Day 7: Monday January 10, 2011: Laundry and Rummykub

Monday is laundry day! Finally clean clothes! I happened to forget a ziplock bag of work shirts, but it worked out nicely because we washed clothes the day I ran out of shirts. :) Today we did all the 'single peoples' laundry. Meaning everyone who didn't have a spouse along, and the youth. 
It was a little different than doing laundry in the states, but thankfully we had 3 washing machines and thus didn't have to do it all by hand! 
   We piled all the laundry into piles of cleanest to dirtiest in the backyard at Jewel's house. The cleanest got washed first since the water was fresh. We filled the washers with water and put the clothes in and let them agitate, then we would wring them out and put them in the other compartment in the washer, which was the 'spin cycle. We then took them out and rinsed them in the rinse bucket and put them back in the spinner to wring out most of the water, then Lara organized them and put them on the clothesline to dry.  The water in the washers would get changed every two washes, or when it got too dirty. The rinse water: every two loads. Like I said, it was a little different than doing laundry in the states, but it was actually a lot of fun....probably because there was a group of us doing it. I wouldn't wanna do it by myself!

The three washing machines

piles and piles of dirty laundry

wringing water out to put clothes in the spinner

"The rinse cycle"

At lunch, we found out we were going on a walking tour of Los Toros to see "all the important places".  I felt like such a tourist. Our tour guides were Henry Reyes and Mildred's husband, Umberto.  Henry had on purple aviator sunglasses with a rhinestone heart in the corner. Hannah and I couldn't help but giggle every time we saw them too! 
Los Toros is much bigger than I thought! We are just on one side of the town! But at the same time, it's not very big if there are 20,000 people living there. We started our tour by the baseball field, which coming from a baseball family, intrigued me. The boys train four hours every morning on this field. Moises is one of them. For many of the boys, baseball is their only ticket out of the Dominican. But I also learned that you have to be tall enough as well. This ballfield is used as a right of way to the fields as well. We walked right through it Sunday when we took our hike. It's not fenced in or separate from the town. It's just a multi purpose field with a backstop and pitchers mound at one end. 

I enjoyed walking around the town, even though it was really hot! We got to see the Town Hall, Schools, Hospital, Library, internet cafe as well as MLB player Pedro Feliz's house. 

The Béisbol field

A veiw from the outskirts of Los Toros

Town Hall.

The Clinic

Ambulance recently donated to the town by MLB player Pedro Feliz

The Dentist chair!

High School classroom

Chevy showing us where we are on a hand painted map on the school wall

By the time we got back, the work day was finished, and successful! Juancito and Dominga's house was plastered! 

The outside of Juancito and Dominga's when we were finished plastering!

After supper, we packed up all the church's sound equipment and loaded ourselves onto a bus and headed to a neighboring town for an outdoor church service. Again, the youth girls graced everyone with our singing and guitar abilities. This time singing Amazing Love.

Now, it was really interesting being in a service where there wasn't a translator!! It was good, even though I didn't understand a word spoken. Some of the songs, we could figure out what they were talking about because they had the words on PowerPoint! :)

  At the end of the service, this little girl was brought up for prayer(we found out later she had a hernia..I think..). Anyway, I thought that was pretty cool and it got me thinking about how here, they don't have all the medication that we do. They just deal with stuff, like ADHD and ADD. Or even other special needs, I don't know, it was just interesting to see how people like that just seemed to be accepted into society. 

Hannah and I were in no way ready to go to bed at 9pm! We were hungry however, so we went to the Cafe de Tres Hermanos to get cheese sandwiches! Then we waited anxiously for the second bus to come back so we could ask Mariela if we could play games! Of course we could!! And we headed over to her house, first with 5 people, then slowly more and more kids showed up ready to play Connect Four against Chevy, or Chess against David! Jamie walked in carrying the game RummyKub, which...to be honest...I automatically associate with old Mennonites! HAH! He asked Hannah, Stephanie and me if we wanted to play. And since Steph already knew how to play she explained to us in English what we were doing!! *sigh*...

