Hey all,

Hope everyone back home is doing well - I sure do miss everyone a lot.  Here it is still hot, hot, hot!!!  I came again today without any idea of what to write so I am starting with pictures... of a frog friend on our window (i find these as well as lots of lizards, spiders, and the like crawling around my classroom and living quarters everyday), the new flowers planted outside our house by Dominican Experience, our new "slackline" (this tightrope thing that my roommate brought from Germany - Dave is already a pro and I always fall off), face painting, the big new trampoline, and other activities from Family Day.

Family Day was yesterday again, and it is always a mix of fun and excitement with sorrow and anger as well as a good slap in the face to remind you how grateful you should be for what you have and how much more love and patience the kids here need and deserve.  One example meeting went as follows:

Hi, welcome, are you family of Estrella's? 

No, Estrella doesn't have family, we were friends with her mother.

Oh I'm Kristin, the volunteer from her house...

Well then shouldn't you know she doesn't have family?  Shouldn't you know that her mom and dad are dead?  Doesn't she talk about them?  Estrella, don't you talk about your mami?  Don't you tell people about her and how she died?  Are you forgetting who you are and who she was to you?

Well Estrella is a wonderful girl, smart, intelligent, sweet, kind... she is like a little sister to me.

She is not your sister - you are not her family and won't be there for her forever, it's not the same as blood family.  Estrella doesn't have anyone.  Is she studying?  Her mom would want her to be smart and to be able to get out of here and make something of herself in the world.  And why aren't you speaking to her in English anyways - don't you speak English?  Estrella, why aren't you learning English?  She needs English if she's going to go anywhere in life.

Well we have an English program in the school...

It sure doesn't look like she is learning any English... Estrella speak to us in English. (Estrella's head is down crying on the table...)

Well nice to meet you - time for lunch....

And other meetings like this.... today I got a note from Estrella saying "Kristin I believe you and you are my sister and I love you and we'll be sisters forever.  You taught me race doesn't matter at all, and it doesn't matter if we're different colors because you're my older sister.  I hope we stay friends forever".  Right as I was on my way to meet Dave to try to buy tickets to come home this summer.  It crushes and fills you with guilt.  And of course this is one story of maaaany.  I held and rocked 12 year old Samuel last night as he learned he wouldn't be going home after all and his mom who met with with him 3 months earlier has now decided she doesn't want to take him back after all.  And there's the consolation you give to Cristela's "2nd mom" who worries she's been lazy in school ever since her sister Raquela died, and convincing her yes she's doing just fine in school and sure she's okay even if it's not entirely true.  With the day to day activities, lessons, and stress sometimes you just forget how much these kids actually have endured and the pain that still lives on in their little hearts.  And then again today as my assistant Maria comes into class exhausted and I ask, "How was your night?" and she responds "Ok, didn't sleep much though".  Later when we have time to talk she explains her uncle died during the night and she had to care for the body, bathe him, clean him, dress him, etc.   When I look surprised, she asks who else is going to do it?  Who does it in your country?  I feel too bad to explain the existence and process of funeral homes.  And because she was too busy with me in my class she missed the lunchtime bus to make it to his funeral.  For a Dominican, it's just another day, another loss, another necessary task, but life goes on.  And then to compare it to the bulldozing of bodies and mass grave sites that happen in Haiti, it's a whole nother story.  Sometimes you just can't even imagine... til you see it with your own two eyes... then you still can't really even imagine cause it's not you yourself it's happening to.

Anyways, Saturday, I did Dominican Experience again, and even though it meant another early a.m., it was really really great.  It was a group of high school juniors from London, Ontario, Canada and they were fantastic.  This time I brought Moises, Erika, and Wilson to do much of my presentation for me, since who better to hear it from than them and they are oh so much cuter than me too.  And after spending the whole week living and working with the poorest of the poor, the Canadian kids all said again and again how much NPH gave them hope and with sparkles in their eyes they all shared how they wanted to come and be volunteers someday too... and I think we got quite a few young sponsors signed up too.  Speaking of sponsoring, just to throw it in there if I haven't already, or recently, you can always check into sponsoring kids at www.nph.org - you get letters, cards, drawings, report cards, and you can even come down and visit them too. :)

