A ‘Normal’ Week Amongst 225 Kids!

Carolina and I!

Alright, so this week has been surprisingly ‘normal’ (whatever that means!) Although I miss my family after the awesome two weeks we spent together, it’s nice to have a bit of a return to normalcy after the craziness of the last two months with Christmas, New Year’s, Three Kings Day, and our 10^th Anniversary celebrations. It’s a good chance to take a little bit of a step back and just appreciate all of the daily occurrences.

A pick-up game of volleyball in the front bedroom. Notice the belts doubling as the net, hehe!

Eridania during recess at school!

Our youngest and oldest, Saul and Debora, walking to school together.

This past Thursday, Avriel, my partner in crime (in more ways than just the fact that we work together in the same department) took off for three weeks of a well-deserved vacation back home in Washington. That leaves me in charge of most Communications department stuff for the next couple weeks, which includes taking lots of photos I’ve realized (what a rough life…NOT!) Here are a few of the photos I’ve had the chance to snap!

We did a little 'Day in the Life of Milagros' segment. Here she is at school!

Walking home from school...

Playing on the swings...

With her volunteer, Milena!

Another request was for everyday items for the kids here...

On Friday, I took out my December birthday girls to San Pedro. It was a really fun group of girls this time around as they were some of the most mature ones in my house. We got some pizza and smoothies and then spent a little time being girly and doing some bargain shopping. On a side note, I’ve been doing these birthday outings with my girls once a month since I got here. This time we were riding in the public guagua (“bus” i.e. dilapidated van that is on the verge of its probably 100^th breakdown) headed to supper and I asked Esperanza if she knew how much a public guagua ride cost per person to see if she knew. Before Esperanza could respond a Dominican lady from the back piped in, “25 pesos!” Well, okay. Next, Milena asks Esperanza how much it will cost us in total since there were 5 of us. Again, before Esperanza had a chance to respond, the lady in back exclaims “125 pesos!” to which Milena responds, “We know, we’re trying to see if la niña knows!” In the moment, it was a little frustrating, because the lady clearly assumed that Milena and I were foreigners without a clue as to how things like public transportation work when really we’ve been learning its ins and outs for quite some time now. But then I thought about how weird it must have looked to all of the people on that guagua that there were two young foreigners, an American and a German, teaching 13-year old Dominican girls things like how to ride public transportation. It really is quite unusual that foreigners come into a country for a year, learn the ways of the people, and then essentially are the only ones in a position to teach Dominican youth who’ve lived here their entire lives basic things about their own country like how to ride a public guagua. That’s certainly not a ‘normal’ situation….just one of the differences between our kids and kids who grow up in a normal family setting.

Esperanza, Belkis, Estrella, and I on the malecon after supper!

On the moto...one of my favorite parts about life in the Dominican!

The drive home!

The last event of note this past week was Visitor Day on Sunday. Our last Visitor Day was at the end of October, so lots of kids were excited to see family members that they had missed so much during the holidays. It was a relatively calm day as far as Visitor Days go. About half of our kids got visitors, which seems to be about the norm. For the kids who didn’t have visitors, us volunteers did activities such as face painting, hula-hoop contests, parachute, etc. Per usual, it was a tough day on the kids who didn’t receive visitors. We can put on as many activities as possible to distract them, but nothing can make them forget that they have no family or friends to care for them outside of NPH. However as my tía put in that night in our house when talking to the girls, “Everyone has things to thank God for tonight whether or not you received a visitor today.” So true.