So life has been really crazy over the last couple of weeks and I have had absolutely no time to blog. I am way behind so I will have to write about my haircut and beach trip another time. For now, I want to write about the awesome Illiana work team that is here this week. I am exhausted. It has been a week of construction, long days, and getting to know some great kids.
They arrived last Saturday night and will be leaving us early Monday morning. On Sunday, they began their week by sitting in on our Sunday School classes and attending our worship services. In the afternoon, we had an Easter activity. We had almost 100 kids show up. Most of them are students from our school, but others were from the neighborhood or friends and neighbors of our students. We were not expecting that many kids, but it was very exciting. The group performed a skit and helped with the craft and the games. We wanted to give them an opportunity to interact with some of the kids that they were helping by being here.
We did construction work on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. We got a lot accomplished. They worked on bending and cutting re-bar and forming baskets and attaching those baskets to the existing columns. They also poured seven columns and finished two of the walls. We are definitely much closer to finishing the first floor. They worked very hard (starting at 6:30 a few of the days) and were very good sports even when setbacks happened.
On Wednesday we went to the beach. The beaches here in the Dominican Republic are so beautiful. Katie and I enjoyed shopping with the girls and helping them barter, making sure that they weren't ripped off. We all had dinner together (at the place offering 1/2 off, of course) and then spent a long 3 hour ride home in the vans.
Today was our last work day, and even though Katie and I could barely get out of bed, we arrived to find the group 'pumped' and ready to get to work. They achieved the goals that they had set for themselves and can definitely feel a sense of accomplishment. Today, Katie and I stayed after work and had dinner with them and also stayed for the evening activity for the first time because we heard that it was going to be line dancing. We had a great time line dancing and playing games with them. They are an awesome group of kids and I have really enjoyed getting to know them and hanging out with them.
It is midnight now, and we just got home. We barely remember the time when we used to do more than just sleep at our apartment, but it has definitely been worth it. Tomorrow is the group's last day here. I am excited to spend Easter with them. We have Sunday School and church, then lunch at the monument, and then a goodbye activity planned for the evening. I will post pictures tomorrow or Monday, but for now, I am going to bed.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
life in the dominican republic
Life in the Dominican Republic is very different than life in the states in many ways. One of the big things that distinguishes the two is that, in the DR, it seems as though nothing comes easily. Some days it feels like everything is a fight. If there is a task you need to accomplish, inevitably twelve things will go wrong before it is accomplished. For the most part, I think that I have grown accustomed to this and take it in stride, but some days, frustration takes over and I start to wish for life in the states. Last week I struggled a little with homesickness and with accepting and adjusting to my new life here in the DR. The new normal.
I want to share a couple examples to help you understand what I mean. Last Monday, I walked a mile (literally) in the 90 degree heat (literally) to get to the copy place so that I could print out and copy my assessment that I needed for the next day. When I got there, I found out that they had an old version of microsoft office and that I couldn't open my documents on any of their computers. I didn't have time to walk all the way back home to get to my computer to save it differently and walk back to the copy place before they closed. So, instead, I walked home and had to hand-write the assessments. And then the next day, I took a cab to the copy place on my way home from work, with my zip drive containing the newly-saved documents, printed them out, had them copied, and transferred all of the assessments I did that day onto the copied assessments. Overall, at least a few hours of extra work and endless frustration. Not the type of situation I ever had to deal with teaching in the states.
Another example: Our oven. Last week, Katie spent about an hour preparing her famous meatloaf, put it in the oven and nothing happened. The pilot light was out. I had been taught how to light the pilot light at Guille and Shelley's, but this oven is different. So after trying to figure it out ourselves for a while, we skyped with her dad as he talked us through it. Meanwhile, gas had been leaking into the apartment. So we waited for it to air out and even with him talking us through it, the pilot light wouldn't light, but we were able to light the burner (?) I don't fully understand what we did. (Oh yeah, and there is no thermometer on the oven so there is a random meat thermometer that sits on one of the racks in the oven.) Now it was already at least 95 degrees in our apartment and her dad tells us that we really have to watch the burner because if it goes out, gas will leak into the apartment. My plan was to get as far away from that oven as possible, not to babysit it, opening the door every few minutes to check on it for and hour and a half. The following scene is what happened next:
Buzzer sounds.
