Las Galeras Camp: Día #1

So, we left Casa Dorado at about 8:30 having been told that it was a 20 minute walk to the school. We headed to La Calle Principal, hooked a right and walked down the main road ‘til we reached the school — remarkably similar in color and style to the school in Madre Vieja as Camila so aptly pointed out. Made it in 15 minutes. Olga and Castro,  two school employees were expecting us and showed us to the room. So far so good. Ana Reyes, Tanya’s local contact, showed up a few minutes later. She told us that she had posted a flyer about the camp but she wasn’t sure how many campers would show up. 9:00 came and went... still no campers. That’s OK, we always anticipate late arrivals in the DR right? 9:15 slips on by... still no campers. OK, now I’m starting to worry. Camila asks me, “What do we do if no campers show up?” My thoughts as well. Then a woman pulls up on a motoconcho and drops her daughter off! We have a camper. Caitlyn heads off into the neighborhood and corrals a few more kiddos. A few more show up on their own accord and by 9:45 or so we have 7 or 8 en total. As the teen leaders hand out camp t shirts and get the kids going on their name tags Tanya and I glance at each other and shrug. “It’s a start” she mouths. And I nod back. And then a funny thing happened. More kids kept on arriving. Alone, sometimes siblings, even two sets of twins. Every time we try to get started another camper shows up. By the time 10:15 rolls around, we have 30 campers and needed to split into two groups. So we did. This country never ceases to amaze me.

At this point less than two hours remained so we moved to Plan C, after abandoning both plans A and B (see yesterday’s post). We did some art, read a book about the environment, and had the students design and build paper airplanes (the day’s STEM activity). And that was that. All in all quite a successful first day. One thing we need to figure out is recreo. There’s a basketball court at the school but it’s too damn (I mean, darn) hot to have the kids run a lot. As you may recall we have lots of softball equipment with us and Ana Reyes told us that we could use the town’s baseball field but it’s about a 10 minute walk from the camp. Our latest idea was to start the camp at the field around 9 while it’s not too hot and then walk to the school afterward. Well start that on Wednesday because we thought of this after camp was over today. Ah well, it’s a start.