Day 9: Wednesday January 12, 2011: "We're gonna get our hair did"

Today is our last full day in Los Toros! :'( 
It's so hard to believe that our trip is almost over and we'll be back in the cold Pennsylvania weather in just a little over 48 hours!

The work projects were almost complete as Heather, Stephanie, Hannah and myself walked around to see the progress. The men were hard at work finishing up as much as they could this last day.  Good job Men! :) 

Rafael in his hole

Chevy running bucket duty at Rafael's hole

The project house: Ralph Ebersole shoveling cement for the gables.

Juansamuel putting forms up for the gables

Joel(Ho-el) lowering himself into hole #2

Josue manning the bucket at hole #2

Two things were on our list of 'to dos' today. Number one: watch baseball practice! I was so excited. It felt like home. Sorta...we were the only white people there. Haha! Anyway, it was so entertaining watching the boys show off for us American girls! 
  We wanted to watch Moises practice, because he is pretty good and we actually knew him so it wasn't so awkward. Sure. We stalked out the field with our cameras in order to find him. This was one time I wish I had my other camera so I could get a decent zoom on the players for some awesome sports photography, but no matter....we found him, on the other side of the field and walked across so we could watch him. 

Moises catching fly balls

Some girls at the ballfield who wanted their picture taken.

Nonchalantly...but not so nonchalantly...some of the players sort of moved over closer to where we were and started...nonchalantly flexing their muscles while they stretched before running. Oh they make me laugh! Hahaha! This baseball practice watching was quite the enjoyable experience if I do say so myself and it will bring many laughs in the months to come, especially when I have to bring Josiah around to practice. 


Wednesday afternoon, it was time to "get our hair did" as Hannah said. :) We walked to a salon and began the process of cornrows and rollers. Heather, Hannah and Stephanie got cornrows, while I wanted to have rollers put in my hair to straighten it. We would see women walking around town with huge rollers in their hair all day to straighten it and I wanted to experience rollers too. 

First off, we got our hair washed. It was so refreshing to know that my head was clean clean clean! I mean yeah, we bucket showered almost everyday(I will say that by the end of the trip, showers weren't so important), but after the women scrubbed our heads and shampooed them twice with shampoo from America(She was very excited to tell us this bit) and used conditioner, wow did I ever feel clean! It was so relaxing as well. I do love getting my hair done. The rollers got put in my hair, then I got to sit under one of those dryers for the first time ever! I don't even know how long it took to dry, but it seemed like forever! While I was under the dryer, unable to hear anything around me, Stephanie and Hannah got their hair washed then dried and the cornrowing began. We spent about 3 hours there and it cost $900 pesos for all 4 of us to get our hair washed and styled. That's about $6 American dollars each!!

The rollers are going in

Stephanie getting her hair dried

Hannah's turn

Heather's turn

Hannah getting cornrows

Time to take the rollers out

This is what the back of my hair looked like at the end

  I think we all enjoyed the experience of what it's like for Dominican women to get their hair done! Although, my hair never ended up straight! Nope. By the time we got back to Albina's, my hair looked pretty much normal, just loser curls! But it was all worth it! 
   We got back around 4o'clock and took time to pretty ourselves up for the going away party at church tonight. Getting our hair done made us girls just wanna dress up. Well as much as we could with the clothes we brought anyway. There was a volleyball game at 4:30 as we hurried to watch at least part of it.....one last time....

Moises the whistle blower

Neil with some pretty intense moves during the game

At 7:30, we had a Dominican style church potluck! Then the youth, lead by Jewel(who was also filling in for the 5th group member) performed a song with miming. Miming, sign language, sort of a human video type thing. Whichever you'd like to call it. Anyway, it was to a song called "Give me Your eyes"...but not Brandon Heath version we're used to. It was very good! I wish I would have gotten it on video, instead of just pictures.

It was a happy/sad occasion as we realized our time in this amazing place. I'm gonna miss these people and their smiles so much! Chevy had the idea of getting a picture of the youth with our house mom Albina. This was quite the ordeal as we gave Jen our cameras and posed for 10000 photos. 

Albina, such a wonderful lady

Who knew this was only the beginning......

L-R:David, Jose Daniel, Yuniors, Juansa, and Chevy

For the next hour or so, the cameras flashed as everyone wanted their pictures taken with us. I felt like I was famous or something! I loved every minute of it though...and now I have a ton of pictures to put up on my prayer board, or even create a new one just for my friends in the Dominican! 

priceless smiles

Gotta love those big brown eyes!

Samuel(Sam-well)

Marc with a bunch of the boys

the girls with Josue

Some of our new friends L-R: Joel(Ho-el), Yuniors, Moises, Jose Daniel, Jeremias, Josue and Danison

Heather and Rafael

When our forever photo shoot was over, the games came out and we spent our last night in Los Toros doing what had become our favorite thing...game nights!  :)  I played Sequence most of the night....and whipped butt on it too!! And I am proud to say that I beat Jamie every game I played against him!!

It was a fun night...and as I went to sleep, or I should say as we went to sleep, because I know I wasn't the only one....our hearts started to break a little as the fact that we were leaving in the morning started to sink in. Does this happen to everyone on a short term missions trip I wonder? People living in other countries are just as real as we are. I think we tend to forget that. And now, with the friendships I've made here...I have family in this small town in the DR...family because we're all family in Christ!