El gran campamento started today! The idea is that the camp will run from 9 to 12 every morning. So, at 8:30 Tanya, myself, Natalie (niece and teacher aide), Evan and Camila (our children and star campers) and Frandy and Cailyn (our nephew and niece and also star campers) arrived at the school and set up. But, it quickly became apparent that this camp will be running on Dominican time as at 9 O'clock only one student, the impresively prompt Eduardo Luis, had arrived. Tanya nervously turned to me and said, "If we build it they will come, right?" But then I told her that was about a baseball field and not a school and, thus, the same results could not be predicted. Sure enough though other students began to slowly file in and by 9:30 we had a total of 14 campers between the ages of 8 and 13. And so it began...
Today was very much a day of introductions; We introduced ourselves and talked about our goals for the program and the students introduced themselves and told us what they liked to do. We talked about what a community was and the students drew pictures of themselves or someone else helping the community. The pictures ranged from one of Barrack Obama, to people picking up garbage to a mermaid (I didn't quite catch the mermaid connection, but I think it had something to do with polluting the ocean.) We played some soccer for a while which didn't work out too well as we had 14 campers playing in an area about half the size of a regulation basketball court. Now that we have a better sense of our space, we'll have to rethink our sports options. Samuel has suggested Karate. We shall see.
All in all it was a good beginning.
For more pictures go to: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tanyaparis/?saved=1