I come out of my bedroom to see Katie running around in circles looking confused.
katie - did you hear that buzzer?
me - yes
katie - do you think it's the carbon monoxide alarm?
me- um... i don't think those exist here
buzzer sounds again
me- i think it the intercom
katie picks up phone - hola? no one was there
door bell rings
katie picks up phone again, no one is there again
door bell rings again and we go to the window to see who is downstairs
we see the lady outside that lives across the courtyard
who is upstairs? - she asks us (in spanish)
yo y carrie(me and carrie) - katie says even more confused
now the lady looks confused as well
katie's cell phone rings and it's a man from india trying to sell her insurance
katie- um, i'm in the dominican republic, you shouldn't be calling me
katie hangs up
door bell rings again
it sounds like a doorbell, maybe we should open the door (hmmm, i don't know why it took so long for that to occur to us)
We open the door to see the two little twins with glasses that live across the court yard holding two bowls of dominican food for us from their mom
:)
Me and Katie like to think that between the two of us we almost make up one whole Dominican, because she speaks the language and I know the country and the culture. But the truth is that most of the time we are very confused and lost. Luckily there are a lot of people that God has put in our lives who have taken it upon themselves to laugh with us and help us (and make us food).
And that is one of the aspects of life in the dominican republic that I love. I am surrounded by dominican people who have so much life and so much love and who truly care about me. People who want to help me and look out for me and make sure that I am ok. And I am so thankful for them.
In my next post, I will be writing about my first dominican hair cut and my first authentic dominican trip to the beach, and throughout those stories, both of these aspects of life here will come up again and again: everything going wrong and wonderful people looking out for me.
I want to share a couple examples to help you understand what I mean. Last Monday, I walked a mile (literally) in the 90 degree heat (literally) to get to the copy place so that I could print out and copy my assessment that I needed for the next day. When I got there, I found out that they had an old version of microsoft office and that I couldn't open my documents on any of their computers. I didn't have time to walk all the way back home to get to my computer to save it differently and walk back to the copy place before they closed. So, instead, I walked home and had to hand-write the assessments. And then the next day, I took a cab to the copy place on my way home from work, with my zip drive containing the newly-saved documents, printed them out, had them copied, and transferred all of the assessments I did that day onto the copied assessments. Overall, at least a few hours of extra work and endless frustration. Not the type of situation I ever had to deal with teaching in the states.
Another example: Our oven. Last week, Katie spent about an hour preparing her famous meatloaf, put it in the oven and nothing happened. The pilot light was out. I had been taught how to light the pilot light at Guille and Shelley's, but this oven is different. So after trying to figure it out ourselves for a while, we skyped with her dad as he talked us through it. Meanwhile, gas had been leaking into the apartment. So we waited for it to air out and even with him talking us through it, the pilot light wouldn't light, but we were able to light the burner (?) I don't fully understand what we did. (Oh yeah, and there is no thermometer on the oven so there is a random meat thermometer that sits on one of the racks in the oven.) Now it was already at least 95 degrees in our apartment and her dad tells us that we really have to watch the burner because if it goes out, gas will leak into the apartment. My plan was to get as far away from that oven as possible, not to babysit it, opening the door every few minutes to check on it for and hour and a half. The following scene is what happened next:
Buzzer sounds.
I come out of my bedroom to see Katie running around in circles looking confused.
katie - did you hear that buzzer?
me - yes
katie - do you think it's the carbon monoxide alarm?
me- um... i don't think those exist here
buzzer sounds again
me- i think it the intercom
katie picks up phone - hola? no one was there
door bell rings
katie picks up phone again, no one is there again
door bell rings again and we go to the window to see who is downstairs
we see the lady outside that lives across the courtyard
who is upstairs? - she asks us (in spanish)
yo y carrie(me and carrie) - katie says even more confused
now the lady looks confused as well
katie's cell phone rings and it's a man from india trying to sell her insurance
katie- um, i'm in the dominican republic, you shouldn't be calling me
katie hangs up
door bell rings again
it sounds like a doorbell, maybe we should open the door (hmmm, i don't know why it took so long for that to occur to us)
We open the door to see the two little twins with glasses that live across the court yard holding two bowls of dominican food for us from their mom
:)
Me and Katie like to think that between the two of us we almost make up one whole Dominican, because she speaks the language and I know the country and the culture. But the truth is that most of the time we are very confused and lost. Luckily there are a lot of people that God has put in our lives who have taken it upon themselves to laugh with us and help us (and make us food).
And that is one of the aspects of life in the dominican republic that I love. I am surrounded by dominican people who have so much life and so much love and who truly care about me. People who want to help me and look out for me and make sure that I am ok. And I am so thankful for them.
In my next post, I will be writing about my first dominican hair cut and my first authentic dominican trip to the beach, and throughout those stories, both of these aspects of life here will come up again and again: everything going wrong and wonderful people looking out for me.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Nuevo Apartmento
The last week has been pretty eventful. Katie arrived Friday night. She had spent a month in Equador, was back in the states for two days and then flew here. She is going to be helping me with my English classes as well as working with individual students who are falling behind. She will be here for about a month.
