Glitter-tastic

This week began, officially, on Sunday with a much different vibe than the days to follow. Sunday, Matteson and I were invited to a house party. We spent the day at the beach, then headed to Reyita & Rick’s, who recently moved to Las Terrenas from Santa Cruz, California. Reyita grew up in Santo Domingo, DR and Rick has been diagnosed with a stress-related heart condition, so they came here for a year of relaxation.

Trick’s on them! On Sunday we toured their beautiful beach home, swam in their cool pool, and played with their animals. Plural. All seems calm and quiet until you watch two puppies tear up a couch and a bunny, you meet all 8 chickens in their laundry room, their three birds, a recently caught lobster and their 2 new horses. Seriously. Not a single bit of it seems complimentary to a year of peace. Best of luck to them. However, I will say they were incredibly kind to us and had wonderful things to say of Las Terrenas. They may prove to be good people to know. Not to mention their offer to hire me as a sitter for their two kids – score!

Anyway, our nice Sunday proved polar opposite of the disastrous adventures Monday beheld. Matteson and I agreed to start some daily activities to keep kids occupied (aka, out of trouble). The first project was a fish mobile for Jose to hang in the library. Monday, we cut about 30 cardboard fish ‘til our fingers blistered. Then gathered the kids around a few tables, aging 4 – 15. Each was handed a fish to color with markers.  Markers are a huge privilege, one of very few forbidden library accessories.

All was fine and dandy, a few troublesome moments over whom got the pink marker, but nothing we couldn’t handle with our minimal Spanish vocabulary.

Then, the glitter. That’s right, glitter. Everyone knows glitter is permanent – it hides in unimaginable places for unimaginable amounts of time. And kids LOVE it! They went nuts. We anticipated the attraction; we structured a table outside of the regular library area, next to a sink (perfect), for the glue and glitter. The kids knew the rules: line up, single file, and two at a time may come paint the glue where they’d like Profe Erin or Profe Mateo to place the glitter. Under no circumstances was ANYONE other than Erin or Mateo to touch the glitter. HA! Who knew kids could crawl so fast between our legs, through and over the fence, and around our blockades? They outsmarted us, and for that they deserved all the glitter, or “brilla”, they wanted.

The event lasted about 30 minutes until, finally, we had kicked the last kid out, covered head to toe in red, green, gold and blue glitter.

Brilla. The word tastes sour in my mouth.

Needless to say, we slept hard Monday night. Tuesday was no better – another project, another mess. The same for Wednesday and Thursday. Fortunately, the projects did result in some beautiful library decorations. The kids were so proud to see their work on the wall! They get a real kick out of tangible results.

Food this week was an entirely different story. Each night we prized ourselves with something new – difficult to do on a tight budget, but we’re getting to know the cheap places.  For $1.50 we can get two large Empanadas, perfectly fried with cheese and ham and chicken, and a ketchup-like topping. And a place down the street sells pizza, a large slice for about the same.  We also, timidly, stopped at a fruit-truck for bananas and mangos. Three large mangos for $3 – I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore, Toto! Thanks to my father’s foodie expertise, I peeled the Mango for breakfast and was overwhelmed with its perfection. And believe you me, that is not an overstatement. It was incredible, I can’t believe we did not try one sooner. So, guess what we’ve been feasting on for breakfast!

Then we had Tapas. They weren’t free like in Spain, but worth it anyway. We sat overlooking the water, munching on Patata Espanola and Croquetas with either chicken or tuna, depending on which of us you ask. All washed down with a large Presidente, the local beer. This end-of-day prize made the glitter fiasco entirely worth it.