Well, I think that's it... other than that we got another new volunteer on Friday - Jaime from Spain who will be our new activities coordinator which we are all very excited about.  It's hard to plan activities nights and weekends when the rest of us already have full time jobs so having someone working full time to do it with us will be really awesome.  He seems really cool other than he is the first person I've met from Madrid so I really can't understand his accent that well.  Working on teaching him all the Dominican street slang that we speak here. :) 

Oh and child of the week to pray for .... Samuel, even though I know it's a repeat.  He's having such a hard time in the school, he has barely made it to class in the 3rd grade room in the past week and I want to increase his time in my room again but everyone is against it because he's not cognitively impaired like my other ones but he is just so angry and sad, he thought he was going back home to mom and finding out she didn't want him is just so hard on him.  He needs a lot of love and prayers. 

Hope all is well back stateside.  If all goes as planned, I should be back in Michigan to take grad classes this summer to renew my teaching certificate in July.  And as everyone wants to know... what's the plan for next year??  Ha well for anyone who knows me well, they can probably guess the answer (as it's the same every year at this time) - we don't know!  For those who don't know, I was laid off from my teaching job in Owosso (I'm on 1 year sabbatical), so probably another year teaching somewhere here in the DR or maybe Haiti.  But that's just a guess cause we really don't know.  Will keep you posted when we know more.

Have a great week all and write me and let me know how you all are and what is new in your lives too!!!

Lots of love, peace, prayers, and sunshine sent from the DR,
Kristin :) 

Hi and happy Monday to all,

So to explain the title, first it is so hot here I think I could just totally fall over - one of those days where you are wet and sticky all day long, and start sweating again within 3 minutes of getting out of the shower.  That kind of day... super humid and you want to dance and play and have fun but you can barely make yourself move.  Ah, the kids are super "tranquilo" too. 

And the earthquake part - since I know you're wondering or maybe worrying - it was yesterday, 5.1 about an hour from here I guess.  We were in the capital though so I didn't feel it or even hear anything about it til this morning when a couple teachers I work with told me they felt it.  No damage though, and 3 deaths - a few vacationers who were on their way out snorkeling and got killed by the tsunami that resulted from the quake.  Yikes.

And the other part - we finished our unit on bugs and celebrated Friday with "Bug Day" where Dave took us all on a bug hunt and we danced with our potato bugs that we made earlier in the week, made play-doh bugs, and I finally was able to make my dirt cups (with "bug juice") which the kids LOVED of course, Rosali finished hers in about 30 seconds and half was on the floor while Moises slowly savored every bit for at least 30 minutes til we scooted him along.  Other bug activities included thumbprint ladybug leaves, handprint spiders, potato bugs, and lots more bug songs, dances, and games.  Oh, and as you can imagine, our bug hunt was full of BIG bugs - including big furry tarantulas.  I tried to take a video but it turned out mostly of me screaming at Wilkin to put it down. :)  Some of our guys just aren't scared of anything.

In Santa Ana, I have started a new behavior program with my pre-teen girls.  If there is one thing that transcends culture, it is adolescence and anyone who has raised or worked with girls this age knows the neck swinging or talk back that comes during that special time of their lives.  So we started a new point system/game to go along with the house rules and each time I catch a girl following the rules I write down a point and the rule they did a good job with.  Well, they LOVE this and are taking it to quite the extreme - I feel like I'm being waited on now hand and foot when I walk in, but we are having fun with it for sure. 

On the NPH Haiti front, things continue to develop and improve slowly, and the visitors and aid keep on pouring in.  Last week's visitors included Demi Moore, Susan Sarandon, Ben Stiller, Gerald Butler, among others, who started a charity that was primarily founded to support NPH's hospital.  See pics here of the celebs with our kiddos http://punchbowlblog.com/2010/04/14/celebs-do-good-ben-stiller-gerard-butler-susan-sarandon-and-demi-moore-visit-haiti/ (maybe I should put in a trasfer request to NPH Haiti :) Oh and here is the website of their organization if you want to check it out... http://www.artistsforpeaceandjustice.com/ - you can find some info. on Father Rick - NPH Haiti's now celeb status director, as well as the list of the other big wigs who are on the board... Clint Eastwood, Charlize Theron, Russell Crow, Nicole Kidman...