That same day I got sick....again. This time it is a sinus infection. There was a cold front that came through. I was hoping it was just a cold, but each day it got worse and worse. Yesterday, when Guille saw me, he asked me if I felt as bad as I looked :) So I got the Spanish name of an antibiotic from the school nurse at Santiago Christian School and stopped at the Farmacia and picked it up on my way to my new apartment. It's still very weird to me that you can just go to the pharmacy and buy things without a prescription. They sell them by the pill. Crazy. But it has now been 24 hours since I started taking them and I am starting to feel better.
The last couple days are pretty foggy. I was feeling really bad, taking a lot of over-the-counter medicine, and I was pretty out of it. I probably shouldn't have worked but I didn't feel like I could stay home because Monday was Katie's first day and yesterday we brought our stuff to school and moved into our new apartment after school, so I couldn't have stayed home. The hardest part about it was that in this culture you can't keep your distance from people, even if it is just because you don't want to get them sick. Everyone greets you with a hug and kiss on the cheek and to avoid that would be rude.
Since we moved into the apartment 24 hours ago, it has felt a little bit like an adventure. All of a sudden we are on our own, forced to figure things out for ourselves. There was no food in the house last night, so we successfully ordered Dominoes, we were very proud of ourselves. Today we only worked for a few hours. We went grocery shopping on our way home. For lunch we made salads with cucumbers and avocados. It's been so long since I had a salad. We were very excited about it. After napping for a few hours, we decided to explore the area. We walked around for over two hours, never actually finding the plaza that we were looking for. We weren't always sure where we were going, but I do know the area well enough that I knew I would be able to find our way back. We did find a different grocery store, a few places to eat, an art gallery, a bakery, a florist, and Yogen Fruz. Yogen Fruz is frozen yogurt blended with your choice of frozen fruit. It was so good.
I am very thankful that Katie is here with me my first month living alone. She speaks a lot more Spanish than I do, and since she lived in Equador for a month, she doesn't seem intimidated at all by the new country, language, and culture. There's no way that I would have been brave enough to order pizza or wander around Santiago by myself. All the things that we did would not have felt adventurous in the states, but here, in a different country, with a language I don't speak, with people staring or laughing or hissing at you wherever you go, it takes courage.
I can see now how God worked out my transition to my new home. I was given two months to spend as part of a family, where I had all of the help I needed as I got adjusted to the Dominican Republic. It was time when I was really able to get to know Shelley and Guille and the kids. It feels very strange not being around them all the time. And now that it is time for me to move out on my own and become independent, I have been given a roommate for the first month of independence, who knows the language and is not afraid of stepping outside of her comfort zone, to help me as I figure out how to navigate life here. I don't know how I would have adjusted without being given these gifts.
"I am trying to understand, how to walk this weary land. Make straight the paths that crooked lie, Oh Lord, before these feet of mine... When my world is shaking, Heaven stands. When my heart is breaking, I never leave your hands. Your hands. Your hands that shape the world are holding me, they hold me still." JJ Heller 'Your Hands'
That same day I got sick....again. This time it is a sinus infection. There was a cold front that came through. I was hoping it was just a cold, but each day it got worse and worse. Yesterday, when Guille saw me, he asked me if I felt as bad as I looked :) So I got the Spanish name of an antibiotic from the school nurse at Santiago Christian School and stopped at the Farmacia and picked it up on my way to my new apartment. It's still very weird to me that you can just go to the pharmacy and buy things without a prescription. They sell them by the pill. Crazy. But it has now been 24 hours since I started taking them and I am starting to feel better.
The last couple days are pretty foggy. I was feeling really bad, taking a lot of over-the-counter medicine, and I was pretty out of it. I probably shouldn't have worked but I didn't feel like I could stay home because Monday was Katie's first day and yesterday we brought our stuff to school and moved into our new apartment after school, so I couldn't have stayed home. The hardest part about it was that in this culture you can't keep your distance from people, even if it is just because you don't want to get them sick. Everyone greets you with a hug and kiss on the cheek and to avoid that would be rude.
Since we moved into the apartment 24 hours ago, it has felt a little bit like an adventure. All of a sudden we are on our own, forced to figure things out for ourselves. There was no food in the house last night, so we successfully ordered Dominoes, we were very proud of ourselves. Today we only worked for a few hours. We went grocery shopping on our way home. For lunch we made salads with cucumbers and avocados. It's been so long since I had a salad. We were very excited about it. After napping for a few hours, we decided to explore the area. We walked around for over two hours, never actually finding the plaza that we were looking for. We weren't always sure where we were going, but I do know the area well enough that I knew I would be able to find our way back. We did find a different grocery store, a few places to eat, an art gallery, a bakery, a florist, and Yogen Fruz. Yogen Fruz is frozen yogurt blended with your choice of frozen fruit. It was so good.
