My Life in the DR

Hola mi familia y amigos!

I apologize for the long silence on here. I've been absolutely horrible at updating this thing and giving all of you a glimpse into what I'm doing here. I am sorry about that.

I guess the first thing you're all probably wondering about is school. Teaching is going very well. I am sometimes overwhelmed by all the work and everything that I have to do, but I'm loving teaching and I LOVE my students! God has given me 19 little blessings, and I am thankful for each and every one of them...even the ones who bring some challenges with them. And I do have some challenging students in my room. My first big challenge is that all 19 of my students are ELL students. For those of you "non-education" people reading this, that means English Language Learners. So that brings a whole new dimension into the classroom that is not there when students are not learning a new language. I have to teach differently here than I had to in Warsaw, Indiana. Some days I do a great job teaching in just the way my students need, and sometimes I don't and I have to teach things again so that they can understand. At first I was very overwhelmed at this task, but now I'm enjoying it. When I say a word that some of my students don't know, I let someone who does know it say it in Spanish to teach the others. I learn from that as well, and they think it's so neat that they are teaching me Spanish. :) I do also have some students who are very disruptive and who just will not listen. In the beginning it was really bad, but they're getting better. They have good days and bad days. One girl is especially hard and I am trying to come up with ways to get her to respect me and to behave in my classroom. I'm taking it one day at a time, because that's all I can do. But despite the challenges and frustrations that this year has brought so far, when I step back and think about what I'm doing, I LOVE it! I know I'm supposed to be here, and I can tell that God is here with me, helping me and giving me strength and wisdom each and every day. Here are some pictures of my blessings.

my class

my class showing their true selves :)


two best friends...they do EVERYTHING together! so cute!


working away


working together

working quietly...for a little bit anyways ;)

A few weeks ago the 2nd grade went on a field trip to the zoo in Santo Domingo, the capital. It was about a 2 hour drive with forty 2nd graders, but it went very well. It wasn't like any field trip I've been on before...we took a charter bus and watched movies all the way there and back. These kids are spoiled. ;) We had a GREAT day at the zoo! They all loved seeing the animals and playing at the playground there after lunch. It was my first field trip where I was partly in charge, and it went well. I'm glad the other 2nd grade teacher was there taking the lead since she had been there before. We had some wonderful parents come along and help us too. It was a very fun day for all! Here are some pictures of our trip.

a view of the zoo

some of my girls on the "train"


on the "train"


more "train"


what cuties?! :)


This girl always says to me, "Um, can I tell you something?"
and then proceeds to tell me a huge long story about
basically nothing. Haha! :)


"Take a picture of me, I'm the king of the world!"


my walking buddies...I was the "caboose" and they were tired :)


beautiful!


time to go home


one last look at the zoo...


it was a long day...a lot of kids fell asleep


what a good friend to let your friend sleep on you


this girl is precious...she hugs me and tells
me she loves me about 12 times a day!
she helps me through the hard days
she doesn't even know it


even the best friends fell asleep. I love the mouth wide open. :)

In other news...we're still enjoying living in our apartment for the most part. We love the apartment, we love the location, but we don't love all the guests that come and visit us frequently. We have ants that like to live on our kitchen counters, and, if we accidentally let them, all over our food. We would really love it if they would leave and never come back. We're working on a solution to this. We also have strange bugs that show up randomly...we don't like them either, mainly because of their size. There will be a picture of one of these strange bugs. Another visitor that we hate is geckos. Well, I hate them, the other girls just don't like them, but I hate them. They're gross and disgusting and scary and they are NOT welcome in my apartment. But they come in anyway and there is no way to really keep them out. So I live with them. Luckily we don't see them very often and most of them are very small. There is also a picture of a gecko coming up...this guy was hanging out on the wall in my bathroom.

strange bug


gecko...gross!!! :(

Mindy, Robin, and I went to the beach with a few other people a couple weekends ago, and it was absolutely BEAUTIFUL!!! I've never been to a more beautiful beach than that, and I guess I always thought they only existed in movies where they can make them look however they wanted to. The water was such a bright blue-green color...beautiful! Here are some pictures to make you jealous... ;)

see what I mean?


if you want to see this for yourself...come
down and visit me...I'll take you there! :)


the guys in orange come around and try
to sell you things...mostly you just ignore them
because you don't know how clean their food is


here is the amazing painting that I found and we bought
for $500RD, which is about $15.00! Mindy was proud of herself
for talking the guy down to the price we were willing to pay.

Some of the teachers had a fall party last weekend...you had to dress up in order to come. Mindy and I did not know what to dress up as, and we thought it would be fun to be something together. We thought of being M&Ms because she's Mindy and I'm Mandy...except no one knows me as Mandy here, so that wouldn't work. Then we thought of things like Salt and Pepper, Peanut Butter and Jelly...but we didn't really like any of those either. Then we thought of the idea of being a compound word...she would be one part of the word and I would be the other part. Here is a picture of us being our compound word...can you guess it?

hmm...

Well, this has gotten very long. There is still more to tell, but I will leave that for another time. I'm ready to stop staring at a computer screen. :) I hope you are doing well. I would love to hear from you about how things are going in your part of the world.

Love you,
Amanda/Mandy :)

Oh, and in case you couldn't guess our compound word...rainbow. She's "rain" and I'm "bow". :)