Rereading blog entries

So a new group of volunteers arrives in the country twice a year. In August the youth, business, and health volunteers arrive. In the spring there is a group of environment, education, and IT volunteers. The arrival date for the newbies is February 29^th, just over a month from now. We received our invitation in the mail five weeks before our departure date. This means that all the people who will be arriving next month have already received and accepted their invitations to join Peace Corps DR.

This morning I noticed there has been a significant spike in views of our blog entries from the first year of service. I attribute this to the undoubtedly several dozen people frantically searching the Internet for clues as to what the next year might bring. (For those of you new volunteers coming in February who have found our blog, we are looking forward to having you, and reread our post from six months ago to that incoming group if you like.)

Anyway, I realized I have never read through our old blog entries from the first year, so I did so this morning. I pretty much have two options to describe the experience. I can be very succinct so as to single out the emotional impact, or I can write a long-winded evaluation of how far we have come and apparently how much we have changed. Nothing in between will suffice here.

I think all I am going to say it…wow.

DR Christmas Number 2!

This was our second, and probably last, Christmas spent in the Dominican Republic. Most volunteers went home for the holidays, but having visited in August we stuck around. And I’m glad we did. Last year was difficult because we were still living with a host family and had to hide in our room and have a little Christmas opening presents and listening to music for the morning before being taken to a crowded club on Christmas evening. This year was much better because when you live in the Caribbean and have control over your own schedule, Christmas can be great. We missed seeing family and friends and look forward to next December, but it’s in the 80’s here and we spent the 24^th and 25^th at the beach. We actually did quite a bit of traveling for Christmas week. We went to the capital for a couple days for the country director’s Christmas party. We spent the morning of Christmas Eve opening presents in our house while drinking coffee and listening to music. A huge thanks goes out to my mom for sending us presents and Christmas decorations. Then that evening we stayed at Juan Dolio, our favorite beach get-away. Christmas Day we went east to Bayahibe and stayed with five other volunteers in a hotel room and the empty house of another volunteer visiting the States (thanks, Selina!). My dad and Nancy arrived that evening and we saw them for about an hour before letting them go back to the hotel to rest while we spent the rest of Christmas with the volunteers. For Christmas dinner we had tacos and chocolate cake.

Our Christmas tree with our presents and presents from Mom!

Coolest present so far: The Waboba ball my mom sent me. It skips on the water and goes really far. I wouldn’t have much use for this in the States, but in the relatively calm, shallow waters here it’s perfect. In the short time I’ve had this it’s become very popular among several other volunteers. Sweet.

Christmas anecdote: Kristy and I pretty much bought each other the same presents. There were a couple differences, like I bought her some jewelry and she got me some cool toys. But we both bought each other coffee and chocolate, and we bought the exact same set of coasters. These coasters also come in one of four different holders, and we each bought the same holder. There’s only one store that we know of that sells these coasters, and they wrap presents for you. So when we put our presents under our “tree” and saw two with the same shape and wrapping, we looked at each other with our “We’re becoming the same person” look, which is similar to our “Oh no, we’re both nerds” look. The reason these coasters are cool is that they have themes that remind us of the DR. Most touristy junk is unappealing, but these are unique…except in the Humphreys house where we have two.

Our identical coasters

"You're a monster!"

Cool Tourists (…Coolists?)

“No mayonaise.”

I look up from my computer in our beloved Trigo de Oro café in downtown La Romana to see four American tourists sitting at the table next to mine. There are three women and a man, and all seem to be more or less in their late 60’s. Initially I am pleased to hear English. And then it happens.

“No mayo. No…mayo….naise. Good lord. No mayonnaise!…whatever. If they’re going to serve tourists they should learn to speak English.”

The man is pointing to the picture of a chicken sandwich on the menu and yelling at the waitress who clearly doesn’t understand what he’s saying. So he resorts to the three immature stages of people who haven’t seen enough comedy to know they’re a big cliché: talking slower, yelling, and frustrated failure.

Fortunately, this doesn’t happen as often as you might think, but it does happen, and more often than it should. Although to be fair, I understand why it happens and it’s almost unfair to the tourists. You work hard all year and spend money that may or may not be expendable, so you develop a lot of expectations for those six or seven days. You’re at your most hedonistic and you worry less about your own standards of behavior. Heck, I show signs of being that way when Kristy and I go to a hotel. She always points out that that’s when she takes the opportunity to dress up and I dress more casual.

