NOT dial-up friendly...
Yea for canadians!
In the air:
I thought I saw heaven, but then I realized I was wrong, because you weren't there.
April and Melissa as we were getting off the plane...
We left the airport, and got into taxis and went to the camp site. Here's some pictures of our temporary housing:
As you can see, security was very tight.
Duct tape: the sign of a true American.
Enter my suite.
Good morning, sunshine!
I loved the landscape.
And my neighbors were nothing short of adorable:
This picture meant a lot to me. I got a lot of time to think, and I did a lot of thinking in the grass just staring up. It was really calming, and helped slow my tears:
The construction site was a lot of fun. We got a lot done, and I got the oppurtunity to bond with some of the workers and local kids. I even got to hang out with my girls from last year at the site:
Eliesel. I worked with him for a very large majority of the time.
Me and Elisa. She came with her mother (Annie), father (Mike) and older brother (Levy). She lives up in North Carolina and came with the team and is possible the most insightful 9 year old in the entire world. I called her "my little leech".
My "Que Carajos" face. The deal with this is that Moody told me that he wanted me to do something random to make me smile-like smack a cow. I did it. And it did make me smile.
Me and my girls. I bonded with them last year.
Me and Escarlet. She was a little girl that I met last year that helped me a lot. She is such a pistol. She's 11 and turning 12, and she was one of the reasons that I was excited about going back.
Another one of my reason for going back. This is Chin-Chin and she's 7. She's deaf, so communication was smiles, laughter, and sticking our tongues out at each other. She's so adorable.
That little braid in my hair was done by Escarlet.
Annie. It looks like she's is a tanning bed because of the color of the tarp.
Freddy (one of our taxi drivers), Jesse, Mike, Hector, and Joe.
Myself, Tito, and April(or "Abril". Her name is spanish is weird, just like mine. I'm "Chanon"). Tito was there last year as well.
Grr. Mas fuerte.
Me and April showin off our muscles.
Me and Seo. His name was to much of a pain to pronounce, so I called him Seo.
Sonrisa!
Hector. The boss on the construction site. You can see how hard he's working...
And yes, we did work:
On the right is what was before, on the left is everything we did. It doesn't look like much, but we put up supporters on the inside of the rooms and tied rebar and steel together on the top, and put up the wood that you see. They are going to pour the second story really soon, which is a lot of progress.
We went to the service at the church by the construction site. I got to sing in Spanish, so that we fun for me. We walked around the neighborhood and invited people to come to church, so that was fun as well:
The church.
Me and Chin-Chin.
They are both incredibly adorable.
The kids loved my camera.
We drove up the Bateys (I'll explain what that is in a second). The drive up was nice, but long. We stopped at a local park for lunch:
Even the Dominican Fireman need support.
That's comforting.
In this picture, we pulled off the side of the road for a minute, and I wanted to take a picture of the mountains. But as soon as I pressed the button, I saw that there was a guy peeing in the picture, so I yanked the camera down and this is the picture that it took.
The Park.
I got into a fight with the kid in the yellow. He's a major pain. In this picture you see aj, katie, levy (his face cracks me up), dalton, elisa, and montana.
Some paper I found there. I was thinking that maybe someone could read it. It might even be upside down for all I know...
I didnt know my own strength.
My and April taking our "Gansta" picture.
The drive to the Bateys was three hours. The Bateys is close to the border between the Dominican Republic and Haiti. These people are "outcasts" from both countries. The Dominican government says that they are Haitan, and the Haitan government says they are Dominican. They are really poor, and they get little medical attention because of their status. So we went out there and offered a free clinic and nutrition program.
Some of the people waiting for the clinic. The people there were really nice and very receptive. I got to walk around and hand out tracs, and I got to talk to some of the local girls and kids. I talked to a couple of guys, but they made me very uncomfortable. I didnt like being around them, so I helped with the kids and stuck close to the girls.
The woman in the red was making candy in a pot outside. She let us in her house and showed us around.
The girl who is smiling helped me out a lot. She hung around me and kept the weird guys away.
A typical batey house.
This baby was so adorable. He was chewing on one of the tracs.
The three amigos.
The kids loved having their pictures taken and they seemed to get a big kick out of it when I showed them the picture that I just took.
Another batey house.
These guys let us husk corn with them. It was cool.
These were the weird guys. The guy in the middle said that he wanted to marry April and started following her around trying to kiss her and tell her that he wanted to bang her. It was really gross. But the guy in the red hat has a million dollar smile if I've ever seen one...
"Hace calor!"
We even entertained some of the local kids. We sung songs and had clowns, and just had fun:
The girl all the way on the left stole my heart. She has a lump on her stomach, and she needs to have surgery. She hung all over me, and I loved picking her up and holding her.
Cute sumo baby.
Not everybody got to come in.
We passed out food and clothes to the kids there:
The pastor of the church in the bateys and his daughter.
My new ride...LoL.
She's so adorable.
And there's that million dollar smile again...
We did have time for ourselves on the trip, too.
We went to a Dominican restaurant called "El Conoco" and got to dance and have really good food:
The woman danced on a bottle.
These two girls were the clown at the bateys. They did an awesome job.
Then the dancers came and grabbed people from our group to dance.
April was laughing the entire time when she was choosen.
The entire time she was screaming in english, "I don't dance! Get someone else!"
I liked the expression that people got when they say that a white girl can actually dance.
Annie looked like she was hopping around the dance floor.
Joe did pretty well.
Hyacinth, Melissa, Annie, and Mike enjoyed themselves.
Levy and Dalton partied to much, I guess. And yes, Dalton is asleep with the table cloth in his mouth.
We went to a beach on Father's day...
(Since I wasn't there)
and went shopping and to another beach on wednesday...
Freddy and Eddy (our drivers) told me that this was my new boyfriend, so we had fun laughing about that. (You can kinda see my injury in this picture...)
It had decent surf, so I went out surfing. That was a lot of fun. The weather got bad just as we got out...
And of course, just like last year, my trip was completed only after I get a few injuries...
I got a couple scrapes and bruises. Nothing that I saw as that serious.
Last year, I got hit with a rock by a protestor. The rock is about 3 pounds and it was thrown through the taxi window and hit me in the ribs. This year, everyone was kidding around and told me to avoid rocks. I didnt listen to well, I guess. I was surfing, and I ran face first into the coral reef.
That was right when I got out of the water.
It's starting to swell a little now.
This is pretty much it. I got a nasty bump on my forhead, the lovely cut between my eyes, a few embrasion on my forhead, and a nasty cut on the top of my head. The rock was so shard that it cut my hair a little bit in the front. Now a have a few of these tiny little spikes. I don't want to take a picture of it now, because it looks really ucky.
Our last night together:
Elisa asleep on me.
All in all, it was a good 8 days away from reality. Now, I'm dealing with it again, and I wish I could go back. When I was there, I put everything aside and helped others instead of being selfish. And that was the best thing that I could do. I'm really glad that I went.
Until next year...