Also, in NPH Haiti news, our new French teacher Cristal (then one who you helped me support after her family lost her house) finally came back to this side of the island today.  After we gave her a few hundred dollars and she disappeared we thought maybe she decided to rebuild and was gone for good, but turns out while she was on "vacation" in Haiti to visit her family, her dad died and then she became deathly ill and was stuck in the hospital.  But she still responded with a hug, smile, and "todo esta bien" when I saw her.  The strength of some of these people is astounding.  Anyhow, I am glad she's back around and hope I can be a friend. 

For the weekend, we stayed with this absolute angel named Marysue who works for the American consulate and has an amaaaaazing 19th floor apartment in the capital overlooking the ocean.  We spent the weekend hanging with Tim and Paola by her pristine swimming pool, eating pizza, going to the movies (my first one in almost a year - Dear Jhon - pretty good, but no Notebook), and eating delicious dinners she cooked for us while sitting out on her breezy balcony.  It was such a treat and it was so hard to come home to our painful bed with wires that stick out every which way after staying at such a posh pad.  But yeah so nice, she is just this sweet lady whose husband volunteers for NPH and they want to bless everyone and take in tons of guests from everywhere and spoil them rotton (all their kids are grown back in the states, except one with autism who they adopted from Guatemala).  Our fellow house guests included a young man from Haiti who almost drowned after his car went off a bridge and slowly sank down, but without ever learning to swim, he somehow managed to rescue both himself and his American passenger.  In return, he is now moving to the US to study at Rutgers college... Marysue's house was where he came to rest his head on the way to the airport.  And a missionary priest/doctor/profesor/... who was a bit odd to say the least... he decided to shower in our bathroom without telling us so now seeing a naked priest is another first to add to my list (just couldn't not share that one).

Okay, well I think that's it cause I am just rambling and didn't really come today with any idea with what to write about, but oh I did want to share that I now have to articles about my program on the nph.org website.  Look under News - Dominican Republic and you can find "Animals Come to Life" about our zoo trip, and the other one Katherine wrote called "Special Education Program". 

Child of the week for prayer - Jose Martin.  Though he has made loads of progress, he continues to struggle with his behavior and has so many problems in class.  Love him to death though.  Let me know if you're willing to pray for him on a continuous basis. 

Oh and pictures - I will try to attach those now.  Not working - will try in a separate email.

But love, peace, and prayers to all, and all those in Michigan - enjoy the cold!!  I'd love to be there right now!! :)

Kristin

In the capital with my new neice Ana Leah!

Potato bugs from our insect unit!

Hello all and happy springtime (though I think I may be a little late?) – here you don’t really see the seasons change so much you know.  Well, this week has been a cloudy, drizzly, rainy, and stormy one – sometimes both literally and figuratively… I just started a new unit this week on insects, and spent the last week focusing on caterpillars and butterflies, with various books, crafts, puppet shows, acting, etc. yet the kids just couldn’t seem to get that the ugly worm and the beautiful butterfly could possibly be the same animal.  With Rodolfo’s help, I made a toilet paper tube cocoon covered in cotton, a fuzzy pompom ball caterpillar, and popsicle butterfly to put together a trick.  On Thursday, I read La Oruga Muy Hambrienta (The Very Hungry Caterpillar) and acted out the book with my pompom caterpillar eating all the food (with sound effects of course – the kids think that’s the best part) and then stuffed him in his cocoon, and the let my colorful inkblot butterfly emerge from the toilet paper tube at the end of the story.  Then the kids did it in our puppet theatre after I was done.  I still don’t know if they totally got it, but they had fun playing a “magic trick”.  But even every year as I teach it, it still just astounds me every time thinking about the process – that an animal can change so much.  I wish I was able to catch a caterpillar and show the kids the whole progression, and watch it myself.  Sometimes I wish too that I could just do the same when I’m down and jaded – roll up in a cocoon and hide for a while, then just emerge again, fresh and beautiful and renewed.  Even more I think I wish this for my kids.  That all the ugliness and negativity that’s been beaten into them for so long could just disappear and roll away like old skin, and they can just fly away into the world beautiful and untouched, seeing themselves the same way I see them, as gorgeous and amazing as they are.  Anyways, teaching this subject gets me all contemplative like, but we also made butterfly bracelets (also out of toilet paper tube – I got lots of donated tubes for my toilet paper tube zoo and have lots of leftovers) and egg carton caterpillars.  I’ve also learned to sing Baby Bumblebee, The Little Caterpillar, The Itsy Bitsy Spider, and The Ants Go Marching In, in Spanish and so we’ve been having lots of insect sing-a-longs too. 

