C2017: Día 9

Today was a cool day. It needs a bit of background information to explain. Fifteen years ago a high school student named Jake Kheel, came to the DR as part of an exchange program with Northfield Mount Herman. Jake stayed with the Familia Montás during his visit and has stayed in touch with the family since then. Jake went back to the states to go to college and graduate school and then returned to the DR to live. He started a Foundation to support the ecology of the country and is involved in multiple environmental projects here. One of which is a documentary called "Death by a Thousand Cuts" he made about the charcoal industry and the deforestation of both the DR and Haiti. Tanya, Kelli, and I saw the film at a festival in Lowell and Samuel was able to get the movie for the camp. So we took the campers into San Cristobal to see the movie and then Jake stopped by for a question and answer session with the campers. The campers were entranced with the movie and asked great questions of Jake. I told you it was a cool day right?

On a side note, The movie was supposed to be shown at 9:30 and it didn't start until 10:15 because the school where we got the movie shown wanted to bring some of its students as well and they didn't get out of class until 10:00. The old gringo me would've thought, "how hard would it have been to tell us that in advance so we aren't waiting for an hour." But, as I've evolved of late, that thought didn't cross my mind at all. 

C2017: Día 8

Today was a day that tested my newfound Dominicatude to the limit as there was so much going on at camp and so many problems to solve at the same time. First and foremost, the Honorable Guadalupe Valdez, who worked with the students at Congress yesterday was coming to the camp to talk about a project she's working on called Zero Hunger which aims to eliminate hunger in the DR by the year 2030. She was supposed to come at 10:30 but we weren't sure how long her program was going to be. So, we decided to do one round of talleres and then see what happens. 

In the meantime there was a problem with the science taller. Camila and Charlie didn't have time to plan last night because of the going away party for Richard and they didn't know what the students had done with us in science since they had missed the previous day due to the Congress visit. They decided to work with the electricity projects we had brought with us but needed time to figure it all out. Hmmm. What to do? No worries. We just combined four groups into the art talleres. 

Then, the honorable Guadalupe Valdez arrived on time!!! And told us that she had a program that would last an hour and a half and wanted a room where all the campers could fit with a projector because she had a short movie to show. Hmmm. Patience. Flexibility. Well, there isn't a room at the school that fits 115 students. But, lo and behold, the school had a computer lab with a projector and air conditioning. All these years, and I never knew that. Did I mention that the room had air conditioning?

So, we shuffled some things around and had Guadalupe work with two groups at a time while the other groups rotated through their talleres. It actually all more or less worked out.  By the way, as all this was going on we needed to get permission slips written, copied, and distributed for the movie tomorrow and then get all the students' names checked for spelling for the certificates that we will be giving them on Friday.

I don't know. I don't think I described the chaos of the day well enough. But We, and I in particular remained calm and flexible the entire time as plans changed on the fly. So, there's that.

Then, on the way home, we find out that Kennel, Tanya's nephew is having a wedding celebration tonight. So, I better go get,showered up as the party starts in 15 minutes.

The Honorable Guadalupe Valdez with the campers

Evan, pitching in to help the science taller with a solar powered spin art project

Students working on their Zero Hunger posters.

Charlie, showing the students the radio he made.

C2017: Día 7

Today the American teen leaders went on a field trip to the capital with some of the Dominican teen leaders and the oldest class of campers to see the Dominican Congress. Guadalupe Valdez, a former member of the Dominican congress, talked to them about what the Dominican congress does and how it is structured. This was a great opportunity for the American teen leaders to learn more about the Dominican government and how it is different from the American government. It was also a great opportunity for the campers to learn more about how their government works. La Señora Valdez has given a tremendous amount of support to the camp these past two years. Apparently, she appreciates what we are doing here because she told the campers that they should have a campamento las margaritas in every district in the country.  Wow! 

Eric sits next to Guadalupe in the seat the president of the Dominican Republic sits in.

Meanwhile, back at camp, the teen leaders worked on some finishing touches at the playground.

