No turning back now.

So, I remember when Tanya and I started this camp 5 years ago. I told her, "We need to think big honey." I wanted to provide a camp experience that would change the lives of our Dominican campers forever. I wanted to take them on field trips all around the country showing them its beauty, teaching them how to take care of it. I wanted to show them how to be creative and inspire them to think about the future; about what they could do for themselves, for the community, for the country. Tanya said, "Slow down Josh. Let's just get these kids together for a couple of weeks and get the program going. Then we can expand on it later."  (I hope that those of you who know Tanya and I appreciate the role reversal in this situation as I, channeling my New England protestant ethic roots, am usually the one urging caution while Tanya, with her Caribbean roots, is most often pushing us to abandon all caution.)

So, we did proceed cautiously for the first two iterations of the camp and, even though we were planning on increasing the footprint of the camp this year all of a sudden it has blossomed into a full blown service learning experience for a whole bunch of teenagers. At first, some of the Paris cousins were going to come for a week, then when our neighbors heard about what we were doing they wanted to send their two kids for two weeks. And so, the Paris cousins decided also to come for two weeks. And then a Runkle family heard about all this excitement and will, most likely, send their kids down with us.  So, looks like we've got about 10 teenagers coming down with us to help out at the camp. Not really sure how this all happened but it is, after all, what I wanted when Tanya first told me of this crazy idea 5 years ago.

Of course, we can't just have all these teenagers hanging around in the afternoon so Tanya has been busy organizing other experiences for them after the camp ends at noon. We've got them going to another school to do some volunteer work and then we'll take them on a variety of cultural and/or "fun" excursions:  To La Zona Colonial in Santo Domingo, to a coffee plantation maybe, away for a weekend trip to the mountains. I hope the kids have an amazing time.

And, by golly, that's not all. Tanya figured that this shouldn't really be all about these gringo teenagers swooping into San Cristobal so we're going to hire on a group of former campers to work as teen leaders as well. She's pretty smart that wife of mine.

So, last week we had a big orientation meeting for many of the teen leaders. We explained what the camp is all about, gave a quick orientation of the DR and then had a tasty Dominican meal that the students helped to cook.  And today in the mail we got our first teen leader application.  I guess this is the real deal.