November Challenge for Gina's CT based on a Name Game Challenge that we played (Click HERE to see my results).

Our challenge was to pick one of our names and make a scrap page out of it. I decided to scrap my Spy Name/Bond Girl Name of SUMMER LILY. Well, I'm not very good at scrapping pictures of myself so I decided to use one that showed I was READY FOR THE ACTION!!!

My wonderful husband snapped this shot of me while I was trying on my snorkel mask to make sure it fit OK for a snorkeling trip (I promise that I do not wear this thing around the house all the time!!!). At first I thought it was great blackmail material so I decided to beat him to it and show it off!!



Created for the Name Game Challenge at the Cre8v Girls CT Blog

Credits for Summer Lily:
SPRINGY SRINKLES kit by Gina Arzaga

Template by Katy Larson & Sonya Johnston (Kissed Studio)
Font: Vivaldi & Orator Std
Photo by Matt