“All I want for my birthdaaay is a…”

But first, it’s “winter” and a very festive (not to mention, busy) time here at NPH. Mid-December I was able to participate in the Proyecto Compartir, again. Last year we did it during December and also during Easter. I was hoping to go visit Quisqueya, which I visited a few times, but this time they chose to donate to the 4 nearby bateys. This time, I went with a few kids, volunteers, and other NPH workers to visit Ramon Santana. Outside of this city are the Atitlano Uno and Atitlano Dos bateyes. When given the choice on which one to stay for the morning I chose Atitlano Dos, remembering that last year the view up there was beautiful. Just to refresh, the entire month of December leading up to Christmas Day, the kids gave up a food item per meal. Our lunches usually have rice, salad, beans/corn, and some meat. So, each day only 3 out of the 4 foods are prepared for them. This was done in order to provide a donation of food to 50 families in these two bateyes, and to even more families in other bateyes on another donation day. We arrived at the community church around 9am, after dropping off the first group in Atitlano Uno. We unpacked what was left on Big Blue (our truck) and got things set up while we waited for families to arrive. Once all were there we introduced ourselves, but I think that they know our organization pretty well by now. Our oldest kids took the children outside to run a few games with them, and to pass out popcorn, candy, and oranges. Inside, the heads of the families received the donations.

Bringing in the donations at Batey Atitlano II

One of our oldest pequeños helping out

Inside and outside views of the church.

Getting ready to leave Atitlano…

With the arrival of the holiday season comes mañanitas. This year we began on Tuesday, December 16^th, the caroling started around 5:30am. So, every morning until Christmas, a group begins to sing outside of one of our houses. That house comes outside, adding more people to the choir, and then they all go to the second house, they come out (adding more to the choir) and so on and so forth until we arrive at the last house (18 houses are involved). The last house (which changes each day) is the house that dresses up as Joseph, Mary, a few shepherds, a cow, a sheep, a donkey, a star, and an angel. Each day another character is added; on the first day the only characters were Mary and the Angel who came to tell her that she would give birth to Jesus. The next day Joseph was added. I thought that for my second time around it would be easier to get up for these. But…nah, it wasn’t. I actually I skipped out on a few mornings. I just wasn’t about it.

Us as shepherds, Mary, Joseph, the angel, a cow, a donkey, the star, and a sheep.

Us (up at the crack of dawn) as: shepherds, Mary, Joseph, the angel, a cow, a donkey, the star, and a sheep.

This year’s Fiesta de la Buena Noche was pretty fun. My girls’ house, Santa Ana, was ready! We had our performance ready for that night’s competitions. We did a merengue number to “Feliz Navidad” by Johnny Ventura. It was something we had just started to practice days before but we lucked out and made it into the second round, which would take place on New Year’s Eve. The volunteers did a dance mix, our dance this year was so much better than last year! We had so much fun and the kids liked to see us make a fool of ourselves.

Here’s our video if you’d like to see…

On Christmas Day, we had the piñata competitions. My Santa Ana girls weren’t motivated to make a cool piñata, and were only concerned about the candy that would be inside. I was told, “DeeJay, even if we do lose, we still win”…Way to look on the bright side, girls.

Here are piñatas we made with each of our houses. Mine is the carved X-Mas tree hanging up on the left. The multi-colored star is that of the San Antonio house, it was HUGE and very creative!

CJ and I trying to re-create a photo we took last year. Last year’s on the left, this year is on the right. He’s grown a lot in a year!

The day after Christmas I had made a song-mix and had memorized a few routines from Youtube to teach my girls. We had practiced every night until NYE. I have 16 girls, only 9 danced in the competition on Christmas Eve, so I only opened up the second routine to those girls who danced in the first half of the competition. In those days, we practiced almost 2 hours every night. Unfortunately, over the course of those few days, I had to cut a few girls from the squad for: fighting, not coming to practice, and being a distraction at practice. YES…it got that real, but they were only cut from the dancing part (booted to the background) and would still be on stage. On the first night I even told them to not start if they would quit if it got tough. I was tough on them in the beginning, but it was only because we had a 5 days to make it close to perfect. I needed them to focus! I’d come back home at night and tell my housemates about how the practices went, and they’d tell me that I was like one of those women from that “Dance Moms” show…I saw myself as more of a head-cheerleader. Sometimes my girls need an extra kick! We finally performed our routine and we felt really good about it. We had a lot of fun and the crowd even gave us the loudest applause out of all the other routines…but the judges thought otherwise. We didn’t place. BOOOOO! My girls had worked really hard on that. No one else could believe it either.

A few pics from the competition: Santa Lucia, Santa Clara, San Pascual, Santo Domingo, and San Miguel

My girls’ house, Santa Ana (that’s me in the red shirt)

Here’s our video if you’d like to take a peek…

After the competition we had our big bonfire. Unlike last year, we didn’t get rained out, the kids were able to roast all of the marshmallows, and we actually had a countdown into the New Year. It was great. The first morning of the year I did a whole lot of nothing. I didn’t leave the house until about 11am, walking out the door I see a few of the younger boys trying to grow a bigger fire from the little flames that were left from the night before. I watched them for a minute to make sure they didn’t set themselves on fire. Then I went and hung out with my Santa Ana girls.

Bonfire!

Happy New Year!

Fuego!

“It’s my birthday, I deserve to be greedy, huh?” I wasn’t though, HaHa On January 17th, 2015, I officially reached my “late 20s”. Where has the time gone? I remember all the age milestones I hit in one decade: 15, 16, 18, 21, and 25. Once I turn 30, the milestones will only come every 10 years…Let’s not talk about it anymore. My birthday weekend this year was well spent with great company. On Friday I went to Santo Domingo for a night out with some friends. We brought in my special day at one of my favorite bars in the colonial zone, Onno’s. I had a really good time with them and ended my night well.

A good time at Onno’s some of my friends

On Saturday afternoon, before heading to Bayahibe Beach we made a pit-stop in Boca Chica for lunch: fried fish and tostones! We arrived at Bayahibe around 5pm and hung out at the beach for a couple of hours. Later we had some pizza for dinner and went out to one of the bars at the beach. Sunday morning we went to visit the Bayahibe part of the Parque Nacional del Este. There we hiked to the Chicho II cave. Inside the cave there’s a freshwater natural swimming pool, so we were able to hop in and take a swim. Afterwards, we headed back to town, had a late lunch, and then we left Bayahibe. It was a really nice weekend. I’m thankful for all that were with me on my special day and for all the birthday wishes I recieved.

Bayahibe with some faves from the DR, France, Australia, and Haiti

In Parque Nacional del Este

En la cueva

Just like last year I took vacation around my birthday, so afterwards I made sure to celebrate with one of my girls who also had a birthday while I was gone. This is us trying to light 14 candles for her and 26 candles for me. No one got burned too bad haha HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO US!

Here’s a few more random photos from a couple of outings over these past few months…