Adriel Fransico Salas Peralta

Adriel is one of the biggest 11 year olds I've ever met, but his size is very fitting of his personality. In school he's always looking after the kids, and I'm sure it's no different outside of it either. In fact, he's two of the other students uncle (Wileyni and Emanuel), and he sometimes even runs his parents colmado (convenience store). He reads and writes well and behaves better than any of the other kids in the class, which I attribute to his maturity despite being only 11 years old. I think that same maturity sometimes gets in the way when we sing songs during circle time. While all the other kids love to dance around and be silly, Adriel almost always sits in his seat and watches. I always try to get him to join in, and it's always great when he does. He's a very sweet kid and makes my time in school much more relaxed.

Rachel Salas Burgos y Wileyni

For a while I've wanted to write about all of my students, and now I'm finally getting around to it. Here is the first installment.

Being a teacher has been one of most rewarding and challenging surprises of my time here in the Dominican Republic. I had no idea I would be teaching until about a week before I was to start, but I’m very glad that I have had the chance to do so. The reason the experience has been so rewarding is because of the children I get to teach and spend time with. They say that teachers aren’t supposed to have favorite students, but I’m not a real teacher so I think it’s ok that Wileyni is my favorite. She just turned seven last month (I'm pretty sure), which makes her the youngest of my students, but she is by far the smartest. She can read and write very well, which is an accomplishment in itself in this part of the country, especially for a seven year old. I’ll teach the kids a few English words that we’ll go over a few times in class on Tuesday, and no one else, not even Olga Louisa (a 23 year old Dominican woman who helps me in class) remembers the words on Thursday, but Wileyni will. She’s so smart that often times I’ll forget she’s only seven years old because I feel like I’m hanging out with an adult, then she’ll act like a seven year old and it’ll catch me off guard. It’s crazy. She’s also hilarious and makes me laugh all the time. Her and another girl, Jenni, will attack me from either side and poke me in the side and tickle me and on days when I’m exceptionally tired it’ll zap all the strength right out of me and I’ll be helpless to do anything except laugh and plead for them to stop. I asked her the other day if she wants to go to University, and she told me yes and that she’s going to be a doctor, and I believe it. I wish you could all meet her and get a hug from her because she is really a special kid, and my life is better having had the privilege of spending time with her.

The Hike

If you've been to the property, or seen the many pictures I post of it, you've seen the mountain with the antennas on top that you see looking out from the property. In Colin's second week here all the way back in the beginning of September, he decided that he wanted to hike said mountain, and this weekend we finally crossed that goal off the DR bucket list... and it was CRAZY. We both came back fine overall, but much more injured than before we left.

After a week of serious speculation and planning what to bring with us in our backpacks, Friday night was upon us and we made sure we packed food (beef jerky and trail mix), what we thought was enough water (it wasn't), our hammocks, basic medical supplies, and of course a machete each for all of the bushwhacking we were sure we'd have to do (turned out to be lots). Originally the plan was to set out from the property, hike all the way to the top, spend the night at the top, then hike back the next day, but after talking with some Dominican friends and looking at a map, we realized that would take us like four days; time we did not have. So we altered the plans and Franci dropped us off in a village called Guananico at 7 o'clock Saturday morning, about a mile from the base of the mountain. The first mile was through the village on a paved road, with the base of the mountain at the end of the road when it hit a river. We crossed the river and took the first path we found, and when we the first person we came across told us that we were on the correct path to the top of the mountain, we were feeling pretty good. After fifteen minutes on walking, it became evident that we were definitely going the wrong way, so we back tracked for about five minutes when Colin stopped and said that if we climbed up this 30 foot cliff, he thinks we would be on the correct path. Not only did that sound quite fun, but I have an absolutely terrible sense of direction and I was following Colin, so up the cliff we went. When we made it to the top we were in a pasture, and it was clear that Colin was correct and that we were exactly where we wanted to be. From this moment on, the rest of the five hour hike was steeply uphill, therefore I was sweating and out of breath for the next five hours.

