Voir Dire

Thanksgiving Morning: head to the local el play.....one game on the main field, another small game on the side...the game on the main field were down to their last baseball....it ripped and then they were down to the strings....just keep playing.... This is a player ran practice today.....after the first game ended, players line up at short and one kid starts hitting pretty hard grounders from the pitchers mound....if you make an error you lose a piece of clothing.... Marten on his third grounder here is about to lose his shoes....he already lost his hat and shirt on the first two attempts.... Just need a bat and a ball, the game is universal.... Ruby finding a little beach time in the morning.

Here is some low-quality footage I took at the border town in Jumanji.....one of the most dislocated and confusing border crossings I've ever seen, probably tied with the Kazakhstan - Russia border near Omsk....joined a great group of people from the state of Georgia and the Dominican through SCORE International to rebuild a roof ripped off by Hurricane Matthew.  Driving through Haiti isn't that difficult when traveling with two doctors, two interpreters that speak Spanish, English and Haitian Creole and an unmarked police escort car.  If estimated travel time to your destination is 3 to 4 hours, just make sure you add 3 to 4 hours....mas o menos another 1 or 2 hours on top of that... The town we were in Simon Caye on the southern peninsula of Haiti was told they should have their power back in 3 to 4.......years.  Rain delay at Barrio Mexico in San Pedro de Macoris.....  Nice haul of platanos.....when translated platanos means "without flavor." The libr...

Took Dean and toured about 10 MLB Academies around our area...very nice complexes, very guarded....I thought I might just have a look around inside but settled for some front gate shots.  Started going to the el play in San Pedro de Macoris....met the baseball instructor 'Beauty' pictured on the far left below....he doesn't take any pay unless you want to throw in a hundred pesos or so a week (about $2)....he instructs about 40 kids...even though we brought a little extra gear ourselves, they ended up giving us a nice bat and three pairs of baseball pants......poor and still generous.  Tranquilo..... Tranquilo..... 

School starts with Angel picking the teams.....players are between 10 to 17 years old...get a baseball, take your positions, start playing....the effort is phenomenal. Smaller kids can have the back corner of the field while the older kids play.... Once the main game ended in the morning, kids start to arrive around noon for the next round.... Two of my favorite questions so far...Duke asked on Sunday:  Are we going to baseball Church?..and..Should we bring our baseball gloves to Church?.......probably.  It's a bit humid.

 First day here: walked Duke, Marten and Dean about 4 or 5 kms....sweating, notice Dukes shoulders are shrugged, complaining about the heat and walking distance....walked into Playa Guayacanes and saw a nice little pick up game....waves picking up from outskirts of hurricane Matthew....  Dean started to localize first.....after sweating for about an hour and a half Dean stripped his shirt....  wind and rain are pushing pretty good now but overall was a good look at the town.

Took this right before we were leaving a house in Narni, Italy.....we knocked on the door and asked in 3rd Grade Spanish, "Casa di Mary?" Come to find out Mary passed away two years ago, but we ended up getting to know the rest of her family who took us in and didn't stop with the hospitality for two straight days. After stealing as much sunshine as we could on the Mediterranean we headed north through Italy, a little strip of Austria and into far southern Germany to say hello to our friend Rachel......before we arrived we coasted back down into this place after one of our rear axel rods broke....... Some more low grade photography by Jon, arrived in southern Germany to hang out with our friend Rachel.............

Drove through the night from Thessoliniki in northern Greece up through ΟΛΥΜΠΟΣ, OLYMPUS for those that don't know Greek....ended up finding a place to park....woke up in the morning to these rock formations clearing through the fog.......like a good song that can't be turned up loud enough, there is not a camera lens wide enough to capture this landscape... ...sometimes you just run into sweet stuff...... Drove around looking at homes to buy today. Thinking we could get a steal in the current world market we offered the monk 1000 €uro. The offer was rejected so we went on our way and are still sleeping in our car. Whenever your ready, we'll just try sneak past ya here, a little road leading up to I don't know where, I thought the road would just loop back, we were a little turned around. Coming into the place a couple ladies started asking me questions about the Monastery....so I tried the best I could to describe the place, soon they realized I wasn't the monk t...