Day 5

For more photos goto: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tanyaparis/?saved=1

Dona Yolanda, Tanya's mother, came today to talk about the day's theme: La Generosidad. Seems like the energy level of the camp was down. Maybe everyone was just tired after a long, emotional week. Me too. No energy for blogging.

-josh

Day 4: Plantas y Poesia

Hoy si estuvo un buen día! The morning broke sunny and hot. Well, every day dawns sunny and hot in the d.r. in August. Our numbers were almost back to normal as Alaila and Carlos returned. Carlos said that his grandmother wouldn't let them go on yesterday's field trip. Melanie and Mariele were still missing but a new camper, Gorge Luis arrived.
María Victoria Carreño, published poet and unpublished cousin of Tanya came to the camp today to discuss poetry with the campers. First she wrote the following poem on the blackboard:
"...Ayer las estrellas se acostaron sin cenar
y el sol tenia un nudo en la garganta."
She explained that she wrote this poem when she first heard about the earthquake in Haiti. "Las estrellas", she explained were the children of Haiti that didn't get anything to eat that night and "el sol" was the rest of the world that had a lump in its throat. Maria V.'s lesson was about personification: how different objects from nature can be used to represent people. So she asked each student to replace "las estrellas" and "el sol" with their own imagery. The kids loved this and did a great job using such imagery as "planetas" and "la luna", "flores" and "el jardin", "hojas" and "el arbol" and even "Red Sox" and "Yankees" (That was Carlos, our baseball fanatic. But based on the imagery I'm not sure if he's a Yankees fan or a Red Sox fan.) Here's a video of Eduardo Luis reading part of his poem:


Even I, not much of a poetry aficionado was insipired. Here's what I wrote:
"Ayer los pajaritos se acostaron sin cenar y el aguila tenia un nudo en la garganta." Hmmm... Don't think I'll ever be a published poet.

So, that took up the first part of the day. We finished the day planting the seedlings that we bought yesterday al vivero. The campers were really into it. There's already a small garden area at the school and we decided to add to the garden rather than create a new one. We let Carlos decide where we should plant our seedlings and then all the campers got to help. The principal came over at the end of the day and we got a nice photo of her with the whole camp. She seemed pleased with our efforts, but somewhat indifferent. I wonder what that's all about. Once again, I'll choose not to share my intuitions at the current time...


-josh

For more photos go to:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tanyaparis/sets/72157624536195627/show/

Day 3: Al Vivero

Today we were off to el vivero -- plant nursery -- to buy some plants for the school. We hired Fonso -- a cousin of Tanya's who happens to own a gua gua (a small bus)-- to pick us up at the camp at 9:30. So, at 10:15 Fonso came to pick us up. Four of our students didn't show up and we don't know why. Perhaps their parents didn't want their children to go on this "field trip". Carlos, our super "energetic" 10 year old camper, told us that he got lost on two school field trips and his teacher couldn't find him. Apparently the school takes huge groups of kids on field trips and not all the kids are necessarily accounted for when they get back. Don't get me wrong, all the kids end up getting home eventually. I'm not really sure how though.

In any event, our intimate group of 10 headed off to learn about plants. When we arrived at the nursery, the owner showed us around and explained how they used seedlings of one plant to create many plants -- a splicing technique that I didn't hear because I was busy taking pictures. We saw lots of fruit tree saplings -- avocado, carambola(star fruit), lemon, sweet orange and regular orange. I later learned that sweet oranges are for eating and regular oranges are used to make juice. (And they're not really called "regular" oranges. Those ones just don't have a descriptor like "sweet" so I call them regular. At first I was going to call them "non-sweet" but that didn't seem to make sense as they are still quite sweet.)

But I digress. We also looked at lots of different flowers and bought four to bring back to the school (Tio Tomas, Tanya's uncle who works for the department of agriculuture, is hopefully going to bring us some more to plant next week.) And tomorrow we're going to plant them. If we can find a shovel, that is...

