Live This Life: Dominican Style

Wow, where to even begin? Christmas was a whole new level of intensity at NPH to put it simply. Basically for the 10 days leading up to Christmas through the day itself, there was not even a spare minute to sit down, breathe for a sec, or even sleep. The term exhaustion doesn’t even begin to describe how some of us volunteers felt afterwards. But we made it through and more importantly, we know that Christmas was special for our nearly 230 kids at NPH!

1. Las Mañanitas

For the 10 days leading up to Christmas, every morning at 6:00am, we did a reenactment of the Nativity scene which included going from house to house singing until finally, at the last house, Mary, Joseph, and crew came out. We all then went over to the Nativity scene set up by the basketball group and did some more prayers and song and ended each event around 7:00am with tea and crackers. This past Saturday, it was the volunteers turn to be in charge. I was a very pregnant Mary! And then on the last day, on Christmas eve, we all finished by going to the nearby batey and celebrating with all of the people there!

When it was Santa Ana's turn to host!

Avriel as the star and me as Mary!

2. Kola Real Christmas Party

Our kids are lucky enough to get to attend a couple of Christmas events, thanks to our generous sponsors. Kola Real, a local soda company, made Christmas really special this year by inviting all of our kids to come to the capital for a party. The day started at 1:30pm when they sent four coach busses over to pick everyone up. Our kids were more than content before we even left site as they each got their own seat and soon realized there was a flat screen TV on boarding playing Ice Age 4! Things only got better from there. We arrived in the capital an hour and a half later to the sight of tons of blow-up bouncy shapes, cotton candy, popcorn, and of course, Santa Claus! Everyone got their picture taken in a new T-shirt and green Santa hat that they were given. Besides Santa, Frosty the snowman, the gingerbread man, and various other winter creatures showed up and best of all, there was a HUGE dinner to end the night. It was an event to remember!

Chilling on the coach bus!

Josi with Santa and his elf!

3. Pig-Killing

So as I’d heard about for nearly a year, we kill some of our pigs for Christmas dinner. As Pili and I were headed into the office around 8:00am on Friday morning, we happened to notice smoke coming up from the conuco (farm) and we realized there were two pigs tethered on ropes. We got over there just in time to see pig #1 get killed by getting smacked with a huge log. Next, some boiling hot water was poured all over them as the workers scraped off the skin and hair. It was quite an experience to see! And the kids there were shocked that it was the first time I had ever seen a pig get killed!

A bunch of us watching as they cleaned off the pig just after killing it!

Scraping off the skin after pouring on boiling hot water...

4. Outreach

On Saturday, we had our annual Christmas outreach. We had two groups of kids go out to two different communities and give away containers full of food to community members as well as put on a program for the kids in the area. I went along with the group to the nearby community of Santa Fe, and as always with Outreach, it was a success! I was very proud of our kids…they did a great job interacting and giving of themselves!

Katerin and I ready to go!

The whole crew at the church we worked out of!

What a cutie!

Sack races!

My new buddy!

Yolanda found a friend! I love how responsible our kids can be with babies!

Amauri giving away one of the baskets to a family!

Giving another one away!

Katerin giving one away!

The whole crew including kids, volunteers, tias, and Marijo!

And yes all 15 of us did drive home on this tiny truck!

5. La Noche Buena (i.e. Christmas Eve!)

This was a day that was MUCH prepared for in every house. Here, it is typical for the festivities to start up around dusk so we had a 7:00pm mass. Following mass, was the big Christmas dinner (this of course, included the big) and the dance competition! Each house had spent the prior week preparing a dance to showcase for this big night (including the volunteers)! I worked for HOURS with my house on prepping a dance to go with a merengue version of “Last Christmas” that is sung in Spanish and English. The girls picked the song and then three of my girls (Esperanza, Belkis, and Katerin) and I came up with the dance moves which we later taught to the house. Nearly all of the girls participated which was good to see! Hands down, our best rendition of it was on Saturday night as we performed for everyone! Things ended around 11:30pm that night as the kids went to bed with the promise of gifts in the morning!

Rehearsing the dance!

...This year, to save me from tears...

