Relaxing Weekend!

So yesterday was a good day. I made a little "couch" out of my bed and propped myself up against the wall and the cabinet across from my bed and worked on finding free medications for physicians and others to bring down. Thanks to Dr. Smith for helping with this back home! I worked on inventory of what we had in the past and what things I thought we could use from what I saw this spring. It took a lot longer than I thought to research and compile all this information. I also worked on the layout of the units I want to be taught this spring. Each unit will be taught over 4 days so I had to figure out what topics I wanted taught and what things would be taught each day. This is what I've come up with for what will be taught:

Anatomy, Infectious Disease, Dental Stuff, Safety, General Health, Adult Medicine, Nutrition, Vaccinations, and Sexual Education

Scott Hagan was an intern last year that started the whole health curriculum and I based a lot of what I'm doing off of what he had done previously, so thanks Scott!

I've already finished the Nutrition Unit and now will start Monday with another one. I have I think 8 weeks left here and 8 units to do, so one a week! Remember, each one has 4 days of material so it will be a lot of work to get done but will be good because I may learn some in the process, especially about infectious diseases!

The group went to Dajabon in the morning to see the Haitian Market. They seemed to enjoy it, it is a very eye opening experience to say the least. Words nor pictures can describe the experience! For lunch we went to Comedor Adelea, a local restuarant and had a buffet lunch. It is always good and always way too much food.

The leaders headed back to the Institute to teach for the afternoon, the group headed with Sharon to the beach and Coco and I headed to do errands. We tried going to the Coke distributor to buy drinks for here but they were closed for siesta. So we returned to the orphanage and I worked some more on trying to find free medications for people to bring down. This lasted a couple of hours until the power went out and at that time Coco and I headed out into town again.

We went to the Coke distributor first where they just had a warehouse full of diet coke, coke, Fanta orange and grape and lots of other drinks. As we were checking out an interesting thing happened. He rang us up for 14 cases plus 2 extras that we were originally getting but then decided not to get. Coco explained to him we weren't taking those and so he scratched them off on the ticket and proceeded to say it would still be the same price. Explain to me how you take away two cases of soda and still remain at the same price?? Coco said no and had to start all over with him, he couldn't figure out how to subtract the price of the 2 from the total. It was quite interesting! And they came to the orphanage after dinner to collect about the equivalent of $5-6 dollars because he still had rung it up wrong!

After leaving there we went to 3 different hardware stores trying to find locks for the Institute. Apparently here in Monte Cristi there is only one hardware store that can copy keys but he can't copy all keys. So, we had to find locks with keys that could be copied and this was a task. The first two didn't have what we needed so we left those. Before heading to the third we went into a little store, kind of reminded me of a dollar store back home. They had all kinds of odds and ends that you could buy like bowls, cups, dolls, paper, clothes, etc. Coco bought some toilet bowl cleaners for the Institute. While she was checking out a little ~3 year old girl was hitting around a balloon and we starting hitting it back and forth to each other. She was cute!

We left there and went in search of something to drink. We went to a colmado across the street (remember these are little pop up stands within people's homes that sell snacks, drinks, etc.) and some guy was leaving with what looked like the leg of a pig. He held it up proudly for us to see. We walked in and it had just been measured on a scale, like what is in the produce dept at Kroger, and under it were juices from the meat that the owner was wiping up! Yuck! He only had cold Cokes but nothing else because the power had been out and everything got warm. Yes, it is hard to keep things well refrigerated here because power is so questionable! We left there and headed to a different one near the children's church.

We stopped at this other colmado and got some orange juice and chips. We then headed to the 3rd hardware store and they had locks that would work. He copied 6 keys for one of the them and we sat outside on a bench and enjoyed our juice and chips. The chips were tomato and olive oil flavored, they were pretty good, not much of a strong flavoring to them. As I parked at the hardware store, Coco told me we had to park half on the curb, half on the road because the road is so narrow! That was fun manuevering! As we were waiting on the bench, a truck was outside the store with a cow in it. A little boy kept looking in at the cow and throwing rocks at it. Coco seemed to think the owner had brought the cow there because the butcher shop was next door and perhaps he brought the cow for the butcher to check out and see if he wanted it.