I am very thankful that Katie is here with me my first month living alone. She speaks a lot more Spanish than I do, and since she lived in Equador for a month, she doesn't seem intimidated at all by the new country, language, and culture. There's no way that I would have been brave enough to order pizza or wander around Santiago by myself. All the things that we did would not have felt adventurous in the states, but here, in a different country, with a language I don't speak, with people staring or laughing or hissing at you wherever you go, it takes courage.
I can see now how God worked out my transition to my new home. I was given two months to spend as part of a family, where I had all of the help I needed as I got adjusted to the Dominican Republic. It was time when I was really able to get to know Shelley and Guille and the kids. It feels very strange not being around them all the time. And now that it is time for me to move out on my own and become independent, I have been given a roommate for the first month of independence, who knows the language and is not afraid of stepping outside of her comfort zone, to help me as I figure out how to navigate life here. I don't know how I would have adjusted without being given these gifts.
"I am trying to understand, how to walk this weary land. Make straight the paths that crooked lie, Oh Lord, before these feet of mine... When my world is shaking, Heaven stands. When my heart is breaking, I never leave your hands. Your hands. Your hands that shape the world are holding me, they hold me still." JJ Heller 'Your Hands'
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Bendiciones
It is Thursday evening and I am still at the church/school and I have a couple hours before church starts, so I thought I would take advantage of the fact that I was able to connect with the internet. Today was a good day. A group of high school students from the states came today for a special chapel. They sang and had a puppet show, the kids loved it. This high school comes down here every year for a week for their senior trip and spend time at different churches and schools. I will post a couple pictures of them along with my pictures of kindergarten and first grade.
Over the next week a lot of things are going to be changing. Tomorrow night a girl named Katie is flying in to help at the school. She is going to be here for a month. I don't really know anything about her, but I will be getting to know her because we are going to be roommates. On Tuesday, I will be moving out of the Hernandez' house and into an apartment. Another missionary is going to be in the states for four months and I am going to be staying in her apartment. Katie is going to be staying with me while she is here. Next Friday, two more people will be flying in to help with the construction for a week, and at the end of the month, a group from Illiana is going to be coming down for a week as well.
The last couple months, since I got here, have been pretty low key. Which was good. It gave me a chance to get adjusted to life here. Staying with Guille and Shelley and the kids has been great. It was good to feel like a part of the family. But now it feels like I am moving into a new stage of life down here. It's a little sad, but I am also excited about it. I will be forced to be more independent. Which, in this country, can be a little scary. Especially since I don't know the language. Also, from this point on, things are going to be much busier. We have so many people coming and going and a lot of work to do preparing for the rest of the school year.
The kids are playing soccer inside and Shelley's phone just rang, so I better go deal with some things. I will try to post those pictures tomorrow. Bendiciones, Carrie
Over the next week a lot of things are going to be changing. Tomorrow night a girl named Katie is flying in to help at the school. She is going to be here for a month. I don't really know anything about her, but I will be getting to know her because we are going to be roommates. On Tuesday, I will be moving out of the Hernandez' house and into an apartment. Another missionary is going to be in the states for four months and I am going to be staying in her apartment. Katie is going to be staying with me while she is here. Next Friday, two more people will be flying in to help with the construction for a week, and at the end of the month, a group from Illiana is going to be coming down for a week as well.
The last couple months, since I got here, have been pretty low key. Which was good. It gave me a chance to get adjusted to life here. Staying with Guille and Shelley and the kids has been great. It was good to feel like a part of the family. But now it feels like I am moving into a new stage of life down here. It's a little sad, but I am also excited about it. I will be forced to be more independent. Which, in this country, can be a little scary. Especially since I don't know the language. Also, from this point on, things are going to be much busier. We have so many people coming and going and a lot of work to do preparing for the rest of the school year.
The kids are playing soccer inside and Shelley's phone just rang, so I better go deal with some things. I will try to post those pictures tomorrow. Bendiciones, Carrie
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Second and Third Grade
This week I decided to take my camera with me for a few days and take some pictures of the people that I am surrounded by every day. On Mondays and Wednesdays I teach second and third grade. Both of these grades have class at the partially-built house down the road, while they wait for the new classrooms to be built. Tomorrow I will try to take pictures of my first grade and kindergarten classes as well as some of the teachers and members of the church.
The first two pictures are of the second grade; one of them smiling nice and one of them being silly
.The next three pictures are of the third grade. The first one was taken right outside of the house. The next
two were taken inside their classroom. It is so small that I couldn't back up far enough to get them all in one picture. As you can see it is very cramped in their classroom, so I try to take them out to an open part of the house for class as much as I can.Today I stayed in the house after class to help one of the teachers and I spent time with some of the students during their break. The next two pictures were taken during that time by the other students.
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