"My dog" laying outside my unfinished door in my apartment and Freddy with a NC hat on...yeah that´s right, I taught him well.

Feet for pom pom critters (they are in stacks of 10), a few of the crafts I am doing on limited resources, and a mobile I made of African critters. You can ask me later why I didn´t choose something easier like...cats, dogs, rabbits, butterflies, etc. No, Kat chose the African animals...haha

I must say that I have respect for anyone who works out programs for kids of all different ages. I can come up with a lot of ideas for crafts and games...but these are kids who have never experienced a summer camp before. They are a bit easy because even crafts that you would do with the younger kids, the older kids enjoy as well. For instance, I am in the midst of cutting out supplies for the smaller kids to make "pom pom critters" (translate that to spanish...please) and all the volunteers who are in university want to make them too. My work this past week has been coordinating a lot of stuff and getting crafts cut out and ready for the first week of kids. I sat down one day and started cutting out feet for the pom pom critters, cutting out cardboard doughnuts to make them, and getting examples ready. I ended up cutting out 160 feet and over 100 doughnuts. My hands hurt a bit. The next day I had a friend helping with the doughnuts which was very much appreciated. We have 50 kids a week so I need 100 doughnuts a week plus a bunch extra in case they break them or they disappear. (the doughnuts are made out of cardboard to wrap yarn around to begin the process of pom pom critters.) I am then making butterflies with the kids with construction paper and tissue paper so the light can shine through the tissue paper. There´s an item that definitely doesn´t exist in Hato Mayor...haha. The nice part through all of it is that I don´t have to come up with new crafts for each week. (I just have to make 150 copies of everything...haha)

All is going well for me here. I "accidentally" (We all know Kat and animals) made friends with the dog that guards my house (he´s a Rottweiler/Labrador mix who grins like my Dylan does) so now at night he barks at everything to keep me protected. They refer to him as "my dog" now. He keeps me up every night right now and I have come out there and threatened his life several times at 2, 4, and 5 in the morning. I end up trying to throw in naps at random times during the day just to catch up! haha. Life is a funny, funny place, isn´t it?!

Spanish is easier in some ways because I am dreaming in Spanish and thinking in Spanish but there are days that it is hard too because I am in the mentality of home. Because I talk fast in Spanish, everyone talks fast back to me and I get lost in the mumbling of Dominican spanish where they drop "s´s". "Me gusta" becomes "me guta" when spoken and it often makes deciphering words fun. We all need a break sometimes I guess. Don´t worry, it´s still my favorite country!

Oh yeah, I´m going to NC School of Public Health in the fall..."I´m a Tarheel born, I´m a Tarheel bred, and when I die I´m a Tarheel dead..." : )

Life in Hato Mayor has definitely been a change for me since I had gotten quite used to the city and all the opportunities there, etc. I must say the thing I miss most is 11pm Sushi runs with all of my friends to go get Dominican Sushi - sushi with Platano maduro on top (wait til the banana is really ripe and throw it in hot grease. It means the banana is really sweet and is like a dessert here...at least for me) If I needed certain craft supplies for a project I wanted to do, I would just go to the store (in a public car...because I have MASTERED that!) and buy things based on our budget. As it stands, I either have to ask for someone to bring it from the city if they are coming, or send an email to an American group coming and hope that those donations will be brought with them. The first thing I did here was an itemized list of everything specifically that was needed from the US including things like pipecleaners because goodness knows THOSE don´t exist here. There end up being a lot of "what-if´s".

These are times you have to let go of being an American based on a rigid schedule and work through Dominican time and scheduling. I can´t tell you how many times I have told groups that have been down here that they need to just chill out and learn that things don´t happen on a normal time schedule. If there is a meeting at 9am, that really means that the meeting is somewhere between 9:30 and 9:45 and there´s no need to rush to get there and stress yourself out. No, no, no. The "hurry up and wait" that the groups do here seems to bother American mentality. Well...let me let you in on a secret. Dominicans don´t hurry up and wait. They look at the clock, see that it is 8:45 and that they have a meeting at 9. They eat their breakfast at a leisurely pace, drink their coffee, take their shower, and stroll out the door around 9:30. When they get there, usually everyone else is showing up or has already gotten there and there is no need to wait on anything. The meeting can now commence. Easy. Stop stressing out you crazy gringos.

