Felizidades el Dia de Gracias!

First of all I want to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving!  I was fortunate enough to spend the afternoon with my "Dominican Family".  Chuck fried a Turkey, and some of us others chipped in for to make the other fixin's.  Meal was great and the company was just as good!  (Momma, you would be proud to know that I made everyone at the table say one thing they were thankful for, just like we do at home!)  

Things are changing around the Jungle.  Megan is finally getting settled in, and doing very well!  Kory, the volunteer from Canada has returned to the tundra. (I'm sure glad I will be here through the worst of the winter!) So Meg and I are working just the 2 of us until the new volunteer arrives on Dec. 4. The baby monkeys are almost 2 months old now, and they are starting to venture off the backs of their momma's.  It is darling to see them climbing on their own and wandering around!  And we are all anxiously awaiting the approaching "high season".  I'm looking forward to being busy as the days go by more quickly that way and also hopefully making some more money in tips.   Chuck & Candy pleasantly surprised me with a raise, which was very much appreciated!  Chuck said that they were very pleased with the way I have become part of the team and the hard work that I've put in.  I have never accepted compliments well, but this was nice to hear!  It is such a different work environment down here.  And its been a little hard for me to adjust tot he "island time" mentality even at work!  Everything is much more laid back and slow paced, and being a type A perfectionist like I am, its been hard for me to slow down and accept that things will get done in their own time.  I'm constantly having to remind myself, "It's not wrong, its just different!"  

I have been going to the gym the past week or so after work!  I pay 100 RD ($2.50 US) for my day pass and even get to use the machines with electricity upstairs!  I've actually really enjoyed it!  I'm no gym rat by any means, but it does make ya feel good to do some exercise!  

Well, sorry I dont have much more to report!  Other than I'm getting very excited to have my family here in January!  

XOXO

Continued Discovery & Growth

I know its been a long time, (I feel like the last 5 blogs have started this way!)  I apologize!    I wont make any promises this time as I have in the past.  Lets face it, I'm not great at keeping y'all up dated!  BUT, here's the latest!

I have recently decided that I am going to extend my stay until March.  I'm approaching 5 months in DR, cant believe its been that long already!  As I look back on the last 5 months, I'm extremely humbled by so many different things; experiences, personal growth, opportunities, relationships.

I want to start by thanking my amazing parents, for making this a possibility for me, and for always supporting me in my frantic and crazy life!  You have truly been a blessing to me in so many ways, I cant even begin to express my gratitude.

I have had so many wonderful experiences here, things I will forever remember!  I have been pushed out of my comfort zone in so many ways, trying new foods, riding on motos, meeting new people, showering (& toileting) with out running water, cooking for 7-10 hungry men. (I have finally been told by the guys that I can cook rice like a Haitan! I was pumped about that.. cuz boyyyy their rice is gooood!)  I'm continually humbled by the everyday life of the Dominican & Haitian people.  They live with so little and work so hard!  At least once a day I see men in their 70's or 80's walking miles to and from work with machete in hand, a sign that they are likely doing hard physical labor.  Likely these men are only bringing home a few hundred pesos for the whole days work.  That's the equivalent of no more than $3-8 US Dollars.  I cant imagine supporting a family and in most of their cases a "grand" family on that amount of money.  But they are happy!  They have no worries about paying the car payments and credit card bills.  They live in the moment and for today, enjoying every minute of it.

I also want to thank the friends I've made here.  And thank them for their honesty.  As I've said before I have had a lot of personal growth as a result of my time here.  And a lot of that has to do with the genuine relationships we've made and the honesty of the people I call my family here!  A close friend from home brought to my attention that I have spent much of my life running from something.  It was hard for me to hear, but the more that I thought about it, he was right.  I'm not sure if I'm running form or searching for something, but I know that my time in the DR has helped me to clear my head, and discover more about myself and my crazy quirks.  I'm hoping that my remaining months here will be filled with just as fun, excitement and personal change as the last 5 have been.

