Day 6: Praise the sun

Woke up to rays of sunlight warming my face and ...a melody of alarms playing simultaneously, with sleeping bodies unphased by them. Took my shower overlooking endless green hills and blue skies, ready to meet new people and hopefully learn, enrich and laugh. Got my cereal and petted the most stoic German Shepard you will meet. Sat in the back and got ready to get scared of Dominican roads, but safely sitting due to a crazy good driver in Eurel. I'd trust no one to make those crazy maneuvers, where our spacious white van stumbles onto oncoming traffic to pass a slow pickup truck, smoothly pathing back into the right lane at the right time.

PLA was fairly close and the ride ended before Romeo Santos got to my favorite part in Cancioncitas de Amor. (Finally found the name of that song) As we rode in the back of Carina's pickup truck to the nearby public school, we felt like militia, we only lacked some AK's and a boombox. After high fiving a bunch of happy kids we finally got to the classroom. We introduced ourselves to the kids there, who were mainly girls, around 8-10 years old. I tried hard to catch their sentences, feeling really accomplished when I actually guessed a word correctly and taught them a new word in English. Alicia was quite the artist and drew a whole picture, labeling different things in Spanish as well as English. We talked about our families and they were eager to hear more. Later we played with the kids in the playground of all ages as I sweat all the DEET and sunscreen off of me while chasing around a soccer ball with some of the kids. Moving to an older age group, we played a competitive game of fill in the blank with Spanish verb conjugations, in which our team lost but everyone looked engaged and eager to get the chocolate that awaited them. It was interesting seeing the kids participate in a prayer, most seemed very engaged. We made one more trip to a school, doing some drawing and singing. I really liked how they taught their kids, all the activities were focused yet fun.

I thought about an earlier comment by someone at DREAM and acknowledged that kids are kids, wherever you go. Carina informed us that most of the kids there were living in slums, but there was almost no indication if you were just talking to them, they were truly just being happy, young souls. One of the other groups at another school encountered a pregnant girl, no more than 13 years old and that sparked some conversation about the practices in the DR regarding marriage at younger ages. It reminded me of similar practices that occur in the rural parts of Nepal. I think the most important message I learned that day or rather got reinforced, is that pity had no place there: these kids did not consider themselves impoverished but rather rich with endless laughter.

-Piyush