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

So the reason I didn’t write yesterday is because I was in the hospital again – but this time for a really good reason. J  Dave’s brother Tim and his wife Paola had their baby!  Ana Leah DeYoung.  She is beautiful and BIG – 9 pounds and not sure how many ounces because the Dominicans just say “Nueve pica” – like 9 something.  But she is very pretty with blue eyes – everyone says she looks more like Tim but I think it will take a while to decide.  So yesterday we talked one of the other volunteers who works in the office to let us borrow the “Chana” – this smushed looking truck thing that is the biggest piece you could ever imagine – to go down to the capitol to meet our new niece.  The windows and the air conditioning are both broken, so I arrived to the hospital with a new sunburn and absolutely drenched as if I had jumped out of swimming pool, and the car stalled out like every 5-10 minutes, the doors even swung open as we were driving on the highway, and we couldn’t make it up even the tiniest hills, but we still arrived as excited as ever.  The hospital room had quite a crowd of visitors and everyone was super stoked (see pictures of the beautiful baby girl below) – Dominicans get quite loud and emotional in times like this – especially Paola’s mom.  After visiting with the baby, Dave wanted to buy some new sandals and eat out at Papa John’s so we had Tim draw us a map of Santo Domingo that was so not to scale, and so we ended up super lost on a wild goose chase for two hours lost in the crazy chana car.  The capitol has sooooo much traffic and all the lights are set on 90 second timers so it can take hours to even cross town, so we decided to finally navigate on foot, which was more fun to explore the city.  The pizza was like 3x what you’d paid in the states and we never found any sandals but it ended up being a fun date night… a long one since we got back home to the orphanage at almost midnight.

Okay so I guess now I’ll rewind back to last week and just walk through the highlights in chronological order day by day…

Monday we started a new week in our zoo animal unit and another week with Italian volunteer Valeria helping in my class and Santa Ana house.  She taught us new dances everyday, and she was so goofy and fun.  It’s crazy how some people have such a presence and can make your life a million times better just by being there.  In our animal unit, we read about and acted out life cycles, cut and pasted animals into their habitats, sang and acted out animal songs, “painted” animal crackers with pineapple marmalade (and food coloring) with paintbrushes, made twirly snakes to match the story “Verdi”, created a toilet paper tube zoo, read lots of animal stories, played matching games with animals to their babies, and so much more I can’t come to think of at the moment, and Friday we culminated it all with a trip to the zoo.

Tuesday I had just come in to start teaching for the afternoon when I heard screaming (screaming is not unusual in the school, but this was of an unusual type) in the hall.  I came out to find little Dion, one of the pre-school kids from the batey had fainted in class and the teacher was carrying him unconscious to the kitchen.  The custodian kept rubbing alcohol all over his face but couldn’t wake him up.  It was so scary.  I saw some Canadian teenagers hanging out on the playground so ran out to tell them to go find a doctor to send to the school.  I saw a few minutes later they were still hanging on the playground equipment so I became a little bit less friendly and yelled at them to run and send a doctor in a car.  It was a super hot day and the clinic is far so I was really proud of them for running all the way there.  Finally they got him to open his eyes but he still laid limp and his eyes just rolled around in his head.  His dad, who works on the school grounds landscaping, came to take him home but I insisted on the clinic instead and spent the afternoon in the clinic with him translating for his dad and the doctors.  Turns out he was just super dehydrated because the batey had no water for 2 days and the only thing he had eaten was a couple of cookies that day.  The batey is just right around the corner, so from there the Canadians said they would make sure that lots of water would be sent over.  Water – such a life staple that we just so take for granted…. everyday here I learn more and more what we actually can and can’t live without.  Thankfully Dion was back in school 2 days later - shining his bright white smile and belting out the national athem in “formation line” again.

