Fort | Dee Jay In The DR

On the road again

On April 22^nd, the school at NPH hosted an Earth Day fair. Each grade prepared table set-ups explaining vegetation, sustainability, and how to compost/recycle. They’d been working on it for about 2 months. It was really cool to see how knowledgeable they’ve become about the subject. I made sure to check out the tables of my girls. Since I don’t work in the school, I don’t really know what they do during the day, how much studying they actually do, let alone if they’re actually learning anything. So, attending this fair opened my eyes a bit. I was proud of them.

Earth Day Fair!

A few table set-ups

Seed Mural;; More table set-ups;; Skit performed by 2 girls from the nearby batey.

On April 26^th, we had another Visitors’ Day. I think this is the 4^th one since I’ve been here. As usual we invite relatives, close friends, former volunteers, and sponsors/padrinos to come spend the day with the children. We play music and have a few activities planned for the kids. Same ol’, same ol’. Except this time I wasn’t put on FacePaint duty. I was more than happy about that.

A few Visitor/Family day games: Parachute, Dominos, and Uno

Photos of a few siblings

Goofing off with one of the Bigs while working the welcome table;; And, YES, Emily and I are Skateboarding experts…more or less…(Less) 🙂

At the beginning of May I decided to use up some of the remaining vacation time that I had left. I took a weekend trip back up to Samaná with Jenny and Emily (both volunteers), and my friend Jessica. We took guaguas up to Las Galeras. The guagua was packed when we got on. I had a seat in la cocina (“the kitchen”, the furthest back row & no one wants those seats) where I was seatmates with this guy carrying 4 baby chicks in a bag. It took us about 3 hours to get there! Overall, I wasn’t too impressed by Las Galeras. We wanted to take a few excursions but it seemed that we’d be required to take transport to a different city to actually do them. There weren’t any excursions IN Las Galeras. We enjoyed our weekend, though. We stayed at an aparthotel called La Isleta de Samaná. The first night, we met up with some friends of Jessica and had a small barbecue on the beach.

View from our hotel;; Mini Beach Barbecue

The next morning we took a boat ride over to Playa Rincon and spent the day there. For lunch we had fresh fish, lobster, and of course tostones.

Playa Rincon

Starting our Sunday pretty late, Jessica and I met up with our friend, Justine, and took a boat over to Playa Fronton. It was beautiful there. You can only get there by foot or boat, and you’d have to bring your own of everything. There were people camping out there, barbecuing. It was really nice! Earlier that afternoon, Jessica and I booked a hotel in Las Terrenas and headed there afterwards. There we met up with some friends and went to a few bars. It was a fun night; I always enjoy myself in Las Terrenas.

Playa Fronton

Monday afternoon we headed back towards Santo Domingo, and from there I took a guagua back to San Pedro. I spent two days at there and then took a CaribeTours bus up to Santiago. I was there back in September, but only for a day. That was that 3 day weekend where I went from San Pedro to Punta Cana to Santo Domingo to Santiago and back to San Pedro (yeah, too much). So this time I spent 3 days in Santiago. There I stayed with a friend of a friend, Paula. I met her back in September through my friend, Israel. Over those 3 days I visited the Héroes de la Restauración monument, the Aurora Cigar Factory, the San Luis Fortaleza, and a few art museums. I met a lot of cool new people. That Saturday I left Santiago to spend the last few vacation days in Santo Domingo with some friends.

With my friend, Israel, at the Heroes of the Restoration Monument

In Fortaleza San Luis;; A few pieces of art that I liked

Tamboril: Where La Aurora is located;; inside one of the factory buildings

Me, Israel and his 2 friends from Argentina

Randomly ran across 2 tops representing our countries: USA & Argentina

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Now, for some random photos 😀

Another trip to Campo Azul, this time with the April babies

Fun activity we did a few Saturdays ago: balloon tossing contest. When I did this a couple months ago it turned into a war!

Spent an afternoon acting silly with this cool kid. He arrived at NPH not speaking any Spanish and now he’s speaking it like a champ. He’s going to help me practice speaking Haitian Creole!

-DeeJay ❤

Pa’ Puerto Plata

Grades from the first month are in and I’m proud to say that 11 out of my 17 girls are at or above a B-average. I took two of these 11 with me into town to do some shopping and to have dinner. I did my usual routine on Tuesday nights, we went to Iberia, walked through the park, and then we went to a PicaPollo spot to grab something quick to eat before meeting up with the rest of the group at Jumbo (grocery). Pica Pollo is fried chicken, the restaurant usually serves Tostones, Mangu, Yuca, Platanos Maduros, Chofan, French fries, soup, in addition to other foods. I usually take them to Domino’s for pizza but they’d been asking me about PicaPollo forever. So I gave them what they wanted. They earned good grades so they were able to choose this time.

