Monday, August 3, 2009

Final Email

Our Trip is Concluded

Back in the States. I'm pretty sure I've got some reverse culture shock. I miss the kids, I miss life in the DR. It is good to see my family though and it does feel like it's time to be back. Here's a recap of our last few days:

Friday we went to the village for what we thought we be the last time. We spent a good three hours there but left feeling like we could've stayed longer. We got to pray for one of my kid's moms who was sick, that was cool. We also got to spend a lot of time with one of the teachers who lives there. That night, all the female teachers came over to our house for hotdogs, they chose the food ; ) Later on we made brownies together. We also had mangoes which were as big as my face, not kidding. It was fun to be with the teachers and laugh and play games together, a nice way to say goodbye. One of them invited us to her house for lunch the next day in the village,

so Saturday we returned once more for a beautiful lunch. She gave us each cards that some of the teachers made the night before. Each had a beautiful drawing on the front with our name, and then a message inside. It was really thoughtful and we were all surprised and touched. We had our last dinner together as a team before the other interns came on Saturday night, and it was kind of sad. We did some of our reentry worksheets and talked about things we learned about U.S. culture and DR culture and the good and bad of each and what good parts do we want to bring with us.

Something unexpected, I woke up with a sore throat on Saturday, which grew progressively worse to a full blown sinus infection, so for me the rest of the trip is a bit blurry. Sunday night the other twenty or so Kids Alive interns were with us at our house, we had dinner together and then went around and shared by site the things that were really great/really hard about the summer and what our plans are for afterwards. It was cool to hear the stories from the other sites and how interns and the kids had changed.

Monday everybody headed out to Caraballo to look at the site (not me) and then we said goodbye to our Dominican housemates and headed to Sosua by the Sea, a resort, where we spent the last night. It was the beginning of culture shock to stay in the resort because there was a/c, electricity, down comforters on the beds!! Also, we could go get banana mamas any time we wanted (like a strawberry smoothie). Alberto and Lidia stopped by to say goodbye to us and offer some final words of wisdom. We love their family so much and they've been such a huge part of our trip; it was hard to say goodbye to them.

Tuesday about 13 of us interns drove down to Santiago and just caught our flight to Miami. We had a long wait at customs and then dispersed to our various connecting flights. Rachel K and I got to see Rachel J off to San Francisco, then, Rachel K and I realized that her flight was actually leaving five minutes after Rachel J's flight, so we speed walked almost the entire D terminal, she got on her plane to Chicago and I met up with a couple other interns who were left. We talked for a while and told stories and shared pictures of some of our kids until each of our flights.

This was an amazing summer and one I will never forget. Many thanks for reading these emails and praying for us and coming on the trip with us. This is probably the coolest experience of my life so far, and I'm very happy to share it ; )

Dios les bendiga (God bless you),
much love,
Sarah and Co.