Do you feel rain?

Another month has finally come and gone. My departure date has been established: June 25. Even though classes end officially on the 13th of June, I have to stay to hand out my grades in person to the kids on the 24th of June. Why on Earth we need 11 days to do end of year tasks like grades and cleaning I will never know. They tell me that they have bought the ticket for the 25th so hopefully it will be a good flight and I will get home the same day I leave. I'm ready to be back. I miss my family, my boyfriend, my friends, my everything!

School has been unsupportive or most things that any normal school would be able to support a teacher in. We're still on our own for discipline, most supplies. But whatever, I'm hopeful that the school will continue to improve. There is honestly only one way for this school to go and that is up. The changes and programs that we have made this year will hopefully continue next year, but probably won't. The new principal is from England. They're probably going to get rid of all the English teachers that are not from there and get new ones from England. The poor kids are going to have a hard time adjusting to the many differences that there are between British and American spelling and pronunciation. Oh well. Not my problem.

The old saying "April showers bring May flowers," also holds true here in the Dominican Republic. This past weekend has been the rainiest I've experiences in all my time here. (that includes hurricane season).

This weekend my friend Albena and I drove to Santo Domingo for the Aventura concert. This is a good 4 hour drive. We stopped in La Romana to grab a coffee and a palmera... I ended up getting on a road that turned into a one way. Driving the wrong way on a one way where there isn't even enough room for one car is a bad thing. Luckily we made it out of there alive.

Just outside of Santo Domingo it started to look like rain. We called ahead to see if it was raining and got a no, so we continued. The clouds turned orange and purple. You can imagine the storm we got while driving through the capital. Making matters worse it was Friday and everyone (literally everyone) returns back to the city. Problem 1: it was a down pour and I couldn't see. Problem 2: Bumper to bumper traffic. Problem 3: the road lights were turned off. Problem 4: we got stuck on a detour and didn't know where we were. SO here's what happened because of all of that. First we got stuck in a traffic jam and ended up being rear ended by a mini-bus. We couldn't get out of the car first off because what would we do, demand he pay us? and second because it was pouring out. Then because of all the water the available land and drainage systems were overloaded with water and the water started pouring into the streets. It wasn't too bad at first, but the water kept coming and coming... pretty soon it was splashing over the windsheild. For a good 15 minutes we were in water up to the door handles. The car was floating at times.... if you thought it couldn't get worse, the car filled up with water almost up to my knees in the front and in the back it was full all the way across where people put their feet. I was literally driving with one hand and with the other tossing water out of the car with a cup AND honking the horn to try and keep the bus in front of us moving. I knew that if we would stop we wouldn't get started again. Why didn't I pull off the highway? Well, there was no where to get off, walls on both sides. As soon as we could get off the road I did. We found out today that where we waited for 2 hours for our dominican angels to arrive is one of the best places to get mugged, car jacked, and find prostitutes and drug addicts. We're lucky nothing happened.

As I said our Dominican Angels came and picked us up. We ended up staying in a hotel instead of with our friend. She couldn't figure out how to help us (or even cared to) so we had to ask people we met a few weeks ago to come and help us. They ended up helping us out more that weekend.

The next day, guess what happened. We got all dressed up to go to the concert. While waiting outside I thought I felt a few sprinkles. Needless to say, by the time we had finally gotten into the concert with a beer in hand waiting for the show it started to rain. And rain. And rain. And rain. We waited an hour and 45 minutes in the pouring rain for it to let up, but it just got worse. Lightening and thunder too. We had no coat, no umbrella, no plastic bag to cover ourselves, and NO SHELTER TO GET UNDER. I was soaked to the bone. Not a single piece of my body was untouched by the rain. It was ridiculous. So in heals and all we walked out of the concert to try and get a taxi home because of the weather. :( so no concert for us. Then I realized that I only had one pair of pants with me which were soaked... so no night life either that night.

I forgot to mention that while coming into the concert the security guard took my battery pack for my camera and while coming out told me that she lost it. So now, I have no way to use my camera.

AND while we were leaving for the concert Albena got stung by a bee.