...and now...I can not associate RummyKub with old people anymore, because it is a lot of fun! And Hannah and I, being the newbies, had the help of Samuel and Jose Daniel...hehe..much the Jamie's dismay! We played 4 games and everyone got to win except Stephanie! :( 
I said midnight was late enough for game nights, cause we all do have to get up and work in the morning. I don't know how the Domincans do it! They stay up late pretty much everynight and are always up and working before us...??

Day 6: Sunday January 9, 2011: Tarantulas. Mucho grande Tarantulas.

It's Sunday and the girls got to sleep in, while the men made us pancakes! 


Breakfast was held at David and Jewels, and mui bein I must admit. Thank you gentlemen for the pancakes. We even had peanut butter for them! 


Marc thought it quite funny to stick a dead tarantula in Steph's face, thus making her scream! But laughter is always good medicine. Jewel informed us that the boys like to hunt tarantulas on hikes and would probably do so this afternoon. So be prepared.

Neil with the spider found outside David and Jewels Saturday night

    After Breakfast, our team had a small devotion as well as a time of sharing what we're learning on this trip or our highlights. It was somewhat of an emotional time as we got to see how God brought things together for so many people on the trip and one by one we shared how much we've been impacted by the people.  The theme that seemed to be biggest was how well we get along with the people and interact even though we don't and/or can't always understand each other's language. 
The verse in 2Corinthians 12:9 that says: My power is made perfect in weakness kept running through my mind. To see how God was proved strong and faithful through the areas we see as our weakness has been so cool to see and I'm looking forward to seeing how he uses us the rest of the trip. 

walking across the river

on the trail

Two miles is a decent way to walk in 80+ degree weather. And it's off we went to the fields for our afternoon picnic. Two miles on a trail worn down by the hundreds of men that walk it every day to go to work. And the work is all done by hand! Unlike in America where people LIVE on their farms, in the Dominican the farmers live in towns and walk to their fields everyday to work. I don't even know when the last time I saw someone using a hoe to work a field in America was!! I am so thankful for tractors, and milk! They don't drink much milk in the Dominican Republic, mainly because they don't have facilities to store it after they milk the cows. The cows are usually in the fields too, so when they milk them, the milk might sit a couple hours in the heat before they even bring it home. They do make yogurt and cheese though. Milk here is usually powered. It's just not the same. :(


We hiked to the field bought by Work Team Partners for Agriculture development. The shade was quite nice after walking an hour in the sun! 

a view from the trail

We got to try real coconut, straight from the trees. I liked it much better than the coconut stuff we get in the states, and the milk was good as well. We got to watch a guy climb a coconut tree. He stuck his foot in a harness type thing and used it to shimmy up 40 feet with a machete to chop the coconuts. The younger men don't use harnesses, so I heard. 

Neil and Kevin helping make orange juice

Our picnic consisted of sandwiches, macaroni salad, and....OATMEAL RAISIN COOKIES! And Mildred made sour orange juice for us right there in the field! Naturally Connect Four came along as well as chess and Monopoly and we all enjoyed some 'game time' in the shade of some pretty big trees. 

The game faces are on

Rafeal's goal was to find a mucho grande tarantula, and off he went on a spider hunt followed by a group of people wanting to catch or see a big spider! We tramped through the fields and woods looking for spider holes. I think the total was three spiders. Pretty big, but not big enough for Rafael! The boys put them on a large stick and Juan Samuel loved chasing girls around with the spider stick. Boys will be boys. :) One of the spiders even crawled up Chevy's pants! *shudders* For the record, I actually enjoyed the spider hunt. I wasn't too freaked out about the spiders, but I wouldn't want to see one in my bedroom! 

