Santiago

Well I had my first Thanksgiving away from home and it was quite a unique experience, but it was a good experience nonetheless.

Yesterday, I had the chance to go to Santiago for a day of shopping and just to get out of Jarabacoa. It was a good but very expensive day, but then again I was able to get my Secret Angel shopping done and get some large quantities of staples.

My most exciting find came at PriceSmart aka Sam's Club/Costco I found 19 dry erase markers for about 70 cents a marker!!! I can now give my kids there own marker for Christmas Hooray!


Right now I'm writing this with Nola who is happily sleeping away on my lap...having a puppy in the house is such good therapy.

Mind Games

You know that feeling when you feel like your mind is playing games on you? I'm assuming most of you do and most of you understand that Satan loves to make us feel this way. I think Satan has been having a little bit too much fun in my brain as of late.

I am writing this after another tearful evening wrestling with God and what my purpose here is. From my neighbors smoking habits to my kids at school I often feel dejected & physically and emotionally unprepared to fight Satan's spiritual battles.

I am thankful that my time here has brought me closer to God and His truth, but I am saddened at what I can not do for my students...they must chose to follow God and obey. I can't just granted them obedience even though I wish I could.

My neighbors on the other hand get an assist for their nighttime recon into my brain thanks to their illegal smoking choices occasionally. Their smoke wafts in to my room where it gets stuck and makes me severely nauseated and keeps me up anticipating sleep and the day to come during which time I try and pray, but often find myself worrying about this or that; obviously not trusting God.

It is hard to think that I have been here for almost 4 months and what a time of growth and discovery it has been. I am constantly surrounded by God's beautiful creation, the glorious sun, and other people who have chose this endeavor too. We have that at least in common.

Being a self proclaimed OCD/busy bee it is hard for me to stop and be still. Something that God taught me about this past weekend when I got to house sit for one of my students with another teacher. My student lives about a 30 minute drive from school in a beautiful log cabin/dr. quinn medicine style cabin...a far cry from the cement house i live in here. It made me homesick for comfortable couches, TV, the library, and a bed without springs sticking out! But the most of all the time without phone or internet gave me time to think. It's uncomfortable for me to sit still because I'm constantly thinking of what I need to do (even now I'm writing a list of things to do tomorrow). But it was good...I had plenty of me time on Saturday when I woke up at 5am to cows moo-ing (techically lowing I think is the appropriate word), but regardless I had some quality thinking and praying time.

Prayer Requests:
I have 3 boys in my class who need serious love and attention. Please pray for guidance I try and show them this without encouraging their bad behavior.

Emotional Stamina - tears are frequent and unexplained most of the time

Physical Strength - praise I have not gotten severely sick, pray that my sleeping continues to improve (I wake up 4 times a night because of dreams or nasuea)

Relationships at the school. I need to do a better job of reaching out...I'm letting my language impediment stop me from conversations...I need to learn to laugh at myself.

Strange but true - one of the first graders' uncles was kidnapped and is being held for ransom (I believe $3,000,000 US). Anyways, Alexander misses his uncle alot. Pray for the family as this is difficult I'm sure (i've never personally known someone with family who had been kidnapped).

Praise:
my lack of sickness
our vonage phone - i've been able to talk ot dear friends in the states as well as my parents.

Saturday Night Live - DR style

Recently (as in 5 minutes ago), I was sitting on my roof listening to the sounds that make up Dominican Saturdays. At first it sounds an awful lot like chaos between the screaming kids playing in the street, to the pots and pans being clanked as they are cleaned after dinner, to the thumping bass of the colmado's radio behind our house, to the acoustic guitar player outside of our corner colmado. All this noise while the trees stir with the passing of the clouds over an extremely bright moon. It is moments like that in which I wish I could capture everything into a picture.

Nights are alive with the music of Dominican culture and it's nice to be a bystander to it all. To have the ability to absorb everything incognito from the safe distance of a rooftop. To be able to lie back and watch the stars and moon disappear from sight and reappear as the wind blows the clouds across a beautiful night sky.

