South to the Dominican Republic: #8 El Bano painted and other events

Ok, El Bano being painted. That is how you spell bathroom in Spanish right? Well anyway, we painted the bathrooms today, inside and out. Fortunately it was not raining when we did this project. Mr. Klein and Ian worked on the electrical outlets today and Mr Klein hired a Dominican guy to go and mess with the power pole next to the church. Pictures of his ladder are down below. There were actually two ladders lashed together - it looked a little risky to me. When my Dad asked if this was the village electrician, we were told, "No, this is just the one they found who was drunk enough and stupid enough to do it." Kind of funny but It wouldn't have been if it had gone wrong. Fortunately it was all fine and he had no catastrophic developments involving electricity or gravity! The electrical situations there are frightening, compared to US standards. By the way, if you want pictures of all the team members and missionary and his family go to jesus-said-go.blogspot.com , there are also other trip accounts there. We had a towel fight (I did not start it) and it turned into a towel rebellion against my dad. He took a little skin off one of the group members and stung quite a few others.

Before today's VBS, we had about 80 tee-shirts that needed to say "Jesus te Ama." Translated this is "Jesus loves me". Some of the more artistic members of our team added this with Sharpie markers. To cut down on the previous day's VBS chaos, we only let kids 12 years old and under inside the building. All the bigger kids wanted to see what was happening inside so the went to a window and oped it up and looked inside. VBS also went well today with singing, Bible time, Bible verse games, and snacks. Useful piece of information is that Dominican kids don't like beef jerky, they spit it out outside. The only difference in the two days is that we only handed out snacks and nothing else, that meant that we did not have the mobs that we had the day before. Many of the kids put their snacks in their bag to take home, like to share with family members.

After VBS we explored the town which was interesting because we got to see a little of how they lived. There are pictures down below, also we saw one of the kids from VBS still working on the papers that we gave them an hour before that. The river reminded us of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory because it was such a deep brown, the picture does not do the river justice. I almost got my head chopped off by some village renegades, but I was saved by the camera and they ran away just in time! So another successful day in Las Canoas. Picture time!

Mr. Zeller marking hats with Amar (love)

Trying to talk with the native

Painting the el Bano

This is the only time the girls were allowed in the boys bathroom

This is the only time the boys were allowed in the girls bathroom

Windows that played a major part of being spied on during our trip

Working on the electrical outlet

Dominican hired hand messing with the electrical wires. The little plants you see hanging on the wires are little air plants that grow without dirt.

Two ladders lashed together

Hog tied to tree

A common sight in the DR

Child working on the papers from VBS, pool table in the background, also a common sight in the DR

Charlies chocolate river

These house foundations are found everywhere in the DR. The Dominican people don't wait till they have money to build, they build when the have some money then stop when they run out, then start building again when they get more money.