South to the Dominican Republic: Post #7 Las Canoas: Day 2

It's gonna rain. When it rains in the Dominican Republic, it RAINS. That is what it did today - it poured. Down below you will see pictures of the road, I mean river, yes, that is the road turned riverish. Today was the same as yesterday except we did some electrical work, fixing fixtures, and finished the interior painting. We also did VBS in the afternoon/evening which went well, but I was making balloon animals the whole time so I was not part of the first day of VBS. More about VBS tomorrow. At the beginning of VBS only 20 or so kids were there and making balloon animals in front of the kids was easy. In the pictures you will see the kids sitting nicely, watching me. Then, as more children arrived, they got closer and closer to me leaving their chairs behind so they could see better, until they were packing in so tight on me I felt a little claustrophobic. There was such a huge group of them, my dad took one picture and you can't even see me anymore! The rest of the group started doing the rest of the VBS activities, so I went back in a small room in the back of the building with a helper and started making more balloons to give out once they were finished with the VBS. After about an hour I peeked my head out and to my astonishment there were over 100 kids out there instead of 20! "Back to making balloons." I said, kind of like the "Time to make the donuts..." Dunkin Donuts man. After we were done it was time for the kids to leave and the plan was that they would get their balloon animal on the way out. We were imagining a somewhat controlled departure similar to what children would do when leaving an American VBS program. Well, giving each kid one and not two balloons and getting all of them out was like trying to stop a pack of hungry wolves from getting the meat that we had in out hands. For the first five minuets it went fine, until the first kids out gave their balloon to someone else and came back in to get another one. Kids going out, kids coming in, balloons in the middle of the pack,adults clamoring for balloons too (in Spanish, of course) ... You get the idea. Chaos ensued. Finally we got all 130 some kids and adults OUT THE DOOR. That was the exciting episode for today. Atleast we know the kids loved the balloons.

We did have showers like we'd never had before, that night before bed. We'd been told ahead of time that we'd be bathing in the "pristine" river, but once Hurricane Sandy rains began, the river was too swift moving to be safe. Instead, we showered in the down spouts on the church building! These were very G rated showers so there are even pictures. Adios!