For a year, the girls were my roommates. I moved in with the girls and their mom (Eddy's sister, Guille) last August and lived with them until I got married this past August. In that time we became very close. We were a part of each others every-day lives. Now that I have moved out, things have changed, and it has been a big change for them. I am not there for them to say goodnight when they go to bed every night. They don't see me in the morning getting ready to go to work. They don't get to hang out and "help" me make supper in the evenings.
It is a priority of mine and Eddy's to make sure that we don't get too busy and forget to spend some time with the girls each week. We do eat lunch at their house a few days a week, so that has helped a lot. Other than that we invite them over to spend time at our house or we take them on outings.
When they come over to our house, they love to help. They fight over who gets to sweep and who gets to do the dishes. They are legitimately disappointed if I don't let them mop. These girls are not used to having very many toys or games to play with. The way that they play is to help mom with the cooking or the cleaning or the laundry or help Tio Eddy when he is fixing something. They like to draw and to write and to color. They also love to make jewelry. People in the neighborhood know this and they have somehow collected beads and thread to make bracelets and necklaces.
Something that you may not realize about life here in the DR, is that for many of the women and children, it is very uncommon for them to leave their neighborhoods. This is true of the girls as well. They go to school each day and once a month they have a doctor's appointment that they go to at the clinic. Going an hour away to Jarabacoa for our wedding was probably the farthest they have ever traveled from their home. It was also the first time that they had ever been in a pool (It was a first for one of Eddy's sisters as well). So, as you can imagine, any kind of outing is a big deal. A couple weeks ago we took them with us to go grocery shopping and they were so excited. They were all dressed up with their hair done and they loved pushing the cart and helping me pick out food. They laughed about the crazy things that I was buying.
We have taken them to the plaza (it's like a mall) a few times, just to walk around and see everything and maybe get a cup of icecream or something. They love riding the escalator and looking at the "pool" (fountain). There is a movie theater there, and we have been wanting to take them to see their first movie for months. We were waiting for the right movie to come out. When I heard that Lion King 3D was coming to the DR, and it was actually in Spanish, I decided that that was the movie. On Wednesday we finally made is work and off to the movies we went. They wore their best dresses (the ones I got them for the wedding) and on the way, in the taxi, Adriani told me that this was just like Hannah Montana. At first I didn't understand, but when she continued explaining it turns out that she felt like her life was like Hannah Montana's because in that show once, they went to see a movie. We bought the tickets, they gave their tickets to the ticket-taker, got their 3D glasses and found our seats. We were pretty early and being a Wednesday, no one was there so we were able to take some pictures. We bought them pop and popcorn and they were so cute sitting there with their glasses eating popcorn and watching the movie. On the way home, Adriani made sure she new what the name of the movie was and she asked what the place we went to was called. Eddy explained that it's called a movie theater. I think she was getting her facts straight for when she told everybody she knew about the experience. Here are some pictures:
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| This is in front of the fountain (there was no water in it this time) |
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