So one last blog before resting for Christmas break. Yesterday we headed out of Monte Cristi around 7:30 am. I finished up some curriculum stuff the night before until 12:15am, then woke up at 5:30am to start packing! We headed to Jaibon, the other orphanage that OO works with. We had to set up for the coming weeks for teams coming in. We arrived in Jaibon around 9am and toured around showing the people that hadn't been there before what it looked like.
The Jaibon orphanage is located on 40 acres of land and is like living in the woods. The buildings are located way back on the property and is surrounded by land everywhere you look. One view from the roof is absolutely gorgeous. Three layers of mountains from afar. We looked around the orphanage, went to visit the school that is on the grounds and has about 400-500 students and we hung out with them a little bit.
The students had their last day so they were there and excited to see Americans. There was one girl with red hair, not something you see very often in the DR. Bryson and I played duck, duck, goose standing up with several of the kids. They didn't quite get the concept. They would tag someone and run about 1/2 way around and then go into a random space that someone had opened up for them to enter. Either way it was fun because they love any attention and games that people will play with them.
We left the school and headed to do work projects. A new dorm like building had been finished to house the girls for this coming week. We thought we were going to have to build bunkbeds for everyone to sleep in but someone had already done it before we arrived which was awesome! So, instead we worked on moving 25 mattresses over to the beds, making the beds, putting up mosquito nets and getting it ready for the groups. We also had 2 other areas that had to be set up and then I played Uno with several people.
After lunch, I took a siesta because of the lack of sleep the night before! We then had a team meeting and I just sat and hung out while they discussed the plans for the upcoming week. After our meeting we headed to see the future home of the Hopkins. They are going to be living on the 2nd floor of the church on the grounds. Their house was pretty neat. It had a front porch area, a big open living room area, a small kitchen, another small room for a kitchen table and three bedrooms, and one small bathroom. I think once they get it painted, cleaned up and set up it will be a great place to live. They were excited to see their new home for the next 10 years!
After this, we had another work project. We had the group clean up the construction debris around the dorm room area and me, Heather and Julie went to chalk the door welcoming one of the families that was coming in today. Well, we chalked the door and then went inside to make the beds. As we entered we realized the room was in no shape for living. There was dust, dirt, and filth on the floors so we decided to sweep and mop it out. We had to knock what looked like mice poop off the mattresses and we had to knock down several dirt nests that are made either by wasps or spiders and seen often. Nothing came out of them luckily but it was a long, hard task of cleaning. The room was dingy and dark so we worked on cleaning it up, making the beds after spraying them down with Lysol and making it look presentable. Tia, the lady in charge at the orphanage, came in and wasn't happy about anyone living in the room. She made 2 of the orphanage kids come and help move stacks of extra mattresses out of the way of the window to at least let more air and light into the room. It looked good once we left, but was rough at the beginning!
This led up to dinner time and then I worked online emailing my 7 completed Units to Tom! Woohoo! After that the boys had a short little culto service where they sang songs and then went around each saying their favorite bible verse. It was amazing that they all knew so many different verses, even little Alex that is about 5 years old. There are about 23 boys living at this orphanage, which runs totally different than the one in Monte Cristi.
We had closing shortly after culto and then got ready for bed and finished organizing my stuff for the morning.
This morning we headed out at 5:45. We got to Santiago about 2 hours early so just hung out until time to leave. I flew with 2 other girls that have been there since I arrived so it was nice to have company. We landed in Miami and I was quickly welcomed to some culture shock. As I went thru customs, I showed my form to the guy but it was inside my passport. He stuck his arm out, stopped me, and said "You didn't show me your form, I need to see your form". WOW! This surprised me a lot because I'm not used to people being so firm or almost rude. Welcome back to the States! :) Well, now I'm just hanging out in the Miami airport and waiting for my flight to leave in another 1.5 hours! I'm excited to be in Lexington, still a little in shock being back in the US.
Have a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year and I'll start blogging again probably mid-January. Maybe right before I head back to the DR!
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Last Blog From Monte Cristi for 2009!
http://picasaweb.google.com/Geedz913/Jaramillo?feat=directlink (pictures from Monday)
http://picasaweb.google.com/Geedz913/InstituteParty?feat=directlink (pictures from today)
I know you are all going to have hours of free time now that my blog will take a short break while I'm home but don't cry too hard.
Yesterday I spent most of the day working on revamping some old units to get ready to post for the volunteers to have access to. In the afternoon I spent some time with the kids hanging out after working on the Feliz Navidad picture of the kids that we had taken the previous day. It didn't turn out very well because most of the kids weren't looking and the letters were all mixed up.
In the evening I was going to go to my room and work some before culto but I ended up sitting over on the basketball court with Jenny and Arianni. Jenny was teaching Arianni a song that is on the radio that I'm sure has some pretty dirty, negative meanings. She always was having her dance in some promiscuous ways to the song. It was sad to see a little girl so young following her older "sister's" commands and doing whatever she wanted. However, she was still a 4 year old and not listening. Sometimes she would just sing jarble to annoy Jenny. But it was fun hanging out with them. Arianni was sitting on my belly as I was laying down. I could sit like that and hang out with her all the time!
We had culto with the kids at 8pm. They had a hard time calming down for some reason but finally they got somewhat quiet and we started. They sang several songs and opened the floor up to anyone. Nena came up and sang by herself, all shy which is odd because she is the ring leader and always crazy, and then Bebo and Christine got up and sang Here I am to Worship in English and then in Spanish. Mancho preached about Jonah and the whale and did a great job. It is so funny because the younger boys will get up and preach but they are so shy! They speak so softly and race through their preaching. He did a great job and made it most of the way without help.
After culto, Bebo, Bella (a university girl here visiting), and Nicol were playing a game. One person would hide their face against the wall and the others try to run forward. The person hiding says, uno, dos tres, mariposita and then turns around and if they see you moving you go back to the start. However, here the person counting can come and talk to you and make faces at you, etc. It was hilarious! Bella, Bebo, and Nicol were saying hilarious stuff to each other and making each other laugh. Bebo at one point was squatting down and Bella said, “you aren’t on the toilet, stand up”, so he started laughing and had to go back to the start.
Today was another day of work but some play. We had lunch at Comedor Adela in town and then I headed to the Institute. They had Christmas parties today for each of the English classes. They did crafts, then sang the song the classes had been practicing all week, and then had treat bags and listened to Christmas music. I worked up until the last class and then watched them sing in the park and hung out with them at their little party.
We headed back here afterwards and Heather and I decorated a cake for Vivian. She leaves Saturday with me but won’t return. We had Moni make two cakes, one big one and one small one. The small one we cut a heart out of and put on top of the big one. Now this sounds pretty, but it wasn’t quite as successful as we had imagined. However, the cake turned out pretty well. It said “We’ll Miss YOU!”. I have a picture!
After dinner, I spent time hanging out with the kids. I chased a few around for a little while but then had to stop since my belly was full. I sat on the basketball court and played with multiple different kids, tickling them, catching them, and just talking. Joanni came and sat in my lap and we started singing different songs in English. We called Christine over for some help and there were several kids, me, Christine, and Heather singing songs in English. It was a lot of fun!
I said my goodbyes to everyone as I won’t be seeing these kids for a month since I’ll go to Jaibon (the other orphanage) the first week I’m back in January. It will be weird not seeing them for so long! Tomorrow we are headed to Jaibon to help set up and get ready to host groups there. We’ll be doing all kinds of work projects and we’ll spend the night in Jaibon tomorrow before heading to the airport on Saturday. See some of you very soon! Good night!
http://picasaweb.google.com/Geedz913/InstituteParty?feat=directlink (pictures from today)
I know you are all going to have hours of free time now that my blog will take a short break while I'm home but don't cry too hard.
Yesterday I spent most of the day working on revamping some old units to get ready to post for the volunteers to have access to. In the afternoon I spent some time with the kids hanging out after working on the Feliz Navidad picture of the kids that we had taken the previous day. It didn't turn out very well because most of the kids weren't looking and the letters were all mixed up.
In the evening I was going to go to my room and work some before culto but I ended up sitting over on the basketball court with Jenny and Arianni. Jenny was teaching Arianni a song that is on the radio that I'm sure has some pretty dirty, negative meanings. She always was having her dance in some promiscuous ways to the song. It was sad to see a little girl so young following her older "sister's" commands and doing whatever she wanted. However, she was still a 4 year old and not listening. Sometimes she would just sing jarble to annoy Jenny. But it was fun hanging out with them. Arianni was sitting on my belly as I was laying down. I could sit like that and hang out with her all the time!
We had culto with the kids at 8pm. They had a hard time calming down for some reason but finally they got somewhat quiet and we started. They sang several songs and opened the floor up to anyone. Nena came up and sang by herself, all shy which is odd because she is the ring leader and always crazy, and then Bebo and Christine got up and sang Here I am to Worship in English and then in Spanish. Mancho preached about Jonah and the whale and did a great job. It is so funny because the younger boys will get up and preach but they are so shy! They speak so softly and race through their preaching. He did a great job and made it most of the way without help.
After culto, Bebo, Bella (a university girl here visiting), and Nicol were playing a game. One person would hide their face against the wall and the others try to run forward. The person hiding says, uno, dos tres, mariposita and then turns around and if they see you moving you go back to the start. However, here the person counting can come and talk to you and make faces at you, etc. It was hilarious! Bella, Bebo, and Nicol were saying hilarious stuff to each other and making each other laugh. Bebo at one point was squatting down and Bella said, “you aren’t on the toilet, stand up”, so he started laughing and had to go back to the start.
Today was another day of work but some play. We had lunch at Comedor Adela in town and then I headed to the Institute. They had Christmas parties today for each of the English classes. They did crafts, then sang the song the classes had been practicing all week, and then had treat bags and listened to Christmas music. I worked up until the last class and then watched them sing in the park and hung out with them at their little party.
We headed back here afterwards and Heather and I decorated a cake for Vivian. She leaves Saturday with me but won’t return. We had Moni make two cakes, one big one and one small one. The small one we cut a heart out of and put on top of the big one. Now this sounds pretty, but it wasn’t quite as successful as we had imagined. However, the cake turned out pretty well. It said “We’ll Miss YOU!”. I have a picture!
After dinner, I spent time hanging out with the kids. I chased a few around for a little while but then had to stop since my belly was full. I sat on the basketball court and played with multiple different kids, tickling them, catching them, and just talking. Joanni came and sat in my lap and we started singing different songs in English. We called Christine over for some help and there were several kids, me, Christine, and Heather singing songs in English. It was a lot of fun!
I said my goodbyes to everyone as I won’t be seeing these kids for a month since I’ll go to Jaibon (the other orphanage) the first week I’m back in January. It will be weird not seeing them for so long! Tomorrow we are headed to Jaibon to help set up and get ready to host groups there. We’ll be doing all kinds of work projects and we’ll spend the night in Jaibon tomorrow before heading to the airport on Saturday. See some of you very soon! Good night!
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Keep Your Hands on Your Belongings...
So Sunday night I gave the group a talk about Dajabon, the border town between the DR and Haiti, just reminding them of a few safety tips, etc. Part of this talk is telling people to keep hold of their belongings/valuables because there are pickpocketers in Dajabon. Well, I had never heard of anyone getting stuff stolen, not that I didn't believe them but I just had the "it will never happen to me type of attitude". I learned my lesson!
As we were stopped inside the market which are narrow streets with tons of people, I felt my cell phone being taken out of my pocket. As I realized what had just happened it was too late to identify who had taken it. I turned around ready to run after the person but that was a rule I told the group, don't run after the pickpocketer so I stopped and just went on. Obviously I was quite upset at myself for not having my hand in my front pocket all the time so it wouldn't happen. I felt horrible because the phone belongs to OO, not me and it had my room key on it! As we came out of the market, I went over and told Coco the news and at first she didn't believe me because I'm always joking. Unfortunately, this time I wasn't! Merry Christmas to whoever stole my phone! ;)
When we got back I headed to the phone store with Coco to get a new cheap phone so that I still could communicate with everyone. She had cancelled my SIM card when we left Dajabon so that was taken care of, now we just had to wait about 30 minutes to get a new phone (which of course I bought). Not quite as good as the one I had (which we had just gotten upgrades like 3 weeks ago), but it still serves its purpose.
After lunch, I hung out with the kids a little bit before heading out the batey. Nena had a Gatorade bottle full of ice that she was drinking from and crushing with a spoon. She would shove the spoon handle down into the bottle breaking up small pieces and then turn it upside down and try to shake out some pieces into her hand. Half of them would land on the dirty patio and she'd eat it anyway. Several other kids wanted some chunks of ice too. Their water here is often room temperature so they love ice and cold water!
Luis invited me to play marbles with him and Jose Luis. Let me tell you how awesome I am at this game. I apparently have no hand-eye coordination. So, needless to say I lost big time. It became almost a joke because I couldn't hit a marble only a few inches away!
I headed out with Dr. Garcia in the afternoon to Jaramillo, my favorite batey for sure. Vivian got to come with me because she hasn't seen a batey yet and leaves Saturday. I gave several shots to both kids and adults. Somehow in this small batey where maybe 50-75 people live, there are always more patients than in the bateys where 1000-2000 people live. There are 2-3 other really small bateys that come to Jaramillo on clinic days so that adds some extra people but it is still odd to me. There are a ton of babies/kids here which is probably why it is my favorite. I also feel like since it is so small it is a lot of the same people so they remember me from month to month.
I got to see some of the babies from 2 months ago this time who have grown up and starting cooing, smiling, and laughing. Vivian and I chased the kids in the house that I chased last time. They would peep their heads out and then run back into their house until we went away and then they'd sneak back out again. I got to see the newborn that is now 6 weeks old. And there was a 9 year old girl that walked from one of the other smaller bateyes with her 2 year old brother, and with two other boys 3 and 5 years old. Her parents sent her there with the 2 year old because he had a fever. Could you imagine sending your 9 year old with your 2 year old to see the doctor without an adult!?
There were a few neat medical things. One little baby of about 5 months had blisters on her hands from playing in a fire. Another man had fallen off his moto I believe and had a nasty open infected wound on his hand. And, a little girl who I think I have a picture of from before with scabs all over her face was back with now what looks like scars, or maybe she just has really bad fungus and that is why her face was so hypopigmented. Anyway, always lots of interesting things to see that are easily and normally quickly treated in the States.
I came back and said goodbye to them as I won't see them until I return next year. I hung out with Lisy for a while tickling her, which she loves. Joanni sat on me and colored/drew on my hands and arms with a pen that she found. I had flowers, people, houses, bananas, and just random markings all over me! While I was being decorated, I was also getting my hair brushed by Ari, one of the little twins. I also spoke to Arianni, now known as bluh, bluh, bluh, and she started laughing when I called her that!
We had movie night with the kids after dinner, and we also showed them the birthday video that we made for Coco of them all saying Happy Birthday. They love seeing pictures and videos of themselves because they always have so many taken but never get to see them. Arianni came in sat in my lap for the last half of the movie. And, when she got up I noticed a nice little wet present left on my pants. She didn't fall asleep so I'm not sure why she peed on me but oh well, she is so cute I'll excuse it!
Tuesday was a work day for me. I did a beach workout early in the morning which mainly consisted of swimming because there wasn't much beach. It is strange how the beach here changes because last week there was a lot of sand and beach area and this week the tide was all the way up to the rocks/hillside but we went at the same exact time!
During siesta I had a lot of fun with Lisy and Merry. We all three got inside of a hula hoop and walked around like a train. Lisy was making choo-choo sounds the whole time and Merry was just holding on and walking. We went all the way towards the front gate of the orphanage and sat down by the wall. We had arrived at "la Playa Popa" (the beach the kids go to in the spring/summer). We played in the "sand" (dirt) for a little while, cooking food, making handprints and footprints in the dirt. Merry is about 10 years old but is about the size of the 5-6 year olds and she struggles with speaking so no one really knows what developmental level she is on. She seems to understand a lot but has a hard time communicating. She still is in diaper but she walks, runs (kind of), and can follow commands if she isn't too stubborn.
She always wants to do the same as the other kids and so as we walked with the hoola hoop she wanted to join. I let her join in and Lisy was receptive which is sometimes hard because the other kids don't want to play with her. We sat down at the beach and she kept saying, Elizabeth me, meaning she wanted to do what Lisy was doing too. It is amazing to see how far she has come because in 2006 when I was here she said "agua" and didn't walk and was about the size of a 2-3 year old.
I picked the group up in the afternoon and got some ice cream with them. When I returned we had to try to gather the kids for a group picture of them with signs saying Feliz Navidad. We were supposed to do the last week but I forgot so we attempted yesterday but it was pretty disasterous. Trying to get 10 kids to stand still was hard, not to mention the other 32 that didn't want to participate so we didn't have many in the picture. Oh well, we tried!
After dinner I played with the little girls chasing them around. They like to run away from me and wait just inside the hallway from their eating area to their room, where I'm not allowed to enter. So I sat down on the little step leading into the hallway and would grab at them and tickle them one at a time. They always love this and more and more keep joining in. I started with 1 and ended with about 6 kids.
It's hard to believe I'll be home in a few days. Not sure I want to leave these kids! Wish I could bring them home with me!
