Turkey and Goat

Thank you so much to all of you who donated the school supplies, clothes, and shoes that arrived here with my family.  I have unpacked it all, and it amazes me how much they brought!  All of it will go to good use.  I have already started using some of the crayons with my 3rd and 4th graders and when Sister Jean Gabriel and Sister Pricilla get here next weekend, we will go through it all and they will be able to distribute it to those in most need.  Gracias!

Dad, Gail, and Jeremy's visit was short, but wonderful.  They got to relax in the hotel and spend time with me and our Dominican friends.  We made it to church at Centro Buen Pastor on Sunday, on Monday night my friends and I took Jeremy out to the malecon, on Tuesday we had a Thanksgiving dinner with many old friends who visited Boxford 10 years ago and are still close friends today, and on Wednesday I made our second Thanksgiving Dinner and we ate with my co-workers and friends which we followed up by going out dancing.  It was a wonderful time!  Both meals were a perfect hybrid of American tradition (turkeys, cranberry sauce, and a lot of thankfulness for our friendship and time together) and Dominican tradition (plantains, rice, goat, Brugal, and music and dancing).  I am very Thankful that I got to share my family with my friends, and I got to share my friends with my family.  There was a lot of laughter and a lot of fun, even with the language barrier.

The Goat we had with Thanksgiving Dinner!
It was so delicious.
It was the only thing we didn't have leftovers of.

Me and the Turkey as I'm getting the table ready

Jeremy and I with our friend Madelin on the malecon

In my classes this week, I taught about the history and tradition of Thanksgiving.  They colored Thanksgiving pictures, learned about Pilgrims (who they were excited lived in my state), and shouted loudly, "HAPPY THANKSGIVING" and "GOBBLE GOBBLE."  I taught my adults and high school kids about the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, Football, and Black Friday as well.  It was a fun week!

Next week, I move into my new apartment.  It is small, but exactly what I need to live for the rest of my time here.   I'm going to buying some furniture and appliances this weekend and then little by little, I'll get what I need.  I won't need that much for the first two weeks before I go home for Christmas.  When I come back in January, I'll be able to make it a home.

As always, if you have any questions, let me know!

Feliz dia de accion de gracias! (Happy Thanksgiving)

Tina

Puppet Shows and Vacation Plans

My camera broke last weekend, so there are no pictures along with this post.  One of my friends is taking it to Santo Domingo to a shop that should be able to repair it, but I'm also having my dad bring my old camera as a back-up one this weekend when he comes in case the other one can't be fixed.

On Sunday, my Dad, Gail, and Jeremy arrive to celebrate Thanksgiving with me.  On Sunday, hopefully we will meet at the airport and then go to church at Centro Buen Pastor.  I'll spend some time at the hotel with them, enjoying the all inclusive food, pool, beach, and air conditioning!  (Though it might feel cold to me now that I'm used to the heat here.)  We also have plans to have dinner with some friends, to go out dancing one night, and to have a big Thanksgiving dinner with some of my friends.  It should be a great week.

My classes are going very well.  Things are pretty much routine now.  The high school kids have moved into buying and selling sports goods and toys (baseballs, roller blades, skateboards, Playstations etc) and they are working on "Wanted" and "For Sale" ads that they are making up into a "WantAds" page in a newspaper.  We've also continued working on selling and buying the items as they play the rolls of customer and client.  The adults are working on career names such at teacher, doctor, lawyer, construction worker etc.  These words add a lot to their vocabulary because occupations like "bus driver" teach no only the job name, but also "bus" and the verb "drive" so there is a lot to get out of this lesson.  They are learning fast, and their speaking skills are very impressive in such a short amount of time.  My 4th graders wrapped up "family" today and we are going to move on to "animals" next week. They are a little jealous of how much the 3rd graders get to sing, so I promised them we would sing more next week.  Animals have a lot more song options than the house and family vocabulary, so it will be easy to do.

