Early Morning Rise = Lazy Day!

We got up and left at 6am this morning to take sunrise pictures by the salt flats. The salt flats are on the way to the beach and are square areas where salt water is pumped in, the water evaporates and they harvest the salt to use here in Monte Cristi and some goes to Morton Salt to be refined and sold. I got some decent pictures but unfortunately my camera battery ran out before the sun rose. Oh well! I'll post my pictures, they are all scenery pictures which I'm usually not a huge fan of but some of them turned out okay.

http://picasaweb.google.com/Geedz913/EarlyMorningPics?feat=directlink

We came back, had breakfast, and then I read some about vaccinations given here in the DR. I flipped through the book we were given in Mao yesterday to learn about the vaccine schedule here. I then took a nap and just rested the rest of the morning. I was still exhausted from traveling all day yesterday and getting up so early this morning.

After lunch, I made myself be productive. I went and hung out with Luz Maria and Yanina for a little bit after lunch until it was time to work.

I worked on taking pictures of all of the dental tools, again, because I rearranged them and sorted them all out. This took about 1.5 hours to take pictures of everything we have! Now I have to go through and look at the lists Nancy has sent me and the ones I'm going to receive from another lady and see if I can figure out what everything is. If not, then I'll be sending the new pictures back out Nancy! :) Bet you can't wait!

After that I worked some on the vaccine unit to type up what I read about this morning.

I promised Luz Maria earlier in the day that I would play chase with her so I went and found her after working for about 3 hours and played chase. We ended up with about 5-6 little girls wanting to be chased. At one point, I was reaching to tag a little one and tripped and fell down, falling onto her legs with my arms. She started crying and I picked her up to make sure she was okay. My hands were pressing hard on her legs as I was falling! One of the other girls tried to make her stand up and she wouldn't put weight on her right leg, the one I kind of landed on, so I was afraid I had really hurt her. At that time, Luz Maria told her to start laughing, and she went from apparently fake crying to laughing. I was so happy because I really thought I could have hurt her badly!

We continued playing chase until it was time for them to eat. They scarfed down their food so they could come back and play and we continued for about 5 minutes. I got too tired and then had to go to dinner, thank goodness! However, before I left, Nena who is about 7 years old, and reminds me of Sydney :), was saying that she wasn't going to play with me because my pants were "Haitian". By this she meant that my pants were dark like Haitians because my pants were black. This gives you an idea of the negative mindset instilled even at a young age, and the irony of it all is that she, her 3 sisters and her brother are all at least 1/2 Haitian if not full blooded Haitians. They are all darker than most of the kids here, so for her to be saying it was very ironic but also so sad. I told her that I liked Haitian people and she called me a liar. Not sure if this will ever change in this country, but maybe one day they'll learn to just respect a person as a person, and forget about the color of their skin or where they are from!

After dinner I went back over and hung out with Jessica and Jenny again. She wanted me to tickle her again like last night so we played that for a while. Not too exciting of a day but a fun one with the kids, and a mildly productive one this afternoon.