We're Here!!!!

Hi!!!!

We made it! We can't believe we're here! Surreal. It's beautiful!

Let's recap so far.

Yesterday, Maile picked up Chanel from Laguna Niguel and we made our way up to Leslie's house in Huntington Beach. There, the three of us carpooled and traveled to LAX together. I'm not going to lie, it got semi-stressful as we ran about 30 mins behind due to traffic (I suppose it was stressful just for me, Maile and Les seemed fairly at ease). So needless to say, we were pushing the envelope haha. All the while, Katie was already at LAX because here family was already up there dropping off her sister at the airport too. So here we had Katie waiting at the airport for about an hour (biting her nails all the while haha) and the three of us casually strolling into LAX nearly an hour and a half later than we planned. Typical.

So then the Small's dropped us off at LAX (thanks so much for the ride- we so appreciated it!), and we had to proceed through the check-in process (which at this rate is dramatic because we have so many extra bags stuffed with arts and crafts- so we're a mess haha). With a sly little wink, we made up for lost time by checking in through business class (probably saved us an hour- and yes, we were flying economy- sweet deal). Katie meanwhile is searching for us in the masses of the economy class check in. In the end, we all got through and made it through security (not without some serious body scanning) and we were on our way!

First stop: Starbucks, for some double filtered Venti waters. Yes, true statement. Starbucks actually has double-filtered water (for those of you who were wondering where that savory taste came from). So with our waters in hand we made it to our gate, boarded our flight and we were off to MIA.

Leslie, Maile, and Chanel slept fairly well. Katie didn't have the same success...Regardless, we were all tired when we got to MIA at 6am (3am California time). Maile then left the airport to have breakfast with her cousin (yay for reunions!), while the other three girls decided not to chance it and we all stayed at the airport and had breakfast at Clubhouse One (for those of you who were curious)- it was great: omelettes, chocolate chip pancakes, and agua.

The three of us then moseyed over to gate D8 and passout on the floor for a 2 hour nap. And when we woke up, it was time to board and Maile had arrived. However, before boarding, we decided it was a good idea to take some Airborne as a great preventative measure against sickness. On accident, Chanel dropped 3 tablets of Airbone into the water (that's 3 times 1667% Vitamin C- woops). So we decided to split it three ways between Maile, Katie, and Chanel- good idea right? We'll let you know how our overdose goes...

Our next flight went well, and when we arrived we located all of our luggage and met Chris, a family friend of Maile's. Suuuuper nice guy- we're so grateful for his help carting all of our luggage to our home-stay.

And finallllyyy, we made it to our homestay. We're staying at Maile's great uncle's house in La Romana. It's beautiful and we're so grateful for the accomodations. Thank you!

After a long day, we had a small meal, watched the U.S Open, and took a little siesta.

Since then, we got dressed, applied our DEET (Maile already accumuated 4 mosquito bites- Sorry Mai-Mark it.), and now we're getting ready to go to church and meet with Yanet (the orphanage manager, who we will be working with for the next 2 weeks).

So we're off! We're so happy we're here and so excited to see what God does with us for the next 2 weeks.

We'll let you know how tonight goes :)

Con amore,

Las Chicas (Chanel, Leslie, Maile, and Katie)