It is a sad for me to think about spending Thanksgiving and Christmas away from my family again, as I did this for many years in Georgia, but I am looking forward to celebrating the Holidays with my "Jungle Family".

Please pray for the next few months, we are approaching high season and from what I hear things get CRAZY at the Jungle.  But more importantly pray for my continued growth & discovery.

Haiti, Lightning, and Mini Monkeys

WOW!!
Haiti~
I think most of you know that I was asked to go along with (what I thought was) a team of Dentists on a trip to Haiti...  I was honored to be asked to go along and was really excited to see more of this beautiful island! The trip was definitely a test of my patience!  It turns out that the "team" was a group of 3 men that were on a bit of a vacation, but also wanted to stop at an orphanage in Haiti that the Dentist had done some work at. In typical Doctor fashion, he wanted to be on a tight schedule for most of the trip, but down here everyone is on island time, so its tough to keep a strict schedule.  I was able to enjoy my time at Danita's Children, the orphanage, and met some amazing people from the states that are working for Danita!  Was very nice to spend some time with english speaking kids my age that understand what a privileged life we live in the U.S.

I was able to see the Citadel in Cap Haitan, Haiti.  It is the fort that the Haitans built after their revolution from France.  http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/180  Check it out!  Amazing to see the history of this place!

Lightning~
My sister, Megan, arrived just before I left for Haiti!  Its been so nice to have her here.  I was worried that because Megan and I haven't been extremely close that she would feel like I was a bother, or wouldnt want me helping her get settled in.  But everything has gone smoothly.  Until this past Saturday.  We had a terrible thunderstorm, which is common down here for this time of year.  But the Lightning was unlike any I've seen before!  Megan asked me if she could use the stove in a lightning storm, and being that our stove is gas, I said of course! As soon as she lifted the metal grate to light the burner, the house was struck by lightning!  Megan received all the shock and immediately fell to the floor!  Lesly and I took her to the emergency room shortly after.  She was admitted to the hospital for observation and just got out today!  She has a little bit of nerve damage in her right hand and the reflexes in her legs are slow, but she is so lucky to not have been hurt worse!

Mini-Monkeys
We have babies!!  Momma #1 of 7 just gave birth to a little one last night!  I will try to post pictures soon!

Mucho Tiempo (It's been a while)!!

First, I want to say I'm sorry I haven't blogged in such a long time!

Second, I'm going to do my best to update you on whats happened here at MJ!  Since I blogged last, Tim came to visit for a week, and so did my Poppi!  Enjoyed the time with both of them.  Got to relax quite a bit on the beach with Tim and then got to spend some time outside of the Jungle with Poppi! Was very nice to see both of them!  Next week Megan, my sister will join me at MJ!  I'm very excited to get to share the experience with her, but I have to keep reminding myself this whole thing was her idea first!

Ok, so the big news!  I know I had mentioned that I was thinking about staying longer, and I have now decided to stay through January for sure.  I'm hoping that Dad can get my car sold to pay off some of that debt, and I'm currently looking for another income here in DR to continue to pay my bills at home.  Not only are the bills at home an issue, but also insurance will be a hurdle to over come also, as I turn 26 in October and will no longer be able to be on my family's plan.  SO!  Prayers for these 2 things would be much appreciated.  I am truly learning so much about my self and enjoying the simplicity in life here, but I need to be sure that my finances and health are taken care of. (Obviously!)

As far as MJ goes, we've had a lot going on!  We have 6 pregnant monkeys, due anytime in the next few weeks.  We have recently received 4 new dental chairs and equipment for the clinic so we are in tip-top shape there.  It is currently low season, so we have had lots of projects going on, repairs & improvements! Along with the good, we've had some not so good also.  Kory crashed our moto, which is the only means of transportation we have, besides paying for a taxi or mototaxi.  So I've been spending MOST of my time in the Jungle as it gets expensive to go into town by mototaxi.  Hoping this will be fixed up by the end of the week, but who knows!

