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

Orphanage & school building day 1

On Sunday (Domincan Mothers Day) we went to an orphanage. We made them food, cake, painted their faces, danced, did arts & crafts, and sports with them. They were all SO happy.

Playing with the kids

Over 200 hot dogs!
Today (Monday) we started our major service project... we are reconstructing a school in a village we visted earlier. The school was started by a few Esperanza borrowers and fuctions to give children who cannot go to school (lack of clothes, no birth cirtificant, too expensive, etc) an education. It isnt able to get accredited because it was in such rough shape and wasnt suitable to be a "school". We started today to clear the dirt to lay the foundation. We are working with actual construction people who know what htey are doing! I guess it is very uncommon to see girls actually doing work and getting dirty, so we grew to be quite a sight for the whole community to see.

Us with some of the students

After a day of dirty work (with some engineers/construction)

27 Waterfalls!

On Saturday, we went to "27 Waterfalls". Here you hike up a mountain then you jump down 27 waterfalls to get to the bottem. It was awesome! My waterproof camera came in very handy. Again, for all the pics go to my Picasa page.