And the Capital continues...

This is the first cathedral built on the island back in the 1700's. Most of it is still original stone, but there are parts that have been reconstructed. This building was beautiful to see first hand and to be set back in time essentially.

These were the church bells on top of the cathedral. They were reconstructed back in the 1900's. Still simple, elegant, and a symbol of freedom and liberty.

Of course there is a Hard Rock Cafe in the Dominican Republic!! Who would have thought? I have tried a couple of different burgers from restaurant and they haven't been the same, so when we saw Hard Rock Cafe, we thought surely they will fix a good burger right? And they did!!! It was so delicious!!!

This is the front of the cathedral...isn't it beautiful!!! We got to go inside for a brief minute before Mass started. Stained glass, rod iron altars, and more makes a beautiful image for the eye to look at while being focused on God; such purity in this place!

Just some more beautiful architecture down the main strip in Santo Domingo!

Ballet, Shopping, and Hard Rock Cafe...Who Could Ask For More?

Last weekend us girls along with some other Americans from a local ministry made the journey to the Capital, Santo Domingo. It's about 2 hours away and we took a taxi, which is a minivan driven by a local man that doesn't really speak English so let it be a lesson learned to always have a fluent Spanish speaker with you:) We spent most of the day shopping, then we ate at the Hard Rock Cafe (a little taste of home) and ended our night with a ballet at a local theatre. The weekend was a success and I am definitely a fan of the capital!! I'll let the pictures tell the rest.

These are the 3 fathers of the country. Their ashes are buried here. They are also present on the 100 peso bill.
Here are their statues in this building that is dedicated to them. There is a guard that stands outside to protect this building. They are kind of a big deal!

After shopping for a couple of hours, we wanted to stop and grab some ice cream at a little stand on the side of the road. Here is the decor on top of the stand. Please notice it says" Safe-T Cup". I found this hilarious!!

Here is the main strip with all the stores on it. It is very cute with rod iron everywhere. You can see down the middle aisle there are black rod iron lamp losts that remind me of some Tuscan village in Italy or something.

Here is another picture of the streets. Everything is bricked and rod iron bars on windows. It has a very Spanish feel to it with the architecutre. Beautiful city!!

What's for dinner?

What's for dinner you ask? Well, I took a picture the other day of a basic meal that Maria fixes us. It consists of grilled chicken and toastones, which are fried plantanes (which are close to a banana). Of course we have Hunt's ketchup at all times on the table and she normally squeezes us fresh juice; either orange or lemon. Quite tasty I must say!

The last night we went on a night hike with the kids. We told them we had lost one of our staff that night and we needed to find him. Earlier that day some of the staff had cleared this trail and flagged it, although we told the kids that Daniel (missing person) had gotten lost, but he left us clues (flags on trees) to help us find him. It was actually very cool, as I have never been hiking before at night and our kids have some fears about the dark, so to see them feel confident in themselves after they conquered it, was so neat!!

Ok, so let's be honest that all of us staff were ready to leave the boys on top of the mountain by Thursday morning. We had all sorts of problems with them; lying, stealing, fighting, being disrespectful, etc. So, Thursday afternoon Tim (Expedition Leader/Disciplinarian) had just about had it and decided they needed to be whipped into shape; let me remind you that he was in the Corps at A&M for 4 years. He had them (13 boys) walk down the mountain (not very far) and pick up a tree that had just been cut down and carry it back to camp on their shoulders. Then when they got back, he made them do push ups. It was sight to see for sure. Thursday night was a real turning point for all of us and that is when we started enjoying our trip! YAY for discipline!

Me with 3 of my fifth graders.

We did some teambuilding while we were there and let me just tell you that the first day we tried to do it, we totally scratched it b/c they couldn't even work as a team. By the second day, we were able to handle each other much better. This was a game where one person is blindfolded and the other person can't talk to them, they must just lead their partner around the campsite. They did pretty good with this. We then debriefed about what does a good leader do for their followers and what makes it easy to follow someone. We also talked about what is it like not knowing where you are going and how does that affect your response?

