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!