Friday was field trip day with 10 of the orphanage kids (mainly the high schoolers). We headed out bright and early at 7am and loaded the bus to head about 2.5 hours away close to Santiago and to the center of the DR. I sat with Yessica, a 13 year old girl, that is probably one of the only kids actually in her correct grade based on her age, and a 4th year student at the English Institute.
We stopped in Santiago for a bathroom break and Coco bought some candy for us, some sugar cane candy like those peppermint sticks that you buy at Cracker Barrel that melt in your mouth! As we stopped, we noticed that one of the back tired looked flat so our next stop was the Gomeria (tire shop). We pulled up on the side of the road like we were parallel parking and got our tire changed with 26 people on the bus! Peguero, our driver, actually was cranking the tire himself...wonder if he got a cut of the pay :) They took the tire off and started to fill it with air, and then we heard BOOM and the inside of the tire had popped so time for a new tire!
We headed out and went to a park to sit and eat our snacks that Coco had prepared for us. Each person got a PB sandwich on a sweet roll, box of raisins, an apple, lime cookies, and cheese crackers! Apples here are expensive (23 pesos a piece...36 pesos = 1 USD) so the kids only get them at Christmas. Well they are out in the markets now being sold because it is close to Christmas so we got to enjoy them! Tasty!
After leaving the park we walked to a church that had stained glass windows that came from Italy. They were very pretty and the church was large! We walked through the church and then headed back to the bus to travel to our next stop.
The next stop was the Mirabel Sister's museum. The Mirabel sisters are well known in the Dominican Republic because of their fight to get Trujillo, the Dominican dictator, out of power. Minerva was the leader of the sisters and she went to law school but was unable to practice law because she did not give in to Trujillo's romantic leads. The sisters were known, in a movement against Trujillo, as the butterflies (las mariposas). They fought in this movement despite being put in jail, tortured, the incarceration of their husbands, etc. Finally Trujillo decided to get rid of them and had their car stopped on the highway after visiting their husbands in jail, and he had men take them into a sugarcane field and kill them along with their driver. People began to follow their cause and take notice after their murders, and six months later Trujillo was assisinated. Dede, one of the four sisters, still lives and was at the museum that we went to. The museum is the house where the sisters lived for the last 10 months of their lives with their Mom. We toured the house, spoke with Dede, and saw the mosulieum where the sisters and one of their husbands are now buried. If you are interested, there is a movie about these sisters called "In the Time of the Butterflies" with modern actors, etc and it tells the story well!
After the museum, we headed to lunch. We went to a place called La Sirvena. I can't begin to explain how big this place was. It was like 2-3 Sam's Clubs in one building but stuff was sold like at Krogers, not in bulk. They had a dry cleaners, a pharmacy, a Jet Blue Airlines booth, food, clothes, deli, furniture, EVERYTHING! They had a food court as well, which is where we ate. We had Domino's Pizza because it was the only choice but it was tasty.
We drove by Los Gigantes baseball stadium, one of the six national teams here in the DR. We couldn't go inside but we got to see it from outside pretty good. We then bought 6 large stalks of sugar cane on the side of the road for the other kids that weren't able to come. These stalks were as tall as me!
We stopped at park that had a gazebo in the middle with a painted ceiling. It was interesting and we took a group picture while we were there!
When then headed to the sister city of Altanta, GA where they had a park with a huge playground. We played around here for a little while before heading to Santiago.
In Santiago, there is a large National Monument and we stopped there to look at it. It sits high up on a hill that overlooks the city which was neat to see because it was dark when we stopped so you could see all the city lights around this monument. They had horse drawn carriages for rides which was an interesting view in the DR.
We made it home about 10:45pm and I headed straight to bed!
Today I'm in the airport. Christine left about an hour ago to head home for a month, she has been here since Jan 3rd and hasn't been home yet! She'll be back Dec. 5th. I'm waiting to pick up a physical therapist and a PA that are coming to do a site visit for the next 3 days before their group comes down in March to do health outreach. Luckily there is free internet here so I'm able to blog, upload pics, and keep myself occupied! That's all for now! Below are my pictures from the field trip!
http://picasaweb.google.com/Geedz913/FieldTripWithOlderKids?feat=directlink
Saturday, November 7, 2009
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Cada Dia, Para Ti Yo Vivo
So this morning as you guys saw, I had an excellent view while working out! It was spectacular to see in person and it seemed to fade some as soon as I went to get my camera! This morning after breakfast I met with Coco and Bryson to discuss our plans for the visitors we have coming this weekend.
