continued.

the cancer walk was at the botanical gardens in santo domingo. i had been once when i first moved to the country and, well, it was atrocious. nothing like the morris arboretum or even the chicago botanic gardens where you could go and spend a few hours looking at beautiful, interesting things.

mostly "el botanico", for me, is really just a showcase of fancy landscaping. most of the plants are dominican and grow wildly - they don't need to be cultivated and i could easily go to the nearest mountainside campo and see the same stuff.

apparently, though, there is a beautiful presentation of all different breeds of orquids and "helechos" in the spring that i think might be worth a visit. but only if we had something else to do in santo domingo. there's also a beautiful japanese style garden. it doesn't have any japonese plants, but the landscaping is such that it reminds me of karate kid. or japan. (though when i was in japan, i didn't really see too many of those "typical" japanese gardens, unless they were touristy... i saw more of them stateside).

that said. amalio and our neighbors went to the walk. but instead of taking part in the 5k they found some shade and set up camp for the babies. i think they had more fun than the kids though, taking pictures and being ridiculous.

Samil playing on the cobblestone. we thought he'd tear up his knees, but he just decided to crawl around on his feet and hands instead.
you see a lot of these types of pictures in dominican photo albums. even dominicans think they're hilarious. here's iberlin and her brother german posing like boyfriend and girlfriend in a traditional dominican pose. there's something about holding onto a leaf of the tree that i just can't understand.
maybe you'd think he was a botanist giving a lecture about a certain type of plant. but no.

samil wasn't too happy taking pictures with papi because he'd rather be playing.
i love this picture. in fact, i have a whole bunch that i took before i started the walk and we've been playing around with them trying to find the one we like best.