The next part of the hike was relatively straight forward, with the path clearly defined. The fact that the path was so clearly defined surprised me, and I was wondering why this was so, but my question was answered shortly when we came to a fenced in area with forty or fifty cows, and three men tending to them. I don't know why, but I didn't expect that people would keep their cows up in the hills, but I was happy about it because they are the ones making the path clear. We stopped and talked to the men, Pepe, Pepe's brother whose name we never learned, and Cucho. When we told them that we were walking from Guananico to the antennas at the top of the mountain, they laughed at us like we were crazy (this became a theme throughout the day). They were very kind to us letting us pass through their land, and Pepe even took Colin's number because he wanted to call us later to ensure we made it to the top safely. After following the path past Pepe's land for another half hour, we came to a much more defined road, which was good and bad. Good because it was very clear which way to go, bad because while it was definitely uphill to this point, the incline got severely more steep. From here on out, the going was very slow. The only good part about the very steep incline was that every five minutes of walking, the view behind us got like 100 times more epic. Finally the very steep part gave way, and it was back to just normal uphill, and we were able to get back to appreciating what was around us instead of gasping for air and wiping the sweat out of our eyes. 

One of my favorite parts of the hike was all of the nature we could eat along the way. Never before in my life had I seen a cocoa tree, but they lined the path, and when we came to a forest full of them, we decided it would be ok to take just one of the pods and eat some. The inside was full of white, slimy beans, and they were DELICIOUS! They didn't taste anything remotely like chocolate (you have to do lots to turn the beans into chocolate), but I liked them much more than I though I would. Along the way we also got to eat guandules (a type of bean) off the tree, wild raspberry type berries (we asked some Dominicans if they were edible before partaking), and we found an orange tree and ate like 10 of them between the two of us they were so delicious and juicy. We also saw lots of coffee trees, which I think is pretty cool and worth mentioning even though we didn't eat any of the coffee beans. 

Eventually we came to another Y in the road, and to the right was a couple of houses with people sitting out in front of them, so we decided to ask them the way. They turned out to be Haitian people, and they spoke spanish, which was good for us cause neither of us speak one word of creole, but their Spanish was still very difficult to understand, so all we really got was to go left at the Y in the road, which was better than nothing. So we took the left, and then staying on the correct path was difficult for a little while. Luckily the trees weren't too dense here, so Colin was able to look up and either see the antenna where we were headed or the next peak over, then decide which way to go from there. We came to one fork where the left was downhill into a valley, and the right was uphill along the ridge. We couldn't decide which way to go, so we took a little break before finally deciding to go up to the right. It was super steep and difficult to hike up, and when we finally came to a clearing 15 minutes later, we took a break to decide if we should continue this way. After some deliberation, we came to the conclusion that both ways would get us there eventually, so we just flipped a coin; heads continuing along our current path, and tails doubling back. It came up tails, which in hind-sight was very lucky because that ended up being the faster way to get there. 

We got lost one more time for a few minutes, but nothing worth describing in detail. As we felt like we were getting closer to our final goal, the path started the change and turned into more of a horse path, which we took as a good sign. Pretty much as soon as we acknowledged this, we basically fell off of this path onto a road! It was a crazy surprise! We gave each other a little baffled look because we were just not expecting this. It wasn't a paved road, but certainly a road wide enough for a car to drive down. In fact, where we came out of the woods there was a pick up truck parked almost directly in front of us, and a man a little ways down the road tending to his farm. We went and talked with him for a little while and learned lots from him in just a few minutes. His name was Nelson Vargas, and he told us about a little village two kilometers down the road (another surprise), and more about the surrounding area and how they are working to turn in into a tourist area (thumb down emoji). He also told us that continuing along this road to the right, we will reach our goal of the antennas. So we set up yet another crazy steep road (I can't overstate the steepness) and another half hour later, we finally reached the antennas, and one more surprise. I did not think we would see nearly as many people along the way as we did, and I definitely did not expect to meet a family living at the top of the mountain, the husband of which tends to the antenna. 

