Day 2: Wednesday January 5, 2011: Los Toros, Azua, RD.

VAAAAARRROOOOMMMM! 
I was jolted awake by the sound of a motorcycle driving past our house, but this was only the beginning. Dogs barking and roosters crowing almost constantly...then all of a sudden the music came on at a house down the street. 

Thus was the beginning of our first day in Los Toros. 

Albina's house: where the youth called home

We had no idea where the church was(which was where we were ate all our meals), and Chevy & David left without us the first time Jewel came around to get us for breakfast. That's what we get for over sleeping I guess. :)
Breakfast consisted of eggs, tomatoes and onions(which became my favorite part of every meal, because if you didn't like the food-cover it with this stuff and it tasted good!), and banana's that somehow they got to taste sorta like sausage. Not bad for my first meal. 

Mark Blank working on a hole

After breakfast, it was time to work. Our first project of the day was hole digging. We needed to dig holes to put the frame of a house up. Hannah, Steph and I took turns cleaning the dirt out of the wholes Eric and Mark were digging.

Hannah using an old bowl to clean out holes

Then when all the holes were finished we helped carry the poles from the saw mill about 2 blocks away. The Dominican's found this a funny site: three girls carrying two poles in a train formation(it was the easiest way) up a hill. I decided that we are pretty much a walking comedy show. But it's all good because I love to see smiles on their faces!
  Getting all the poles to the job site went rather quickly with 20 people carrying poles and we were kind of ahead of the rest of the work, so a few of us went over to Juancito & Dominga's house to tack the studs in the walls for plastering.  The majority of the houses built in Los Toros are made out of concrete. The plaster will stick to the concrete, but the wooden frame needs tacks to hold the plaster. The tacks were to be in a zig zagy pattern about 3 finger widths apart. 

teamwork. always.

Chevy and Neil working as a team

 Juancito and Dominga live right next to the church and Juancito is a deacon I do believe. They have 4 boys: Jamie-18, Josue-17, Joel-15 and Juan Samuel-14. Our project for their house was to plaster and put flooring in the addition they added to expand the kitchen, put in a bathroom and another bedroom. We finished the majority of this project by lunchtime. Lunch most of the trip was the same- rice, chicken(or beef) and beans. Some days we had salad or other random items mixed in. We had sour orange juice. In the Dominican they have sweet oranges and sour oranges. The sour oranges aren't good for anything else except making juice and the juice tastes more like Lemonade than Orange juice. It was good!

   After lunch, Linda B, Lara, Hannah, Stephanie, and I got to go on a trip to Azua; to the hardware store to buy supplies. We went along with Kevin, Coho, David Reyes and Broulio. We hopped in the back of a pick-up and began an approx 20 minute trip. I loved riding down the road in the back of a pick-up, even more so because it is sort of illegal in the states. :) 
We spent what seemed like forever at the hardware store in Azua, but that's typical.

I used this time to talk to Kevin about the people and culture. The first shocker I had was learning that Los Toros had a population of about 20,000 people! Here I thought it was a small town!! You can't really see the whole town, because there are a lot of trees. The roads in Los Toros were very recently paved, which I will count as a blessing because that means less dust on my feet. The people are very friendly and helpful. They will do anything for you, even if it's illegal. Kevin said he had to explain to one guy that just because your friend asks you to do something, if it's breaking the law, you don't have to do it! The women don't work with the men, which is the biggest reason why we American women are so entertaining. The woman do the housework and stuff associated around the house. Now their housework is still much harder than the housework in America! Kevin also said that we girls might not get to work every day, because the guys aren't used to giving up their job to females. 

This is going to be an adjustment for one very independent female who likes to 'do it herself!"


Also, Kevin informed us that the men hiss at the women here. And the women like it, so we should get used to being hissed and whistled at, because they love Americans! In the Dominican, unlike America, the lighter skin you have the better. So men will wear long sleeves and women walk around with umbrellas to shield the sun. And all the while we're looking forward to getting tans! :)


Just like what usually happens, the girls had to use the bathroom(and you know how it goes: when one has to go, they all have to go). We walked across a courtyard and 2 streets to the Pollo Rey(The Chicken King). The first thing I noticed when I walked in was the A/C!! We found the sign Banos and ran back with Stephanie in the lead. She threw open the door only to find a guy in the bathroom cleaning the mirror! He turned his head and with a cheerful voice said "iHola!" 
From where I was, all I saw was Steph throw open the bathroom door then I heard a male voice and I thought for sure she went into the boys bathroom(which she practically did at the Miami airport). It still made for a good laugh! 