The rain is pouring and pouring outside the window, and it makes me think of the rainstorms that happen throughout a week here, but also the silver linings that follow (or should I say rainbows?) which are the salvations that keep you going.  Like.....

When you think you can’t stand another plate of beans and rice or you will throw it across the room (as Samuel actually did last week), and then you come home to Dave’s homemade fresh salsa, after picking veggies from the NPH garden.  Or get invited over for a meal at Marijo's – Friday night was fresh squeezed passion fruit juice and a huge delicious dinner.

Or when you think you’ve had enough with the kids and they just have no respect, and then Erika stuffs her favorite toy into your hand saying “Take it, I love you, you’re the best teacher I ever had”… or the crumpled handfuls of wildflowers come, the notes and drawings, the hugs and kisses or when they come running from out of nowhere screaming your name and jump into your arms… all these little things that are what keep you here day after day.

When you think you just can’t get along with some of the people anymore…. Like when Tia Susanna yells and yells in my face and I say why are you mad at me, I just want to talk to you about disciplining the kids… and she responds “Mad?  What would make you think that I’m mad, my lovely daughter?  I’m not mad, this is just the way we talk here…”

When you think the kids just aren’t getting it at all, then they all just blow you away, like on Friday when every one of my (verbal) kids recited all the days of the week, all the months of the year, and all the classroom rules (okay some did have a chindilin of help) – but I was so excited and we hugged and cheered and celebrated so much, they just all wanted to do it.  I thought we were on such a roll, so I said and now the letters!  But when they sat with their mouths hanging open, I realized I was pushing my luck. J

When the kids seem too violent, too aggressive, like they just can’t or won’t get along, then we have Peace Circle (Friday we switched it up to a sticker ceremony) and they just plaster stickers onto one another, not themselves, and congratulate, compliment, thank, and love on each other more than I could ever hope for. 

When you miss the American conveniences, you've read every English book you can find (if only I could have read so fast in high school and college as I do here) and you just miss vegging in front of the TV, but then find more amusement laying in bed with your spouse as he gives a running commentary on the worker ants who travel in lines up and down your bedroom walls – and they actually do stop and communicate with each other I swear (which like butterflies are another amazing and interesting species if you take the time to stop and watch and study them).

When I think I just can’t stand another second of living in this international commune like house, and I think whoever thought it could work to stick a married couple in here, with all these different people, languages, belief systems, cultures - how could this ever work?  Well sometimes it just plain doesn’t.  But then there is my husband, when I am about to totally lose it (or already have), to stick me on the back of his moto and whisk me away to the beach yesterday  - even if it is raining, it is just soooo what I needed. (or like last week shopping when I thought I would have a complete meltdown in the line of the grocery store when I had all the ingredients to make chocolate dirt cups for our insect unit and there is no bar code on the very last bag of gummy worms and the salesclerk just absolutely won’t let me have it for any price – and it's not like you can run to Meijer's - sometimes I just need him to pull me away from these cultural conflicts that just make me NUTS)

When passing by the people living in the bateys seems too depressing, the problems seem too big, and there is just not enough you can do, but a dreaded early morning Saturday with Dominican Experience turns into the opportunity to fix up and paint Moreno’s (a fellow Haitian staff member) crumbling house (with a team of 28 high school kids from Montreal) and you realize it’s all worthwhile.  Our next idea is to fix up Freure’s house, another Haitian farmer, who literally lives under a couple pieces of tin, using a bucket for a bathroom and a cup of charcoal as a stove.  Not sure how we’ll make this happen, but you have to stay hopeful right?

Or like yesterday riding home on the moto, after a rainy day at the beach (and hiding out in our favorite pizzeria) when the rain finally clears, the clouds part, and gaps form in the big puffs of cotton overhead to allow perfectly isolated beams of sunlight to leak through, like something you’d only see in a movie, like All Dogs Go to Heaven or something, when at the end the main character dies but the outpour of light floods down from the sky and makes you realize it’s all gonna be okay.  And there's God, and He's telling you, yup I'm right here.

