Day 7

Well, today turned out to be a pretty good day after all - considering that last night at about 11 as we were getting ready for bed Tanya turns to me and says, "So, what are we going to do tomorrow?" Here's what happened... Yesterday, we were going to go on a field trip to the Botanical Gardens in Santo Domingo. But, there was a huelga in the capital so we couldn't go. What's a "huelga" you ask? Well, whenever a group of people here is unhappy about the state of affairs they organize a strike, for lack of a better word. They get together and block all the streets to protest the injustice, with the hope that the government will fix whatever it is they're upset about. Often, the strike starts off well-intentioned but then the teenagers get into it and just start making lots of noise and quemando gomas(make a huge bonfire with old tires) to create a big mess. Yesterday's strike was because gas prices here are skyrocketing and the people want the government to do something about it. If it works maybe we should burn some tires up in Brookline. So, the long and short of it was that we couldn't get into the capital. Istead, yesterday, we did what he had planned for today leaving us with nothing to do today. So, here's what we came up with at 11:00 last night (remember, that's how this whole diatribe started right?) We talked about the big themes that we had covered in the camp -- respecto, responsabilidad, comunidad, cooperacion, generosidad -- and about how all of them had to do with improving our environment. Then we gave each camper a cutout of a speech bubble and asked them to write down one thing - one simple thing -- that they would promise to do to help their community. After recess and a self-defense lesson by Samuel, el director de deportes, the kids drew self-portraits. Tomorrow we will attach the speech bubbles to the self-portraits. I love it when a basically unplanned lesson actually works out pretty well. Makes me wonder why I spend so much time planning my own lessons, but I'll save that discussion for another place, time and blog.

-josh

Oh, by the way, here's a video of Geudy practicing his poem for the "super giant end of camp celebration" that we have planned for thursday:


For more photos, goto: http://www.flickr.com/photos/52916986@N03/?saved=1