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......