It's been an exciting couple weeks since I last posted on here. Classes are going wonderfully, but sitting so long in one spot makes me so sleepy! We will be leaving for the Domnican Republic (DR) early, early Sunday morning - 3am. While we are there, the plan is to get to know some of the locals and work on building relationships with them. Also we will be helping to pour/build a foundation for an extension to a school. Wel will also be going into some of the classes and performing biblical skits, playing games, and generally interacting with the children.
This week we have been taking the Basic Safety Training (BST) course; which involves practicing being a firefighter, and also a water safety pratical. We did the firefighting today, and it was fantastic!! At one point we got timed on how fast we could get the equipment on. I got the breathing apparatus and mask on in 35 secs, and the fallout gear on in 50 secs - we had up to 3 min total to get the stuff on. One of the exercises was to pull 'Buck' (a 165lb dummy) out of harms way; I had teamed up with Alex, and fortunately he was able to pull Buck, becasue I had a hard time getting a good grip on him. We also got to use a fire hose and put out two different fires, whis was so exhilarating! I'm ready to go back and do it again.
Tomorrow we will do our water safety practical in an indoor swimming pool. I think it will be fun too, but I'm just a bit worried about the 'floating/treading water' part. Part of the exercise will be to don emersion suits, and flip over a life raft; that's gonna be great!
Last Saturday, most of our group took a trip to the local zoo. It is really nice, and has a great variety of animals. One of the girraffes liked my hand - they have extremely slimey tongues that feel nasty! But it was pretty cool anyway. Well, gotta go to the DR preparation meeting, so I'll try and add more later.