Tuesday night was Nikki and Collin’s goodbye parties which we did as a pizza party (Dave was LOVING it).  Collin returning to Cali after 2 months of driving trucks everyday to Haiti, and Nikki onto her next adventure in the Galapagos Islands after a year as phys. therapist here.  Nikki was the first friend I made here in August, so I was sad to see her go, but I am getting more and more used to the revolving door to our house and the weekly goodbye parties.  We had pizza night with the volunteers with lots of crazy stories.  I feel like such a homebody after listening to stories from nearly every roommate about backpacking across multiple continents, conversing in 4-5 languages…. Like Guesa, new dentist / professional kiteboarder from Switzerland who is planning to break 2 Guinness world records this fall when he kiteboards from Russia to Alaska – he already has $56,000 invested from sponsors….. or Jacob, the Texan lawyer who studied culinary arts in France and now volunteers in the special needs house, and who has already started his plans to open a franchise of coffee house daycares when he goes back to the states in May.  There are some really outrageous people coming through our front door everyday. 

Wednesday was an early morning as I snuck into the school at sunrise to start decorating the room for Maria’s birthday (my lovely teaching assistant who’s more like a sister).  I covered the room in streamers, posters, cards, presents, and made a purple cake with a big heart.  She was turning 29 and said with tears in her eyes that it was the first time anyone had ever celebrated her birthday and said it was the best birthday she ever had.  It was definitely worth getting up early for.

Thursday highlight was pasta night with Valeria.  She came over to the Santa Ana house with me that night and cooked up amaaaazing Italian pasta.  It was fun and so delicious.  And then I accompanied the Canadians all night translating for them as they brought new stuff animals to all the kids in their beds, riling them up for all the tias.  It was a late night, but worth it for all the hugs and smiles.

Friday was our zoo trip, which was another 2 hours lost in Santo Domingo with our driver Mario, but a very fun trip.  It was a beautiful zoo and much bigger than I expected (not like Detroit but awesome for the DR) and the kids loved taking the train all around to see the animals.  Friday afternoon the Canadians planned the Olympic games for the orphanage which ended in a huge crazy water fight, and Moises has not stopped talking and laughing for 4 days now about how he “got my husband Davey so wet”.  Friday night we had movie night in the park and I sat and cuddled up among the 200 kids and watched Scooby Doo on the big screen.

Saturday was up bright and early again for “Dominican Experience” – a group that hosts foreigners on service learning trips – NPH is one stop among many.  I will be helping take this over when Mark, other roomy, isn’t here so I’m learning how to coordinate, give little speeches, try to encourage sponsorship, etc.  Seems like it’s pretty up my alley other than more work on Saturdays.  After that we loaded up in the bus, and went with the Canadians to these underground caves called “Cuevas Maravillosas” – they were amazing and full of these Taino Indian drawings that were supposedly 900 years old but to me they looked like Pokemon and cartoon characters that one of my students could have drawn.  After that we went with them to stay at a hotel for a night, on them, which was soooo nice (not the nicest hotel but so great to get away off the “terreno” for a night and bond just the two of us – plus 40 Canadians :)  Met lots of new people, lots of new stories…. Including Anita, who had recently had cancer and had her entire tongue and jaw cut out, and spent the week in a mask but still pretty remarkable that despite the obstacles, she’s here on a mission trip in the DR.

And Sunday they paid for 40 of the kids from the orphanage to come to the hotel to swim in the pool and have lunch – it was packed and a recipe for disaster – it didn’t take long before little Antonio had fallen and busted his head open and we were speeding to the hospital.  The only available vehicle was the “Jungle Safari” bus – the size of a semi with outdoor seating and broken brakes, so it was a little nerve wracking but Dave got us there safely.  It took 4 of us to hold 4 year old Antonio down on the bed while they gave multiple injections and put in seven stitches, then stuck a tetanus shot in his butt (after we promised it was all over).  Another crazy day…. then hurried home to bake a cake in time for Valeria’s goodbye party at Santa Ana.