So Sunday morning we woke up early and decided to get the hell out of dodge. We had had enough of the SD for one weekend. Albena and I took a taxi to where we needed to catch the bus. We get there, realize we have no cash and that they don't take cards so we had to leave and find an ATM. While walking to a store Albena's shoe broke. So I left her on a corner with the bags by herself so I could go get the money. Finally we got back, got out tickets, and came home (where almost upon arrival it began to rain).

Today we learned that the bus stop we left from is known for trouble and extremely dangerous. half of the people that go there apparently get either mugged or assaulted in one way or anything. The location is known for it's concentration of drug dealers and prostitutes. Good thing we were there during daylight. And yes, I do realize that I left Albena waiting on a corner. Good thing no one wanted to screw with us!

Moral of the story: even when you think it's bad, thank your lucky stars it isn't worse.

Monthly Post

I'm getting a bit lazy with my updates. I'm going to try and be better with updating for the remainder of my time here. Which by the way has yet to be actually determined. I am hopeing to be home sometime during the week of June 16th, but my contract is not officially up until June 27. Oh well... either way I'll be home eventually and I'll be able to see most of you at Courtney's graduation from high school party. Since she's been accepted to Green Bay already she BETTER graduate. We'll see.

This past month was hugely busy. Albena and I had visitors every week pretty much. Even better her mom is returning on April fools for another visit to the country. Hopefully my mom and the sisters will be coming for a visit towards the end of my stay here to help me move home. There are still 80ish days that I am here, plenty of time to come and vacay in the beautiful resort ville that is the Punta Cana/Bavaro region. When mom and dad were here we took a day trip out to the Samana penninsula to visit with the humpback whales who come to the area to rear their whales before taking the long trip back north to their normal whaling grounds. Interesting fact: the adult whales fast the entire time they are here because the fish that makes up the bulk of their food intake are not present in these waters. They only come down here because it is wayyyyyyyyyyy too cold to have babies up north. I almost agree with them after the winter you are all having. We also ended up taking a horseback riding trip through the Dominican counrtryside, through rivers and up and down mini-mountains (no not hills) in order to get to the Limon Waterfall. It was absolutely beautiful.

Work is going pretty great since the last post. I'm comfortable in my duties and am working on my goal for the month of March of professional development; I have a few articles almost ready to submit for the U's TESL newsletter. I've been having a hard time deciding what my next move will be when I return home. Will I go ahead and go back to school for my TESL Masters now or will I try and find a job for a year or so. What I know is that I will be back in EC for a while so Jason can take advantage of the experience and benefits from his job at Menards. He put a major part of his life on hold for me this past year and I am willing to rearrange a few things I had planned for him. I'm just happy to be coming home and I'm excited to see what this year brings in every area of my life.

Uhm, It's been starting to get warmer here... I've got a decent tan going for a white european girl. A few new things I've done lately include a dissappointing deep sea excursion, traveling to the capital, and getting sick during my week long vacation UCK. I haven't been that sick since I drank bad milk at the restaurant I used to work at.

I hope you all had a great Easter. I'm still eating some easter candy that my mom and dad brought me :) and my kids are enjoying playing with their bunny ball that Albena's mom sent down for us. It's absolutely ridiculous seeing the kids rolling this ball with a bunny inside of it. They absolutely LOVE it. "Can we play with the bunny ball?"

It has almost been a month since my last post. I'm not doing too well at this journaling thing. I've been busy with work and tutoring and well... that's about it. A lot has been remaining consistent here in PC since the last big earthquake.

I'm working now with a reading club 2 times a week. There are 30 students and about 15 that come each time. I read a story to them and then we do different extension activities. It took a lot of paper work to get this club going. They want to have all these afterschool organizations, but they make it SO HARD to do them! We've met 2 times now. It's going pretty well!

Uhm... I'm looking forward to my visitors next month! My mom and dad are coming from the 5-10, Albena's grandma comes from the 8-15, Albenas dad comes the 16-23, Albena's friends are coming the beginning of the month and I may have a few more visitors the week of spring break (hopefully!!) I'm waiting to hear from them... I'll actually send them an email after I finish this. March will go by quickly because of this. Then it will be April and I will be 2ish months from home.

