Graduation!

Me, Tania, Yocattia, Avriel, and Maria Ines

This weekend was a weekend unlike any other here at NPH…graduation! The festivities kicked off with the special needs students’ graduation celebration on Wednesday morning. Two of my girls, Erika and Carmencita, were recognized with certificates and I, sitting there in the audience, felt like such a proud ‘mom’.

Erika and me!

Saturday morning, the action continued with the 8^th grade and preschool graduation ceremony at 9:00am. This was a big deal…5 former volunteers made it back to celebrate, hundreds of photos were taken, and the kids were dressed in their absolute best. Another one of my girls, Yocattia, was one of the 8^th grade graduates. Again, I was soooo proud of her. I nannied for five summers, but I’d never felt like such a parent before. It’s hard to even describe! 

Yocattia!

The ceremony begins!

Our 8th grade boy graduates!

Our 8th grade girl graduates!

Yocattia and myself post-graduation!

Arturo and Milagros graduate from preschool!

Milagros gets her diploma...

 Then throughout the afternoon on Saturday, us volunteers prepared for the graduation red and black ‘after party’, this time just for those with invites (7^th grade on up). The night kicked off with some music, a brief power outage (in which the dancing continued), a dance show performed by a group that came in from the capital, an award show (Mr. and Mrs. 8^th Grade, Mr. Sonrisa Bonita, Miss Dulzura, etc.) and finally, us volunteers performed a dance we had secretly been preparing for two weeks. We made a mash of 5 of the most popular current dembow songs and put on our tigre gear and off we went. It was a blast!!

Avriel and myself all decked out in our red and black!

Franchesca and me!

One of the older girls painted the nails of all of the girl volunteers prior to the party!

Me and Sulema, the older girl helper in my house.

Giving out the awards...Mr. 8th grade was Yoan and Mrs. 8th grade was Yocattia!

All ready to dance in our tigre outfits...notice my Twins baseball hat...aww yeah!

And here we go...unju unju...

Getting our 'flow' on...

Muevete jevi jevi jevi...

 

Now, summer has officially started! About 1/3 of our kids are spending anywhere from a couple days to a month with family members they have, and the majority of those kids left today. Six of my girls took off this morning and another couple will head out in a week or so…it was a little bittersweet saying bye and knowing I won’t see them for awhile (I can NOT imagine saying my real goodbye when I leave). But I’m excited for them to be able to connect with their family this summer! Overall, it’s been a very busy week!

Proyecto Familiar (plus summer starts!)

This weekend was busy busy busy…and the kid in me definitely came out between the soccer, kickball, art projects, parachutes, Twister, tug-of-war, movies, and music in the park. One of my favorite parts of the weekend though was something we call Proyecto Familiar. It’s a project us volunteers are in charge of. About ¾ of our kids have siblings living here on site with them. So every couple months, each family gets together with a volunteer to make supper and just spend the evening juntos. This weekend, it was Yocattia and Franyersy’s turn. They’re probably one of the closest set of siblings on sight. I let Yocattia plan the night, so we started off by making tostones (fried plantains) the way their mom taught them when they were little. Then we fried up some eggs, cheese, and salami. And finally we made some chocolate pudding and finished the night off with a movie. Plus they squeezed a little salsa-dancing lesson for me in there too. It was a blast!! 

And as of today, school is officially out for the summer! This summer is sure to be an exciting one as we have 11(!) new volunteers arriving, 5 full-year ones and 6 one-month ones to teach fun summer classes. There are currently ten of us volunteers so we are more than doubling! Also, this summer, more of our kids than ever are going on vacation for anywhere from a week to a month to spend time with family they have…whether that be a parent that is still alive, an aunt or uncle, an older sibling, or a friend…so we won’t have nearly as many kids on site for awhile. And finally, we will have an unprecedented amount of visitors from ex-volunteers to families coming to spend time doing projects here from high school and college groups to my 2 sisters, a friend (Becca), and my aunt, Mary at the end of July! Let the busy-ness begin!

Wilson, My God-Bro

As of tomorrow, I have officially been living in the DR for 5 months, and hands down, one of my coolest experiences here has been having a god-brother. So, as you know, the fam visited here in February and mom and dad spent a good five days here at the orphanage before we hit the beach up north. Soooo….being as I work in sponsorship, I may or may not have pressured them into sponsoring a kid (actually it was quite easy) and guess who they picked…Wilson!

Wilson is 15 years old, and one of the awesome-est kids on site. He’s super passionate about learning English and about helping the special needs kids. We have a special needs house with 9 special needs kids, and he spends casimente all of his free time there and is always making sure they’re included in the activities that happen on site. He’s also got a younger sister named, Milis! Basically, he’s a great guy and he’s always asking about my family and friends. He’s easy to talk to and I actually do feel like he’s my brother as funny as that sounds. Let’s see…what else? He wants to be a comedian when he grows up and he’s determined to go to university, which I’m sure he will since he’s such a hard worker. Oh, and one more thing, he has a John Deere hat that he likes to sport on occasion. I knew the first time I saw that hat that we would get along!

Anywho, if you’re ever so inclined to send a letter or anything this direction, it would be awesome if you sent something for Wilson too. All of our kids love love LOVE hearing from their sponsors (which we call godparents/padrinos) and I want him to be included in the fam as much as possible. And his birthday is October 6^th! So there you have it, you now know my one and only god-brother, Wilson!

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!

Melissa and My Girls

So, this past Wednesday, college roomie and bestie Melissa arrived. We spent Wednesday afternoon through Saturday morning in Juan Dolio at an all-inclusive. We spent about 75% of that time at the beach or pool, which was awesome. Although rainy season is upon us, apparently Melissa brought the sunshine, because it didn’t even rain or get cloudy once. Saturday morning, we changed scenes from the tourist DR to the real DR and we took a public guagua over to NPH. We started off with a tour and approximately 200 introductions. We ate lunch and supper in my house and my girls took an INSTANT liking to her. We told them a story about how in college we make hundreds of paper snowflakes one year before Christmas and currently, paper snowflakes are still being made in the house (all it took was that little story). Saturday night was spent dancing out in the nearby batey after saying good night and getting a quick dancing lesson from the girls. On Sunday morning, Melissa said “Adios” to the girls and off we went to the airport. It was a quick, amazing trip! 

Getting a seafood dinner!

Show at the resort!

Pool + beach + bar!

Roomies!

Pool with a swim-up bar!

Hanging out at NPH and headed out dancing!

In other news, ‘Titanic’ has been a major obsession with my girls for a few months now.  I spent a good hour with Katerin and Maria del Carmen tonight rehearsing two verses and the refrain of “My Heart Will Go On” over and over and over and over. It’s the little things in life… :)