Rafael leading the spider hunt

Chevy let it crawl up his leg!

the biggest one we found

 

 

 

We found an aloe plant and David had some pretty bad sunburn

Our walk back was much hotter, but that's kind of obvious since it was the middle of the afternoon!  Marc and Jose Daniel actually raced back! Wow, I would pass out from heat stroke if I tried that! Wearing jeans in the heat isn't so bad actually, and I feel safer with all the spiders I might come in contact with. :)
On the walk back, I noticed something: So you know how in America, when we see boys wearing their ballcaps in weird positions on their heads, we(well I do anyway) tend to look at them as cocky or gansta. Well I noticed that Moises and Josue were wearing their hats funny and at first I was gonna roll my eyes thinking it was a fashion statement just like America, until we went around a turn and they moved their hats. THEN I realized that they are using them to block the sun from their faces!! :)


Believe me, a cold shower never felt better than it did coming in from a hot day. I don't even think they need hot showers here, cold showers are so refreshing after you've sweated so bad you actually had B.O. And the skirt wasn't so painful either! 
While we were waiting our turns in the bathroom, Chevy and I got to talk to Samuel(Samwell) about the beautiful thing we call SNOW! I overheard Chevy asking him if he knew what it was and I mentioned that I had pictures with me to show him. Pictures I might add of the blizzards we got last winter. It's so funny to watch their expressions when they see snow. "No me gusta!" were the words out of Samuel's mouth when he saw pictures of snow up to my waist. 
Samuel is David's nephew. And He lives in the house next to ours, and in Kevin and Jen's while they're in the states. He's 25 and one of the nicest guys I've ever met! He's only been speaking English for 3 months, but he's pretty good. We talked about baseball and snow sports, since Chevy and I both work at Whitetail Ski Resort, we explained skiing and snowboarding. Skiing-you get 2 boards. Snowboarding-1 board. :)


 And now, it's time for church! Jewel asked us if we'd like to sing a song for church. Hannah, Stephanie and myself decided on Blessed Be Your Name with me on guitar. AH! You have no idea...NO IDEA how happy picking up and playing a guitar made me, even though it was electric! I would have played the rest of the night! We got tons of cheers and applause and whistles when we finished of course. :) :) 
    The sermon was called "God Never Forgets our Work". The Bible passages used were: Hebrews 6:10, Matthew 20:8-16. 7:22,23, and Esther 6:23. Thankfully Jewel did the favor of interpreting for us Americans! Although, I will say that I had a hard time paying attention because I was trying to figure out what David was saying before it was translated! He preaches with such body language it's hilarious!! But the sermon was good. Oh yea and their worship was great, I'm loving the beats. Kinda made me want to break out into random dance. And I love watching people worship God! 
When church ended, we went back to Albina's... well after we shook about 50000 peoples hands and said iHola! to pretty much the entire church that is. :) We really weren't sure what they did after church, so we decided to chill and drink coffee made by Albina. Samuel and Jose Luis joined us. Time to practice our Spanish and their English. With Chevy doing an excellent job as the middle man translator, we talked about farming in Pennsylvania as well as some of the things we do differently. I was curious to know whether or not Christians danced. Samuel said NO...but they do to 'good' music. Christian music. I was relieved, I could never survive in a society where I couldn't dance. It was hard enough not busting moves to all the beats we heard from the bars. Samuel asked us if we could understand the words to the songs and when we said 'No', he was glad, because he said they weren't good songs. He asked us if we liked the weather in the Dominican and of course we all said yes! Then we told him what the weather was like in PA currently. You should have seen the size of their eyes when Chevy converted it to centigrade! And poor Samuel like spazzed out! "Mui Frio! Mui mui frio! No es bueno!"  
Over the course of our evening, we were joined by Juan Samuel, Joel(JO-el), and Benedict. While Steph was writing a letter to her boyfriend, which of course brought up the topic of whether  Hannah and I were single and whether we would be interested in a Dominican boyfriend. That was a little awkward. :) Random factoid: It's not out of the ordinary for a 30 year old to marry an 18 year old. They believe love has no age. 
ANYWAY. While Steph was writing, Hannah and I were working on some friendship bracelets. With Samuel holding a flashlight so I could fix my knot mistakes, the boys all watched with fascination as we knotted these bracelets together. I wanted to make everyone a bracelet, but the problem with that is EVERY child would want one and that would be too much work and time.  In this case, I looked over at Juansa and asked him if he wanted one. The smile on his face was enough of an answer for me. I gave them the bag of colors and said "Dos colores". They all picked out two colors and Hannah, Stephanie and myself whipped up bracelets for the group(David and Chevy included). 
I for one am impressed at their color matching skills and the colors they picks. I couldn't even tell you who's was my favorite, although I'll have say Juansa's because I made it, it was the first one, AND blue and green are my favorite colors! 


