Angelina move over. (DR2009)

We walked to the school of the child that I am currently sponsoring today. It’s called the Christian Center of Education for Development- CCED. It open in September 1995 with 170 students in four grades. More classes were added each year and more students as well.  The school now serves grades pre-school thru grade 12.  Twenty-seven students were in the first graduating class in 2001.  All of them now either have a job or are going on to higher education. We got a tour of the school and peek in on classes of many different grades. Some of our preschool teachers even joined in on a class and learned a song in Spanish and taught a song in English. Of course I started to do a little magic again and when another class took some time to come out and say hello to us. It’s so fun to see children’s eyes when a magic trick is performed. Such beautiful smiles.

Although i didn’t get to meet my student, I’ll get to meet him tomorrow night along with his family, I did have a very pleasant surprise. As I was doing a magic trick i felt a tap on my back and turned to see Crismaili. She goes to school at CCED! I talked to Manny one of our interpreter that used to be a teacher at the school to find out how she ended up going to school so far away. He said that many people in the area try to go to CCED because it has such a better reputation and higher standards than other schools. The amazing thing is that for Crismaili it is approximately a 7 mile walk to school and back. I took some time to hang out share a few smiles and take another picture with her before i asked her if she had a sponsor to help her with her education yet. She said no. I’ve never been so happy to hear such unfortunate news. I knew that I had to sponsor her. Not only did i have such a fun time connecting with her last year, but saw her again this year and then she found me while at her school. So today I’ve been working on trying to become her sponsor and hopefully get to word to her so that she and her family can join us tomorrow night for fiesta and have time with her as well as Noe Israel. 

I was excited to share the news with others and quickly got the humorous response, “Are you going to be like Angelina Jolie and adopt tons of kids?” Who knows. 🙂 All i know is that right now, I’m excited about my new family members in the Dominican Republic.