Ohhh, boy! Where do I start?! It has been a crazy but awesome summer for us! I guess I will start at the beginning!
Ty and I had the opportunity to travel to tropical Punta Cana, Dominican Republic in June. You may be thinking why did they choose to go to the Dominican Republic? Well, we didn't really choose to go there. You see, I sell Scentsy and every year if you are an awesome seller-person, they treat you with a fabulous week long vacation. We earned the trip to the All-Inclusive Hard Rock Hotel in Punta Cana. We didn't have to pay for anything! Even the flight was taken care of by Scentsy. We did pay extra to spend 2 extra days though. And we were ever so happy we did! The DR is the most beautiful place we have ever been!
This is the airport. It is a huge grass hut that has no walls. It's crazy when we first got off the plane. The heat and the humidity just slap you right in your face!
Our beautiful suite!
Ty is, of course, working. Ugh...can't get away from it!
This place had 9 pools and 12 different restaraunts all included.
Paradise!
best drink ever! Fruit Punch! It had pineapple juice and other crap all mixed together. So good!
The lounge chairs were in the pool! There was about a 4 foot wide ledge and then it would drop into the pool. So nice!
We ordered 5 desserts and only 5 desserts at this restaurant. The cute waiters didn't understand at first but once they did they thought it was cool.
We walked a while on the beach. The most prettiest beach ever. The sand was super soft. You would just sink into it. There weren't any seashells or seaweed.
Ty played volleyball most of the day.
This guy is awesome! His name is Juan and we talked to him for about 2 hours! He told us about his life and it was really inspiring. He started sneaking into karate classes when he was 8 yrs old. He wanted to take lessons so bad but his family couldn't afford them. So that's why he snuck in. After 3 classes the teacher called him over after class and told him that he needed to pay in order to take the classes. Juan explained that his family didn't have enough money though. So the teacher told him that if he would be his helper and enter competitions that he could take the lessons for free. Juan was the best in his class and the teacher always called in him to show the rest of the class how to do the moves. SO he made that deal and won many competitions through his teenage years. But he still wanted more. He wanted a better life. So he picked up a couple of English books so that he could learn English. He read them cover to cover. People who know English in that country often get paid more money. So when he was 18 he took a college course and already knew everything the professor was teaching. then he came to work for the Hard Rock Hotel which is 8 hours in a bus away from his hometown and new wife. He makes about $500 a month but typical wages in the D.R. is only about $200 a month. His story was truly inspiring. He is in charge of karaoke and the one song that reminds him of all his hard work is "Don't Stop Believing." We also talked about how we are Christians and we talked about the Church with him. If we had a BofM I would have given it to him. We also talked about Haiti and all the witch craft that goes on there. Just like here, Haitians are coming to the D. R. illegally to have a better life. It was real interesting and fun to talk to a native. He was so nice and really funny!
Ty hit the bullseye!
I took pics of dogs so that Miley will appreciate what she has.
Scentsy paid for one excursion. We went snorkeling, snuba, and speed boating.
I was so freaked out to go snubaing. We went 20 feet down and it was so awesome. Once I got down there I only paniced once! Our guide swam us around and took great pics of us.
Here's us on our private speed boat. It was a hunk of metal but we made it fun!
This said "Party Boat" on it. Doesn't look much like a party to me!
This girl, as Ty said, was the Dominican Snooki! She was all trying to be hot and dance for the other boat. Gross.
The bar is OPEN!!!
You're so blessed, Miley. Don't you forget it!
Everyone rode motorcycles. Without helmets. They would go zooming by. We saw one with 3 people on it and one had an infant! Crazy!
We did another excursion: buggies. These things were BIG pieces of crap! But, it was all part of the experience! To start off, ours had a flat tire. So we had to wait for it to get pumped up. At least 5 of the buggies broke down. But they were prepared with spares. One of their buggies said "Mechanic" on it so they knew what to expect!
They took us on some dirt roads through small villages and homes. A lot of people complained about how worn down the buggies were and Ty and I just rolled our eyes. Hey, you're in a 3rd World Country, what did you expect? We loved having the broken down buggies! It made it fun!
The tour guides took us to an underground cave that had a pool in it. It was really pretty. There were shops there too.
Ty went in it.
We went fast through a mud puddle and I got muddy! So fun!
Ty was driving real crazy after the mud puddle and actually broke our buggie!!!! We were laughing so hard! The back just ripped apart! They had to ram our broken buggie back to their shop with a different buggie. They had a spare on that they let us drive.
Then they took us to a beautiful beach.
There were tons of local kids climbing on one another and just playing around.
Ty decided to join them! They LOVED him!
Every single on of them would jump and climb on him, he was covered with kids!
This one is holding on to Ty's hair! It was hilarious!
Then Ty would flip them in the air. They were so cute!
Had to get this!
Poor dog was begging for food from everyone! (Miley, be grateful for your plain, old, boring dog food. There are starving dogs in the Dominican Republic who would be happy to have that!)
Ty bought this yummy fruit from a kid. You take off the green peel and then there was this orange soft thing that you would suck off and then you would spit out the huge seed. It tasted like a grape but so much better.
This is MY paradise!
Our favorite tree out our room..the TY tree!
We went ziplining and while we waited for our turn I caught a lizard! Shawn wanted us to bring him home one but this was all he got!
This guy was the spitting image of Will Turner from Pirates of the Caribbean! Except he's Spanish. I HAD to get my pic with him. I told him who he looked like and he smiled and laughed. He had the ponytail in back and everything! It was crazy!
They served us yummy pineapple after the zipline.
One day at the pools they had water toys! They had these cute little boats that you could ride around in.
In another pool they had huge blow up water slides. And everyday they had JAMMIN' music going on. We ordered drinks from the waitresses.
We swam with dolphins but they wouldn't let us take our own cameras :(. So I took pics of what we could! They had a bird show we went to first.
This dude was from Russia or somewhere and his hair was seriously standing straight up. He did not crack a smile ONE! He was so serious.
We got kissed by a sealion.
Ty playing beach volleyball.
Every night they did a show. One night it was a circus, the next it was a dance show. Here is Ty in stage during a dancing competition. He almost won.
This is the airport going home.
I've always wanted to board an airplane on the tarmac!
Yay! I did it!
We had a 4 hour layover in NYC which turned into a 9 hour layover due to weather. We had a nice dinner at the steak place there and Ty watched movies on his laptop. I wandered around looking at people. This lady stuck her feet in Ty's face. It was gross. I have always wanted to go into NYC but we didn't think we had the time to go. If we had known we would be there for 9 hours we might have attempted it. It was so frustrating to be SO SO close but not go!
