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!