What I have failed to far to mention is the physical toll the hike had taken thus far. None of our injuries had occurred yet, but by the time we reached the top, my legs were freakin jelly, and were cramping up every couple minutes, all of which I expected. What I did not think about was the toll carrying a heavy pack for many hours would take on my shoulders. When we got there I was so happy to take of my backpack I nearly flung it off the mountain. But none of that mattered because we had made it, and we were ready to start reaping the rewards of our hours of hiking (4 hours and 44 minutes to be exact). We sat on a roof and just stared out in the direction we had come from trying to name all the cities we could see. We could see (from east to west) Punta Rusia, Villa Isabela, Luperon, Guananico, Imbert, and at night we could see the lights from Puerto Plata. We obviously took pictures, but we talked about how in situations like this we almost feel like it's pointless to take pictures to show people because a picture could never possibly capture the vastness. After appreciating for a good long while, we wanted to hike some more to get to a vantage point where we could see the view of what's on the other side of the mountain. So we talked to the man who lives up there (who has lived up there his entire life and told us that they don't have water up there and have to go three miles to the closest village for it) and he pointed us in the correct direction. It was very clear that people don't usually go this way, because we were utilizing our machetes more than ever. But after only about 10 minutes, we reached our destination and were able to appreciate some more. It was a very interesting and unexpected view. Facing out toward the direction we came from was mountainous, but out in the other direction was completely flat almost as far as we could see (which was quite far) and all farm land, but still very beautiful nonetheless. 

Now we had only one more goal before calling it a day with the hiking and going to explore the village that Nelson told us about, which was the tallest peak of the mountain, so of course we had to get up there. And this is where it got treacherous, and the injuries started. Much like the path to the peak we were just at, it was very overgrown and we had to frequently utilize our machetes to get through. It was farther away as well, but we reached where we were trying to go in another half hour, but there were a lot of trees and we were unsatisfied with the view. So Colin climbed an old cell tower and say that "20 yards away" there were some tall rocks we could sit on top of and get the view we so desired. I put 20 yards away in quotes because it was much, much more that 20 yards, with the distance accentuated by the treacherous terrain. I know I already used treacherous before, but it's the only words to describe the way to these rocks. We were no longer hiking, but rock climbing. There were times where it was quite terrifying, but always more fun and exhilarating than anything else. After a long 20 yards, we finally made it to the rocks we were headed for. It was very cool sitting on top of the rocks because they were their own peaks, and it was a straight drop 50 feet down from them, so I made sure to hold on tight the entire time. So after even more appreciating, we decided it was time to get down off these rocks and head for the town. In heading toward these rocks, we were walking away from the antenna and the start of the road, so we were a solid hour through all the treachery from the antenna. Colin observed that the road to the town was right below us, and after much deliberation (my vote was just to take the long, safe way back around to the antennas) we decided to go Colin's way and climb down the face of the mountain down to the road to "save some time" (we did not save any time). Plus, this is where the injuries began.