-josh


For more photos goto:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tanyaparis/?saved=1

Day 2

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/

Day 1

El gran campamento started today! The idea is that the camp will run from 9 to 12 every morning. So, at 8:30 Tanya, myself, Natalie (niece and teacher aide), Evan and Camila (our children and star campers) and Frandy and Cailyn (our nephew and niece and also star campers) arrived at the school and set up. But, it quickly became apparent that this camp will be running on Dominican time as at 9 O'clock only one student, the impresively prompt Eduardo Luis, had arrived. Tanya nervously turned to me and said, "If we build it they will come, right?" But then I told her that was about a baseball field and not a school and, thus, the same results could not be predicted. Sure enough though other students began to slowly file in and by 9:30 we had a total of 14 campers between the ages of 8 and 13. And so it began...
Today was very much a day of introductions; We introduced ourselves and talked about our goals for the program and the students introduced themselves and told us what they liked to do. We talked about what a community was and the students drew pictures of themselves or someone else helping the community. The pictures ranged from one of Barrack Obama, to people picking up garbage to a mermaid (I didn't quite catch the mermaid connection, but I think it had something to do with polluting the ocean.) We played some soccer for a while which didn't work out too well as we had 14 campers playing in an area about half the size of a regulation basketball court. Now that we have a better sense of our space, we'll have to rethink our sports options. Samuel has suggested Karate. We shall see.

All in all it was a good beginning.
For more pictures go to: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tanyaparis/?saved=1

What’s For Snack?

Yesterday I spent hours in Walmart buying materials for the camp, but mostly, buying the snacks.
While adding the:
Cheez-its
Club Crackers
Animal crackers
Grahams crackers
Rice Krispies
Chocolatitos Hershey's
Pop tarts
Pringles
Nilla Wafers
and
Chocolate chip cookies
to the cart, I began to think about the snacks of my childhood:
Home made coconut and sweet potato ice cream from Don ñoño’s house.
A package of Guarina crackers and a lemon Mabi from Eladio’s corner store
A slice of arepa from El Arepero and Fam!
A little wrap of freshly toasted peanut
A sweet esquimalito
And of couse, the delicious fruit from Doña Yolanda’s backyard.
Health to the old days!

Carta a Raul Mondesi (Borron creado por Luli)

Estimado Señor Raul Mondesi,


Por la presente queremos saludarle y aprovechar para felicitarle por su triunfo en nuestro partido en las pasadas elecciones.

El motivo de esta carta es mostrarle nuestra visión comunitaria para el barrio Madre Vieja. Tenemos la inquietud de ayudar a nuestro barrio y Dios ha puesto la idea en mis hermanos y en mi. Nuestro objetivo es comenzar este verano 2010 un programa en el cual los estudiantes disfruten de actividades para su desarrollo físico e intelectual. El programa combinaría talleres académicos de lectura y escritura con talleres artísticos y deportivos.

En dicho programa participarán estudiantes de 10 a 12 años de edad. Pensamos incluir deportes como baloncesto, balón-pié y béisbol. Para planear el área de deportes nos gustaría contar con usted para apoyarnos con su experiencia y éxito en los deportes. Tenemos la seguridad de que su presencia y carisma causarán un impacto positivo en la vida de cada estudiante.

Nosotros viajaremos a San Cristóbal durante la ultima semana del mes de julio. Si esta interesado en participar en esta causa y desea saber más información, le invitamos a reunirse con nosotros a nuestra llegada a Madre Vieja. Juntos podremos lograr el cambio deseado para nuestra juventud.

Atentamente,

Computadoras!

Hoy me reuni con la maestra de computos de mi escuela (Runkle School) y me informo que la escuela va a donar
unas cuantas computadoras para el Campamento Las Margaritas. Que cosa tan grandiosa!
Pues a ver como empezamos a planear el como mandarlas y el uso que se les daran dentro del programa.
Se les podrian donar algunas a la escuela y dejar las demas para usarlas en el programa durante el verano.
Bendiciones!
Besos,
-t

Adios a las Cajas!

Hoy fue un dia de regosijo. Yasi le dijo adios a dos cajas; una jumbo y una mediana (27").
El envio se hizo por Embarques Ivan "El Pionero". El costo de las cajas fue de US$240.
Nos aseguraron que llega en un mes, asi que a cruzar hasta los dedos de los pies!
tanya

Y Continuamos con los planes!

Pues hoy ordene unas casitas de madera para los pajaritos. Son unos "kits Design-Your-Own Birdhouses" para que los niños las ensarmen y las pinten. Esta va a ser unas de las actividades.

Por otro lado, Yasi y Oscar han regresado con las cajas necesarias para empacar. Felipe viene mas tarde con otros materiales para agregar y ver como se envian esta semana- lo mas tardar.

-T