Pica Pollo!

A week later, in my house we celebrated the Quince (15^th birthday) of one of my girls. I was happy to celebrate this day with her! She’s been patient with me and my (sometimes choppy) Spanish; she’s been respectful, well behaved, she’s just an all-around good kid. So I made her a special cake (a double layer strawberry with jam) and bought some soda. I also brought music, because what’s a party without music? Later on this month, well next weekend, on November 30^th, we’ll have a big birthday celebration for all the girls who have turned 15 and all the boys who have turned 18. It will be crazy! I cannot wait. A few days after our mini-Quince celebration in my house, I had another birthday to celebrate. This time, it was for one of our youngest who turned 12. This time I made cupcakes and brought them bags of candy. I couldn’t bring music because the Tia told me that the birthday girl had been acting up earlier that day, but we spent the evening watching their new favorite telenovela, “Marido En Alquiler”.

My 15 year old in the red shirt and my 12 year old in the pink one with the brown skirt.

We recently had a volunteer retreat. We took an hour guagua from San Pedro to the capital. From Santo Domingo we took a CaribeTour bus up north for 330 pesos. It took about 3.5 hours to arrive in Puerto Plata. We stayed at a bed and breakfast spot called Villa Carolina. There’s a restaurant nearby called La Lena, it had THEEE best burger I’ve eaten since living here! Anyway, the next day we headed to Damajagua, about 45 minutes away, to experience the 27 Saltos y Charcos (27 Jumps and Waterfalls). We arrived around 10:30am; they gave us our helmets, life-jackets, our 2 guides and sent us on our way. A sweaty 45 minutes later, we finally arrive at the first waterfall. There, the jump was about 5 feet, not high at all. From there we continued to hike to the following 26 waterfalls. On a few occasions we had the opportunity to either slide or jump off, and I always chose to slide because I am what our guides called “gallina”, I was too chicken to jump off HaHa. & Thanks to the natural limestone, I managed not to get scraped by the rocks when sliding. The largest jump is about 40 feet high, but that is one that we skipped out on towards the end because the last 3 or 4 jumps were closed off. It was a great experience, though! Everyone has different weekends off, so it was great to get away and do something fun together. I’ll definitely do the 27 Charcos again.

Few pics from around Villa Carolina

Anyone who knows me knows that I love cats. These two cuties were my buddies for the few days we were there. 🙂

Lunch at La Lena

Walking on the malecon in Puerto Plata with Kat & Meike

At the Fortaleza San Filipe: Buff of Antonio Maceo Y Grajales, a Mayor General in the late 1800s

At the Fortaleza San Felipe: Buff of Antonio Maceo Y Grajales, a Mayor General in the late 1800s

Sunset over the fortaleza;; Statue of General Gregorio Luperon “Primera Espada de la Restauración”

Breakfast before going to the 27 Saltos y Charcos

Ya llegamos

The Team

It looks scary but it was FUN!

🙂

You have those that are graceful in the water, like Kat, Mega, and Jennie...and then there's me, with my foot out of the water.

You have those that are graceful in the water, like Mega, Jennie, and Kat…and then there’s Me, uncoordinated and just really awkward with my foot out of the water ;P

Last Group Pic;; “Look, Ma! No Hands!”

The next morning we went took the Teleferico (cable car) up to Mount Isabel de Torres. It’s currently the only cable car you’ll find in the Caribbean. At the top there’s a park, a botanical garden, and the statue of Christ The Redeemer. The ride up was about 10 minutes. About halfway up the cable, the car just stopped, which sent us into a swing for 10 long seconds. That was fun…NOT, but the car started back up and we were on our way again. We weren’t sure if we’d get a good view of anything because it was really cloudy that morning. Gracias a Dios, the clouds cleared up completely and presented us with a beautiful view of Puerto Plata and the north coast.

In the front yard of Villa Carolina, waiting for our taxi to the Teleférico…

Cable Car;; Map of the park;; A Band that plays music while you wait

It was cloudy going up;; view of a baseball field from above;; 1 support tower;; Upper loading station

Christ The Redeemer Statue;; DR Flag;; Facts about the Teleférico

Meike, Me, & Jennie with Puerto Plata in the background

A few posts ago I talked about how we began a garden. Since then we’ve planted Arugula, Spinach, and Mango. So now, we have those in addition to Corn, Tomato, Zucchini, Green Bean, Basil, and the Sunflower. The plantains on our tree finally became ready to cut down. We’ve shared those with our houses that we work in and with the other staff that live on site.

“Started from the bottom, now we here!” We finally have something growing. We’ve already picked some of the green beans and the basil is ready too. However we still have some time until the tomatoes and corn are ready.