herro.: Hummingbird

See SaraBeth Swagerty after a couple drinks for Spanish pronunciation.

Where does one stay while in the Dominican Republic, you ask? well, if you're lucky enough to be a DREAM volunteer, you might get to stay in your own personal slice of heaven: The Hummingbird. Oddly enough, I did not see a single hummingbird during my entire visit.

This place isn't exactly what you'd call a hotel...it's more like apartment-y. I was pleasantly surprised to see that our rooms didn't have dirt floors or rats feasting on my pillow when I walked in. A wonderful German lady, Birgit (Baguette, if you're sassy) owns the place and rents it out to Norwegian study-abroaders during the year and DREAM volunteers during the summer. We eat breakfast and dinner, try to catch at least a couple minutes of internet in between power outages and diarrhea our little hearts out all right here in our home for the summer. For the record, I never had diarrhea. Boo Ya. Anyway, there are ten rooms, It's a small place and most of the time you can find volunteers in anyone's room but their own. Especially in room 4, where the AC is always cranked. The Hummingbird boasts a beautiful pool and a great staff who keep us well fed and the sand out of our beds. That kind of rhymed and I wasn't even trying.

The most important and hard-working staff member at HBird? Princesa, the guard dog.

This is what a typical day at the bird looks like! laundry hanging, great pool, people sweating...