About a month ago now, Chuck had to let his cow farmer go, as he was selling Chucks cattle for his own profit with out Chuck knowing.  With this we found out that a lot of the families in the area  were involved in the cattle sales.  These are families that the Ritzens have helped in numerous ways, provided jobs to many of them in the past, paid for the children to go to school, even bought Christmas presents for most of them, so it was clearly hard for them to find out that they had been essentially stealing from them in such a way.  Hard to believe that someone could take advantage of a couple that has done so much good for them and the area!

On a better note, Candy has been training me on some of the book work and office side of things involved with the business, such as payroll and inventory.  Because of this, Chuck & Candy were able to take some time off to relax at their Florida home.  This was much deserved by them!!  Things have gone fine at the Jungle, but I must say I look forward to their return.

Last night we had a Haitian man hobble up our driveway with a LARGE laceration on his heel.  He explained that he had caught his foot in the spokes of a moto 2 days prior.  (He was illegally crossing the border with 5 people on the bike)  I found out shortly after he arrived, that he is a cousin of one of our farm workers.  His foot was visibly severely infected and needed immediate attention.  I drove him to the CMC Emergency Room, where he was quickly turned away because he had no documents or insurance.  They suggested he go to Puerto Plata to the larger hospital for surgery.  I talked with Chuck on the phone and he said to pay for his cab to the other Hospital.  Pele, our farm worker, and the cousin got a cab and went to Puerto Plata.  I found out this morning that the hospital there did nothing but clean out the wound and give him a shot of antibiotics.  It kills me to know that just because this man does not have proper documents that he is denied proper medical care.  I know first hand health care in the states is an issue and hard to come by,  but at least we are give proper emergency care when its needed!

I'm continuing to practice my Spanish and feel like I'm getting pretty good.  I can understand or at least follow along with most conversations at the jungle, work related and not!  I'm also try to learn Creol, which is the Haitians native language.  It has been a little challenging to try to remember both, but I think its possible!  Chuck has offered to send me to Haiti with a team of medical staff next week, as the Monkey Jungle Representative.   :)  I look forward to seeing the country and more of the island!  So many of my close friends here are Haitian and I am honored to get the chance to see their homeland!

Alright, enough for now!  Back to work at the Jungle today!

Saturday Clinic & New Opportunites

I was fortunate enough to spend my Saturday in the Dental Clinic, as we have a volunteer that has taken over the work in the Pharmacy.  I worked with quite a few of the docs this week.  Dr. Gerry, the lead dentist, who I had worked with before, was just over seeing everything.  We had 2 visiting Dentists, one of which was a Pediatric Dentist (which was perfect for the mustard seed kids).  So I spent the morning working with Clari the Dominican Dentist, and then helped to keep the Mustard Seed crew calm while Dr. Juan Carlos worked on their teeth.  WOW!  Sure is hard to reason with a child with disabilities that doesn’t speak your language.  But just goes to show that a smile and soft touch can go a long ways!  Every one of the patients were so thankful for the work we did.  Sure is rewarding to give such a small thing for such tremendous appreciation. 

                During my lunch break, Cole a good friend of Chuck’s that I’ve gotten to know as he comes to MJ quite often, asked me to represent his company at a Bizarre next Saturday in Cabarette.  Cole has started a company called Cambio, which is change in espanol.  He has hired families that live in the dump to make a line of leather products such as bracelets, iPhone cases, wallets, wristlet purses, etc.  The products are amazing, and the organization behind it just as great!  Anyway, I have sold quite a few of the products here at MJ, so Cole asked me to sit at the Cambio table in Cabarette at the Bizarre on Saturday, sounds like it is similar to an art show.  So I’m looking forward to that!  It will give me a chance to meet more people in the area, and also practice my Spanish! 

