Friday, October 14, 2011

The Girls

If you read this blog regularly or are my facebook friend, you may have heard me mention "the girls".  When I mention "the girls", I am referring to Eddy's nieces, Adriani and Adriana.  When I met them they were 6 and 4.  Now they are 8 and 6.  Since their names are so similar and saying the two names back to back sounds like a tongue twister, we just call them "the girls". 

For a year, the girls were my roommates.  I moved in with the girls and their mom (Eddy's sister, Guille) last August and lived with them until I got married this past August.  In that time we became very close.  We were a part of each others every-day lives.  Now that I have moved out, things have changed, and it has been a big change for them.  I am not there for them to say goodnight when they go to bed every night.  They don't see me in the morning getting ready to go to work.  They don't get to hang out and "help" me make supper in the evenings. 

It is a priority of mine and Eddy's to make sure that we don't get too busy and forget to spend some time with the girls each week.  We do eat lunch at their house a few days a week, so that has helped a lot.  Other than that we invite them over to spend time at our house or we take them on outings.

When they come over to our house, they love to help.  They fight over who gets to sweep and who gets to do the dishes.  They are legitimately disappointed if I don't let them mop.  These girls are not used to having very many toys or games to play with.  The way that they play is to help mom with the cooking or the cleaning or the laundry or help Tio Eddy when he is fixing something.  They like to draw and to write and to color.  They also love to make jewelry.  People in the neighborhood know this and they have somehow collected beads and thread to make bracelets and necklaces. 

Something that you may not realize about life here in the DR, is that for many of the women and children, it is very uncommon for them to leave their neighborhoods.  This is true of the girls as well.  They go to school each day and once a month they have a doctor's appointment that they go to at the clinic. Going an hour away to Jarabacoa for our wedding was probably the farthest they have ever traveled from their home.  It was also the first time that they had ever been in a pool (It was a first for one of Eddy's sisters as well).  So, as you can imagine, any kind of outing is a big deal.  A couple weeks ago we took them with us to go grocery shopping and they were so excited.  They were all dressed up with their hair done and they loved pushing the cart and helping me pick out food.  They laughed about the crazy things that I was buying.

We have taken them to the plaza (it's like a mall) a few times, just to walk around and see everything and maybe get a cup of icecream or something.  They love riding the escalator and looking at the "pool" (fountain).  There is a movie theater there, and we have been wanting to take them to see their first movie for months.  We were waiting for the right movie to come out.  When I heard that Lion King 3D was coming to the DR, and it was actually in Spanish, I decided that that was the movie.  On Wednesday we finally made is work and off to the movies we went.  They wore their best dresses (the ones I got them for the wedding) and on the way, in the taxi, Adriani told me that this was just like Hannah Montana.  At first I didn't understand, but when she continued explaining it turns out that she felt like her life was like Hannah Montana's because in that show once, they went to see a movie.  We bought the tickets, they gave their tickets to the ticket-taker, got their 3D glasses and found our seats.  We were pretty early and being a Wednesday, no one was there so we were able to take some pictures.  We bought them pop and popcorn and they were so cute sitting there with their glasses eating popcorn and watching the movie.  On the way home, Adriani made sure she new what the name of the movie was and she asked what the place we went to was called.  Eddy explained that it's called a movie theater.  I think she was getting her facts straight for when she told everybody she knew about the experience.  Here are some pictures:




This is in front of the fountain (there was no water in it this time)



Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Preschool

Before moving to the Dominican Republic, I was a teacher. I graduated with a degree in Early Childhood Education for regular and special ed.  With this degree, I can work in a variety of different careers with children from birth to 8 years old.  My first year, I taught a 4 year old at-risk classroom.  Then I spent three years teaching an Early Childhood Special Ed classroom.  When I decided to move down to the DR, I was actually in the middle of preparing for a new career as a Developmental Therapist, working with children birth to three years in their homes.  I have always been passionate about my jobs and I enjoyed going to workshops and taking classes to learn more.  It was my dream to go back to school and get my master's at the Erikson Institute in Chicago and maybe one day work as a Child Life Specialist in a hospital.  If there is one thing that I know about, it is how to teach young children.  I would not call myself an expert yet, but it is definitely my thing.

When I moved here to the DR, I started as the English teacher.  For the first school year I taught English to Kindergarten through 3rd grade.  However, almost immediately I felt led to get more involved in the preschool.  This past school year I taught kindergarten through fifth grade English and I started taking on some administrative responsibilities at the preschool.  It was nice for me because I was directly involved with every student at our school last year, but balancing the two was difficult and I was not able to accomplish everything I hoped to at the preschool.  This year I am focused 100% on the preschool.  I guess my title would be preschool principal or preschool coordinator.  Basically I am in charge of the preschool as a whole.  This new role is both inside and outside of my comfort zone at the same time.

It is inside my comfort zone because I am back to doing my thing.  I am very comfortable in my own knowledge of how to teach preschoolers.  God has given me a gift for understanding very young children, understanding why they do what they do, how they learn, how to deal with behavior problems, and how to build relationships with them.  I feel very useful in my new position and I am so thankful to be using my gifts to be helping the school.

It is outside of my comfort zone because I have never been the boss before.  I was used to being responsible for my own students and maybe an assistant.  Now, I am responsible for 80 students, 4 teachers, and 4 assistants.  Two of my teachers are first-year teachers.  When there is a problem, I am the one who responsible for taking care of it.  Of course, I have help from Shelley and Guille and Eddy. But it is my responsibility.

I have also never been responsible for teaching other teachers.  The teachers of the preschool are wonderful women and they are so hard-working and want to do their best for their students.  I am so thankful for the teachers our pre-school has been blessed with.  However, I am introducing many new concepts and many new ideas about how to teach and how children learn.  They are open to learning new things, but what I am teaching them is very far outside their comfort zones, plus we have the added difficulty of the language barrier.  My Spanish is improving daily, but since I had no formal Spanish classes, it can still be a barrier at times.  God is helping us all with this and I am so excited about the progress that has been made and the relationships that I am building with the students and the staff. 

Last week we had our first teacher work day.  It was my first time leading that type of meeting.  It went really well and I was very encouraged.  Next week our first grading period ends, so we have evaluations, report cards, and parent-teacher conferences coming up.  Please keep us all in your prayers as we continue to do our best for the children that God brings to our school.