So, like all situations, at times you’re dealing with jerks and other times you’ve got decent people in unique circumstances. Nevertheless much of our long process of integration has included intentionally addressing many of the stereotypes about Americans that are a mix of American media and interaction exclusively with tourists.

So you’ll understand the pleasant surprise it was to receive an e-mail from the main office looking for volunteers near La Romana who might be available to spend an afternoon with a couple people arriving on a cruise ship. These two, David and Anna, were potentially interested in joining Peace Corps after retirement and wanted to meet some volunteers. When I e-mailed them back they were enthusiastic to come visit our site as well. So, on December 15^th we met them downtown, they bought us lunch, and we brought them back to Villa Hermosa to see our site. They also brought us a killer care package and have expressed interest in supporting our upcoming groups.

Anyway, a huge hello to David and Anna, and thanks for representing our country well as you’re out traveling.

David and Anna in front of our apartment

Construye Tus Sueños Business Plan Competition

In mid October we had the annual Construye Tus Sueños business plan competition in the capital. There were 100 kids representing 45 business plans that were there for three days to either watch or compete. Twenty-four groups competed in front of a small group of judges, eight were invited to compete a second time in front of everybody and all the judges, and four were chosen to have their business plans fully funded. 

I brought two groups from my business classes, one of which competed. She did not win, but both groups say they now have an idea of how good you have to be to win, and they are both planning to come back and compete next year.

Overall it was a great conference, very professional and the kids learned a lot. I learned a lot as well, and we have a laundry list of things to tackle to try to make it even better next year, principally by moving from 3-4 awards to a 0% micro loan model which will allow us to fund more plans, include more partner organizations, encourage well thought-out budgets, and improve accountability since just dropping 60,000 pesos (about $1,600) on a few kids from the campo has been shown to potentially do as much or more harm than good. 

Now that the conference is over, we have to begin the process of dispersing the funds to the winners and maintaining accountability that the money is being used for its state purposes, fundraising for Construye 2012, and planning out the tasks and responsibilities of the new leadership team. There are eight coordinators on the leadership team and our ambitious goal is to identify all the tasks and ambitions of Construye for 2012 and assign responsibility for each one to a coordinator by the time everything dies down for Christmas. I will probably have some specific tasks assigned to me as well, but my primary role is to coordinate the team and make sure the whole thing is coming together. 

Personally, in addition to leading the coordinating team, I will facilitate the business curriculum again this year. I also hope to have two or three Dominicans who have completed the course co-facilitating with me. 

Anyway, more to come as things progress. Kristy and I are both swamped, but I’m excited about the projects we are tackling this year. 

Friends at Construye!

Rediscovering Music

I think my friends all know that I love music. It’s been a huge part of my life since I started singing as a kid, and even more so since I picked up a guitar for the first time my senior year in high school. I’ve had my ups and downs – times where I played almost every day and dry patches of not playing at all for several months, but it’s always been something I go back to and find a lot of fulfillment in.

Right after swearing in as an official volunteer, a small group of volunteers scoured the colonial zone in Santo Domingo looking for music shops and a group discount to buy guitars. We finally found a decent guitar for a decent price and four of us bought guitars for about $60 a pop.

I then preceded to not play it for a full year. Well, not really. I pulled it out a few times, but we were living with a host family and it was just awkward. Dominicans really only like their  music and I don’t think they really got my folky singer/songwriter style. Not to mention, I only know songs in English (they did however appreciate my improvised rendition of “My Heart Will Go On” when they asked me repeatedly if I knew the Titanic song).

However, in the past 2 months I’ve developed friendships with some fellow music loving volunteers (Phil, Eli, Andrea…you know who you are) and have found the courage/inspiration to dust off Fulano (the name of my dominican guitar) and start playing again.

So, for your hopefully not too harsh criticism and enjoyment, are a few samples. First is a video of me playing Adele’s “Someone Like You” (thanks, Andrea for showing me this song!).

And here’s a recording of something Eli and I wrote together. We didn’t get to finish it so it’s a bit short, but you’ll get the idea. Eli’s playing the guitar part and I’m singing.

I’d also love ideas of new songs to try and learn, so send me your ideas and/or requests!

Life just got busy again

A weird dynamic of being in the Peace Corps is the upward and downward swings of busy-ness. Volunteers talk about it a lot….it´s really hard to be balanced. Most of the time we´ve got almost nothing going on, or we can hardly keep up.