Around midnight we said goodnight and everyone went their separate ways. I quite enjoyed just chilling with... friends I guess I can call them. And learning some about their lives in the Dominican. Its funny to think that we're "friends'' when we've really only known each other a few short days, and we don't speak the language very well, but I guess that's not everything to friendship. Friendship can't be based on any ONE thing, it's millions of things. Like spending time together, and sharing, and respecting each other, and being patient while the other stumbles over their tenses or phrasing of a sentence, and being able to laugh at each other in a non-mean way. Or just being there to show that you care about the other person.


And I realized that the more we interacted, and the more we showed that we care about them, the more I saw our friendships budding. And I pray these friendships continue to grow as we work together, play together and laugh together.

Day 5: Saturday January 8, 2011: THE BEACH!

Slowly he walked up to us, face downcast and hidden. I looked at him, wondering why he was here...

Then he spoke. "I have a confession...I didn't have polio!"

Hannah and I flew out of our seats with exclamations of "WHATTT!! SERIOUSLY!!! OH MY GOODNESS!!! I KNEW I SHOULDN'T BELIEVE A WORD YOU SAY!!!!!!!"

Meanwhile, everyone else at breakfast was laughing at our reaction to Marc's confession..everyone that is except Stephanie, who was in the bathroom! Then we had to recount the story of Marc telling us about his polio epidemic to the rest of the group, who just found it all the more hilarious! 
Polio. Hah.

This was how our Saturday in the Dominican started.  :) 


As for work, well the men worked till lunchtime. Finishing up the plastering of Juancito and Dominga's house as well as pouring more concrete for the walls of the house project.

 Jen mentioned something about making cookies at Jewel's house for our picnic lunch on Sunday. Cookies! That's all she had to say, I was ready to go help. 

Oatmeal raisin cookies were on the menu. You have no idea how excited I was to make cookies. Good 'ol American style cookies! We whipped up two batches and they went in the fridge till later that day, when they'd go in the oven.
We headed over to Mildred's then to help make pineapple juice. MmmMmm I love pineapple juice! We used 12 pineapples to make enough juice for our group! Like Friday, we cut the pineapples at Mildreds, then headed back to Jewel's to blend and strain them. The great thing, I already knew how to cut the pineapples properly!! Mildred even complimented me on my work!

After lunch, we climbed aboard a bus, our group combined with quite a few of the Dominicans and headed to the...BEACH!!!!!! I've been looking forward to the beach since I first found out about the trip to the DR!! It took us about an hour to get there, and it wasn't a tourist beach so there wasn't many people there. The first thing I noticed was how dirty it was. There was trash all over the place, like much of the country. I think the only place they have trash cans is next to the toilets for toilet paper. I think, that's the only thing I DIDN'T like about the trip..the trash all over the place. It sure made me thankful for trash pick up and removal services in the US.
The beach wasn't technically ocean front, it was more like a bay. Sadly this meant that the waves really weren't waves, but that didn't stop me from running screaming into the water! Hannah Horst had never been to a beach before, unless you count Cowan's Gap.  :) What could be better than saying that your first time at a beach was in the Caribbean! 