C2017: Día 6

Well I'm pretty beat and not feeling super inspired to write. Just got back to the house after working on the playground for 5 hours. It's looking really good though. We're just about finished. A few final touches and then some major cleanup and that will be that. Today the preschool teacher came by and she was overjoyed with the work that we had done. She was also really helpful, giving us some ideas that we could work with. Like she suggested that we paint a couple of hopscotch games on the concrete floor and that we build a separate area for the sandbox rather than use the structure that we had built. So we took care of that this afternoon and Ervin came by and finished up some of the work that Oscar left for him to do and then did some major painting. Tanya told the kids that the paint was this strong Dominican paint that wasn't safe for them so she and I would take care of all the painting. But the real reason that she didn't want the kids to paint is that (shock of all shocks) they make a complete mess whenever they do any painting!!! And we have enough to clean up already. The flaw in her reasoning, though, is that I am not a particularly neat painter either and probably made just as much of a mess as they would have.

The major success was finally getting the tires cut in half for the palette car that we've been working on. You wouldn't believe how hard it is to cut tires. I tried the circular saw and then a hacksaw and then we even were able to borrow a jigsaw. Nothing worked. Finally, one of the workers from the school came over with a saw used to cut metal. And that worked, with considerable effort. 

Hmm. I guess I was somewhat inspired to write after all. Though, is anyone (aside from Meg and Tanya) reading this? I could write some corny line like, "If Josh writes a blog and no one reads it, did it actually happen?" But that wouldn't make any sense so I won't. 

Here are some pictures of the day:

                                    Making a dream catcher in art class

                         Desire, Thania, and Ginny demonstrating their artistic headgear.

                   Testing the strength of the Popsicle stick bridges in science class.

                Emily playing clapping games with the campers in sports and games.

                           Eric, Charlie, Bailey, and Emily working on the sandbox

    Filling the sandbox with sand(what else would you fill a sandbox with, you might ask.)

    After this photo the sifter broke and the leaders had to pick out the rocks and glass by hand. 

    Notice the cut in half tires? 

                          Our tire cutting friends testing out the fruit of their labor.

C2017: Día 5

Today, at C2017, was a very, very big day. Mark your calendars. August 4, 2017 I, Joshua Paris - gringo extraordinaire, became more Dominican than my Dominican wife and her sisters. Here's how this transformation went down. You see, today we were expecting a visitor, Carolina Santana - a recent graduate of Harvard Law School who was born and raised here in the DR - to come speak to the campers about her experiences (more on that later). She was set to come at 10:30 so around 10 Tanya pulled Luli and me together to figure out how we would fit this visit into the schedule. I said, "Why don't  we wait until she arrives and then figure it out." But Tanya and Luli wanted to figure it out so I didn't pursue my viewpoint that one needs to be flexible here, waiting to see what develops before making grand plans. So, 10:30 rolls around. No visitor. 10:45 passes us by. Still no visitor. At 11:00 Carolina arrives and we gather the students for her presentation. Ha! After all these years I finally have become fully Dominicanized! But, as you know, I've said that in the past only to revert to my gringoness at the next inconvenient moment. Furthermore, I won't spoil this momentous occasion by sharing my gringo reaction to the organizational structure at the Acquarium yesterday. 

Anyway, here's the day in pictures:

Science: the students built Popsicle stick bridges whose strength we will test on Monday.

And in art the kids finished their Eric Carle pieces:

And in deportes they played dodgeball:

And now it's back to the playground. It is Oscar's last day here. So I hope we can get a lot done.

C2017: Día 4

Great, great day! We took the entire camp to The National Acquarium. 108 students, 25 teen leaders, and 8 teachers. My expectations were pretty low as far as acquariums go as we come from a city with one of the best acquariums in the world and I think I'm an Acquarium snob. But I was pleasantly surprised as there was lots to see. And the best part, as always, is seeing how excited all the campers are just to go on a field trip, any field trip. I think they had as much fun eating their lunch in the park next to the aquarium and playing in the playground as they did seeing the sea life. One thing to remember for next year: Leave earlier! We forget that it takes at least 30 minutes to load (and then get an accurate account of) so many campers into 5 buses. And It took 30 minutes to get into the museum once we arrived. I don't think they're used to such big groups. Nor are we, come to think of it.

