seeds

The ag site got a huge donation of seed packets for all kinds of vegetables. In the above picture some visiting students are helping to organize the seeds. I was so thankful to get the seeds for two reasons: 1. the kids are more excited to plant and care for their gardens when they aren't always planting the same old thing, and 2. it's hard to get a variety of seeds here. Just the day before getting the seeds I was selling radishes in the market and they asked me if I had any of those ' nice, round' radishes. And I said I did plant some, but wouldn't be able to sell them because I needed to leave the plants to harvest seeds off of. This seed donation had two different radish seed varieties (both which appear to be nice and round), which I'm so excited to try!!

crushes

We had a team just leave a week ago that worked with Andre in his kids club. The team had 5 young ladies and one guy on it. Like TWU, they taught piano, guitar, english, and computers. What I didn't totally expect was that several or the club members developed crushed on their teachers and by the end had basically claimed which one they liked. A few days after the team left I discovered these messages written next to the door of the casita (where the ag site works out of). 'Cici y Emilio' and 'Dauris y un american'.

I basically posted it because it was cute. The truth is, though, that I had to have a talk with a few club members about how to respect girls, somthing which many have not been taught.

The coolest floor

We had a team that worked on Meri's house last week and they poured the floor. Here is a picture looking down on it (those are my feet)-- isn't that an amazing floor!! They pour the concrete floor and let it dry for about an hour. Then they 'float' it by rubbing the concrete with a trowel (?) that makes the water come up to the surface. They put a little more cement on top and smooth it out real smooth. Then they add a little more water by sprinkling with a sponge and put colored cement on (first light blue in this case), smoth that out, and then sprinkle on a darker colored cement (dark blue) and smooth it out ot make swirls. Dominicans can do crazy things using cement.

TWU leaves :(

The TWU team (shown above) finished up their time working with us in Los Higos this week and flew home on Saturday. This really was an excellent team!! The girls were very mature, reflective, and conscienscious. The community was really happy with these girls- commenting that they were pretty 'tranquila' (tranquil/ calm), and didn't spend a lot of time out in the streets (among women in this culture it is more respected to be at home).

We saw a lot of progress in the kids club. The above picture shows Jess giving guitar lessons to Daury. The guitar class especially learned a lot because the say kids stayed in the class the whole time. Andre is hoping to continue giving guitar, piano, English, and piano lessons throughout the summer when 2-week teams start coming.

Rabbit hutches

So far we have three rabbit hutches in kids' homes and plan to make 5 or 6 more. In this picture we are carrying one up to Yenny's house which is quite a hike even when you aren't carrying a rabbit hutch. We've been making the hutches mostly from wood because we can get free scraps from the sawmill, but may need to consider using something lighter.