Monte Cristi- Day 5 (Poco a Poco)

Okay, so today we woke up 7:20. I got up a little bit earlier today to skip the shower lines. 20+ girls in one room is definitely an experience. We all headed down for breakfast at 8 and had pancakes, and scrambled eggs. We headed to class shortly after. Today was our second last day and I felt the heart break as I was walking up to the school with the other volunteers. As soon as we walked into the first grade, Cristopher called me over. Today, I worked with the boy next to him, Yoshell, and let another volunteer help Cristopher as I knew it would be harder to leave, the more attached I became. Yoshell was very attentive to class and absolutely loved participating during the lesson. We had recess after class and it was a blast. I got the chance to interact with so many more children today that I had not yet had the chance to meet. Recess is wonderful as it does not matter what language you speak, as long as you play and have fun!

After recess was the second grade. Today, I was helping a sweet little girl named Youlanni. She was wearing reading glasses and she was so excited to see that I had sunglasses on my head. She also loved my baseball bracelet. This class went super well and all the students were super well behaved. On our way back to the O360 facility after class, we stopped to grab some juice before lunch. It was soooo good. For lunch today, we had rice with chicken, fried plantains, vegetable salad and HBE. After lunch, we headed over to the park across the road to throw a football around. We meet a nice local man and he joined in the game until we had to leave and head back to SJPS. It was nice interacting with him as he knew some English. Third grade was up first this afternoon and they were great. I worked with a boy today that I have not worked with yet and he did very well. At first, I could tell that he was not very interested in the lesson but as time went on, I became more interactive with him and he really began to listen and participate in the lesson. It was great to see how much of an impact I had on him in so little time. The boy next to him was super attentive in the lesson as well. He had his hand up at every opportunity to volunteer at the front of the class and his smile was so contagious. We left third grade and we were feeling good today as we walked up to fourth grade (my class). However, once we got to the door, we could see the teacher inside with the class and she was punishing certain students by hitting them with a meter stick. It seemed so cruel but corporal punishment is not frowned upon here as it is back home so we were in no place to make any judgements. It was hard to see but my fellow teachers and I entered the classroom with positivity and began out lesson. Today, our class was super well behaved and we really took control of the class if they started to fall off topic. Something that I forgot to mention before is that 0360 only has enough support to give grades 1-3 English classes. However, if there are multiple volunteers here, they are able to give the fourth and fifth grades English class as well. Therefore, grades four and five are not as well advanced in English unless they attend the O360 afterschool programs. This makes teaching difficult in these grades as they are not used to the language but each volunteer did a very good job with their lesson plans in these classes. After grade four, we moved to grade five. Today, I worked with a young boy who was not at all interested in the class when we got there but after a little bit, I was able to get him to become more engaged in the class. After grade five, we got the chance to attend the after school program again as it is run on Mondays and Wednesdays. Today, many more volunteers came to help in this classroom. Today, many more students were misbehaving but since there were so many of us volunteers, we were able to work with the students closely and keep them on track while the main teacher dealt with the problems that were going on in the classroom.

When the after school class was over, all of the volunteers headed back to the O360 facility for dinner. Today, we had white rice stew with chicken and fruit. I’m excited to tell you all about my experience during dinner. While everyone was eating, a young lady stood in front of out tables and told us her story:

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Yasmine was brought to the Outreach360 orphanage when she was 5 months old. She had no family. Once she was 18, she had to leave the orphanage and find a place to live as the orphanage can only house you until you are 18 years old. Yasmine was brought in to live with the Outreach360 staff members at their facility until she could manage to get onto her feet. She now has a husband and 2 children (a boy and a girl) and they live a few blocks down from the 0360 facility where we are staying this week. She works at a bank here and is trying to raise enough money to go to school and study to become an English teacher. Outreach360 allows her to come into the facility whenever they have volunteers here, to sell bracelets that she makes to help raise money.

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Before this trip, my church held a fundraiser for me and we made much more money than I needed. They told me to bring the money down to the Dominican with me and if I saw a need, to meet that need. As soon as Jasmine began to speak, it’s like something came over me and I knew that this is where my money was going. I approached her before she left the facility and I told her my story. I told her about my church back home and I gave her the money. She was more thankful than I can even put into words. After dinner, a few of us volunteers headed out for some ice cream. Once we sat down, a young boy approached us and started talking to us in Spanish. We tried to pick up on what he was saying but we could not understand him. We asked another volunteer to come over as she is fluent in Spanish and she told us that he was trying to tell us that he doesn’t have a toothbrush at home. It was heartbreaking. Children in Canada often refuse to brush their teeth before bed just because they don’t want to, even though they have a perfectly good toothbrush and toothpaste right in front of the, in their heated houses, with electricity, and this boy would have loved nothing more than the simple pleasure of owning a toothbrush.

Tonight, once we got back to the O360 facility, we had meringue lessons as well as a group reflection on how the week has been going so far. It was amazing to hear about the connections that have been made between volunteers, between volunteers and the community, or between volunteers and the children, after being here for less than a week. Tonight, three of the male volunteers got tattoos. They went to a local tattoo shop and paid 600 peso’s for a tattoo. I wanted to get one soooo bad but on Friday, we are going to swim in the ocean and I really did not want to miss out on that. However, we went to the tattoo shop later this evening and the tattoo artist said he could do our tattoos on Friday after the beach soooo guess who’s getting a tattoo on Friday, in the Dominican Republic… MOI!

Highlight of my day today: Estabon. This was the boy that I worked with a few days ago in fifth grade who was playing with glue and hitting the doll on Monday, our first day of class. On Monday, he was miserable and wanted nothing to do with the class. He didn’t participate and kept being obnoxious in the classroom. Today in class, he was working with another volunteer and I was blown away. This boy was so attentive and cooperative. He raised his hand and even went to the front of the room a few times to participate. Words cannot even describe how thankful I was at that every moment. We have been with these children for 3 days now and the impact we are making is breathtaking. I have no idea how I am going to say good-bye tomorrow.

Poco a Poco (little by little)