I've waited a while to write the blog as the last few days have been very busy. After our first day in San Francisco, we woke up early in the morning and were taken back to the University. I was told that we would basically be living at the University, we would only sleep at our cabaña. After eating a delicious breakfast of mangu (mashed plantains), eggs, lightly fried cheese, and thick, round salami, we began our day of training. As usual, Darling spoke only in Spanish and I had to make sure the training points were given to Cory as clearly as possible in English. We were told that we would each then have to take our training and train the rest of the staff. We will be, essentially, the jefes (bosses) or captains of the camp. I also found out that, despite the fact that this will be an English immersion class, our staff only has limited English speaking ability, so we'll also have to train them in the vocabulary they'll need to speak to the kids in English. We'll be doing this on Tuesday, as long as the strike isn't continuing (I'll get to the strike later).
We learned about the format of the camp during this training session. Every day, we'll be at the camp at 7:30AM to get ready to meet the parents and kids when they are dropped off around 8:00AM. Darling emphasized the necessity of being on time. He explained that the culture in Dominican Republic isn't very focused on being on promptness or being on time at all. He said that, while he worked for a human resources company in the US, he really began to love our culture of being (or at least trying to be) exactly on time or close to on time. I found this extremely funny, as we've come to understand that if he says he'll pick us up in the morning at 8, we set our alarms for 8:15, shower, and he's usually here closer to 9. Everyone moves pretty slowly here (despite their fast, reckless driving and complete disregard for lanes, traffic lights, or stop signs). So we begin the camp by singing a Good Morning song in English. The point is to repeat it every day and get the vocabulary of morning activities into the kids' minds. Then we will start separating into the Kids and Teen groups. From there, we will divide up further into tribus (or tribes). On the first day, we will figure out a specific structure for each group. The three most important aspects of the camp are education, competition, and music and art. We will find out the strengths of each tribe and then gear our activities towards those strengths. Each kid will make their own tribe banner (if they are the tiger tribe, they will have a picture of a tiger and then, if they're good at basketball maybe they'll have a picture of Michael Jordan). They will present why they chose the name and strengths of their tribe, in English, to the rest of the camp. In schools in Dominican Republic, they don't have bells to signal when you need to switch classes, they have songs instead. So we are going to use this custom to play songs in English that the kids will become familiar with and that are easy to understand and sing. After the presentation of the tribes, we will hear the lunch song (Peanut Butter Jelly Time or the McDonalds/KFC/Pizza Hut song) and eat. After lunch, in order to digest, we will spend an hour watching English TV or listening to English music. Shortly after this, the competition song will sound (We Will Rock You or I Like to Move It Move It) and we will begin sports competitions. At the end of the day, we will have English classes, music, art, and evaluation of the students progress and will identify what we need to practice each day for the students. The camp goes from 8:00AM to 6:00PM Monday-Saturday. Each day, the schedule will remain basically the same, only with the selection of the tribes being replaced by presenting the day's activities, giving us more time for sports, swimming lessons, dance, music, art, English lessons, etc. We hope that the kids will be able to learn English without realizing that they are learning it. Just by being in an environment where their sports, games, lessons, activities are all in English, they will become comfortable with it in a more natural, useful setting. Darling gave us each some English instruction books so that we can look at some of the teaching techniques and vocab lists, giving us a way to maybe aim at teaching a unit each day through the activities.
After the training, we went back to our cabaña to move. We packed up and headed about 20 feet to another set of rooms. They were still cabañas but these ones were a little bit bigger, we each now have our own, and they each have a jacuzzi. We're also a little removed from the rest of the place. We've gotten to know the guards (many of who are armed and know that the two gringos in 25 and 26 are actually living in the place) so they've been taking good care of us.
