Mira Mi Pinta

My Escojo Mi Vida youth group graduated from my Sex Ed / Life Skills course in late May. With the course finished and the summer months ahead, we arranged to do 3 community service projects. One in June, another in July and a third in August.

Project #1 – A Community Mural

Among the first sights one takes in upon entering Batey Cachena is a large wall on the side of a row house barrack that is peeling away multiple layers of decades old political campaign ads. The wall is ugly. So we painted it.

My youth came up with a design that offers a welcome to and description of the community. The wall includes baseball players, sugar cane cutters, a school and an open bible featuring a verse chosen by one of my Christian youth. Each of these are accompanied by the words: Land of Baseball Players, Land of Hard Workers, Land of Professionals and Holy Land (a bit much).

We are not nor do we pretend to be proper artists. For that reason the final product was a little lackluster and nothing resembling a work of artistic genius. But my kids did the work themselves and the townspeople seem to like it. Success.

Artists at work.

Welcome to Cachena. The finished product.

Oz

I'm back to the noise and unrelenting heat of the DR after 2 weeks Down Under. Australia was a great time but it was somewhat of a tease to be in such a large country for such a small period of time. Can't wait for a return trip to visit other great cities and the bush. That said, experiencing Sydney, diving in the Great Barrier Reef and cuddling koalas with the fam isn't a bad way to spend a vacation.

Sydney Opera House

Sydney Harbor Bridge. We climbed to the top!

Giraffes, Zebras and a skyline view at Sydney's Taronga Zoo

SCUBA Diving in the Great Barrier Reef

Hand Feeding Kangaroos

'Cuddling' Koalas

The Day that Wasn't

We left Los Angeles on June 2. We arrived in Sydney on June 4. And June 3? It would seem to have not existed for myself and the other 200+ people on our massive Airbus. For the first time in my life, an entire day has escaped me. Bill Bryson, Iowa’s greatest author, is able to put it more poignantly than I:

“Each time you fly from North America to Australia, and without anyone asking how you feel about it, a day is taken away from you when you cross the International Date Line. I left Los Angeles on January 3 and arrived in Sydney fourteen hours later on January 5. For me there was no January 4. None at all. Where it went exactly I couldn’t tell you. All I know is that for one twenty-four-hour period in the history of the earth, it appears I had no being.” – Bill Bryson, In a Sunburned Country