As we were stopped inside the market which are narrow streets with tons of people, I felt my cell phone being taken out of my pocket. As I realized what had just happened it was too late to identify who had taken it. I turned around ready to run after the person but that was a rule I told the group, don't run after the pickpocketer so I stopped and just went on. Obviously I was quite upset at myself for not having my hand in my front pocket all the time so it wouldn't happen. I felt horrible because the phone belongs to OO, not me and it had my room key on it! As we came out of the market, I went over and told Coco the news and at first she didn't believe me because I'm always joking. Unfortunately, this time I wasn't! Merry Christmas to whoever stole my phone! ;)
When we got back I headed to the phone store with Coco to get a new cheap phone so that I still could communicate with everyone. She had cancelled my SIM card when we left Dajabon so that was taken care of, now we just had to wait about 30 minutes to get a new phone (which of course I bought). Not quite as good as the one I had (which we had just gotten upgrades like 3 weeks ago), but it still serves its purpose.
After lunch, I hung out with the kids a little bit before heading out the batey. Nena had a Gatorade bottle full of ice that she was drinking from and crushing with a spoon. She would shove the spoon handle down into the bottle breaking up small pieces and then turn it upside down and try to shake out some pieces into her hand. Half of them would land on the dirty patio and she'd eat it anyway. Several other kids wanted some chunks of ice too. Their water here is often room temperature so they love ice and cold water!
Luis invited me to play marbles with him and Jose Luis. Let me tell you how awesome I am at this game. I apparently have no hand-eye coordination. So, needless to say I lost big time. It became almost a joke because I couldn't hit a marble only a few inches away!
I headed out with Dr. Garcia in the afternoon to Jaramillo, my favorite batey for sure. Vivian got to come with me because she hasn't seen a batey yet and leaves Saturday. I gave several shots to both kids and adults. Somehow in this small batey where maybe 50-75 people live, there are always more patients than in the bateys where 1000-2000 people live. There are 2-3 other really small bateys that come to Jaramillo on clinic days so that adds some extra people but it is still odd to me. There are a ton of babies/kids here which is probably why it is my favorite. I also feel like since it is so small it is a lot of the same people so they remember me from month to month.
I got to see some of the babies from 2 months ago this time who have grown up and starting cooing, smiling, and laughing. Vivian and I chased the kids in the house that I chased last time. They would peep their heads out and then run back into their house until we went away and then they'd sneak back out again. I got to see the newborn that is now 6 weeks old. And there was a 9 year old girl that walked from one of the other smaller bateyes with her 2 year old brother, and with two other boys 3 and 5 years old. Her parents sent her there with the 2 year old because he had a fever. Could you imagine sending your 9 year old with your 2 year old to see the doctor without an adult!?
There were a few neat medical things. One little baby of about 5 months had blisters on her hands from playing in a fire. Another man had fallen off his moto I believe and had a nasty open infected wound on his hand. And, a little girl who I think I have a picture of from before with scabs all over her face was back with now what looks like scars, or maybe she just has really bad fungus and that is why her face was so hypopigmented. Anyway, always lots of interesting things to see that are easily and normally quickly treated in the States.
I came back and said goodbye to them as I won't see them until I return next year. I hung out with Lisy for a while tickling her, which she loves. Joanni sat on me and colored/drew on my hands and arms with a pen that she found. I had flowers, people, houses, bananas, and just random markings all over me! While I was being decorated, I was also getting my hair brushed by Ari, one of the little twins. I also spoke to Arianni, now known as bluh, bluh, bluh, and she started laughing when I called her that!
We had movie night with the kids after dinner, and we also showed them the birthday video that we made for Coco of them all saying Happy Birthday. They love seeing pictures and videos of themselves because they always have so many taken but never get to see them. Arianni came in sat in my lap for the last half of the movie. And, when she got up I noticed a nice little wet present left on my pants. She didn't fall asleep so I'm not sure why she peed on me but oh well, she is so cute I'll excuse it!
Tuesday was a work day for me. I did a beach workout early in the morning which mainly consisted of swimming because there wasn't much beach. It is strange how the beach here changes because last week there was a lot of sand and beach area and this week the tide was all the way up to the rocks/hillside but we went at the same exact time!
During siesta I had a lot of fun with Lisy and Merry. We all three got inside of a hula hoop and walked around like a train. Lisy was making choo-choo sounds the whole time and Merry was just holding on and walking. We went all the way towards the front gate of the orphanage and sat down by the wall. We had arrived at "la Playa Popa" (the beach the kids go to in the spring/summer). We played in the "sand" (dirt) for a little while, cooking food, making handprints and footprints in the dirt. Merry is about 10 years old but is about the size of the 5-6 year olds and she struggles with speaking so no one really knows what developmental level she is on. She seems to understand a lot but has a hard time communicating. She still is in diaper but she walks, runs (kind of), and can follow commands if she isn't too stubborn.
She always wants to do the same as the other kids and so as we walked with the hoola hoop she wanted to join. I let her join in and Lisy was receptive which is sometimes hard because the other kids don't want to play with her. We sat down at the beach and she kept saying, Elizabeth me, meaning she wanted to do what Lisy was doing too. It is amazing to see how far she has come because in 2006 when I was here she said "agua" and didn't walk and was about the size of a 2-3 year old.
I picked the group up in the afternoon and got some ice cream with them. When I returned we had to try to gather the kids for a group picture of them with signs saying Feliz Navidad. We were supposed to do the last week but I forgot so we attempted yesterday but it was pretty disasterous. Trying to get 10 kids to stand still was hard, not to mention the other 32 that didn't want to participate so we didn't have many in the picture. Oh well, we tried!
After dinner I played with the little girls chasing them around. They like to run away from me and wait just inside the hallway from their eating area to their room, where I'm not allowed to enter. So I sat down on the little step leading into the hallway and would grab at them and tickle them one at a time. They always love this and more and more keep joining in. I started with 1 and ended with about 6 kids.
It's hard to believe I'll be home in a few days. Not sure I want to leave these kids! Wish I could bring them home with me!
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Last Weekend Here for 2009!
So yesterday was a recovering day of sorts. I was exhausted from planning all week for Coco's birthday and then traveling all day on Friday. I spent the morning catching up on my blog and resting in my room.
Before lunch, I worked with Domingo on his math. He has an exam tomorrow for math and had asked me earlier in the week to help him. He is in 5th grade and was learning exponentials, pattern recognition, square roots, division and multiplication. I made up some problems for him to answer and he did really well. He was so proud of himself, and kept saying write 100% on there! We worked for about an hour on math and Ariel, his older brother worked with us for a little while. He is 12 years old and Domingo is 10 years old but they are in the same grade. Ariel struggled a lot understanding pattern recognition such as 42, 44, 46, what follows. However, Domingo caught on so quickly. Ariel got frustrated easily and quit.
After lunch I hung out some with the kids and worked on uploading my pictures as well. At 2pm we met as a group because we got the approval from Pastor Ramon to have Noche Especial with the boys. This is a special night twice a year that they have and they get to play games, eat treats, watch movies, and have a sleepover in the education building. We helped the male volunteers plan for the boys fun night. I worked on wrapping a gift multiple times with layers for a game where they passed the gift until someone could get thru the layers.
After dinner, we started getting everything ready for the evening. We baked sugar cookies and I worked on coloring the icing and separating it into individual cups for the kids. We had the girls over to make bracelets, decorate and eat cookies, and watch a movie. We set mattresses out and laid on the ground watching the movie. They enjoyed eating the icing and cookies and we watched Beauty and the Beast's Christmas Movie. At the end, Nena was fast asleep so I picked her up to take her back to her bed. She told me to wait so I put her down and she was searching for something, however, was so out of it she was confused and looked like a drunk person. I picked her back up after a minute or two of aimless searching and carried her back over while she snored on my shoulder. Joanni was so out of it that she actually peed on Heather and she was carrying her back! :)
We made a fort out of sheets for the boys to play in later in their evening and then headed to bed. On the way up to my room, we had a great excitement. At the top of the stairs awaited a fun friend of nature. It was huge so Heather and I called Coco to come kill it. He crawled up a suitcase, we knocked the suitcase over, trapped it underneath and then lifted the suitcase and killed it with a cinder block. It was so nasty, black, and hairy! I'll leave the guessing up to you! :)
Caela stayed with us last night because her Dad and brother were sleeping over here. She stayed on the top bunk above Heather.
This morning was fun. The boys ended their special evening by having breakfast with us. We had pancakes and hard boiled eggs which they love. Some boys had 4-5 pancakes and a few eggs each. Luis Alberto was stabbing his pancake with his fork because he didn't know how to cut it to eat it! I sat between Domingo and Jaury and enjoyed spending breakfast with them!
We had a short orientation with the group, introducing ourselves and then had free time. I hung out with the kids for a little bit. I spent some time with Liry, one of the university girls, who is in PT school. We had a good conversation discussing what she is learning in school, her work here at the Rehab Center, and just how everything is going.
After lunch, I hung out with the kids and had some great fun! Heather and I went out for just a little bit but ended up staying until dinner. Arianni was jumping rope and was able to jump over it about 3-4 times in a row. It was so cute. She was super proud of herself. The other little girls jumped in and wanted to jump too. I showed them my skills as well! :)
After this, Nena the chief of the little girls came and took the jump rope away. Here is where the fun came in. We got put in jail again. They sat us down in chairs and tied Heather and I together with the jump rope. I started chanting a song in English to try to get them to sing along and that resulted in socks being tied around our mouths. It was hilarious! We broke free finally.
I tried to rock Arianni to sleep in my arms but she kind of came back to life and started playing with broken legos and jacks that she found on the ground. I tried to teach her English. I would say "What is your name?" and then tell her the answer and then ask again and she would answer. Then we worked on "How old are you?" and she would respond with 4. Well this turned into her not wanting to answer so she just made sounds with her tongue. So, I asked her if her name was bluh, bluh, bluh (sounds she made with her tongue) and she said yes. So, for the rest of the day I called her by that and she would respond. It was precious. Also, when I asked her her age she started responding with a loud grunting sound instead of four which was so funny! So now Arianni is bluh, bluh, bluh and she is a "loud grunting sound" years old.
We went to church with the older kids tonight and I rode back on the yellow school bus with them. When we pulled up to the orphanage all the little kids came running out so excited to see the older kids return after 3 hours away. They were surprised to see me and Heather in the bus but excited too. I'm sure going to miss these kids for 3 weeks!
Before lunch, I worked with Domingo on his math. He has an exam tomorrow for math and had asked me earlier in the week to help him. He is in 5th grade and was learning exponentials, pattern recognition, square roots, division and multiplication. I made up some problems for him to answer and he did really well. He was so proud of himself, and kept saying write 100% on there! We worked for about an hour on math and Ariel, his older brother worked with us for a little while. He is 12 years old and Domingo is 10 years old but they are in the same grade. Ariel struggled a lot understanding pattern recognition such as 42, 44, 46, what follows. However, Domingo caught on so quickly. Ariel got frustrated easily and quit.
After lunch I hung out some with the kids and worked on uploading my pictures as well. At 2pm we met as a group because we got the approval from Pastor Ramon to have Noche Especial with the boys. This is a special night twice a year that they have and they get to play games, eat treats, watch movies, and have a sleepover in the education building. We helped the male volunteers plan for the boys fun night. I worked on wrapping a gift multiple times with layers for a game where they passed the gift until someone could get thru the layers.
After dinner, we started getting everything ready for the evening. We baked sugar cookies and I worked on coloring the icing and separating it into individual cups for the kids. We had the girls over to make bracelets, decorate and eat cookies, and watch a movie. We set mattresses out and laid on the ground watching the movie. They enjoyed eating the icing and cookies and we watched Beauty and the Beast's Christmas Movie. At the end, Nena was fast asleep so I picked her up to take her back to her bed. She told me to wait so I put her down and she was searching for something, however, was so out of it she was confused and looked like a drunk person. I picked her back up after a minute or two of aimless searching and carried her back over while she snored on my shoulder. Joanni was so out of it that she actually peed on Heather and she was carrying her back! :)
We made a fort out of sheets for the boys to play in later in their evening and then headed to bed. On the way up to my room, we had a great excitement. At the top of the stairs awaited a fun friend of nature. It was huge so Heather and I called Coco to come kill it. He crawled up a suitcase, we knocked the suitcase over, trapped it underneath and then lifted the suitcase and killed it with a cinder block. It was so nasty, black, and hairy! I'll leave the guessing up to you! :)
Caela stayed with us last night because her Dad and brother were sleeping over here. She stayed on the top bunk above Heather.
This morning was fun. The boys ended their special evening by having breakfast with us. We had pancakes and hard boiled eggs which they love. Some boys had 4-5 pancakes and a few eggs each. Luis Alberto was stabbing his pancake with his fork because he didn't know how to cut it to eat it! I sat between Domingo and Jaury and enjoyed spending breakfast with them!
We had a short orientation with the group, introducing ourselves and then had free time. I hung out with the kids for a little bit. I spent some time with Liry, one of the university girls, who is in PT school. We had a good conversation discussing what she is learning in school, her work here at the Rehab Center, and just how everything is going.
After lunch, I hung out with the kids and had some great fun! Heather and I went out for just a little bit but ended up staying until dinner. Arianni was jumping rope and was able to jump over it about 3-4 times in a row. It was so cute. She was super proud of herself. The other little girls jumped in and wanted to jump too. I showed them my skills as well! :)
After this, Nena the chief of the little girls came and took the jump rope away. Here is where the fun came in. We got put in jail again. They sat us down in chairs and tied Heather and I together with the jump rope. I started chanting a song in English to try to get them to sing along and that resulted in socks being tied around our mouths. It was hilarious! We broke free finally.
I tried to rock Arianni to sleep in my arms but she kind of came back to life and started playing with broken legos and jacks that she found on the ground. I tried to teach her English. I would say "What is your name?" and then tell her the answer and then ask again and she would answer. Then we worked on "How old are you?" and she would respond with 4. Well this turned into her not wanting to answer so she just made sounds with her tongue. So, I asked her if her name was bluh, bluh, bluh (sounds she made with her tongue) and she said yes. So, for the rest of the day I called her by that and she would respond. It was precious. Also, when I asked her her age she started responding with a loud grunting sound instead of four which was so funny! So now Arianni is bluh, bluh, bluh and she is a "loud grunting sound" years old.
We went to church with the older kids tonight and I rode back on the yellow school bus with them. When we pulled up to the orphanage all the little kids came running out so excited to see the older kids return after 3 hours away. They were surprised to see me and Heather in the bus but excited too. I'm sure going to miss these kids for 3 weeks!
Saturday, December 12, 2009
What a Crazy Week!
http://picasaweb.google.com/Geedz913/CocoSBirthdayWeek?feat=directlink
So, this past week was super busy and very long! Yesterday was Coco's birthday, she is the country director who lives here full time. We wanted to surprise her with a great birthday so we came up with the idea to give her 34 small gifts over the course of the day. So, in short I've been up all week working hard with the other leaders to prepare the gifts for Coco. It was fun! We had the all kids make a card for her, we made a video with clips of all the kids saying Happy Birthday to her, we made a purple elephant pinata, we had the kids spell out with their bodies Happy Bday Coco laying on the basketball court and many more fun surprises.
This may be lengthy but I'll try to just keep it some of the most interesting highlights from the week.
Sunday - We went to Cabarete, a touristy beach town and had an awesome lunch at Jose O'Shea's and then spent time on the beach relaxing. I had a Denison t-shirt on and some guy recognized it because he went to Ohio State and knew someone that had gone to Denison. What a small world! We stopped at a road side fruit stand and got apple bananas. I'm going to have to look for these at home, they look like bananas and have the same texture as bananas but taste like apples! So good!
Monday - This was Christine's birthday, she is my roommate who just returned from home. We got her good, soaking her with water as she walked up the stairs both after class in the morning and in the afternoon. The twins were both scared of me all day and pretty much all week because they knew at one point I'd be taking out Arianni's stitches. In the afternoon I went to Batey Sabalo. A new one for me this trip. I didn't have my camera unfortunately because we were using it for Coco's video but there were some cool sights. I saw a huge turkey walking around! Also, there was a 1 month old little boy with a huge gumball sized abscess on his neck that had gone to town to see the doctor and been given a cream for a fungal type rash that he had on his skin. They had Kola Real bottles (16 oz) filled up with gasoline for sell. Apparently someone goes to town and buys gas and then fills up these bottles with gas to sell.
On the way home Dr. Garcia was telling about a priest he knew that was trying to learn to say Father, Son and Holy Spirit in Spanish I believe, and some kid tried to teach him but taught him Father, Son and Holy Ass because the kid didn't know how to say Spirit and so for 5 years this guy went around telling people and preaching about the Father, Son and Holy Ass until he realized 5 years later what he was saying!
We decorated a cool cake for Christine's birthday and played some Mafia after movie night with the kids.
Tuesday - I worked in my room and worked on the hospital video with Bryson. Also, took a trip into town to get supplies for the pinata!
One highlight of the day was playing with the kids. Heather and I were sitting next to each other and Joanni put our hands together and put her younger sister on guard to make sure we didn't move. She then went to her room and returned several minutes later with a "rope". This rope was the tie that went to one of her dresses. She had ripped one side off (it was a tie that went around her waist to tie a bow in the back). She tied our wrists together and made us walk. Then she went and ripped off the other one to tie both hands together. We headed over to the playground were there were more kids ready to tie us up. Nena, the leader of them all, joined in the fun. We got tied to the benches several times, with some kids on our sides, releasing us! Eventually Nena tied us together, and actually in an unescapable fashion and took us to their kitchen area to "jail". We sat down on the ground while she kept guard. However, a couple of kids tackled her while a couple other kids used their teeth to get the knots out. It was hilarious! We got up to leave and Nena went to get a tree limb to use as a switch to punish us. We actually had to run fast to our side to avoid the torture that was to come! It was great fun!
