And The Doors Opened...: Sunday, May 16, (It's been a while...) to Wednesday, May 19, 2010

So I woke up to the lovely sound of a feathery creature jumping onto the tin roof of our barracks. It was a peacock. A PEACOCK! Annoying. It apparently miscalculated his landing since he scratched and slid, clawed and scratched his way up to the top of the roof. Everyone woke up - not just me.

So today was a day is discussing our journals. We were told that we had to have a journal to write in if we were going to get academic credit. Well I wasn't going to, but I brought one anyway and I am glad I did. I like to write. This way I won't forget what I do each day. It's just stupid since they are going to read our journals and comment on them. By "they" I mean my project leaders. We are going over "ways to write" and how to journal. Lame. This place kind of reminds me of high school. Cliques, groups, clans... It's all here. I'm not one who fit into any one group. I guess you could say I'm a "floater."

I am sick of being treated like I'm 5. My leaders are treating us girls like we are in back in 1st grade. We have "jobs" to do each day. They all have fancy names too. I was the paparazzi one day where I was the designated picture taker. Another day I was the "go-getter" so I had to "go get" the girls who weren't at the dining hall yet. Stupid. We had this chart that used colored popsicle sticks that were rotated every day. Boo. We all signed up for an eye-opening experience. If we wanted a vacation we wouldn't be here at all. We all go to universities somewhere in the world, how about we don't be treated like little kids? That would be a start.

Speaking of an eye-opening experience... Seeing little kids with dirty clothes, no shoes, hardly any education... It broke my heart. It makes me feel horrible because we are all complaining about something. The heat, how dirty we get at construction, and the fact that we couldn't straighten our hair. These little kids don't know any different. They don't know how to live life any other way than with the things they have. I learned that I can't change the poverty level here, I can't change the way these families live, the only thing I can change is the attitudes of the little kids and helping them have a better day. They can come to the school here at Rancho Campeche and smile. They can forget about their troubles at home and just have some fun. It seems so inconsiderate of me to complain about little things when they are the biggest issues in the Dominican Republic. I never realized the things I took for granted like electricity, running water, HOT water, food (that won't give you salmonella), clean clothes and bodies, and shoes.

One of the girls on my trip with me asked the country coordinator a question that crossed everyone's mind. "What do the Dominicans think of us? Should we really take pictures of them? What is crossing the line?" She didn't really have an answer for us. Instead we came up with a group consensus. My personal opinion is that the people here are so intrigued by anything that isn't familiar to them. I am different so therefore they are going to stare. People are so curious that they don't hide the looks they give us. They don't hide their emotions and facial expressions. It's fascinating to me that the mothers here enforce their children to dance and pose for pictures. Were we interrupting their lives? Are the happy we're here? Maybe we weren't interrupting anything. They knew we are here to help them. That could be why they are so interested in all of us. Because we are helping them. They don't know anything other than what they have in front of them. They live in the moment. I wonder what they would do in my shoes?...

We had quite the commotion tonight in the bunks. One girl ran out of the barracks/bunk house/cabin thing screaming at the top of her lungs. She stops where there was a big group of us and she goes... "I am 98% sure that I just touched a ______ tarantula!!!!!!!!" It was so funny, but most of us got nervous and didn't want to go to bed. Then we are treated like we're 5 (again) because we didn't want to get into our beds with there are tarantulas running around all of our heads. That's just gross. Our leader goes... "Girls. It's just a tarantula. Now go to bed." Of course no one wanted to, no one was listening to her. She grabbed a shoe and a roll of toilet paper thinking it would be enough. WRONG! It make it's way outside and one of our local helpers "took care of the situation."

There was another fiasco with the journals. The leader man wouldn't give me mine back even though I NEEDED to write things down. It's how I cope I guess. I asked for it and I even said I would give it back to him. But he said no. He eventually gave in when I got angry and a few other people wanted theirs back too. To top that off, when it rains here everything gets shut down. The parents don't send their kids to school. No one showed up for class today :( We had a few hours left of the day and finally a few showed up. It was the first day of class too. We got assigned students and they were our own individual student to teach. My student's name is Angel Luis. Not like a Christmas angel, but Ahn-hel Loo-eeees. He's shy but he knows his stuff. His English was pretty good too! He didn't know full sentences and things like that, but he knew some vocab words that a lot of the other kids didn't. He caught on really fast too. Quick learner he is. He is 11 years old and wears long sleeves and jeans in the 90+ degree weather. AH!

There was this group of little boys in the afternoon that always hung out together. You could tell they were the "bad boys" of the class. I just had to get them together for a picture.

In the afternoon we have a different set of kids come to the school. So there are a few girls that I am going to be teaching in this group. Vanesa and Yocaira. Yocaira's real name is Satan Elena. It means Saint. The complete opposite of what we thought... Vanesa is really clingy and doesn't want me to be out of her sight, even while playing games. Satan Elena is quiet and doesn't really show emotion. I can't tell if she's learning anything or not. I can't really tell yet. Hopefully by the end of these 2 weeks they will want to come back. They were both 8 years old. My group decided that the morning students are Dominican and have a little more Spanish. The afternoon group wasn't into the games as much and they seemed like they didn't know much Spanish. They always looked at us like we were silly for saying anything to them in Spanish. We were kind of thinking that maybe they were Haitian? They had to leave and come to the Dominican after the earthquake. We/I have absolutely NO idea.