So in this treacherous terrain, Colin moved much faster than I did. He has much longer limbs than I do, and he is also a bit less cautious than I am in such a situation. So as we're climbing down this mountain, I can't see him so I would call out his name every once in a while to both make sure he was ok, and to ensure I was headed in the right direction. I'm headed down nice and slow, but still accidentally grabbing the occasional thorn or getting scraped up when slipping on an unstable rock. Then, one of the times I called for Colin, there was a little hesitation, and very calmly for the situation, he says Mikey, I just took "a little fall" (it wasn't a little fall). So I got really nervous and got over to where he fell from, and he free fell 15 FEET down the mountain!! I rushed over to where he fell, owning both of my knees on the sharp edges of rocks in my haste, asking what he broke along the way. Somehow, someway the answer was nothing. Although he avoided breaking anything, he certainly didn't get away unscathed. He got some gnarly cut-bruises on his arms an legs, but was overall ok and able to walk away from the fall. He was climbing backward down the ledge, and when he took off his foot to start moving down and only had one foot and one hand on the wall, the rock he was holding on to broke and he fell backward. I asked him later once we finally reached the bottom if he though he was going to die when he started falling, he said yes and the image that flashed through his head was how the newspaper title back home would read announcing his death. The rest of the climb down the face of the mountain was full of little slips resulting in little cuts and bruises, and by the time we finally reached the road we were headed for, my hands and legs were covered in those tiny cuts and bruises, but despite all the injures, I'm really glad we chose to go the way we did, because it was incredibly fun, and I'm sure I'll never do anything exactly like it again. 

We reached the road, and walked into the village, which ended up being a typical Dominican village. A few colmados, no where to eat, and lots of people hanging out on their front porches. We talked with a woman and her children while they played Play Station 2 (another one of those surprises). Then we walked through the village more, ran into Nelson playing some dominos, bought some more water and food, and decided to head out of the village and find a place to set up camp. We ended up finding a perfect spot, up off the road with a few well spaced trees, strung up our hammocks, and started collecting supplies to build a fire. After some very hard earned relaxation, we got the fire going and roasted the hot dogs that Colin brought along, which were delicious. It was dark now, and Colin decided to walk back into the village to buy more water, just in case. While he was gone I went and checked out the view, and it was super cool to see all the same cities we did by day, which were now clusters of lights by night. I was in my hammock by 9 o'clock, and passed right out, but the sleep was very short lived, because it was very windy, and freezing up on the top of the mountain. Neither Colin nor I slept more than an hour or two, and when 5am finally rolled around, I found Colin curled up in a ball on the ground next to the fire, which was equal parts pathetic and hilarious. No matter how completely miserable and sleepless the night was, it was all worth it to see the sunrise in the morning from the top of the mountain. Pictured above, was without a doubt the most incredible sunrise I've ever seen. From the property there are too many mountains to see the sunrise until it's already up in the sky, but from such a high vantage point you could see every minute of the sunrise.

After we were satisfied with the amount of sunrise we were able to witness, we set off down the mountain. The way down was immensely easier than the way up. While walking down the steep hills was a little bit tough on our already over tired legs, we got down in less than half the time it took to ascend the mountain. On the way down we ran into Pepe again, and talked with a few more people on the way. We made it back to Guananico around 9 o'clock, and Franci came and picked us up. By the time we got home, I was freakin exhausted and passed out in the hammock for a good while. 

It was the craziest adventure I've had so far while in the DR, and I will never look back at the top of the mountain or those antenna again. 

Farewell to the beard

Scroll for the progression (the second one is my favorite)

Today I shaved my beard! Well actually my friend, and friend of the mission, Alberto did it for me! it feels super good to be rid of it. This was the longest I've grown a beard by almost a full month, and honestly, it was terrible. All sorts of gnarly stuff fell out of it as he was shaving it too, which I thought was awesome. Everyone's reaction as I saw them was super funny, with, "who's that guy, can't be Mikey," topping the list. Riding the motorcycle home and actually feeling the wind on my face was pretty nice too. I think for the rest of my time here, I'll probably just try to maintain a constant scruff, as opposed to growing another ridiculous mountain man beard. 