Another week full circle, still lots of details left out but feels like I am writing just waaay too much again.  Let me know what you want to hear if you are reading – what’s interesting, what’s boring, what’s just too depressing or offensive.  I don’t really know anymore.  Pray this week for all the kids here who are sick – HIV, AIDS, cancer, heart conditions, etc.  We had another very near death experience with one of the kids this weekend and it’s just so scary sometimes.

Hope all is well back home…. Here is SOOOOOO hot again.  Dave’s mom comes Sunday so that is exciting.  We got a new guitar for the volunteer house so the roommates are singing along to Ben Harper and the likes.  Take care and keep in touch. J 

Pics below are baby Anna Leah, zoo trip, kids painting animal crackers, baptism pictures, Papa Johns, views from our hotel, and Dave pretending to pee on the Chana car. 

Love, peace, and prayers,

Kristin                  

My new neice Ana Leah!

So by the title, I am sure you have already guessed it has been a hard week.  This is the first time in my life I have ever had to attend the funeral of a child, and I hope it will be the last.  I’m writing this now on Sunday night because I know I can’t make it through this email in a public internet café tomorrow without losing it. 

So, Wednesday morning we were all in the kitchen making breakfast when we got the news that Raquela, a beautiful girl with big gorgeous eyes and mini braids from the Santa Clara house had passed during the night.  I didn’t think this could be true, as I had seen her the night before at the barbecue party on the basketball court giggling and dancing and playing with the Canadians.  I ran to find the house director to find the news, who said “Yes she died… we don’t know why…. resume your day as normal, go teach in the school and we’ll let you know when we know about the funeral”…. It’s hard to piece together the day that followed… Nikki, Raquela’s house volunteer and my close friend, ran from the house crying and literally has not stopped since.  In the school, the kids ran through the halls yelling “Raquela died! Raquela died!  Did you know that Raquela died?”  Though it’s not anything new or uncommon here, the kids still all deal with death in so many different ways.  The comments in my classroom ranged from:

“We can’t play very much today, we have to be serious because Raquela died”

“Raquela died, so we all get to go in the big yellow school bus on a field trip to the cemetery.”

And when I said she’s in heaven now with God and the angels, Erika (my seven year old with cognitive impairments) responded:

“Heaven - that’s where my mom is too.  She can be with my mom, she will give her hugs”

We prayed a lot and we tried to take things easy, making cards and talking in circle time about how we can help the tias or her teacher.  The first grade teacher stood outside her doorway and sobbed and sobbed.  “She was my student last year and now she’s gone… why does this happen so much in this terrible country?”   How do you resume school as usual and just teach math and vowel sounds when a member of this big NPH family has died?  Soon the school director came and said go home, eat lunch, and come back to the chapel in two hours for the funeral.  My roommate Ross carried in her body and Nikki bathed her and washed her hair.  The tias dressed her in her best clothes and found flowers around the grounds to pin in her hair.  She looked as gorgeous as ever lying in her casket in her little white dress but I couldn’t get too close, it just didn’t seem real.  Samuel from my morning class made her a card, and I took it over to her house, Santa Clara.  I can’t explain the confusion and sorrow of the girls in the house.  The girls ran to me and took me by the hand and showed me her photo on their house bulletin board.  That’s Raquela, my friend, my sister, Princess Raquela… her sister Cristela was hiding in the back of the crowd with big swollen eyes.  Her nine year old sister, who comes to my class in the a.m. for reading support, was the only family member at her funeral.  The tia and I held each other and cried into each others’ shoulders.  I actually feel sick just even rehashing all of this in writing.  The funeral was made up of a large crowd of white t-shirts – black and white are the funeral colors here but mostly white.  The funeral was short – no poems or letters or stories.  Some Canadian high school kids sat behind us and chit chatted in English, mostly complaining about how hot and tired they were, while in the meantime our kids were wailing and crying – two were carried out nearly hyperventilating and one had fainted.  The wailing got louder as the casket was closed and carried out.  We overloaded the big yellow school bus, 3-4 to a seat and many people standing.  My dress was soaked by the time I got in from holding and hugging kids who sobbed uncontrollably into my stomach.  There was not room for everyone, and many kids didn’t want to go, but some were not able to because of Canadian visitors who wanted to go and then wandered around the cemetery taking pictures as if they were on a tour.  The bus must not have gone more than 10-15 miles an hour so it was a really long, silent ride.  Right before we got to the cemetery, the Hurst ran out of gas and was stuck outside the cemetery.  So we all piled out and waited for someone to bring a plastic red container of gas.  Then we made our way down to the grave site where Magali and Lizbeth (who both passed away in the past year) were also buried.  Dave’s co-worker Dioni brought the little rickshaw car full of containers of cement.  And there, the workers and kids poured cement and water, mixing the cement while the older girls sang and everyone else cried.  The graves here are above ground, cemented into a stone slab, which is just what they did after we watched them put in the casket and a drawing/letter from our class, and then cemented the casket in.  And as we continued to cry, the kids helped to wash the cement with a hose and clean the truck.  Every unimaginable job not completed by staff of a funeral home but rather by the kids, workers, and volunteers here amidst their grief.  It is so incredibly different from the $10,000+ ordeals we have in the states.  Then we left the cemetery and it was over.  Less than 8 hours after finding out at breakfast that morning.  Another child gone, and life goes on.