As we came back up to our room, we could hear Nena yelling our names from across the orphanage grounds. They were all waiting at the little mesita for us to come back down. She called me on Christine's phone and told me that she wouldn't tie me up if I came back. So, I had to take part and went back down, where I recieved a few light wacks with the tree limb. The game shifted and Nena started acting like a crazy old woman. I wish I could even begin to give the image justice because it was so funny! She was limping around like a old gimp person, had a stick as her cane and had this scour on her face. She would pick up rocks and "throw" them at us (purposefully missing us) and then start yelling non-sense. We were safe on the table so we'd all get off, she'd come chase us but running with her limp and cane, and then we'd get on the table and she'd throw rocks. Quite amusing!
Wednesday - Heather took Brittany, our one week volunteer, on an early sunrise hike, so instead of working out here that morning, we went a did a beach workout. We lifted rocks, jumped along the beach, ran, did lunges with driftwood, and swam at the end. It is scary to open your eyes in the ocean with goggles. I kind of freaked out at first, just afraid of what I might see but the workout overall was great!
I worked all day on health stuff and preparing gifts for Coco's birthday surprise. At night I was playing with Nena, chasing her around and tickling her. I love this kid! And just to reiterate what I've said before, she is Sydney's Dominican clone. At one point she jumped on Coco's back and almost knocked her down. Coco scolded her by saying you can't jump on my back, I'll fall and hurt you and myself. Immediately, Nena covered her face with her hands and got embarrassed and started crying. She wouldn't talk or do anything for several minutes until Coco sat down and put her in her lap and then she eventually uncovered her face but still was very chill the rest of the night!
Thursday - I spent all morning finishing Coco's gifts. For lunch we were treated and got to go to the French restaurant. I had a seafood pasta with shrimp, crab, and calamari. It was awesome! For dessert I had bananas foster which was very tasting as well! That afternoon I went out to La Recta. This batey is huge about 2000 people but very few come because they are Haitian and don't like to vaccinate their kids and just don't go to the doctor much. We walked around to one house next to where we were. There were tons of kids, naked, just hanging out. One little baby had infected skin all over her face and neck, and the nurse had to convince the Mom to bring her to consult with the doctors. There was a small creek of water beside this house and a lady was in there bathing when we arrived. As she got out, a boy was walking over with a 5 gallon water jug and filled it up. I'm hoping it was to wash clothes with, but I'm sure they use this for cooking, cleaning, bathing, etc.
I gave shots to several kids and there were 1 month old twins there that were precious. The Mom of the twins had 2 other sets of twins at home. One of the oldest twins died, and the nurse told me that she told the Mom that was a good thing because she had too many kids already! They are a little too blunt here sometimes! Can you imagine having 3 sets of twins, and living in extreme poverty! Wow! And she delivered the twins at her own house! While she was delivering the newest ones, she cactus on the ground and made a playpin to contain her other kids. If they tried to get out, they would touch the spikes of the cactus and stay in the playpin area. Once again, very resourceful! One little 3 year old boy that I gave a shot to was crying huge tears for minutes after his shot. I reached down and picked him up and he laid his tear soaked cheek on mine and after 5-10 seconds stopped crying! It was so precious!
I came back to the orphanage and had to take Arianni's stitches out. We brought her up to the education center so the other kids couldn't watch and as soon as she saw me she said, Are you going to take out my stitches? All week she had been asking me this because the other kids would tease her, and I would say no! Well, this time I had to say yes and she started crying! We sat her down and started taking them out. John was holding her legs and arms, and Heather had her head. She kept screaming "I won't move, I won't move" because she did not like being held down and as soon as we let go of her she was perfect, didn't move, and let me continue working! I was pulling on the stitch at one point and she said, "Elizamen, Ya!" which means enough or stop basically and I had to stop because that broke my heart. But, after a few minutes I got them out and she was tearful for a while but ok.
For dinner, the staff wanted to surprise Coco for her birthday and they prepared goat, which is a delicacy here. She was surprised and we had a good dinner! Afterwards, Coco had ice cream for all the kids. She buys treats for the kids on her birthday but since she was going to be gone Friday, she gave them ice cream Thursday evening instead. We worked til about midnight Thursday evening finishing the pinata and the final touches on her birthday surprises.
Friday - This was a great day. We hung Happy Birthday up outside the doors where Coco lives with a poem labeled #1. This explained that we had 34 surprises waiting for her. We left at 6:30 to head out on a journey to the "Alps". We visited a battle ground where the Tainos (Indians) fought the Spainards and saw the ruins of the first fort built in the DR. We went to a place called Holy Hill, where the Spainards camped at night before the battle and it had the most amazing and beautiful view! We bought some bread here called ojardra that was tasty. It has a sweet ginger flavor. I bought some from a little girl that sold a bag for 40 pesos. I asked for three bags and had 150 pesos, so after she added it up to 120 pesos, she said, I'll give you a fourth bag for 30 pesos. I took it, and she was so excited to have sold the bread!
From there we headed to Jarabacoa where there are lots of mountains. We ate lunch at the confluence of two rivers, and it was beautiful. It looked like being in the states at the Gorge or in Colorado or somewhere. We had a picnic lunch and it was misty and actually started raining a little. It was peaceful and relaxing though so no one cared about the light mist! From there we headed to a waterful a little outside of Jarabacoa. It was deep in a rainforest like jungle area but with a paved path. We spent a little while here observing the waterfall and just enjoying the beauty of the area.
We then headed to Santiago to a street full of shopping and touristy vendors. We stopped at McDonalds for ice cream for some, went to La Sirena which is like WalMart, Sears, Lowes, Hobby Lobby, Macy's all combined, and then hung out at PIzza Hut while some people ate pizza.
We headed back home around 6:30, where another surprise was awaiting Coco. The lady in town that owns the restaurant where we eat most weeks (at least with big groups), prepared trays of food, chicken strips, sandwiches, and two other Dominican dishes, along with a big cake for everyone to enjoy. We then gave Coco the pinata, and showed her the video to wrap up a fun and adventurous day!
So, this past week was super busy and very long! Yesterday was Coco's birthday, she is the country director who lives here full time. We wanted to surprise her with a great birthday so we came up with the idea to give her 34 small gifts over the course of the day. So, in short I've been up all week working hard with the other leaders to prepare the gifts for Coco. It was fun! We had the all kids make a card for her, we made a video with clips of all the kids saying Happy Birthday to her, we made a purple elephant pinata, we had the kids spell out with their bodies Happy Bday Coco laying on the basketball court and many more fun surprises.
This may be lengthy but I'll try to just keep it some of the most interesting highlights from the week.
Sunday - We went to Cabarete, a touristy beach town and had an awesome lunch at Jose O'Shea's and then spent time on the beach relaxing. I had a Denison t-shirt on and some guy recognized it because he went to Ohio State and knew someone that had gone to Denison. What a small world! We stopped at a road side fruit stand and got apple bananas. I'm going to have to look for these at home, they look like bananas and have the same texture as bananas but taste like apples! So good!
Monday - This was Christine's birthday, she is my roommate who just returned from home. We got her good, soaking her with water as she walked up the stairs both after class in the morning and in the afternoon. The twins were both scared of me all day and pretty much all week because they knew at one point I'd be taking out Arianni's stitches. In the afternoon I went to Batey Sabalo. A new one for me this trip. I didn't have my camera unfortunately because we were using it for Coco's video but there were some cool sights. I saw a huge turkey walking around! Also, there was a 1 month old little boy with a huge gumball sized abscess on his neck that had gone to town to see the doctor and been given a cream for a fungal type rash that he had on his skin. They had Kola Real bottles (16 oz) filled up with gasoline for sell. Apparently someone goes to town and buys gas and then fills up these bottles with gas to sell.
On the way home Dr. Garcia was telling about a priest he knew that was trying to learn to say Father, Son and Holy Spirit in Spanish I believe, and some kid tried to teach him but taught him Father, Son and Holy Ass because the kid didn't know how to say Spirit and so for 5 years this guy went around telling people and preaching about the Father, Son and Holy Ass until he realized 5 years later what he was saying!
We decorated a cool cake for Christine's birthday and played some Mafia after movie night with the kids.
Tuesday - I worked in my room and worked on the hospital video with Bryson. Also, took a trip into town to get supplies for the pinata!
One highlight of the day was playing with the kids. Heather and I were sitting next to each other and Joanni put our hands together and put her younger sister on guard to make sure we didn't move. She then went to her room and returned several minutes later with a "rope". This rope was the tie that went to one of her dresses. She had ripped one side off (it was a tie that went around her waist to tie a bow in the back). She tied our wrists together and made us walk. Then she went and ripped off the other one to tie both hands together. We headed over to the playground were there were more kids ready to tie us up. Nena, the leader of them all, joined in the fun. We got tied to the benches several times, with some kids on our sides, releasing us! Eventually Nena tied us together, and actually in an unescapable fashion and took us to their kitchen area to "jail". We sat down on the ground while she kept guard. However, a couple of kids tackled her while a couple other kids used their teeth to get the knots out. It was hilarious! We got up to leave and Nena went to get a tree limb to use as a switch to punish us. We actually had to run fast to our side to avoid the torture that was to come! It was great fun!
As we came back up to our room, we could hear Nena yelling our names from across the orphanage grounds. They were all waiting at the little mesita for us to come back down. She called me on Christine's phone and told me that she wouldn't tie me up if I came back. So, I had to take part and went back down, where I recieved a few light wacks with the tree limb. The game shifted and Nena started acting like a crazy old woman. I wish I could even begin to give the image justice because it was so funny! She was limping around like a old gimp person, had a stick as her cane and had this scour on her face. She would pick up rocks and "throw" them at us (purposefully missing us) and then start yelling non-sense. We were safe on the table so we'd all get off, she'd come chase us but running with her limp and cane, and then we'd get on the table and she'd throw rocks. Quite amusing!
Wednesday - Heather took Brittany, our one week volunteer, on an early sunrise hike, so instead of working out here that morning, we went a did a beach workout. We lifted rocks, jumped along the beach, ran, did lunges with driftwood, and swam at the end. It is scary to open your eyes in the ocean with goggles. I kind of freaked out at first, just afraid of what I might see but the workout overall was great!
I worked all day on health stuff and preparing gifts for Coco's birthday surprise. At night I was playing with Nena, chasing her around and tickling her. I love this kid! And just to reiterate what I've said before, she is Sydney's Dominican clone. At one point she jumped on Coco's back and almost knocked her down. Coco scolded her by saying you can't jump on my back, I'll fall and hurt you and myself. Immediately, Nena covered her face with her hands and got embarrassed and started crying. She wouldn't talk or do anything for several minutes until Coco sat down and put her in her lap and then she eventually uncovered her face but still was very chill the rest of the night!
Thursday - I spent all morning finishing Coco's gifts. For lunch we were treated and got to go to the French restaurant. I had a seafood pasta with shrimp, crab, and calamari. It was awesome! For dessert I had bananas foster which was very tasting as well! That afternoon I went out to La Recta. This batey is huge about 2000 people but very few come because they are Haitian and don't like to vaccinate their kids and just don't go to the doctor much. We walked around to one house next to where we were. There were tons of kids, naked, just hanging out. One little baby had infected skin all over her face and neck, and the nurse had to convince the Mom to bring her to consult with the doctors. There was a small creek of water beside this house and a lady was in there bathing when we arrived. As she got out, a boy was walking over with a 5 gallon water jug and filled it up. I'm hoping it was to wash clothes with, but I'm sure they use this for cooking, cleaning, bathing, etc.
I gave shots to several kids and there were 1 month old twins there that were precious. The Mom of the twins had 2 other sets of twins at home. One of the oldest twins died, and the nurse told me that she told the Mom that was a good thing because she had too many kids already! They are a little too blunt here sometimes! Can you imagine having 3 sets of twins, and living in extreme poverty! Wow! And she delivered the twins at her own house! While she was delivering the newest ones, she cactus on the ground and made a playpin to contain her other kids. If they tried to get out, they would touch the spikes of the cactus and stay in the playpin area. Once again, very resourceful! One little 3 year old boy that I gave a shot to was crying huge tears for minutes after his shot. I reached down and picked him up and he laid his tear soaked cheek on mine and after 5-10 seconds stopped crying! It was so precious!
I came back to the orphanage and had to take Arianni's stitches out. We brought her up to the education center so the other kids couldn't watch and as soon as she saw me she said, Are you going to take out my stitches? All week she had been asking me this because the other kids would tease her, and I would say no! Well, this time I had to say yes and she started crying! We sat her down and started taking them out. John was holding her legs and arms, and Heather had her head. She kept screaming "I won't move, I won't move" because she did not like being held down and as soon as we let go of her she was perfect, didn't move, and let me continue working! I was pulling on the stitch at one point and she said, "Elizamen, Ya!" which means enough or stop basically and I had to stop because that broke my heart. But, after a few minutes I got them out and she was tearful for a while but ok.
For dinner, the staff wanted to surprise Coco for her birthday and they prepared goat, which is a delicacy here. She was surprised and we had a good dinner! Afterwards, Coco had ice cream for all the kids. She buys treats for the kids on her birthday but since she was going to be gone Friday, she gave them ice cream Thursday evening instead. We worked til about midnight Thursday evening finishing the pinata and the final touches on her birthday surprises.
Friday - This was a great day. We hung Happy Birthday up outside the doors where Coco lives with a poem labeled #1. This explained that we had 34 surprises waiting for her. We left at 6:30 to head out on a journey to the "Alps". We visited a battle ground where the Tainos (Indians) fought the Spainards and saw the ruins of the first fort built in the DR. We went to a place called Holy Hill, where the Spainards camped at night before the battle and it had the most amazing and beautiful view! We bought some bread here called ojardra that was tasty. It has a sweet ginger flavor. I bought some from a little girl that sold a bag for 40 pesos. I asked for three bags and had 150 pesos, so after she added it up to 120 pesos, she said, I'll give you a fourth bag for 30 pesos. I took it, and she was so excited to have sold the bread!
From there we headed to Jarabacoa where there are lots of mountains. We ate lunch at the confluence of two rivers, and it was beautiful. It looked like being in the states at the Gorge or in Colorado or somewhere. We had a picnic lunch and it was misty and actually started raining a little. It was peaceful and relaxing though so no one cared about the light mist! From there we headed to a waterful a little outside of Jarabacoa. It was deep in a rainforest like jungle area but with a paved path. We spent a little while here observing the waterfall and just enjoying the beauty of the area.
We then headed to Santiago to a street full of shopping and touristy vendors. We stopped at McDonalds for ice cream for some, went to La Sirena which is like WalMart, Sears, Lowes, Hobby Lobby, Macy's all combined, and then hung out at PIzza Hut while some people ate pizza.
We headed back home around 6:30, where another surprise was awaiting Coco. The lady in town that owns the restaurant where we eat most weeks (at least with big groups), prepared trays of food, chicken strips, sandwiches, and two other Dominican dishes, along with a big cake for everyone to enjoy. We then gave Coco the pinata, and showed her the video to wrap up a fun and adventurous day!
Saturday, December 5, 2009
Christmas Joy is In the Air!
http://picasaweb.google.com/Geedz913/ChristmasParty?feat=directlink
Today was an awesome day! We had a lot of fun with the kids getting to do some special things!
This morning Heather and I cleaned our room up because Christine comes back tonight. We Dominican mopped and cleaned the bathroom and then worked on a few other projects up until lunch.
The afternoon was pretty free. We tried to take a picture with the kids having them spell out Feliz Navidad but it was too difficult to get them organized so we didn't end up doing that.
I then asked Nicol to put rollers in my hair. They use huge plastic rollers to straighten their hair and I wanted to see my hair straight here! So, Nicol put my hair up in rollers, which I didn't get a picture of because it all happened so fast. They have a dryer chair here like at a salon back home that was donated to them several years ago. So they decided to put me under the dryer to make it faster than just waiting for it to air dry.
Well, this chair is pretty old and the plug was missing from the cord. However, they still have the wires that go to it, so Nicol turned off the breaker, plugged the green and white wires into the socket, and then turned the breaker on and it worked! SCARY! We were doing this in the laundry room where Carolina was washing clothes and water was everywhere. I was sure someone was going to get electrocuted, but somehow we all survived. I had to sit under the dryer for 15-20 minutes which was quite warm and the bobby pins were burning my head. However, it was better than sitting in the sun for 2-3 hours waiting for it to dry! I felt like I was really at the beauty salon!
After this she took the rollers out and then with a round brush and blow dryer straightened my hair. Then she used a straightening iron and straightened it even more. Much more of a process than I thought. However, the best part is they put their hair up by basically brushing it in a circle flat around your head and then putting a hairnet on it. So, she did that which I wore until later in the evening. It looked pretty hideous. I have some pictures!
After getting beautified, I came back to my room to finish cleaning up and putting stuff away. We got ready for dinner, and then was time for the Christmas/Birthday party. I took my hair down from the net and it looked great. I didn't get a great picture of it but it was straight like at home but fell into my face from where it has been wrapped around my head. Wish I could fix it like that at home but I'm definitely too lazy to do all of that!
Every 3 months they have a birthday party for the kids that celebrated their birthday in those 3 months. This was the October, November, December party. Also, Cameron bought gifts for all the kids and so we had a Christmas party as well. Zuni, the administrator, worked on putting up the Christmas tree and decorating it, so to start the celebration of Christmas, Cameron plugged in the lights. We sang Feliz Navidad together, Pastor said a prayer that all the kids repeated after him, and then we sang Happy Birthday in Spanish and English.
