Dominican Republic Video!!!

Here's a fantastic video made by my son, Dustin!

It completely captures our experience in the Dominican Republic.
I especially love the second half. Love!

 

Friday Archive Dive!

"Cinnamon Squirrel"

12x12"

acrylic on canvas

Lomo Saturday - Late!

Oopsie! Sorry it's late!

More Lomo Saturday here:

Initiator Anki - Nikki - Casper - Iris - Mireille - Marrit - Aujke - Judith

Wednesday in the DR

Wednesday I helped in Dental!!!

Our office space. 

This poor man had at least 4 teeth pulled. That was a common thing here in the dental section. This man had a particularly hard time. His last tooth was fused to the bone and they could not get it out! After at least 2 hours of struggling, the Dominican dentist pulled out a hammer and chisel. The tooth came out. 

Our potty that day.

Inside: Yes. We had to pee in a bucket.  O_o

Jeanne, one of my best friends ever. Beautiful dental hygientest, women of God. 

Later in the day it rained SO hard, we had a little flood around our area. 

I caught a special moment here. . . 

Back at the MGM compound, kids eagerly awaited us. They wanted to clean our shoes for $1! We were all muddy that day, so I actually decided to do it. These are the little guys that cleaned mine. They did a good job! 

Tuesday in the DR.

Tuesday was such a fantastic day.

We went to a remote Haitian refugee village, where most of the people spoke Creole.

The kids were fantastic. Plentiful and ready to hang out!

Pat got handed a "pantless" small child.
We laughed because she didn't know if it was a boy or girl until the mom took the baby back.
It was a boy btw. LOL!

The boys were infatuated with my tattoos. They probably don't see many tattoos in the DR, especially on super light skin. Lol, my skin has never seen the light of day! ^_^

I worked in optical.  Our "office" we outside under a porch and makeshift shade tarp.

We were amazed how many older folk had perfect vision!
Sadly, if they had bad vision they were usually beyond help with cataracts. 

They had to point and tell us which direction the "E" was going. 

I love how they always use bright colors to paint the houses. 

One of my favorite pictures from the trip. 

The kids singing at evening worship. Beautiful hearts. 

Lomo Saturday!!!

It's been a few weeks since I posted anything new for Lomo Saturday. I honestly ran out of pictures! The weather here hasn't been so great, so I just haven't been able to take more...until NOW!

I took a whole role of Action Sampler in the Dominican Republic.

I gotta say, this ended up being my favorite roll to date!

There's a silly story behind the developing of this role. I got the film from a "mystery pack" on lomography.com  - It was an expired FujiFilm Velvia 100 role. I didn't realize it said "professional" and required special developing. So anyway, I took to it Walgreens to develop, and didn't think anything of it. The lady working didn't notice anything special about the film either. When I came back to pick up my order, the lady seemed discouraged and a little mad. She spread the pictures out to show me how they all came out red...thinking I would be mad. (HAHAHAH!!!!) She proceeded to tell me that it may of ruined their machine, and/or she was going to have to drain the chemicals. I don't know if this ended up being true or not. She really didn't know, but I think was scared she was going to get in trouble if the machine was ruined. Since she thought she ruined my film as well, she ran them through again and developed them in black and white. I personally LOVED the "red" versions. When I got home, I tried to research it and see if their machine was really ruined. I couldn't really find an answer, but I did find something saying that when that film was developed regularly, it would cause the cross process effect. AWESOME!

So in the end, I'm glad I got them developed the way I did...but sorry I may of gotten the lady in trouble.

I'm only going to post a few a week...which is going to kill me! I love them all so much!

Friday Archive Dive!

 

Original sketch - September 6, 2007

Painting - December 2007

"Don't you think it's strange that I've been reading?"
That's actually Dustin on the left...hanging out with the monster.
It shows our Iron Maiden coffee mug and coffee cake that Dustin always used to make.

This painting is an illustration on how God has really worked in my life...blessing me with a son that knows Him, and is not afraid to look sin in the face. True story.

Here's the song that inspired the painting as well.
This is just a random video I found with the song on youtube...not the official video. ^_^

So anyway. I ended up getting a tattoo of this illustration in January!

It's so special to me. Corey did a fantastic job as usual. Perfect. 

LOVE!

The moon...

How I could I forget this!?

The moon on our first workday was surreal!! It has this fantastic ring around it.

Not to mention, the sky was so clear, and the moon so crisp.

I took some pictures, but since I didn't have a tripod they just don't do justice.

I guess this phenomenon is called "moon rings" which you can read about here. 

It's cause by refraction of moonlight in ice crystals in the upper atmosphere. 

I've never seen anything like that here in Pennsylvania.

I'm so glad we got to see it!

Monday. Our first work day!

 

Most of the time we traveled by cattle truck...since the bus couldn't make it through some of the bumpy dirt roads.

Miles and miles of fences made with trees. 

We did our first mural of the week!

 

It was a bit of a challenge, because we forgot a few things...like paint trays. It all worked out though.

 

Before

After! 

 Some of the guys worked on building a new outhouse.

Inside the church, the Dr.s were hard at work taking care of different needs.

Outside, the dental clinic. 

 

Every evening we went to a different church. Today we wore our wrap skirts, donated by a friend of mine! After the week was over we gave them to the kitchen staff at MGM.

 

The church services were always so lively and wonderful. 

We literally had a conga line going! Unfortunately I lost my lens cap while prancing around.

It was a fantastic day. 

Sorry for the lack of words. I seem to of used them all up in my brain today. . . Thank goodness I have so many pictures that speak for themselves!

Sunday April 1st...getting oriented.

I didn't take my camera to the church service...so I drew it! 

A view of the "yard" behind our building.

Dustin sample some pineapple pop.

MMM!! Chocolate raisin ice cream! 

Claire catching up on a little devo time. 

Haitian girls always at the gate, selling bracelets. 

Dustin gets a few braids from the Haitian girls. *me gusta face*

Just hanging out with the kids. It's fun to try and explain that I am Dustin's "madre".

The rest of the day we just got to hang out and get oriented. 

We were all exhausted because of the travel and had to adjust to the heat. 

It was a nice day to take it all in and get used to our surroundings.