Campamento 3.0: Day One

Day one is in the books and was a great success. We arrived more or less at 9:00 (well some of us did.   Our teen helpers were hanging out upstairs unbeknownst to us as we thought that they had already headed over to the school.) and there they were ... A lhorde of campers waiting for us -- which was a relief because we're never quite sure if they will show up. The problem was that there was only one room ready for us so we had to squeeze into that one room while the others were being.cleaned. Here they all are:

No worries. Yini -- one of the teen leaders, and a future teacher if I ever saw one -- took over, taking roll and organizing the distribution of the camp t-shirts with Carmen . By then the rooms were ready so we divided up the kids and got to work:

For me the hi light of the day was recreo(recreation). One group of younger boys got together and played baseball using their palm as a bat and a pair of rolled up socks as the ball. But I truly realized we had done something good when I saw that Camila, Eric, and Jacob had joined the giant game of banderita that was being organized:

I feel like in the past I have shared my gringo observations of a Dominican camp but today my observations are more directed at myself. Basically, after 17 years married to una Dominicana I think I have at long last become Domicanized. In the past I would've become a tad flustered when our plans didn't go off as expected. But today, it was like water off a duck's back (I was going to use the expression "cool as a cucumber so I could contrast that with the oppressive heat but decided that that expression didn't fit as well) I just laid back and waited for things to work out as they always tend to do ... eventually. We'll see if my cool, calm, collected new self (don't laugh tanya) lasts the two weeks. I'll keep you posted.