When Brian and I got back from our trip to the states, at first I felt like I would never get things going again. Kids were busy with school, they didn´t seem that excited for the new groups I was starting, and a few meetings completely flopped. But, predictably, the momentum has caught up with me and I´m starting to feel like a crazy person, going from preparing charlas, to working on writing grants, to planning events, to going to meetings, to visiting other volunteers, to trying to keep up with house work, to attempting to find some down time.

If I´m honest with myself, I prefer to be a little stressed out. I like feeling productive, and a little pressure keeps me motivated. However, I do let it get to me at times and that results in some not so pleasant Kristy moments (sorry, Brian).

I´m trying to be more mindful of how I handle things like stress, and guilt for not being more stressed out. Peace Corps life is going to naturally slow down and speed up, but I have the responsibility of maintaining a healthy mental and emotional life in spite of all the external factors.

The other day, I was having a difficult time getting in touch with some people who I needed to talk to for a grant I was writing, and on top of that, I had been given some misinformation that meant I might have to start over. I could feel my temperature rising and rather than pace around the apartment like a crazy person pulling out my hair, I made myself sit down and play spider solitaire on my computer for a good half an hour until I calmed down. I ate a sandwich and went back to work as a professional and effective Peace Corps volunteer. For those that know me, that was my equivalent of running a half marathon after eating burger king – it took a lot of self-will and I wanted to throw up a little. But, it showed me it was possible and I´m excited to be maturing in this way.

Anyway, I have a long way to go, but one step at a time, right?

Great way to end the first half!

First of all, Friday the 23rd marked the beginning of the second half of our total Peace Corps experience, from arriving in DC for staging in August 2010 until we complete our service on October 27th 2012. So congrats to all of group 517-10-02 for that major achievement.

Alright, I’m going to take a quick break from explaining projects and camps and have an uncharacteristic pat-ourselves-on-the-back moment. This post contains prideful accounts of recent events. Reader discretion is advised.

Committee weekend was this week, and it’s when we have meetings for all the national initiatives and projects Peace Corps runs in this country. The meetings this week were for identifying changes in leadership and vision for the next year. Back in June, the current program manager for our business course and competition, Construye Tus Sueños, announced that he needed to find someone to take over the program for 2012. I told him then that I was interested in leading that program. So, going into committee weekend I was keeping this in mind and trying to plan out how I might balance projects on site if I were to be involved in the national initiative.

Let me explain, first, the dynamic Kristy and I find ourselves in. We’re both leaders and take initiative, but so are all people who join the Peace Corps, so over the past year we have taken on many support roles. We participate in a lot of things, but usually aren’t out in front or the most noticed, which is fine with us because we were first year volunteers, had worse Spanish than most, and were too busy on site to focus on national initiatives anyway. That is why what happened last week was an encouraging surprise.

Not only was there enthusiasm for me to take over the Construye program during our meeting among all the people who want to be coordinators next year, but before the meeting people were telling me that I should do so. On several occasions people said, “We were in a group discussing who should lead Construye next year and who could logistically do it and we thought, ‘Brian would be perfect!’” That never sucks to hear.

Then, to my great surprise, several people expressed disappointment after the Construye meeting because they wanted to invite me to join leadership teams in other programs. I did agree to be a coordinator for the exploding Superman initiative because I plan to expand my boys’ group on site this year, appreciate the heck out of that program, and just love doing it.

I’ll let Kristy tell her own stories, but she had very similar experiences and for the next year is a coordinator for Glow, a 5-day girls’ summer camp that is the culmination of the girls’ programs, and she is the chair person for the Volunteer Advisory Committee.

Looking back on where we were a year ago, having had extremely low (and in my case, non-existent) Spanish, we’re amazed we’ve arrived at this point of taking on lots of responsibility and work.

Also, as hard as we worked this year to try to define and achieve a measure of success, a huge thanks goes out to everyone back home who has supported us. There are a lot of you, but the biggest thanks definitely go to our moms who have spared no expense in time or treasure. We love you both and will reward you with many fat grandbabies at our earliest possible convenience.

What’s coming next…

Now that we’re back after our vacation, I’m gearing up for another 13 months of Peace Corps project goodness. Here’s a preview of a little bit of what I’ll be working on.

Chicas Brillantes: I’ll be starting a new girls group, but this time for teenagers. The two girls that went to Camp Glow with me will also be helping me lead and organize. My baking class went over really well in the community, so my plan is to squish the two together. We’ll start the meeting with the preparing of a new cake recipe, then while it’s cooking on the stove, we’ll do the charla/activity, then by the time we finish that, the cake should be ready to eat and enjoy! The girls are also interested in art projects so we’ll do some of that too.