3rd grade practiced answering, "How are you?" with emotions this week.  They loved that if they answered "bad" I would turn to the others with a worried face and say, "Be careful of her!  She said she's bad!  Watch out!"  If they answered "sad" I also made a big deal of trying to cheer them up.  They loved it, and my overreactions to their answers helped them understand what they were saying.  It was fun for me too!  Maybe I have a bit of Jeremy's acting in me after all.  Today, though, they were the actors.  When I arrived for class time, they had a puppet theatre set up.  Instead of class with me, they put on a puppet presentation skit about how God accepts all of us.  Basically, there was a town of people who were afraid of the wolf that lived in the woods, but one of the towns people knew that if he told the wolf to come and join the towns people and invited him to celebrate God with them, that the wolf would not harm them, because he is one of God's creatures too.  It was very cute.  After a practice show for me, the teacher then invited the other grades, the teachers, and the Director to come and watch.  It was wonderful to see how attentive and polite the other kids were as they watched and the 3rd graders were very proud of their work.  They were said when I left that we didn't have English class, but I told them that what they did was much more important and that I'd be back next week.  I was sad to not have my camera for the show, but hopefully they will put on more puppet shows this year and I'll be ready.

Tonight I'm going to my 2nd San Pedro Estrellas Occidentales game.  They are the local baseball team, and they are awesome to watch!  Like the old Red Sox (pre-2004) they come so close every year, but they haven't won the championship in over 60 years.  Right now, they're in first place in the Dominican Baseball league.  At the end of the season, there are playoffs and then one team wins the league.  That team then goes on to play the other countries' best teams in the Caribbean Series.  Its so fun to cheer on the Estrellas, and my friends said I'm becoming an Estrellita!  I'll be wearing my green hat with the star emblem proudly tonight, and cheering them on!  The baseball games are a lot of fun, and the cheers are very musical with whole rhythm sections set up in the stands (various drums, noise makers, tambourines, and maracas) and there are a few large horns.  The fans take their teams very seriously, and being a Boston fan, I understand this!  There were actually a lot of Red Sox hats and T-shirts mixed into the crowd last time I went, and I have to say that made me smile.

My next post will be after my family's visit, so Happy Thanksgiving to everyone at home!

Dios les bendiga,

Tina

New Class Growth!

I'm very excited about my new adult class.  I now have 3 students!  My 4th is joining on Monday.  They are more motivated than my high school kids who are more interested in asking me about Justin Beiber.  So far I have a pre-school teacher, a stay at home mom, and a musician/music teacher.  The new student is also a teacher.  I think as word spreads, I will get more.  Right now, they know all the numbers (up to 1,000) and they know the alphabet, how to fill out information cards and identify themselves, and how to introduce themselves.  We're next going to talk about jobs and careers.  They are all much more interested in pronunciation than writing or reading, so we talk a lot, and that's great.  The stay at home mom is fabulous at speaking, but has to look everything up when I ask her to write stuff down.  Really though, it doesn't matter, because the speaking part is much more important for what she needs.  She wants to be able to talk to the volunteers that come here from the US, and she'll be able to do that without a problem!

The high school class has been "playing" clothing shop all week.  They take turns being the tourist and being the sales clerk.  They are practicing phrases like, "Can I help you?" "What size would you like?" "Would you like to try this on?" and "Thank you.  Please come again soon."  This is all very practical and could help them get a job anywhere near the tourist sections of the island, but their favorite part was that I cut out pictures of clothes from American magazines and we practiced things like, "That is so cute!"  "That's adorable,"  "I love this top," "What a great color!" and other "cool" phrases.  They even learned "mini-skirt," "low-rise jeans," "tube-top," "skinny jeans," and other fashion words that they thought were totally "heavy" (which is the word they use for "cool" right now - yes, it comes from the US).

My 4th grade are happily drawing houses with bathrooms, bedrooms, kitchens, dining rooms etc. and full of family members.  This week they learned to say, "Where is the mom?  The mom is in the living room."  Though I actually had one kid protest that I messed up the placement because I had drawn the mother in the living room and the father in the kitchen.  Didn't I know it was supposed to be the other way around?  Someone said to me recently that culture here is like the 50s in the US, and at moments like that, I think there is some truth to that statement.

House vocabulary for 4th grade

My 3rd grade have calmed down some.  I think that they're getting used to the routine of having me come twice a week, but I also think the teacher and director of the school have been working hard to curb the behavior of the rowdy class, and its working well.  They are learning emotions like "I am happy" and "I am sad."  They asked me to add "confused" too, which I thought was funny.

3rd Grade with new seating plan

The 3rd Grade Box of Crayons before I added new ones for them

My friends are working very hard to get this American girl to dance.  I can dance a little, but not in the way I'm supposed to here.  I don't shake my hips enough and they tease that Americans only know how to jump around on the dance floor (which I guess is what I do?)  I don't want to cave and take the evening dance lessons that are offered downtown that a friend of mine from Texas has been taking, but I might have to.  Those who have tried to teach me a few moves say I learn fast though, and even though I can't tell the difference between a Meringue, a Salsa, and a Bachata, they say I'll get there.  Though, they did promise we can go to a Reggaeton club soon, which is more like American music and dancing.  You dance with a group of friends free-style instead of having to wait to be asked by a guy to dance and dancing a specific style like we do at the other clubs.