Hannah's first time in the ocean!

We stayed in the water about an hour, then while Stephanie and Hannah worked on bracelets I became sports photographer with Chevy's and my camera for the Baseball game that the boys were playing. With tree branches and towels set up as the bases, a volleyball being pitched underhanded and everyone in their barefeet, it couldn't have been any better. Until the volleyball got destroyed and they got a tennis ball that is. :) Sports photography is my favorite of them all. Capturing that split second when the batter hits the ball, or getting a runner in mid-stride. Oh there is nothing like it! Watching them play, brought back so many memories of the countless and endless baseball games I go to over the summer. And the millions of pictures I take of Josiah, to capture his passion for the game. I missed it, and for a minute and I realized just how much I enjoy being at baseball games! 

Neil taking a swing at the ball

JR pitching

Moises at bat

...and I'm pretty sure Moises is safe

Josue and Rafael in mid-stride

My favorite pic: Joel in mid swing!

Jamie up to bat

Chevy up at bat

 We enjoyed supper at David and Jewel's and some chill time with just our group. Rubi wanted us to play some games with her, so we played Hungry Hungry Hippos and CandyLand!! It was a night of relaxation after a relaxing day.

Hungry Hungry Hippos with Rubi

The only downside to this day was that both David and Eric came back from the beach and got sick. 24 hour stomach bug. ICK! So the ipods came out for bed time, to block out that horrid noise of barfing!!

Day 4: Friday January 7, 2011: Watch out for burping guys....with Polio

Before I even start with Day 4 of our trip, you all need to know that in the Dominican, burping is extremely vulgar. Like cussing. They don't burp! Needless to say some of us...*cough cough Steph* had to watch our 'potty mouths' while we were down there. :)

It's amazing how fast I adapted to the sounds of the night in Los Toros. By Friday, I could sleep through anything, except maybe when the motorcycles cut full throttle right in front if Albina's house!! 

Marc carrying TWO bags of concrete

mixing the concrete

The work projects continued with mixing concrete for the walls of our house project. Instead of mixing in sand, like they do for plaster, gravel is added to make concrete. They mixed the concrete right there in the middle of the road, but whatever works.

Notice David and Chevy's matching shirts?

David pouring concrete (Chevy's pic)

Rubi Reyes supervising

Hannah, Stephanie and myself had opportunity this morning to help Mildred make juice for lunch. We made passion fruit juice with oatmeal. The oatmeal acts as a thickener so it was more like a smoothie. The thing I learned most about juice making is: the key to great juice is to strain, and strain, and restrain the juice to get ALL the extra stuff out.  We prepared the passion fruit at Mildred's house, then carried everything about 4 blocks to Jewel's to use the generator to run the blender. Here Mildred blended the juice then we ran it through the strainer, once, twice and sometimes three times. Waste not is right! Then we poured it into a 5gallon water jug and added tons of water and sugar! Then we carried the juice to the church for lunch.

Typical Lunch: rice, beans, and chicken (Chevy's pic)

After lunch, I got to help plaster and finish the outside of Juancito and Dominga's. It was a tedious job making sure we got ALL the holes filled and smoothed over. The first layer of plaster was put on speedily before lunch and thus made for extra time fixing it after lunch. But no worries, with a little teamwork it was finished in hardly any time at all. 
  I enjoy working with the Dominicans. Always laughing, and having a great time no matter what they're doing. It was also pretty entertaining to watch Marc and Neil interacting with them. They got along so well, so quickly and neither of them know much, if any Spanish!  Laughing is understood in EVERY language, and with Marc, Neil and Broulio you get lots of laughs! Broulio...well to describe him, as Hannah put it...a jolly man. She said if Santa was short, black and skinny, he'd be Broulio! This man is maybe 5'2', but his personality makes up for the rest! And his laugh makes you wanna bust out in giggles. 

