Hey guys its Reese Peterson and Ella Crocker writing this blog today! Today was long, hot and humid but overall a very productive day. We started the day off all eating breakfast together and thought we would be adventurous and try some Dominican style items. What we thought was a yummy French toast stick was in reality a piece of fried cheese that if you closed your eyes you probably thought was a piece of a rubber tire.

After breakfast we hopped on the bus and made the 40 minute drive over to our worksite in Fondo Negro which was the school in town. We first started with clearing out branches from a tree that was blocking our workspace where tomorrow we are planning on building the structure for the roof. While we were taking a water break a little girl named Marta from across the street where she lived came and joined in the project and also decided to braid all of the girls hair too. After socializing and learning the native dance of bachata and arguing who did it better (Ella and Damien - one of our translators - were the obvious winners), the group got to digging holes in the ground for the posts which will stabilize the structured roof. After several hours in the blazing sun we took the bus to the local community center where we had a delicious meal made by Miguel’s sister and got to really connect with each other by playing card games and dominos.

Around 3:30 we headed off to the baseball field where we will be going everyday to help with practice for the next week. We joined in there groups and can testify that they can probably run for hours on end without breaking a sweat. We got to scrimmage with the older boys and we are definitely the weakest links, they were probably happy when we left. While baseball practice was going on some of the girls were sitting in the stand and got the wonderful salon service of some of the younger local girls! We got back to the hotel and the boys joined in the pool after the heat had settled a little bit.

We all showered, changed, and headed down to the lobby for dinner which was excellent. Dessert was also a hit but we found out Ryder doesn’t like pumpkin cheesecake. We all chatted for a little bit and just reflected on our conversations and experiences that we have had in our short time in the DR. We are extremely grateful for the opportunity to be here and truly appreciate the eye opening experience and the connection growing stronger between God.

We hope this wasn’t terrible for our first time writing a blog.

That’s a wrap of day 3!