my winter wardrobe
i have officially begun to wear my winter wardrobe here in the land of endless summer. today i wore a shortsleeve tshirt and
long pants and even got the chills a time or two.
and to add to that, camille made a wonderful chicken soup that was perfect for the rainy day that it is. mix in a little splash of baking frickin' bars and you have yourself the smells of holiday cheer.
a dominican winter has officially begun.
the most wonderful time of the year
today it begins. the christmas season. dominicans have had trees out since the beginning of october (i have actually heard of tree sightings in september), and i did hear christmas music coming from a house near the escuelita in pancho mateo this past week. but dominicans don't have other holidays, like thanksgiving, for which to postpone the christmas festivities.
and so now i can officially begin listening to that oh so wonderful christmas music. none of that jingles bells stuff, mind you. but the truly great stuff, like O Holy Night. now that's christmas.
however, it is sometimes a bit difficult to get into the christmas spirit when it's 85 degrees outside. so please keep texas weather in your prayers. i'd love the opportunity to wear something other than tank tops for a few weeks.
thankfully, the White's provided us with a wonderful thanksgiving turkey and sweet potatoes to counteract the weather. and as for the day after, we are blessed to have leftover pumkin AND pecan pie as our A&M vs. t.u. halftime break. bringing texas thanksgiving tradition to santiago.
life is good.
and now for the obligatory top 10 thanksgiving list. i am thankful for:
1. A&M vs. t.u. football the day after thanksgiving and that the DR has american tv stations
2. turkey
3. sweet potatoes
4. pumpkin pie
5. pecan pie
6. leftover chocolate birthday cake
7. a wonderful cook like teresa white
8. high-speed internet
9. cute haitian babies
10. seeing my family in 22 days
a birthday on foreign soil
so yesterday was my 26th birthday. it was quite different from any other birthday i have ever had. yes, there was the traditional dinner out and chocolate cake. but everything leading up to that point was quite different. not that my birthdays have ever been super exciting. actually, they've been quite normal days, for the most part. yesterday is what i would now consider fairly normal, but would not have considered normal 4 months ago.
i got up and did not shower (the first thing that was not normal 4 months ago) because, when you're gonna go sweat through your clothes before you even leave the house, really, what's the point? i then went and taught literacy and english classes in a haitian bateye. teaching is not abnormal, but being in a haitian bateye, well, i can definitely say this was a first for my birthdays. it was also the first time i rode on a motorcycle with a complete stranger - on my birthday.
i went from there to visit some people in a different haitian/dominican bateye. camille and i went to visit a haitian family whose son/brother died last wednesday due to a machete accident. this, also, is not a typical way for me to celebrate my birthday.
26 years ago i was born to a loving family in the united states and have been given everything i need to have a comfortable life. 26 years later i am celebrating my birthday with those who will never set foot on american soil, nor have the priveledges i will probably never be denied.
i went from a day of poverty in the bateyes to a nice seafood and pasta dinner. two vastly different worlds collided. and to be honest, the best part of my day was not the posh dinner.
beach bumb babies
that's isaac on the left, and jacob on the right. jacob is now crawling - everywhere - and isaac is soon to catch up.
please continue to pray for these two as their future is still unknown - to us, at least.
He gives and takes away
be sure to check out
camille's most recent post and pray for this family.
superbecks!
this morning as i was preparing some lessons and looking through the materials about which i just posted, i decided to take a quick break and catch up on some blog reading. because i know that rebecca (http://the-infinite.org/~becks/blog/) has committed to a month of daily posting, i went there first to catch up on a weekend of no blog reading.
i must say that i was convicted about how little i trust the Lord to provide. it wasn't just just the post from today about Jehovah-Jirah (the Lord our Provider), but also a simple story about her disfunctional car and how it is now running beautifully, with a discount, and two free meals to boot.
these, of course, are physical provisions of money and food. these are things about which i am not currently worried. but the root of my worry is still my doubt of God's provision.