La escualita

Sorry the picture is too big for the blog, but it's awesome so I wanted to make it as big as possible

      I love this picture because almost everyone in it is in motion. So much so that if you look at it for too long, too closely it seems like it could be posed. This is school. For all of August and a good part of September, I primarily stayed on the property and tended to it, but then in September after Colin arrived, schools opened and I really wanted to be a part of it because it's super fun to hang out with little kids, and also it was a way to get off of the property. So every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon I would go with Colin and Megan into El Canal and we would have class with 3-5 year olds from 2-5:30. At first I assumed more of a support role because Colin and Megan are here working with VMM for the sole purpose of teaching. It was fun to get to know the kids while not having to do any of the lesson planning, which was nice. When school started, I was told that I would eventually be tutoring older kids who need help in their schools, which I was very excited about! Then when the former coordinator of our school program, Loryn, was down here for a visit in October, she informed me that I would have my own class of 6-10 year olds! She rattled off a bunch of things that I need to teach them, and told me I'd be starting the next week! Teaching the 3-5 year olds was easy, it was colors, numbers, days of the week, but teaching the 6-10 year olds meant I needed to teach them things like the alphabet, how to read, and reading comprehension. I feel like people go to college to learn how to properly teach that kind of stuff, so in the beginning I was completely lost. I didn't know what to do for lesson plans, or how to properly teach them to read. Three weeks in, I still don't really know what I'm doing, but the kids at least seem to be having a good time! I think this coming weekend I'm going to sit down, call Loryn, and really start learning how to teach these kids what they need to learn! My class started at 4 kids, and as of next Tuesday I will be up to 7! After this post I'm gonna get pictures of each of my kids individually and blog about them, so you can get to know them too!

I am completely unharmed

As the title of this posts suggests, I am completely unharmed. But, as I'm sure you can surmise from the title of the post, there was an incident. Also, sorry there is no picture, but I didn't think to take one until we were out of there.

So, I'll start from the top. Today Colin and I decided we were going to explore a village out in the boonies called El Burro. El Burro means the donkey, and the road is named that because when it rains, the road gets so bad that the only way to access the village is via a donkey. But I'll write about our adventure in detail in my next post, this one is about something else. So El Burro is on the way to Imbert, so after our adventure we decided we would start heading to Imbert on our motorcycles and stop at a random place to eat on the way. We drove and drove and there wasn't even one place to eat on the way, so we decided to continue all the way into Imbert. We got to the entrance of Imbert and Colin saw a man he met the night before in Luperon, so we parked our bikes and went walked back to Colin's new friend Carlos to ask where a good place to eat is. He told us to go to the park in town and there was a good place to eat right next to the park.

We headed out and got some delicious chicken and plantains for dinner (what else is new). While we were eating we talked with the woman who owned the barber shop next door, and she pointed out the ice cream shop right down the road. I love ice cream and that is something they definitely don't have here, so Colin and I were definitely all over that. So we got our ice cream, which was surprisingly delicious, and now we're ready to head back home because by this time it's dark out. So, Colin takes off on his bike and I still have some napkins in my hand that I used to wipe the water off of my seat because it had been raining, so I stopped and threw them in the garbage. By this time, Colin is pretty far ahead of me, but he stopped at the intersection to make sure I was on my way, and when he saw that I was, he continued on. So I'm driving and come to the intersection. I want to try to paint the best word picture possible so you can fully understand how much this was not my fault. It's your standard four way intersection, but only one side has a stop sign. The one side with a stop sign was the side directly across from me, with the other three stop-sign-less.

