So I have been here one week, well almost, since I arrived at 2am I guess it hasn't quite been a full week :)
Today we went to the Institute like I said and cleaned. Everyone cleaned their classrooms, so that left me with bathroom duty! So exciting! It wasn't so bad cleaning but the smell in the boys bathroom was awful, like stale urine that had been sitting for years. And not to mention, there were millions of mosquitos in there. Well I put on my gloves and sucked it up and cleaned away! Got it "sparkling" clean or good enough for my standards. It smelled better once I was done but still unable to completely get rid of that smell. Also, the floors are so dirty with dust that you basically just mop the dust around and I'm pretty sure the floors never really got that clean but I tried, which is all that counts :)
After cleaning, Coco bought us frozen juice in a bag. They have water and juice in bags here that you drink out of and a little colmado across the street from the Institute freezes the juice bags so they are like popsicles. I had an orange flavored one and it was tasty, especially after sweating from cleaning! A colmado is a little store that a lot of people have set up inside their homes where they sell sodas, cookies, candies, etc. It is comparable to a gas station in the states I guess, a small convience store. They cost 5 pesos and right now the exchange rate is 36 pesos for 1 dollar so pretty cheap! We got ten of them, one for everyone, for a little over $1.
We went back for lunch and had french fries, grilled cheese and leftover lasagna. It was yummy!
Since I stayed up until 12:30am last night working on my blog, I took full advantage of the siesta today and slept from 1:45pm until 3:15pm! It was great! I was going to get up at 2pm and play with the kids for an hour but couldn't get out of bed! After my siesta, we cleaned the floor in our room.
Dominican cleaning is a little different than American. Here the floors are concrete so they way we cleaned the floors was by pouring water mixed with cleaner all over the floors and brushing the floors with brooms (kind of like the big push brooms, not like a regular broom you'd think of). We swept this water out our front door which pour down to the ground from a pipe outside our door. Then we throw clean water onto the floor for the rinse cycle. It was pretty fun actually cleaning this way, however, the floors get quite slippery!
After cleaning, I had my driver's test with Coco. We drove the big truck today. It is longer than Dad's Avalanche so just imagine me driving that plus another back end on the bumpy roads. It was interesting. I think I scared Coco because when I first got in the driver's side I was confused by the pedals and asked what the gas pedal was for. I felt pretty dumb but was also very nervous so kind of out of my element. The gears are tough to shift on the truck so that took a little bit trying to figure out how to shift from 2nd to 3rd to 4th. They rarely use 1st gear here. So I started out driving out by the ocean, headed towards the beach (the large mountain you can see in one of my pictures). We passed by a restuarant and Coco said the guy sitting outside could tell it was a new driver. I think I was going a little fast over a pretty bumpy part! Oops! Most of this road is well paved and has very little traffic. We drove out to El Moro (the beach) and had to trek up a steep hill. Coco had to coach me in how to shift to 2nd to go up the hill. I still don't quite understand the whole concept behind the different gears.
After mastering the empty paved road we headed to down that is heavily populated by motos, kids, animals and large dips in the road. I was nervous and probably drove slower than anyone has in Monte Cristi in a long time. We drove around to various landmarks that we often take volunteers to and I did pretty well. I didn't scrape the bottom of the truck on the road and only stalled the truck once! I got very nervous when cars would be behind me because I felt pressured. The way to tackle the dips in the road is to drive over to the left side of the road, cut the wheel and turn towards the right and then cut the wheel and turn left on the other side of the road, angling the truck so that it doesn't hit the dips. Kind of hard to explain but I'll take a picture some day of the dips to give you a visual of what I had to do!
Some of the main roads are split by a large median so you have to cross 1/2 way, stop then continue on. People drive on the wrong side often of the split roads so you have to look both ways even though they should only be coming one way. Also, motos often zip past you on both sides so you have to constantly be watching for them on your sides especially while you are driving left, right, right, left, etc while trying to not scrape the bottom. And along with all of this, the truck doesn't have power steering so you are trying to sharply turn a big long truck without taking something out! So we were gone about 2 hours practicing driving and although it was scary at times it was pretty fun too. The roads are quite bumpy and I'm sure I would have thrown people out if they were in the back so for right now I'll stick to driving only passengers in the front seat and no one in the back. When we came back to the orphanage, Winston, one of the kids opened the gate and was pointing at me and laughing. Apparently women only drive motos here so it is weird for Dominicans to see women driving trucks. I asked him later if I did well and he said Yes!
Tomorrow we are going in the minivan which rides a lot lower to the ground so we'll see how that goes, I'll probably be scraping the road a lot more and freak out. Although this is apparently a lot easier to steer because it has power steering and it isn't as long! We'll see!
After dinner tonight I went over and hung out with the kids for a little bit. The older kids left for church at 8pm and then we went inside their comedor (eating area) and they were watching Madagascar 2 again! Luis Alberto found me after I was over there for about 30 minutes and he laid in my lap the rest of the time. I got my hair brushed by Arianni, she had one small pony tail in the front, I'm sure it looked lovely! They are all so cute and lovable!
Sharon, a 2 year leader, Jennifer, a 3 month intern, and Gabrielle, a 3 week volunteer should be arriving in the next 30 minutes. The kids are all excited for Sharon to come back because she was here Jan-June and has been home since then. They were on the same flight as the one I came in on last week and were only delayed 25 minutes instead of 4 hours! Lucky for them!
Hasta manana! (Until tomorrow) Buenas noches! (Good night)
No comments:
Post a Comment