coneja (o)

So, the big news at the social work site this week is that it turns out that Titi, the rabbit, is a boy. That would explain the reason she [he] has not has baby bunnies, yet.

faldas

Kay Yua Korean lady that lives in Michigan (she is the mom of my intern from 2006, Sandra), is working at my site during this outreach. She came prepared to teach the advanced sewing class to make simple skirts. The whole process turned out to not be so simple, but most of the girls did manage to finish their skirts. It was good to have an outsider come to the class and give the girls advice, because I think they sometimes get tired of me nagging them to sew straighter or correct their mistakes. Kay graciously told them when they needed to correct their sewing and the girls took her advice well.

Today Kay was also going to make a simple sundress for Marcela (an SI missionary kid). She cut the fabric out, but then later couldn't find it. Not long after, Gabby came out of the sewing room sporting a skirt and headband her mom made her using her new skirt-making skills. Turns out that Maciel found the little sundress fabric and cut it down to make a skirt for Gabby. Apparently she didn't recognize that that fabric was already cut for someone else's project. ;)

jira

Last week the social work site from El Callejon, which also works with women, brought their teenage girls to Los Higos to have a cookout with the girls from my teenagers' Bible study. We hiked to the river, cooked locrio (chicken and rice), and swam. The top picture shows Daisy, the leader of the social work site in El Callejon starting the chicken.

The girls from El Callejon had prepared a short program where they gave each of my girls a friendship bracelet (one girl is shown giving a bracelet to Genesis, from Los Higos) and then sang a few songs they had learned. It seemed the girls had a good time, except for the fact that the rice turned out kind of hard.

One of our biggest frustrations, however, was that about 40 young men from Los Higos decided to go to the river right when we went. Dominicans often show up for events they weren't invited to, because the idea of an exclusive event doesn't fly here. We were disappointed, however, because we wanted to have an event just for our girls and we had a hard time convincing the girls to spend time with one another rather than going over to talk to the boys.

gran exposicion de costura

On Monday, we had a sewing 'exposition'. Basically we decorated the community center with all the things the sewing class has made in the last four month. We laid plastic chairs down on the floor to form 'beds' to put our bedspreads on, and hung curtains behind the beds to try to make it look like they were in bedrooms. We hung bags on the back of chairs, to make it look like we'd left them there when we got home.

Unfortunately it rained on Monday, so hardly anyone came (except a bunch of kids who realized we had a snack). The participants seemed disappointed that hardly any adults came, but were pretty excited to get their pictures taken with what they had sewn:

Here, Melvin poses with his 'bedroom'. He officially joined sewing class about a month ago and scrambled to get 4 months worth of class projects done in time for the exposition:

Below, Vianelli poses by her 'bed' and a curtain made by Maribel:

Although attendance was super disappointing for our exposition, knowing we were going to have one was really motivating for the ladies. I announced we'd have the exposition about 10 days ahead of time and the women flooded by site daily to finish up their projects on time. A few that had gotten behind were able to catch up with all the class projects in time to show them at the exposition.

Lucas

I bought a male rabbit, finally. His name is Lucas. (Yessica suggested the name). He is shown here with me and Gabriela.

We put him with Titi for a few hours, because it seems she was in heat, but time will tell whether or not she got bred.