Hotel Platino Santiago

... never get dessert,
Who have no safe blanket to drag behind them,
Who watch their parents watch them die.
We pray for those who can't find any bread to steal,
Who don't have any rooms to clean up,
Whose pictures aren't on anybody's dresser,
Whose monsters are real,
Whose nightmares come in the daytime.
And we pray for those who will eat anything,
Who have never seen a dentist,
Santiago, Dominican Republic lstockwell

... aggressive, and I had to be "rescued" by the staff.  A sweet little girl with Down's Syndrome seemed particularly out of sorts today, as she kept grabbing my backpack and trying to open all of the pockets.  "Es mio, es mio", I kept telling her.  It's mine!
She was adorable, but quite a stinker today.  So, it's been an eventful, tiring day all in all.  
I'm also missing my family like crazy!  I think I have done well so far ...

... Open to the air.  I realized during the session, that it doesn't matter what language you are praising God in, it's still praise, and it's still respectful, and very much a form of worship.  These communities are tied to their "schools" and churches, and it's amazing to see.  The school was just built, and had a Grand Opening while we were there.  It's a two-story, 4-room stone building for students, infants through high school.  
It ...

... directions, asking about street locations, buying a pineapple, etc.  I am proud to say that my group paid six pesos less for our pineapple (24 pesos) than the others who paid 30 pesos---thanks to my expert bargaining skills.  I said, "Cuanto cuesta, senor?"  (how much is this?), he said Triente pesos (30).  I said, "no puedo comprario, es muy caro (i cannot buy, it is too expensive).  He went down to 28 pesos until I said ...

... item max. So the cashier calls the manager over and all four of them proceeded to argue about how items they had...and they spent more time debating the matter than it would have taken to ring all the items. Finally when I realized I could pay with a credit card I decided to go off and look for some more things. On my second trip to the register I was behind a man and his young son ...

... jump steeply out of a flat plain they seem much higher. World Vision has a center in the mountains north of Neyba to give employees a base of operations closer to the rural communities they work with up there (see pictures of the center in the previous post). Since I'm no longer spending every day out in the communities collecting my own data, I've had time to accompany Luzlanda on two work trips there. We've been distributing anti-parasite medication at ...

... Jones like, day of my life in a long time. I went with 4 other friends and one of my friend´s homestay family, which was 30 people, on a hike to a river. We all thought that it was going to be an easy hour hike on a path to a river. Boy, were we wrong. It was a 3 hour hike through brush, trees, bushes with thorns, falling guavas, snakes, and climbing up and down rocks. The thing that made it so funny was that ...

... trip included everything from transportation, lunch, VIP area, security to open bar on the bus. We met at Agualina resort in Cabarete at 8:00am for the tour, and ended up waiting almost 2 hours because apparently there were more people that showed up than they planned, and they didn't have enough buses to accommodate all of us. So much for great organization. There were 70 of us, mostly 20-something year old ...

... to jump it is optional. It's optional, because it's completely crazy. It's about a 40ft jump, into a pool below that is about 5-7 ft wide, and once you're up there all you can see are rocks. You can only take a "step" off, not a jump, because if you jump, you'll go to far and hit the rocks. Um, scary!! I stood up there for a long time, trying to get my heart back down to a normal speed, and then trying to convince myself to do it. It was quite ...

... said, well from what I know the whole community is one big family, right. Well, he says "yeah, but were distant." I guess I have my own rules about certain things that are not going to change. Tomorrow, I am going to Constanza to buy food for a dinner/birthday party for the youth in my community. We do activities together, but you need to have things outside of the work. We are celebrating the Oct. and Nov. birthdays. So I was told that I will be helping ...