what DO we do on the weekends?

I often am asked what I do on the weekends here. Well, this weekend was a three day weekend thanks to Saint Mercedes (whoever that is!). On Friday we slept in and then went grocery shopping. We were going to watch a movie, but our friend Joe called wondering if he could shower at our house since he had no water at his house. We said yes, so he came over, showered, ate dinner with us, and then we ended up hanging out and talking until 11 or so - no movie. Today we slept in again (seeing a theme here?), had our traditional Saturday Morning Pancakes - this week they were banana - and I did some work on child sponsorship. We skyped with some people, called some people, went for a long walk, played a game with some friends, and worked on our homework from our Beth Moore Bible study on Daniel. Tonight we will go to the Makarios team house to watch Glee on the big projector! On Sundays we go to church; I arrive an hour early to practice with the worship band; church is at 11. After church we sometimes go out for lunch; tomorrow we will pack veggies and hummus and tortillas and head to the beach after church (yesterday and today were cloudy/rainy). Part of tomorrow will probably be devoted to lesson plans and prep for the upcoming week of teaching. Sunday nights I skype with Erica, my best friend from Wheaton, to finish my weekend off well!

So there you have it - my weekend in a nutshell!

Back to School!

The most important part of a 1st grader's school day is, of course, breakfast! On the first day of school, we started them off with nutritious hot oatmeal drink called Avena. They proceeded to make milk mustaches with it and make me smile!

One Year with Lauren

On August 3rd, Lauren and I went out to lunch to celebrate one year of knowing each other! Our missionary training program started on August 3rd, 2009; we met that night and have been roommates, close friends, and traveling buddies on this road called missionary life ever since. We celebrated a year of paradoxes, tears of joy and tears of sadness, hope and anger, loving life here but longing for the comforts and family of the States, experiencing the pain of broken relationships and the healing of grace and reconciliation. We have created a physical home here, intentionally living in community and sharing everything we have, making our apartment an emotionally and spiritually safe place. We have pushed each other to grow, held each other up through times of crisis, learned to navigate Dominican culture together, worshipped together, thrown the rubber "yuck" duck against the wall together, and done a LOT of laughing together! I am so thankful for Lauren, for the wisdom and joy she brings to my life. I so clearly see God's providence and work in putting us together and binding us together - it's amazing and mind-boggling how He knew we would need each other and provided for us. He is faithful. He is good. He has done great things for us, and we are glad.

A story that illustrates the hilarity of our lives here: after our celebratory lunch, we went to La Sirena (the grocery store) for frozen yogurt. We have a club card for Sirena, and we had earned two plays of their giveaway computer game. I think for buying the right brand of lunch meat? So we scanned our club card to "play" the game, and we won! We won $1000 pesos, which is about $30 US, to spend at Sirena! The man in charge turned on a loud flashing buzzer and stuck a microphone in Lauren's face and said, "How do you feel?" It was crazy and surreal, but we were very excited! Perfect end to our roommate celebration!

Construction Update

As usual, it's been awhile! I wanted to share this link to Brian's blog, a Kids Alive missionary who spent the summer with us leading work teams. He gives a great overview of all the construction and other work the teams did this summer!

If you would like to receive my email updates (or think that you do receive them but didn't get one this week), you can email me at emily.jamison@my.wheaton.edu and I will add you to my list!

Check my facebook page for lots of pictures of our new playground!

Slip-n-slide!

We set up a slip-n-slide for the kids with a team one day - it was hilarious to watch and the kids LOVED it! They still ask me when we're going to do it again!

Erica!

I was blessed incredibly by visitors this spring. To top it off, Erica, my best friend from Wheaton, came to visit for 2 weeks! Since she's a teacher, she has the summer off. We had a blast going to school, hanging out with the summer interns, relaxing on the beach, talking about music and life. We even did some sight singing (yep, we're music nerds)! It was so much fun to have her here and to show her my life - we talked a lot this year, so she had heard all about the people, places, and things in my life and now got to experience them firsthand!

The pictures, clockwise from top left: relaxing. eating frozen yogurt at La Sirena. erica documenting the tarantula hunt that Lauren and I went on one night. beautiful beach. "water games" day with the kids! world cup excitement...? and erica spending the day with lauren and meeting some of the kids she works with.

Katy's Visit

After a wonderful birthday celebration with my North Coast family (and Molly, who surprised me by coming up a day early!), Katy came to visit! She got to stay for two weeks, which was incredible. We had a lot of fun, a lot of beach time, and a lot of sister craziness time! The three of us hadn’t been together since January, so the sister time was definitely needed!

Katy and I went out to Playa Grande, walked around Montellano, and spent a few days at school. We forded the river and sat in the team house drinking coffee with Junior and Francina when the guagua broke down one morning. She helped me write almost 100 of the kids’ progress reports, and she came to the Mother’s Day extravaganza (See Facebook for pictures). The three of us got to go to New Life, my church, together, have lunch at La Sirena with Sariel and Holly (and eat some delicious frozen yogurt, of course), and relax around the apartment. We also spent a CRAZY afternoon re-writing “Welcome to the 60’s” from Hairspray, choreographing, and recording a video of us singing and dancing as a Mother’s Day gift!

We went to Jarabacoa for the weekend, but it rained a lot and then the elections sent us home a day early (we didn’t want to be traveling on the day they announced the results). So (thanks to Mom and Dad’s generosity) we went to the resort a day early and got to spend 3 lovely days there together. Wave pool, water slides, delicious food, weird shows (have you ever heard someone sing The Stars and Stripes Forever on the words “Here we go”???!), dressing up, ocean, beach, the usual… right!

It was sad to see Katy go. Spending time all together was so refreshing and wonderful. At one point in our lives, if you had put the three of us in a room together for even two days, we would have killed each other! So it’s sort of amazing that we spent two weeks together and loved every minute of it! (At least I did… haha!) I have been so fortunate to get to share my life here with my entire family – a rare blessing for someone on the mission field.



We tried to take jumping pictures... Molly's a frog! Keep scrolling to see the best jump.