A Doctor of Physical Therapy and a PA who has her PhD and teaching at St. Francis University in PA, are coming to do a site visit on Saturday. We found out earlier in the week that tomorrow is Constitution Day here so everything is shut down on Monday for the holiday. So, kind of bad timing for them to visit because everything will be closed but we have worked out some times for them to visit the Rehab Center and the hospital is open because of the ER.
After meeting with Coco, Arianni and her brother Luis Alberto came over to the mesita where we were sitting and starting talking and playing with us. I hung out with them for a bit and then headed up to my room to shower for the day!
The rest of the morning I played around online, talked to my Mom, and headed to do dental inventory! Nancy, THANK YOU!, labeled all the pictures I took of the tools we had and I went and counted what we had. This took longer than I thought. I had hoped to be done at lunch but wasn't even half way done.
At lunch, Coco bought some sugar cookies for us from the bakery so we got to enjoy those. Yummy! I then headed back up to do some more dental inventory. Still didn't finish before I had to leave to head into town.
I went to speak to the director of the Rehab Center to work out a time to meet with her to open the center to tour with the visitors. She wasn't there at first so I went with Coco to Lilo's the little market place and helped her pick up stuff for goodie bags she made for us tomorrow.
When I got back I played with Ari a little bit. Two of the little girls had a puzzle with food on it, so we would go to the "colmado" (little place to by food) and buy drinks, apples, etc. and "eat" the puzzle pieces. I couldn't play for too long because I wanted to finish dental inventory today! I headed back up and finished before Spanish class started.
Before dinner I hung out with the kids. I just sat on one of the benches with Luz Maria and talked with some of the teenage girls. Then we went to the mesita and read with some of the kids. They really enjoy reading which is good!
After dinner, I went back out and hung out with the kids again. They were a little crazy tonight. Jennifer fell asleep in my lap which was sweet. Freddie was sitting next to Christine and copying everything she said in English. He kept saying "I'm a girl". It was hilarious and his English was pretty good although I'm sure he didn't know a lot of what he was saying. He does know girl though! I went inside and sat with Lisy and tickled her for a while. Heather was singing with Arianni, one of the 3/4 year olds and it was adorable. She was standing on the top of the table, just signing at the top of her lungs a song called Cada Dia! It was so precious and I wish I had my camera so I could have gotten a video. She sang this and another song and was dancing along on the table!
Tomorrow we eat breakfast at 6:30 and leave at 7:00am to head to the center of the DR and tour and hang out. Should be fun and I'm excited to get to spend time outside of the orphanage with 10 of the kids! Get ready for a lot (hopefully) of pictures from tomorrow!
A Doctor of Physical Therapy and a PA who has her PhD and teaching at St. Francis University in PA, are coming to do a site visit on Saturday. We found out earlier in the week that tomorrow is Constitution Day here so everything is shut down on Monday for the holiday. So, kind of bad timing for them to visit because everything will be closed but we have worked out some times for them to visit the Rehab Center and the hospital is open because of the ER.
After meeting with Coco, Arianni and her brother Luis Alberto came over to the mesita where we were sitting and starting talking and playing with us. I hung out with them for a bit and then headed up to my room to shower for the day!
The rest of the morning I played around online, talked to my Mom, and headed to do dental inventory! Nancy, THANK YOU!, labeled all the pictures I took of the tools we had and I went and counted what we had. This took longer than I thought. I had hoped to be done at lunch but wasn't even half way done.
At lunch, Coco bought some sugar cookies for us from the bakery so we got to enjoy those. Yummy! I then headed back up to do some more dental inventory. Still didn't finish before I had to leave to head into town.
I went to speak to the director of the Rehab Center to work out a time to meet with her to open the center to tour with the visitors. She wasn't there at first so I went with Coco to Lilo's the little market place and helped her pick up stuff for goodie bags she made for us tomorrow.
When I got back I played with Ari a little bit. Two of the little girls had a puzzle with food on it, so we would go to the "colmado" (little place to by food) and buy drinks, apples, etc. and "eat" the puzzle pieces. I couldn't play for too long because I wanted to finish dental inventory today! I headed back up and finished before Spanish class started.
Before dinner I hung out with the kids. I just sat on one of the benches with Luz Maria and talked with some of the teenage girls. Then we went to the mesita and read with some of the kids. They really enjoy reading which is good!
After dinner, I went back out and hung out with the kids again. They were a little crazy tonight. Jennifer fell asleep in my lap which was sweet. Freddie was sitting next to Christine and copying everything she said in English. He kept saying "I'm a girl". It was hilarious and his English was pretty good although I'm sure he didn't know a lot of what he was saying. He does know girl though! I went inside and sat with Lisy and tickled her for a while. Heather was singing with Arianni, one of the 3/4 year olds and it was adorable. She was standing on the top of the table, just signing at the top of her lungs a song called Cada Dia! It was so precious and I wish I had my camera so I could have gotten a video. She sang this and another song and was dancing along on the table!