They have the largest cakes ever that they make for the parties every 3 months! It was crazy insane, but I guess to feed 44 kids plus everyone else it has to be pretty big.
Arianni, who got stitches Wednesday night, has been afraid of me for the past 2 days because she thinks I am going to take out her stitches. So everytime she has seen me she runs to her room crying. Well tonight I sat down next to her twin sister at the party and she actually came over and sat in my lap! I was excited because I didn't think I'd be seeing her for a week! At one point she turned around and asked if I was going to take them out, just to double check!
All the kids got cake, which was yellow cake with pineapple flavor/small pieces. We got some too of course! Yummy! They like to give huge portions here! They also handed out ice cream, and they got little treat bags! What a great night for them. On top of all of this, Cameron gave each kid a gift. They loved them. The girls got little tea sets, beauty salon sets, hula hoops, strollers, and body wash for the older ones. The boys got remote controlled or cars that lighted up and moved around. They loved them! The older boys got basketballs and Odalis got Cameron's boom box he'd been using all week.
After the party ended, we headed to another one. The streets in town have a contest every year for best Christmas decorations. The street that the English Institute is on always decorates big time for the event and they were having a street party tonight. We headed over there with some of the older kids and hung out for about 1 hour. Jazmin, who used to live here, lives on that street so I got to see her for a little while. We just hung out, enjoyed the lights, and played with some of the neighborhood kids. It was a great start to the Christmas season, and really makes me excited for Christmas!
Tomorrow we are headed to Cabarete, a touristy beach town, for a relaxing get away! Should be fun!
Today was an awesome day! We had a lot of fun with the kids getting to do some special things!
This morning Heather and I cleaned our room up because Christine comes back tonight. We Dominican mopped and cleaned the bathroom and then worked on a few other projects up until lunch.
The afternoon was pretty free. We tried to take a picture with the kids having them spell out Feliz Navidad but it was too difficult to get them organized so we didn't end up doing that.
I then asked Nicol to put rollers in my hair. They use huge plastic rollers to straighten their hair and I wanted to see my hair straight here! So, Nicol put my hair up in rollers, which I didn't get a picture of because it all happened so fast. They have a dryer chair here like at a salon back home that was donated to them several years ago. So they decided to put me under the dryer to make it faster than just waiting for it to air dry.
Well, this chair is pretty old and the plug was missing from the cord. However, they still have the wires that go to it, so Nicol turned off the breaker, plugged the green and white wires into the socket, and then turned the breaker on and it worked! SCARY! We were doing this in the laundry room where Carolina was washing clothes and water was everywhere. I was sure someone was going to get electrocuted, but somehow we all survived. I had to sit under the dryer for 15-20 minutes which was quite warm and the bobby pins were burning my head. However, it was better than sitting in the sun for 2-3 hours waiting for it to dry! I felt like I was really at the beauty salon!
After this she took the rollers out and then with a round brush and blow dryer straightened my hair. Then she used a straightening iron and straightened it even more. Much more of a process than I thought. However, the best part is they put their hair up by basically brushing it in a circle flat around your head and then putting a hairnet on it. So, she did that which I wore until later in the evening. It looked pretty hideous. I have some pictures!
After getting beautified, I came back to my room to finish cleaning up and putting stuff away. We got ready for dinner, and then was time for the Christmas/Birthday party. I took my hair down from the net and it looked great. I didn't get a great picture of it but it was straight like at home but fell into my face from where it has been wrapped around my head. Wish I could fix it like that at home but I'm definitely too lazy to do all of that!
Every 3 months they have a birthday party for the kids that celebrated their birthday in those 3 months. This was the October, November, December party. Also, Cameron bought gifts for all the kids and so we had a Christmas party as well. Zuni, the administrator, worked on putting up the Christmas tree and decorating it, so to start the celebration of Christmas, Cameron plugged in the lights. We sang Feliz Navidad together, Pastor said a prayer that all the kids repeated after him, and then we sang Happy Birthday in Spanish and English.
They have the largest cakes ever that they make for the parties every 3 months! It was crazy insane, but I guess to feed 44 kids plus everyone else it has to be pretty big.
Arianni, who got stitches Wednesday night, has been afraid of me for the past 2 days because she thinks I am going to take out her stitches. So everytime she has seen me she runs to her room crying. Well tonight I sat down next to her twin sister at the party and she actually came over and sat in my lap! I was excited because I didn't think I'd be seeing her for a week! At one point she turned around and asked if I was going to take them out, just to double check!
All the kids got cake, which was yellow cake with pineapple flavor/small pieces. We got some too of course! Yummy! They like to give huge portions here! They also handed out ice cream, and they got little treat bags! What a great night for them. On top of all of this, Cameron gave each kid a gift. They loved them. The girls got little tea sets, beauty salon sets, hula hoops, strollers, and body wash for the older ones. The boys got remote controlled or cars that lighted up and moved around. They loved them! The older boys got basketballs and Odalis got Cameron's boom box he'd been using all week.
After the party ended, we headed to another one. The streets in town have a contest every year for best Christmas decorations. The street that the English Institute is on always decorates big time for the event and they were having a street party tonight. We headed over there with some of the older kids and hung out for about 1 hour. Jazmin, who used to live here, lives on that street so I got to see her for a little while. We just hung out, enjoyed the lights, and played with some of the neighborhood kids. It was a great start to the Christmas season, and really makes me excited for Christmas!
Tomorrow we are headed to Cabarete, a touristy beach town, for a relaxing get away! Should be fun!
Friday, December 4, 2009
A Welcomed Weekend!
I'm excited it is the weekend, it means sleeping in, until 8:15 that is, no workout in the morning and enjoying a relaxing day tomorrow.
Today I started a new unit titled Safety. This morning went well and I was pretty productive. I laid out what information I wanted taught, or at least had originally planned. I found some good activity sheets and information on helmet safety and was on roll. I paused for lunch and a little siesta.
During siesta, Julie was working with Jessica on spelling words for the spelling bee that they were going to have in English class later in the afternoon. After Julie headed upstairs, I stayed and spelled with her. It was fun just working with her and seeing how much English she really does know. She is about 11-12 years old and is the youngest in level 4 at the English school. She understands a lot and and speak quite a bit of English which is going to be a great skill for her later in life! We spelled words from air to strawberry to baseball to blanket. She did well with most of the words, although a lot of double letters like diFFicult were hard because she would only say one letter. But I was very impressed and we worked on spelling for about 30-45 minutes!
Before spelling with her some of the little kids were out and wanted tickled of course. Luis Alberto was standing in front of my lap at one point and picked a nasty booger and wiped it on the chair where Jessica was sitting. It was disgusting so I showed her and she called over one of the workers. She made him wipe it with his hand and then basically carried him by his arms over to the sink to wash his hands! Gross little boys! :)
After lunch I tried finding information in English and Spanish on seat belt safety. For 1-2 hours I found nothing and finally gave up and quit working for the afternoon. I've now decided to completely rearrange this unit because teaching Dominicans to wear seat belts and helmets is going to be like teaching Dominicans to not drop their "s"'s when they speak. Dominican Spanish is very sloppy so instead of saying "Esta Bien" they would say "'ta bien" because they drop the s and essentially drop the "e" before it. So, anyway, I've decided after wasting the afternoon to change the unit! Oops!
Heather and I went to hang out with the kids for a little while before dinner time. I saw Arianni's three stitches on her forehead, but she left because she was not interested in talking about this. I played for a little while on the slide with some of the little girls and then sat with Jessica again for a while. She didn't tell me she won her spelling bee, but I found out later from Julie she had won. Guess our practice helped! Oh, side note, as I was coming up with words, she kept trying to add letters to the end. For example, I said beautiful and she would say beautifully, and she tried to say sloppily was a word. Not sure because my English skills are diminishing day by day but don't think those are proper words!
For dinner we ate a the restaurant connected to Hostel San Fernando where Cameron is staying. We had a little buffet style dinner of french fries, tostones (plantains), fried chicken, and crab. It was tasty. The crab was meat stewed with some vegetables and had some small bones in it. A little different than normal crab, but it was good and something different! They have a nice pool at the hostel and we went outside, took some pictures and just chilled by the pool for a bit. On the way home we stopped by the English Institute.
The street that it is on participates in a Christmas decorating contest every year. So, we stopped and got out to look at the lights. It made me really excited for Christmas! They have a huge wall set up at the front of the street that looks like the Catholic Church in town and only has an opening large enough for motos to pass so the street is half shut down, at least to cars or bigger. In the middle of the street they have alternating "candles" that are my height and trees with lights. The house next door to the Institute has an awesome upstairs deck/patio and they have some great looking decorations. We hung out for 5-10 minutes with some of the neighborhood kids that know everyone and then we headed back.
We played some Apples to Apples tonight before calling it a night. This weekend will be fun. We are having a birthday party for the kids tomorrow night, and headed to Cabarete (a beach/touristy town) on Sunday for a "vacation" day!
Today I started a new unit titled Safety. This morning went well and I was pretty productive. I laid out what information I wanted taught, or at least had originally planned. I found some good activity sheets and information on helmet safety and was on roll. I paused for lunch and a little siesta.
During siesta, Julie was working with Jessica on spelling words for the spelling bee that they were going to have in English class later in the afternoon. After Julie headed upstairs, I stayed and spelled with her. It was fun just working with her and seeing how much English she really does know. She is about 11-12 years old and is the youngest in level 4 at the English school. She understands a lot and and speak quite a bit of English which is going to be a great skill for her later in life! We spelled words from air to strawberry to baseball to blanket. She did well with most of the words, although a lot of double letters like diFFicult were hard because she would only say one letter. But I was very impressed and we worked on spelling for about 30-45 minutes!
Before spelling with her some of the little kids were out and wanted tickled of course. Luis Alberto was standing in front of my lap at one point and picked a nasty booger and wiped it on the chair where Jessica was sitting. It was disgusting so I showed her and she called over one of the workers. She made him wipe it with his hand and then basically carried him by his arms over to the sink to wash his hands! Gross little boys! :)
After lunch I tried finding information in English and Spanish on seat belt safety. For 1-2 hours I found nothing and finally gave up and quit working for the afternoon. I've now decided to completely rearrange this unit because teaching Dominicans to wear seat belts and helmets is going to be like teaching Dominicans to not drop their "s"'s when they speak. Dominican Spanish is very sloppy so instead of saying "Esta Bien" they would say "'ta bien" because they drop the s and essentially drop the "e" before it. So, anyway, I've decided after wasting the afternoon to change the unit! Oops!
Heather and I went to hang out with the kids for a little while before dinner time. I saw Arianni's three stitches on her forehead, but she left because she was not interested in talking about this. I played for a little while on the slide with some of the little girls and then sat with Jessica again for a while. She didn't tell me she won her spelling bee, but I found out later from Julie she had won. Guess our practice helped! Oh, side note, as I was coming up with words, she kept trying to add letters to the end. For example, I said beautiful and she would say beautifully, and she tried to say sloppily was a word. Not sure because my English skills are diminishing day by day but don't think those are proper words!
For dinner we ate a the restaurant connected to Hostel San Fernando where Cameron is staying. We had a little buffet style dinner of french fries, tostones (plantains), fried chicken, and crab. It was tasty. The crab was meat stewed with some vegetables and had some small bones in it. A little different than normal crab, but it was good and something different! They have a nice pool at the hostel and we went outside, took some pictures and just chilled by the pool for a bit. On the way home we stopped by the English Institute.
The street that it is on participates in a Christmas decorating contest every year. So, we stopped and got out to look at the lights. It made me really excited for Christmas! They have a huge wall set up at the front of the street that looks like the Catholic Church in town and only has an opening large enough for motos to pass so the street is half shut down, at least to cars or bigger. In the middle of the street they have alternating "candles" that are my height and trees with lights. The house next door to the Institute has an awesome upstairs deck/patio and they have some great looking decorations. We hung out for 5-10 minutes with some of the neighborhood kids that know everyone and then we headed back.
We played some Apples to Apples tonight before calling it a night. This weekend will be fun. We are having a birthday party for the kids tomorrow night, and headed to Cabarete (a beach/touristy town) on Sunday for a "vacation" day!
Thursday, December 3, 2009
PG-13 (Kind of)
Yesterday I spent the morning at the Rehab Center making another video tour. We arrived around 10am and starting taping. Joanni, the administrator of the center was excited to have us and would open the little rooms to let us tape the patients as they were receiving therapy or heat or electrical stim. Not sure the patients were super excited to be filmed but they weren't complaining. We got some good shots and there were several patients so it worked out well. The guy that is always in the kitchen made some homemade lemonade and it was great! He uses fresh squeezed oranges and lemons mixed with sugar and it is awesome!
We interviewed Joanni, and a couple of the therapists and then Dr. Garcia. He is the president of the Rehab Center and is always a wealth of information.
After lunch I spent time working in the afternoon. I didn't go out with Dr. Garcia because I had a lot to get done on my units. I hung out with the kids after working for several hours. For dinner, we had Thanksgiving again! I guess we had so much left over that we had a repeat of last week, PLUS PUMPKIN PIE! I like pumpkin pie, but never have been super crazy about it but it tasted wonderful.
I went and hung out again with the kids. Nena sat in my lap and we chatted for a while. She was telling me about the pig that got slaughtered here on the grounds yesterday. They were saying it is for Christmas dinner but seems a little early. She is so goofy and crazy most of the time but was pretty chill and just being cuddly last night which was fun. The kids had culto which was a little different than normal. Three of the girls got up and led singing and just had random people come up and sing. Julie and Bebo sang a song in Spanish, Heather sang Feliz Navidad with the teenage girls, and other kids came up and sang. Nena was in my lap singing, and Luis Alberto was to my side singing. His speech isn't the best so it was funny listening to him sing and he would start singing the line about 3 seconds before everyone else. But I love that he has learned so many songs in just a few months!
*PG-13 portion* :)
Pastor talked about his Christmases as a child. He was saying that when he was little he was told that baby Jesus delivered gifts to each house on a horse. They would leave water and grass under the bed for the horse to eat so he could keep going from house to house. However, he was poorer than others on his street with 8 brothers and sisters so he never understood why Jesus would leave him a small toy and his neighbors a bicycle. He couldn't understand why Jesus was unfair! So, he then proceeded to say, kids Jesus doesn't bring gifts at Christmas, Moms and Dads do! No chance for them to believe in something like Santa! :( He had Bryson come up and tell the American tradition of Santa Claus and was surprised to hear that we leave cookies and milk for Santa to eat. Julie always chimed in about the good/naughty lists! Maybe it will help their behavior! :) Culto was fun with a little Christmas spirit and some fun songs!
Today was a typical day. I worked this morning finishing up my Adult Medicine Unit. This afternoon, I headed into Batey La Cruz with Dr. Garcia and gang. I gave vaccines out in the batey today. It was the first time I had been to this one since I've been here. I brought my camera today but the battery died after the first picture! Sorry! A dog randomly came up today and sat next to Dr. Garcia while he was doing clinic. Nothing like random animals in your "clinic". As I was vaccinating one of the older women today, she was lifting her sleeve up and had huge arm muscles for a 70ish year old woman. I was impressed!
This afternoon I took a nap after returning because I think I haven't been drinking enough water the past few days. I chugged 64 ounces of water between 3pm-6:30pm so I felt better after dinner. We had Mexican night tonight! Yummy guacamole!
Afterwards I went over and hung out with the kids. At first they were going crazy, jumping everywhere, crying, etc but eventually they calmed down and I sat with Luis Alberto cuddled in my lap. Jenny who is older came over and we were talking along with Jazmin. Pastor went to dinner with Cameron who is here visiting and he returned late for church. They usually leave about 7:45 but he wasn't back until 8:15 tonight. So, we had extra time to hang out with the other kids. Jazmin was screaming/singing Feliz Navidad at the top of her lungs, Jenny was putting "makeup" on Luis Alberto using pink chalk, and Nena would come around every once and a while to tug on my hair.
At one point while we were sitting on the bench, from a distance there was a bright orange color in the horizon. I wasn't sure if it was a brush fire or not, but found out quickly it was the moon rising. I got up to go look at it and it was absolutely gorgeous. It was a full moon that was bright orange with complete darkness around it! Wish I could capture it for you but pictures wouldn't do it justice! I hung out with Jennifer sleeping on my lap and just talking to Jenny.
Then someone came over and told me that one of the twins had cut her head while jumping in one of the cribs. I saw a bunch of kids crowded around on the patio and Nicol was holding Arianni. She had blood on her dress and a pretty deep gash on her forehead. Sure enough, she needs more stitches! This is Round 2 for her, her last ones were in the back of her head! Pastor wasn't back from dinner at this point, so the front gate guy and one of the older caretaker women went to the hospital for stitches. No practicing for me! :)
Coco decided to eat her left over pumpkin pie so I joined her in the kitchen and she shared some of her pie which was tasty. It had been in the freezer and was super cold so was even better!
Tomorrow is a work day here for me and we are going to dinner out at one of the hotels in town. Should be a good treat!
We interviewed Joanni, and a couple of the therapists and then Dr. Garcia. He is the president of the Rehab Center and is always a wealth of information.
After lunch I spent time working in the afternoon. I didn't go out with Dr. Garcia because I had a lot to get done on my units. I hung out with the kids after working for several hours. For dinner, we had Thanksgiving again! I guess we had so much left over that we had a repeat of last week, PLUS PUMPKIN PIE! I like pumpkin pie, but never have been super crazy about it but it tasted wonderful.
