rainy days

It's been rather rainy lately. As in all day, every day. (Stay tuned for a post about my rainy Thanksgiving camping adventure!) Rain means flooded roads, flooded rivers, and flooded houses. It means leaky ceilings (in my classroom, not my house) and early dismissals - we have to leave school before the river rises again and becomes impassable. Rain means wading through the river when it's too high to get the trucks across, and rain means screams from the men riding in the back of the truck with an umbrella when the downpour starts! It means low attendance, winter coats and hats, muddy footprints in my classroom, and worrying about getting colds. Rain means sweatpants and hoodies, wearing socks to bed, drinking tea and coffee at all hours of the day/night, soup, baking (favorite!), and wet laundry. It also, sadly, means not going to the beach for a few weeks (horrible, I know...).

But in the midst of the rain, I have found joyful moments. First, watching my coworkers cross the river yesterday. I, the smart gringa, wore Chacos and waded right through. Two of my coworkers, however, had worn socks, leather shoes, and nice pants. They did NOT want to get wet. Check it out:

Also, we finally saw the sun this morning! I rode in the back of the truck to soak up as many rays as I could.

 

Aguiluchooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!

On Saturday I went with some friends to Santiago to watch an Aguilas baseball game - Dominican pro ball, which is sort of like AAA ball in the US - to celebrate a friend's birthday. We had so much fun and yelled "Aguiluchoooooooooooooo" which is their cheer, a LOT! There were all the normal parts of a baseball game (except the 7th inning stretch, which they apparently don’t do here?), but then there were a lot of things that were different from an American baseball game. All the concessions cost around a dollar! You could buy an entire bag of microwave popcorn for a dollar – a real treat for us, who don’t have microwaves! They also sold fried chicken and plantains, pork chops, beef jerky, ice cream, nachos, pizza… all in the stands! Another strange concessions thing: every couple rows, there were trash cans full of bottles of sodas, juice, beer, and rum! Despite that, there weren’t too many drunk people, possibly because the Aguilas won! Here are some pictures from the evening: the stadium, Cakito and Sarah watching a replay, fans, the beer/rum trash cans!, and the congratulatory line of Aguilas after the game.

renaissance.

renaissance: a renewal of life, vigor, interest, etc.; rebirth; revival

Thanks to God hitting me over the head with truth from friends, my devotional book, and my pastor over the past two weeks, I have come to some serious realizations.  The last few months, I have been living life passively.  I was not taking hold of the abundant life God continued to offer me.  I was using my circumstances as an excuse and playing the victim.  Yes, losing my roommate and many friends was hard, but where was my joy?  Was my joy really that wrapped up in those relationships?  What about being completely satisfied in the Lord?  What about "the joy of the Lord is your strength"?  I realized I was sitting around waiting for someone or something else to fill the space and time that the people who moved back to the States had left empty.  I wasn't taking initiative to build new relationships or to do things that were healthy and fulfilling for me.  I was putting unrealistic expectations on the people who are physically present with me.

Wow.  Those were some hard thoughts to come to terms with.

As always, however, God is faithful, and he didn't just convict me.  My mind spun for four entire days - raced at about 10 million words a minute - and then, last Friday morning, spun itself out.  My thoughts stopped, and my mind and heart were overwhelmed with God's presence, joy, and peace.  I felt a surge of energy - not just physical, but emotional energy, too.  God suddenly gave me the desire to initiate new relationships and try new activities.  I claimed my wholeness in Christ and my fulfillment in him.  And, as cliche as it sounds, I have lived differently over the past week.  I've done some things that we don't usually do here (like going to an international food festival), but more than that, I've gone through my normal, day-to-day activities with a new perspective.

The best way I can describe it is to say that I feel like I got my life back in me.  A renewal of life.  A renaissance.  And for that, I am grateful.

I want to share some quotes from my devotional book, Jesus Calling, by Sarah Young.  The daily devotions are written as if God were speaking to us - I often feel like they were written speaking directly and specifically to me!

When your energy fails you, do not look inward and lament the lack you find there.  Look to Me and My sufficiency; rejoice in My radiant riches that are abundantly available to help you.

Your future is in My hands; I release it to you day by day, moment by moment... I want you to live this day abundantly, seeing all there is to see, doing all there is to do... Each day of life is a glorious gift, but so few people know how to live within the confines of today.  Much of their energy for abundant living spills over the time line into tomorrow's worries or past regrets.  Their remaining energy is sufficient only for limping through the day, not for living it to the full.

breakthrough

The kindergartners had a breakthrough this week!  Yesterday after school, Antonia told me that the kids were sitting in class, chanting their Beginning Sounds chart (oso, oso, o o o; avion, avion, a a a... all the way to Washington, Washington, w w w), when suddenly one of them blurted out, "Wendy, Wendy, w w w."  And thus began phonemic awareness!  They have figured out that their names start with sounds - that the chart actually means something in real life!  And they figured it out on their own!  It's now their favorite thing to do during class.  They chant the names and beginning sounds of all their classmates.  They might be the only kids in our whole school who understand that the name Maria's first sound is mmm, not ma.  I am so proud of them!  And so excited for what this will mean later on in the year - phonemic awareness is a critical skill in learning to read!  (Insert one of Lauren's BAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH screams here for added excitement!)  I'll have to take some video of them and post it so y'all can share in my phonics-nerd excitement.  And see/hear how ADORABLE the kids are when they're learning!  Praise God!

school is in session!