                Saturday afternoon after work, Chuck had a talk with me about a new possibility for MJ.  He has toyed with the idea of adding horseback riding to the MJ experience for quite some time, and heard that I grew up riding horses.  Chuck asked if I would be interested in helping to lead the horseback riding tours.  Of course this is something I’d love to do!  Spend my days riding through the mountains of the Dominican Republic??  How could you turn that down!  Chuck and I spoke with some of the locals and are hoping that we can pay them to use their horses for a while.  They will bring their horses to the Jungle in the morning, and we’ll use them for trail rides around the farm.  Then at the end of the day we’ll pay the owners for their use.  I love the way Chuck tries to help the people that live in this area with this type of arrangements.  He often does things in this way to help benefit not only his attraction, but the people in the area as well! 

                Saturday night, we went into Cabarette.  It was Kori, Denson (Eddy Murphy) and Me.  We met up with Stephan (Wesley Snipes) and 2 girls we had met that had been to MJ that week.  We went to our regular place; Kahuna’s and had a few drinks on the beach.  Found out when we got there that they were having “Oil Wrestling”.  Yes this is just what you’d think it is.  Girls half naked in a blow up swimming pool covered in oil, wrestling.  I was less than thrilled, but the guys sure enjoyed it.  After the wrestling match, we went to Onno, the popular dance club.  Danced a little bit, this of course makes you sweaty.  So I decided it would be great to jump in the ocean before we went home.  Well, the swimming in our clothes was fun, but the cab ride home covered in sand in a wet dress, wasn’t so much fun!!  Over all though it was a great evening out!  

Mustard Seed & Hog Roast

Wow!  So much to write about!  We had a team of medical students here volunteering for part of the week in the clinics.  We were able to see around 500 patients in 3 days.  So cool to see so many people being treated for so many things in such a short amount of time.  One of the patients was a 3 month old little boy who born 2 months premature.  His urethra is coming out the bottom of his pe-pe.  He will require surgery by an urologist.  The boy’s father did not have the money for the surgery or even a consultation with the specialist, so Chuck is paying for the medical care and gave the father a job working at MJ to pay off part of the cost.  We have a new member of the team!  Enok is a haitan, speaks great English, and seems to fit right in with the rest of the guys!  So awesome to be working for such a caring Man.  Chuck and Candy have been so wonderful to me!  (More on that later!)

One day while the students were here, Candy and I got to go with four of them to Mustard Seed Orphanage.  This is an orphanage that specializes in children with disabilities, mostly Cerebral Palsy.  I don’t even know where to start telling you about this experience.  As most of you know I spent a lot of time when I was growing up at Opportunity Village as both my parents worked there and and then I worked there through much of high school and college.  So I was thrilled to be able to join the team at Mustard Seed.  The Children were absolutely beautiful.  Every one of them were very clean and well taken care of which was great to see!  I was so worried on the way there that a third facility like this in a third world country would be absolutely pitiful!  But it was a wonderful place.  Each child got was evaluated and treated for anything they needed.  We left quite a few antibiotics for the kids, for upper respiratory crud, and a few creams for skin rashes.  One little boy needed the most medical care.  He was a thumb sucker and had sucked his thumb so much that it was raw.  He had rubbed it clear down to the muscle.  He also had a large soar on his leg from a fall and a small amount of skin break down on his back as the poor boy could hardly move from his CP.

Part of the evaluation for the kids included examining their teeth and triaging who needed to be seen by our dental team the following Saturday.  We booked appointments for five of the kids to come see the dentist that next weekend.  Obviously I was sad to leave the kiddos, but looked forward to seeing some of them on Saturday Clinic.

The last day that the doctors were here, Friday, we had a hog roast.  Yes, full blown pig laid out on the BBQ, head and all.  Don’t get me wrong the pork at the end of the day was wonderful, but I sure had a hard time getting the raw, slaughtered pig image out of my head.  Chuck made baked beans and cole slaw.  He mixed up some Rum Punch and bought one drink for every one of us staff.  Sure was aa fun afternoon.  