So anyways, that kinda sums it up for the week.  Okay so prayer child of the week will be Moises.  He was the one found in a basket on the steps of a church as a baby so they named him accordingly (like Moses) and he only learned quite recently to walk – which is more like a lopsided run where he falls on his face about every 10-15 steps but he sure is resilient.  I'm pretty sure I haven't picked him yet but I am pretty sure I don't have anyone committed to praying for him so let me know if you want to.  He is blind with cerebral palsy and like I said before, he is like total sunshine to work with (even if he does talk all the way through all my read-alouds).  And despite him being blind, Maria and I always get to hear from him everyday about how lovely we look. J

Okay, off to one of my two choices of public transportation – One, an overcrowded guagua (van) bumping reggaeton weaving crazily in and out of traffic – once it even did a 180 u-turning in front of oncoming traffic – you feel like you're in a movie or videogame or something.

Or the more expensive choice, the 80 cent motoconcho – the motorcycle taxis that I have seen up to 5 on at a time (limbs hanging off all directions), and where passengers will carry on back anything from newborns to kitchen appliances to full-sized ladders.  Usually I'm practically gagging while hanging onto a fat man wearing too much cologne who tries to practice his English and I don't understand a word of it.

Which choice would you go for? J  Usually I pick the latter, but only because I spend way too long writing these emails.  Hopefully someone is reading... Speaking of which, I think I may switch to blogging rather than the Monday emails, less pressure and maybe it will be a little less random than my Monday night banter?  Any thoughts?  Blog sites are blocked at the orphanage but I could try on Mondays or days off?

Well love and prayers to all – enjoy the April showers and the rainbows too!!

Love, peace, and prayers,

Kristin

So I know what you're thinking... yeah right I'm not capable of writing a short email, but I think I really will.  I just wrote on Thursday (sorry for the baby joke to everyone who really fell for it) and there's just not too much to write, and I still have many copies to make and shopping to do.  We came back Thursday for all the "holiday festivities", only to find that it was very quiet, "tranquilo", and pretty serious.  Friday morning, the kids did these plays where they marched around the grounds and the older kids acted out the resurrection.  But then the kids really all thought that Jesus really actually died that day, they were confused, so they thought they really had to mourn until Sunday (the orphanage called a day of silence... with 200 troubled kids between 1 and 18, yeah right!) so this translated to "quiet" days of watching 14 hours of TV straight.  Blah.  But we did make these cute foam crosses and decorated them and watched the Jesus movie in the park Friday night (they lost the Passion of the Christ we were supposed to watch, then accidentally put in a movie about David with graphic scenes of him and Bathsheba, there were lots of ooohs and ahhhs)  Sooo then Saturday we dyed eggs, and Sunday we had an orphanage wide Easter egg hunt and 5 eggs had numbers on them and the kids got clues and the ones who found them got an entire 2 liter of coca cola (which each drank themselves entirely without sharing, in all of about 10 minutes).  I imagine they didn't get much sleep last night, and their tias probably didn't either.  They also rode the big yellow bus into town for a 5 hour (no joke) Easter service.  They had to leave at 6am so I missed out because I didn't even know about it (communication is not a strong point here).  So yeah, that's it.  Oh and I spent hours and hours plugged away in my classroom creating a program guide for the special needs kids to use here in the future and also to share with NPH homes in other countries I hope (28 pages so far and counting).  And translated IEP forms to try to start that whole process (so far everyone just laughs at me when I try to explain this idea but hopefully I can somehow make it work - maybe I'll bake like I used to in the states :).  Okay, so that's it, was it short this time?  Oh and one last thing, it was really great to go back today.  I was bracing myself after they were stuck in the houses so long, but they were really great, I got a week's worth of hugs and kisses, and the kids didn't even want to leave my classroom (and they were much more well behaved than the past week in their houses so coming back to teach was actually like a breath of fresh air).  And my mother-in-law Sandy brought these cute pen-pal letters from her first grade class in Mexico, complete with stickers, photos, candy, etc. so that was a fun way to welcome them back.  But yeah, that's it for this week.  Hope all was well for Easter and Spring break back home.  And safe travels to all those traveling and still enjoying their spring breaks (I have to admit I am a bit jealous...)  Please write and fill me in on all the details.  Thanks again for all your continous support and prayers.  And please continue to pray for Yudelkis and her heart condition too. :)
Love, peace, and prayers,
Kristin      

Baby On Board - I'm pregnant (email subject)