Here are some partner groups who just got done leading and following. Notice the blindfolded girl on the left that looks totally comfortable with her partner and she doesn't seem nervous. Yet the boy on the right is trying to take off his blindfold and the leader boy looks someone mischevious eh? Fun with 5th graders:)

Manabao Continues...

We cooked all of our own food; we split the kids into "cook groups" and that one group was responsible for feeding the entire camp for one meal. My group was in charge of Thursday lunch. We made quesadillas with sauteed bell peppers and onions, mixed with black beans and corn and salsa, all in a lovely tortilla.

Here is another one of our students flipping those tortillas! 5th graders are alot more capable than you think!!

On Thursday and Friday we held classes, math, art, english, and poetry. I taught the math class and we talked about different kinds of graphs. They constructed a bar graph based on who could collect the most sticks for the campfire in 1 min. They then constructed a line graph on the number of times they could jump rope or hula hoop in 15 sec, 30 sec, 45 sec, 60 sec. These are our final product!

Don't they look like they are hard at work? They stayed pretty focused, which goes to show us what being outstide does to us.

Lastly, here is Ms. Amanda with some of our 4th girls in our tent. They were excited to have a slumber party every night with all their friends! Ms. Amanda and myself didn't have the idea of a slumber party really...more like a everyone stop talking and go to sleep party. That idea doesn't really go over well with 4th grade girls, much less girls of any age:)

M-A-N-A-B-A-O, Manabao, Manabao

Well, here comes the story you have all been waiting for and that is my camping trip with 4th and 5th graders. As you are probably thinking it was challenging, exhausting, frustrating, fun and every other emotion that comes to mind. I actually think that I will just let the pictures tell the story, b/c they will do a much better job than myself. Here goes...

We set up these tents called "lentus" and there was one for 4th girls, 5th girls, 4th boys, and 5th boys. I slept with 4th grade girls and got to know them very well. They are very chatty as one would assume, but nonetheless loveable!
This is one of the 4th grade boys hammering in the stake of the lentu. Who knew 4th and 5th graders can work as hard as they did?

When we reached the campsite, after hiking for an hr and a half, we broke for lunch. Please remember that to us staff we realize you need to eat a hearty meal b/c you do alot of exercise and you can't go on just snacks. Kids however finished all their candy and snacks within the first 2 hours we were there. Do I need to say more about what the afternoon was like?

These were my kids that I hiked with in the back while pushing them, literally, up the mountain. Who knew 4th graders and some 5th graders could be so dramatic?? I believe I heard "I am going to die Miss Baker" about 57 times up the mountain. Us staff made the hike in about 45 min, we took an hr. and a half!!!

Conflicting Karoake

I am coming to realize more that this town is very much a "vacation town" for the wealthy to come down to their mountain homes and enjoy the scenery. This past Sunday we went to a resort type place called the River Club where you will see in the pictures, is not a place that really the locals can afford to come to every weekend for a poolside afternoon. I felt conflicted last week as I was at this place with 5 different pools and the river below us and yet I drive home to La Colonia where we can´t even get trash off the street. These two places I feel like should not be able to thrive in the same location, yet they do and there are several more places like the River Club that is strictly for the upper class.

All of that to say, I had a wonderful time that afternoon and even though it did end up raining, everyone went to the cabana and we had karoake time!! Yall probably all know that I did sing my heart out to Whitney Houston´s "I Wanna Dance With Somebody" and Alicia Key´s "Fallin". You will have to look at Leah´s blog for those pics.

This place is located on the Yaque River a little outside of town. There were these boys which reminded me of the "lost boys" from Hook that would come out of their homes along the river and jump in the river with no fear of these huge boulders in the river and play in their underwear. It was a sight for sure!
Connecting both sides of the resort is this suspension bridge over the river.

Here is another picture of the place. There are 5 pools total located all over the club.