Tomorrow we eat breakfast at 6:30 and leave at 7:00am to head to the center of the DR and tour and hang out. Should be fun and I'm excited to get to spend time outside of the orphanage with 10 of the kids! Get ready for a lot (hopefully) of pictures from tomorrow!
Buenos Dias!
I couldn't resist posting this on the blog itself! While I was working out this morning on the roof, this was the maginficent view that I had. The colors were so much more vibrant than the picture captured but you still get an idea of what a great start to the day I had! :)
Here is the link from the few pictures I took yesterday. http://picasaweb.google.com/Geedz913/BateyIsabel?feat=directlink
Here is the link to my Videos. http://picasaweb.google.com/Geedz913/MyVideos?feat=directlink
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Take Two...
This morning's workout was a lot of fun. We ran about 35 minutes and did several activities randomly in between running like I had mentioned yesterday. It was difficult but a great workout! We got a few funny looks because we were stopping to do jumping jacks, or lunge, or side step but we got some waves too :)
This morning I tried to work on the Infectious Disease unit but the internet was down most of the morning so I didn't get a lot of work done. I actually napped because I was worn out from going to be late last night and getting up early this morning.
The Hopkins Family as I have mentioned is learning Spanish so today for lunch we had a "Spanish" only lunch. We weren't allowed to speak English. It is good to do this but a lot more difficult also. Most of the Hopkins kids were silent during lunch but we tried to talk with them to get them to speak in Spanish.
During siesta I went out and played with the kids for a little while before I had to leave. I just sat out there with some of the younger girls and held them :)
This afternoon I went back to Batey Isabel and it was very interesting. One woman came in with a large 2nd degree burn on her boob basically (chest wall if you want to say). She spilled coffee from the coffee maker onto her chest yesterday and had a burn that was probably about 1 in X 4 inches. It was large! I have a picture that I'll post tomorrow. She wasn't modest at all about letting me take a picture!
After this, we had to give a girl who was probably about 8-10 years old a shot of penicillin in her behind. From what I understand from her Mom, she's had problems with her throat since she was born and now she has kidney problems. I am assuming she has had strep throat a lot and because of that has developed kidney problems which is common if it isn't treated. So, now she has to receive a shot of PCN every month for 6 months and they want to remove her tonsils. She opened her mouth for me to see and her tonsils were enlarged but didn't look red or anything to me, so perhaps these are just prophylactic shots?
The next interesting patient was an elderly man that smokes and his blood pressure was 210/120. The automatic machine would not record it so we had to take it manually. I had the nurse double check me because it was so high! He was acting fine and didn't seem to be bothered by his extremely high blood pressure but apparently he had run out of his medications. I told him he needed to stop smoking and he was just laughing at me for lecturing him. There aren't a lot of people that I see smoking here, I've probably seen about 10 people smoking in my 6 weeks here but I'm sure there are more smokers than I'm aware of.
We saw an elderly man who was brought over on a moto from his house who was having a very difficult time breathing. He said he has had a lot of chest congestion for the past week or so and is having a hard time walking and breathing. Dr. Garcia listened to his lungs, this was the first time I've seen him use a stethescope since I've been here! He gave him 3 different meds to start but I hope he gets better because he looked like he needed to be in the hospital to help him catch his breath!
The last patient we went to see was an 85 year old woman. We went inside her house because she has a difficult time walking. She was complaining of hip pain, leg pain, and a tremor in her left hand. She had a noticeable tremor in her hand, I assume Parkinson's of some degree. She looked pretty good though for her age. She was talking about how her vision is sometimes good and other times very blurry, and just asking how her BP was, etc. She was very precious and thanked us for coming when we left.
When I returned to the orphanage, they asked me to take out Franchesca's two stitches on her forehead. This story earned the title of the blog tonight. Take two...removing stitches from a screaming child, like before. This time I thought it would be easier because they were on her forehead but it was still hard. She was screaming as Pastor Ramon was holding her head and Carolina was holding her legs. She kept jerking her head side to side and the scissors I had were not at all sharp. After several minutes, I got the two stitches out and then held her in my arms for a little while as she calmed down. Jazmin, an 8 year old girl, brought out a little computer like thing for her to play with but it only lit up and didn't play music like it was supposed to. She played with this for a while and Luis Alberto and Luz Maria came and sat in my lap some as well.
Tonight for dinner Coco cooked Linguini Alfredo and pasto with a pesto sauce. They were both very tasty and a nice little change from the norm.
