A Day In The Life...

To be honest, I've been avoiding writing an update on my blog because although I've lived here in the Dominican Republic for about a month & a half, I'm having trouble wrapping my head and heart around my daily life here. It's a struggle to want so much to connect with and stay in touch with and love on my family and friends back in the US, yet how to convey my life here as it is so different. For example, yesterday at school (where I spend the majority of my days), I was a tour-guide, nurse, lunch-lady, and dispenser of underwear.

In the very beginning of the morning, David, a 7-year old in Kate's class, showed me a sore on his foot that was hurting him, so I took him in to the "office" and cleaned the wound with hydrogen peroxide and intended to simply put neosporen and a band-aid on it, until I saw what was under the dirt and puss. It was obviously infected, and he had a second sore on the opposite side of his foot that was also infected. We have a group of High School Spanish students here this week working and teaching at the school, and one of the sponsors is a coach and works at a pharmacy so I called him in as he has the most medical experience of us all and he agreed that it was infected and said it needed to be lanced. If we were in the States, this would be something that is done at a doctor's office, but since we don't really have that luxury here, he had to use a foot-long knife that we usually use for chicken because we didn't have a scalpel. We covered David's face with a towel so he wouldn't see the knife and be scared. One of the wounds was cleaned, but the other was actually calloused over and was too hard to try to puncture so it had to be filed down and cleaned as best possible. David was such a great patient through all of this without anything to numb the pain! We saw him again today at his house to clean and change the bandages, and it seems to be getting better. He couldn't really explain how he had gotten the wounds, but they were most likely just scrapes or blisters that were on his foot, and since he lives where he does, he is always wearing sandals if any shoes at all, and living and playing in a toxic river and parasitic soil.

After nursing, I fed snacks to 48 morning children (hot chocolate, banana, bread, water & a vitamin), then lunch to 23 pre-schoolers (rice and beans, water/milk, & vitamin), and snack to 53 more afternoon children (hard-boiled egg, banana, bread, water & vitamin). Then during both the before and after school programs, Christina's classes received new (donated) underwear. And of course, throughout the day, played with and loved on some kiddos.

Then I go home to our nice house in our nice neighborhood and eat a nice dinner before I take a nice shower and sleep in my nice bed. My heart broke for the poverty when I was here last August, and now I have to reconcile this with living a daily life here...and I'm not quite sure how to as of yet. So this is why I have trouble answering the seemingly-simple question of "How's it going?" It's good. It's where I need to be and what I need to be doing now. I love the kids that we work with and wish I could do more. I love the staff and the community that we're becoming, and one of the things the Lord is teaching me about is prayer.