Good afternoon,
As the TD community enjoys yet another snow-ish day off, we are not as *fortunate*.
I have tracked down the wifi password for the base and am now reconnected with the world.
First off, I will hopefully set up a blog this weekend. Until then, this will have to suffice.
Second, we arrived without too much trouble. The airport departure was smooth, as in bad things didn't happen, but it was not "my" best airport departure. American Airlines was understaffed and we spent much time waiting for them to get started. This can be frustrating when you get to the airport at 3am and have to spend time waiting. Having said that we all made it safely and that's what matters. The check-in/customs system has now changed: kids do much of the customs work online at individual kiosks and spend less time talking to agents. We got on the plane to Miami without issues, we had 2.5 hours in Miami and we arrived safely in Santo Domingo...but not all of our luggage did. This was the first time in 5 years that we had missing luggage. Thankfully what we were missing wasn't that important to our daily existence: our three guitars and Sophia's suitcase :D As Brian, Sophia and I dealt with the missing luggage the rest of the crew exited the airport and started loading the bus so I can not share their reactions. When I saw Guido, our Dominican host, I told him our missing luggage was to arrive tomorrow he said "we'll see. I know my people". Thankfully it did arrive so all is well. Within a half an hour of the guitars arriving there were faint sounds of Mumford and Sons being played by Jordan (guitar) and Brian (banjo) with some stellar lead singing (Arie).
It is hot, sunny and lovely. Okay, that is kind of a lie. Currently it's raining and has been for the last hour. That is quite rare for our Santo Domingo base. Usually if it does rain here it is a short shower. Not today, we've had thunder and lightning even - a rarity. The joy of it all? It started raining (pouring) shortly after the crew left in small groups on a photo scavenger hunt where one of the rules was "do not return to the base before two hours is up". It's fun to see who "disobeyed" that rule and returned.
This group is on fire! Not an "out there" kind of on fire, but...I can't really explain it. They are just soaking in everything. Monica and Dylan (now Diego because Dylan is a brutal Spanish name) volunteered to do dishes last night and when they finished they asked if they could do dishes after every meal because it was so much fun! They had the cooks howling with "Como se dice...?" (how do you say...?) when pointing to objects. Diego and Monica would repeat what they thought they heard and, apparently, put on quite a show by doing so. This morning the group soaked up a 90 minute Spanish lesson: they're so eager to learn! Last night students were holding their dictionaries saying "I just want to be able to talk to them" and began looking stuff up! They braved entering the school yard on our base and began interacting with the school kids (high schoolers) and then after lunch pretty much stalked out and then greeted the elementary kids as they arrived for the day. (Sidebar: after this morning's interactions with the high schoolers, it has become official: Scott is Justin Bieber). They are doing everything they can to interact with the culture and it is so exciting to see! And in addition to interacting as much as possible, after lunch I was going to assign mandatory shut-down-quiet-on-the-base journal time but decided against it when more than half the group said "what if we're caught up on our journals and already journaled about yesterday and our first DR impressions?" Well then. Good on you. Keep it up.
One of my most exciting moments on the DR trip is seeing people here again: Guido (our Dominican host), Memen (one of the cooks), Augustine (the day doorman), and Maria - she's my favourite greeting. She's about 4ft nothing which, compared to my 5 '11 status is quite fun, and she hugs with everything she's got. While still in Canada I had told the students that seeing Maria was most exciting for me. Well, they all got to witness it: short Maria came running out of the kitchen shouting "Gracias a Dios! Mi amor, mi corazon!" (thanks to God, my love, my heart) and enveloped me with her hug and, literally, lifted me off the ground. She released and came at me again. I told her "this is my new group - my new students" and she ran at them and hugged them a couple at a time saying "gracias a dios". A couple folks had to wipe away their tears; it really was beautiful.
Circle time was fun and pretty "standard"; in general, people's roses were: finally arriving and their thorns: the airport/saying good-bye. The overall consensus? "How can we not love it here with people as lovely as this?"
We're off to a good start.
Thanks for your support.
On behalf of the iBlock 2014 group,
rachael
PS: Attached are some pictures. For those of you who have been a part of the program for a while you'll see the difference in the pictures. The difference saddens me: for the first time in five years we did NOT have spaghetti, rice and beans as our first dinner. What stayed the same, however, is the fact that dinner was great. I was clearly in a rush to finish my chicken and didn't notice that the pictures I took are blurry and I cut Sophia out on the close side: I'm sorry but the moment can not be recaptured.
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