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...