But now the questions, how did she die?  What happened?  How is this fair for this beautiful, bright, and overly affectionate 7 year old to be gone?  How do we help the kids to understand?  And how will her 9 year old sister Cristela ever recover?

As with the other two kids who died here, there was no autopsy.  The answer was simple – “she just died.”  She, like many kids here, had AIDS, so there was an easy blame.  But since we had 41 Canadian doctor/medical staff here who were by her side through the whole thing, things were much more complicated this time.  They have made themselves loudly clear; the cause of death was not her AIDS.  The cause of death was neglect.  The Canadians will say over and over again, she didn’t have to die.  Her death, like the majority of deaths here in the DR, was preventable.  She went into MUSA, the public hospital I have described in past emails, the Canadian doctors ordered to have a tube put into her lung and an IV put in.  They didn’t have an IV available so they put her in a waiting room.  She died a few hours later.  She died because immediate action was not taken.  So now what?  These things happen in the DR all the time.  We are in a developing country where the systems – education, healthcare, business, etc. – are simply, for lack of a better word, subpar.  People are angry, hurt, devastated, but we are not in the states.  We can’t file a law suit.  We can’t fix it.  We can’t bring her back.  The kids don’t ask for an answer.  They are sad, but they are used to it.  Almost all of them have lost one, if not both, of their parents and many siblings.  People here die of simple illnesses and accidents that would be easily treated and taken care of in the states.  But it feels like because she’s one of our kids – an NPH kid who we know and love – it should be different.  But should it?   The people in Haiti have it even worse.  How is this fair?  White people with money come and go from the country all the time, but it is still left the same – AIDS, poverty, death, suffering – how can people drive by in their tour buses and happily sit in their resorts sipping pina coladas, leaving without giving a second thought to those people dying right outside the walls?  Not to say that I don’t appreciate the tourists who do feed the economy, but the injustice and inequity that exist in our world just sometimes blows my mind.

