On Again, Off Again

Dear reader:

As I sit here drinking a papaya batido (fruit juice smoothie) and pondering what to write, the Great Easter Fiasco comes to mind. Let me explain:

Epic fail!!

Semana Santa, or Holy Week, is one of the year's biggest  celebrations here in the Dominican Republic. Ironically given the religious nature of the holiday the majority of people, at least from what I observed, choose to get rip-roaring drunk and dance in the middle of the street (passing cars be damned). While I did not take place in these particular activities, I did enjoy a short yet extended weekend. Why short, you ask? I told my students on the Friday before that there would be no classes on Holy Week under the assumption that the NGO where my class takes place would be closed, and because everyone and their mother had the week off, and also because no one communicated to me otherwise. On the Monday of Holy Week I very enthusiastically participated as an interpreter at a day-long clinic hosted by a group of chiropractors on mission from Canada. It was wonderful to go back to my roots (I was a volunteer medical interpreter and nurse's aide at a free clinic for Hispanic immigrants during college) and to feel that I was lending a helping hand--or voice, to be more accurate. As I was mid-sentence in translating for a particularly thorny case of rheumatoid arthritis, lo and behold I get a call from my Ministry of Education supervisor asking how class was going. I told her my present location was not, indeed, the classroom and ella

cogió cuerdas (literal translation: seized the rope, colloquial translation: got angry) with me. I apologized profusely for the miscommunication and promised to call my students (all 60 of them) to say that class was in session for the next day. Surprise, surprise: out of the few students that responded to my phone calls, only three showed up for "class" the next day. I did my due diligence in planning a lesson, donning my teacher clothes, and marching off to class the next day (Tuesday) as well only to be greeted by, you guessed it: no one! As disheartening as it was to sit twiddling my thumbs in an empty classroom, I did get some good quality reading done, something I have not had time to do in the past few weeks. Chalk it all up to inexperience and severely plugged channels of communication--my Easter week did not go as expected. Unfortunately there are no other long breaks on the horizon; I am going to have to put my nose to the grindstone (to borrow a colloquialism from my native English) in order to survive the rest of the school year!

Moral of the story: NEVER. ASSUME. ANYTHING.

Until next time, dear reader.

Saludos,

Kirsten