I went and hung out again with the kids. Nena sat in my lap and we chatted for a while. She was telling me about the pig that got slaughtered here on the grounds yesterday. They were saying it is for Christmas dinner but seems a little early. She is so goofy and crazy most of the time but was pretty chill and just being cuddly last night which was fun. The kids had culto which was a little different than normal. Three of the girls got up and led singing and just had random people come up and sing. Julie and Bebo sang a song in Spanish, Heather sang Feliz Navidad with the teenage girls, and other kids came up and sang. Nena was in my lap singing, and Luis Alberto was to my side singing. His speech isn't the best so it was funny listening to him sing and he would start singing the line about 3 seconds before everyone else. But I love that he has learned so many songs in just a few months!
*PG-13 portion* :)
Pastor talked about his Christmases as a child. He was saying that when he was little he was told that baby Jesus delivered gifts to each house on a horse. They would leave water and grass under the bed for the horse to eat so he could keep going from house to house. However, he was poorer than others on his street with 8 brothers and sisters so he never understood why Jesus would leave him a small toy and his neighbors a bicycle. He couldn't understand why Jesus was unfair! So, he then proceeded to say, kids Jesus doesn't bring gifts at Christmas, Moms and Dads do! No chance for them to believe in something like Santa! :( He had Bryson come up and tell the American tradition of Santa Claus and was surprised to hear that we leave cookies and milk for Santa to eat. Julie always chimed in about the good/naughty lists! Maybe it will help their behavior! :) Culto was fun with a little Christmas spirit and some fun songs!
Today was a typical day. I worked this morning finishing up my Adult Medicine Unit. This afternoon, I headed into Batey La Cruz with Dr. Garcia and gang. I gave vaccines out in the batey today. It was the first time I had been to this one since I've been here. I brought my camera today but the battery died after the first picture! Sorry! A dog randomly came up today and sat next to Dr. Garcia while he was doing clinic. Nothing like random animals in your "clinic". As I was vaccinating one of the older women today, she was lifting her sleeve up and had huge arm muscles for a 70ish year old woman. I was impressed!
This afternoon I took a nap after returning because I think I haven't been drinking enough water the past few days. I chugged 64 ounces of water between 3pm-6:30pm so I felt better after dinner. We had Mexican night tonight! Yummy guacamole!
Afterwards I went over and hung out with the kids. At first they were going crazy, jumping everywhere, crying, etc but eventually they calmed down and I sat with Luis Alberto cuddled in my lap. Jenny who is older came over and we were talking along with Jazmin. Pastor went to dinner with Cameron who is here visiting and he returned late for church. They usually leave about 7:45 but he wasn't back until 8:15 tonight. So, we had extra time to hang out with the other kids. Jazmin was screaming/singing Feliz Navidad at the top of her lungs, Jenny was putting "makeup" on Luis Alberto using pink chalk, and Nena would come around every once and a while to tug on my hair.
At one point while we were sitting on the bench, from a distance there was a bright orange color in the horizon. I wasn't sure if it was a brush fire or not, but found out quickly it was the moon rising. I got up to go look at it and it was absolutely gorgeous. It was a full moon that was bright orange with complete darkness around it! Wish I could capture it for you but pictures wouldn't do it justice! I hung out with Jennifer sleeping on my lap and just talking to Jenny.
Then someone came over and told me that one of the twins had cut her head while jumping in one of the cribs. I saw a bunch of kids crowded around on the patio and Nicol was holding Arianni. She had blood on her dress and a pretty deep gash on her forehead. Sure enough, she needs more stitches! This is Round 2 for her, her last ones were in the back of her head! Pastor wasn't back from dinner at this point, so the front gate guy and one of the older caretaker women went to the hospital for stitches. No practicing for me! :)
Coco decided to eat her left over pumpkin pie so I joined her in the kitchen and she shared some of her pie which was tasty. It had been in the freezer and was super cold so was even better!
Tomorrow is a work day here for me and we are going to dinner out at one of the hotels in town. Should be a good treat!
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Happy December!
It is hard to believe it is already December! The kids here are excited that "winter" is here because it means closer to Christmas time for them!
Yesterday was a normal Monday. In the morning, I worked on some personal stuff online, organizing pictures, blogging, downloading pictures, etc because my free Microsoft Office trial had run out so I couldn't work on my units from my room.
In the afternoon, I headed out to Batey Madre with Dr. Garcia. It was an interesting day but familiar clinic day to one back home. Isabel was a 77 year old woman with high blood pressure, reading 200/100 yesterday taken manually. It was too high for the automatic cuff to take it. When she went to consult with Dr. Garcia, he was asking her about her medications and she wasn't sure what she was taking so he had her go get them.
She returned with a purse full of medicines. Here they don't come in pill bottles, they come in little packages like the gum that you push thru the aluminum to get out. The come in packages of 10 pills and she had tons of them. She had 4 different blood pressure medications, furosemide (lasix) which is used to help with swelling, and digoxin which is used for the heart as well. When he asked how she was taking each of the blood pressure medications she couldn't tell him. She almost looked embarrassed because she was so clueless. She had about 10 packages that were completely empty that she had kept for no known reason, and other packages of the same medicine some with 1-2 pills missing, others with 3-4 missing, and other not opened, showing that she was just taking them randomly and didn't realize they were the same thing. So, after some discussion with Dr. Garcia, he took away 2 of the BP pills and kept her on 2, and then kept her on furosemide and digoxin. He rubber banded them together to help her try to stay organized and will see her back in a month.
It was eye opening to see this. She doesn't understand how harmful it is for her to have such a disorganized arrangement of her medications. However, I'm sure this happens so often even in patients that I see, and even in patients that aren't 77 and are only taking one medication. Often times it is easy for me to forget that I understand my directions easily but for a patient who didn't study medicine and doesn't know the difference between one pill and another, they can easily get confused. It was a great lesson learned to me more diligent about having patients bring in their medications and reviewing them every visit!
After I got back, I spent some time in the "hair salon" of Nena. I sat on a swing while she did my hair. She was trying super hard to do something cute and kept coming up with things in her head. She was going to pull a large piece in the front to the side and clip it with a barrett, like the ones little girls use, but after several tries she realized my hair was too thick to hold it in. So, she put a front ponytail in my hair instead with a red bow that one of the little girls had received from her Mom. From the salon I had to head to dinner but wasn't allowed to take it down because it was a rushed job and I was told to return after eating quickly. So, I showed up to dinner looking marvelous!
After dinner I headed back over for some torture. Nena started working on my hair, then gave the job over to Joanni, then to Coral who is 12 and pulled harder than anyone and then Joanni again who got stopped finally by one of the caretakers because she could see I was in pain! They pull so hard here!!!
We had movie night and watched Alvin and the Chipmunks which the kids loved. Heather and Julie made brownies which were tasty as well! Ari was sitting in my lap for a little while during the movie and she is the one that had her bad front tooth removed. She looked up at me and said, my tooth is clean now! She is so cute because she keeps saying how clean her tooth is, but she has no tooth there anymore. Today she actually asked me when she was going to get a new one! :) I told her when she was 6 years old!
A couple other random sights from the day. On the way to Dr. Garcia's house we were driving by some local neighbor kids and the little boy had his same yellow tighty whities that he always wears. However, this time his little wee wee was hanging out the top of them and they were just covering the rest of his package. It was quite the sight! On the way back from the batey we drove by a house and on the front porch area was an old car seat that came out of a van or something just sitting on the porch as a couch/resting area! So ghetto but resourceful! :)
Today was a little different for me. I had planned on working on units all day because I have 4 to finish and less than 3 weeks left! AHHH! Where has time gone? But, Jennifer, one of the interns has been having wrist pain for the past 4-5 days since one of the older boys squeezed her thumb really hard. So, I went with her to the clinic for an x-ray just to make sure nothing was broken. There is only one guy in town that can take x-rays and he works in the hospital in the morning. So, we arrived around 9:45 and waited until just before 11 for him to arrive from the hospital to take an x-ray. It was not broken so we headed to the pharmacy to get diclofenac (an anti-inflammatory). You can buy prescription drugs here without a prescription.
Before stopping at the pharmacy we stopped by the Rehab Center briefly to set up another video tour for tomorrow. We are going to do a video tour of the Rehab Center tomorrow with some more interviews! So I spoke with Joanni,the administrator,who is excited for us to come tomorrow to video tape.
We headed back for lunch and went to see the kids but very few were out because they were eating. While we were waiting, Cameron arrived. He is from Michigan and has supported Orphanage Outreach for the past 10-12 years by raising several thousands of dollars each year. He is here for a week and will be working on some painting projects and just hanging out with the kids. I spoke with him some and then headed up for a little siesta.
I worked most of the afternoon on one of my units until 5pm which is my normal stopping time and my favorite time to hang out with the kids. I hung out with Carolina and Erikson (an older boy that lives in town but comes to hang out and help out) as they were reading thru some Dominican school notebook. The book had some religion, teaching the books of the Bible, etc. A little different from American public schools, huh? During this time, about 5 little girls were carrying over a bucket of food scraps to feed to the goats and they were all making goats sounds. It was funny! Joanni came out and I played with her some and we went over to see the goats as well.
After dinner, I spent more time over with the kids just hanging out. Jennifer fell asleep in my lap early on and I took her to go to bed, and then had Luz Maria and Mineli hanging out in my lap. We were just sitting watching a hysterical scene. Several of the 8-11 year olds were acting out people fainting in church. One of them would stand up on a cinder block, touch another persons head, and start screaming, Leave, leave them, Heal him, Get rid of the demons and the person would be helped down by the other kids to lay on the ground. This would continue until everyone was lying down and sometimes they would start "convulsing" on the ground. It was funny, while kind of disturbing, to watch this but it is what they see sometimes at church so it was interesting. They starting getting the little girls to come over so they'd have more people to "heal".
After this ended, they started playing more normal childhood games like Duck Duck Goose, etc. I ended up hanging out with Heather and Jessica and we played a clapping game that is hard to explain but was fun.
Tomorrow we are headed to the Rehab Center to film in the morning and then I'll stay back from the bateyes to try to get some more work done since time is running out! Hope everyone enjoyed their first day of December!
Yesterday was a normal Monday. In the morning, I worked on some personal stuff online, organizing pictures, blogging, downloading pictures, etc because my free Microsoft Office trial had run out so I couldn't work on my units from my room.
In the afternoon, I headed out to Batey Madre with Dr. Garcia. It was an interesting day but familiar clinic day to one back home. Isabel was a 77 year old woman with high blood pressure, reading 200/100 yesterday taken manually. It was too high for the automatic cuff to take it. When she went to consult with Dr. Garcia, he was asking her about her medications and she wasn't sure what she was taking so he had her go get them.
She returned with a purse full of medicines. Here they don't come in pill bottles, they come in little packages like the gum that you push thru the aluminum to get out. The come in packages of 10 pills and she had tons of them. She had 4 different blood pressure medications, furosemide (lasix) which is used to help with swelling, and digoxin which is used for the heart as well. When he asked how she was taking each of the blood pressure medications she couldn't tell him. She almost looked embarrassed because she was so clueless. She had about 10 packages that were completely empty that she had kept for no known reason, and other packages of the same medicine some with 1-2 pills missing, others with 3-4 missing, and other not opened, showing that she was just taking them randomly and didn't realize they were the same thing. So, after some discussion with Dr. Garcia, he took away 2 of the BP pills and kept her on 2, and then kept her on furosemide and digoxin. He rubber banded them together to help her try to stay organized and will see her back in a month.
It was eye opening to see this. She doesn't understand how harmful it is for her to have such a disorganized arrangement of her medications. However, I'm sure this happens so often even in patients that I see, and even in patients that aren't 77 and are only taking one medication. Often times it is easy for me to forget that I understand my directions easily but for a patient who didn't study medicine and doesn't know the difference between one pill and another, they can easily get confused. It was a great lesson learned to me more diligent about having patients bring in their medications and reviewing them every visit!
After I got back, I spent some time in the "hair salon" of Nena. I sat on a swing while she did my hair. She was trying super hard to do something cute and kept coming up with things in her head. She was going to pull a large piece in the front to the side and clip it with a barrett, like the ones little girls use, but after several tries she realized my hair was too thick to hold it in. So, she put a front ponytail in my hair instead with a red bow that one of the little girls had received from her Mom. From the salon I had to head to dinner but wasn't allowed to take it down because it was a rushed job and I was told to return after eating quickly. So, I showed up to dinner looking marvelous!
After dinner I headed back over for some torture. Nena started working on my hair, then gave the job over to Joanni, then to Coral who is 12 and pulled harder than anyone and then Joanni again who got stopped finally by one of the caretakers because she could see I was in pain! They pull so hard here!!!
We had movie night and watched Alvin and the Chipmunks which the kids loved. Heather and Julie made brownies which were tasty as well! Ari was sitting in my lap for a little while during the movie and she is the one that had her bad front tooth removed. She looked up at me and said, my tooth is clean now! She is so cute because she keeps saying how clean her tooth is, but she has no tooth there anymore. Today she actually asked me when she was going to get a new one! :) I told her when she was 6 years old!
A couple other random sights from the day. On the way to Dr. Garcia's house we were driving by some local neighbor kids and the little boy had his same yellow tighty whities that he always wears. However, this time his little wee wee was hanging out the top of them and they were just covering the rest of his package. It was quite the sight! On the way back from the batey we drove by a house and on the front porch area was an old car seat that came out of a van or something just sitting on the porch as a couch/resting area! So ghetto but resourceful! :)
Today was a little different for me. I had planned on working on units all day because I have 4 to finish and less than 3 weeks left! AHHH! Where has time gone? But, Jennifer, one of the interns has been having wrist pain for the past 4-5 days since one of the older boys squeezed her thumb really hard. So, I went with her to the clinic for an x-ray just to make sure nothing was broken. There is only one guy in town that can take x-rays and he works in the hospital in the morning. So, we arrived around 9:45 and waited until just before 11 for him to arrive from the hospital to take an x-ray. It was not broken so we headed to the pharmacy to get diclofenac (an anti-inflammatory). You can buy prescription drugs here without a prescription.
Before stopping at the pharmacy we stopped by the Rehab Center briefly to set up another video tour for tomorrow. We are going to do a video tour of the Rehab Center tomorrow with some more interviews! So I spoke with Joanni,the administrator,who is excited for us to come tomorrow to video tape.
We headed back for lunch and went to see the kids but very few were out because they were eating. While we were waiting, Cameron arrived. He is from Michigan and has supported Orphanage Outreach for the past 10-12 years by raising several thousands of dollars each year. He is here for a week and will be working on some painting projects and just hanging out with the kids. I spoke with him some and then headed up for a little siesta.
I worked most of the afternoon on one of my units until 5pm which is my normal stopping time and my favorite time to hang out with the kids. I hung out with Carolina and Erikson (an older boy that lives in town but comes to hang out and help out) as they were reading thru some Dominican school notebook. The book had some religion, teaching the books of the Bible, etc. A little different from American public schools, huh? During this time, about 5 little girls were carrying over a bucket of food scraps to feed to the goats and they were all making goats sounds. It was funny! Joanni came out and I played with her some and we went over to see the goats as well.
After dinner, I spent more time over with the kids just hanging out. Jennifer fell asleep in my lap early on and I took her to go to bed, and then had Luz Maria and Mineli hanging out in my lap. We were just sitting watching a hysterical scene. Several of the 8-11 year olds were acting out people fainting in church. One of them would stand up on a cinder block, touch another persons head, and start screaming, Leave, leave them, Heal him, Get rid of the demons and the person would be helped down by the other kids to lay on the ground. This would continue until everyone was lying down and sometimes they would start "convulsing" on the ground. It was funny, while kind of disturbing, to watch this but it is what they see sometimes at church so it was interesting. They starting getting the little girls to come over so they'd have more people to "heal".
After this ended, they started playing more normal childhood games like Duck Duck Goose, etc. I ended up hanging out with Heather and Jessica and we played a clapping game that is hard to explain but was fun.
Tomorrow we are headed to the Rehab Center to film in the morning and then I'll stay back from the bateyes to try to get some more work done since time is running out! Hope everyone enjoyed their first day of December!
Monday, November 30, 2009
Weekend Activities
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Saturday is normally a travel day for groups but Queen Margaret's was here until Sunday so instead we had activity day with the kids. One of the girls from the group was celebrating her birthday so we started the morning off with a little Happy Birthday singing and of course, water on her head. She gave me a scour when I poured water on her head but oh well, it was fun!
That morning we had craft/activity time with the kids. They had bracelet making, coloring books, painting, finger paints, and a couple other activities set out. Finger paints looked like a fun idea until the kids went crazy and just started pouring the bottles of paint all over the table. At one point, there was no one manning the station and it became insane so we quickly shut this station down. It is wild how fast something can get out of hand with kids! I worked on making a keychain to attach to my phone so I won't lose my room key. The kids did crafts for about 1 hour and then we had a little break before lunch.
After lunch and siesta, we had an hour of reading with the kids. They really enjoy coming over and either reading to someone or having us read to them. I read with Luz Maria and towards the end Joanni as well. We read about 8-10 books, some only 3-4 pages long ;) I had hoped to read with Indiana because I haven't spent much time with her but she wasn't there. I found her afterwards and mentioned this to her and she said she was washing dishes but wanted to read. So, I went to get some books and we went over to a little table and she read 4 books to me. It was cool hanging out with just her and having her read.