as i was looking through this new and wonderful english curriculum, i became overwhelmed with all the things there are to be done and the things that are needed. there are physical things, such as dictionaries and teachers. but there are other things, like time, patience, endurance, strength, wisdom, guidance, passion, love, committment, discipline, knowledge, and i could go on and on. these are things that i cannot go out and buy, no matter how much money God provides to me. these are not things people can donate even if they wanted. they are things i can only get from my Lord, and must trust Him to provide. but He will provide. the question is, "voy a esparar?" "am i going to wait? am i going to hope?" i love the spanish word "esperar" because it means both wait and hope. it is much easier to think of it as waiting with hope, than our english words wait or hope used alone.
so this is what i, and we all, must do. espero. i wait. i hope. i trust in Jehovah-Jirah.
English curriculum!
WE HAVE ENGLISH CURRICULUM!
this curriculum actually arrived sometime last week - much more quickly than i expected. i had been searching for bible based EFL curriculum since last spring when i first decided to spend a year of my life in the DR. once i arrived and began learning the culture and building relationships with my students, i felt much more adequate to choose an appropriate curriculum. i found Passport to the World of English, published by Literacy & Evangelism International. it teaches all of the important aspects of the English language while encorporating Biblical lessons and Bible stories. it is a four level series, with the final level a bible study on the Gospel of Luke. i've been spending time looking through these materials and they are absolutely wonderful!
while it is exciting to have a curriculum - student texts, teacher manual, audio cd's and tapes - it is also a bit overwhelming. there is a lot of preperation to make these books helpful for my students. there is also a lot to consider in training the locals to use these materials. so if you would like to help, the following are ways in which you can do that:
1. come to the DR to be an English teacher
2. tell your friends to come to the DR to be English teachers
3. donate bilingual english/spanish dictionaries for the students to use
4. Pray - that I would have wisdom to use this curriculum appropriately, and for the locals who will continue these classes after i leave
5. become a coffee shop snob and only go to Dominican Joe (www.dominicanjoe.com), which supports Makarios, and therefore indirectly supports me, as well
crippled, mute and blind
this is Vilila and her family. Vilila is the one who once fed me so much food i thought i was going to explode. standing next to her is her daughter, Andrea, Andrea's husband, Daniel, and their daughter, Yanibel.
it's exciting to meet a family like this and know that Yanibel, at age 3, is getting the beginnings of her education from Camille. it's little girls like Yanibel that make it worth being here. here's why:
vilila is Yanibel's grandmother. yet unlike many grandmothers, she will never be able to read to Yanibel because she is illiterate. she also will never be able to take her on fun vacations because, besides not having the money, she's crippled. she hobbles around the village on her cane, but i can't image her going any further.
so then you would think that surely Yanibel's parents would be able to read to her, right? well, not quite. you see, Andrea is mute, so she herself is probably also illiterate, and even if not, cannot read out-loud to her daughter. and Daniel? well, he's blind.
so whereas most kids in the states grow up with their parents reading to them so they begin kindergarten with some idea of this concept, this has not been a privilege Yanibel has been able to enjoy.
but thanks to Makarios, Camille, and all of our wonderful supporters (and of course, our Lord who is the real provider), Yanibel now goes to school twice a week and is beginning to learn the alphabet. she will not have to grow up illiterate like the rest of her immediate family.
my students
to see pictures of my students, check the
MAKARiOS BLOG.
you should be checking that one, anyway :-)
weather
i know some of you may have been wondering about what the weather is like here in the DR (besides the recent rain i have posted about, of course).
to put it simply, it's H-O-T.
now heat in november is not a foreign idea to us texans. but here's the kicker: i can't remember the last time i wore anything with sleeves and didn't regret it. though we get warm weather even into december, and sometimes january, in the lone star state, these are for the most part, a bit random, interspersed between days of cool, or even downright cold, weather. the last time i was cold was....yesterday in the air conditioned grocery store. the last time i was cold without a/c...i can't even remember. yes, the rain did cool the temperatures down a bit. but not enough to warrant any description other than HOT.
so yeah, it's hot. it's been hot. and it's going to be hot.
i'm glad we live near the beach :-)
