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'