The Last--Aventura Style (as in not the very last, but the last for now)

My time this year is up! The year ended on a beautiful note with a field trip to the beach. Only two of our kids had been to the beach before, and they were all excited and well-behaved. I spent the bus ride listening to kids reading signs “Profe, that says ‘supermarket’” and teaching the kids about stoplights (“Yes, you have to stop on red.”) My favorite part was when we got to the coast and the kids could see the ocean. As soon as the ocean was out of sight, Paulino (9) would say, “The ocean ran out” and I repeatedly had to explain that the ocean doesn’t run out and that it’s there even if we don’t see it. It was such a good day. These kids deserve so much more than they have, and I was happy we could give them a good day. Below are some lists summing up the year!!!!

Funniest moments
-Times with our Ethiopian neighbor friend. He’s a doctor doing his residency here through the World Health Organization and he lives up the street from us. He does not believe in evolution or dinosaurs, though we are hoping to show him Jurassic Park soon. When we asked if he was going to hang out with his friends, he assured us he was not going to hang out, later explaining to us that he thought “to hang out” had a connotation of drug use. We have had many moments like this.
-convincing some new Dominican friends that Leah was actually America Ferrara (actress from Ugly Betty). She bears a shocking resemblance to her.
-Visiting a resort we were not patrons of and getting a free meal and drinks .
-Snorkeling—we were invited by some Peace Corps people, under the assumption that some of them were going to snorkel and others dive. In actuality, all of them were diving, and only Leah and I were snorkeling. So we were placed in a group of a family of snorkelers, and the group guide kept calling the family to lunch or to snorkel, and we just followed along.
-The kids dancing Michael Jackson.
-Teaching my kids to eat with chopsticks
-While waiting for a bus, we were approached by a deaf motorist. He was part of a group of about ten deaf motorists, and we stumbled along in conversation. When we had to leave to catch the bus, the man signed to us that we call him. And how would that have worked?
-Everything the kids say. They are so funny. I can’t even think of an example, because they say hundreds of funny things every day.

Worst moments
-Death of three year old boy (malnutrition)
-Finding out Yolanda (11 years old) had been repeatedly raped
-Watching parents beat their children
-Seeing toddlers (and babies!) left by themselves in the street.
-Losing my patience with the kids.
-In passing, a mother (who neglects her children) walks by her crying child (with an eye infection) and told me to take her child to the clinic.
-Waking up in the middle of the night because the lights (i.e. the fan) went off and the heat woke me up
-The light going off in the middle of doing laundry
-Getting robbed
-this wasn’t actually that horrible, just annoying because it was the first time in my life that it happened. It was non-confrontational. I was eating fried chicken, and it just happened.
-I only lost my favorite sweater, playing cards, an origami crane, and my keys—all things which can easily be replaced.
-Whenever this song plays (so about every ten minutes):
-lyrics translated to English:
I want an American girl to send me a visa. I want an American girl to take me out of here, and then I’ll ditch her when I get there.
-this song was created so that men could harass us even more on the street.


Illnesses/health problems I’ve witnessed in the batey (death numbers since my arrival):

-malnutrition (2 deaths and several suffering from it)
-head funghus and ring worm (countless infected)
-parasites/amoebas (countless infected)
-conjunctivitis (epidemics break out, it’s really gross)
-black eyes/bruises (countless!!)—many from their parents’ beating them/hitting them with pans/cutting them with knives, you name it
-burns (it’s very common that kids get burned from cooking haha—not funny, just crazy that children cook over charcoal unsupervised)
-sickle cell anemia/anemia (most of the kids are anemic, several with sickle cell)
-cancer (2 deaths)
-dengue
-HIV/AIDS (1 death, I’m aware of a few cases; I suspect there are many more than I’m aware of, but they keep this information very private)

Personal Health Battles

infections (countless!!!!!!!!)
cold x 2
parasites x 2
dehydration!!!!!!!!!!
conjunctivitis
head lice
head funghus (I know, it’s gross)

(never amoebas!)

Funniest/strangest agenda items from our weekly staff meetings

-reminding teachers to make their kids wear underwear so that everything is covered

-telling the kids not to bring us flowers (they pick the trees to death to give us the flowers!)
-how/to whom we can give bread and milk out (this one lasted for a couple of weeks)

Only here moments
-While on a bus, the cobrador (the driver’s assistant/man who collects the money) offers to collect everyone’s trash on the bus (what great service!). He then throws all of it out the window.
-I found a toilet seat floating in the ocean (do you see a theme here?)
-During charades, my fellow (Dominican) teacher acts out a drunk
-Batey kids go to the bathroom on the floor in their house
-Rain means at most a third of normal attendance
-There is a dump nearby the batey where kids find all sorts of goodies to circulate. One of the most popular finds was thousands upon thousands of tattoos. Most recently, an adult in the batey found hundreds of bags of Wendy’s tortilla chips (for salad) and packets of syrup and jam (all expired from the month before). He was selling these from his house. This was a big hit.

Best moments
-Mango season (for a few weeks in may we’ve had more than 20 mangoes drop every day from our tree in the back yard! Only thing better than a mango is a free mango)
-Katrina (1 ½ years old) counting to 4!
- Birth of Melania’s baby. On May 1, I went to the hospital (and waited aaaallll day) to see Albeiro, Melania’s new baby! After repeated attempts to abort him, Albeiro came out on time and perfectly healthy. His birth truly is a miracle.
-Dancing merengue and bachata
-Playing board games and cards (we learned poker this year!) with the girls
-End-of-the-year outings (one with the staff and their families to the beach, another with the kids to the beach). I realized what a blessing it is to work with really good people. People from the batey who work with us were also there, so it was nice to spend time all together. The paseo with the kids goes beyond words.
-Life lessons from Bertha (one of the women I teach). She has a bit of a scandalous past, but she’s a strong woman of faith, mother of ten, and has a great sense of humor and outlook on life.
-Whenever the kids dance Michael Jackson. I know four year-olds who do it better than Michael. I’m serious.
-Time spend with my Kreyol teacher, Michael (11 years old). He came from Haiti about the same time when I got here, but his Spanish is already great. He’s a sweetie and we only just became friends. He’s taught me to say a lot of important phrases (Hurry up! You cheated me! That’s my bread!) .
-Teaching in the afternoon (We generally rotate groups of children every two-three weeks, but I had the privilege of teaching the same group of kids every afternoon all year). I know each of my kids very well and I love them. Three of my kids learned to read this year, and I taught almost all of them to successfully write in cursive. Sometimes I felt as though I wasn’t seeing any improvement, but at the end of the year I recognize how far many kids have come.
-Convincing my kids that our Flat Stanley doll (Florinda) really once was a girl who had been flattened. They are all a little confused about this.
-Singing with the kids. I taught my group “We are the World,” and other kids complained to me that my kids wouldn’t stop singing it—at home or at school.
-On the last day of school, the kids had the opportunity to say thank you to the American teachers (Katie and Amanda) who won’t be coming back next year. They were so beautiful: “Thank you, Profe Katie, for teaching me to read.” One of my kids from the afternoon got confused and thought I was leaving, and she started to cry.

This is it for the year! Next week the four of us are going to Haiti (don’t worry, we are avoiding the Port-au-Prince area) and I’ll be headed home on June 23. I’m returning August 1. Thank you all for your support and prayers this year. I hope everyone has a great summer!