Hato Mayor is definitely much slower and involves a break of several days between meetings...right now because of the rain. It´s like clockwork here. Around...well...now (as I sit in the internet cafe), it begins to rain (pour actually)and doesn´t stop til about 3 or 4 in the afternoon and then starts again around 8 or 9 and rains through the night. You find shelter where you are because there is no need to try and run to a meeting in the rain. Everyone else involved in the meeting is standing under some overhang or is in the next store over waiting out the rain as well. The town floods in certain areas although not like the city and of course Dominican life shuts down. If it´s raining, the mentality is, "We will have a meeting another day or much later today because no one is going to come anyway." Sadly that´s true...or funny because it´s predictable. For instance, I had a scheduled meeting yesterday with Sophia and Ana about organizing the volunteers for this summer camp. The meeting was at 3 and around 1pm, the downpour hit. It rained for 2 1/2 hours and then stopped. We could have taken the motoconcho over there at 3 and gotten a little bit wet, but it would not have mattered anyway. We strolled in around 4:30 and the volunteers were starting to show up. Only 4 of them came but that´s a pretty good turnout with that kind of weather. I was impressed.

As it stands right now, I am in my final stages of planning and getting everything ready for the first week. I have now cut out 40 butterflies out of construction paper (missing 60 more), 300 pieces of tissue paper to go with the butterflies, 140 pairs of feet to go with my pom pom critters, have examples of all of the possible crafts along with explanations in English and Spanish for both sets of volunteers, etc. All the cutting though, I must say with a laugh, has been done with my medical bandage scissors and everyone laughs at me. Hey, you use the supplies you have, right?

I must say that I am ready for a break and am ready to go home, see my parents, see my friends, see my dogs, take my own car to go wherever I want to whenever I want to, and not have to wait on the rain or a motoconcho. They are so worried about the gringa that they don´t let me go anywhere by myself and I often feel like I am 13 again with braces and an awkward grin (Oh wait, I did that again at the age of 22...hahaha) Anyway, back to cutting out feet out of index cards with medical scissors...

So I am in Hato Mayor now, 2 weeks of a small town after getting used to the city. Needless to say it is quite the change and I miss the ability to go anywhere I want to because the stores and places actually existed. At least there´s an ice cream store and an internet cafe here...haha. I am working on a summer camp for the kids here in and around Hato Mayor starting in two weeks. Most of the kids are poorer kids and live in the Barrios surrounding the town (poorer neighborhoods)so Sophia, the organizer, wants to do special stuff with the kids. My problem is writing a curriculum in Spanish when my Spanish is not that good..and then translating it into English for all of the English speaking volunteers who will be coming to help out this summer. Explaining the crafts has been really fun too...haha. I sit there with my dictionary and mime out as many words as I can..haha. This whole idea is new for me - coming up with all the games, all the crafts, the hours, the schedule, the other possible activities including meeting with the headmaster of the school where we will hold the camp, etc. I should be able to plan anything after this...haha.

We visited the school that we worked on last year when I came with Presbyterian Campus Ministry and a lot has been done. Unfortunately there´s a ton more that is needed. Supplies are expensive and contractors here have delayed and delayed on certain items so that the only way things get done are when groups from the States are here to do them. The money is tight and the progress is so slow. It was nice to see some parts finished and saddening to see other parts in the same place that they were a year ago. I´ve attached pictures mainly for those of you who were here with me last year to see progress...and non-progress.

Everyone take care and I will see you soon!

I had to take a picture of it before I left Santo Domingo. The oven in my host family´s house in SD...yeah, can you tell we use it?!

Welcome to rainy season in Santo Domingo...

my girls at Doña Chucha