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.....

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....

Day 1:January 4, 2011: From freezing to sweating.

It's 6:30am and I'm watching the sunrise out of the window of AA flight 1851 from DC to Miami. Alas however, I have an isle seat so no pictures of this beautiful sight.
  The morning ran pretty smoothly and we got through airport security without a problem. Thank you Jesus!
   As I sit here, listening to Neil and Mark snore in the seats beside mine, my mind is racing with thoughts about what to expect when I get to the DR. I've heard story upon story told in ways to both encourage my trip as well as scare the crap out of me. I decided I would write my own story, told my own way. And you, my reader, get the opportunity to share the experience with me. Sit back and enjoy!

flying into Miami

Hannah Horst

11:15am.
Plane ride number two. Goodbye USA! Again thank you Jesus that getting through security and customs went well. My story of choice from the Miami airport goes something like this: We were hungry. And well there's not very many food choices after you go through security. Chevy happened to see a sign for Wendy's! So, him and David decided to check it out while Hannah, Stephanie and I watched their stuff. Ten minutes went by and I got a text from Chevy. There was no Wendy's!!! :( It was Coming Soon! Talk about false advertising! I was looking forward to bacon cheeseburgers and fries one last time! The girls settled for beef and cheese sticks and bottled water, totaling $5.22! Ouch.
  I am very blessed to have a window seat this flight, and am sitting with Stephanie and Mark. This is my first time flying over the ocean and I must say that it is extremely pretty! I love the blues, greens and tans reflecting in the sunlight! All I can say is Thank you God for such beautiful creations! Our flight should land in Santo Domingo at 1:45pm DR time, which is an hour ahead of Pa. The weather when we left Miami was 68 and the weather in Santo Domingo is currently 76! I will mention that it was 22 when we left for the airport this morning. Talk about weather shock.

A view out of the plane window over the ocean

   I've enjoyed getting to know some of the people on the trip I didn't know before, like Mark. This guy is crazy, but so much fun. I guess you have to have an extreme sense of humor to have 3 daughters! :) Apparently Stephanie and I have already made our marks in the group as the two crazy ones. Imagine that?! I'm pretty excited to see how we grow as a group on this trip. 
I guess I should introduce you to the group huh? 

There are 18 of us: Kevin and Jen Sheeler(who are sorta the ones in charge so to speak) Curtis and Linda Berry, Johnny and Linda Horst, Kenny and Lara Lehman, Ralph Ebersole(Linda B and Lara's dad), Chet and Chevy Martin, Neil Kuhns, Mark Blank, Eric Carbaugh, David Akers, Stephanie Eshleman, Hannah Horst and myself, Victoria Utermoehlen. Quite a group if I do say so myself.  :)

Landing in the DR!

We landed safely in Santo Domingo and got through customs and all the fun stuff with flying colors. We met David & Jewel Reyes and Rafael & Heather Reyes at the airport. David is the pastor at ________ in Los Toros. Jewel happens to be Hannah's cousin. Rafael is David's brother and Heather is Kenny and Lara's daughter. We piled all 36 suitcases into the back of a truck and boarded the baby blue bus that would take us on our 3 hour ride to Los Toros, Azua, RD.

4:20pm
Currently I am sitting on the bus, parked on the side of the highway with a flat tire. And the adventures begin! We just got out of the city of Santo Domingo. My goodness the people here drive different! I think they drive on the RIGHT side of the road like in the states, but really no one really stays on their side of the road!! There were a couple times the vehicles that passed us going the other way were so close we could stick our hand out of the window and touch them! Wow! And I think that the only thing a vehicle needs to pass inspection is a working horn! They all use them!! It was an experience riding through town that's for sure. I've seen alot of the same cars we have in the states. Lots of Toyota's and Honda's. And lots of street bikes and mopeds. I think I only saw one stop light, but for some reason I don't remember if we stopped at it! All the traffic rules seem to be more along the lines of SUGGESTIONS. :) 
Right now they are jacking up the bus, with the people still in it! I find this kind of funny. Oh wait, we have to get off.  
While we were sitting on the side of the road, we got to watch lots of bikers drive by. They carry anything and everything on the backs of those street bikes! Even car doors....

 

He's packin :)

We stopped at a Buffet about half way to Los Toros. Here we got our first taste of Dominican food. Friend chicken, ham, fried plantains, as well as fish. Now the fish well they cooked it whole, which meant the head was there with eyeballs. That ruined my appetite for fish and we proceeded to dare Mark to eat the head, which he graciously obliged.  
We got to Los Toros around 10pm. So I have no idea what the town looks like! :) Mark, Eric and Neil got dropped off first at a guy named Coho's house. Next the youth- Chevy, David, Hannah, Stephanie and myself were dropped off at David and Rafael's parents house. This began another experience: Language barrier! Mama Reyes, or Albina knew less English then we knew Spanish! And she talks very fast! The first thing she did was make us Dominican coffee, which is basically strong coffee with TONS of sugar! Then we resorted to the point and show method to figure out what she was talking about. Our favorite phrase is "NO COMPRENDO!" We all got hugs when we walked in and whenever we would say 'No comprendo' we would just hug Albina. It was nice to know that she welcomed us and loved us even though we had no idea what the other person was saying! 
    We watched Baseball on TV before bed time. It was kinda weird for me to grasp at first, because it is January! But I could still understand what was going on even though the announcers were speaking Spanish. When the game was over we headed to bed. Hannah, Stephanie and myself were in the pink room. There was a full size bed and a bunk bed. Hannah got the bottom bunk of the bunk bed and Steph and I shared the full size bed. David and Chevy's room was basically two mattresses on the floor. But as far as I know they didn't mind.

