3 – 9 Febrero
This was our first real routine week of school with out holidays or random trips. It finally feels like this is where I go to school and that I’m not just some tourist wandering around (people still stare all the time but I don’t think there’s a chance for that to stop so oh well). Wednesday was Dimitri’s birthday so Brie and I went over to JB’s apartment to hang out with the guys. I tried Haitian rum.. I hate rum so it was terrible but not as bad as other kinds I’ve had. And Dimitri’s mom had made this like super sweet/thick as syrup/rum drink that I only had a sip of but was really good but I felt like I should have put it on pancakes. Thursday it rained all day and after a full day of class Rosie and I did not feel like going out so we watched Sex in the City for about three hours and went to bed early. Oh and for dinner that night mama made pancakes and the Dominican equivalent to oatmeal.. it’s a lot thinner and a lot sweeter and you drink it out of a coffee mug (Rosie didn’t understand this at first and put water in her oatmeal mug and mama laughed at us). It was good but too sweet to drink a lot of.
Friday it was still raining so we didn’t do much during the day, just homework and watched the Office for most of the day. That night we went to this Haitian boy Clement’s apartment to have a few cocktails and play spin the bottle like middle schoolers before we went to this house party where we met up with Brie, Joe, Charlotte, and Randi. There were a ton of people but it was all outside in the backyard this time but still had like a bunch of different DJs so that was cool. The police came I guess, which meant nothing except they had to stop playing the music so after lingering there for a little bit we all went back to JB’s apartment to hang out. Oh and we were just talking about cultural differences with them and they said that almost all guys lose their virginity between 11 and 13. I could not believe it but sex is just way more casual here which is just so weird and different for me. But, before we knew it it was 4am and we came home.. mama laughed at us the next day but was ok with it because usually parties don’t start until so late here.
Saturday was even more worthless than Friday.. since we went to bed at like 5am we didn’t wake up until like noon. After lunch we were still recovering from the evening before and tried to watch a movie in Rosie’s room but we both fell asleep for like three hours. Amazing how I can just always keep sleeping here when it’s raining because you really don’t feel like doing anything. When we woke up we went to La Sirena which is like a wal-mart type situation because we had planned to watch Mean Girls with Stephanie and Jenny and we wanted to make them puppy chow but couldn’t find any of the ingredients so we decided on rice crispy bars. And luckily for us looking like death, we ran into JB and Dimitri so that was pretty random/funny/unfortunate. When we got home we made our rice crispy bars and Jenny was at a friends house so we decided to watch the movie another night. That night Rosie and I went with JB, Dimitri, and Carlille to meet their friend Paolo and we hung out as his apartment.. oh my god. It was the nicest apartment I’ve ever seen in my life, and he lives there by himself. It was like extremely well decorated and clean and huge. His parents live in New York and he lived there with them for 15 years but decided to come back here for school. They were going out to a club but dropped us off before because we had to get up at 7:30 on Sunday.
After getting completely ready Sunday morning, Jonathan (our program director) called us a little after 8 saying that our excursion was cancelled because it was still pouring rain. Sooo let down, because I was way excited (we were going to go to Jarabacoa to ride horses to a waterfall then go to La Vega for carnival in the afternoon.. and those are all very outdoorsy activities so it doesn’t make sense to go when it’s raining but still) so naturally I went back to bed and took a three hour nap. I’m going to be so rested when I come back it’s going to be out of control. I watched two and a half movies with my mom after taking my second nap of the day and finishing my homework through Wednesday. Loser. We also watched the news which was really sad because tons of people’s houses were flooded and completely destroyed and normally it doesn’t rain this much. So sad.
This morning (Monday) was my first day of volunteering with the kids in the orphanage/home place. It was absolute chaos but I absolutely loved it. There were about thirty kids who “split” into two groups (they were all about eight years old or younger) of little kids who were going to do art and the older kids who we were going to teach English. There were four of us from the university, two for the little kids and two for the older ones. However, we were all in the same room that also had all the toys in it and it’s been raining for the past three days. And we didn’t get any training whatsoever, they literally were just like “ok here you go you have two hours teach them English good luck!” It was ridiculously crazy but the kids were all excited to learn it was just difficult with the environment. We managed to teach them “hello my name is..” and “what is your name” haha except when we had them practicing writing it I wrote my example as “my name is Krista” and all of the kids wrote “my name is Krista Juan” or whatever their name was because they didn’t understand that Krista wasn’t part of the English. Hilarious but I clearly need to improve my teaching techniques. After about 20 minutes of trying to get them to focus we gave up and just let them play and helped individual kids with what they wanted to practice. They know the “head shoulders knees and toes” song and I quizzed them on the individual parts and they only kind of knew them but it was cute to watch them go through the song in their heads to try to figure it out. I’m really excited to plan what to teach them and try to make fun activities because I think we’re really just on our own. I’m with the older kids on Wednesday afternoon so I don’t know if that will be harder or easier but I guess I’ll find out. I miss all of you so so much, les amo!