We've got a scuba diver ...

Cristofer found something new and exciting to play with last week ... he ran around wearing the snorkle gear for most of the morning!

TRICKS (are for kids) ...

Two boys from the English school rode their bikes to school last week ...here they are showing off some tricks!

WINSTON

The many faces of Winston ... he's a character!

Viene Algo Nuevo! (Somthing New)

You've probably had Lay's Potato Chips before ...but ...have you had COCONUT FISH flavored chips??? We spotted this strange, new flavor at the supermarket last week!

Swinggggggggggggggg

Moncho playing baseball .... (background- clothes hanging out to dry on the fence)

English class in the park

Last week we took our English classes to a nearby park ...we had about 10 volunteers with us and they spent time playing and conversing in English with the kids ... here are Nina, Leonel, Jose Luis and Carlos ... these boys are 3 of 6 orphanage kids who attend the English school.

Carlos, Leonel, me, & Jose Luis

There are 3 English classes, and each class has a class, or team, name ... here are the Brave Bears ... the other classes are Terrific Tigers and Super Sharks

Estrella!

The orphanage dog ...the one and only-- ESTRELLA (in English her name means 'Star')

Carmelo

Carmelo (and a lot of the other kids) had fun with new baseball gloves that have been coming in with donations these past few weeks!

DOMINGO aka MINGO aka MINGITO

Domingo's photo shoot :) ... he's been enjoying his new hat that came in with recent donations

MURAL

For the past 4 years an art professor from Penn State has been coming with the volunteer group from that school, and each year he leads a mural project at one of the local schools. This year the mural was done at John F. Kennedy school. The principal requested a mural painting of the DR ( a map) with city names so that it could also be used as a learning tool for the younger grades. Stan (the art prefessor) and some of our other volunteers sketched out the plan and several volunteers helpingwith the drawing and painting transfer to the wall. It turned out really well!

Below is a photo of the sketched plan.

Stage 1- an outline of the island
Stan (or el Stan-o as we call him) and the principal putting up caution tape to keep the kids out of the area that was being painted during recess.

The detailed work begins...

El Stan-o and a volunteer working on city names ...

The finished mural! ... they did lots of detailed work, pictures of trees, sugar cane, rice fields, and other things known or common to the island ... at the top by Monte Cristi is a painting of the school itself.

Football in the Ocean

Last Friday during our beach day some of the volunteers got a football game going in the shallow part of the water ... they had a good time, and even got one of our Dominican bus drivers to play for a while!

Donations!

Volunteers during our 2 biggest weeks (March 3rd and March 10th) had a lot of work sorting all of the donations they came with ... our donation categories mostly include- clothes, food, toiletries & medicine, school supplies, sports equipment and some books and toys. Most of it goes directly to the orphanage, but when we have excess donations go to people in the community, the schools and the local kid baseball teams.

Another cute kid!

Erika and I

Brothers/Hermanos

There are a lot of brother/sister goups here at the orphanage ... one group of brothers that Bryan and I have known since the very first year we came down are the 3 boys pictured below ...from left to right- Domingo (6) Ariel (8) and Jochi (12) ...they are a great group of kids!

Bryan, Cristofer & the Sombrero

Cristofer (3 years old) got his hands on a Sombrero hat this past week and has been wearing it ever since!

Hola Loco!

With volunteers come bags of donations ... food, clothes, school supplies, etc ... sometimes a few rare donations make it to the DR though ...like sweaters, and in this case- a fuzzy winter hat! The kids enjoyed modeling it to get a few laughs!

Working Hard!

Our largest school team, Episcopal High School, is working with a Dominican construction team on a new laundry/storage building ...cement brick by cement brick! They are working hard!

Organizing the school supply program room!
After lots of work out in the sun, water breaks are important!!!

More work at the construction site.

A Big Week in the Schools!!!

Me and Erika, one of the girls from the orphanage, at the school she attends.

A little arm wrestling demo one recess
One of our volunteers getting attacked by his students (but in a good way) on recess

With over 200 volunteers we are teaching in almost every school in Monte Cristi--11 schools!!! Everyone is doing a great job and the kids in this town are really enjoying it!

There's a new bank in town ...

When week long volunteers arrive we usually take them to the local bank to exchange dollars for pesos ... with over 200 people though, that wasn't going to work ... so instead we exchanged the $ ahead of time and opened our own money exchange station ... here are your OO bankers flashin some cash--Coco, Nina, Bryan, Elizabeth

Meal Time w/ 230 volunteers!

Volunteers going through the food buffet line during Spagetti Night! Normally we have 1 large buffet set up, this week we have 2

Normally volunteers eat inside of our biggest ramada ... that has about a 100 person capacity... this week we have an outdoor dining area set up as well. It is shaded by the large grey tarp shown in the picture ... we've also put in an order for no rain:)

Here is a more close up shot of a chunk of 40-50 volunteers eating in the outdoor area

JEFES!

Wearing official OO colors- white and blue ...Tom (Director of OO) Coco, Me, Elizabeth & Nina (our 2 interns) and Bryan ...Tom is here this week and we are all working hard to make the record braking 230volunteer week a success! So far its going great!