Off to uncharted lands!

I sent out letters to everyone and their goldfish asking for help to go on a dental mission during spring break. I got a great response and want to thank those of you reading this who could help out. But for those of you who didn't get the letter, or I don't like enough to send one (seriously, you'd have to be on my hate-for-all-eternity list to not get one... or it got lost in the mail or something, no worries), here's the haps:

Groups of students get together and plan dental mission trips during school breaks. They're not school sponsored, but most are through an external charity organization of some kind. Some of the trips are vacations with a couple days of service, others are intense week-long slave labor clinics (the group that went to Jamaica worked 10 hours/day for 6 days or something, but did get to stay in a Sandals resort at night with all-included restaurants and stuff), so when I saw the itinerary for this trip to the Dominican Republic, I got excited. Arrive Saturday, work Monday through Thursday, spend Friday doing "cultural" things like visiting a nearby national park or large market, and fly home Saturday. And it's a third cheaper than the more popular vacation-y trips. It's through Orphanage Outreach, who arranges for volunteers of all kinds to come and help out. It's in the small town of Monte Cristi on the northwest coast of the DR and we'll be spending a lot of time in the open-air clinic helping the workers/families living on the banana/sugarcane plantations. There will be about 18 in our group and some other dentists from other places coming next week. Since it fills up our break, most in the group wanted to get there a day early and just hang out/relax, so we're leaving today, immediately after our last final. (Like, get out of the final and run to the school's housing 10 blocks away to leave at 12:15).

I'm excited about going, but I don't travel much and am more nervous about the traveling than anything. I've left the continent once, to Hawaii, and only left the country to Canada and just inside Mexico, so this is a bigger jump for me. We will be in New York for about 8 hours, in the middle of the night, and we have no plans to fill that time (sleeping in JFK airport does not get good reviews) so I've got a bunch of audiobooks and movies on my ipod to kill time in between naps. I've got lots of bugspray and sunscreen, as well as my own pair of Vibram Five Fingers (for the adventures and fun stuff), and my very first official pair of scrubs (pants at least, they give us shirts to wear while there). I just realized I don't have a hat or sunglasses. Dang it.

I've got the camera and will try to take LOTS of pictures. As for the rest of the family, they're in Utah at Emily's parents. Today, Grace is going skiing for the first time.