Wednesday nights the kids have culto so I went out and hung out on the wall waiting for culto to start. Luis Alberto came and laid in my lap and we sat there until culto began. Odalis played his drum set that he made earlier in the week, the one I took some pictures of.
After culto, I promised Mancho that he could play one of the games on my cell phone. They were playing yesterday but the time ran out and he didn't get to play. He played, followed by Ariel, then Carmelo until it was separation time from the kids. They all love playing these games on my phone, not sure I'll ever get away with not letting them play now! AHH!
I'm calling it a night early tonight. I'm exhausted from staying up too late last night! One more day of work and then off to our field trip on Friday with 10 of the orphanage kids!
This morning I tried to work on the Infectious Disease unit but the internet was down most of the morning so I didn't get a lot of work done. I actually napped because I was worn out from going to be late last night and getting up early this morning.
The Hopkins Family as I have mentioned is learning Spanish so today for lunch we had a "Spanish" only lunch. We weren't allowed to speak English. It is good to do this but a lot more difficult also. Most of the Hopkins kids were silent during lunch but we tried to talk with them to get them to speak in Spanish.
During siesta I went out and played with the kids for a little while before I had to leave. I just sat out there with some of the younger girls and held them :)
This afternoon I went back to Batey Isabel and it was very interesting. One woman came in with a large 2nd degree burn on her boob basically (chest wall if you want to say). She spilled coffee from the coffee maker onto her chest yesterday and had a burn that was probably about 1 in X 4 inches. It was large! I have a picture that I'll post tomorrow. She wasn't modest at all about letting me take a picture!
After this, we had to give a girl who was probably about 8-10 years old a shot of penicillin in her behind. From what I understand from her Mom, she's had problems with her throat since she was born and now she has kidney problems. I am assuming she has had strep throat a lot and because of that has developed kidney problems which is common if it isn't treated. So, now she has to receive a shot of PCN every month for 6 months and they want to remove her tonsils. She opened her mouth for me to see and her tonsils were enlarged but didn't look red or anything to me, so perhaps these are just prophylactic shots?
The next interesting patient was an elderly man that smokes and his blood pressure was 210/120. The automatic machine would not record it so we had to take it manually. I had the nurse double check me because it was so high! He was acting fine and didn't seem to be bothered by his extremely high blood pressure but apparently he had run out of his medications. I told him he needed to stop smoking and he was just laughing at me for lecturing him. There aren't a lot of people that I see smoking here, I've probably seen about 10 people smoking in my 6 weeks here but I'm sure there are more smokers than I'm aware of.
We saw an elderly man who was brought over on a moto from his house who was having a very difficult time breathing. He said he has had a lot of chest congestion for the past week or so and is having a hard time walking and breathing. Dr. Garcia listened to his lungs, this was the first time I've seen him use a stethescope since I've been here! He gave him 3 different meds to start but I hope he gets better because he looked like he needed to be in the hospital to help him catch his breath!
The last patient we went to see was an 85 year old woman. We went inside her house because she has a difficult time walking. She was complaining of hip pain, leg pain, and a tremor in her left hand. She had a noticeable tremor in her hand, I assume Parkinson's of some degree. She looked pretty good though for her age. She was talking about how her vision is sometimes good and other times very blurry, and just asking how her BP was, etc. She was very precious and thanked us for coming when we left.
When I returned to the orphanage, they asked me to take out Franchesca's two stitches on her forehead. This story earned the title of the blog tonight. Take two...removing stitches from a screaming child, like before. This time I thought it would be easier because they were on her forehead but it was still hard. She was screaming as Pastor Ramon was holding her head and Carolina was holding her legs. She kept jerking her head side to side and the scissors I had were not at all sharp. After several minutes, I got the two stitches out and then held her in my arms for a little while as she calmed down. Jazmin, an 8 year old girl, brought out a little computer like thing for her to play with but it only lit up and didn't play music like it was supposed to. She played with this for a while and Luis Alberto and Luz Maria came and sat in my lap some as well.
Tonight for dinner Coco cooked Linguini Alfredo and pasto with a pesto sauce. They were both very tasty and a nice little change from the norm.
Wednesday nights the kids have culto so I went out and hung out on the wall waiting for culto to start. Luis Alberto came and laid in my lap and we sat there until culto began. Odalis played his drum set that he made earlier in the week, the one I took some pictures of.
After culto, I promised Mancho that he could play one of the games on my cell phone. They were playing yesterday but the time ran out and he didn't get to play. He played, followed by Ariel, then Carmelo until it was separation time from the kids. They all love playing these games on my phone, not sure I'll ever get away with not letting them play now! AHH!