After that we still had 2 hours until dinner and I was kind of bored so I found Vivian and Jennifer and we headed out into town for a walk. The days I don't work out (Sat/Sun) I feel so sluggish so I needed to get out and move a little. We had no real purpose in our walk so we stopped at a clothing store just to browse, and then headed into the center of town hoping to see the Skim Ice (popsicle guy). We didn't so we headed back. A lady sitting with about 6 adult men stopped us and asked if we were American. She lived in Baltimore for 15 years and now lives here and in the capitol. We spoke with her for about 5-10 minutes before heading back for dinner.
On my way back upstairs before dinner, I stopped at the mesita and hung out with Mineli and Paola who were going crazy attacking Bryson. I ended up just hanging out there for about 30 minutes laughing at how wild and crazy they were. After dinner, I got cleaned up, and we headed out for ice cream in town. That evening at dinner we had birthday cake to celebrate the volunteer's birthday so I passed on ice cream. I had a left over cupcake from the night before at lunch and some chocolate so I figured I had reached my treat limit for the day!
There was a church concert going on in park across from the Institute so we headed there after ice cream. They had a big stage set up with a Christmas tree and lights and were passing out Dominican flags. There were a bunch of people from town in the park, several English students, Jazmin who used to live at the orphanage, and the older orphanage kids came. We hung out there for about an hour which was fun. They had a pantomime skit that was performed, and music was played the remainder of the time.
We had to head back around 9pm to do closing with the group. They were a quiet group so it didn't last too long and then I hung out with Heather, Coco and Bryson just chatting and eating more chocolate!
On Sunday, the group was scheduled to leave at 10:30. After breakfast, I watched Bryson work on the hospital video, seeing how he captures and logs different clips to organize the video. We headed down to say goodbye to the group and I sat at the mesita with Luis Alberto. We have a running joke that his name is Elizabeth and my name is Luis Alberto so I kept telling him that and joking with him. As the group was loading up, I ask him if he wanted to go in a suitcase and he said yes. So I carried him over to the bus and Chiro the driver had an empty duffle bag. I said, open the bag, Luis Alberto wants to go, and as he did this, Luis Alberto squirmed out of my arms saying, Yo no voy, I'm not going, and ran away. It was adorable! Apparently he doesn't understand sarcasm at age 5! :)
The group left and we hung out at the mesita with Luis Alberto, Paola, Yanina, Merry and Winston. It was a very peaceful, relaxing time just sitting there chatting and hanging out for a while. Jessica came up later and wanted to play L,R,C so I went and got that and we played until lunchtime.
After lunch, I organized my pictures some and then headed to the baseball game to watch Bebo play. He is Pastor's youngest son who is 20 years old and plays on a local team here in Monte Cristi. The game was supposed to start at 2pm and we got there about 2:40 and it finally started about 3:10. There was no official umpire, just a couple of guys that switched out and no real scoreboard but someone apparently kept score. Bebo played outfield and batted once while we were there.
We didn't stay too long, about an hour, because these boys had homemade fireworks that they kept popping and it got super annoying! It looked like a shoelace with a metal tube on one end and a screw on the other. They would stick a match down inside the tube, then the screw into the tube and then smack that part against a wall or something and it would pop real loud. One boy threatened to do it where I was sitting twice, the first time I asked please don't and he left and the second time he was being a brat and I responded right back telling him I'd push him down the concrete bleachers! :) I'm so nice, I know! But he left!
We headed back to the orphanage and I took some pictures of the kids. Mineli apparently had been covered head to toe in these pretty pink flowers and they were telling me all about this. I headed over to the patio and Nena sat in my lap and chilled for a while. The bell rang for snack and all the kids went to get their red juice and crackers. They all had pretty dresses on that quickly became covered in red juice! I sat with them while they ate their snack and then somehow the girls and one little boy started getting into a juice/water tossing fight. I avoided this and hung out with Luis Alberto, pretending to steal his snack from him like a few nights ago.
He came and sat in my lap and was being all lovey-dovey and cute. I'd squeeze him tight and he would scream, and this continued for a few minutes. Then somehow, Tito came around and Luis Alberto changed and farted on me and starting being bad! He got nice again, and we played a little hand game that Heather taught him earlier in the day. You tap fists and say Pound It, then twist and say Lock It, then put it in your pocket, then put your two pointer fingers together longways and say Break the Pickle, which the other person splits with their fingers, and then you say Tickle Tickle Ticklet. He would do it, then I would do it. I love hearing him speak English!
We headed up for dinner and finally I could share the chocolate with everyone at dinner since the group was gone. I had been sharing it in secret from the kitchen refrigerator but this time we brought out the bag! After dinner, I heard lots of chanting, yelling coming from the kids so I walked over to see what was going on. Nena was standing on the patio wall, and the other little girls were all standing in chairs. She was leading "culto" which had now turned into her doing English chants from summer camp. It was hilarious! She'd chant something and they would all repeat back. This went on for another 3-4 minutes until they all went wild and started jumping on Bryson and I and not wanting us to leave. I took a few self administered pictures of Luz Maria and I and when I had to leave to shower for church, I literally had to run away to get out because they cling to your shirts or legs and won't let you leave!
We headed to church for the evening and there was guest from Santo Domingo who sang 3 songs from his worship CDs. I sat by Little Nicole at church and she ended up laying her head down in my lap and sleeping towards the end. There is a round of gripe (colds) going around here at the orphanage and she is one of the sick ones.
After church Coco treated us to movie night in her apartment. She popped popcorn on her stove and bought soda for us. It was a great treat. We watched Slumdog Millionaire and then called it a night!
Saturday is normally a travel day for groups but Queen Margaret's was here until Sunday so instead we had activity day with the kids. One of the girls from the group was celebrating her birthday so we started the morning off with a little Happy Birthday singing and of course, water on her head. She gave me a scour when I poured water on her head but oh well, it was fun!
That morning we had craft/activity time with the kids. They had bracelet making, coloring books, painting, finger paints, and a couple other activities set out. Finger paints looked like a fun idea until the kids went crazy and just started pouring the bottles of paint all over the table. At one point, there was no one manning the station and it became insane so we quickly shut this station down. It is wild how fast something can get out of hand with kids! I worked on making a keychain to attach to my phone so I won't lose my room key. The kids did crafts for about 1 hour and then we had a little break before lunch.
After lunch and siesta, we had an hour of reading with the kids. They really enjoy coming over and either reading to someone or having us read to them. I read with Luz Maria and towards the end Joanni as well. We read about 8-10 books, some only 3-4 pages long ;) I had hoped to read with Indiana because I haven't spent much time with her but she wasn't there. I found her afterwards and mentioned this to her and she said she was washing dishes but wanted to read. So, I went to get some books and we went over to a little table and she read 4 books to me. It was cool hanging out with just her and having her read.
After that we still had 2 hours until dinner and I was kind of bored so I found Vivian and Jennifer and we headed out into town for a walk. The days I don't work out (Sat/Sun) I feel so sluggish so I needed to get out and move a little. We had no real purpose in our walk so we stopped at a clothing store just to browse, and then headed into the center of town hoping to see the Skim Ice (popsicle guy). We didn't so we headed back. A lady sitting with about 6 adult men stopped us and asked if we were American. She lived in Baltimore for 15 years and now lives here and in the capitol. We spoke with her for about 5-10 minutes before heading back for dinner.
On my way back upstairs before dinner, I stopped at the mesita and hung out with Mineli and Paola who were going crazy attacking Bryson. I ended up just hanging out there for about 30 minutes laughing at how wild and crazy they were. After dinner, I got cleaned up, and we headed out for ice cream in town. That evening at dinner we had birthday cake to celebrate the volunteer's birthday so I passed on ice cream. I had a left over cupcake from the night before at lunch and some chocolate so I figured I had reached my treat limit for the day!
There was a church concert going on in park across from the Institute so we headed there after ice cream. They had a big stage set up with a Christmas tree and lights and were passing out Dominican flags. There were a bunch of people from town in the park, several English students, Jazmin who used to live at the orphanage, and the older orphanage kids came. We hung out there for about an hour which was fun. They had a pantomime skit that was performed, and music was played the remainder of the time.
We had to head back around 9pm to do closing with the group. They were a quiet group so it didn't last too long and then I hung out with Heather, Coco and Bryson just chatting and eating more chocolate!
On Sunday, the group was scheduled to leave at 10:30. After breakfast, I watched Bryson work on the hospital video, seeing how he captures and logs different clips to organize the video. We headed down to say goodbye to the group and I sat at the mesita with Luis Alberto. We have a running joke that his name is Elizabeth and my name is Luis Alberto so I kept telling him that and joking with him. As the group was loading up, I ask him if he wanted to go in a suitcase and he said yes. So I carried him over to the bus and Chiro the driver had an empty duffle bag. I said, open the bag, Luis Alberto wants to go, and as he did this, Luis Alberto squirmed out of my arms saying, Yo no voy, I'm not going, and ran away. It was adorable! Apparently he doesn't understand sarcasm at age 5! :)
The group left and we hung out at the mesita with Luis Alberto, Paola, Yanina, Merry and Winston. It was a very peaceful, relaxing time just sitting there chatting and hanging out for a while. Jessica came up later and wanted to play L,R,C so I went and got that and we played until lunchtime.
After lunch, I organized my pictures some and then headed to the baseball game to watch Bebo play. He is Pastor's youngest son who is 20 years old and plays on a local team here in Monte Cristi. The game was supposed to start at 2pm and we got there about 2:40 and it finally started about 3:10. There was no official umpire, just a couple of guys that switched out and no real scoreboard but someone apparently kept score. Bebo played outfield and batted once while we were there.
We didn't stay too long, about an hour, because these boys had homemade fireworks that they kept popping and it got super annoying! It looked like a shoelace with a metal tube on one end and a screw on the other. They would stick a match down inside the tube, then the screw into the tube and then smack that part against a wall or something and it would pop real loud. One boy threatened to do it where I was sitting twice, the first time I asked please don't and he left and the second time he was being a brat and I responded right back telling him I'd push him down the concrete bleachers! :) I'm so nice, I know! But he left!
We headed back to the orphanage and I took some pictures of the kids. Mineli apparently had been covered head to toe in these pretty pink flowers and they were telling me all about this. I headed over to the patio and Nena sat in my lap and chilled for a while. The bell rang for snack and all the kids went to get their red juice and crackers. They all had pretty dresses on that quickly became covered in red juice! I sat with them while they ate their snack and then somehow the girls and one little boy started getting into a juice/water tossing fight. I avoided this and hung out with Luis Alberto, pretending to steal his snack from him like a few nights ago.
He came and sat in my lap and was being all lovey-dovey and cute. I'd squeeze him tight and he would scream, and this continued for a few minutes. Then somehow, Tito came around and Luis Alberto changed and farted on me and starting being bad! He got nice again, and we played a little hand game that Heather taught him earlier in the day. You tap fists and say Pound It, then twist and say Lock It, then put it in your pocket, then put your two pointer fingers together longways and say Break the Pickle, which the other person splits with their fingers, and then you say Tickle Tickle Ticklet. He would do it, then I would do it. I love hearing him speak English!
We headed up for dinner and finally I could share the chocolate with everyone at dinner since the group was gone. I had been sharing it in secret from the kitchen refrigerator but this time we brought out the bag! After dinner, I heard lots of chanting, yelling coming from the kids so I walked over to see what was going on. Nena was standing on the patio wall, and the other little girls were all standing in chairs. She was leading "culto" which had now turned into her doing English chants from summer camp. It was hilarious! She'd chant something and they would all repeat back. This went on for another 3-4 minutes until they all went wild and started jumping on Bryson and I and not wanting us to leave. I took a few self administered pictures of Luz Maria and I and when I had to leave to shower for church, I literally had to run away to get out because they cling to your shirts or legs and won't let you leave!
We headed to church for the evening and there was guest from Santo Domingo who sang 3 songs from his worship CDs. I sat by Little Nicole at church and she ended up laying her head down in my lap and sleeping towards the end. There is a round of gripe (colds) going around here at the orphanage and she is one of the sick ones.
After church Coco treated us to movie night in her apartment. She popped popcorn on her stove and bought soda for us. It was a great treat. We watched Slumdog Millionaire and then called it a night!
Friday, November 27, 2009
Happy Birthday EMMA!
First I have to wish Emma a Happy 28th Birthday! Welcome to the club :) Hope you had a great day!
Today was a field trip day for me. Heather had to teach her class at the English Institute so I took the team to Dajabon, the Haiti/Dominican border, and was the caboose again. It is always interesting to go there because each trip is a little different. Today there was an older Dominican lady with a disposable camera trying to take a picture of the Asian students that are here with the group. There was also a man that yelled out and said "Are they Chinese? Or do they just look Chinese?". It is funny how fascinated they are but I suppose if they never leave their island they don't see many people from foreign countries.
The market was a more crowded today than last time because it was Friday versus Monday, but definitely not as crowded as I have seen. It was a peaceful day, and we made it through without too many difficulties.
We headed back into town and I hung out in my room until time to head to lunch in town. We ate lunch at Comedor Adela where they serve buffet style food. It is always way too much food, especially before heading to the beach to lay out! They have everything though, rice, bean, chicken, beef, goat, mashed potatoes, spaghetti, broccoli, these little wheat things called quepers, stewed eggplant, meatballs, cheese empanadas, bread, cake, pineapple, and watermelon. It is an amazing assortment of food and I used to eat so much when I would come only for 1-2 weeks but now that we go with groups often, I've learned not to stuff myself!
From there we headed to the beach for a couple of hours. It was a hot day at the beach. I kept having to wipe my face on my pillow/towel because I'd be dripping sweat and wake up. But, it was great! On the drive home I saw an interesting lady walking down the street. She had shorts on and you could only see her left leg and on the right side she had a crutch that she was using to walk with. I didn't think much of it until I happened to look down at the crutch and she had a small foot that was actually holding on to the crutch with her toes. She must have had a shortened leg with some type of deformed foot attached. It was interesting and I didn't want to be a noisy onlooker but medical stuff like that always peeks an interest in me!
After returning from the beach we had free time until dinner and then again after dinner until 8pm when the older kids went to church. I hung out after dinner and tickled Ari, with her newly removed front tooth, chased around Nena, and Luz Maria and then sat and hung out with Nena for a while to cool off.
Tonight we had movie night with the group and watched Elf. I hadn't seen that is a while so it was great watching it. Made me excited for Christmas time! Julie and Heather baked cupcakes during the movie and they were done right as the movie finished. Great ending to a great day!
Today was a field trip day for me. Heather had to teach her class at the English Institute so I took the team to Dajabon, the Haiti/Dominican border, and was the caboose again. It is always interesting to go there because each trip is a little different. Today there was an older Dominican lady with a disposable camera trying to take a picture of the Asian students that are here with the group. There was also a man that yelled out and said "Are they Chinese? Or do they just look Chinese?". It is funny how fascinated they are but I suppose if they never leave their island they don't see many people from foreign countries.
The market was a more crowded today than last time because it was Friday versus Monday, but definitely not as crowded as I have seen. It was a peaceful day, and we made it through without too many difficulties.
We headed back into town and I hung out in my room until time to head to lunch in town. We ate lunch at Comedor Adela where they serve buffet style food. It is always way too much food, especially before heading to the beach to lay out! They have everything though, rice, bean, chicken, beef, goat, mashed potatoes, spaghetti, broccoli, these little wheat things called quepers, stewed eggplant, meatballs, cheese empanadas, bread, cake, pineapple, and watermelon. It is an amazing assortment of food and I used to eat so much when I would come only for 1-2 weeks but now that we go with groups often, I've learned not to stuff myself!
From there we headed to the beach for a couple of hours. It was a hot day at the beach. I kept having to wipe my face on my pillow/towel because I'd be dripping sweat and wake up. But, it was great! On the drive home I saw an interesting lady walking down the street. She had shorts on and you could only see her left leg and on the right side she had a crutch that she was using to walk with. I didn't think much of it until I happened to look down at the crutch and she had a small foot that was actually holding on to the crutch with her toes. She must have had a shortened leg with some type of deformed foot attached. It was interesting and I didn't want to be a noisy onlooker but medical stuff like that always peeks an interest in me!
After returning from the beach we had free time until dinner and then again after dinner until 8pm when the older kids went to church. I hung out after dinner and tickled Ari, with her newly removed front tooth, chased around Nena, and Luz Maria and then sat and hung out with Nena for a while to cool off.
Tonight we had movie night with the group and watched Elf. I hadn't seen that is a while so it was great watching it. Made me excited for Christmas time! Julie and Heather baked cupcakes during the movie and they were done right as the movie finished. Great ending to a great day!
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Feliz Dia de Acción de Gracias! Happy Thanksgiving!
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Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving with family and friends! I'm sure everyone ate until they were miserable which is always great but terrible at the same time! Although I missed being with my family to celebrate Thanksgiving, I had a fun time with the kids this evening as they came over to celebrate with us.
Back up a little to tell you some about the day. This morning I started working on the Adult Medicine Unit and got the objectives set, now just have to work on the resource materials for the objectives which is what takes so long!
After this, we headed back into the hospital to finish filming. We ran into a guy from town that had a 25 day old baby girl in his lap. She was all bundled in pink and very precious! We said hello to Dr. Garcia, and then started taping. It started off a little rough because I asked him if we could tape a chart and he said that was illegal. I guess there are some privacy laws at least here. I was pretty sure none of that existed but I guess it's good to know patients still have a little privacy. So, we moved on to the ER which was pretty busy and I went inside to ask if we could film. They said we had to talk to the director, which I explained we had, and then she said we needed a note from him. So, we pitched that idea also.
