dominican experiences

Here are a few pictures of me teaching the third grade class. They have class in the partially built house and their room is very cramped so I try to bring them out into this open area as often as possible for class.

In this picture we are playing a review game (boys vs. girls).



In this picture, I am teaching them a new song.








A few weekends ago, Katie and I went on a beach trip. Osiris (the assistant pastor at our church) is starting a sister church very soon, and as a fundraiser, he planned a beach trip. About half of the people that went were from our church and we knew them, the other half are members of his new church. Shelley and Guille did not go, so it was basically me and Katie and 30 Dominicans crammed into two gua-guas (vans). But of course, they were an hour late leaving the church, and then one of the vans broke down and we sat on the side of the road for about an hour and then finally tracked down a new guagua, which needed gas of course, so we ended up getting a very late start, but that is to be expected here. Katie and I were expecting a typical tourist beach, so we didn't pack a lunch. When we got there, we were shocked to find out that this was not a tourist beach. I cannot imagine a more 'dominican' beach. We were the only Americans there. There were no gift shops or restaurants. Just lots of dominicans with loud music playing out of speakers that were as big as their cars and dominoes games being played everywhere, shacks containing people cooking fish and rice and chicken lined the 'street'. Our search for a bathroom included walking through a 'dance club' (basically a tin roof with loud music and presidente) and being told we needed to pay 10 pesos to get the key to a tin home-made outhouse painted pink. It was definitely a dominican experience. I wish that I could have taken pictures of everything that we saw and experienced, but it was not a place for tourists and we were trying to blend as much as possible so taking pictures would have been a bad idea. I did take this picture while hiding next to our van so that no one could see me. Of course all of the women had gotten up two hours early to make a complete dominican meal for lunch so Osiris' wife, Manuela, gave us some of her food and it was so good we asked her if she would teach us how to cook. So last week we went over to her house and spent almost 6 hours there walking miles searching for chicken and spending hours learning how to cook a real dominican meal. We took lots of notes and took pictures of every step to help us remember. It is a lot of work. We both definitely have a lot more respect for dominican women and the amount of work that they put into every meal.



























A few weeks ago, we decided that going to a salon and getting haircuts would be a good idea. When we went in to make the appointments, the lady told me that my hair was boring and that she would make it more exciting, so I was pretty nervous. Luckily for me, however, Katie went first. We were there for hours. Katie had long hair before we went in and asked for a trim. However, she ended up with a bob. She cut a lot off. So by the time she got to me, she was so worried about cutting too much off, even though I kept telling her that she could, she barely cut anything of. However she did style it in a very fluffly, bouncy way. This is a picture of me at the salon.