Whoa, I’m exhausted. This weekend was busy busy busy! I spent Thursday and Friday in the office translating and prepping all sorts of stuff for the International Meeting. And then Friday night, I played visitor coordinator for a bit when a group of 15 Canadians came in. I went to La Romana airport and picked them all up, then helped them figured out their rooms, get dinner, and that kind of thing. Then Saturday morning, I gave them all a tour of NPH and we went to a nearby batey. That was crazy because 1) I’m giving tours of the place and talking about it to groups when 3 and ½ weeks ago, I hadn’t stepped foot here yet…I’ve come a LONG way…and 2) the bateys are really poor areas and I really felt like we were intruding their living space by taking a group of white people there who were snapping photos the whole time and such. Anyways, the last thing we did was go to a couple training fields. LITERALLY right outside of our gates is the Milkwaukee Brewers field, then a little farther down are the Detroit Tigers and the Toronto Blue Jays. This is just one example of the HUGE contrasts I’m seeing…dirt poor villages with tin shacks next to fancy, huge buildings with beautiful grounds and guards at the gate.
Then Saturday, I showed a movie (The Little Mermaid) to my casa and another movie to the younger boys later at night. Sunday was Visitor’s Day, which I decided was definitely NOT my favorite day here. I spent the whole day face painting and taking pictures technically, but more than that, just hanging out with some of the kids who were having a tough time, because their family didn’t show up (even though a lot of them promise they will). One of the cutest boys was so down, he wouldn’t even talk to anyone, so I just sat with him for awhile and then later we took a walk and he started talking a bit. Then one of my girls, who is always bouncing off the walls because she has such a bright, loud personality, broke down crying in my arms when it came to be 5:00 and her family still hadn’t shown up. I definitely teared up with her and we had a good chat about how it’s okay to cry sometimes. Of course, there were many happy kids with aunts, dads, siblings, etc. here, but for me, at least, it was hard to enjoy the day, when I saw so many kids, who are normally pretty happy, super down…walking around by themselves, hiding away from all the action, that kind of thing. Also, there were a lot less family members that showed up than normal, because we didn’t send a bus up north to pick some of them up like we occasionally do.
Other than that, I got a lot of dancing in this weekend! We went to the batey on Friday and Sunday night (today was a holiday, so no school or office work—Duarte Dia). I just LOVE the music here! And both of those nights, as soon as us girls started getting asked to dance, we were out of chairs for hours until we were ready to leave as the guys outnumbered us like 5 to 1. And literally EVERYONE dances here. There was even one guy I danced with wearing a MN Twins hat! But it turned out he didn’t actually know anything about the team…but still kind of exciting. While walking home on Friday night, John and I managed to step right into a HUGE pile of horse manure, so that was…an experience. Anyways, good weekend, but I’m wiped. Here’s a couple photos!
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