We made it through our first month of school!  The teachers are doing a great job, the kids are settling in, and learning is happening!  Praise God!  Because of the public school schedule, we won't be able to take a class of four-year-olds like we were hoping, but we have plenty of work focusing on kindergarten, first grade, and second grade!  Dalexi, Antonia, and Dudu have really stepped up to the task of everything that I have asked them to do - they've been willing to make lots of crazy changes to the way we do class, the way they teach, the way we discipline, everything.

An unexpected change to my job (already, I know...) is that I am once again teaching first grade.  This year I'm co-teaching with Dalexi.  We have 18 little guys; I teach phonics, reading, and handwriting through the Rod and Staff curriculum and workbooks for an hour each day.  Then I get them settled in their centers, supervise center time, and help them clean up.  Dalexi teaches the last 45 minutes of class, teaching math, helping the kids do their public school homework, and reading them a story.

I LOVE teaching.  I love being in the classroom with the kids.  I'll take teaching over office work any day, even on the days when the kids are out of control and I almost lose my voice by the end of class.  They have stolen my heart - all of them.  It's been fun to get to know their little personalities.  And we've managed to learn all 5 vowels so far!  I'm looking forward to starting reading groups during center time soon and being able to work more individually with them.

Please keep praying for us as we continue in the school year.  Pray for continued energy, wisdom, and creativity for us teachers.  Pray that God would open the minds of the kids to learn to read and their hearts to learn about him.  Pray that we will show God's love in every interaction we have with the kids.

Here is a link to the photo album of pictures from our first few days of school.

Here are my first graders.  So cute!  They bring me lots of joy with their precious smiles, hugs, and yelling "prooooofeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!" (that's really how they yell it!)  Remember to click on the picture to make it bigger.

Mom and Dad's visit!

For the second time since I moved to the DR, my parents came to visit me!  Unfortunately, their flight was cancelled due to the hurricane, but that wasn't about to stop them!  They rented a car, drove overnight to Pittsburgh, got new tickets, and got on a plane at 6:30 am, arriving in Puerto Plata only an hour after their cancelled flight would have arrived!  Now THAT's dedication.

We had a great visit together!  We stayed in a lovely condo in Cabarete (a treat for me!), went to my favorite beaches and restaurants, and went out to the village to see the school and shop at La Tienda.  We rode public transportation - they were great sports and even rode motorcycle taxis!  Dustin and I played a show the night they got in, and then led worship at church the next morning, so my parents got to hear me make lots of music while they were here!  It was fun to introduce them to my friends, show them the changes at the school, and of course sit on the beach or swim in the ocean and talk.  I am so grateful for my parents and for how they continue to love me, bless me, and guide me.  I'm grateful that they want to visit me here and that they want to understand my world - even trying to speak some Spanish!

Here are some pictures (the only ones, actually, that we took while they were here - oops!) from our snorkeling morning!  We had beautiful weather their entire trip!

extreme classroom makeover

The last two weeks have been prep weeks for the teachers at the Park Care Center.  We spent three days at a wonderful teacher workshop in Jarabacoa, then dove in to prep our rooms for the year.  I'm coordinating early education this year, which means I'm overseeing/responsible for 4 grades in 2 classrooms with 2 teachers and 2 teacher's aides.  We're totally recreating our early education program this year - new curriculum, new classroom setup, and new schedules that include circle time, read-alouds, and learning centers.  So we had a lot of work to do!  When we arrived at school last Thursday, our first day of prep, this is what the classrooms looked like:

The school carpenter was in the process of sawing apart, reinforcing, sanding, and varnishing two walls of bookshelves so that we could use them in the classrooms.  After finishing the bookshelves, he sawed the metal legs off some old desks, somehow got the desktops off, and built new desktops for them.  Those old desks are now tables for two in our preschool/kindergarten classroom!

This Thursday, the furniture was finally done, the whiteboards were hung, and the games and manipulatives were divided between the two classrooms.  We had a LOT of fun moving bookshelves and desks, decorating the rooms, and setting up the learning centers.  Preschool and kindergarten kids have art, books, phonics, construction, and "casita" (imagination/house) centers.  1st and 2nd graders have art, books, phonics/writing, construction, and math.  Now the rooms look like this - quite a difference!

The 1st and 2nd graders start school on Monday.  The classroom is ready, the teacher... will be fine.  He's feeling a little unsure right now, which is fine, so I'll spend lots of time in that classroom the first few days.  But I'm confident that once he gets into the routine of how the schedule works, how the lessons laid out in the curriculum book work, and how to use the discipline system we agreed on, he'll be more than fine!  The younger kids will start later in the week, as we still have lots of work to do to get the teachers familiar with the curriculum.  (For anyone interested, our 1st and 2nd graders are using Rod and Staff, and our little guys are using Estrellitas.)

Please keep praying for us as we start the school year!  I've talked with the teachers a lot about how we're learning how to do this together.  What works, we'll keep, and what doesn't work, we'll get rid of and try something else!  Pray for wisdom for me as I learn how to empower the teachers.  Praise God for the changes we're making, that my boss is on board with everything!  I'm so excited about what this year holds!