And where do we go from here?  I know my emails are usually happy go lucky with fun stories, but the truth is that sometimes it’s just really hard.  Sometimes it hurts too much.  Sometimes I hate it and sometimes the culture makes me want to scream.  What do I do with her nine year old sister who will now be coming to my classroom much more (as I invited her to).  I gave her a new stuffed animal and lots of hugs, but what now?  How can I understand when I have a living sister, just two years younger than me, the same as Cristela and Raquela, who I have barely spoken to in nearly a year over one misunderstood phone call.  How does this make sense?  But life here has resumed as normal.  The activities resume, but the tias cry and cry, saying “Can’t they see we’re mourning – that we lost a child we love?”  And now my heart jumps or my stomach sinks when other kids get sick.  One of the girls from my house who has AIDS had a fever that spiked Friday during the night and went to MUSA.  Though it seems selfish to compare, I can’t help but think, what if this happens with one of my Santa Ana girls?  Or one of the kids in my class?  Could I handle it?

So definitely this week, the child who needs prayer is Cristela.  Let me know if you will pray for Cristela.  And for Nikki the volunteer too.  She also worked with Lizbeth who died in December, and is beyond heartbroken.  She has gone days without eating and cries non-stop. 

In positive news, I do have an exceptionally wonderful visitor, Valeria, from Italy who is helping in my classroom.  She has been by my side this past week and has quickly become a close friend.  She came as one of the gazillion Italians who was on her way to Haiti and simply passing through, but then they decided not to let her go there for whatever reason, and because they didn’t know where to put her for 2 weeks, they asked if she could hang with me.  I was a bit worried she might be like some of the visitors who are afraid of my kids or don’t know how to interact with them, but she has been as far opposite as possible.  She is creative and patient and fun and just plain awesome.  Lately I have had a hard time with the school here, missing my colleagues in Owosso, and she has been a complete answer to prayers – a total angel.  She also helps in Santa Ana with my pre-teen girls so she has gotten an inside peek at my life here, sat by and listened, inspired and encouraged me, and become a friend very quickly.  I will be very sad when she goes back to Italy next week.  She was there with me today, proud too with tears in her eyes as my girls were baptized and had their first communions in the church at NPH in their frilly white dresses, lacy socks, and shiny white shoes.  They were beautiful, and I got tons of pictures.

As you know, I could share a million more stories of all the things that happen in a week here, but will let you go now.  Please keep praying for everyone here.  We really need it right now.  Also, pray for Haiti.  I just heard tonight from my roommate who's just back that violence has broken out there again and that Father Phil (the director of NPH there) found the decapitated head of a nun on a pole there.  I don't know if she was involved in NPH there or not, but crazy stuff, and so unfair when it happens to the people who are just there trying to help.  Pray, pray, pray...

Love, peace, and prayers to all,

Kristin     

Roommate Nicki and beautiful angel Raquela

Hi,
So it actually is, for the first time, really really cold here.  Actually today the sun did peak out so it was perfect sweater and jeans weather, but last week and especially through the weekend, it has been cold!  Seems like a nice change other than we did not come prepared for cold, so instead we layer and layer anything, leggings, jeans, tshirts, sweaters.. and have been wearing the same thing a lot.  Saturday we took a cold, really rainy moto ride, the rain felt like needles and by the time I got off I actually could barely move my fingers, I was so cold.  I know I am not getting any sympathy here from anyone in Michigan but the weather really has been so bizarre.  This past week has been kinda like the weather, kinda blah.  Not to complain, but this really might actually be a short email because there's just not too much to share.  New week, but kinda same ol same ol... finished up the dino unit, more roommates left to go home to Germany, new dentist roommate arrived from Switzerland to stay 2 months.  Lots more visitors en route to Haiti, mostly Italians again.  41 more Canadians here for 2 weeks, all doctors and nurses this time, they are bussing in hundreds or maybe thousands, of kids from all the bateys around San Pedro.  The clinic has been crazy but it's really pretty amazing how many kids are getting treated and taken care of from so many different places.  Spent the weekend hanging out in the batey, exploring San Pedro on the moto, eating pizza, hiding under a blanket from the rain and cold, working in the school, hanging with the kids, tia teacher conferences, etc.  Last night we figured out how to set up our living room as a movie theatre using some donated equipment from the Canadians... usually used for Friday night movies for the kids projected on a white sheet on the basketball court.... and we watched The Blind Side... first movie I have seen in forever but really really good.  Okay, I think this is all I have for the week, sorry so boring, but it's been kinda that kind of week, not really boring, but kinda dreary and still full of many challenges... sometimes living in this humanitarian hotel/grown up college dorm with 16 roommates, among 200 troubled kids and working with people with different backgrounds and beliefs can be a bit difficult.  Child of the week for prayer... Wilkin.  He tried biting me today several times and tried to stab me in the face with a pencil, after trying to hump my thigh during math center.  Ah maybe this is too much info., but for anyone who knows me well, knows these can be normal occurences in the world of special ed... especially in an orphanage in a third world country I guess. :)  Still love each of the kids to pieces, but ah sometimes it gets crazy.  Below, I am attaching a few pics from this week from our end of the week dino unit celebration.  I made green "swamp juice" and found "Dino cookies" at the store - how lucky is that?  Also, our dino lace up animals and a few other projects on the class bulletin board.  Okay well lots of love and peace and prayers sent your way from the DR...

