Hoy si estuvo un buen día! The morning broke sunny and hot. Well, every day dawns sunny and hot in the d.r. in August. Our numbers were almost back to normal as Alaila and Carlos returned. Carlos said that his grandmother wouldn't let them go on yesterday's field trip. Melanie and Mariele were still missing but a new camper, Gorge Luis arrived.
María Victoria Carreño, published poet and unpublished cousin of Tanya came to the camp today to discuss poetry with the campers. First she wrote the following poem on the blackboard:
"...Ayer las estrellas se acostaron sin cenar
y el sol tenia un nudo en la garganta."
She explained that she wrote this poem when she first heard about the earthquake in Haiti. "Las estrellas", she explained were the children of Haiti that didn't get anything to eat that night and "el sol" was the rest of the world that had a lump in its throat. Maria V.'s lesson was about personification: how different objects from nature can be used to represent people. So she asked each student to replace "las estrellas" and "el sol" with their own imagery. The kids loved this and did a great job using such imagery as "planetas" and "la luna", "flores" and "el jardin", "hojas" and "el arbol" and even "Red Sox" and "Yankees" (That was Carlos, our baseball fanatic. But based on the imagery I'm not sure if he's a Yankees fan or a Red Sox fan.) Here's a video of Eduardo Luis reading part of his poem:
Even I, not much of a poetry aficionado was insipired. Here's what I wrote:
"Ayer los pajaritos se acostaron sin cenar y el aguila tenia un nudo en la garganta." Hmmm... Don't think I'll ever be a published poet.
So, that took up the first part of the day. We finished the day planting the seedlings that we bought yesterday al vivero. The campers were really into it. There's already a small garden area at the school and we decided to add to the garden rather than create a new one. We let Carlos decide where we should plant our seedlings and then all the campers got to help. The principal came over at the end of the day and we got a nice photo of her with the whole camp. She seemed pleased with our efforts, but somewhat indifferent. I wonder what that's all about. Once again, I'll choose not to share my intuitions at the current time...
-josh
For more photos go to:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tanyaparis/sets/72157624536195627/show/
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