YWAM (Youth With A Mission) is an outreach-evangelical organization with bases all over the world that uses the arts to express the gospel to youth-college kids. I am familiar with it from growing up in Tyler, where the home base is close by. They also happen to have 3 bases here in the DR with one in Jarabacoa. Last weekend they put on a performance called SIGUELO which means to "follow it". They had musical groups, rap groups, a phenominal hip hop group, etc. It was a beautiful thing to watch and made me miss the arts for sure. Whether it´s a song or dance or drama, there is just something about the arts that communicates to a totally different part of your soul than just words. It always seems to move me somehow and bring me to a place of worship that other means can´t do. I love that feeling and love watching it in action. Needless to say I had a great time...give me music and dance anyday!!

Me and Amanda (4th grade teacher from Seattle) at the concert.

Me and Bida Lisa at the concert. She is one of Maria's many grandchildren. She went to Doulos for the past several years, but this year she is at the public school. She knows English very well and is really mature in her life and walk with the Lord. She comes over alot to hangout.

This was the stage set up. As you see they are very gifted in art and the sign reads "Follow It". It is a little more elegant than that in Spanish.

Here are Melinda (other student teacher that I live with on the left) and Erica (1st grade teacher from North Carolina) on the right.

Lastly, this is Cecilia (my host sister or Maria's daughter who lives above us) and myself at the concert. That night she made a profession to follow Christ and turn her life around, which is super exciting!! Can I get AMEN???

No landfills, No humane society

So, I feel like as I write I have kinda let you down in the fact that you might see all the fun things we do on the weekends, but really as far as the town that I am living in (Jarabacoa) I don't think I have communicated that much to yall. So, sit back for some story time and picture time with Robyn.



First I would like to say that I am starting to really enjoy the town and frequent the supermercado (grocery store) more often; I love seeing the same lady checking me out every time I go in, I love seeing the same moto drivers that take me home sometimes, I like to be able to call people by name and walk the same route home where people know us gringas and yell out "Americana" as we walk by. These are the things that I have grown to love.



I believe I have told some of you that when I first got here, I definitely saw the treasure spots of this town, such as the waterfalls, parks, beach, camping, mountains, etc. Yet there is also a distinct poverty level in this town and country as well; especially where we live, we walk amongst it everyday on our way home. There is no concept of trash pickup in this town, so the streets in my barrio (neighborhood), La Colonia (The Colony) are lined with trash. There is also no humane society which means perros (dogs) run rampant about town. They are actually not violent at all, they almost run away from you if you walk towards them. These are probably the 2 things that I see most of everyday. Obviously from the states, we think just set up a trash pickup system or a humane society right? That will solve these problems, but systems and organizations also require money, which contrary to the popular saying "doesn't grow on trees". A couple of weekends ago, there was a city wide trash pick up day where local schools and organizations joined together to pick up the trash around the river. We had about 30 show up including teachers and kids (which was so neat to watch them participate) and parents.

Here is the Yaque River in the background and some of our kids picking up trash along the river.

This is our prinicpal, Asbeth, and 3 elementary girls who were such troopers picking up trash.


Sorry this one is turned upside down, but here is more evidence of the trash we picked up for about 4 hours! As you can see a tire in the middle of the picture represents bascially everything we picked up was automotive parts. There was an automotive shop on this land and it appeared that they just threw everything behind them without looking. No matter if it was a tire, oil cans, plastic wrap from plastic bottles.

This picture is most disturbing to me for that is my hand in the yellow glove and I have picked up a whole layer of the earth and yet there is even more layers of plastic underneath the surface. I mean they have continually thrown layers and layers of plastic out in this yard and they don´t even realize that it piles up this much. I say they, but I mean we as a people not just Dominicans. It truly opened my eyes and the kids eyes as we discovered this.

Here is my friend Amanda, 4th grade teacher, who is just getting started on her first bag of trash. I believe everyone individually probably filled 3-4 huge black trash bags. The city officials came by to help us pick up all the bags and they even compensated you for each bag you filled depending on the weight. It was truly a productive day.