Youtube

I have a YouTube account set up, and I will be posting more videos. I uploaded a bunch last night, but didn't have a chance to go through them, so they have strange names, and might be poor quality. Check it out at http://www.youtube.com/aredman314

Just landed in NYC.

One of Our Teachers

Hector's Sandcastle

Hector is very persistent, he made a pretty good sandcastle despite John and Graham's attempts to hinder his progress.

The sea of the day

The Crew

Day at the Beach

This was the day at the beach: spaghetti, and sprite and sea...

Day 8

2nd to last day here, I video taped the whole drive in, 20 minutes straight. I'm gonna bring all our recorded media home to post where our internet is faster. I will need to edit the drive in because we had a few times when we had to wait, and YouTube videos need to be under 10 minutes, maybe I'll break it into two ten minute videos. We have all the work finished except painting the lettering on the outside of the school. During lunch/playtime all the guys got their hair done. The kids poured water on their heads and spiked their hair. Then they flattened it, spiked it, flattened it, spiked it in the front, put a hair tie in it, etc. Once the water dried up, they made us go to the bathroom and pour more water on our heads. I got some pictures of that and of Anthony painting the wall. The ladder leaned against the wall at a very strange angle, more parallel to the ground than usual. He is also leaning out away from the ladder painting, nobody has gotten hurt but it is a pretty weird looking picture. I just had to take a few minutes from writing this to explain to someone how to look at their fonts. See? I leave the country, different language, culture, and I end up explaining something techy. Speaking over telephone made only slightly more difficult by the poor connection and the language barrier. Then I received and e-mail from one of the teachers here at the school with some really good pictures from when we went to the beach, I forwarded them a mi padre en los Estados Unidos, and they should be posted in around 24hrs. We will be back in the United States late Thursday night and early Friday morning. Hasta Luego

Day 7

Today we finished the second bench, all we need to do is mount a fan and we are done with all the construction work for the week. Chloe kept the children in her class from breaking crayons and she feels very accomplished. Towards the end of our trip we will burn our pictures and videos to a disc and bring them home because the internet is soo slow we can't upload them. We would get a thumb drive but a 2GB thumb drive is around 1,700 pesos.

[Sidebar: Hello all, this is Chloe. Andrew said to feel free to write something if I felt so inclined, so I did. Apparently he's running out of things to say, which I don't understand at all. ;) Even though everything isn't quite "new" any more, I can still think of plenty of fun stories. We're all still quite sunburned from the beach, and poor Graham somehow got it the worst. Um... letsee... I have food on the brain at the moment. Today was more pollo con arroz-- chicken with rice. :D Yummy. We also got to try yucca, pronounced yoo-ca by the locals. It's a root of sorts, and reminded most of us of potato. It might to a little nuttier. It's pretty bland as tubers go. Hector says the way they grow them is that they'll plant them on both sides of the furrow. As the years go on, they chop off the top as the root grows deeper and deeper. We didn't find out what the lifespan of a plant was, but it sounded like they could go for quite a while. Hector also appeared at the end of the day with these cookie-like coconut balls. They are deep fried and taste strongly of ginger. He only brought two, but since we liked them promised to bring more tomorrow. I'm hoping to find out what they're called so I can do some research and try to make them when I get home. Es muy declicioso! :) My class today was a blast, as usual. The kids are used to seeing me now, and don't behave quite as well when I try to get them to pay attention to their work. I had to physically place myself between Nathanael and Felix to keep them from wrestling each other. That was interesting... they liked my necklace and decided that was more interesting than their coloring sheets. Anthony came up and helped in our room for a while. He and Carolin played a singularly long memory game. Um... oh, and we bought oranges from one of the salesmen walking between the cars. I'm like a little kid, I think it's so fun any time we buy something from the van like that. The whole city is one big drive through for all sorts of things! :D Alrighty, I guess I'll give this back to Drew now. See y'all Thursday. Can't believe how fast it's going...]

Day 6

Today is Sunday so we went to church. We went to Hector's church which has an extremely large Spanish congregation down stairs, and about twelve deaf people meeting up stairs. It was a very interesting sermon. Hector spoke and Mrs. Pappano interpreted for those of us who didn't know Sign Language. After that we went out to McDonald's for lunch, it was pretty much the same as in America. Then we went to "Los Tres Ojos": The Three Eyes, which are a series of caves, caverns and underground water formations. They were very interesting. We then went shopping for groceries. We didn't do much today because we didn't have school, but we do tomorrow so there should be more to say. I won't be posting any more videos because the internet connection is soo slow, but I will burn them to a disk and bring them home to post there.

