First I am going to talk about what happened last night after we got out of class. We actually had a free night after class last night and so Dana and I decided we wanted to spend some time with Monchi and try to get to know her better and work on our Spanish. We came home and Monchi was not here, but Fanny and Jenny were here. Fanny is the live-in maid and has been here for I think 7 years. And Jenny is sort of an adopted daughter of Monchi’s. Dana found out today that Jenny’s mother use to work for Monchi as a maid and got pregnant while she was working here. I think Monchi’s ex-husband fired Jenny’s mother, but Monchi still financially supports Jenny. So Jenny hangs out here a lot, because her mom is really poor. We ate dinner with Monchi and it was grilled ham and cheese sandwich’s with ketchup and mayonnaise. I didn’t realize there was ketchup and mayonnaise on it and I could barely taste the ham so for those of you who were wondering that is how I was able to tolerate eating it. Trust me when you don’t have a lot of choices and you can’t communicate your likes and dislikes, you eat what they give you. Then Dana and I both got to make phone calls on this thing called Magic Jack which according to Andy is a voice over IP service. You use the computer to make a phone call. Then we went to bed!!!!
Today I woke up really tired. It was the first day since I have been here that I did not wake up before my alarm went off. Instead I hit the snooze and slept for an extra 5 minutes. I actually got a warm shower today and by warm I mean really warm considering my past few experiences. I turned the pressure down on the shower and I think that helped a lot. So apparently you can have warm showers as long as you are okay with not being able to get the shampoo out of your hair because you have no pressure. For breakfast we had corn flakes and a banana. The banana was really ripe and would have been good in banana bread. Then we left to go over the Hostos school.
At the Hostos school me, Jordan, Debbie and Ashley prepared to leave with the 3rd and 4th graders on their field trip to Santo Dominigo. We took two different vans and split the kids up by grade. I rode with Jordan on the third grade bus. Our bus driver was an old cranky man who refused to listen to our teacher. He immediately turned on Dominican rap and turned the volume up to an unreasonably loud level. Our teacher asked him to turn it down and he just turned it up. I learned that Dominican like things loud and like to be loud. The kids liked the music, but they also liked to scream over the music. So for the next 2 hours that is what I got to listen to. Then when we got Santo Domingo and took the kids to a Papa Johns for lunch. Yup they have Papa Johns over here and its better here than in the states. Papa Johns was NOT prepared for us at all. They brought out one pizza at a time and didn’t serve drinks until all the kids were basically done eating. It was what I like to call “organized chaos”. To me it feels very chaotic, but it seems to work for them. We then took the kids to a museum, but the museum was directed at young children. I would compare it to the science spectrum. We took a guided tour, but unfortunately it was in Spanish so I did not understand any of it. Once the tour was done we left the museum to head home. We were suppose to be back in Santiago at 5:30pm, but we did not leave Santo Domingo until approx. 4pm. Well when we left the museum we had to go back to Papa Johns because the teacher forgot to get the receipt from our meal and then we were finally on our way. Well of course everything that could go wrong did…there were bus problems, and then it rained (apparently people freak out about driving in the rain down here), and then we had to take a bathroom break on the way home. By bathroom break I mean we stopped for 30 minutes to let the kids run through the rest stop, get food, and use the restroom. It was complete madness. The rest stops here are just open air convenience stores and they usually have little restaurants in them as well. So first of all I was freaking out, because these kids were all over the place and I felt like I never knew where they were. Secondly they eat so much sugar/junk food!!! I don’t know how they still have all their teeth. And of course after they consumed their body weight in sugar we got back on the bus for the remaining portion of our journey. They were going insane, jumping up and down, and screaming like crazy people. It was during this field trip that I realized that I never want to spend 10+ hours in a confined space with 3rd graders again. We did not get back to Santiago until 7:30pm. We completely missed our university class time, and then the girls wanted to go to the disco. I DID NOT WANT TO GO TO THE DISCO! I was just really tired and cranky from being in a loud bus with kids on a sugar high, and the last thing I wanted to do was go to another loud place. But I sort of agreed to go to the disco…I didn’t want to stay home if everybody else was going.
Kanki took us all home and told us he would be back at 8:45. Dana and I went in to eat dinner which was an cheese, and ham omlett. I know what everybody is thinking…Robyn does not eat ham and here she has eaten it twice! Like I said you eat what they give you especially when you are hungry. Then we got a phone call saying we were not going to the disco, because the DJ’s were not going to be very good. THANK GOD! So instead I got to call my parents and then go to bed. I was so happy.
Much love,
Robyn
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