Happy April Fools!!! hahaha... sorry, with my new baby niece, this book I’m reading all about babies, and just so much baby talk, I just couldn’t resist…. But come on, we are making $65 a month and live with 200 kids already; I doubt too many people fell for that one… though anyone who knows me know that I would have adopted at least 10 of them from here or Haiti by now if I had the money for it. J

So anyways, we’re on spring break here or Semana Santa (Holy Week) as they call it where everyone either goes crazy at the beach or fills their week with “serious religious activities” (like we’re doing here at the orphanage).  We decided to bypass both for a couple days and head to the mountains with my mother-in-law who is here visiting from Mexico (the reason I missed my Monday email again).  As I was riding the big tour bus through the curvy mountain roads, I thought back to exactly one year ago, on the same type of bus also on our Spring break curving through mountain roads too, only in Mexico, … when we spontaneously flew down to interview to work for NPH, a trip planned only 5 days in advance when we scored super cheap tickets to Mexico City while all the “danger alerts” were out.  I can’t help but think of the crazy chain of events and how much has come from that spontaneous decision.  It seems like it’s gone by so fast but yet so much has happened since then…  unexpectedly becoming foster parents to two beautiful Burmese girls and the devastating separation to follow… packing up my classroom in Owosso and life in Lansing… finding a disaster of a classroom here and long list of kids, all with the same diagnosis of “mentally retarded”, and somehow turning it into a fun learning environment where I love coming to teach each day… meeting and saying good-bye to so many new friends from so many places… near-death experiences and rare illnesses, countless hospital visits… wild adventures traveling on backs of motorcycles and in overcrowded guaguas through bustling cities, along palm-lined shores, past fields of sugarcane, and through vegetated mountains… meeting crazy wonderful people along the way with all their crazy wonderful stories that inspire and mold me and my perspectives… a natural disaster that brought so much tragedy yet such an amazing outpour of love and kindness too… deaths and births of loved ones… I’m not sure I quite realized what we were getting ourselves into taking that spontaneous flight one year ago, but looking back, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

So anyways, that brings me to this week and my update.  Since I think everyone takes the most interest in all of the crazy illness stories, I will start with that.  In addition to the “gripe” (pronounced greepay) which is like a cough dew cold that you always have either a little or a lot and never really goes away, an inevitable surprise came Monday morning that I thought I had become invincible to.  On my forearm, I found a circle of several elevated bumps which eventually formed one big large pink bump known here as “hongo” (fungus).  The kids are covered in them, in many of my photos I’m sure you could find 20-30 covering their sweet little heads, which in 8 months has never stopped me from cuddling, hugging, and covering them in kisses.  I expected this would be a trade-off, I would love them and save them the hurt of rejecting their affection, and in return would get the hongos myself (like the 4 months of impossible to get rid of biting lice I got in Mexico).  But after a few months here, I figured I was invincible to them and figured this meant I could just smother them even more.  Not sure why it took 8 months, but no such luck.  Just pray it stays on my arms, and not covering my head like our little guys (and girls) who get their heads shaved regularly.  Our cute little girls here and gorgeous actresses like Natalie Portman can pull off that look, but I think I’m just not one of them… I have pictures of the hongos but chose not to attach them just because they’re not pretty but let me know if you really want to see.

The rest of the week has been kind of the same… more parties… more specifically a barbecue/dance party thrown by the Canadians where I spent the night twirling around with my student Moises (my blind boy with CP who calls himself my boyfriend) – looking across the basketball court I realized he was the only one in a crowd of the 200 who wasn’t able to get up and dance, so I can’t quite explain the joy that came when I asked him if I could “have this dance”.  He is one of those kids who is like a little slice of heaven… I don’t think it’s possible to spend time with him and ever leave in a less than stellar mood.  Thursday we had a thank you party for the Canadians on behalf of the “special ed. dept.” where we presented cards, sang songs, and ate cake that I was up baking furiously til midnight the night before after seriously screwing up the recipe (you’d think with the amount of cakes I bake I couldn’t still screw it up).  We also spent the week doing a fun Easter unit, making crafts, painting eggs, and creating Easter baskets for our Easter party on Friday.  I managed to pull Dave out of bed before the sun once again so he could help me fill Easter baskets and hide eggs Friday morning.  It was still a week before Easter so I came up with this long explanation which I reenacted for the kids of me calling up the Easter bunny on the phone and asking him to come one week early because we were going to have vacation from school.  The kids didn’t understand or care since they thought the Easter Bunny was American anyways and he had never visited before, but they giggled along and enjoyed all the treats and festivities.

