Orientation Week is HALF over already!

It's weird how the days are jam packed but seem to be long and go really slow... yet we've only been here for 4 days and it seems as if it's been much longer than that.

Orientation has gone really well. We've had spanish classes every day so our professor can split us up into three groups depending on our skill level. In class the past two days, we've learned the vocab for playing dominoes (a very popular game here!), sang songs in spanish, and learned the two main dances here: La Bachata y El Merengue. They are so fun! Tonight, we had a huge barbeque/dance in the dining hall with the Encuentro group and the 20+ Dominican staff members here... it was so fun! We danced for over an hour after dinner... with fellow students and Dominicans! It has been so fun to learn a new dance; we are all really excited to go out throughout the semester so we can dance more at restaurants and bars that have live music!

As many of you know, Haiti experienced the most massive earthquake in its history a few days ago... I encourage you to keep Haiti and the people it affected in your thoughts and prayers... tonight at dinner, Padre Bill (the Jesuit priest who is the chaplain at ILAC) mentioned that although they don't know yet, estimates say that more than half a million Haitians have died from the quake. Unfortunately, Haiti doesn't have national building codes, and so many of the structures, including a major hospital, government buildings, and the president's palace. Although we are hundreds of miles away from Port-au-Prince, Haiti (where the earthquake's epicenter was near), we definitely felt its tremors. I was sitting in a chair reading a book on the patio and Camille was reading on the couch next to me and I though someone was shaking my chair from behind and so I stopped reading and turned around and no one was there. Camille looked up and then I realized the entire concrete structure of the ILAC center was gently swaying back and forth. It felt like I was on a cruise ship, with the constant movement below, almost to the point of motion sickness or feeling dizzy. The floor was literally rumbling underneath me and the lights were all swinging back and forth. Although it seemed like it lasted longer, it really was proabably less than a minute or so. So it was definitely eye opening and cool to have experienced, but a little scary too...thank you to everyone for all your prayers and concern.

Let's see... what have I been up to in the past few days? We've had many talks and discussions as part of our orientation... student life, how to play Dominican dominoes (a huge pasttime in the campos, especially), rules of ILAC, how to become culturally intelligent, introduction to our microfinance course, spanish classes, EDP course (Encuentro Dominicano Program course: history, theology, and economy of the DR and the Caribbean) introduction, reflections on "who am I?" and more.

We have started exploring the different service sites within Santiago this week. There are about 7 or so to pick from; we're visiting each of them this week and then starting next week, we will decide which one we want to serve at twice a week for the whole semester. Yesterday, my group went to the first site, Caritas, which was a soup kitchen/daycare for younger children to hang out at before they head to school in the afternoon. They love playing with my hair or riding piggyback or on my shoulders... also big into playing baseball as best as they can, usually with a cheap whiffle ball and using their hands as a bat. It was a great morning. After lunch, we went out to Centro Leon, an art museum. The cool part about the museum was that there is a cigar factory there too, so we got a tour and watched how they make cigars and smell the leaves and everything! Only a few of the guys actually bought some cigars, haha. It was cool though. And it was funny, they had a vending machine outside the factory and the museum for El Presidente, the most popular beer here... everything is just so lax!

Yesterday was also Peter's 20th birthday, so we all went out for the first time on our own - 20 of us in 4 taxis! We had to figure out how to get phone cards to apply to the ILAC cell phones and how to communicat with the taxi drivers to get to and from our destination! It was definitely an adventure. We ended up at a nice restaurant/bar with an outdoor patio... it was so fun!

Small world actually... many groups from Creighton and other areas use the ILAC center and come down for mission trips and medical clinics, etc. When we came down on Saturday, a group of CU Law students were here. Today, a group of orthopedic surgeons came down... and one of the doctors is my doctor who I saw for the pain in my knees about a month ago! Small world, he'll be down here for 10 days... he said they'll service 75+ patients a day and do hundreds of surgeries. He said if I wanted to help translate for the doctors and Dominicn patients, he'd love my help... and if I want to be an orthopedic surgeon, he'd pull some strings for me! Too bad Caitlin Chrystal isn't here :(

We've had lots of rain and drizzle the past few days, but I think it's finally clearing up! It's been 70s and rainy, and yet the Dominicans call this weather "cold"! I'm just happy for the green trees and flowering plants and humidity. Anyway, tomorrow we're going to more service sites... should be a great day! Hope all is well with family and friends... miss you all!

Melissa