School and then some...

All right, so things have definitely been looking up since last week. I don’t know what my break down was all about, but this week I have been feeling a lot better about why I am here and what I am here to do. Thank you for the prayers – spending time in the Lord has been a huge help!

This has been an interesting week. Monday I finally got my classroom, so I only had 2 days to clean it out and decorate it. I think I did a pretty good job with the materials that I had access to. The directors have been a great help – whenever I felt that I needed something they would either go find it or an equivalent to it, or add it to their shopping list. We have enough pencils, crayons, modeling clay, and paint to last us quite awhile! So that could make for some fun art projects. I am still trying to figure out how I am going to control 20 4 year olds for 4 hours a day while teaching them new things… I just need to work on my planning, I’m sure that will make everything better!

School was supposed to start on Wednesday, but the secretary of education called school off because of the hurricane (Hannah). This was great because I had another day to fix up my room. I felt much better and much more organized when I left that day. Then Thursday was our first day. It was nice because there were only 5 kids that came – because school was supposed to be canceled again but we opened anyways. At the beginning, none of them would speak any English to me except for “hi” and “fine”. I have an assistant who speaks Spanish, and some English, which really helped me understand what they were trying to say. I feel that by the end of this, I should pick up a lot of Spanish just by listening to my students! Anyways, my assistant asked if anyone could understand English, and all but one said they could. I knew they could somewhat because when I asked them to do certain things or if I said certain things they would do them or at least not look at me like I was crazy, which was a step. It went pretty well over all. We played with play doh, went over the rules, practiced some procedures, read some stories, then colored. Some could write some of the letters of their names while others just drew different shapes and such. We talked about the colors and I found out that most knew how to count to at least 5 in English! That was pretty exciting! Anyways, things went pretty well.

Then we got information that we weren’t going to have school Friday because hurricane Ike was on its way. So today Rachel and I slept in and went back up to school because our pay checks finally came in! We celebrated by going to the mall and buying phone cards – exciting, I know. I bought some bracelets and Rachel bought some fun earrings, each only coming to like only $1 each! I love cheap jewelry…

In upcoming news, hurricane Ike is supposed to hit tomorrow night – not so much hit us with the center of the storm but we are expected to have a lot of rain and wind. This will be the closest to being in a hurricane that I’ve ever been. Apparently we have to cover parts of the windows in masking tape and leave all of the doors open so the wind can go through. We have to move everything off the floor because it’s supposed to flood a little within the house – I guess this is another reason why there is no carpet in the Dominican… so keep praying that the damage isn’t that bad!

Sorry these updates are so long! I will post pictures soon of our room, house, classrooms, and school. Please continue to pray for us, our students, and our house family. Love you guys!