From there we headed out to the lobby area and taped some of the basic exam rooms and then headed upstairs to the HIV/AIDS ward. This was interesting because I had never been up there. It is only about 2 years old. As we came up the stairs, a young girl about 8-9 was at the top outside the door singing and dancing. She continued as we were standing there watching and we talked to her. Then her Mom came to get her to go back inside. We walked in, introduced ourselves and were told to ask the doctor if we could film. They walked us into a consult room where the doctor was with the dancing girl and her Mom and we just interrupted them, upon their request, and asked. The doctor was very friendly and said tape whatever you want, and told us we weren't a problem at all being there. As Bryson filmed, I stood at the front desk area and ended up talking with a lady that lives in Batey Madre. She saw my OO shirt and recognized it, saying we help out a lot in the bateyes.
From there we walked around filming so it looked like we were walking thru the hospital. We saw the guy with cast on, talked to a guard from the jail that was there guarding a patient, and then went upstairs and saw the same 16 year old girl from yesterday. As we were talking to her, her Mom came down the hallway with the same doctor we had spoken to in the HIV/AIDS ward. Makes me wonder if that is what she has??
The end of the hospital tour was the best. We asked the people in the chart room if we could take a picture and they invited us in. Imagine the size of a sitting room in an average American home and the room was maybe that size. In there, they have stored 40 years worth of manilla folders that serve as the patients charts. It was a mad house! People were stepping over charts, shelves had charts basically falling out of them, stuffed to the brim! It was an OCD person's nightmare and even was overwhelming for me who we all know is not very neat! They had drawers with letters on the front and each drawers had 100s of index cards with the patient's information and file folder number. They'd find these cards, find the number, and then go searching for the chart. So, every morning patients show up wanting to be seen (no appointments made), and the get their names, find their index cards, pull their charts, then staple a small square with a number on it and give the patient a matching "ticket". After receiving their ticket, the go sit and wait for their number to be called. INSANITY is all I can say about that! I'll have to post a link to the video once it gets finished!
From there we headed out of the hospital and back for lunch.
After lunch I went to help Coco set up for our make shift dental office. The Reilly's are both dentists so they offered to help do some extractions on two of the kids that had really bad teeth. Little Ari was first, the twin with the rotted broken front tooth. She came upstairs a little frightened and by the time he finished just looking she was ready to go. As TJ numbed her from the back (the palate), numbing medicine came squirting thru the front where there was an abscess.They got her front tooth out, with a little crying and holding down and then moved on to her brother who has about 4-5 teeth rotted to the gums.
He was terrified because he had heard his sister crying and he took a little more convincing to get numbed. Bribery with some play trucks helped! He screamed so loud as they were numbing him and it was breaking my heart. I had the job of holding his head still while Pastor Ramon held the flashlight and his arms. There were 3 others helping hold down legs and hands also. As TJ pulled out the first tooth, he was amazed at how big it was and it had an abscess on the bottom! For being 5, and terrified he did excellent. He was still a little dazed and fussy even an hour or so later just from the shock I think.
Next they started screening the other kids that weren't at school and found several cavities in most of the kids teeth, but small ones that can be fixed in the spring when we have big clinics. Pili and Edison also had to have teeth removed and they both did well. They were scared but held their mouths opened and were very brave for what was going on!
After doing the orphanage kids, Caela, the Hopkins daughter actually had a baby tooth that didn't fall out and needed removed so they moved on to her. And from there, they took out a tooth of the guy that does everything around here for us, like drive the bus, run errands, repair things, fill up water jugs, basically anything that needs done! It was interesting because he had a tooth next to his canine (which was missing) that was leaning over sideways because of his severe gum disease. They told him it needed to come out and he at first refused. His reasoning wasn't because of pain but because of what people would say. He didn't want people to comment on his appearance and he wasn't sure when he'd have time to go get a partial denture made so he could cover up the missing tooth. After some convincing he allowed them to do it, and it saved him 500 pesos. Yes, an extraction back home is about $160-200 dollars, and here it is $15!
Once our dental clinic closed, I went and hung out with the kids a little, checking in on the former patients who all were well and had forgotten! Ari was even showing off her new missing tooth. One interesting note, as she was getting her tooth removed, her twin was outside the door and knew something was going on. She was crying I think more than Ari, and continued to cry for about 10-15 minutes afterwards, even though Ari was calm. It was bizarre how upset she was and it wasn't even her being worked on!
I got to talk to my family today which was great to hear everyone's voices and after that I spoke with Coco who had gone to the post office and I had a package! Thanks to Laura, I received a box full of chocolate Halloween candy! It took 22 days to arrive but I've already had and shared several pieces and the wait was worth it! THANKS SO MUCH SMITH FAMILY!
I went and hung out for a bit with Jennifer, Joanni, and Mineli. They were braiding a Barbie doll's hair, one that Ari had won as her reward for being a good patient.
We got to "dress up" (not wear OO shirts) for dinner so I went to shower and get ready for our big Thanksgiving feast. The group made placemats with all the kids names on them and we set out crayons for them to color their placemats when they came over for dinner. The kids were all anxiously awaiting under the tree and kept inching closer and closer waiting for the bell to ring. Pastor said a few words, prayed and then we enjoyed a little skit done by 4 of the girls. They did a pantomime to a couple of songs but the CD was skipping so it got cut short a little. It is always cute to see them perform for us! Then, everyone sprinted to the front. We helped the little ones get their plates and the others were served buffet style. On the menu tonight was: mashed potatoes, chicken, yams, carrots, peas, stuffing, sweet bread, and cranberry sauce. I had a little bit of everything except cranberry sauce! I sat with the older girls and had a great time! As I was waiting for the orphanage kids and staff to go thru the line, I snapped some shots of the kids enjoying their huge plates of food. It is amazing how much they eat here, even the 3-4 year olds!
After dinner we had the Dajabon talk with the group, as I'll be headed there again tomorrow to lead this team because Heather has to teach at the Institute. Good night!
Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving with family and friends! I'm sure everyone ate until they were miserable which is always great but terrible at the same time! Although I missed being with my family to celebrate Thanksgiving, I had a fun time with the kids this evening as they came over to celebrate with us.
Back up a little to tell you some about the day. This morning I started working on the Adult Medicine Unit and got the objectives set, now just have to work on the resource materials for the objectives which is what takes so long!
After this, we headed back into the hospital to finish filming. We ran into a guy from town that had a 25 day old baby girl in his lap. She was all bundled in pink and very precious! We said hello to Dr. Garcia, and then started taping. It started off a little rough because I asked him if we could tape a chart and he said that was illegal. I guess there are some privacy laws at least here. I was pretty sure none of that existed but I guess it's good to know patients still have a little privacy. So, we moved on to the ER which was pretty busy and I went inside to ask if we could film. They said we had to talk to the director, which I explained we had, and then she said we needed a note from him. So, we pitched that idea also.
From there we headed out to the lobby area and taped some of the basic exam rooms and then headed upstairs to the HIV/AIDS ward. This was interesting because I had never been up there. It is only about 2 years old. As we came up the stairs, a young girl about 8-9 was at the top outside the door singing and dancing. She continued as we were standing there watching and we talked to her. Then her Mom came to get her to go back inside. We walked in, introduced ourselves and were told to ask the doctor if we could film. They walked us into a consult room where the doctor was with the dancing girl and her Mom and we just interrupted them, upon their request, and asked. The doctor was very friendly and said tape whatever you want, and told us we weren't a problem at all being there. As Bryson filmed, I stood at the front desk area and ended up talking with a lady that lives in Batey Madre. She saw my OO shirt and recognized it, saying we help out a lot in the bateyes.
From there we walked around filming so it looked like we were walking thru the hospital. We saw the guy with cast on, talked to a guard from the jail that was there guarding a patient, and then went upstairs and saw the same 16 year old girl from yesterday. As we were talking to her, her Mom came down the hallway with the same doctor we had spoken to in the HIV/AIDS ward. Makes me wonder if that is what she has??
The end of the hospital tour was the best. We asked the people in the chart room if we could take a picture and they invited us in. Imagine the size of a sitting room in an average American home and the room was maybe that size. In there, they have stored 40 years worth of manilla folders that serve as the patients charts. It was a mad house! People were stepping over charts, shelves had charts basically falling out of them, stuffed to the brim! It was an OCD person's nightmare and even was overwhelming for me who we all know is not very neat! They had drawers with letters on the front and each drawers had 100s of index cards with the patient's information and file folder number. They'd find these cards, find the number, and then go searching for the chart. So, every morning patients show up wanting to be seen (no appointments made), and the get their names, find their index cards, pull their charts, then staple a small square with a number on it and give the patient a matching "ticket". After receiving their ticket, the go sit and wait for their number to be called. INSANITY is all I can say about that! I'll have to post a link to the video once it gets finished!
From there we headed out of the hospital and back for lunch.
After lunch I went to help Coco set up for our make shift dental office. The Reilly's are both dentists so they offered to help do some extractions on two of the kids that had really bad teeth. Little Ari was first, the twin with the rotted broken front tooth. She came upstairs a little frightened and by the time he finished just looking she was ready to go. As TJ numbed her from the back (the palate), numbing medicine came squirting thru the front where there was an abscess.They got her front tooth out, with a little crying and holding down and then moved on to her brother who has about 4-5 teeth rotted to the gums.
He was terrified because he had heard his sister crying and he took a little more convincing to get numbed. Bribery with some play trucks helped! He screamed so loud as they were numbing him and it was breaking my heart. I had the job of holding his head still while Pastor Ramon held the flashlight and his arms. There were 3 others helping hold down legs and hands also. As TJ pulled out the first tooth, he was amazed at how big it was and it had an abscess on the bottom! For being 5, and terrified he did excellent. He was still a little dazed and fussy even an hour or so later just from the shock I think.
Next they started screening the other kids that weren't at school and found several cavities in most of the kids teeth, but small ones that can be fixed in the spring when we have big clinics. Pili and Edison also had to have teeth removed and they both did well. They were scared but held their mouths opened and were very brave for what was going on!
After doing the orphanage kids, Caela, the Hopkins daughter actually had a baby tooth that didn't fall out and needed removed so they moved on to her. And from there, they took out a tooth of the guy that does everything around here for us, like drive the bus, run errands, repair things, fill up water jugs, basically anything that needs done! It was interesting because he had a tooth next to his canine (which was missing) that was leaning over sideways because of his severe gum disease. They told him it needed to come out and he at first refused. His reasoning wasn't because of pain but because of what people would say. He didn't want people to comment on his appearance and he wasn't sure when he'd have time to go get a partial denture made so he could cover up the missing tooth. After some convincing he allowed them to do it, and it saved him 500 pesos. Yes, an extraction back home is about $160-200 dollars, and here it is $15!
Once our dental clinic closed, I went and hung out with the kids a little, checking in on the former patients who all were well and had forgotten! Ari was even showing off her new missing tooth. One interesting note, as she was getting her tooth removed, her twin was outside the door and knew something was going on. She was crying I think more than Ari, and continued to cry for about 10-15 minutes afterwards, even though Ari was calm. It was bizarre how upset she was and it wasn't even her being worked on!
I got to talk to my family today which was great to hear everyone's voices and after that I spoke with Coco who had gone to the post office and I had a package! Thanks to Laura, I received a box full of chocolate Halloween candy! It took 22 days to arrive but I've already had and shared several pieces and the wait was worth it! THANKS SO MUCH SMITH FAMILY!
I went and hung out for a bit with Jennifer, Joanni, and Mineli. They were braiding a Barbie doll's hair, one that Ari had won as her reward for being a good patient.
We got to "dress up" (not wear OO shirts) for dinner so I went to shower and get ready for our big Thanksgiving feast. The group made placemats with all the kids names on them and we set out crayons for them to color their placemats when they came over for dinner. The kids were all anxiously awaiting under the tree and kept inching closer and closer waiting for the bell to ring. Pastor said a few words, prayed and then we enjoyed a little skit done by 4 of the girls. They did a pantomime to a couple of songs but the CD was skipping so it got cut short a little. It is always cute to see them perform for us! Then, everyone sprinted to the front. We helped the little ones get their plates and the others were served buffet style. On the menu tonight was: mashed potatoes, chicken, yams, carrots, peas, stuffing, sweet bread, and cranberry sauce. I had a little bit of everything except cranberry sauce! I sat with the older girls and had a great time! As I was waiting for the orphanage kids and staff to go thru the line, I snapped some shots of the kids enjoying their huge plates of food. It is amazing how much they eat here, even the 3-4 year olds!
After dinner we had the Dajabon talk with the group, as I'll be headed there again tomorrow to lead this team because Heather has to teach at the Institute. Good night!
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women
Today is the day of the assasination of the Mirabel sisters and therefore the day of elimination of violence against women.
Today was a fun and different day for me. Bryson and I left right after breakfast to meet Dr. Garcia at the hospital. We are doing a video tour of the hospital to show groups in the spring because often times it is difficult to take large groups through the hospital. I interviewed Dr. Garcia asking him about the history of the hospital, how people pay, the different services provided, and what areas it serves. After his interview, he took us to find the director of the hospital, Dr. Reinoso for an interview. He hadn't arrived yet so we waited a bit for him and then went and interviewed him. He is an internist and talked about the teaching aspects of the hospital and the HIV/AIDS program/ward that they have. From there we toured around on our own some, and talked with the radiology tech and he showed up the equipment there. They have an old x-ray machine from the 1950s that looks like something out of Frankenstein!
On our tour we talked with a man who was in an accident and had a full leg cast, we saw many other men inpatient and a couple of kids. One guy got up out of bed holding his IV bag in one hand and his catheter bag in another. We got some good shots downstairs before heading upstairs. We also got a shot of the huge laundry machine and the kitchen where they were cooking. I learned today that they put plastic over the rice while it is cooking to keep the steam in to cook it more. So much for BPA worries here! They also were spraying roach killer on the counters while cooking! SANITARY!
We went upstairs and ran into a girl that was walking the hall with her IV bag in hand. She was shorter than me, probably about up to my shoulder and her arms and legs were smaller than my wrists (and I have small wrists). She obviously had some sort of genetic or growth problem. But she was very sweet and let us film her and talked with us about where she went to school, etc. She was coming out to the nurses station to watch TV, she had an extra IV pole set up by a lounge chair and enjoyed some cartoons.
We continued on upstairs, which is all women, and started talking with a lady in one of the beds. She asked me if I knew her neice, who lives in NY and studies medicine. She went on and on and couldn't understand why I didn't know her. She said we look alike! :) Her sister did marry an American but for some reason I just don't think I look like a half Dominican/half American girl!
We went to my favorite area next, the mother/baby rooms! There was a 5 day old little boy that was adorable. I talked with his Mom a little while Bryson filmed him.
From there we toured around the OR, which is quite impressive compared to the States. They make us put on gowns to walk back, but not really sure how that is keeping anything sterile! ;) We didn't finish filming but had to head back so he could teach Spanish to the Hopkins family.
After returning, I sat with Ari for a bit while she was coloring. She said something I found so funny! She was talking to Franchesca who is 4, they are about the same age, and told her that if she colored her back ugly she wasn't going to love her, but if she colored it pretty she would love her. So, Franchesca colored, not so well (remember she is only 4 and a little behind at that) and Ari said, "No te quiero" which means I don't love you. It was hilarious! Then she told me I wasn't her friend so I'd tickle her until she said, Ok you are my friend!
After lunch, I hung out with the kids for a bit. I did some coloring and was disappointed in my lack of coloring skills. I used to think I was good, but now I'm not!
I headed out to Batey Maguaca today with the crew and gave some vaccinations. I took some decent pictures. One boy had gone fishing and had about 8 fish that I got a picture of, got a garland Christmas tree, and some other shots of people.
Tonight we had activity night with the kids and had them over to our side to play games. I played Candyland several times with Mancho and won twice even though he kept cheating. He would rig it so he advanced to the end with the princess card and I'd go back to the beginning. But I still won because he'd draw another card that would send him backwards! We had puzzles, Jenga, coloring, Betty Spaghetti and other games out for about an hour.
Wednesday night is always culto, the little worship service on the patio so we went over there to participate in this. Luz Maria fell asleep on my lap and she snores louder than a grown man. Apparently she had a true problem with her sinuses so she snores crazy loud! After culto I spent a little time with Carolina before heading to my room because of the mosquitos.
A couple more things that I forgot from the past couple of days. Two nights ago I walked into the bathroom to brush my teeth and saw in the window a tarantula about the size of an egg, maybe a little bigger. We have screens on our window so it couldn't come in but it still was gross! I softly screamed and had Heather come to look at it. I stood in the corner while she looked through the screen and said "Wow you can see how fuzzy it is!". Meanwhile I wasn't too entertained but she blew on it to see what it would do and apparently they don't hold on and it fell over the wall! Oops! :) We put up some toilet paper in the area where the screen is not completely intact with the wall and covered it with duct tape. Didn't want any chance of that thing squeezing thru, if it didn't fall to its death before that.
Then, the next morning I was running down the street working out and by the sewer drain, which I was closest to out of the 3 in my group, there was an even bigger tranatula! I did a few high knees and quickly moved over to the right. Bryson got a stick to see if he could get it to bite because he could see its teeth! It scurried down the crack in the drain and we continued on. In my 8 other trips, I had maybe seen 1-2 of these, but I guess being here longer you see more! :)
Happy Thanksgiving tomorrow! I'm jealous somewhat of the great food everyone will be enjoying! We are having dinner with the kids which will be fun, but not all the same food :( I hope everyone enjoys their day off work and time with friends and family and enjoying great food!
