Hello everyone!

I woke up to pouring rain early this morning crashing onto our zinc roof.  Luckily it stopped for a little bit so Carmen and I could get our fresh produce in town.  When I was driving to class in El Estrecho Abajo, it started to pour again.  And just as I was thinking how I really didn’t want it to be raining (because my car leaks everywhere), at that moment Chicha said, “ Mira, un arco iris!”  There was a huge rainbow to the right, so I slowed down the car and pulled over to take a look.  For the first time in my life I saw the beginning and end of a rainbow, with everything in between.  I really wanted to run outside and take a million photos, but it was pouring and at that point wasn’t too sure where my umbrella had disappeared to.  But it was a great way to start off my morning. 

The kids are off from school all week so expecting more kids, I made my lesson plans a little different.  We have been playing more games.  Yesterday, we played musical chairs and limbo.  The kids had a great time.  Today we did some relays races.  I had them blowing feathers across the floor and hitting balloons into the air; the kids couldn’t stop laughing.  They loved them.

Here are a few photos…

We are also going to play a game with the parachute, have a jump rope contest, play hot potato, and red light green light (which I turned into stop and go, because most of these kids have never seen a stop light before.)

Other great news, a year or so ago, Chris started a pig project down here.  He was given a donation, bought 2 pigs, and gave them to 2 families with the agreement of taking 2 piglets from the first litter and 1 from the second litter to give to other families.  The rest are theirs to either raise and sell for a good chunck of change, or eat, or just keep raising them.  He based the project off of The Heifer Project.  Most of the people around here know how to raise pigs and you can raise them for close to nothing here.  They feed their pigs food scraps, as well as whey or the runoff from all of the cheese factories.  This is a huge dairy area with a ton of cows (who I have to stop my car for daily), and therefore a ton of milk to make cheese with.  Those factories sell the whey to families for close to nothing.  Anyways, Carmen was one of the families and her pig gave birth to 7 piglets this weekend.  Here is a photo….

They are super cute!

Here is a photo of me with my hair braided… hahaha (although they are out now... the little elastics kept breaking and their hair says in braids, mine does not...)

Oh yeah and if you haven’t heard yet, I’m coming home to visit. J  I fly in super late April 28^th, and I fly back down here May 8^th /9^th.  I am super excited to see everybody!!! 

I hope everyone has a fantastic Easter!!! J

Adiós!

Oh yeah and p.s. my garden is doing fabulous!  I have a couple tiny melons starting to grow as well as a zucchini J  And today I was visiting with Nani, and I asked her how I can get a certain kind of flower that she had in her yard into mine, and she ran and got her machete and dug out some roots of a little branch.  She then continued to take clipping of other flowers that she had and told me what to do with them. J I’m super excited to have flowers growing all around the house too!!

Hello everyone!

Bill Benson, the director/ founder of “The Village” Mountain Mission Project, came down last week for a visit.  He had always wanted the mission to get involved with the children of the Dominican through one way or another.  He was thrilled to sit in on a couple of my classes.  He was almost as happy as the kids who were more than delighted to have him there.  J

I have a couple of class photos here…

 Pueblo Nuevo Class

 El Estrecho Abajo Class

And a couple of random photos of the class…

And this is Chicha (Carmen’s daughter who helps with one of the classes and who spent 2 hours this evening braiding my hair J ) and Michael (the 2 year old who Carmen took in) and me ofcourse…

And here is my twin for the day… J Isaura… she thought it was so funny that we were wearing the same color clothes!

I also had my first parent’s meeting.  I was super nervous, but both the meetings in each village went very well.  I just hope the parent’s understood my butchered Spanish.  Hahaha

To the daycare people, the kids come running into class singing and asking for the “tooty ta” song, which I have in Spanish.  They just love it! Haha (for non-daycare people, “Tooty Ta” is a song where you tack on a different motion each time you sing the little song, it starts with thumbs- up, and ends with thumbs up, elbows back, feet apart, knees together, bottoms up, tongue out, eyes shut, and turn around. It’s a great song!)

That’s all for now!

Buhbye!