Teaching

5/12/2008

As you know, my official job here is to develop community ecotourism projects. To put it into as few words as possible, it has been challenging, fun, and rewarding so far. I dig it, but it definitely leaves time for me to do other things. In my free time, I mostly find myself hanging out with kids teaching them stuff they have never seen before that back in the States is so normal. For example, twice a week I go to the elementary school and give English class for a half hour. At the end of each class, I put a song on the radio with the lyrics on the chalk board. So far, they enjoyed the song by this strange group called the Beatles the most.

My other teaching endeavor has been baseball. It started when I met a man passing through my town who is from the Dominican Republic. When he told me where he was from, I immediately took that as a chance to talk baseball. I also took advantage of that when I met a doctor from Cuba. Anyway, after about a half hour of talking about the pros, he started telling me how all kids in the Dominican grow up playing the game even though most don´t have baseballs, bats, gloves, bases, or even fields.

“Pero la única cosa que se necesita es amor para el juego. Así se encuentra maneras para jugar” he told me. “But the only thing you need is love for the game. That´s how you find ways to play.”

Well, of course after he said that, I was convinced I was going to teach the kids of this town. We started with the basics of how to hit. I took the handle off my broom while the 3 youngest boys of my host family rounded up all the bad oranges that fell from the trees in our backyard. I showed them how to stand and hold the bat, and they got a feel for their swing until all the oranges ended up squashed.

I wasn´t totally sure they liked it, but the next day changed my mind. Without me even mentioning baseball, the youngest kid (Hector) approached me and told me he thought our bat was too heavy and that we were all going to get new ones. I didn´t really get it at first, but then he told me he knows the perfect wood in the jungle that is light, strong and straight. So, we ventured into the rainforest and the four of us picked up sticks that were going to be our new bats. After we carved them down with a machete, we were ready for batting practice. I have a video of what that looks like, but I will put that up when I find a faster connection.

They did that for quite a while and got to where they weren´t spinning in circles every time they took a swing. When they got bored of tossing stuff onto the roof, the kids told me they wanted to play this game for real. So, we headed to the soccer field where I drew out a diamond and taught them the basics of the rules. We had enough to fill one team, so we played sandlot style for a couple hours. It was a success!

Apparently word got out about this game that did not involve a whole lot of running because the next day, our numbers doubled. We played a full 9 inning baseball game. We lost 28-22, but I was smiling the whole time.

Meal Time

Written 5/11/08

One thing that I have consistently been dreaming of since I arrived to my site is food. Allow me to explain. For breakfast and dinner everyday, I have eggs, black beans and tortillas. 9 times out of 10, lunch is a hunk of chicken tossed into some boiling soup. Oh, and don´t forget the tortillas. That meal goes perfect with the 90-something degree heat and 100% humidity we have been experiencing every afternoon. I usually don´t start off sweating at lunch time, but afterwards I look like I just dumped the bowl onto me instead of into me. I´m not complaining, I am just trying to give you a feel for what life is like. Eating is no longer a changing, exciting time of the day, it´s just what we do to take away the hunger.

Don´t feel bad either. There are a few reasons for this. One, they think we´re weird because we don´t eat tortillas with every meal. Also, there are tons of crazy tropical fruits that just grow naturally all over the place. It seems like anytime I go walking with a kid somewhere, our original mission gets changed when the kid spots a tree that has some fruit in it. We then spend the next few minutes either climbing said tree, or chucking whatever sticks nearby to knock down the fruit. After eating our earnings, we continue what we originally set out to do.

I still like beans, eggs and tortillas. We shall see if that hold true in a couple years.