Little of This, Little of That

             Injuries: So I didn’t talk about all my injuries until now for a few reasons.  One, I know my mother is at home worried and missing me already, but also because I’m a little embarrassed by my own clumsiness!  But now!  Its almost comical, so I decided I better share with everyone how horribly accident prone I am in this country!  The first week I was here I got some scratches on my hands from the monkeys while feeding.  My first thought was, dang! That is definitely gonna scar (I scar very easily) but oh well, it will be a reminder of an amazing summer!  Shortly after the many scratches on my hand, I was riding the moped with Manuel, and we fell.  DON’T WORRY!  We were going very slow and just kind of laid it down in a gravel driveway.  But this too added to my injuries, my knee was bruised and scraped up pretty good, and my same hand now had scrapes on my palm as well!  Somehow in the process of the bike falling I also got a cut on my left middle toe.  No big deal, just a little blood, cleaned right up and went on with my evening.  About 2 days later, I was walking down the hill from my house to the apartment and stumbled, and stubbed (I’m almost sure broke) my toe.  It was black and blue right away, and I had a nice limp to go along with it for about a week.  It is still quite soar, but the pretty colors are gone.  Now, that was my first good “trip”.Since then I have tripped on numerous things, its almost twice a day that I step wrong, and stumble, even just on regular flat ground!  This past week, I finally got up enough courage to get on a moto bike after dumping the moped.  I rode with Pierre just form my house out the gate and into the MJ gate about ½ min up the road.  When I got off, I hit my calf on the hot muffler and now have a LARGE blister that I’m nursing.  So again, walking with a limp!  I’m loving my stay in DR, but if this keeps up I may come home in pieces!

                Baseball: Sunday nights in our neighborhood (if you can call it that) the guys get together and play softball.  I had told Lesly that I enjoyed watching baseball, so he and I rode down the hill to the little snack shack at the corner and grabbed some drinks and then walked over to the “ball field”  We had to climb through a fence to get in, it wasn’t until the game was almost over and the cows wandered into the outfield that I realized we were sitting in the cow pasture!  Was cool to see everyone from the area together, cheering for their friends, sitting around joking with each other!  There was two teams, one was obviously the favorite!  They didn’t have matching uniforms or even very impressive equipment, but they were sure having fun!  It was a little awkward to be not only one of very few females there watching, but the only Gringa!  Everyone stared of course!  (I’m getting used to that though, it happens everywhere!)

                Out & About: Sunday night after the baseball game, a group of us planned to go out for the evening.  I was excited to go and then realized I had to get back on a bike to get into town!  This time with THREE people!  So let me just paint the picture for you all!  The road we live on is HORRIBLE!  Extremely rocky, full of pot holes, curvy, hilly!  Its nuts!  So not only is it hard to navigate, but we had 3 of us crammed on one little dirt bike.  I chose to take the middle cuz I knew there was no way my butt would stay on the back of the seat!  I made it into town w/ out dying, and of course thanked Denson for keeping me safe.  We got to the Pizza place and Pierre was about to park his bike when the Police pulled up and started questioning him.  Haitans in the DR are discriminated against pretty badly.  Pierre of course is a Haitan, so the police took his bike for the night and claimed he didn’t have the proper paperwork.  This wasn’t true, but Pierre said he wasn’t willing to pay the $ they asked for just to get his bike back because he knew $ was all they were after.  So after we ate our Pizza in Sosua, we all got a cab to Cabarette.  We piled 7 people, along with the driver into a little tiny car.  What an experience.  We had a few drinks and then went dancing.  WOW!!  I’m such a white girl!  Everyone down here has great rhythm, and hips like Shakira.  But I sure had fun! 

Monday, yesterday, was my day off!  Lesly and I went to the beach in Sosua. (Again, 3 people on a bike, Me, Lesly & the driver)  I of course wanted lots of Sun, but in the words of Lesly “I’m black man, I don’t need more black!”  So we got chairs, one in the shade and mine in the sun and just hung out for the day.  Sosua beach is extremely relaxing.  There were a few locals there, but not many others, so I napped in the sun most of the afternoon.  I made dinner for everyone when we got back from the beach.  Pele is and I did some Spanish/English learning and we played cards for the rest of the evening.  It was a great day off! 

The next day (yesterday) I was back to MJ and had a pretty quick and easy day.  Still really enjoying my job!  :)