Broulio's family (sorry this is a blurry pic)

    Marc has a catch phrase which he uses all the time: "Heavvvvyyyy", and it's pretty hilarious now, because the Dominicans are catching on and using it too!

The work day finished early today, because there was a volleyball game at 4 or 4:30. The girls headed home to grab quick showers, shave and don skirts for visiting night after supper. AND so we wouldn't be talked into playing, and failing at volleyball! Jewel explained that she's been teaching one sport at a time, starting with volleyball. And a little basketball. Every Dominican knows how to play baseball, being it's the national sport in the DR. Soccer, well it's pretty much nonexistent, same with football. 


After supper, Hannah, Stephanie and myself were escorted by Joel(Ho-el) to meet and "Share a moment'' with a girl named Salidad. I was so glad to have Joel with us walking through the streets of Los Toros in the dark! It is slightly freaky! We met Salidad at her parents house, which is so close to the bar that we really couldn't understand a word that was spoken. We met a man named JuanCarlos as well. Both he and Salidad spoke relatively good English, which I was VERY thankful for!
We walked through the town, down and around to Salidad's grandparents house. Which was in a much quieter location! It was a cute little house with a covered patio type place where we had a table set up for our evening. JuanCarlos started out by saying that he didn't speak very good English. Well, I sat there with my mouth hanging open, because he spoke the best English I'd heard so far! And I told him thus! He'd been to the states a few times, Indiana he said, for work purposes. 
Junior and Mariela joined our party just before we began our first activity. Activity number one: we were to draw our families and share a little about ourselves. I was 'el smarto' and just so happened to bring along my photo album. Thankfully we'd just had family pictures taken a couple months ago! It was nice having both JuanCarlos and Salidad there to help translate for us as well as Junior and Joel. I did have to remind myself quite a few times to speak slower English so they could catch what I was saying! 
Salidad made us Hot Chocolate-Dominican style! We had this for breakfast before, but I liked Salidad's better. It was more chocolaty. The hot chocolate is made with chocolate, cinnamon and allspice(I think). I'm not sure if they put milk powder in it or not. Mui Bien! And Delicious! We also got to try some bread, which tasted just like zucchini bread. The sight of this bread made us remember our "Panda fruit" joke and we all cracked up laughing! 


Salidad brought out a game called Línea 4. I was like "oh, time to learn a new game"...until she took it out of the box and guess what...it's CONNECT FOUR!! :) Thus began two hours of fun playing Connect Four against everyone around the table using flash lights for light since the electric was out. It was great to play different people, and they're all good! I started to learn their 'style' so to speak when playing this game. Junior is one of those people who's a pure joy to be around! I haven't seen him without a smile. When you start playing against him, you go in confident, and then BAM! He traps you everywhere! I don't know if I won against him once! One game he had it set up to where he could win in 3 places with just two moves of my pieces! He drops the pieces so fast you don't think he's strategizing at all, cause yanno..that's what I do. Haha! But no, he just knows what he's doing. Joel is pretty good too, not as fast, but he'll trap you all over the place! 
It made me realize how much time we spend NOT playing games in America. When everyone has computers in their houses, or cell phone, or transportation to places 30 miles away, we go to the  movies or the mall, or play computer/video games. How often to we take time to learn Connect Four!? It's much more complex than I ever thought!!!
   Our final game of the night was "Hands on the Table". Jewel taught it to them(and apparently it came from the states, but I've never played it!) and it's pretty simple and fun. Basically, one person it out with their back turned, and the rest of the people pass a Peso around under the table until the one who's "It" yells "Hands on the table!" Then they have 2 chances to guess whos hand the Peso is under.

    We left around 9:30-10pm and headed back to the church to watch Marc, Neil and Chevy play basket ball with some of the boys! Stephanie noticed that Marc had a limp and this brought up the following disscussion:
Hannah: I think he had knee surgery. I know someone else who had knee surgery and he has the same limp.
Steph: No, I think he had polio as a kid. Look, one leg looks longer than the other.
Me: Steph, Marc is too young to have polio. He's younger than my mom and she even had the shot. Polio was in the 50's.
Steph: Well he was raised Old Order River Brethren, maybe they didn't get the shot. 
Me: Ok, Steph...I'll ask him! MARRRCC, come here a minute!!!