What else... This weekend was pretty boring. I went grocery shopping in Higuey and bought some nummy things to eat. Some of my treasures were whipped chive cream cheese, Feta cheese, corn cakes, oatmeal milk, and proschutto... however it's spelled. I make some pretty tasty pitas with some of that stuff. And I've taken to requiring a good night-cap while I'm watching everybody love's raymond-- Oatmeal Milk with Vanilla. Hopefully I'll be able to find that back home. I spent Sunday doing laundry, grades, and lounging around watching movies, reading, and doing crosswords. It was so nice to have alone time like that.

Well, I'm actually teaching language arts right now so I suppose I should get to that. The students are starting to calm down a bit. I'm giving them a pop quiz today after they finish their reading as they were no reading nicely with me as a group nor participating in the questions. This isn't a punishment, but it gets them quiet and lets me not get upset.

It's been a long long time

It's been well over a month since I've last posted and a lot has happened.

I returned back to the US for a visit with family and friends and to celebrate the holidays. Before I could get to the festivities, I graduated from college. I finally finished college!! Whoo Hoo! I graduated Cum Laude. :) Fancy fancy... made the Deans List last semester, too! Not the Uncle Dean list, but the other kind ;). Because my flight was three hours delayed the night before the ceremony, I didn't get to take part in all the pomp and circumstance. Christmas and New Years were nice. It was good to see everyone again. I had a hard time spending time with people because I knew in the back of my mind, that I was going to have to say goodbye to everyone very soon. It was much easier to be a hermit. Proabably a decision I will regret in the future, but oh well.

I came back to the DR on the 7th of January. It seems like forever ago, but I've only been here for 23 days. Not fair... feels like a month. My kids have been a bit calm this semester. I redid the seating chart with them and it seems to work better. I'm holding my classes military style as well.. it's hard, but I have to. We're learning about the election process in the USA this month and next month. It's kidna fun to work with the kids on this topic. We'll be starting out mock elections in Feb. Since I'm not in school myself this semester I'm able to spend some time working on special clubs, celebrations, and activities for the students in the school. I have finally gotten approval to being my English Reading Club. It should be a lot of fun; already 7 students have signed up and signup goes until Feb. 5th with the group starting on the 7th. Two of the other English teachers here and myself are taking on the Spelling Bee, 100 day celebration, and spirit days for the school. There is absolutely nothing for the students to look forward to. And we've proposed things in the past but have gotten shot down. This time we're just going to go ahead and do it without waiting for the 2 week turn around from our superiors. Something has to be done. Another thing we have in the works is a motivational reading program--similar to Pizza Hut's Book It. Hopefully that will be up by the end of Feb. as well. Can you believe that there isn't a program like this in the entire Dominican Republic. I'm sure other schools may have something that they use, but nothing that is nation wide like Book It is.

My school days themselves are a little less hectic. I'm teaching 2 less hours a week that fall semester. Apparently my schedule was wrong last semester... oh well. I'm still tutoring M-R until 7pm... so I have 12 hour days 4 days a week and then on Fridays I'm going to start tutoring another student after school for a few hours. There are so many kids here who need help... I feel horrible that so many people in their lives before me have failed them.

I live for the weekends here in Punta Cana. Every weekend I spend 1 day cleaning my apartment, doing laundry, and some school work and the other day I spend at the beach with Albena. It's fun fun fun! I promise to come back in the summer with a tan! I'm already the same color as a few of my students! We usually go to the puntacana hotel beach. I love to lay out on the beach with my book. It's so relaxing. We eat at the hotel too. You can get a fancy drink there (no umbrellas :() or my favorite, the Long Islam Ice Tea (should say Long Island, but they have long islam on every single one of their menus)

On a technological note: my computer is pretty much shot. It's a miracle of Juan pablo Duarte that I'm even able to see what I'm typing right now. My computer monitor has decided that since I've finally gotten an external keyboard that works, not to work. The images jump around to the point that a person could get a seizure. Then the images will freeze, screen turns black, and then that's it. Game over. But today was a good day for my computer, it's been workin gthe entire time! I'm very happy with this and that's why I was able to write something.

My parents are coming to visit in a month and a half! Very exciting. My sister may come sometime too! I'm working with bridget to see if she can come. I'd love to have more visitors!!! (HINT hehe)

Take care!