Love always,
Kristin

Portfolios ready to show off at Tia Teacher conferences!

Happy first day of March!
So though happy to report things here have been relatively uneventful, at least in terms of no natural disasters, near fatal illnesses, climbing mountains, etc., I can't believe what is happening in the rest of the world!  We were at the beach on Saturday when we got word, then came back praying for my roommate Kristina who has lived the past 2 years in Santiago, Chile, where all her best friends and boyfriend live.  She was trying to skype him all night without luck, sitting in our kitchen in suspense.  Finally she got word from a friend that he is okay, but still hasn't even talked to him.  Then we heard about the tsunami heading for Hawaii, where my sister, and New Zealand and her home country of New Zealand.  Crazy!  I haven't seen the news yet today, but it looks like there has been so much devastation in Chile.  Not quite what happened in Haiti but we keep saying that can't imagine if this 8.8 had happened in Haiti, the whole country would have been wiped out.  Anyways, crazy stuff.  I'm sure they will need lots of help and prayer now too. 

So since I am limited on time here, I think I will make more a bulleted list of highlights/updates from the week rather than my usual looooooong email... though I'm sure some bullets will be quite long themselves. :)  Some weekly highlights:

* Dave's new garden in our courtyard of our house... he's planted tomatoes, mangos, avacados, papaya, chile peppers, and much more.  And his surprise going back to our old house and finding a mango tree and two avacado trees growing out of our compost pile!  Hopefully a few years from now the kiddos will be getting all the fruits and veggies they could ever need in their diets, and hope we can come back to see it and enjoy! :)

*CANADIANS!!  January starting the Canadian CRAZE that was bigger than I ever realized... they are coming down in teams of 20-30 each week in phases, there are 129 altogether, and it all started when this amazing couple from Canada feuded over where to spend their 25th anniversary vacation.  They came across NPH Nicaragua and since then they have brought hundreds of friends and literally hundreds of thousands of dollars.  They have built houses and bathrooms in the nearby bateys, as well as schools, churches, and do microfinance loans to start businesses in the poor areas.  They took me shopping last week and bought all new workbooks and supplies for my class.  From our few vacations through Canada, I never would have known how much I could love Canadians!

* Italians... we've had about 30-40 staying in our house in this past week (though not all at the same time)  We still have aid trucks go to Haiti everyday, and we are still filling them with doctors and volunteers all the time, still dominated by the Italians.  They are sleeping on cushions all over our living room floor every night.  We had a famous Italian actress with her famous soccer player husband the other night.  I was already in my PJ's so Dave tried to convince me it was Victoria Beckham so I'd come out but I didn't fall for it, and didn't meet the famous people who were sleeping on our living room floor.  Speaking of famous though, we have had many names through our NPH hospital in these past months.. Wyclef Jean, Diane Lane, Sean Penn to name a few... NPH Haiti is becoming a pretty happening place.