And I asked Marc if he had polio as a kid. Yes was the answer. Hannah and I were astounded! Really? We explained the preceding conversation and how outlandish we thought the whole idea was. He was like "What?! Are you guys making fun of my disease?" That got our attention so we asked him to explain. He had polio when he was eight years old. It got to be so bad that they had to go to Mexico for treatment. He spent two years in therapy learning how to walk again. Well now, that was a new twist on life. 
  
As we walked home, escorted by 3 or 4 boys, I was thinking about the simplicity of their lives. How much I'm beginning to enjoy it. I could almost live here......


 




 

Day 3: Thursday Janurary 6, 2011: Mangos

As I write this there is a fresh blanket of snow on the ground. Kinda hard to believe that just a few days ago I was getting sunburn.

  Our third day in the Dominican started out pretty much the same, with dogs barking and motorcycles roaring by and of course...who could forget the music that played all day long. We arrived late to breakfast, but just in time to pray and eat. 
  
   I will be completely honest and tell you straight out that I did very little work today. There were so many people working, that I felt just in the way of the people that were more knowledgeable. So I spent the time trying to learn how they do things, and talking to Heather about what it's like living in the DR. She's been married about a year to David's youngest brother Rafael. And she's Chevy's cousin, which means that the Mennonite game was played on this trip, being that pretty much everyone in our group was related somehow. Except me of course.  :)

Mark and his gun show

 We watched the men start digging a hole for the septic at the house we were building. The hole needed to be about 20 feet deep, squared at the top, then circular at the bottom. Usually they dig until they hit ground water, but Kevin wanted to explain that the dirt can be used to filter the water before it hits the ground water if you leave a few feet between. 

One of the things Kevin and Jen told us when we started our trip was that we're here to serve and to help the Dominicans. We're not here to force our ideas and the way we do things onto their way of life.  They cautioned us to remain teachable while working, realizing that we are coming to a place where some technology is 50-100 years behind what we're used to. 

The frame was up for the house, and the next step in construction was putting wire between the poles to act as rebar for the concrete to be poured later. After the wire was in place, the men put up wooden forms to pour concrete for the outside walls. 

Mark and Chevy putting up a form

 The project at Juancito's continued with the job of plastering the walls, both inside and out. The plaster was made out of sifted sand mixed with cement. All mixed by hand, which I found very fascinating to watch. 

Juan Samuel adding water to the plaster mixture

They would pour buckets of water into the middle of the plaster mixture then using shovels, walk around it mixing it together. Basically like a cement mixer. And they NEVER spilled the water!! Next the plaster was spread all over the walls and smoothed out. Then finished by splashing water on it and smoothing it into perfection. 

The human cement mixer

 In the morning, there really wasn't much work for us girls to do, so we took a walk around town with Jen Sheeler to see where everyone in our work group was staying. Our first stop was David and Jewels house where Johnny and Linda stayed. Lara, Linda B. and Linda were in the process of making pineapple juice with Mildred(the lady who made the juice for our meals every day). David and Jewel have a back up generator for when the electric goes off so they pretty much always have lights.
   Our next stop was Kevin and Jen's house, which was the home of Curtis and Linda as well as Chet and Ralph. Kevin and Jen's house is solar powered, so they don't have to pay an electric bill when they're not in the DR. The electric bill usually runs about $200 pesos a month in Los Toros, which is between $5 and $6 US dollars. Not bad, except that the average worker makes about $300 pesos a day, which is approx $8 US dollars. Jen took us down to the "river", which she said we would call a creek because it's about the size of the Conecegege. She explained that the poorer families come down to the river to bathe. The water we use for our showers and toilet comes from springs in the mountains, although no one knows exactly where. The rainy season is hurricane season, so June-November. They can get 12 inches of rain in 48 hours and it erodes like crazy. As our tour continued, we went to Rafael and Heather's house. Heather's parents were staying with them in the small, two bedroom concrete house. Heather told us that the only stipulation she had when finding a house was that it had to have an indoor toilet! 
  Our final stop on this short tour was the home of Coho. Coho isn't his real name, but the Spanish name for cripple. He was born with a club foot. But that didn't stop him for anything! He was right there working with the rest of the crew. Coho's house was home to "The Three Stooges" Mark, Neil and Eric. He had a black tank on top of a concrete tower behind his house...and that was his hot water heater. 