Slowly we all fell asleep to the sound of blaring music from the bar down the street.......


    

Dominican Republic Trip 2011

I know, I know...two posts in two days!

But I didn't want to add this to my last one. :)

In just a little over 24 hours, I will be headed south to the airport to board a plane for my VERY FIRST trip OUT OF the UNITED STATES! 

I'm traveling with a group of 14(I think?) people from at least 3 churchs in the area. We are going to a town called Los Toros in the Dominican Republic. And our mission is to put an addition to a Deacon's house as well as start and possibly finish a house for a family in the community.


Your prayers are very much coveted! As I finally started packing, all the nerves and worries of what might go wrong started running though my mind, BUT I know God's in control. And I'll be fine. :) I am very very thankful to be traveling with people I consider family to me and am looking forward to experiencing another culture and meeting tons of new people. 
    My biggest prayer is that while I'm there, the people will see the love of Christ Jesus flowing out of me every moment of every day and that they will want to experience that Love for themselves. 




So Adios and God Bless!
♥Victoria

Hello 2011!

2011 has arrived!

And what do I have to say to this occasion? Nothing much really. 

I brought in the beginning of the year in bed with a head cold. Not such a great start huh?

The Holiday season this year didn't seem as exciting as it usually does. Maybe I'm getting older, but for whatever reason....no matter how hard I tried...I still needed more of the "Christmas spirit" so to speak. We got our tree up a week or so before Christmas, but half the family wasn't there to help decorate. Honestly, it was weird coming home to a decorated tree and not being there to put MY ornaments on the tree. We were so busy. So so busy. Christmas morning was different too, with mom and dad dragging us kids out of bed to open presents, because mom had to work in the afternoon. 

Everything felt so rushed. 

But enough with the things that were different. Different is good. 

The thing I'll remember most about this Christmas was getting to spend time with my daddy. He's been so busy during December that I never see him. And I was even living at home! He would come in around 8 or 9pm and go straight to bed. 

December 23, we borrowed a meat grinder from my granny down the cove. And I heard she used to make Pulla Bread, which is delicious if you've never had it. Dad decided we should prank her, hinting that we'd like some Pulla for our christmas get-together. I designed little signs with the word PULLA on them and hung them around her kitchen. It was so much fun! Not to mention it had been forever since I was at that house. So many memories...

Christmas Day, since mom had to go to work at 2:30, Josiah and I decided to go snowboarding. Why not? The snow was beautiful, in my opinion anyway. It did get a little icy towards the end of the day, but all is well. Josiah and I spent time working through the smaller terrian park. I'm still building the confidence to go off jumps, BUT I did it multiple times without falling. I also ventured over to the blue square slopes...meaning the advanced ones. I'm still a little scared of them, but not to worry, I still have 3 months of boarding left!

The week between Christmas and New Years was packed full. So full, I think I wore my body out. I also played over 6 hours of video games. Which I NEVER play. Wii Just Dance 2 is one of my favorites! I was involved in a dance off and lasted 2.5 hours! I got to ride a 4wheeler and attended my first coffee cupping. That was an experience for one who never drinks black coffee. I came out of it with a much higher appreciation for a good cup of coffee.  I played Battle of the Sexes for the first time...and learned that nails are NOT measured by size, but by pennyweight. Screws are the ones measured by size. :) 

Thursday, December 30: What a day! My friend Steph Burt came up from Columbia Md to join Josiah, Joel, Alexander and myself for some skiing/snowboarding. Was Whitetail ever packed! There were lines EVERYWHERE! I couldn't believe I was joining the masses of people on the slopes, but I did. Being that the lift lines were long, and the snow was slow because of the weather...my lovely friends got me over to the black diamond slopes. What an adventure that was! Honestly however, it wasn't too bad. So long as I reminded myself not to panic at the fact I was going STRAIGHT DOWN the side of a mountain! I also went through Jib Junction:The big terrain park, and did a jump or two! Be proud of me! :)
   Slowly but surely I will conquer all my fears of going to fast and dying on a slope, and I'm thankful for friends that challenge and push me, but stay right there with me the whole time. :)

We left Whitetail around 5 to head to Hannah B's house to chill, and play some Wii. I HAVE NEVER HAD SO MUCH FUN PLAYING VIDEO GAMES IN MY WHOLE ENTIRE LIFE!! We danced for a while, then decided to bring out Super Mario Brothers. Hannah, Steph Burt and myself are NOT good at video games. Josiah...he's a little better. We played that game for like 2 hours. Screaming our heads off the whole time! It was a day/night to remember!


As 2011 begins, I don't know what my thoughts are. On one hand, I'm pretty excited for what God is gonna do, but on the other hand, I'm a little apprehensive of the changes that might take place. 'God help me not to worry' is one of the things I have to pray everyday. I know I'll be ok, and I know God's got my back. Sometimes, I just wish I had control and could work everything out right now, instead of having to wait on God's timing. But that's not how we grow. So as I finish for tonight I pray "God, help me to wait. Help me not to worry, and help me to trust you, even if it's not how I want it to go."


God Bless you in 2011!
♥