We arrived at the school promptly at 9:00 and to my surprise four of our campers were waiting for us. Wahoo! In fact, Candy told me that they had been waiting for "un million de anos". Turns out that meant since 8:30, but still. By 9:20 all our campers had arrived and so we began...
Today's theme was "cooperation", so we talked for a bit about what that means and then Tanya read outloud the book, "Un Jardin en la Ciudad" (City Green) in which a group of people in a neighborhood in New York plants a garden in a vacant lot that had been filled with trash. Then we let the kids play outside for awhile, recess style, and finished the day with an art activtiy in which the campers used craypaws and watercolors to create a painting of a garden. And that was the day. These 3 hour camp days pass awfully quickly.
What I've noticed in the first two days is that the students really take their time with any art project. I thought they were just being perfectionistic but Tanya told me that they rarely get to use the materials (colored pencils, watercolors) that we brought and, as a result, they want to spend as much time as they can with these.
So, our big idea in starting this camp was to leave something permanent for the school and our thought was to clean up an area on the school's grounds and plant a garden (much like the story we read today). We're not making much progress in getting the details of this plan worked out. I'm not really sure why though I have my suspicions. But I'll keep those to myself for now. After having visited the D.R. about 7 times in the 12 years since I met my wife Tanya I've learned that the adage "life is what happens while you're making other plans" dominates the dominican way of doing things (though I think Tanya would disagree that I actually understand and accept this.) We shall see how this plays out.
-josh
For more pics goto: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tanyaparis/sets/72157624646023134/