Official Voice of the Deaf Blog

Here is a link to the official Voice of the Deaf Blog.

http://tinyurl.com/ybnl4ta

Day 5

Today we went to the beach with two of the teachers from the school, Hector, and his wife. The two teachers were freezing because it was around 75* all day. They didn't even know how to swim. Nobody was at the beach because it was cold and overcast so we pretty much had the whole place to ourselves. We went swimming in the Caribbean Ocean. We didn't do much today because it took so long to get to the beach. We drove longer than usual and had two extra people. Today was another interesting day for communication. Neither of the teachers spoke English but knew sign language, and Hector and his wife are deaf. This post is soo short because we really didn't do much today.

Morning Day 5

We don't have school today. A few of the teachers from the school are here now because we will be Tourists. Hopefully we will go to the beach, but it is pretty "cold" today... 77* We will see.

Hasta Luego

Day 4

I'm posting this soo late because I went to use the iMac but the blog took 5min to load because everyone had to watch the latest episode of LOST and was hogging all the bandwidth. But the episode is over and I understand why it is called LOST: Nobody understands it and they are all lost... Anyways. Today at school we finished the shelves in the storage room. They look really good. Before the room was just a separate place to pile things. Now they have two walls with ceiling high shelves. We also built a bench for the main play area. We taught the kids how to play four square and they love it. Peggy wanted us to teach them because the ball has less of a chance of flying out over the wall. After school we went to the mall, Hector dropped us off then went home. Everything in the mall was a new experience. It was a regular mall, a Pizza Hut, McDonald's, Burger King, Radio Shack, and some other local stores. I bought a special rock called Larimar. It's usually blue, sometimes green, and is found only in the Dominican Republic. After wandering around for a while we got something to eat, and broke up with a time and place to meet. Everyone looked around for a while. I went into a local grocery/convenience store to see what they had and how much it cost. Since Hector had gone home the plan was to get a taxi home. Taxis in the Dominican Republic are very different from taxis in the United States. The taxi was a seven passenger van, counting the driver, that is six seats for passengers. We fit all ten of us in those seven seats. Jon, Anthony, Paul, and Graham sat in the back three seats, Mrs. Pappano, Mrs. Curletta, and Mrs. Blevins, sat in the middle two, and Mr. Pappano, and I shared the front bucket seat. It was really tight, and I was hanging out the window, witch is pretty sketchy with the kind of driving that happens down here. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but this kinds of madness can not be accurately described with anything short of experience. There are three lanes, people are constantly switching lanes, and motorcyclists are always weaving between cars, in both directions. It is pretty funny to see two motorcycles try and go between the same cars in different directions at the same time. Tomorrow is Sabado, (Saturday) and if it doesn't rain, we will be going to the beach, there is a 30% chance of precipitation, and it should be around 70*. 70* sounds perfect to everyone who lives in upstate NY, it is currently around 30* in NY. In the Dominican Republic, it is always soo hot that today, it was around 70*, overcast, and raining, and one of the secretaries at the school was walking around with a coat wrapped around herself. And the motorcyclists looked really cold this morning. If it doesn't rain then we will go to the beach and eat spaghetti. I don't know why, but in the Dominican Republic everyone eats spaghetti when they go to the beach. In America, hamburgers are "picnic" food, in DR spaghetti is "beach" food. I am making soo many errors with spelling and grammar. It is a combination of it being 10:45 (local time), and speaking in three different languages every day. Today especially I spoke more spanish than usual because we went to the mall and everything is in spanish. In just the past few lines I have tried to substitute "en" for "in" and "dia" para (for) "day". Some people, when I struggle, dismiss it and get someone who knows English, but I prefer the people who don't mind repeating them selves multiple times, and make a genuine effort to understand me. The bugs are starting to come out so I should probably get under a sheet and go to bed. I will try to have more video up tomorrow, depending on cpu availability. Hasta Luego mis amigos en los estados unidos y mis hermanos en Cristo.