I'm calling it a night early tonight. I'm exhausted from staying up too late last night! One more day of work and then off to our field trip on Friday with 10 of the orphanage kids!
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Tickle Me Elmo!
Thanks Mom for the title. She suggested this a couple of weeks ago so time to use it!
Today I went to Spanish class that Bryson is teaching to the family to learn about direct object pronouns. Sounds interesting huh? It is fun relearning some of the details of Spanish that I have forgotten. After class, I worked on the Infectious Disease Unit. The start of 4 out of 9 units. Woohoo! I actually found a pretty cool online resource that Scott had saved previously called Migrant Health Promotion and it is a program that offers basic health training to migrant workers to teach them about the basics of hygiene, safety, etc. and has a lot of great information!
This afternoon I hung out with the kids for a little bit. I was hanging out with several of the younger children, getting my hair brushed and then got my hair braided by one of the older girls, Nicol. She had to wet my hair as she braided it but instead of just sprinkling water on my head, she was pouring water from Sam's sized plastic jelly container. She would spill some which would clearly go down and get my shirt wet. Eventually my shirt was quite damp and at one point I said "why don't you just use my shirt to wet my hair". Well, bad idea! She then poured the rest of the container on my head, soaking the entire upper 1/2 of my t-shirt. She assured me it was okay because it is hot here so it cooled me off! ;) It was all in good fun and free braids so I can't complain!
I worked a couple more hours on adding some information I received to a different unit until time for Spanish class again this afternoon. Class is taught from 9-10 and 4-5 but from 10-4 the family is expected to study, do homework, do online listening activities, etc. They have a lot of Spanish to learn in very little time. I don't envy them because they are studying so hard!
After class I hung out with the kiddos before dinner. I was tickling Lisy who is about 4 or 5 and she got excited and wanted me to stop so she bit me on the arm. Apparently I'm a tasty treat here! I put her down immediately and told her to sit on the wall for 1 minute. Miraculously she sat there until I said it was time to get up (maybe not a full minute ;)) and I said, what do you say and she said Sorry! Supernanny at work right here! I was impressed though because she can be mean and not care many times!
Luz Maria was playing with a Clorox bleach box and laying in it, putting it on her head, etc. Eventually it was flat on the ground and I went over and rolled her up in it like a hotdog in a bun. I walked around offering "salchicha" to others and they were eating part of the Luz Maria hotdog. Nena and Arianni wanted to be hotdogs too so we rolled them up and ate them. So much fun with so little resources!
Edison was "riding" a bike from that consisted of the handle bars, the cross bar that connected the handle bars to the seat, and maybe the frame where the tire would fit into but without a front tire or any back parts to the bike. The seat was a 5 gallon water jug, like the Highbridge spring water gallon buckets. Obviously they didn't go too far but these kids are crazy creative, and they destroy things at the same time! :)
After dinner I spent some more time with the kids, tickling Joanni, Arianni, and Lisy again. Joanni and I went and sat on one of the benches and sang a sing and repeat song in English that they learned this past summer. "There was a great big Moose", Repeat back, "Who liked to drink a lot of juice", Repeat back, "Say Weh O Weh O Weh O", etc. It was fun because she was actually singing it to me and I was repeating back to her. Although they probably don't fully understand what they are signing because it is all in English, they still all love this song.
We had a conference call with Tom and Bryan, the director and associate director, of OO who lives in Arizona and Michigan, respectively. We all discussed what we are working on from them recruiting volunteers to us working down here. They already have around 400 health people signed up for this spring so looks like I'll be busy!
Tomorrow I've designed a fun workout run that I'm excited about. We are going to do a run that is about 30 minutes there and back but in the middle of the run we are going to switch it up by stopping to do jumping jacks, squats, walking lunges, side steps, pushups, and standing abs so I'm excited to try it out and see how it goes! Better get to bed!
Today I went to Spanish class that Bryson is teaching to the family to learn about direct object pronouns. Sounds interesting huh? It is fun relearning some of the details of Spanish that I have forgotten. After class, I worked on the Infectious Disease Unit. The start of 4 out of 9 units. Woohoo! I actually found a pretty cool online resource that Scott had saved previously called Migrant Health Promotion and it is a program that offers basic health training to migrant workers to teach them about the basics of hygiene, safety, etc. and has a lot of great information!
This afternoon I hung out with the kids for a little bit. I was hanging out with several of the younger children, getting my hair brushed and then got my hair braided by one of the older girls, Nicol. She had to wet my hair as she braided it but instead of just sprinkling water on my head, she was pouring water from Sam's sized plastic jelly container. She would spill some which would clearly go down and get my shirt wet. Eventually my shirt was quite damp and at one point I said "why don't you just use my shirt to wet my hair". Well, bad idea! She then poured the rest of the container on my head, soaking the entire upper 1/2 of my t-shirt. She assured me it was okay because it is hot here so it cooled me off! ;) It was all in good fun and free braids so I can't complain!