Next weekend, my family comes to visit, and they will be bringing a lot of supplies.  Thank you to those who have already donated.  If you are interested in donating or want to know more,  let me know.  Also, I have included a link to my Dominican Video Slide Show that I made for church last week.  It should work even for those of you that do not have facebook, but if you have problems viewing it, let me know.

http://www.facebook.com/video/?id=173701160

Dios les bendiga,

Tina

Hurricanes and Cholera

Right now I would normally be singing songs and practicing new vocabulary with my 4th grade class, but its raining.  Here, we have rain days, like snow days at home, when school is cancelled due to large down pours.  The roads are flooded and hard to pass; the motorcycles who are brave enough to go out have to drive very slowly through the mud and puddles and they try to keep dry with raincoats, garbage bags, umbrellas, and/or some combination of covering materials like cardboard boxes and newspapers; the people walking have usually given up entirely and are as wet as if they have been swimming; and the people at home are emptying the catch basins that they put under the many leaks in their roofs and raising their belongings off the floor so that if the overflow of rain comes in off the street, they can save what little they have.  This is what happens on a normal rainy day.  Today though, isn't a normal storm, its Hurricane Thomas.  My community is lucky to be far outside of the danger zone of this hurricane, and we'll only get up to 4 inches of rain (which is still a HUGE amount for a city that sees street flooding when there is anything beyond a sprinkle).  The other side of the country, closer to Haiti, will see up to 8 inches of rain.  There will probably be mudslides, overflowing rivers, and countless other problems that will occur from this storm.  They are in the "warning" zone.  Haiti is in the danger zone.  As if there aren't enough problems in that country already, they will be pummeled with up to 12 inches of water, high winds, and huge waves for about 78 hours.

This morning, as I couldn't sleep because of the wind whipping through the palms outside my window and the rain pelting on the metal roof, I was very thankful that I was inside, dry, and warm.  The water won't come in the convent house and the wind won't do any damage beyond knocking off a few extra mangos on the tree out back, and we have electricity and water (and if the electricity goes, there are back-up batteries, and a back-up, back-up generator).  I'm very lucky.

They are nervous that the massive amount of water that is flooding onto the island is going to increase the cholera problem.  I know that this problem has made the US news because Haiti is such a hot topic country right now.  There is cholera here too, but luckily not to the degree that they are seeing in Haiti.  My 4th grade English class last week was interrupted for about 10 minutes when some of the doctors from the Centro Buen Pastor health clinic came in to talk to the kids about cholera and how to prevent it. They were talking to the kids, about washing their hands when they use the bathroom and simple sanitary lessons, but they were really trying to reach the kids parents.  The kids were told to make sure their parents used clean water to cook and wash dishes, they were told how much chlorine should be added depending on the size of the water tank they had at their houses, and they were told how to explain to their parents that vegetables and fruits should be washed before eaten.  I have always believed that giving children access to education is a key element is curbing the problems of the third world, and it was exciting to see this in action as these 4th graders were being taught how to avoid cholera and how to keep their families healthy.  I've never seen them so excited and motivated as they rushed to the bathroom to wash their hands before eating snack.

Cholera Educational Posters at the school

On Sunday, I have been asked to speak about Risk Taking Mission at Second Church, and obviously I can't commute in to do so, so I have made a video that will be shown during worship with photos about my mission and the risks I am taking here.  I won't post it before it is shown at church, but I'll try to post it online afterwards for anyone who wants to see it.  This hurricane and the cholera out break remind me even more about the risks I'm taking.  I also wish that so many people wouldn't ask me if I'm nervous about living alone in the convent right now.  I don't think I'd be so nervous if they didn't keep insisting that I should be nervous so often!  But, I am living well and I am living well prepared.  I don't have to worry about unclean water because I have access to bottled for all my needs, the house is well built to prevent damage from hurricanes and to prevent invaders, and I the two dogs are wonderful watchdogs who make me feel very safe.

Keep Haiti, Dominican Republic, and the rest of the Caribbean in your prayers this week as Hurricane Thomas continues to pass through.

Dios les bendiga,


Tina