Day 3

WOW... day 3, today we finished the cabinet in the kitchen. We had a regular drill, so it was difficult to make a dent in the concrete wall. The last pilot whole was the most difficult because there was a support for the corner of the building- extra thick concrete. The students had recess after that, and we taught them how to play a game with the soccer balls we brought. You jump in the air, catch the ball, throw it to the next person before you land again. After that we prepared to start the shelves in the storage room. Then a few of the teachers needed black/white boards and other things hung up on the wall, so we had to drill more concrete. We actually got it down to a science and knock out 2 black boards, a white board, and a cloth school bus well before lunch. Then they started working on the shelves. There were enough people working on the shelves, so I found a teacher and sat in on a class. I learned about "los trinitarios", the three founding fathers of the Dominican Republic. Another teacher wanted help, so I went into the 2nd grade room and helped teach simple subtraction using buttons. (5-4=?) Then we played Uno. Then the bell rung. A real bell. The large electric bell only rings when they have electricity, which is usually for an hour a day. So they ring a small bell. We all went and ate lunch. For lunch we had the same chicken, but with black beans and rice. We also had potato salad. After lunch I still wasn't needed in the construction work , they ran out to buy "concrete" nails, so I went back into the 2nd grade room. We drew pictures of fish using a grid to copy the picture. Then we played Sorry! I always thought Sorry! was an easy game: pick a card, follow the instructions, and the next person's turn. But the cards are in English and nobody knows English. The teacher didn't even know how to play. I simplified the rules so much and they still were making mistakes. When we arrived home some of the guys went down to the corner store and bought 3 soda pops for 50 pesos. Which is about $1.50. I need to get off now because we are going to watch Monsters inc. and Paul needs to get on. I will post again tomorrow!

Videos

ok so the video didn't load like i thought it would so I just posted it to YouTube. There it loaded the first time, only it took 30min to load this single 1min, 30mb video. Here is the link, there are people waiting for the computer so I will upload more later. Watch Paul's first real life encounter with Sign Language at YouTube.com. Subscribe to my account because I will be posting more as the week progresses

http://www.youtube.com/user/aredman314?feature=mhw4#p/a/u/0/3Cag1qdCrMo

Day 2

Our first day at the deaf school. Mr. Pappano, Graham, and I went to the hardware store to get supplies for some shelving and cabinet projects that we are working on at the school. We went to the store with a man from the school named Hector. He is deaf, knows ASL, and can read lips very well. It was an interesting experience for me, as I was talking to Mr. Pappano and Graham in English, Hector using ASL, and trying to communicate with the owner of the store in Spanish.

Probably the scariest part of being down here, is the driving. There are generally two to three lanes going in each direction on main roads, and one lane each for smaller ones. There are people crossing the street everywhere, and cars weaving back and forth between lanes. There are motorcycles and motorbikes driving between the lanes and in the lanes. Even in the largest intersections- two tree lane roads- there are no stop lights. I haven't even seen a stop sign here in Dominican Republic.

Back at the school everyone helped various classes, we even learned some signs. Paul even learned the sign for 3! We washed the floors, and helped teach some of the students. For lunch we had rice, beans, and chicken. Everyone really liked it.

En Santo Domingo

We all arrived safely in Santo Domingo, and we are at Peggy Blevin's house now. It is very hot and humid. The electricity is sporadic at best. We will be going to the deaf school tomorrow morning around 8:00am Local time. Dominican Republic is one hour behind Rochester.

We just landed in NYC. Everyone is doing good just got off the plane. We have a 2 hour layouer until we leave for "La República Dominicana!" Hasta Luego!

They are Off to DR!

The team met at Rochester International Airport at 5AM. Check in and security was breezed through w/o an incident. At 06:30AM, the DR Team left for NYC. After a brief layover there, they will be headed to DR. Continue to pray for journey, and their time in DR. Look forward to updates as their time progresses.

Blog Set-up

Tomorrow, March 2nd a team of bilingual home schooled students and I will be traveling to the Dominican Republic. We will be assisting Ms. Peggy Blevins with a school for deaf children. All of the children are deaf and are learning American Sign Language.If this school were not there, the students would not be going to school at all. More information about the school can be found in the YouTube video after the post. We will be assisting Ms. Blevins with teaching the children, and doing some repair work around the School. Please pray for a safe journey for all of us, we will be traveling from Rochester to NYC and then Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Adios y Hasta Luego!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56MLerlpYZE
http://www.voiceforthedeaf.org/Voiceforthedeaf/Welcome.html
http://voiceforthedeaf.blogspot.com/