Camp 3.0: Day 3

So, if I were asked to state the goal of el campamento (which I have been on many occasions) I would say that it is to empower the children of San Cristobal to be agents of change. Based on what I saw from the Dominican teen leaders today I would say that we have most definitely made some progress towards this goal (I actually think that we've had quite an effect in this area, but my overall humility prevents me from saying so). For example...

At recess Ashley (Dominican teen leader extraordinaire) led about half the campers in a sack race. I realize that that doesn't sound like such a big deal but tanya and I have tried and completely failed to organize recess for five years. I vividly recall our first recess years ago in which we tried to get a soccer game going. It lasted about three minutes before one team "perhaps" scored a goal and the game devolved into a giant argument. For the most part "recreo" hasn't really ever been much better than that. But this year has been different and today was stupendous. It looked like this:

And like this:

Then, after recess the teen leaders divided into groups to run three workshops: Art, music theatre, and dance. They were all really good. I spent a lot of time watching the dancers work through a choreography that the leaders put together last night. Loraine (previously mentioned as yini - her first name) is shown below leading the group. This wiped Loraine out so much so that she basically fell asleep later that day at the beach (more on that trip soon)

Taller de arte:

Taller de musica y teatro:

So... There you have it. These teen leaders, many of whom attended the camp in past versions, have blossomed into the leaders we hoped they would become and are taking over the camp. 

Another of the goals of the camp was for the gringo and Dominican leaders to make real connections. T form their own community as it were. Miraculously, considering the communication challenges, this seems to be happening as well. We all spent the afternoon at the beach. Hmmm... I took about a hundred pictures with my "real" camera. Let me work on getting the pictures here............Okay took a bit of work but here you go:

Well, you can probably guess the work around that I used. Pretty creative huh? Suffice it to say that a good time was had by all