Nonstop.

So these past two weeks have been STRESSFUL. I think it’s actually been my most difficult time at NPH up until now….certainly a reminder that this job is HARD. Anywho, here’s a peek at all the insanity…

Hurricane Sandy

It hit pretty hard, and it was about a solid 4 days of rain and overall dampness. The kids had a day and a half of school cancelled and were cooped up in the houses, so I certainly got in my fair share of domino games. It was definitely the most rain and most forceful winds I have seen here. Fortunately, here at NPH we were just fine…I don’t even think that we had any trees down, and we’ve planned very well for rain with our set up (drainage system, etc.) The same can’t be said for the rest of the country. There were lots of trees down and I can barely imagine the mess with all of the gravel roads and lack of general preparedness for rain. Things were certainly flooded. I kept thinking of the barrio in Santo Domingo I visited back in spring with a medical group that is located in a valley. I remember being told that it is one of the poorest barrios in the country, because it gets washed out every year. I’m sure they were affected big time…

Our new pool!

Madelon Gets Sick

This was a wild card. Madelon went in the clinic on Saturday morning while Av and I cleaned the house to soon hear that Madelon had been admitted into the hospital for the next 24 hours because she had a bad stomach infection. SHOOT. As we all know quite well, it SUCKS being in the clinics/hospitals of this country and even more so when one’s alone, so Avriel and I worked out a plan of shifts on the spot. We were also in heavy-duty gala planning mode at this point, so luckily we were able to bring over a bunch of work that we could do while she rested. Thank goodness, Madelon made a full recovery and is up and running at 110% again!

Visitor Day-October 29^th

As I’ve mentioned various times before, Visitor Days are the toughest of days here. There’s so much expectation, joy, and disappointment all at once—pretty extreme. This Visitor Day, I worked at the front gate for the first time greeting all the family members who came to visit and getting their information. It was interesting, but is also one of the toughest spots to work since there’s so many kids there just hoping that the next person to walk through the gate will be someone they know. The rest of the day I spent with my girls who didn’t get visitors. I think there were 11 of them without visits. Us girls hung out painting nails, chatting, playing Bananograms, and they helped me prepare stuff for the gala as well. This Visitor Day about half (100ish) of all of the kids got visits while half didn’t.

Photo shoot time with Erika, Esperanza, and Belkis!

There we go! Esooooo!

Esperanza and me!

Someday I'll get a photo with Lucy looking at the camera!

Bananagram time! Actually, not a very easy game when every word here can be spelt about 3 different ways according to most!

Gala, Gala, Gala

A prestigious country club in the capital agreed to help us put on a big gala at their location, so this was an event we had been planning for since the end of summer. Our main goal was to get new sponsors and donations too of course! My main role was prepping sponsorship stuff as well as helping make the ‘kid cards’ that we put at every spot on the tables. That turned out to be QUITE a chore. Essentially, we had to cut out a red rectangle, cut out a blue rectangle, glue on the blue rectangle, cut out three different pieces for the front and glue them on, cut out a piece for the back and then glue it on, and finally get the specific child to sign it FOUR HUNDRED times over. Yup. Luckily, I was able to get a lot of help from my girls and in the end, they looked great. We had just over 250 people at the gala and we got 19 new sponsors! The program went well and we all got back home here at 2:30am that night!

The room was gorgeous!

Each place setting complete with the 'kid cards' we made!

Another place setting with the flower centerpieces...that was a nice surprise (especially since we didn't have anything planned for the center of the tables!)

Sponsorship wall!

Daniela (sponsorship coordinator), me, and Sonya (accountant) back working the tables!

One of our dance lines got to go and be a part of the program...here I am with Esperanza and Valentina.

Grupo de Amistad

Another thing that I know I’ve mentioned quite frequently is Family Project (Proyecto Familiar) where siblings get together and make a supper. In October, it was my turn to help out with the ‘Friendship Group’ or the kids from three different houses who don’t have siblings here at NPH. We made pizza, and it was a BLAST! There were 8 kids and 3 of us volunteers. A great time was had by all :)

Emaus and Pili preparing the crust!

Everyone assembling the 3 pizzas!

Enmanuel with pizza #1!

Emaus watching the pizza cook, haha!

Juan Carlos and me!

Joe and I dancing a little impromptu bachata...the kids are always shocked to figure out that us foreigners can hold our own on the dance floor!

Time to eat!

Gosh, teenage boys can eat a lot!

The whole crew!

Sponsorship Murals

And lastly, a project I’ve been working on for awhile was making some new sponsorship boards for the visitor houses on site and I finally got that done! We decided to advertise sponsorship by dressing up the kids in costumes that reflect what they want to be when they grow up and asking for help making their ‘dreams come true’….I’d say it turned out pretty well!

Well, I think that’s about it for this novel. The only other thing of note is that I go home in 8 days….I can’t wait!!!! So excited for a little bit of cold, a cup of Caribou coffee, and seeing loved ones!

P.S. I’ve had a few questions about the puppies….well, they spent about a week leaving right outside the front gate before Kieran realized that was the start of a zoo…so the puppies got sent away :( But hopefully they’re alright!

P.P.S. I got SOOO lucky this week! I accidentally spilled a cup of water on my laptop (I didn’t want to break the glass cup apparently, so I let it fall on the laptop instead of the ground) and my laptop refused to turn on for a full 24 hours. I was getting a little worried, because a new laptop isn’t exactly in my $50/month-paycheck budget. Well, one day and a huge bag of rice later (fortunately, there’s so shortage of that in this country) it turns on with only a small water stain on the screen THANK GOD!!!