Dominican Republic with the Y Day 2

See how I need City Mouse to create the titles? No originality! My friend Vicki titled this day "Frogger" You know, the old Atari game?
Today we went to two more DR Ys. The 2nd was in a very poor neighborhood. The Y came there in the 70s after a hurricane to help rebuild houses and saw that there was not one school in the neighborhood so they started a school. They have a ton of space to build on and an old broken down basketball court- outdoors and no money to expand. The people here cannot pay for the school, it's only $100 a year and they get physical checkups and two meals a day plus an education. We went across the street to visit the village- dirt floors, leaky roofs, cook over fires, bare feet in a nasty field, a skinny pig tied up in the yard, naked children but. . . families grouped together, older kids helping to care for the young, respect for adults, playing baseball with the simplest tools in the only space they have.
It's hard to be in these countries and to keep from feeling like it's a zoo. I don't want to walk around and stare at them and take photos and do nothing to help them.
On the way back, one of our cars broke down and they had to push it off of the road (thus the frogger). We had pizza that night and ice cream bars and french fries. Everything here is very relaxed and it makes me a little disgusted with the American culture- no offense. In the US we value every minute instead of every person. We rush around accomplishing tasks- and we all know I am one of the worst offenders. But here, you spend 4 hours at dinner discussing things that matter. You take the time to enjoy every minute. We've talked about how ours is an individualistic culture and here it's collectivist. In the US we look out for #1 and here it's your family and your community that you value.
We went to another beach for beer and coconuts. I drank coconut milk and ate some coconut and coming from a coconut hater- real coconut is nothing like the artifical stuff.
When we came back to the hotel room there was a pair of pink underwear that didn't belong to me on the table beside my bed! We had a number of speculations about how that underwear got there but I have decided to believe that they cleaned under the bed and found it and hopefully it was clean. But I assure you I sanitized the area after I removed it. I suppose I should have titled this blog- pink panties and more people would read it :)