I worked a couple more hours on adding some information I received to a different unit until time for Spanish class again this afternoon. Class is taught from 9-10 and 4-5 but from 10-4 the family is expected to study, do homework, do online listening activities, etc. They have a lot of Spanish to learn in very little time. I don't envy them because they are studying so hard!
After class I hung out with the kiddos before dinner. I was tickling Lisy who is about 4 or 5 and she got excited and wanted me to stop so she bit me on the arm. Apparently I'm a tasty treat here! I put her down immediately and told her to sit on the wall for 1 minute. Miraculously she sat there until I said it was time to get up (maybe not a full minute ;)) and I said, what do you say and she said Sorry! Supernanny at work right here! I was impressed though because she can be mean and not care many times!
Luz Maria was playing with a Clorox bleach box and laying in it, putting it on her head, etc. Eventually it was flat on the ground and I went over and rolled her up in it like a hotdog in a bun. I walked around offering "salchicha" to others and they were eating part of the Luz Maria hotdog. Nena and Arianni wanted to be hotdogs too so we rolled them up and ate them. So much fun with so little resources!
Edison was "riding" a bike from that consisted of the handle bars, the cross bar that connected the handle bars to the seat, and maybe the frame where the tire would fit into but without a front tire or any back parts to the bike. The seat was a 5 gallon water jug, like the Highbridge spring water gallon buckets. Obviously they didn't go too far but these kids are crazy creative, and they destroy things at the same time! :)
After dinner I spent some more time with the kids, tickling Joanni, Arianni, and Lisy again. Joanni and I went and sat on one of the benches and sang a sing and repeat song in English that they learned this past summer. "There was a great big Moose", Repeat back, "Who liked to drink a lot of juice", Repeat back, "Say Weh O Weh O Weh O", etc. It was fun because she was actually singing it to me and I was repeating back to her. Although they probably don't fully understand what they are signing because it is all in English, they still all love this song.
We had a conference call with Tom and Bryan, the director and associate director, of OO who lives in Arizona and Michigan, respectively. We all discussed what we are working on from them recruiting volunteers to us working down here. They already have around 400 health people signed up for this spring so looks like I'll be busy!
Tomorrow I've designed a fun workout run that I'm excited about. We are going to do a run that is about 30 minutes there and back but in the middle of the run we are going to switch it up by stopping to do jumping jacks, squats, walking lunges, side steps, pushups, and standing abs so I'm excited to try it out and see how it goes! Better get to bed!
Monday, November 2, 2009
If It's Yellow, Let it Mellow!
http://picasaweb.google.com/Geedz913/OrphanageKids2?feat=directlink
Be grateful that you get to flush the toilet everytime after you go! This was not the intended theme of the blog but here our rule is "If It's Yellow, Let It Mellow, If It's Brown, Flush It Down". Let's just say, that I just went pee and although there was only pee in our toilet collected over the day, it was brown and got flushed. Wow, how quickly pee can add up and stink which is what I'm experiencing currently in my room! STINKY!
Anyway, aside from the nastiness above today was a good day. I rode into town with Coco to drop off the people who teach at the English Institute. Currently, they are doing a bunch of road construction because they are trying to prove that public works is doing something for its town. However, they are just destroying the roads and making it impossible to get around. Instead of turning left like we normally do, we had to turn right and got trapped. We continued down another road, and eventually had to reverse down two blocks, me in the back directing her. Eventually we made it to a main road but the opposite direction of where we needed to go. It was insane! Every road we tried to turn down was being torn up like 2 blocks down from where we were.
After finally escaping the maze (our version of a corn maze for the fall I suppose), Coco and I went to try to talk to the public health dentist to ask for help in seeing if our hand pieces work. We are still finishing up dental inventory and need to know what hand pieces work that we have here but we all have no clue. So, anyway we went to see her but she was in a meeting until 12 so we didn't get to speak with her. Then we went and delivered donations to the hospital of several items that were donated in the spring that we couldn't use here in our clinics.
I came back and read some of my book because I was unmotivated to work on the curriculum since I had lost about an hour or so of the morning. I went to pick up the Institute people to get out again and had a Skim Ice! Yummy! Always enjoyable and refreshing!
This afternoon I hung out with Joanni and Arianni, tickling them as usual. I love Arianni's version of my name, she still says Elizamen, even though everyone else says it correctly!
