When the end becomes the beginning...

Something that Rachel told us at the beginning of the trip, that a lady she volunteered for told her, keeps ringing in my head.

These people don't need your tears...they need your help.

This trip has been the perfect example of this.

While in Cabarete, and exploring Santo Domingo, Purto Plata, Sosua, Carabello and many other areas that names have slipped my mind, our group has seen a number of beautiful and disturbing things.

But it seems lately that all of the ugly things are fading into the backdrop.

In the past few days we have wrapped up the last of our workshops (that all went amazingly, we got alot of positive feedback not only from the participants but our DREAM volunteers and eachother),finished our last Spanish Lessons at CBI, visited a very interesting diverse array of schools that DREAM helps, went for a drive up the mountain past Puerto Plata to an Eco-lodge called Tabagua that is run by a very prestige Canadian man named Tim, watched the DREAM students participate in hip hop lessons from a group from Houston and last but not least went on a field trip with the dream kids down a river that leads to the ocean.

So tonight I'm going to share two stories with you.

The first is from when we visited the Haitian Batay in Carabello. This was the first day since when we first arrived in Dominican that we had overcast weather. I found this to be rather ironic considering everyone's mood. The entire drive there was pretty silent because we knew what we were about to enter. Sadly enough, the Haitian people in the Dominican receive a negative thrash from the Dominicans, and is reciprocated with more negativity from the Haitian people. It seems to be a terrible racial circle considering the proximity in which these people live with one another. But anyways, we got to the Montessori school and for some reason everyone was super quiet. We were then led into a quiant classroom decorated with names done up in glitter glue and a circle of singing children. This was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. The children were learning how to say the numbers, days of the week and greetings in numerous different languages! These kids couldn't have been any older than 4 years old. There was one child's voice who just rang like an angel and as I sit here writing right now I can still hear it in my head. I hope it never fades. After being in awe of these little tikes for a while we were then led into their library where a local man named Wilson, who is 22, talked to us about the relief efforts he has been working on in Haiti and the horrors he has seen since he was there. These were things I wasn't surprised to hear, but were still horrifying and unbelievable. We were then led into the village because Katherine (DREAM CEO) and Rachel knew a woman who had started a co-op that was promoting positive business in the area. It was a jewellery shop that was all hand made products in the effort to minimize prostitution in the area and give the women a positive way to hep out their community. We looked through the first shop and wasn't having anything jump out at me. So one of the women led John, Kristi, myself and Jamie over to another small location not far from the one that everyone else was checking out. I walked into the room and saw a doll hanging from a shelf. I had been trying to figure out something really special to get my 8 month old niece that would embody my trip and everything I learned here that I could impart on her. I knew this doll would do just that, so I asked the lady how much (with my best spanish) she said 350 pesos and I told her I would take it. I thought it would be cool to get a picture of her holding the doll and she said of course, took the picture, then John took one of the 2 of us with the doll...she then introduced herself (after I asked her name IN SPANISH hehe) showed me pictures of what happened to her father's home in Haiti and gave me her e-mail. I plan on keeping in touch with her for a long time and eventually printing off the e-mails to add to a scrapbook of all the pictures of children I met here for my niece to have.

Story number 2
On a blistering hot afternoon, after waking up bright and early at 7 as we do on most days here; we got to board a bus full of loud, boisterous children and head on down to our riverboat tour. It was AWESOME. We got to the eco-tourism place and the tour guide showed us iguanas, a pink flamingo, a love bird, a snapping turtle and a crocodile! We then hopped on to a small motorboat that took us downstream while he pointed out a bunch of natural vegetation and explained how everything works together here in the Dominican. We stopped at one point where a bunch of the boys hopped out of the boat and one of the guides climbed up a palm tree and hacked down a bunch of coconuts that we all got to drink and munch on once we got to the beach. There was a little girl that I had connected with through one of my workshops and saw again during G's workshop named Estephonie. She kept throwing her arms around me and walking around the beach with her arm around me. It was the cutest thing I had ever been witness to, it felt awesome. She grabbed on to my charm necklace and i started saying the english words of what the charms were and she repeated them to me. She then grabbed a little crab off the beach and with another small group of girls showed it to me so I said " Que nombre en espaniol" and they told me it was "Congrego" THEY UNDERSTOOD ME! Finally, that was something I was really struggling with in my time here, I just wanted to talk with them and laugh and tell jokes and it was hard because I wasnt fluent in spanish! But anyways we shared a coconut and played a traditional Dominican "capture the flag" sort of game. It was alot of fun, but it started to rain so we grabbed our stuff and ran for shelter. I couldnt seem to find my shoes and found Estephonie grabbing my hand and running under the shelter holding onto my sandals. We plunked ourselves down onto a picnic table and everyone decided it was a good opportunity to take pictures. Steph wouldn't even get in the picture without me, so we took a few shots and hopped into bus and headed back into Cabarete. She got a bit jealous because someone plucked another boy onto my lap for the ride home. We were getting out at Swell and she was trying to tell me something and I didnt know what she was saying so she tried to grab someone to translate but everyone was in such a rush that we didnt get time. I had to watch her sad little face wave goodbye through the window. It was really hard and I wish I had have known what she was trying to say but I have all of the faith in the world that I will be back here really soon, and hopefully my spanish is alot better so we can have full on spanish conversations.

Today after the last workshop we had to fill out an evaluation form for DREAM and give our emails for future opportunities and just to keep in touch.

So as our trip is coming to an end and our flight leaves early Sunday morning, this is not the end of our DR adventure. We all have separate stories, and we learned so much about ourselves, eachother and the people that make this island so beautiful. But just because we are leaving does not signify that this exchange is by any means over. I believe that this is just the beginning of a beautiful relationship that Centennial College has formed with Colonia Nueva, Cabarete, and on an even larger scale the entire Dominican Republic.

So please, do not hesitate to contact any of us and ask us about our experiences here! We all have tons of ideas for further contact with a number of the NPOs we met here and also a ton of great ideas about how we can help, and without you Centennial, we have no backbone. I look forward to hearing from all of you and thanks again for following our glorious journey.

Hasta Luego