   After lunch, Stephanie, Hannah and me decided to take a nap. Jen informed us that we need not feel obligated to stay around the work crew. If we needed rest...go take a nap. They won't care! We slept for about an hour and were awakened by Henry, one of David and Rafael's brothers, looking for his dad. He opened up the curtain to our room and his face turned to one of shock, surprise and slight embarrassment when he saw Stephanie and I staring at him. "Oh!! Excuse me!" were the words out of his mouth as he quickly dropped the curtain and made for the door. 
That was just too much! Steph and I busted up laughing! The expression on his face was absolutely priceless!!

Samuel and Mark plastering together

We headed over to Juancito's house where the crew was plastering walls. Stephanie and Hannah joined in, much to the amusement of the Dominican boys who stopped working to watch them. Kevin informed me that they were impressed with how good of a job girls could do. :)


The work day was finishing up, and it was almost time for supper when Stephanie leaned her head around the corner and said "Victoria, come here."  My initial thought was that she wanted to throw a handful of plaster in my face so naturally I said, and repeated "NO!"  She was insistent and said that someone wanted me. Slightly confused I walked over only to find that Jamie had picked a mango for each one of us girls. Kevin informed us that there are no mango trees in Los Toros, but that Jamie was in the fields today and must have picked them for us. :) :) :) 

Chevy and me playing pit with some of the boys

Our evening activity was GAME NIGHT!! Tables were brought into the church and chairs set up. Dominoes is like the National activity in the Dominican Republic and every Dominican knows how to play...and play well. My first game experience was learning the game Pit brought down by Linda Horst. Jewel explained the rules in Spanish, while Stephanie explained them to me in English. Pretty simple and easy for a loud mouth like me! I played so long my hand started to hurt! Then Jewel brought me over to learn a game called Can't Stop with Moises, his older brother Danison and a girl who I can't recall her name. It's a strategy game that I wasn't too good at, but it made for laughs. When I lost my 3rd game straight, it was time to switch out and back to Pit! :) The cards were so dirty by the time we finished playing...for 3 hours total! But it was totally worth it. At one point, I was the only American playing...with all boys. And they couldn't shuffle cards very well, so pretty much every time one would try and end up giving them to me to shuffle. And I'm a horrible shuffler! 

playing Can't Stop with Moises and Danison(Chevy's pic)

 Game night ended with...can you guess...?? Connect Four! And they got me to play Jamie again. This time I won the first game, with some help from the crowd and lots of cheering from the boys!  :D

Who will win??

 Game night gave us time to get to know each other better. Even if we couldn't talk to each other we could at least figure out their personalities and such. And share lots of laughs. It was so cute to hear them try to pronounce our names, although mine was the easiest, because it's the Spanish word for victory. Nonetheless I love the way they say it!!!!
  
   I'm starting to feel more comfortable and getting used to the differences, like the electric being off and such. It's not that important really. The people are what matters, not what clothes they wear, how clean they are or whether or not they have indoor plumbing. We can still have fun without the things that seem so common place in America. It's not the things that bring the smiles or the laughs, it's who you're with. Taking time to appreciate the people for THEMSELVES not the stuff they have.



...and with that thought and a smile on my face, I drifted off to sleep.....