6. Christmas Gifts!

After hours and hours of gift prep and organization, everyone got together in the multiuse center at 10:00am on Christmas Day for the passing out of the gifts! Per tradition, each kids receives a shirt, pair of pants, and pair of shoes on Christmas day. And then on January 6^th, Three Kings Day, the kids receive the fun stuff! We went house by house handing out gifts and snapping pictures with Santa Claus! A big thanks to CESPM for making this day possible!

Maria del Carmen and Ditania!

All 220 plus gifts ready to go!

7. Piñatas

At 2:00pm on Christmas day, after a lunch in the park, all of us gathered in the multiuse center once again for the breaking of all of the piñatas. Each house made a piñata and there was quite a variety: a heart, a butterfly, a bumblebee, a pig, a tarantula, an elf, a dinosaur, a Christmas gift, a panda. And then there was our piñata: a flower. Now I gotta say, I had NO CLUE how difficult a flower piñata would be to make. About a week before Christmas, I pulled some piñata options off of Google Images and my girls decided on doing a flower. Simple I thought: 5 balloons you paint them, stick them together, and FUAH: a flower piñata. SOOOOO much simpler said than done. What Google Images doesn’t account for is the extreme humidity of the Caribbean, which basically prohibits anything from drying (the fact that I can take a shower at 7:00am and still have wet hair at the end of the day should have tipped me off on this!) And it a piñata sits there for awhile without drying apparently the balloon pops and it is a piñata no longer. So making 5 balloon piñatas actually meant making about 15 of them and still having problems with them drying, exploding, etc. Finally, we get 5 roundish, dryish piñatas and we paint them as a house (I was adamant that my house make the piñata, not just me!) And then, I smartly decide that the girls would love glitter so I bring a bunch of that over and off course all 5 get doused with it. Fast forward to the assembly of said piñata. There is no glue gun that works, no super glue, and fairly limited amounts of tape on site. DANG. So I am lucky enough to find a roll of clear packaging tape and I went to town. Between all of that tape and a lot of finger-crossing, I SOMEHOW got the piñata all together including the candy inside. Have you ever tried taping something covered in glitter? NOT EASY. Anyways, it’s finally Christmas afternoon, and it’s Santa Ana’s turn for the piñata. I’m watching them put it up on the rope willing it not to all fall apart. Somehow it made it up. Somehow it stayed together. And actually it took about 5 or 6 girls whacking it to get it to fall apart. That right there was my Christmas miracle. And never ever again will I make a piñata unless someone pays me an obscenely large amount of money!

The whole darn process...

Finished product!

How do we put it up, Kristen??

Yacqueline taking a few swings...

Next was Maria del Carmen's turn...

Followed by Erika...

And it's down...time to grab the candy!

8. Other Christmas Festivities!

I have to say that my favorite part about Christmas day was the giving of my gifts to the girls. For months, I had been working on finding photos of each of my girls when they were younger to give to them along with a photo of them today. From there, my mom helped me find some cute little bags, pencils, stickers, socks, and of course, chocolate to add to the mix. So while everyone was doing piñatas, I borrowed the keys from my tia and snuck up to the house will all of the gifts and put them all under the tree. I went back to the piñata party and when it ended walked back to the house with the girls. We go into the house and gils head straight for their rooms not even noticing the pile of gifts under the tree until Valentina walks in and screams “YOU ALL, THERE’S GIFTS UNDER THE TREEEEE!!!” Thus commenced the screaming, jumping, and running around. It was loud and it was precious! Each kid scrambled to find their very own bag! And guess what? They all loved it! “Gracias Kristen, gracias Kristen, muchas gracias! Later on, I went to find Wilson and give him his Christmas gift from my family as well!

All of the photos I gave the girls!

Secretly putting the gifts under the tree while everyone was at pinatas!

The mad dash after Valetina's announcement!

Muy contentas!

How cute are they!?!

Me and Belkis!

Wilson with his new Drake tshirt!

Cristela and me!

Tia Elena with the potholders my grandma made for her!

Overall, the Christmas season was crazy, but it was also really special. There may not have been Christmas cookies, lots of Christmas music, or snow, but I noticed that people seemed to focus on the real meaning of Christmas a lot more. It has been a special experience that I will never forget, and I got to share it with some of the best kids in the world!