Check it out! That is me dancing with one of my youth! We are at a fundraiser bakesale/dance. I was content to count money and stare at the sweets, but she forced me to do a bachata. This picture is difitely not staged...

Fundraising efforts are slowly but surely sucking up every drop of my free time, but perhaps in the end it'll be worth it. If not, then, well, at least my kids will know how to raise money in a transparent fashion. Taken from actual conversations: "No, we cannot use money for the basketball court to buy our group t-shirts." "Yes, everyone has to pay. It's a bake-SALE. Yes, even your mom's friend." "No, you cannot buy a beer at our bakesale-you are underage, and a beer costs the price of like 5 cups of juice! And we don't even get any proceeds from beer!"

As you can see. A learning curve.

It's starting to get hot hot hot outside. That means only one thing...Alicia is getting stinky, stinky, stinky. Especially since my method of cleaning my clothes- the washer at the PC office- has finally bitten the dust. Again. Too bad my little travel-size spray bottle of Febreeze isn't larger...

The heat also means that soon, noone can tell me when, exactly, summer break will start! Woohoo! This means a whole lot of new projects: A science camp, a construct your dreams course (where youth who want to learn business principles, basic accounting, and have an idea for a business learn how to do it, write up an official proposal, and submit their proposals to compete against other proposals, potentially winning the grand prize of the start up money for their business!), a new youth group in another region (though I refuse to help them build anything until I finish up with what I'm in now), and sweating. None of that matters right now, though, as I'm still in school. Just dreaming about the future.

Speaking of school. Yesterday, some punk threw chewed popcorn at me. Gross. But that negative was balanced by the positive of one of my kids who told me a month ago he wanted to quit learning to read (so I let him) came back and we've almost clenched literacy! Whoooohoo! You can throw all the chewed-up popcorn at me that you want if it means that I'll get a literate kid out of the mix.

Here's something cute: the baby next door calls me "she-sha!" Here's something not cute: She's decided she likes me, so she'll walk over when I'm home, dump out the stuff I keep in the front for the kids to play with (crayons and coloring books and such) and walk over my clean floor that is still wet with mop water in her grimy, cute little feet. I feel like this could be something resembling karma for the way I behaved when I was a child, but, as we all know I was a saint. So, really, she's just a rotten little adorable baby who can walk. Does that make her a toddler? I guess so.

Here's something not cute: My cat (who is cute) has decided that, instead of killing stuff now, he'll just bat it around until it gets angry and decides to go for ME. This is not fair, as I have no killer claws or instinct. However, I do have raid, and I'm not afraid to pull that trigger.

Finally some DR facts:
All kids have to wear a uniform to school. It's the same uniform for all public schools: khaki pants, light blue polo shirt. Jeans and a different color shirt for private schools. It's useful, because you can always identify who's a student, and there's no judging based on what someone's wearing. Which brings me to fact number 2. Women in my campo are ALWAYS looking at what I'm wearing, and commenting on whether it makes me look fat, whether it's wrinkled, whether it's stained, torn, new, cute, etc. I've started looking at what I put on before putting it on, and even matching my earrings with my clothes. Sometims. This country is changing me.

Finally, here are the types of animal fights they have in my campo:
Dog (illegal)
Rooster (legal)
Beta fish (legal)
Beetle (not joking) (legal)

I've tried to avoid all of them, but maybe have partaken in a beetle fight. It's ok, they usually fly away before anything actually gets hurt.

If I had posted this on the 4th, I would sign off saying
"May the fourth be with you!"

HAHAHAHA.
-alicia