I’m also working on writing a short recipe/how to bake book we can print and sell as another fund raising method for the girls group. People in the neighborhood are always asking me how I make my banana bread so I think it’ll be a good seller.

Escojo Mi Vida: El Artistico, the organization that Brian is working with has asked me to come teach the Escojo curriculum over there. I’ll be going over there once a week to teach a class of 20 students or so. I’ll be charging 100 pesos per student (about $3) so I can have some transport cash to bring graduates from my Escojo group to come and help me do charlas.

Deportes Para La Vida: My plan with the 2 students I took to the DPV training is to go through the course with all the Escojo Graduates, then with them facilitate a field day of games and activities for the kids in our barrio on the Saturday after December 1st, World AIDS day. We’ll probably have it at the school, give a short charla, then play the games from the DPV curriculum. We’ll have teams, prizes, snacks, etc.

English Discussion Group: So far, I’ve already graduated a basic english class and and advanced english class. My plan is to now meet with these students once a week for a discussion group. The focus will be less on teaching, and just getting everyone to practice talking. We’ll have a new subject every week and take turns answering questions.

Muevelo: My little girls dance group is starting back up after our break over the summer. We’ve already done tap, salsa, cha cha, and tae kwon do, and I’m planning/hoping to teach (or getting guest teachers to teach) yoga, hip hop, ballet, and irish step dancing (Sarita! Come to my site!). 

Conferences/Camps: I’ve also got a few camps and conferences coming up in the next few months. Brian and I are both going to a 3 day Brigada Verde camp, which is focused on the environment, conservation, and biology. We can each take 2 kids and are both helping give a couple of the charlas. I also have a regional Chicas Brillantes conference which is basically a smaller version of Camp Glow. Finally, I’m going to be helping coordinate next summer’s Camp Glow with 2 other volunteers. It’s going to be a big job but I’m super excited to be a part of a project I love so much. Volunteer Zach and I are going to be the coordinators, and Volunteer Tina is going to be our budget/money guru.

Volunteer Advisory Committee: I’ve been serving as my region’s (south east part of the country) representative on VAC (this committee is the ‘go between’ the volunteers and the administration of Peace Corps DR) since last winter, and I’ve recently taken over as the chairperson of the committee. What that entails is organizing our meetings with the Peace Corps staff at the office every 4 months, running my regional “mini-vac” meetings, and coordinating an All Volunteer Conference that happens every spring. I think it’s really awesome that Peace Corps has this outlet for volunteers to voice concerns and communicate with the people that are leading us, and I feel really honored to be able to serve my fellow volunteers in this capacity.

Other (Documentation/Sanitation/Celebrando): These are some projects I’m wanting to work on, but I don’t yet have a super clear path on how they’re going to happen.

Documentation is working to help get kids get their official papers so they can show they’re Dominican Citizens. This is important because for whatever reason, a lot of kids don’t get documented (because their parents are illegal immigrants, because they weren’t born in a hospital, etc etc), but without it, they can’t go to high school, get a job….I’ve been working with one of my youth to get his papers together, and this week I’m going to La Romana to meet the Judge that I’ll need to work with. I’m new at this so I’m kind of fumbling in the dark, but I think it’s a really worth while project to pursue so I’m hoping that this first case will work out, and I’ll be ready to try it again with some other kids.

Brian and I have been working with our neighborhood association to pursue a sanitation project that would include the building of latrines, and the installation of septic tank filters. The problem is, we’re not water volunteers and once again, we’re just taking it a step at a time and trying to figure it out as we go. We’ve had a couple of planning meetings with the community and we’re talking to other volunteers that are more knowledgeable than us, but it’s definitely one baby step at a time.

Celebrando is the world cultures and geography class Brian and I want to teach together, we just haven’t decided when/where/how we’re going to do it. I know we’ll get to it eventually, but I think we might have to wait until after Christmas as the fall/winter is already so jam packed.

PHEW! At least I’ll have plenty to do! As always, I appreciate the prayers and encouragement of you folks back home, and I can’t wait to update with how everything is going. Wish me luck!

Celebrando, States, and Deportes

So my feelings of guilt for not posting for over a month have caught up with me and I’m going to try to do a summary of the highlights from August and September so far. Suffice it to say, it’s been a busy but awesome month and a half.

