Life Here Is...

Comical. Frustrating. Beautiful. Exhausting. Inspiring. Busy. Captivating. Sweaty. Unpredictable. Crazy. Touching. Loud. Adventurous. High-Energy. Unique. Multilingual. Precious.

Imagine living with 215 children 24/7 in your own ‘mini community’ out in the country but all within 4 cement walls in a 3^rd world country…

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Here's the last couple weeks in a nutshell...

1) Sick. So this fits under the exhausting and frustrating category. I was sick sick sick this past week. I literally was in bed for 48 hours straight. Head, stomach, eyes, throat…it was all bothering me. Comically enough, I was just talking with the other volunteers last week about how I’d not gotten sick yet while they all have. Needless to say, that is not true anymore. Anywho, still not feeling quite up-to-par, so getting tested for parasites tomorrow.  

 

2) Movie theatre. Friday night, we took 15 kids to the movie theatres that had won a reading contest we did a couple weeks back during La Semana del Libro. It was a blast! There were a couple kids who had never been to a movie theatre before. They were fascinated during the movie by the little room where the movie is projected…couldn’t stop looking back. I ended up sitting next to one of our little 7-year old troublemakers, and he behaved so well. I was so proud! On the bus ride home, the kids all fell asleep, a couple right on my lap.

3) Mother’s Day. Today is Mother’s Day in the DR, so we did a celebration in the school on Friday for one group of caregivers and we have another celebration this afternoon for the other group. I still haven’t figured out why we celebrate this here. I think we are removed enough that if we didn’t celebrate it, most kids wouldn’t even realize it was happening. It’s really bittersweet, because the kids put on some fun dances and skits, but underneath it all, most are a little sad as they think about their mom’s that have either passed away or abandoned them.

  

4) Visitor group. Yesterday, we had a group of 50 visitors from North Eastern University in Boston. Mostly college kids and a couple professors. They were a great group and helped out by working in the farm, donating lots of stuff, and spending some quality time with the kids. But add 50 people to the daily ins-and-outs of life here and things get a little crazy. Long, good, exhausting day.

5) Bday party. Amidst our visitor group, we had the birthday party for the birthdays in May. This is something the Sponsorship Department is in charge of, so I took the bull by the horns this weekend and tried to make it a fun event. We celebrated 19 birthdays from 2-year-old Jofran to 16-year-old Franklin.

Jofran!

Jonathon, Sandy, and Luisito

Precious!

Luisito---Best. Smile. Ever.

Some of the birthday boys!

6) Baby picture contest. Starting yesterday, we are doing a contest where the kids see pictures of all of us volunteers as kids and have to guess which is which. It is the TALK OF THE TOWN. Everyone is SO into it! Can you guess which one is me? Everyone tells me I’m ‘igualita’ and ‘linda’ with my ‘dienticos’…

 

Coming soon…Meet Wilson, my godbrother!