I headed out with Dr. Garcia to Batey Madre and took BPs with the automatic machine. There were very few patients so I didn't give any vaccines today. We got back about 4pm and I sat in on the Spanish class that Bryson is teaching the Hopkins family. Then I hung out with the kids taking several pictures since I had my camera on me. Odalis made an awesome drum set that I have pictures of and a couple of videos of also! Check it out!
After dinner tonight we had movie night with the kids. We watched Shark Tale, which they have been requesting for a while. Jennifer sat in my lap most of the movie. I love snuggling with the little kids during movie night! :) Tomorrow will be a work day, gotta bust out another unit this week and Friday we are going on a field trip all day about 2 hours away exploring some of the country!
Be grateful that you get to flush the toilet everytime after you go! This was not the intended theme of the blog but here our rule is "If It's Yellow, Let It Mellow, If It's Brown, Flush It Down". Let's just say, that I just went pee and although there was only pee in our toilet collected over the day, it was brown and got flushed. Wow, how quickly pee can add up and stink which is what I'm experiencing currently in my room! STINKY!
Anyway, aside from the nastiness above today was a good day. I rode into town with Coco to drop off the people who teach at the English Institute. Currently, they are doing a bunch of road construction because they are trying to prove that public works is doing something for its town. However, they are just destroying the roads and making it impossible to get around. Instead of turning left like we normally do, we had to turn right and got trapped. We continued down another road, and eventually had to reverse down two blocks, me in the back directing her. Eventually we made it to a main road but the opposite direction of where we needed to go. It was insane! Every road we tried to turn down was being torn up like 2 blocks down from where we were.
After finally escaping the maze (our version of a corn maze for the fall I suppose), Coco and I went to try to talk to the public health dentist to ask for help in seeing if our hand pieces work. We are still finishing up dental inventory and need to know what hand pieces work that we have here but we all have no clue. So, anyway we went to see her but she was in a meeting until 12 so we didn't get to speak with her. Then we went and delivered donations to the hospital of several items that were donated in the spring that we couldn't use here in our clinics.
I came back and read some of my book because I was unmotivated to work on the curriculum since I had lost about an hour or so of the morning. I went to pick up the Institute people to get out again and had a Skim Ice! Yummy! Always enjoyable and refreshing!
This afternoon I hung out with Joanni and Arianni, tickling them as usual. I love Arianni's version of my name, she still says Elizamen, even though everyone else says it correctly!
I headed out with Dr. Garcia to Batey Madre and took BPs with the automatic machine. There were very few patients so I didn't give any vaccines today. We got back about 4pm and I sat in on the Spanish class that Bryson is teaching the Hopkins family. Then I hung out with the kids taking several pictures since I had my camera on me. Odalis made an awesome drum set that I have pictures of and a couple of videos of also! Check it out!
After dinner tonight we had movie night with the kids. We watched Shark Tale, which they have been requesting for a while. Jennifer sat in my lap most of the movie. I love snuggling with the little kids during movie night! :) Tomorrow will be a work day, gotta bust out another unit this week and Friday we are going on a field trip all day about 2 hours away exploring some of the country!
Sunday, November 1, 2009
Happy Halloween! (a day late)
http://picasaweb.google.com/Geedz913/WeekendFun?feat=directlink
So I forgot to add on the previous blog that the night we were playing on the basketball court with the kids, they found a crab behind the court. It was about the size of large hamburger bun. Then about 3 minutes later a huge toad goes hopping across the basketball court. What fun creatures we find here! :)
Yesterday was a fun day. We cleaned the room a little in the morning and I took on the job of cleaning out our shower faucet. I put on gloves and unscrewed the drain top. I then went to work removing the hair and pulled out about a baseball sized wad of hair, dirt, sand. It was disgusting but our drain works well now ;)
Before we headed out for the afternoon I hung out with the kids for a little bit. The kids here have a little store that is stocked with toys from donations and they are allowed to buy things with points that they earn for being good, doing their chores, etc. All the kids had their new gadgets and some had new jump ropes. Two of the little girls, Franchesca about 4, and Ari, age 3 were jumping rope with me and Nicol holding the ends and twirling it for them. It was hilarious to watch but they were pretty good for their age!
We headed to Jaibon, the other orphanage for the afternoon. First, we stopped a roadside goat restaurant and had some good food. I ordered baked goat, and although it sounds gross, it was pretty good. It tasted like pot roast to me. The only weird thing was all the bones in it. Little ribs, and Luke who was sitting next to me, had this huge bone sticking out of his, probably some leg bone or something. That was a little disturbing! We had a bunch of good sides, some rice dish that tasted like jumbalya, fresh avocados, plantains, and white rice! It was yummy!