I wish I could share the beauty of it all with more than just words, but that is all I have to offer.

Life Update...Complete with Pictures

Life Update…

I’ve been failing at blogging as of late…my apologies. I’m loving life most days and becoming increasingly frustrated on others. Let’s take a walk back down memory lane over the last 2 weeks.

2 Weeks Past: October 24^th-ish

October 24^th – Teacher work day aka compile grades and do report cards…fun times. Also an incuse to watch Facing the Giants as a staff; if you’ve never seen the movie you probably see it for the sheer entertainment factor…not necessarily the acting…just the entertainment.

That Sunday- Ariel Kelly at church…to most of you Ariel Kelly means nothing. He happens to be one of the many Christian Reggatone artists that have emerged in the past years. So church started normal with 30-40 minutes of decent praise and worship in a PACKED sanctuary (roughly the size of the Stuart Room plus the lower lobby (for my TU readers)). Then the awkwardness starts…some unknown person that is connect to Ariel Kelly gets up and does a mini-awkward opener. Then Ariel Kelly…rap/reggae for church…odd….but it’s one church experience I won’t forget.

28^th- Christy Elmer’s birthday…fantastic times of good restaurant food and S’mores on our roof…pre-stairs being completed.

30^th- stairs are complete

November 1^st – please see below photos…

Our new stairs and our beautiful house & the beautiful view.

AND a Dominican Sunrise photo...my favs of all my pics alway...

4^th – This begins the saga of the worst afternoon ever here at JCS in Rm 204.

1:10 – Yulissa our Spanish teacher and the MOST patient and loveable person ever is beside her self due to one of my student who hasn’t done his homework for 8 homeworks in a row. I myself am not please with this news but have to move on to teach…History begins. History goes well enough, I’m pleased…let’s move on to Language…here is where the tide turns…

2:15 After completing my review of synonyms and antonyms one of my students decides that he needs to put his lunch box away from under his desk. He decides to just yank on it not stopping to think that it could be stuck on the leg of his chair. After much huffing and puffing and drawing entirely too much attention to himself he completes his task. What you have to understand I have a very “laughable” class…they’ll laugh at anything…SUPER frustrating. Anyways, now that my two worst gigglers were going this boy got extremely upset; when I say extremely it is an understatement. In the process of my helping another student I see a pencil go flying through the air (007 knife throwing flying)…the pencil ends up in my nice newly painted drywall. Thankfully the pencil missed the intended target, but I know have a pencil stuck in my wall and a still very angry child, plus my heart is racing at what could have happened. So I take the time to walk the student all the way downstairs to the office. I come up stairs to inspect the damage to find that the pencil landed in the middle of another of my student’s names. The student decided that it would be a good idea to write his name on the wall…oops! He now is also in trouble losing his lunch play time to clean my walls. 10 minutes later we have all calmed down. I am still as jittery as before because I’m still thinking of what could have happened. I decide that that best way to calm myself down is to read aloud to the kids. My kids are huge fans of the Pigeon series (thanks Dr. Quinn for hooking us on them Jr. year) so we read Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus…voices and student read alouds too.

2:25

At the end as we are heading back to our seats to do our math (only 30 teaching minutes left in my day) a jacket is swung through the air by one of my free spirited students. Only problem is the zipper of the jacket hits of my kids on the head…the student it hit tends to be somewhat of a complainer so they started crying…I thought nothing of it until about a minute later when I asked him to come to his seat. When he got up I noticed the line of blood running down his face and the small puddle of blood on the floor. Hitting panic mode now I rush to the child and walk him down stairs along with the child who hit him in the head. The time now is 2:35…in the past 15 minutes I have had a pencil thrown at my wall and had a child have his head busted open by a zipper…being one who doesn’t react well to this much surprise I was doing my best to keep my panic under control. Thankful I made it through the rest of my day.

Thus concludes the majority of my adventures. I am babysitting tomorrow night…bonus. Sad news I have Saturday school detention supervision on Saturday (obviously) …good news I’m a morning person anyways. Sorry if the formatting is strange I stopped trying to make it look nice.