I slowed down coming up to the intersection, looked both ways and saw that there was no one coming, and continued through the intersection. As I'm three quarters of the way through the intersection, a man in his car who should be stopped at the stop sign (which is one of two stop signs in all of the campesino so you think he might actually obey it) decides the stop sign is unimportant, runs through it starting to make a left turn and BAM! hits me with his car. I saw him starting to go so I swerved to the right in an attempt to not be hit by his car, which I think was a good move because as a result of it, he hit me perfectly perpendicularly and I fell directly to the right. After he hit me I laid on the ground for like two second thinking, "are you freakin' kidding me?" By the time I opened my eyes and got up off the ground, there were three or four Dominican's helping me pick up my bike and bring it to the side of the road and making sure that I was ok. The car was perhaps going 5 miles an hour and I was going even slower, so I truly am completely fine, which is awesome. I literally got one minuscule cut on my ankle that didn't even bleed. So I'm sure you're wondering about the person who hit me. Before I can even get my motorcycle to the side of the road, a big fat Dominican man (who I'll refer to as the angry fat man, AFM for short) comes out of the car yelling at me immediately that it was my fault that he ran the stop sign and hit me with his car. He was yelling, so I started yelling at him too! (In spanish, which I'm actually pretty proud of). I yelled at him that he ran the stop sign and hit me with his car so it was his fault! Meanwhile he's pointing to a tiny area where the paint on his bumper got chipped telling me that I need to pay him for it. I'm telling him no way because it was his fault and he needs to pay me if my motorcycle is damaged! By now Colin realized something is up so he turned around and finally joined the party. And I call it a party because within two minutes of this guy hitting me, there are 20 to 25 Dominicans on their motorcycles taking up the whole street trying to find out what's going on, and I'm the guest of honor.

Now Colin rolls up on his motorcycle trying to find out what's going on and basically takes over the argument for me, so he starts to argue with this man who's now trying to get me to go to the police station with him, which was not about to happen because the law here is extremely racist against anyone who isn't Dominican. As Colin arrives and takes over the argument for me, another man tells me that I need to move my motorcycle because it was blocking traffic, even though it was parked correctly on the side of the road and the AFM parked his "damaged" car right in the middle of it. I go to move my motorcycle to the sidewalk, and some random guy says to me that he was there when the guy hit me, and it wasn't my fault as he was walking past me. I pleaded with him to stay and tell that to the man who hit me, but his response was unexpected, and probably the best advice I've ever received, particularly in a tense situation. His advice was, "it wasn't your fault, leave." I couldn't understand why I didn't think of that myself. It hits me all at once that the AFM doesn't know my name, where I work, or that I even live in the Dominican Republic. He probably just assumed I'm some gringo on vacation. So I get on my bike, and yell once, "Colin!" but he didn't hear me over the AFM. So I yelled his name again, much louder this time, and we made eye contact and I took off. I think it was the adrenaline's fault that I didn't communicate anything else to him and just bolted, assuming for some reason that he knew what I was saying just from my look.

As I take off, the AFM sees and took two steps toward me then gave up trying to chase me realizing it would have been a futile effort. I'm speeding down the road, looking back every two seconds hoping that Colin will be following shortly after. After three or four look backs, I realize that he didn't get the message, so I turned around heading back to rescue him, trying to think of an excuse as to why I left. As I get halfway back to the scene, Colin whizzes past me and says, "that was crazy!" I whip around to follow him, and I catch up very fast because for some reason, Colin is slowing down to stop and as I zip past him I yell, "rapido, rapido, rapido," because I am not about to be chased down by this guy. We get out of town quickly, and ride side by side for a minute and decide that we'll get almost all the way back home before we stop to talk about it. We make it to the basketball court five minutes from home, pulled over to the side of the road, and sat in the bleachers to get the entire story straight. I told Colin my side of the story, then he filled me in on his side of the story after I bolted when that guy told me to leave.

Colin informed me that as he was talking, the AFM was so angry that he was all up in Colin's face with one hand balled into a fist, at which point Colin realized he needed to calm the situation way down. He was successful for a bit, but as I yelled Colin's name, took off, and the AFM gave up on chasing me, but then immediately turned his sights to Colin. As the man was distracted by me driving away, Colin caught my drift, slowly pulled his bike keys out of his pocket and put them in the ignition, but as he kicked the bike to start it, the man realized what he was trying to do and put his hands on Colin's handle bars to keep him from driving away. At this point Colin realizes that the man is going for his bike keys so he takes them out of the ignition and slips them into his pocket, but to no avail. The AFM is so angry at this point that he reaches into Colin's pocket and rips the keys away from him. Now the AFM has clearly over stepped his bounds, and the crowd of Dominicans know it, and thankfully intervene, shifting the attention of the AFM from Colin, to themselves. One Dominican guy said to Colin, just get out of here, and Colin responded he wants to, but doesn't have the keys. Colin says he doesn't even know how, but the keys ended up back in his hand thanks to the friendly Dominicans. Colin put the key in the ignition, very wisely put the bike in neutral to keep the AFM's attention off him and on the Dominicans now trying to reason with him, and when he was far enough away, kicked the bike on and made a clean get away.

