First Days at the Bateys

Today we woke up nice and early (6:15) to get a breakfast at 7 at the hotel. We ate, organized and loaded all the bags onto the bus, and were headed off to the batey at around 8:15. Once there, we set up in one of the bateys' churches and got to work. Mac and Abby were in charge of giving the de-worming medicine out to the children, Sarah, Prema and Kayla were scribing for the doctors, Neil, Nick and myself (Dominique), were working in the pharmacy, Chris was in charge of glasses and Rachel and Jess were in charge of taking blood pressure. This being the second time I've been on this trip, I've got to say this day ran a lot more smoothly than last year's first day. The pharmacy was organized and we all worked well together and helped each other out to fill prescriptions. Things were pretty busy the first half before lunch in the pharmacy, Nick, Neil and I were running around with Jesse and Danny ( two volunteers that came with Molly's group) filling as many prescriptions as fast as we could. As the day went on we learned all the different meanings of the doctors' scripts (like QD means daily, TID means three times a day, etc.). Eventually we made a cheat sheet for how to label medicines with the instructions in Spanish for the patients to read them and know how to properly take their medicine. After our lunch break, the pharmacy slowed down a bit and I was able to play with the kids along with Abby and Mac outside, which was really fun. We played catch outside behind another church near the church we were set up in. The kids insisted on taking a lot of photos with us, and they were all more than happy to pose for our cameras. Many photos and hugs later, I headed back to the pharmacy where things had picked up a bit. We ended the day at around 3, and after packing things up onto the bus, took a walk around the batey. Little did I know though, that while we were out walking, Moises, the Hospital director, was organizing the batey in the church and decorating it with birthday decorations to celebrate Jake (Molly's brother), Christy (doctor volunteering with us) and my own birthday. They had cake, clowns and balloons, and sang happy birthday to us when we walked through the door back from our walk. Christy, Jake and I had a dance off, following the lead of the clowns who were funny and entertaining. After a lot of singing and cake, we packed up for good and left the batey to come back to our hotel. Some of us showered, while me and a couple other people took a dip in the pool to cool off. After the pool, we got dressed, had dinner at the hotel, which was really delicious beef, pork and rice, with a sort of avocado salad and bread. Directly after dinner we allot back on the bus and went to Jumbo, where we a lot of us bought balls to give out to the bateys, and other things; I bought a shirt for my younger brother and other little things. Now we just got back from jumbo, and while some people are in their rooms relaxing from the long day, others are playing cards and enjoying the cool night time weather. We are all really excited to go help more people tomorrow in the batey, visit the orphanage and go out to breakfast at Trigo de Oro, a delicious french styled cafe in town. I want to end the post with something we do during dinner each night; rose, bud and thorn. Rose is something good that happened today, thorn is something bad and bud is something that you are looking forward to. I had two roses today; first is how much I enjoyed spending my birthday in La Romana, and second is how much of the Dominican history I learned from talking with the Bladimir, one of our translators, and Yamil. My thorn was how hard it was to deny people things that we couldn't give them without causing problems; for example, giving sunglasses out caused a lot of trouble and we had to stop giving them out, unfortunately inhibiting people who really did need them from getting them. My bud is going out to breakfast tomorrow and just helping more people out in the different bateys this whole week.