C2017: Día 3

Good day at camp today. I thought that we wouldn't be as tired as in the past since we're not teaching all day but that doesn't seem to be the case what with us running around looking for this, settling that dispute, and supporting the teen leaders in their teaching. Won't bore you wth the details even though I guess I already did a bit. Of greater import and interest is what the leaders did in the talleres today.

Science: They continued there work in chemistry by "exploding" plastic canisters using alka seltzer. Then they transitioned to the material sciences and made slime.

And in art the started a two day activity making a work of art in the style of Eric Carle. So today they painted a design on tissue paper. And you'll have to wait to hear about the second part until they do it. As a hint I can tell you that it has something to do with scissors.

Meanwhile oscar and some of the teen leaders continued work in the playground:

The big adventure of the day though happened later. After la comida we took all the teen leaders, gringos and locals, into la capital to go roller skating. The kids were super excited. Then, after a very loud hour bus ride (I am now officially burnt out on "despacito") we arrived at Rollers to find out that there was a skating lesson taking place and it was closed to the public until 5. Well, as my loyal followers should know by now, one must always have a plan B here. Which we fortunately did. We got back on the bus and went to a mall not to far away for pizza and a movie. But not just a regular movie. We saw the new Transformers movie in 4D! This meant that while we were wearing our 3D glasses the seats moved with the action and they sprayed us with air or water as the plot indicated. In general I find all that more distracting than entertaining (I can barely handle 2D after all) but the kids had a blast. And, since the movie was really bad ( if they're going to make a summer blockbuster technology filled movie the least they could do is have the plot make sense and write some good dialogue. Is that too much to ask?) all the 4D antics provided much needed distractions.

On a side note, at Rollers the students in the class were all decked out in traditional figure skating outfits complete with flesh colored tights that went over their skates even though the didn't really match the actual color of their flesh. And they were practicing axles, flips and toe loops(that's right I know some figure skating terminology. What of it?) The question I have is what exactly they were training for?

C2017: Día 2

Wow! What a day. It seems like what we've been working towards is really coming to fruition. Case in point, as I was writing this last sentence Eric sat down next to me and said, "I really liked the work we did this afternoon." He was referring to the last few hours we spent working on the playground (more on that later) And what I assume he meant in his succinct way was, "It's a great feeling when you can see the immediate results of your hard, physical labor. Especially when you are doing it for a common good."

I think the same could be said for the entire day. We changed the schedule this year because we thought the teen leaders, both American and Dominican, were ready to take over the camp's main activities. And that's exactly what they showed us today. They led all the learning activities while Tanya, Luli and I worked mainly on logistics and transitions. Furthermore, three of the six home rooms were led by Dominican teen leaders Nicole, Thania, and Cailyn with Evan and Luc. Here's a photo journal of what went down: I hope you like it.

Science Workshop:

Charlie and Camila led one of the science classrooms in experiments on buoyancy while Kelli led the other class in some Ph work.

Sports and Games:

Eric and Frandy designed the obstacle course that one group did while the other played some card and board games. 

Art Workshop:

Luc, Eric, and Evan had the students use drawings and playdough to reflect their learning in the science workshop:

Oh. And by the way 20 or so new campers showed up today so we're at 116.  Told you so. Here is one final picture of transition time:

Then, in the afternoon all the teen leaders went to work in the playground with Oscar. As Eric described, they all worked hard and had a great time doing it. It also turned out to be a great bonding experience for all of them. It's funny what has transpired with these Dominican and American teenagers over the last three years. In the first year that we brought teenagers with us they really bonded when we went to the beach. So last year we said, "wasn't that great what happened last year. Let's go to the beach earlier this year."  So we did. And the two groups barely spoke to each other. So, this year we decided not to partake in any social engineering and just let things develop as they would or wouldn't. And then today they all totally bonded while doing this hard work at the park. There was laughing and dancing and sharing of Spanishu slang, and singing. "Despacito" seems to be popular here as well. All while painting, building, digging, and cleaning. Here is what it looked like:

I have lots of videos as well but I can't figure out how to get them in the blog. Guess I'll post them on Facebook. By the way, here's my latest idea. We make a music video of all the kids working and then taking a break to drink a Coke or Gatorade or something. Then we'll send it to them for their new commercial and donate the proceeds to the foundation. What do you think?