Ya está viernes?!

Wow, I can't believe a whole week has already passed! To the left is the banana tree in our "backyard" that I'm looking at now as I type. Below are some sweet girls that hang out at the school each day. Look at that baby! :D






















This week was great--each morning going with the group from the Austin Stone to work on the Makarios school, each afternoon something different (city errands with Robin, Chichigua, etc). While the boys did some heavy manual labor on the addition to the school, us girls continued to paint the interior, organize, clean, and work on craft projects for literacy camp, which starts next week. The school looks great! I'll include more pictures later. For now, check out the work that some of the Stone guys were doing with Yeffry (Dominican for Geoffrey), one of the hardest-working young men you'll ever meet. (He looks a lot like young Walt from LOST, and he's heard this before, just fyi.)


To get to the Makarios school, you turn off of the autopista (highway, pictured at left) that runs from Puerto Plata, past the dirt road through the cane fields that leads to Chichigua (a batey to be described later) to Montellano (where the schools is), and then to Cabarete ("the beach"), onto the street Calle Silencio. Calle Silencio takes you into Montellano, and then after a couple of turns, you are on a little dirt driveway in the middle of the crowded town. The Makarios School driveway is shared with a few neighbors who live in beautiful, colorful, little wooden and metal homes. Our nearest neighbor, Adolfo, whose house is pictured below, made us some jugo de melón delicioso (really good honeydew juice, made from just honeydew and a lot of sugar). Christina, our Dominican teacher, told me that you can make any kind of juice with just a blender! I'm trying it when I get home. Anyways, It gets super muddy when it rains, so most mornings it's dusty but then mud central in the afternoons (pictured below). The school itself is yellow on the outside, now light aqua and mint on the inside. There are two classrooms, a mini-office, two bathrooms, a kitchen, and two closets. There is no glass in the windows as to help increase air flow. Each classroom is full of toys, books, and teaching materials, much like an American school, except that there are no desks, just big round tables, and everything is dusty.

A lot happened this week, way too much to relay back. That said, I'll give you a short account of my first time in Chichigua, one of the three bateyes served by the Makarios school. Bateyes were originally founded as mini-villages for those working on the sugar cane plantations. As time went on, the poorest people tended to congregate in the bateyes, and now these bateyes are scattered along the rich, green Dominican countryside, seated here and there between the cane fields. Chichigua is the smallest of the three bateyes we serve, and though around 100 people live there, I felt like the area was maybe an acre, at most. The houses reminded me a lot of the slums in Lusaka, constructed primarily of found metals that had been hammered flat, some houses acting as a quilt of ads for whatever company had originally used those canisters that now comprise their walls. Only a handful of the houses have floors.

The road to Chichigua is made of dirt, rocks, and potholes, runs through the canefields, and provides some of the most gorgeous views of countryside I've ever seen. As soon as we pulled up to Chichigua (we being me, Marissa my roommate/new BFF :), Robin, the teacher/my partner for my project, and Katy, my super funny other roommate), we are greeted by several Haitian children beaming with smiles and a game of dominoes being played next to el tanque, or Chichigua's water cistern that looks suspiciously like a rusted submarine parked a mile from the beach. The children are anxious to get to know the new gringas, Marissa y yo, and are full of questions for us. One child, Alfredo, is super interested in my watch and wonders why is says that the time is 13:20. I tell him that my watch is broken and I can't figure out how to fix it (that's my way of saying, in Spanish, that I got it stuck in military time on the way here...) and somehow little Alfredo punched just the right buttons to get it back into American time! Instantly we were best friends and I though I told him gracias! gracias! gracias!, I don't think he understood just how thankful I was. Subtracting 12 is difficult! ...Anyways, Alfredo proceeds to hold my hand as he gives me a guided tour of his neighborhood. We all then pause at the back of Chichigua to play with some of the children and talk to a woman, Elizabeth, who lives on the edge of the batey. One of my favorites is a little boy of about 2, Manuel, who during my first encounter with him was chewing on a broken butter knife. Though malnourished, little Manuelito has infinitely more energy than I do and wears me out! His favorite games are: grabbing leaves from the tree above my head, being tipped upside down/maybe trying to flip out of my arms?, and running and plowing himself into my legs. Great fun with little Manuelito! ...This has already gotten VERY long and there's so much left to tell, so I'll conclude Chichigua with a prayer request: that I would get to form some real friendships in my 5 remaining short weeks there. I didn't take any photos because I just didn't feel like it was appropriate to be taking snapshots of their situations when we aren't even friends yet. I want them to know that first, I'm interested in them, and second, I'm interested in sharing their stories with others, rather than just spectating. Ya know?

Okay, so that wasn't so short after all. Surprise! But here below are some pictures to illustrate the week:

Pictures of sweet/rowdy little niños that hang out at the school each day, asking for basura (trash), melón, and globos (balloons):














Qué preciosas!!















Below are two of the niños who hang around the school. Sweet moment, right? Right after this the two started peleando (wrasslin'). Oh, kids.


















Thanks for reading and praying and keeping in touch! Here are the praises and prayer requests that I have now:
Praises: i love the people here. Americans, Dominicans, everyone. I especially love the other intern, Marissa, and we've been blessed with some great time to share and pray together. It's been raining, still, so I'm not hot yet! Plus, praise God that I live in Texas and am used to heat.
Prayer: still feelin' a little funky, but it comes and goes. So just that I'd start feelin' great every day. Also, Spanish, humility (this is a scary prayer...and :/ slash :) has been being answered...), mom and Cody!, especially as mom makes some big decisions, and the people here. They need love and prayer.

love you all.

Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with enurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the corss, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.
Hebrews 12:1-2