After he cut the first set of keys for that lock, Coco asked for him to do the same with another lock that was the same kind. She tested all the keys and they fit perfectly from the first lock. However, after finishing the 2nd lock which was exactly the same, the keys were not cut well or the lock was not easy to turn for some reason. She told him she wasn't going to buy it unless he fixed them and he tried oiling the lock and shaving down the key some but it still was tough to turn to remove the key after opening the lock. She said she couldn't buy it because the keys would break, so he put the lock back in the container and stapled it together and put it back on the shelf! Great management huh!?

During this process one of his workers drove by and there was a large sound as he drove by. He had rebar on the back of his truck that was so long it hung off the back quite a bit. We are guessing this hit the ground and made the loud noise. Well the hardware store guy yelled at the driver of the truck because of the rebar hitting the ground. He had a Haitian guy sitting in the front seat with him and the store owner yelled at the driver for not having the Haitian in the back holding onto the rebar. He said, "You need the Haitian back there because if the rebar falls off and something happens, then it is the Haitian's fault and he will just get shipped back to Haiti but if he isn't back there and something happens then my store will get in trouble for the damage done". If that isn't pure racism, I'm not sure what is! The relationship between Dominicans and Haitians here is one of the ugliest things I've ever seen! I can't imagine what it was like in the US when whites and blacks were segregated!

This afternoon would have been a great time to have had my camera. We had several photo opportunities. The guy with the meat at the colmado, a dog eating out of a trashcan, an old woman whose jaw was flapping up and down like old people do while she was sweeping outside her home, two old ladies walking down the street with their umbrella, a pregnant Haitian woman walking with a tub of sandals balanced on her head for sell, and many more I'm probably forgetting!

We left there and headed back to the orphanage. After dinner I hung out with the kids some and then we had closing with the group at 8pm. After closing I came up to my room and just hung out before going to bed!

Today was an easy day. We went to the Institute after breakfast to clean for the family coming. The family that is on their way from Santiago as I type is a husband, wife, 15 and 16 year old sons and a 13 year old daughter. They are moving from CO here and plan to stay for 10 years! The kids are going to homeschool while here. They have all been here for some period of time and have loved it. I'm excited to meet them tomorrow at breakfast.

But anyway, we went and cleaned the rooms on the third floor where they will be living. The boys will share a room, the girl has her own room and the Mom and Dad have the biggest of rooms. Each room there is an old hotel room so it has a bed (bunk beds in the kids and a queen or kind sized bed in the parents), a dresser and a bathroom with shower. We had to dust all the dirt that had accumulated over the past several months. I'm sure it is already dirty again just because nothing truly gets clean here. But we made it at least presentable and put sheets on the beds, etc.

We came back, had lunch and the rest of the day was free. This afternoon I played Left, Right, Center with Christine, Vivian and some of the kids. They enjoyed this game, although here in the DR everyone is a cheater. Jochi would steal chips from the center pile while we weren't looking! It almost isn't fun to play games here sometimes because they always cheat so bad but it was fun today because it took us a while to figure out he was cheating. We played about 15 games, at one point with 9 people!

The rest of the day consisted of me just relaxing, hanging with the kids, eating dinner and as a treat we baked brownies tonight with chocolate icing! Not as good as yours Nancy but they were pretty tasty because we don't get much chocolate here. I brought a 6 lb bag of chocolate Halloween candy when I came and we finished that in 2 weeks if that tells you anything.

Tomorrow is just another day to relax, get to know the family and spend time with the kids. They get a little sad and bored when groups leave because they don't have constant interaction with people to give them attention! But we all have lots of free time tomorrow to spend with them!

Happy Birthday party to Alexa! She's almost 3! Wow!