We got to the orphanage about 2pm and hung out with the boys. This orphanage is totally different than the one here. It is tucked back on a road, down a long driveway and has a church, school, and a boys and girls orphanage on the property, as well as tons of areas where pigs, birds, and chickens live. The girls orphanage area is not used currently, only boys live there for now. There are about 24 boys living at the orphanage and they are so sweet and well behaved. Tia, a lady that has lived there for many years, is strict and keeps the boys in line. They all have chores and are so respectful. We played several games with them, and had a reading time with them as well. It was a great 3 hours, that passed by so fast but very nice and a different environment from the kids here!
We headed back to the orphanage, had dinner, and then Christine and I watched Hairspray until our other roommate Heather arrived from the airport. She went home for 2.5 weeks and came back last night. It is great to have her back!
Today was a packed day starting with a little worship service, then some time with the kids. I got drilled in the knee with a hard plastic top of some sort by accident but it broke skin! One of the older girls was throwing it at another girl and I somehow ended up being the victim! :)
We left after lunch and went to a new beach near El Morro, the other beach. This beach was not for swimming because it had lots of seaweed and junk in the water but Vivian and I walked around exploring a little and there were lots of shells, coral and snails on our walk. I came back and enjoyed the sun for a little bit before we left.
After the beach, we went to the English Insitute and played games with the Hopkins family. We played a game called Farkle (a dice game) that was a lot of fun. We hung out there for about 2 hours before heading back for dinner. They treated us to ice cream floats which was a lovely treat!
The rest of the evening was typical for a Sunday here, dinner, church with the kids, and now just resting until bedtime! Happy November and wishing everyone a great beginning of the week!
So I forgot to add on the previous blog that the night we were playing on the basketball court with the kids, they found a crab behind the court. It was about the size of large hamburger bun. Then about 3 minutes later a huge toad goes hopping across the basketball court. What fun creatures we find here! :)
Yesterday was a fun day. We cleaned the room a little in the morning and I took on the job of cleaning out our shower faucet. I put on gloves and unscrewed the drain top. I then went to work removing the hair and pulled out about a baseball sized wad of hair, dirt, sand. It was disgusting but our drain works well now ;)
Before we headed out for the afternoon I hung out with the kids for a little bit. The kids here have a little store that is stocked with toys from donations and they are allowed to buy things with points that they earn for being good, doing their chores, etc. All the kids had their new gadgets and some had new jump ropes. Two of the little girls, Franchesca about 4, and Ari, age 3 were jumping rope with me and Nicol holding the ends and twirling it for them. It was hilarious to watch but they were pretty good for their age!
We headed to Jaibon, the other orphanage for the afternoon. First, we stopped a roadside goat restaurant and had some good food. I ordered baked goat, and although it sounds gross, it was pretty good. It tasted like pot roast to me. The only weird thing was all the bones in it. Little ribs, and Luke who was sitting next to me, had this huge bone sticking out of his, probably some leg bone or something. That was a little disturbing! We had a bunch of good sides, some rice dish that tasted like jumbalya, fresh avocados, plantains, and white rice! It was yummy!
We got to the orphanage about 2pm and hung out with the boys. This orphanage is totally different than the one here. It is tucked back on a road, down a long driveway and has a church, school, and a boys and girls orphanage on the property, as well as tons of areas where pigs, birds, and chickens live. The girls orphanage area is not used currently, only boys live there for now. There are about 24 boys living at the orphanage and they are so sweet and well behaved. Tia, a lady that has lived there for many years, is strict and keeps the boys in line. They all have chores and are so respectful. We played several games with them, and had a reading time with them as well. It was a great 3 hours, that passed by so fast but very nice and a different environment from the kids here!
We headed back to the orphanage, had dinner, and then Christine and I watched Hairspray until our other roommate Heather arrived from the airport. She went home for 2.5 weeks and came back last night. It is great to have her back!
Today was a packed day starting with a little worship service, then some time with the kids. I got drilled in the knee with a hard plastic top of some sort by accident but it broke skin! One of the older girls was throwing it at another girl and I somehow ended up being the victim! :)
We left after lunch and went to a new beach near El Morro, the other beach. This beach was not for swimming because it had lots of seaweed and junk in the water but Vivian and I walked around exploring a little and there were lots of shells, coral and snails on our walk. I came back and enjoyed the sun for a little bit before we left.
After the beach, we went to the English Insitute and played games with the Hopkins family. We played a game called Farkle (a dice game) that was a lot of fun. We hung out there for about 2 hours before heading back for dinner. They treated us to ice cream floats which was a lovely treat!
The rest of the evening was typical for a Sunday here, dinner, church with the kids, and now just resting until bedtime! Happy November and wishing everyone a great beginning of the week!
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