Christmas Program Pics

4th Graders in PJ's

"Santa" under the mistletoe

4th Graders Singing

Christmas in the D.R.

So, it's been a while since we've blogged. Not only have we been busy with finals, Christmas activities, etc., but our personal lives have been pretty hectic too. The Chases left a few weeks ago to return to the States, after Steve's dad died of cancer. 3 other staff member are leaving JCS as well. (We still need a French and Social Studies teacher!) One of our cats was sick, the other we just got fixed. (you wanted to know that, didn't you?) We had our new invertor hooked up, and Daniel hooked up the Tanaco. Leah moved to the Chases house, so we are currently without a next-door neighbor, until January. :(
Anyway, that was a very brief update. But, I thought people would be interested in what Christmas is like in the D.R.
Christmas here consists of:
-Lots of music (Christmas carols at 4:45 in the morning)
-Lots of fireworks (at any time of the night)
-Ginger tea (although we have not had any this year)
-Gummy candies
-Warm weather and palm trees
-Alegria en Las Montanas (a popular Christmas Carol)

We also had a fun Christmas program, in which my students sang "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Clause." I was mommy, and Daniel was Santa, of course. :)
In less than one day we'll be in the States!!! Hopefully we'll update more later.

Belated Thanksgiving (and lots more)

Written November 26 – posted December 2

Starting a week ago Sunday, after church we went for a hike/picnic by a river with some JCS’ers and people from church. We had fun swimming around and shooting a “movie” on somebody’s normal digital camera. Tuesday, the jr/sr high students went on a field trip to the Mirabal Sister’s museum. If you’ve heard of the book/movie “In the Time of the Butterflies,” it’s about them. The museum is in their family home and is full of historical items and pictures. We even got to meet the one surviving sister (Dede) who was the main source for the book/movie. That night for our Tuesday night dinner we made a 3-course crepe meal and it was sooooo good. Dylan (Leah’s 6-year-old) even helped make some of the crepes.

Wednesday, Teresa’s class took their field trip to a bottled water place and saw the filtration/bottling/testing process (I’m sad I missed out), toured a plant/nature reserve, and went hiking/swimming at the same place we were at on Sunday. They had a blast and from all I heard the trip went great.

Thursday we celebrated Thanksgiving starting at Leah’s house for cinnamon rolls and watching the Macy’s Parade. Then we used the Chases’ house for Thanksgiving dinner (even though they were in the States) from about 12:30 to 3:30 with JCS staff. After that, we went to the school and met up with some other folks and played some American football and ultimate frisbee. It felt so good to run around and do sports. Even though Teresa and I run now, we don’t do nearly as much game/team sports as we’d like and it felt so good! After that we gorged ourselves some more on dessert.

Friday morning we headed off to the beach with Leah, Dylan, and Regan. We went to Cabarete and all stayed in a condo-type room. The beach was gorgeous and we had a lot of fun in the sun and ocean. We ate dinner at a restaurant on the beach and it was beautiful. In the morning we ate at a bakery and had a couple hours at the beach before we had to get ready to leave. On the drive back, we had a major delay from some people setting up a roadblock and burning a tire in the road. Nobody would tell us what was going on as traffic was stopped and people were walking back. We kept hearing “Esta muy malo.” As we saw the tire and boulders by the road, the police came running by our car (with weapons at the ready) and then we were able to get through. We didn’t see anything more on the road or in the news later. We were going to ride an air-tram over Puerta Plata, but it was closed to replace the cables, so we just continued on to Santiago for shopping and dinner.

Today we had planned on going to a baseball game in Santiago with some Dominicans we know, but we were just too tired this morning. It has truly been a day of rest including 2 naps for me and multiple hours of us just bumming around. It was much needed and we’re both much more energetically ready for school tomorrow than if we’d gone.