This is my life

‘The only thing constant in the world is change. That’s why today I take life as it comes.’

-India.Arie

I was listening to some music the other day and I found this opening line to a song rather inspiring. Change seems to be one of the most common themes present in my life as I am living it right now - just about nothing is the same as it was a month ago. Every day brings new challenges (as well as some challenges that never seem to go away) as well as surprising and exciting new things. My mood is constantly changing, life is like a rollercoaster, always shifting. So to take life as it comes, dealing with each issue and excitement as they arrive seems like some of the best advice I could receive here.

All of that said, I thought I would start with a bit about what my life looks like now that im a little settled into a routine. Of course no day is the same but there is a bit of order. I get up in the morning around 7 and have a breakfast of fruit (we go shopping every Monday and I buy almost nothing but mounds of delicious cheap mangos) and sometimes bread and coffee with the others who live in my house (there are 7 volunteers in this house). We then work from 8am to 12:30pm, which consists of countless numbers of things. Lots of brainstorming and meeting with people to talk about future plans as well as teaching 5 hours a week on a regular schedule (more about that later) and planning for the classes and excursions. From 12:30 to 2pm we break for lunch. I usually go straight to Santa Rosa (the house I eat with) and spend most of the time there playing things such as a hand slapping game similar to ‘down by the banks’. I love the ability of boys between the ages of 6 and 11 to play this game. They would be content to do it all day long. The work day then continues from 2-4, though often we end up working until closer to 5 depending on the day and what we have going on. After work, it is a bit of a free for all usually taking a little bit of time to myself and spending most of the time playing with the kiddies. After dinner at around 7, the kids in my house go straight to bed so I have the rest of the night to hang out with the volunteers and do whatever else needs to be done. It sounds pretty relaxed but I usually end up being pretty hectically busy from 8am to 7:30pm.

As for the classes, Ingrid and I began teaching this week and have taught a lesson in 3 of our 5 classes so far. We go into the school and teach for an hour when the classes would normally be having their science like class. First of all, what the heck are we teaching about? In true Dominican fashion, we’re honestly planning it week by week aside from having selected a number of themes we want to cover. We’ve named our class “Naturalismo y el Medio Ambiente” (naturalism and the environment) and hope to accomplish three main things throughout the year. For the kids to understand the process of food growing from seed to table, for the kids to gain a greater appreciation of the natural world, and for them to understand a bit of the interconnections between the human and natural world. It might be a bit of high hopes, especially for the last goal, but why not aim a little high? Our first week, as with so many things here, has been up and down. We taught the second graders first, and although it was hectic, we felt somewhat accomplished afterwards. Today on the other hand left us feeling rather defeated. We had our second to youngest group, pre-primario, who we’ve realized we can only do really really really basic things with and who had some trouble participating in class. This afternoon we taught the third graders, who we were warned are the worst class in the school… and well – the warnings couldn’t even prepare us for the class. We spent most of the hour trying to get them to sit in their seats and stop yelling and fighting… and despite all of our efforts, there wasn’t a single time when every student was in their seat or when no one was talking over us. We could barely get through one part of our lesson plan and left wondering how we will ever be able to teach them anything. Marijo insists it gets better as they gain respect for us as teachers, but it is still very very disheartening. I don’t think words could really describe the atmosphere, we were both completely amazed when we left.

In other exciting news, we’ve been planning a beach clean up for this Saturday as a part of an international day to clean up the shorelines! I’m pretty excited to bring the kids to do that as it will be sort of a fun excursion, yet also showing them the extent to which littering is polluting their country. Ingrid and I are really hoping to focus on taking the kids off of the terreno and using excursions as a teaching method… although planning requires a lot I think it will be very valuable for them!

I feel like I could write forever, and each time I sit down to write, the things I am lacking are so much greater than the things that I have included. But I don’t want to overbear y’all with too many words. In a perfect world, I would write shorter things a little more frequently… but business doesn’t quite allow for that. We shall see!