Our ride back to Los Toros took place in the back seat of a white Toyota pick-up, driven by a guy from Los Toros who happened to be in Azua today as well. Kevin thought it would be safer for us to ride here, than on top of the bags of concrete piled high on the back of our truck. We got to try cookies! I was so excited when Kevin asked if we'd like a cookie....but to my disappointment the cookies were just colored bread. Good if you were expecting bread. 
   We arrived in Los Toros just in time to grab a shower and get to supper.  The shower wasn't so bad actually. After all the stories I'd heard about how cold the shower I was expecting to scream, but really it was nice. The bathroom in Albina's house is pretty nice for bathrooms in the area. Work Team Partners worked on it last year(I think that's right). And you can flush toilet paper down the toilet! Our showers worked like this: we would pour a bucket of water on our heads and wash our hair and get all soaped up, then we would quick turn on the shower and rinse it all off. There is a trash can full of water in the bathroom which we used to flush the toilet when the water's off(the water is usually on from 9-6) and for our showers.

For supper we had Dominican Spaghetti. DELICIOUS! 

Introductions and Panda Fruit

The Wednesday night church service was more of an introduction service for us Americans. We got to sit in front of all the people and Jewel lead a quiz game. She lined up six boys and we had to figure out which two sets were brothers and age order. Then she asked them to pick out the families in our group. They did pretty good too. 
Our second activity was an orange peeling competition. Who could peel the fastest and/or prettiest. Mark Blank decided to try his hand at it as well, which made for tons of laughs from everybody watching! 

Rafael, Junior, & Mark showing their oranges (photo credit:Chevy)

The Dominicans peel their sweet oranges alot different than we're used to. The skin is tough and you can't peel it with your fingers, so they use a knife and somehow create this beautiful masterpiece, then they cut them in half and suck all the juice out. 

Rafael peeling a sweet orange

Neil eating an sweet orange DR style

Eric learning how to peel sweet oranges

Table of fruits grown in the DR

Our final activity was a fruit guessing game. There was a table that had all sorts of fruit on it and our job was to see how many we knew.  There were oranges, both sweet and sour, bananas, mangos,  plantains, yuca(which is like our potato), coffee, cashew fruit, papaya, zepolte(which i named the football fruit cause it looks like a football), guava, passion fruit and this weird spiky green fruit. Earlier in the evening Chevy, Hannah, David, Stephanie and I were walking through the town when we saw Coho driving his motorcycle with this weird looking fruit. We heard him say something to a passer-by and we recognized the words "Panda fruita". So we thought the fruit was Panda Fruit! When Jewel held it up, we were all proud that we knew this fruit and quickly exclaimed "Panda Fruit!!" Jewel gave us a weird look and started laughing. When we explained the story to her she quickly told the congregation and they erupted into laughter! We did NOT hear "Panda fruit", what we heard was "Pan de fruita'' which is a fruity bread(pan=bread in espanol)!! Needless to say, we all got a good laugh!


When church was over, Jewel wanted us to meet one of our translators, a sixteen year old girl named Mariela. She had already left church, so we followed Joel(pronounced Ho-el) around until we found her. She lives 2 or 3 houses down from where I'm staying and she invited us in to play games. We decided we had nothing better to do at the moment so we agreed. The TV got moved and the furniture got rearranged for the 20+ youth that squeezed into a living room that was no more that 20x8 feet! I'll admit I was a little nervous about playing when I knew hardly any Spanish and they knew hardly any English, but I will NEVER regret this night! The electric was off, so we played all the games by candlelight. Monopoly JR was my first game, and I won! Then we got a group together and played Uno for a while. I quite enjoyed watching them banter each other in Spanish while playing games, just like we do. It made me realize that really the only difference is the language, we're all still people. 

The biggest game by far this night was Connect Four! Usually I would say that this game is too elementary for my liking, but it's really not! Jamie loved playing this game...and beating everyone! It became the center of attention and we crowded around to see who would win each game. Then Jamie asked me to play! After a little hesitation I decided that I would, and most likely lose too, because I cannot remember the last time I played Connect Four! I sat down, very intimidated by the serious look on his face. One by one the pieces went in and I lost very quickly. But Jamie wanted to play again and this time I won somehow. :) 


All in all it was a very fun night and I'm thankful we took time to play with the Dominican teens. Little did we know that it was only the start....