There you have it. Colin and I agree that we are now officially Dominican having gotten in an argument with a Dominican man while surrounded by 20+ other Dominicans. I do feel bad that I left Colin hanging like that, but I truly didn't mean to (remember the adrenaline?), and I will point out that I definitely went back for him. All in all, now that we're both ok, along with the bike (aside from a broken front brake handle), it was kind of an awesome experience. Not one that I want to have again necessarily, but still kind of cool.

La Cirugía

September 11th, 2014

I can't believe it's taken me this long to blog about this, it was quite the experience. I'll start out describing the picture, then give you the story. So what you're looking at here is two doctors pulling a baby out of a woman's womb, or if you want to get technical, a c-section. Yes, I saw a real live c-section, it was awesome... and gross. The woman on the right was the surgeon, the woman on the left was the assisting nurse, and this is the moment where the surgeon reached into the woman's womb, and scooped the baby out.

Ok, now the story. In September two medical groups came to the mission, and when there is a medical group here, they go to the hospital in Imbert on Thursday, because on Thursdays, they do c-sections (does anyone else think it's funny they have a designated day for them?) The first group that was here was a group of 5 grumpy old ladies, who I drove around all week, so on Wednesday night I asked Sarah and Elissa, "if I wear some scrub pants, do you think I'll be able to go watch a c-section?" They said I might as well try, and I'm glad I did. Thursday morning I slipped on some scrub pants and declared with a fist pump, "I'm ready to commit so fraud!" We got to the hospital and I did my best to act like I belonged. We were all together when the doctor asked who wanted to go see a c-section, and trying not to seem to eager, I volunteered, and I was in. The next thing I know I'm in an OR and there is a woman lying on a surgery table ready to be cut open and have her baby yanked out of here. I'd like to make it known that the fact that they didn't even check if I was actually a medical professional or not wasn't even the most ridiculous part of this experience. To go into the operating room, I didn't even have to wash my hands, they let me take pictures (clearly), and when they cut something off the lady, they just threw it on the ground! They also don't have suction in the operating room so the blood (and there was LOTS of it) just runs onto the floor. I have another picture showing all the blood, but I thought it was a bit too graphic, but email or facebook me if you want to see it and I'll certainly sent it to you! The most surprising thing about watching the surgery for me was how rough the surgeon was! I don't know if that's how it is for all surgeries, but they were ripping this poor woman open, who was in fact awake the entire time. At one point the two women were gripping either side of the incision with both hands and hanging off of the woman to open her up, it was crazy! Then once they finally cut away all the muscle and fat and whatnot and finally made it to the womb, they couldn't pull the baby out, so they called in the director of the hospital who had just arrived and he came in in his yellow button down, put down the mail he was holding, and started pushing on the woman's stomach! He wasn't even wearing freakin gloves! The whole thing was absolutely ridiculous. When the doctor sewed up the last layer of skin I turned to her and said, "wow, thank you, that was incredible," then walked out of the room as nonchalantly as possible. Could you imagine in America trying to do something like this? I don't really know, but I feel like if this woman was in American her HUSBAND wouldn't have been allowed in the operating room, never mind a complete stranger with dirty hands who isn't even a medical professional! But I suppose this is a good representation of the Dominican health care system (at least out here in the campo).

I'll reiterate, it was super awesome, super gross, and I'm super happy I got to have the experience.