Celebrando Del Este

This was a 3 day conference focused on World Cultures, Geography, Ethnic foods etc. Brian and I brought 4 teenage girls from our community and hopefully they’ll be helping us run a “Celebrando del Mundo” course before in the fall/winter. A few highlights:

The youth painted a giant map of the world and used it for geography games. This is a big deal as most could not even point out where the DR was beforehand.

Brian helping me teach Swing dancing as part of a four station dancing around the world activity we did. Other dances included Salsa, Zumba, and Irish Step Dancing

Watching Brian give his charla on Morocco during our Global Village activity. The kids "visited" 9 different countries and had to answer questions correctly while passing through "customs" in order to be able to get a stamp in their "passport" and move on.

Brian and I with the four girls we brought. They are all in either my English class, or my Escojo group.

USA TRIP

After Celebrando, Brian and I took a 3 week trip to the states to visit family and friends for the first time in a year. Super fun and so great to see everyone. We spent 9 days in the NW visiting the Seattle/Kent/Federal Way area and also a couple of days in Oregon in Salem/Portland. After, we flew down to Southern California to visit my family in Yucca Valley, and Brian also drove out to Phoenix for a few days to visit our good friends out their, Joel and Katie.

Spent a day in Seattle with Brian's mom hanging out on Alki Beach, taking the water taxi, and visiting the Seattle waterfront.

Went and saw an awesome Seattle Sounders game with friends Cameron and Bethany. Here we are in front of Century Link Stadium with our Sounders gear and our Starbucks cups. LOVE SEATTLE!

Spending the day with mom and taking the tram in Palm Springs. Really beautiful.

The biggest highlight for me was just getting to spend time with my family. And I love this new family portrait my sister took with all of us together. My little family of four has certainly grown in the past 5 years!

Deportes Para La Vida

Deportes para la vida is a training conference that teaches youth (and some adults) how to educate kids on HIV/AIDS by using games and sports. It started out in Africa (Grassroot Soccer), and has since grown worldwide. We call it Deportes (sports) here and not soccer because baseball is the big thing, but the program can be used with or without any kind of sports. I took two of my Escojo graduates, and we’re planning on multiplying the information to the rest of the group and planning a field day using the games for December 1st, World AIDs day.

Playing "Mis Suportes" showing how those affected by HIV/AIDS need community support and how damaging it can be when they're stigmatized.

The two kids I brought and I receiving our certificates at the graduation ceremony. Somos entrenadores!

Finally, here’s a link to a YouTube video of all the volunteers doing a dance at the Talent Show. Talent Shows are a really big deal at conferences and the Dominicans get really into them. So, we decided to go all out as well and choreograph the whole thing. Aside from being silly and a way to share a little American hip hop culture, it was a super fun bonding experience between the volunteers.

Well, that about wraps it up!

Camp GLOW 2011

Last week I experienced something I haven’t experienced for quite a while….summer camp.

Every summer, Peace Corps DR puts on a girls camp in an ecological reserve called Rancho Campeche. All the volunteers here have the opportunity to apply for a space, but as it is a youth initiative, first choice gets reserved for youth volunteers like myself. I ALMOST didn’t apply, and I’m so grateful now I did. That was way back in January and February when I was still working on my diagnostic, and I think I was so over whelmed at the time, I couldn’t see myself being ready to do it. Anyway, I DID apply, and I got accepted, and we’ve been having meetings to plan this thing for months now. It’s really cool how they’ve set it up. There are a couple of 2 year volunteers that are the coordinators, and then everything else gets planned by committee. That way, we all participate, we all take initiative, and we all feel ownership over the camp.

My duties for the camp included:

• Being on the programming committee. We took all the workshop and activity ideas and organized them into the camp agenda. We got the idea from last year’s camp to give each day a theme. This year we had “Yo Soy Sana” (I am healthy), “Yo So Creativa” (I am creative), “Yo Soy Poderosa” (I am powerful), and “Yo Soy Brillante” (I am brilliant/shiny).
• Being a helper/facilitator for an Improv Drama workshop led/planned by another volunteer. SO FUN. We basically played a bunch of games from Whose Line Is It Anyway like “freeze” and “party host”. The girls thought it was hysterical.
  

