The Daily Routine

On Monday I began what will be my regular schedule for the rest of the year. Regular schedule is a bit of a misnomer as things can, and will, change here due to the country I´m in and also because we are such a small, fluid organization. But anyway, here goes.

Each day, I go to the DREAM Project office in town from 8:30-11. I am in charge of supplies and supply donations and coordinate getting what we have out to our people at their locations. I also do various other tasks such as corresponding with people interested in making supply donations, and updating our website´s supply donation section. On top of that, I´m available to do any other office task that needs to be done.

From 11-12 I have lunch and usually go back to my room and have a couple sandwiches and some bananas.

From 12-2 I teach computer classes. Monday is reserved for teachers and other various adults, and the rest of the week is for students. I teach one class from 12-1 and another from 1-2. Each class meets twice a week, either Tuesday and Thursday, or Wednesday and Friday. My afternoons are spent supervising the afternoon recess and also trying to make it more organized (ie have them do something other than throw rocks at each other).

Directly related to the recess task is the student council that I am going to try to put together. Another volunteer and I are trying to get a group of interested students, aged 13 or older, to meet after school to form this council. The goal is to have them eventually conduct activities during recess and take on a leadership role within the school. We would also like to have special activities for them later in the year like trips, dances, and other events in the community. This seems to be a tall task, but hopefully it will be successful.

My last task is to be the DREAM member on the computer committee. This committe is mainly made up of local Dominicans and the goal is to get this computer lab turned into a functioning internet café during the evenings. The reason for that is to make this self sustaining as far as maintenance and also raise money to pay the salary of a full time computer teacher here. This also seems like a difficult task, but it would be hugely beneficial if we can pull it off.

So there´s an overview of what my days will look like for the foreseeable future. I also recently took some pictures of my school and would like to share them with you below.




Front of the school



Back of the school


The Computer Lab



Inside the computer lab



Inside one of the classrooms

It´s been awhile

I thought I´d get some more pictures up, as it has been some time. This is also the last day of the diagnostic period and Monday I´ll begin my regular routine. I´ll post more about what that entails soon. In the meantime, enjoy. Oh, another thing, I think I changed the settings so anyone can leave a comment with out going through the process of registering. If you had trouble registering, or were just too lazy, see if you can do that now.


Here´s me on the Conde in Santo Domingo, which is a popular pedestrian thoroughfare with lots of shopping and restaurants. It was intially the main street through colonial Santo Domingo but was converted to its current use sometime recently.

The ruins of a hospital in the colonial zone.



Here´s a street in the colonial zone. If you remember in the Godfather II when they go to Cuba, there´s a scene where Michael is in the car with someone and someone tosses a grenade and says ¡Viva la revolucion! According to Anthony, the Cuba scenes were filmed in SD and this street is where that scene takes place. I really want to watch the movie again and see if this is true.


Anthony, Caroline, and I all drinking out of odd glasses. It´s the little things that spice up life.

Más fotografías

Some more shots from Santo Domingo...




In front of the Columbus statue. The cathedral is in the background.

The cathedral. It might not look like others you´ve seen because it was never completed, hence no steeple.

And here is the back side of the Columbus statue juxtaposed against the Hard Rock Cafe to the right. I didn´t ask anybody, but I assumed it´s the oldest Hard Rock Cafe in the Western Hemisphere.

Picture Time

I now have the ability to post pictures again. It´s been a while so I´m just going to throw up a bunch of them, without having a unifying theme or anything.


Here are some Payasos on the last day of camp when we had a barbeque.










I grew a beard for 5 or 6 weeks, starting sometime during camp and lasting up until the most recent orientation. Here´s a good view of it.








Here´s a side view.











Then I shaved it down to the amish/Abe Lincoln look for a few days. An aside, this picture was also taken from Diego Columbus´ house looking across the Ozama River.







Finally, I went down to some really large ugly chops. They were fun for a few days as well. This picture was taken from across the river, basically in the background from the prior photo.







And the side view. Behind me here is the Columbus lighthouse, described in the post on Santo Domingo. Behold its majesty.








In one of the museums, we found the greatest weapon ever invented, the Mexican Pistol Sword. It´s a sword with a pistol built into the hilt, so after you run your sword through your enemy, you can finish him off with the pistol to ensure that he is dead. Genius! Here is Anthony marveling at the sheer beauty of this device.








Here is a picture of some guy in one of the museums. I knew I wouldn´t remember who he was, but I was really amused by his rather large lips. His lips are so big.....
This might only make sense to my brother Ryan.











Here I am in front of Diego Columbus´ house on the Plaza de España.










And of course, Diego Columbus´ TV and VCR.








That´s enough photos for now. More to come later.

Everything is going to be OK

For those who were worried, I was in fact able to watch the first of many Irish victories of the season. Yes, the win was not as easy as many thought it would be, but it was a win and that´s the most important thing. We´ll find out more about this team over the course of the next few weeks. Anyway, I was able to watch the game at the always fabulous Jose O´Shay´s Irish Pub which doesn´t really seem like an Irish pub compared to one in the US, but I guess it is a lot closer than anything else here. More importantly, however, they have a lot of tv´s and looks like they have access to any channel that shows college football. So it looks like I´m set for the season. You can all breath easy now.

Back To Work

Since returning from the capital, I have experienced quite a few changes. All of the rest of the long term volunteers (I think there are 14 of us total) are now here and we had a week long orientation last week. Orienation consisted of a lot of information sessions, some of which was old information and some of which was new, getting to know everybody type activities, and group trips to important places like the medical clinic, the large hospital, the office, etc. (most of which I had already been to). All in all, it looks like a pretty good group of people to work with. The week was lead by the Program Director, Sarah, who was not here over the summer and arrived sometime during the week when I was gone. Sarah is in charge of coordinating all of us volunteers and making sure we have the proper support and direction during our time here.

This week, we have all started at our respective placements. I am at one of the two schools actually located in Cabarete, the Puerto Cabarete School. It is only a five minute walk from where I live and is located somewhat centrally in town, although it´s at one end of the main strip. The other school, which is where the summer camp was, is located at the other end of town in the neighborhood where many of the Dominicans live. I´ll be working at this school with Anthony and Jeff, two fellow volunteers. Oddly enough, they placed all three males at the same school. The next three weeks are meant for us to just get acclimated to our schools, see what we have to work with, and figure out a specific plan of attack for what our roles are at each location. Everything that is expected of us is a little overwhelming at times, so it´s good that we get to ease into things, as I know there will be plenty of learning as we go too.

That´s all for now, but I should be able to post more frequently now that I´m in a computer lab at the school.