Things have been crazy here lately with little time to think or write out a blog. We have had two groups from Virginia here...one group only for 10 days and the other group for three weeks. Welcome to being friends with everyone at CSA because you definitely are part of an unpaid contingency of staff.

I have been working at Doña Chucha two days a week in the morning helping the girls out with sport class...no wait...leading sport class completely in Spanish..woohoo Kat! (This sentence deserves and exclamation point...really) This means basically that I break up fights that the girls have every day or they take me aside in the middle of an organized game to stare at my hair and put it in braids.

Doña Chucha is a girl´s orphanage in Santo Domingo with 90 girls from the ages of 5 all the way to the teenage years. The girls are in school there and also live together. Many of them have extended families or parents who just can´t take care of them so often on the weekends, they go out and stay with their family or their family members visit them there. Most of the girls are starving for attention and once you pull out your camera, it is all over. They will all be posing with each other, with flowers, with our PE ball, etc. I love my girls though.

I went to the school a few weeks ago to begin working but when I talked to the director, Fior, the kids didn´t have their sport clothes ready even though we had called to tell them Friday and Monday that I was coming. Mmmk..in that case, I will come tomorrow...but NO...wait, even though I showed up the next day, they weren´t ready again because they were working on stuff for a mother´s day celebration that Friday. (Mother´s Day was this past Sunday, May 27th in the DR) Welcome to Dominican organizations. With some organizations it doesn´t matter how many times you exchange information or visit the place with the schedule of volunteers and programs, nothing seems to be ready. The problem is that these programs and interaction with willing and excited volunteers would benefit the kids here but the kids are suffering because the administration doesn´t have their act together. Don´t get me wrong, there are organizations here like Vision Mundial who are doing amazing jobs in the communities (especially the really really rural communities) and try everything in their power to benefit all the people around them. Unfortunately though, there are a lot of people who seem to be fine with their organization just getting by.

I have been helping out the group from JMU mainly because they are working both at the Down´s Syndrome School and at Doña Chucha so I have had experience with both programs. I have definitely gotten to see the other side of things in terms of leading groups and administrative details dealing with large groups of people.

I´ll get up some pictures in the next few days before I head to Hato Mayor for two weeks. I´m getting close to the time that I´m coming back and all the weeks are flying by right now!! I hope everyone is well and I miss you all!

My kids that I took to Feria del Libros, Guillermo on the computer, Evelyn painting (she´s probably my favorite kid), Lucas...always smiling for the camera, and Lucas and Katherine learning to make pineapple juice.

me and Liz in the middle of our ¨short walk¨ in Hato Mayor for my birthday.
Sophia and Raphael made me a cake for my birthday!!

These past two week I have been working with kids from the Down Syndrome School here in Santo Domingo. The moment I walked in the door my first day the secretary asked me if I could take a group of the kids with me to Feria del Libros and have the kids work on the computers there. Well sure...let me just jump into a new job by being completely uncomfortable in a place I don´t know with 5 kids with Down Syndrome. I would like to file that under the ´not smart´category...just for future reference.

Feria del Libros...just to clear that up, is a book fair with books from all over the Latin world plus 1 or two shops from the USA - South America, Central America, etc...and there are tons of shops and tons of people. There is an area for the kids with puppet shows and book readings, places for ice cream, places for pizza and other food, and tons and tons of book shops. My job with the kids for one whole week was to meet them (thank God not take them) to Feria del Libros and work at this place with computers from 2-4 pm so that the more high functioning down´s kids could get computer exposure. The school had nothing planned for them so they ended up typing brochures for the place where the computers were. At least it was easy enough. The next day, the kids were a good 30 minutes late but they made it. Come Wednesday, no kids. The program is supposed to extend from Monday - Thursday...where are my kids? Knowing full well Dominican time...I waited. Finally after 1 1/2 hours of waiting, I got a phone call from the Director saying that they weren´t coming today. Awesome. Thursday...oh yeah. The same without the call. But I digress...

Yesterday, I got to the school and we worked with beads. At least for the girls. We have one kid, Luis Miguel who sits there, stares at the ceiling and spits through his tongue most of the day. We have other kids who make jokes and are on a very high functioning level. After beads we painted...thankfully with washable paints. I turned around for 5 seconds and Juan Miguel had painted his face a beautiful shade of red...and his hands a nice tint of yellow. Awesome. They really are a joy to work with and I am definitely learning my commands with them in spanish. So, welcome to an update of a few events at the moment. Pictures to follow.

So last weekend I definitely got a good surprise when I got taken to Hato Mayor because Sophia wanted to throw me a party for my birthday. It definitely fit into true Dominican form because plans were canceled or sketchy as all get out and then the trip itself was decided Saturday morning at about 9am...I hadn't even woken up yet...sweet. On Sunday, they took me out to this land that belonged to one of the ladies there...tons of oranges (although according to the kids there, the fruits weren't oranges, they were 'chinas' ...whatever, they are small oranges). We were told that we were going for a walk which turned out to be a hike with these kids through fields, up around the orange trees, mango trees, cacao trees, etc crossing rivers and ducking under barbed wire fences to keep out the animals. Can't keep us out...hehehe. They told us that we were going around the bottom of the mountain and would continue in a circle around the bottom and come back to where we were eating lunch. We got about 3/4 of the way there and Freddy, our guide...maybe 11 or 12 years old disappeared and we couldn't find him at all. We yelled for him for like 5 minutes...NADA. So...we took off back the way we came which took what seemed like forever. The entire walk was in the sun and we were sweating like crazy. All the little kids had taken off their shirts and Elizabeth and I kept saying that we wished we were guys so that we could do away with the shirts that were sticking to our backs. Of course, since we thought we were going for a short walk, we didn't take ANY water at all and drank...hmm...probably a gallon each in a 2 minute sitting. Well...anyway, lunch was ready. We sat around, ate pollo y arroz and cooled off. A few minutes later, everyone came back out singing Happy Birthday...in English. Good Spanish Immersion...hahaha. They had me a cake with a big candle in the middle with TONS of icing. Sweet! We ended up having to take off back for Santo Domingo partially because we still had things to do...but also because it started pouring down rain...haha. Turns out that the presidential party was having a convention in Santo Domingo and all of the buses on the road were full of people being bussed into the city for the convention. Welcome to outright craziness.

Ok, the political party pays to have people bussed into the city when conventions are happening where they pay for the buses for these people, pay each one of them a certain small fee for coming and pay for their food and beer during the convention. This time, they were having a parade around the entire city, there were guaguas (buses) everywhere in the city, and helicopters flying overhead. Of course you couldn't get through with anyone on the phone and good luck if you decided to go anywhere in the city because you would encounter absolute traffic jams no matter what street you were on. Perfect time to stay inside, sleep for awhile, and then watch a movie....without stepping foot outside. Kind of my perfect day anyway.