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
4 Weeks Left! AHHH!
So this past Saturday was my 4 week mark until I come home. I'm both excited to see everyone at home, but sad to leave here because I'll be half way done with my trip and time has flown by! I'm sad to be missing Christmas, New Year's, Noche Especial (a slumber party with the girls), and King's Day down here but know I'll love being home also!
This weekend things were kind of slow and I decided to help the orphanage staff ladies clean rice. The rice that they buy here has little rocks, dirty rice, and other random things it in that aren't edible, so everyday they set up a table and sort thru the rice to clean it. I thought it would be kind of fun, which it was for a while, but after staring at a white table, sifting thru white rice for about 20 minutes, I started getting a little nauseated. It was like getting car sick almost. I had to retire from my rice cleaning days and decided to walk into town to the local grocery store just to get out and move around.
Yesterday was a pretty normal day. I worked in the morning on some Sex Ed stuff and then spent the afternoon in Batey Juliana with Dr. Garcia. On the way to the batey I noticed in one of the cow pastures that the troughs for water were made out of huge tires cut in half. Also, they had big barrels that were cut in half and used for troughs. They are very resourceful here using things we'd typically throw away for different things.
When we arrived there were very few patients but slowly more arrived. There were about 20 men that came to be seen, and about 2-3 women. There are very few women in this batey, although it is slowly growing. The people here are constantly changing also. The men seem to come and go out of this batey. I took some BPs but mainly just hung out because we were vaccinating. There was a girl there about 9 years old that had dirty blonde hair and was lighter than most Dominicans. Her dad also had blondish hair and was lighter skinned. It is weird to see blonde Dominicans!
After I returned back to the orphanage, I hung out with Mineli for a little bit on the patio area. Then I went upstairs to take the test that the Hopkins family had just taken to see how well I knew past tense. It was difficult!
After dinner we had a little bit of free time before movie time with the kids. I went over and was giving Nicol a massage and got one in return. Some of the older kids went to a concert that was being offered by another church. They had to pay 30 pesos so only those with money saved up could go. The kids get a few pesos everyday to buy snacks at school, but sometimes they will save their pesos for events such as this or to buy something bigger.
We watched Toy Story which I hadn't seen for a while. Franchesca sat with me and fell asleep not too long into the movie. Heather and Julie made brownies for the kids and they handed those out right as the movie ended. They love special treats like this! We also got to enjoy some from a second batch after they finished cooking. TASTY!
Today was a day of work here at the orphanage. I worked on the Sex Ed unit this morning and this afternoon, finishing it just before 5pm! This morning I also went to the hospital to talk to the director about an interview. Bryson is going to make a video tour of the hospital to show the groups in the spring and we want to do some personal interviews with Dr. Garcia and Dr. Reinoso the director of the hospital. While we were waiting for his secretary to return to her office, a lady from Jaramillo (one of the bateyes) walked by and as I was saying hello to her and shaking her hand, she said "Hola, Elizabeth". I was shocked she knew my name, but it was pretty awesome at the same time! Another reason this batey is quickly becoming one of my favorites!
We found out from another doctor that we work with in the local clinic, that Dr. Reinoso had gone to the capitol this morning so after waiting 20 minutes for his secretary who never showed up, we headed to pick up the teachers from the Institute.
We came back and had a little break before lunch. I played a dice game with the Hopkins, High/Low. It was fun! I'll have to take that one home with me. They know a lot of great games!
After lunch, we had lots of free time to siesta and hang out. I went over and saw the kids for a bit and ended up sitting with Lisy and tickled her! Surprise, I know! It was fun though because at one point she was lying on the ground pretending to sleep and I then pretended to sleep, then stooped over as I was "sleeping" and then my arms would "fall" onto her belly and start tickling her!
I came back and rested for a little before working for the rest of the afternoon. After finishing the unit, I headed out with the kids again. Ari, Luz Maria, and Yanina were at the mesita and asked for some coloring books. I brought them out and hung out while they colored and also read the Caballos (horses) book. The leader from the team this week brought out some paint and was working with Winston. She would have him draw something on paper with a white crayon pressing hard and then paint on top of it and it would show up. He enjoyed this! We did that up until dinner time!
After dinner, I helped Coco sort donations along with Jennifer and Vivian. We had to pull Vivian out of her bed at 6:45 to help, she goes to bed so early, it cracks me up! They brought tons of clothes, a pile on the table that taller than me! We sorted through these separating them into boys and girls, shirts, shorts, pants, etc.
After sorting for over an hour I headed out to hang out with the kids for about 45 minutes until separation time. There weren't many kids out and William kept asking for books to read so I went and got three books. I called him over and sat with him under the light post and read the 3 books to him. He loves sitting and reading! Often times, he, Bryson and Winston will sit and read together. Both he and Winston are very very shy, so to have him open up to me is rewarding!
Tomorrow we are going to film the video tour of the hospital which should be fun and then I will head out to Batey Maguaca in the afternoon. I haven't been there yet with Dr. Garcia this trip, but went a couple of weeks ago with Bill and Cara who were here on a site visit. We'll see if any of the kids remember me! Should be a good picture taking opportunity. I haven't been taking many recently because I've been working in my room which is very exciting to document with pictures! :)
This weekend things were kind of slow and I decided to help the orphanage staff ladies clean rice. The rice that they buy here has little rocks, dirty rice, and other random things it in that aren't edible, so everyday they set up a table and sort thru the rice to clean it. I thought it would be kind of fun, which it was for a while, but after staring at a white table, sifting thru white rice for about 20 minutes, I started getting a little nauseated. It was like getting car sick almost. I had to retire from my rice cleaning days and decided to walk into town to the local grocery store just to get out and move around.
Yesterday was a pretty normal day. I worked in the morning on some Sex Ed stuff and then spent the afternoon in Batey Juliana with Dr. Garcia. On the way to the batey I noticed in one of the cow pastures that the troughs for water were made out of huge tires cut in half. Also, they had big barrels that were cut in half and used for troughs. They are very resourceful here using things we'd typically throw away for different things.
When we arrived there were very few patients but slowly more arrived. There were about 20 men that came to be seen, and about 2-3 women. There are very few women in this batey, although it is slowly growing. The people here are constantly changing also. The men seem to come and go out of this batey. I took some BPs but mainly just hung out because we were vaccinating. There was a girl there about 9 years old that had dirty blonde hair and was lighter than most Dominicans. Her dad also had blondish hair and was lighter skinned. It is weird to see blonde Dominicans!
After I returned back to the orphanage, I hung out with Mineli for a little bit on the patio area. Then I went upstairs to take the test that the Hopkins family had just taken to see how well I knew past tense. It was difficult!
After dinner we had a little bit of free time before movie time with the kids. I went over and was giving Nicol a massage and got one in return. Some of the older kids went to a concert that was being offered by another church. They had to pay 30 pesos so only those with money saved up could go. The kids get a few pesos everyday to buy snacks at school, but sometimes they will save their pesos for events such as this or to buy something bigger.
We watched Toy Story which I hadn't seen for a while. Franchesca sat with me and fell asleep not too long into the movie. Heather and Julie made brownies for the kids and they handed those out right as the movie ended. They love special treats like this! We also got to enjoy some from a second batch after they finished cooking. TASTY!
Today was a day of work here at the orphanage. I worked on the Sex Ed unit this morning and this afternoon, finishing it just before 5pm! This morning I also went to the hospital to talk to the director about an interview. Bryson is going to make a video tour of the hospital to show the groups in the spring and we want to do some personal interviews with Dr. Garcia and Dr. Reinoso the director of the hospital. While we were waiting for his secretary to return to her office, a lady from Jaramillo (one of the bateyes) walked by and as I was saying hello to her and shaking her hand, she said "Hola, Elizabeth". I was shocked she knew my name, but it was pretty awesome at the same time! Another reason this batey is quickly becoming one of my favorites!
We found out from another doctor that we work with in the local clinic, that Dr. Reinoso had gone to the capitol this morning so after waiting 20 minutes for his secretary who never showed up, we headed to pick up the teachers from the Institute.
We came back and had a little break before lunch. I played a dice game with the Hopkins, High/Low. It was fun! I'll have to take that one home with me. They know a lot of great games!
After lunch, we had lots of free time to siesta and hang out. I went over and saw the kids for a bit and ended up sitting with Lisy and tickled her! Surprise, I know! It was fun though because at one point she was lying on the ground pretending to sleep and I then pretended to sleep, then stooped over as I was "sleeping" and then my arms would "fall" onto her belly and start tickling her!
I came back and rested for a little before working for the rest of the afternoon. After finishing the unit, I headed out with the kids again. Ari, Luz Maria, and Yanina were at the mesita and asked for some coloring books. I brought them out and hung out while they colored and also read the Caballos (horses) book. The leader from the team this week brought out some paint and was working with Winston. She would have him draw something on paper with a white crayon pressing hard and then paint on top of it and it would show up. He enjoyed this! We did that up until dinner time!
After dinner, I helped Coco sort donations along with Jennifer and Vivian. We had to pull Vivian out of her bed at 6:45 to help, she goes to bed so early, it cracks me up! They brought tons of clothes, a pile on the table that taller than me! We sorted through these separating them into boys and girls, shirts, shorts, pants, etc.
After sorting for over an hour I headed out to hang out with the kids for about 45 minutes until separation time. There weren't many kids out and William kept asking for books to read so I went and got three books. I called him over and sat with him under the light post and read the 3 books to him. He loves sitting and reading! Often times, he, Bryson and Winston will sit and read together. Both he and Winston are very very shy, so to have him open up to me is rewarding!
Tomorrow we are going to film the video tour of the hospital which should be fun and then I will head out to Batey Maguaca in the afternoon. I haven't been there yet with Dr. Garcia this trip, but went a couple of weeks ago with Bill and Cara who were here on a site visit. We'll see if any of the kids remember me! Should be a good picture taking opportunity. I haven't been taking many recently because I've been working in my room which is very exciting to document with pictures! :)
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Mosquitos EVERYWHERE!
So yesterday in town they fumigated the streets for mosquitos. Well guess where mosquitos go when the streets in town are fumigated...they come to the outskirts of town to the orphanage! Wow, I feel like I could bathe in 100% DEET and still get bit constantly. Usually I only wear bug spray in the AM and right before dinner but now I'm constantly wearing it. The only cool thing about the fumigation is tons of yellow butterflies (probably moths) have come in to the orphanage to seek refuge also so that is very pretty to see!
Today I spent some time studying Spanish with the family as they reviewed for their test tomorrow. I still have a lot to learn!
I spent the rest of the morning hanging out with some of the kids. All the leaders got new cell phones this weekend because the contract had run out on the others. So, the kids got the orphanage staff's old phones to use as music players only. We discovered that their old phones and our new phones have bluetooth so Carolina sent me a Spanish song to my phone that is now my ringtone. I'll probably miss my phone calls now forgetting what my ringtone is!
As I was headed up to our little Sunday worship service, I was stopped by one of the kids because a page had been torn out of a book that they kids were reading. Well that turned into a disaster. They started blaming each other and then 3-4 of them teamed up on Joanni and started calling her names, throwing rocks, balls, etc at her, pulling her hair ties out and just being plain ugly. So, I stayed down with her trying to protect her from the other little girls and ended up reading Little Red Riding Hood with her and another book. The second book was a shapes book and just had a bunch of pictures in it asking about the different shapes. We turned this into a game which was fun! As soon as she'd turn the page we'd find something and say "this is me" or "that is you", of course making ourselves the pretty dancers and the other person the worm or clown. We went thru the book 2-3 times playing this game which I'm glad I spent the time with her, removing her from the other little girls.
After lunch today, I sat around and talked with TJ and Susan, the parents of the Reilly family. They are both dentists from Georgia, who went to OSU and are from Ohio. They do a lot of traveling and so we were talking about this and just enjoying each other's company. After that I headed to my room to rest for a little while. My one hour nap turned into a 2.5 hour nap! Apparently I was more tired than I thought.
Several of the other volunteers went to the beach this afternoon, but since I napped I did not go. After waking from my slumber, I went and hung out with the kids for a while before dinner. I sat with Luis Alberto and pretended to steal his snack from him. We played this last night as I was sitting with him. He'd start to put the cracker in his mouth and I'd pull his hand away and "try" to eat it. They get snack early on Sundays because they eat dinner later after church!
Several of the other little kids and older kids were just hanging out waiting to head to church. Leonel was telling me about going to get Luis Alberto from his house to come to the orphanage and how he ran away and hid and they had to go back the next day to get him. I can't imagine how scary it would be to leave your Mom and/or Dad and head to a strange place at 5 years old! But I know they are better off here now, with food, shelter and someone to look after them!
While we were hanging out and they were enjoying their snacks, I decided to take pictures of the kids with my new cell phone. I got an adorable picture of Luz Maria with cracker crumbs all over her face which is now my background phone picture. I love it!
After dinner tonight I headed up to get ready for church. Church is always fun just sitting with the kids and working on my Spanish by trying to translate. Well tonight, the lady that was leading the singing part of church decided that us Americans needed to sing. She called Bryson up and asked for anyone else that knew how to sing to come up. The kids start yelling mine and Heather's names to go up and sing. I tried to warn them that I couldn't sing, but since Bryson was up there alone, Heather convinced me to go up with her to not leave him hanging. We went up and sang "This is the Day" in English. Luckily, they like to clap with every song here so it drowned out our singing, not to mention none of us were singing into the microphone! After we sang it in English, two of the boys came up and sang it in Spanish with us. I didn't know the words in Spanish so I just stood up there for that portion. Dad and DJ, you guys should be proud of me. I've joined the Dominican choir, well just as a guest singer for one day! :)
When we returned from dinner, the team from St. Margarets had just arrived. We greeted them and I helped wash the dishes after they ate dinner. I then headed up to my room because the mosquitos started feasting on my legs thru my scrub pants!
Off to bed to start another exciting "work" week!
Today I spent some time studying Spanish with the family as they reviewed for their test tomorrow. I still have a lot to learn!
I spent the rest of the morning hanging out with some of the kids. All the leaders got new cell phones this weekend because the contract had run out on the others. So, the kids got the orphanage staff's old phones to use as music players only. We discovered that their old phones and our new phones have bluetooth so Carolina sent me a Spanish song to my phone that is now my ringtone. I'll probably miss my phone calls now forgetting what my ringtone is!
As I was headed up to our little Sunday worship service, I was stopped by one of the kids because a page had been torn out of a book that they kids were reading. Well that turned into a disaster. They started blaming each other and then 3-4 of them teamed up on Joanni and started calling her names, throwing rocks, balls, etc at her, pulling her hair ties out and just being plain ugly. So, I stayed down with her trying to protect her from the other little girls and ended up reading Little Red Riding Hood with her and another book. The second book was a shapes book and just had a bunch of pictures in it asking about the different shapes. We turned this into a game which was fun! As soon as she'd turn the page we'd find something and say "this is me" or "that is you", of course making ourselves the pretty dancers and the other person the worm or clown. We went thru the book 2-3 times playing this game which I'm glad I spent the time with her, removing her from the other little girls.
After lunch today, I sat around and talked with TJ and Susan, the parents of the Reilly family. They are both dentists from Georgia, who went to OSU and are from Ohio. They do a lot of traveling and so we were talking about this and just enjoying each other's company. After that I headed to my room to rest for a little while. My one hour nap turned into a 2.5 hour nap! Apparently I was more tired than I thought.
Several of the other volunteers went to the beach this afternoon, but since I napped I did not go. After waking from my slumber, I went and hung out with the kids for a while before dinner. I sat with Luis Alberto and pretended to steal his snack from him. We played this last night as I was sitting with him. He'd start to put the cracker in his mouth and I'd pull his hand away and "try" to eat it. They get snack early on Sundays because they eat dinner later after church!
Several of the other little kids and older kids were just hanging out waiting to head to church. Leonel was telling me about going to get Luis Alberto from his house to come to the orphanage and how he ran away and hid and they had to go back the next day to get him. I can't imagine how scary it would be to leave your Mom and/or Dad and head to a strange place at 5 years old! But I know they are better off here now, with food, shelter and someone to look after them!
While we were hanging out and they were enjoying their snacks, I decided to take pictures of the kids with my new cell phone. I got an adorable picture of Luz Maria with cracker crumbs all over her face which is now my background phone picture. I love it!
After dinner tonight I headed up to get ready for church. Church is always fun just sitting with the kids and working on my Spanish by trying to translate. Well tonight, the lady that was leading the singing part of church decided that us Americans needed to sing. She called Bryson up and asked for anyone else that knew how to sing to come up. The kids start yelling mine and Heather's names to go up and sing. I tried to warn them that I couldn't sing, but since Bryson was up there alone, Heather convinced me to go up with her to not leave him hanging. We went up and sang "This is the Day" in English. Luckily, they like to clap with every song here so it drowned out our singing, not to mention none of us were singing into the microphone! After we sang it in English, two of the boys came up and sang it in Spanish with us. I didn't know the words in Spanish so I just stood up there for that portion. Dad and DJ, you guys should be proud of me. I've joined the Dominican choir, well just as a guest singer for one day! :)
When we returned from dinner, the team from St. Margarets had just arrived. We greeted them and I helped wash the dishes after they ate dinner. I then headed up to my room because the mosquitos started feasting on my legs thru my scrub pants!
Off to bed to start another exciting "work" week!
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