Okay, and again more of the same weekly events… more Italians of course, who were on their way to Haiti to host this event/donation thingy put on by Dannon yogurt at the NPH hospital there.  More aid trucks to Haiti and just more aide…. Thankfully I was able to slip some money (donated last week by my lovely BFF Tracye and her friends) to my new friend Cristel on her way out to visit family in Haiti for Semana Santa… She is a gorgeous Haitian girl and our new French teacher here who lost her home in Haiti, and I already love her.    

Saturday was my first day running “Dominican Experience” by myself here.  They were a group of high school students with their teacher for Alberta, Canada doing like a mini Peace Corps (2 weeks instead of 2 years) but actually really like the Peace Corps… staying with low-income families, no running water/electricity, working in the bateys, getting to know the people, cutting sugarcane in the fields with the underpaid Haitian workers… no fancy resorts or swimming pools… the real deal.  And compared to many of the high school “service groups” I meet down here, they were really really great.  No complaining about spending all day in the hot sun….  they got lots of yardwork and gardening done, and they also painted super cute murals of animals and such on the walls of the previously blank pre-school playground.  They included me in their “daily reflection” group which was full of tears as they shared some pretty profound stuff for a group of high school kids.  One girl I had a chance to talk to told me she herself was adopting from El Salvador so this was quite an experience for her.  I was blown away by them, and excited to hear they all seemed to want to sponsor kids and come back as volunteers. 

Friday afternoon, classes were cancelled and my roommate Katha and I organized a teacher training on how to use some new donated materials to play learning games and help the kids use more hands-on techniques (as a previous volunteer in the school explained to me once, here it mostly like the teacher writes on the chalkboard, the kids copy it down, and if you can’t see it or don’t get it, you’re just kinda screwed).  It turned out pretty good, the teachers did get really into it (we brought lots of volunteers up front and the trouble wasn’t getting them to participate but rather to get them to sit back down after!)  The room was loud and they were having fun, and hopefully a piece of that will transfer back into their classrooms… J

Sunday we went on this “religious outing” and marched for 3 hours in the sun in what felt like 100 degrees stopping to pray every 5-10 min. or so – no water and no bathrooms – then went to a church service that some teens put on for another full 3 hours – also no water and no bathrooms – I don’t know how the people do it!  Poor Maria Ines asked me to look for a bathroom with her which we didn’t find (I brought my Nalgene bottle that I shared w/ her and I myself used the bathroom in one of the tia’s houses halfway through the parade), and when we came back she sat through another hour rocking and crying through church until I finally took her outside where she immediately dropped her pants and peed on the side of the church… then refused to speak for an entire hour because she was so ashamed.  The people would tell me “you shouldn’t have given her water” but it’s just so crazy some of the things they do here like this.  Now you might understand my comment about retreating to the mountains… not cause I’m not religious, but just some of the things they do here are just so crazy.  But the religious controversies I come across here are another topic I could go into for several more pages so I’ll just stop here.

So the rest is just same ol’ same ol’ – working in the school, watching movies under the stars in the park curled up with kids in the grass, playing “beauty shop” for hours in Santa Ana where the girls rip through my hair not quite understanding my hair isn’t African like theirs, and just playing, dancing, goofing around here… also 2 days up in the mountains which could be another whole email too.  But I know everyone says my emails are too long and though I always have a goal to shorten them it just never happens.  Maybe I will cut them to every 2 weeks or maybe try a blog again (last time I just couldn’t get it to work from the orphanage or upload all my old emails).  Anyhow, Happy April Fools – go play a great trick on someone, and also very Happy Easter, have fun back home with eggs and bunnies, I’ve heard the big Easter tradition here is sweet beans, like baked beans with syrup and sugar and cookies inside, so consider yourselves lucky to be in the USA. 

Oh and let me know if you would be willing to pray for Yudelkis, one of my students and former Santa Ana girls who has a hole in her heart and is very sick.  She needs lots of prayers.

Love, peace, and prayers,

Easter baskets!

At our cool hotel in Jarabacoa, it was made almost all out of bamboo!

Easter bunny came to fill our Easter baskets

Dave visiting with his mama in Jarabacoa

Playing Easter bunny games