  Acting with Sarayu in the improv drama workshop

• Co –facilitating a workshop on leadership and diversity with 2 other volunteers. We talked about 4 leadership styles and gave each a color and movement representation: Verde (green) – classic leader, the one with the vision, wants to get stuff done and doesn’t like side tracks.  Azul (blue) – the sensitive, loyal person, more concerned with people’s feelings.  Mamey (orange) – the fun loving person, the life of the party, super animated and energetic. Amarillo (yellow) – the organizer, the detail oriented person that makes list. We asked the girls to pick which one they thought they were, then we put them in their color groups. Once there, they had to “plan their dream party” and then share with the group. Point being to see what it’s like to work with a group of people that think the same way you do. Then, we switched up the groups to have representatives from every color and they had to plan their perfect girls group activity. We talked about how the process was different, and how sometimes the colors clash, but we’re also the most effective when all the personalities are represented.
  

  Helping facilitate the leadership and diversity workshop

• Co-planning the nightly reflection activities. Every night, we got together in smaller groups (7-10) to reflect on the day. We didn’t make these up – these all came from training or other more experienced volunteers, but they’re still pretty cool so I’ll share them here: Day 1, Sweet and Salty – we passed around peanuts and hard candy and each girl shared something sweet (good) and something salty (bad) about their day. Day 2, Roses and Thorns – Vicky made a beautiful worksheet the girls used to write down a rose (something good) and a thorn (something not so great) about their days. Day 3, The Ball of Encouragement – the volunteers took a volleyball or soccer ball and put everyone’s names from the group on it with masking tape. The first person throws the ball to someone else and says something they appreciate about them. The second person removes their name, and throws it to someone else. This continues until all the names have been removed.  Day 4, Body of Learning – Vicky made another great worksheet that had the outline of a little person with a big heart in the middle. The idea was for the girls to write in the body their camp experiences – something they saw for the eyes, something they did in the hands, something they felt in the heart, etc.
  

  rose and thorn worksheet

  

  Body of learning worksheet

• Finally, photo/video taker. Not because of any special skills or anything. There were 3 of us that volunteered to take photos of as much as possible to try to record everything.

There were so many other great activities too: Art therapy, kick boxing, a professional panel of Dominican women, yoga and stretching, kick ball…..Also, so many good classes and charlas: Healthy relationships, women in history, Conocer tu cuerpo (know your body), and much much more.

Dan´s yoga and stretching class

Some of the girls doing a women in history presentation

Here are a couple of personal highlights:

• Quilting: Phoebe organized this amazing activity where all the girls and volunteers each made a quilting square during the week. When it was all put together, the colored squares also made a butterfly, the symbol of Chicas Brillantes. The girls LOVED it, and many had never done anything like it. We gifted it to the owners of the ranch where we have camp every year in hopes that they would proudly display it for future generations of Camp Glow-ers. One more fun note – many of the girls didn’t turn their squares in on time, which meant that a group of about 7 or 8 volunteers (including myself) stayed up until 3:30am on the last night to sew all the squares together. It turned into a very silly evening with lots and lots of singing. Oh yeah, the electricity also went out at 1, which means we spent the final 2 hours sewing by the light of 2 or 3 headlamps. Locura.
  

  The finished quilt!

• Condom Party. I know there are probably some among my more conservative readers that may not get this, but I’m ok with that. There are 3 methods of prevention that Peace Corps promotes more than anything: Abstinence, Faithfulness, and Condoms. Part of teaching about condoms is making sure that our students are comfortable with them, and that they really understand how to use them correctly. The condom party included condom balloons, condom costumes, and most importantly, lots of condom games. My favorite was a condom relay where 6 teams raced to correctly place condoms on a plantain, do jumping jacks to symbolize “relaciones”, then correctly remove and throw away the condom before tagging in the next team mate. So funny. But really educational! We had to stop and help them if they forgot to check the expiration date, or tried to open it with their teeth, etc.
• Talent Show. Dominicans LOVE talent shows. American teenagers would never survive one of these. People have no fear of getting up and lip singing or dancing or doing really really dramatic skits. It’s a little scary, but pretty funny most of the time.
• My Two Girls: I invited two girls from my Escojo group, Adriana and Noeli. They’re both super sweet and it was so cool getting to watch them experience camp for the first time. And in such different ways. Adriana is way more competitive and into sports, and Noeli is far more introverted and artistic. But they both found their places to shine and made new friends. There were even a few tears on the last day. They also both wrote me these really sweet thank you letters which I will definitely treasure. So, now that we’re back home and camp is over, Adriana and Noeli are going to help me start a new girls group in September! We made a four month plan together, and they’re stoked to start to share with the other girls in the neighborhood what they’ve learned.
  

  The two girls I brought and I at the butterfly ceremony on the last night.