Service week!

Last I updated we were on day 1 of a 2 day project to build the foundation for a school. By the end of the second day we had dug the 8ft holes for the foundation and removed all the dirt. I cant even explain how exausting that is what you only have shovels and buckets. Oh how I love power tools and machinery! When we left of the 2nd day the cement was ready to be poured! I hope to one day come back and continue working with the school.

The next day we took a well deserving break and went to Saona Island. This is about 2 hours from Santo Domingo and we got to snorkle and lay on the beach!

On Thursday, we went to a school in a village that we were going to repaint inside and out. This included scraping it too. It was a lot of manual labor, but some of the local kids helped out too! It was a 2 day project that we crammed into one day and a long day it was! It was quite a marathon of teamwork to get it done. It came out beautiful!

Moving on to Friday, a man from the Red Sox came down from Boston. He works a lot with the Dominican/Red Sox relationship. He brought us to the Red Sox Academy in San Pedro. It was a really cool place to see. There are about 35 players who stay there. They are in rooms of bunkbeds and eat in a cafateria. They play a game everyyy single day and then 3 days a week they take english lessons. This is the very bottom of the professional leagure pyramid. The next step from this would be playing for the Red Sox is Ft Lauderdale with the team they have there. It's a long road to play at Fenway! There were a lot of scouts there and we got to see them play a game vs the Mets. It is very weird to think how much of their life revolves around baseball. All of the players there are between 17-20 years old and come from Aruba, Venezuala, DR, etc...
After the Academy, we went to visit a pre-school and baseball field that the Red Sox had built for a local community near their facilities.

That bring us to today. Everyone is departing to fly back to Boston later this afternoon. I am going to stay in Santo Domingo until Monday, then my friend and I are off to Haiti and Cuba. Not sure of our plans exactly yet, but you probably won't hear from me for a week or so after monday.

Check my pisture site for all of the pictures! http://picasaweb.google.com/KatieJerdee