Mornings in La Hoya

So, it’s the school holidays but it is almost impossible to sleep in in the morning. This week these are some of the things that I have been woken up by:

- Children imitating the turkeys next door then the turkeys responding

- Miss Mish (the  COPA cat) meowing for food outside my door
- Roody (the local carpenter) and his workmen doing something which sounded like grinding metal outside at 7am when they came to fix the office door.
- Cockerels which think its time to wake everyone up at 2am

- people from the Catholic church in the village going carol singing at 4am with a scraper board! 
- Mota (our next door neighbour) grinding chicken feed

- Mota playing really loud Christian music at 8am on a Saturday!
- Mota having what sounded like a full blown domestic next door but was probably just a discussion about what they were going to eat for breakfast (Dominicans tend to shout… a lot!)
- Mota’s family thinking its OK to watch Mama Mia at full blast at 7am

- Mota having a confused Spanish conversation with Cathy (the new health adviser who doesn’t speak much Spanish): 
     Mota: (shouting in Spanish) ‘Cathy how are you?’
     Cathy: (in English) ‘I don’t understand’.
     Mota: (in Spanish) ‘say ‘I’m fine…. I’m fine’’.

     Cathy: (in Spanish) ‘I’m fine’.

     Mota: (in Spanish) ‘ that’s good, I’m fine too’.
Now, I didn’t think there was much need to shout this across the garden right outside my window at 7.30am.

These things can be annoying especially when it’s the start of the holidays and you were looking forward to a lie in. However, mostly they really are just hilarious and I actually get up in a really good mood after being woken up by whatever variety of random things have happened in the small hours of the morning.

December update

OK, first blog post in a wee while! Thought I would give you guys a low down as to what’s been happening here at COPA.

First of all, at the end of November we were robbed while away on a shopping trip in the local town. The thief/s broke through three locked doors and both Ruth and I are now both camera and computer less. Brilliant! It was a pretty rough few days after the robbery and I especially was feeling pretty emotionally low. However, all the other volunteers were fabby, we felt very supported and after a long phone conversation with my lovely family (first time I had spoken to them in 4 months), some speedy internet sessions in Bombita and some retail therapy in the crazy market the dark cloud had lifted. Not having technology at my finger tips is annoying but it makes you look up and realise what’s around you. It’s kind of nice to drop off the internet grid for a while and not be consumed with facebook and email. So all in all its OK, life goes on, Christmas is almost here and term has finished and we are still loving life in the beautiful Dom Rep.

In other news, I have been doing Christmassy projects for the past few weeks with my classes which has been really fun but as I said before, term is pretty much finished for the year. There have been exams all this week  and we haven’t been teaching, instead I have been concentrating my efforts on making Christmas presents, grading peoples work, tidying the dreaded art cupboard and tackling Spanish. It was the last day of term on Thursday. All the children go a Christmas shoe box from their sponsors in the States so we helped to organise them and hand them out. There was also a MENTAL assembly. Some of the highlights were: Aris (the school PE teacher), Ron (another COPA volunteer) and Perez, the school janitor and local bar owner, (a man who rides his motor bike from one end of the school to another to give the 5^th grade teacher her keys when she has forgotten them) doing a dance to a jingle bells remix. Possibly one of the best things I have seen in my life. Ever. Another highlight of the assembly was a drama of the Christmas story told through the medium of rap complete with a weird donkey which was to 8^th graders covered in a green sheet.

The other night we had an interesting experience teaching three Dominican men and Ron to cook pancakes. Men don’t do cooking here or cleaning or any domestic chores for that matter, that’s the woman’s job, regardless of whether they have just returned from a full days work or are planning to go out later or have a large extended family to care for. But that’s a rant for another day! Anyway we had a very funny experience teaching Aris the sports teacher and two other guys from the village how to mix and flip. There was a lot of confusion as to what a sieve was, how to crack eggs and how much mixture to put in the pan! However once those minor hurdles had been overcome everything went pretty smoothly with lots of patting on the back and fist pumping whenever a successful flip was made, there was even a pancake rap complete with beep boxing! Extremely funny experience.

So that’s just a quick update on what’s been happening here. The PT boys working in Santiago are coming here for Christmas and we are planning on a major eating marathon around La Hoya on Christmas Eve. Food is a big deal most of the time here but at Christmas it seems to be the only thing on anyone’s mind. On Christmas day all the COPA volunteers are headed to the beach for a bonfire and barbecue. After Christmas the PT volunteers are headed to Cabarete in the North for New Year before heading back for the start of term on the 7^th of January. So. Busy few weeks ahead of us here! I will try and do another post before we flip into the New Year but if I don’t get a chance to, have a wonderful Christmas!

Me and my 8th grade class wishing you a Happy Christmas!