Today we hosted some AWESOME volunteers. There were two families, so 11 people total,visiting from the States. We picked them up at their hotel in the pouring rain. Seriously - it POURED rain all night, and continued into the day.
Our first stop was Mustard Seed Orphanage. This is a very clean, and good orphanage, for mentally and physically disabled children. The entire group was really great with the children.
Our next stop was the public hospital. We had a lot of donations to give out, including a suitcase full of baby clothes for the new babies ward. We visited the new babies, some were only one hour old. We handed out new baby stuff to every mother. There must have been almost 15 new borns in total. One of the girls in our group was sharing a birthday with all of these newborns - so how could we NOT sing Happy Bithday?
Next we headed down to the Melacon to view the Fort, and show everyone the view of Playa Oueste. You can see the garbage filled, polluted, smelly area where a lot of our kids live, right from the main tourist attraction in Puerto Plata - pretty sad eh?
Everyone in our group wanted to have some authentique Dominican food. So we took them to the Provocone - where you can have chicken, rice and beans, fried plantanes (my personal favourite), and fries. So we ordered some of everything to try. One of our kids, Jose Manuel was out shoe shining, as usual, so he came in and ate with us along with another shoe shine boy on the street looking famished.
After lunch we headed over to the club. We had some kids come, and play board games, some went to the basketball court with three of our volunteers, and others hung around and played diffrent games inside the club - it was still raining at this point. At the club, we opened the major donations our group brought - including 4 brand new lap tops, and brand new cameras. This will be awesome for our computer class, and helping the kids learn English with online learning tools. The cameras will be great because we want to start a photography program as well.
So we spent the afternoon at the club, hanging out with the kids, doing activities and playing games. Our last stop of the day was to see where the kids live. We took everyone to Playa Oueste, and Sonya being as gracious as she is, let everyone in to view her house.
When we were done in Playa Oueste, we took everyone back to their hotel. We had a mini debriefing on the bus, and everyone shared thier favourite part of the day - or the part that hit them the most.
Today was a very enjoyable day, and I hope to see this group again - they may join us for another day!
No comments:
Post a Comment