After switching places, we headed over to the Telenord station. We were greeted by the shotgun-wielding guard outside the TV station (a really common site, Burger King usually has two armed guards) and went inside. I knew we were going to be on TV, but as usual, the information was extremely limited, so we just walked up the stairs ready to do whatever we needed to. Darling told me that there were 3 Telenord channels in the station, Channels 8, 10, and 12. We started at 8 and moved to 12. At the first station, we met a very good looking Telenord TV host, your typical fast talking, good looking, E!-type Spanish language TV personality. She didn't really give us too much information, or maybe she did, she was just talking at the speed that TV personalities talk (every minute costs money). She passed a microphone through my shirt and, at that point, I realized I'd be saying something but I still wasn't too sure what. There was a signal that we were on and she began to speak at her 100 mile a minute pace. Darling then said a few words about the camp, fast as well (but mostly because he was more nervous than we were). He then pointed to me so I said, in English, a little bit about the camp and why parents and kids should be interested. We then walked next door to channel 10 where we did the same thing, but this time on the live news. Afterwards, we waited a little bit and then went in to another show where 2 gorgeous girls were seated at a desk and interviewed us about the camp. Again, we weren't given too much information. Darling spoke in Spanish, I spoke in English, and Cory gave us support. Afterwards, Elizabeth, one of the teachers at the University suggested we go to get some Mofongo. I've had great Mofongo experiences in Puerto Rico, so I jumped at the chance.
Cory, Shannon (a friend of Johnny's) and I got in the car and Darling drove us out to the town where we'd eat. We got to the place and each ordered our own type of mofongo. I got mine with sausage. Mofongo is basically a mash of plantains and whatever meat you choose, put into a bucket like object and turned upside down so it looks kind of like a sand castle of meat and starch. We had various sauces, poured them on, mixed the food up, and went to town. This was supposed to be the best mofongo in the Cibao region and it really didn't disappoint.
Lunch was over, so we started towards the campus of UNE (the University - Univesidad Catolica Nordoestana). On the way, we stopped at the Museo de las Hermanas Mirabal. The Mirabal sisters were three sisters who were involved in anti-government action during the Trujillo regime. After their mother died, they decided to mount a campaign against the government. They were all certified teachers and lawyers under a regime that coveted unyielding obedience and discouraged advanced education, especially for women, because it could lead to, god forbid, questioning the regime's oppressive stranglehold on the country. The sisters and the husband of one continued raising awareness about the oppressive policies until they had an "accident" in their jeep one day. The three sisters were killed and dismembered. They became martyrs to the cause of throwing off the shackles of totalitarian rule. Today, their estate stands as a monument to liberty and nonviolence. Trujillo took power in 1930 after a military coup and held it until he was assassinated in 1961, one year after the murder of the three Mirabal sisters. We met the only surviving sister at the museum which is still also her home.
After this, we headed to the campus to check out the University. We do our daily operations in the old administration building that is now primarily used for continuing education and English classes. The main campus was actually really nice. It was secluded in the woods behind some farms. The buildings, although fairly quaint, were large - enough to contain the 5,000 students taking classes. Students don't live on campus, they only go to the building for classes, food, or work. We drove through the campus and then headed back to town. We spent a little bit of time at the university and then headed back to shower and hang out for a bit. Later, we got picked up by Johnny, Shannon, Darling, one of their friends whose name I don't think I'll ever be able to spell or pronounce, and Darling's son Benjamin. We also squeezed into the car (Dominican cars are usually filled with well over the capacity and its not uncommon to see 3 or even 4 people on one moped). We headed to the movies, a typical Friday night activity. We stopped in at the heavily guarded Burger King. They have something called a cheesy Whopper. This heart-stopper is a regular whopper with a piece of fried, processed cheese. I felt like actually making it to the movie without keeling over, so I opted for the regular burger. We headed to the theater where Transformers, Cars 2, and Limitless were our options. Since none of us had seen limitless, we went in. The movie was really awesome and afterwards, everyone was trying to figure out how to come up with the ingredients for the limitless pill so we could immediately understand each other's languages. We headed back to the room, ready to go for Saturday, our first day of not actually "working."
