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Roxanne-
Hola! We are now in Las Terrenas doing volunteer work for the Fundacion Mahatma Gandhi. So first I will tell you about the town and such. Las Terrenas is in the Peninsula de Samana (you can see it on our map) and it is absolutely beautiful. The mountains come almost up to the beaches and are covered in palm trees and other tropical plants. The beach is also beautiful (stacie and i go every morning) and the water is crystal clear. It´s a medium sized town so it is pretty easy to get around. We are staying at the foundations house called Casa Paz. It is a few minutes walk from the beach. It is pretty basic and definitly not luxurious, but that is okay. However, Jose (in charge of fundacion mahatma gandhi) did tell us it would be impossible not to have a few cockroaches and ants. He also said that there are spiders the size of a hand, oh yes, on the ceiling but not to worry because they won´t fall on you. So, we didn´t have any incounters with roaches until stacie was going to the bathroom one night and one was hanging out on her foot. I was going to the bathroom the other day when i looked up at the ceiling (which i do all the time of course) and spotted one of those hand-sized spiders (he was not exaggerating!!) I quickly left the bathroom and haven´t told stacie because i did not want to freak her out. If she has time to read this then i guess she´ll find out. So, we are now officially hard core because i did not scream and stacie just killed the roach and did a little dance to make sure there were no more on her. We are also officially scared to use the bathroom.
The Foundation we are working for is a very small one only based here in Las Terrenas. Las Terrenas is somewhat of a tourist town. A lot of French and Italians move here and live seperate from the Dominicans. The dominican population is varied but a lot of the kids we work with are very poor. The foundation started a few years ago when a couple that lived here (one is from oregon and the other maryland but is dominican in race) wanted to start a library because there was no where for children to read or play. The library has about 600 books, including adult books in spanish, english, french, italian, and german, and childrens books in mostly english, spanish, and french. It also has an outside area with desks and the entire town´s only play ground that has three swings, two teeter-totters, and some tires. The library is open in the mornings and afternoons and the children come from two thirty to five thirty. The first hour is reading, the second is reading, typing on the computer, and playing educational games, and the third hour is playing on the playground and soccer on the field. Right now we are working at the library and playing with the kids until we get a feel for things and then we will start doing other programs like arts and crafts and such. There is also another volunteer, Alex, from Germany. He speaks only a little spanish and his english isn´t great either. We were talking about going out tonight and he can´t figure out how to use his phone so he said, ´how about we, how do you call it, make out, somewhere.´ After laughing for a few minutes we explained that it was meet up, not make out, and we will probably never let him live it down.
Our typical day here would look like this. Stacie wakes up at 9ish and tells me to get up. She gets a few things around and then tells me to get up. She is almost ready and then i finally get up. Then we make our way to the beach where we take turns running and guarding our stuff (who knows how long that will last) and hang out on the beach all morning. Next week we will start working at the library some of the mornings. Then we go back, cook lunch, and head to the library. After that we usually stop and buy some fresh and delicous fruit and run errands like coming to the internet cafe. Then we go home and cook and watch for insects. Most nights we just hang out and read till bed time but tonight we have friends in town from Cabarate so we are going out with them and the other volunteer Alex. Alright well my hands are tired so we will blog later on!!
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