Recycling Exhibition

(from Friday December 3, 2010)

WARNING: There are a lot of pictures here. But with reason; PCV friends looking to make recycled crafts with kids - this post is for you. Supplies: plastic soda bottles. Available at a colmado near you, ya tu sabes, mis amores. <3

So IDENE (my school) had an art show to display the recycled crafts that the students and teachers had made. All of the classrooms had a table of their work on display. The teachers gave a demonstration of how to make each craft, and the importance of caring for our environment. Community members, students’ friends and family, neighbors, and my host family were invited to the event. A good-sized group showed up to learn about recycling. And the exhibition even made it on Mao’s afternoon news - what a fun Friday.

Photos below from the recycling exhibition, “Reciclamos para Cuidar Nuestra Tierra,” or “We Recycle to Care for Our Earth.”

Careful, it’s pretty darn cute.

Plastic Fork Fan:

Plastic Bottle Candle Holder:

Plastic Fork and Spoon Dolls:

Plastic Bottle Box with Zipper:

Plastic Bottle Christmas Tree:

Plastic Bottle Flowers:

Plastic Bottle Box with Zipper:

Plastic Bottle Apple:

Milk Carton Cars:

Kid Art:

"Together we can save the world from trash." :

Plastic Bottle Flowers:

Plastic Bottle Catch Game:

Cuidense mucho. Adios!

XO

Botanical Garden

After Thanksgiving, some of us stayed for ISLT (Spanish class) in Pantoja. This meant a week back at Entrena for training, (though it was a lot more relaxed than the first time around), a week compartir-ing with friends (yes!), and a week living with my host family in Pantoja.

I love visiting the family. Actually, I love all my host families. Anyway, now I live 4 hours away from them, so can’t visit too often, but even still they always make me feel like part of the family. So it was fun to be staying there for the first time since August. Way back in the spring, my host dad said that before 2011 we’d go to the Botanical Garden. And so here we are. Enjoy the pics!

XO

Gracias a Dios

...for Thanksgiving, Peace Corps-style.

Here are some photos of Pre-Thanksgiving at a friend’s site in La Caya and Thanksgiving Day with PCVs, staff, and friends in Santo Domingo. Both celebrations were great. I was feeling campo guilt at first (from the time away in early November) and debated whether or not to go, but am so glad I did, and can’t believe I considered missing it. At Pre-Thanksgiving in La Caya, we stayed at a fellow volunteer’s host family’s relative’s house - a home (though it seemed like a resort) on a hilltop that overlooked the pueblo/campo below. There we shared amazing American food, dancing and good times. Then on Thanksgiving Day, almost all the volunteers in the DR gathered at a club in the capital for a day of sports, games, a talent show, dance contests and of course a traditional dinner. So nice. And then finally, to top off the Thanksgiving festivities, one of my taxi drivers was from the Boston area. So, I got to talk about northshore Mass, in Spanish, to someone who knew what I was talking about, (and who had even celebrated Thanksgiving before) - yay!

Muchas gracias to all the talented and creative chefs! And another gracias to friends who shared these photos. Hope that everyone back home had a memorable Thanksgiving, too. See you in a few weeks.

Note: You might view the following and think, “Um, this is Peace Corps?” I know. I didn’t expect infinity pools, either. Such a lucha, sometimes. ;)

La Caya:

cogiendolo suave.

y La Capital for Thanksgiving:

Okay, thank you for reading! Love to everyone.

XO

Med Mission

Recently, two PCVs and I spent a week translating at a medical mission for doctors and medical workers from Creighton University at the ILAC center near Santiago. Their team of 40-50 traveled from the States, to treat hernia patients in the Cibao area of the Dominican Republic. The patients, mostly children, were Dominicans, Dominican-Haitians, and Haitians from rural campos or bateys who otherwise would not have had these surgeries. The medical team was great - a lot of just amazing, good-hearted people. Luckily, I had the chance to participate in their experience. This particular team of doctors travels here yearly to do hernia surgeries, so some of the patients had been scheduled last year during the 2009 trip, and in all, the final count for this 2010 mission was somewhere around 120 surgeries during their 5 day trip.

I’d never seen all sides of a hospital/clinic before, and watching a couple of the operations was pretty interesting. I spent most of my time in the Pre-Operation room, where patients came to wait after they had been checked in and approved for their surgeries. This room was pretty busy everyday, a lot of people waiting, some more nervous than others, and each time a patient was called into the Operation Room to start his or her surgery, we’d all applaud and cheer, “Vaya con Dios y Maria!” I chatted with the patients to fill out their medical history forms and mostly just tried to be fun for the little kids. In between waiting with the patients and coloring pictures though, there was work to do, claro - translating for the med students as they set up the patients with their IV’s, explaining anesthesia in spanish between the anesthesiologists and the patients, and translating for the doctors as they located, and marked the places for operation on their patients.

One time while translating to a patient for one of the doctors, we were having a bit of a tough time communicating English-Spanish, since this patient spoke only Kreyol (don't know much Kreyol...yet. ;) ). So I went out to the waiting area to find someone who could translate. Thankfully, some of the family members there could speak both Kreyol and Spanish. So we had a little language train going - the doctor asking the question in English, me translating it to Spanish, the caretaker asking the patient directly in Kreyol, the patient answering, and then passing the answer back along this line, eventually reaching English. A pretty cool moment; I love that sort of thing.

It was a great week, sharing with wonderful people. Enjoy the photos!

Pre-Op Room:

Recovery Room:

Waiting Area:

ILAC Center:

Roomies for the week:

The 2010 Hernia Mission Group:

Ok, that was a lot of pictures. But maybe not quite enough - check out this link and this link for more. :D

Thanks for reading; much love!

XO