*Germans... okay last ethnic group I swear... my roommate Nikki had her family here and Wednesday they cooked us a HUUUUGE feast of German food and barbecue, desserts and beverages... with them here and the roommates, the Germans dominated Wednesday night, more Germans than the rest of our countries combined.  It was the most delicious food I had in all my time here and we ended the night by climbing up the wall of our house and sitting in a campfire style circle on the roof laughing and telling stories under the stars.

* Dinosaurs!  We started our unit on dinosaurs this week, and the kids love it.  Our 5 year old nephew Asher sent us these awesome videos on him teaching about dinosaurs with his great collection of toys (SO cute!), and we used our blow up dino toys from Mrs. Gooding's class in Owosso to play all kinds of games like Dino Stomp, Name that Dino, and jumping over the Dino Swamp.  We are making lace up dino stuffed animals, dino teeth necklaces, going on dino bone digs on the playground and even found a baby dino egg!  (I painted a watermelon white and we hid it on the playground :)  The library even had all the fun dino books about Dinos going to school or the doctor, in Spanish.  (see dino egg photos below)

*Carnival and Independence Day... Friday we celebrated carnival by making fun sparkly masks... idea and materials provided again by lovely Mrs. Gooding... and put on dress up clothes and marched around the carnival.  The kids had an assembly where they read poems and sang songs about Dominican independence, I learned a lot.  Saturday night we decided, against others' advice, to go out to the malecon for the Independence Day celebration and for roomie Jose's bday (I baked him a lemon cake painted as a Spain flag!).  But definitely would never go back.  Mostly just really drunk people doing things I would would never imagine to see in public, streets in mountains of garbage, and people breaking and throwing bottles and getting into fights all while children wandered helplessly through the crowds and across streets of broken glass.  We snuck into a club down the street that was completely empty because everyone was outside, and spent the night practicing our merengue and bachata dancing.

*The bateys.... In addition to taking my student Rodolfo out with my roommate to celebrate his classroom success, the nearest batey, Batey Nuevo, set up a snack shop/bar with the microloan from the Canadians.  We went out Friday night to support the efforts, but mostly for me just to play with the kids.  All the kids recognize me from the school and come running and jumping, Kristina Kristina... I became a human jungle gym for the rest of the night and we danced and danced all night swinging the kids in airplane rides, upside down, etc.  I bought grape soda and gave it all away to the kids in "vasitos de munecitos"... using the top as a "little dolly glass".  I love the kids at NPH, but hanging out with the batey kids in and outside of their one room tin huts in the batey both melts and breaks my heart to just a whole different level.

* The beach and sunshine... Dave and I jumped on his motorcycle Saturday and snuck away for a few hours, speeding down the highway along the shore, sun burning my shoulders, until we found a deserted beach to enjoy for the afternoon... just us, our books, the swaying palms, turquoise water, and sand.  Though I did get super burnt. :(

*Progress reports... okay so this more just a ton of work than a highlight but it is so worth and exciting to see the little to lot of progress the kiddos are making.

Okay, so maybe the bullets weren't really a shortcut.  Other than that, the usual highlights are just the hugs and kisses from the kids, the flowers and love notes and treats.... playing and dancing, breaking my back with the bajillion piggy back rides.

Child of the week, let me know if you want to commit to praying for Samuel O.  He was expelled in the fall and is fulltime in my class, and it is not always easy.... he is a sweetie but definitely a trouble maker to say the least.

Okay love, peace, and prayers to all.  Wishing you all an awesome week!!
xoxo
Love,
Kristin



Carmencita drinking dino juice at our Dinosaur day party!



How perfect they make Dino cookies here??



Our dinosaur stuffed animals we sewed!





Playing dinosaur games - thanks Mrs. Gooding for your donation!

 


Found the dinosaur egg!!

 


Independence Day parade!




Maria making masks with the kids for Independence Day!