Archive for: February 2009

Today was time for the hardest lesson yet; making a budget kite. The following pictures will tell the story, click the first image to see the photos in a slideshow - click on the right side of the image to advance.

Today we attended our first basically traditional Dominican birthday party for our neighbors 1 year old son.

Our time is running out now and I have to admit our focus has begun to shift back to North America. We’ve actually found the last few days a bit challenging for this reason. Having all gotten over our colds we are now trying to get caught up on sleep. Unfortunately Ariana has a lingering cough which has made this difficult.

If you’ve ever played the game Mad Gab you understand what it’s like learning a new language. You know what you want to say, and you have to be very creative to get it out using the limited words you …

Today Ariana got to head out with her classmates to a day camp. The original plan was for Nicole to accompany the class, but when the original bus never showed up and they decided to stuff everyone into a bus half the required size she realized this wasn’t going to happen.

As you know Nicole and I have always enjoyed celebrating Valentines together, not only because of its common meaning, but it is a reminder of the date I originally asked Nicole out on (Dec 14, 1994 if your counting). For this Valentines day I did something extra extra special for her…..

When it rains, it pours. And I mean the literally and figuratively. For the past 5 days it has been pouring here. Not your typical tropical downpour between patches of sun, but non stop rain. If you’ve followed the news you’ve probably heard of a number of mudslides. Although some have been in the same province as us, our location is doing fine. There is a warning out for the city of La Vega due to the river flowing through it, but we are far from it and protected by hills on three sides. But that doesn’t mean we haven’t had some problems.

It’s to not try and joke around with people in a language I can’t really speak.

With exactly a month left till we jump back on a plane for North America we’re going to try give our cultural and language learning a boost by eating lunch and dinner with a local family 5 days a week. Starting next Monday we will (hopefully) have one family each week cook us both meals in their home. Not only will this help out some families that are having a very difficult time getting work right now, but it should give us much more time to get to know some others as well as practice and correct our Spanish.

For only the second or third time since arriving hear there is no music playing tonight. It’s an erie sort of feeling like the calm before a storm. Surprisingly, even the animals are being pretty quiet as well. I guess it should be a really good nights sleep. And we need it after last night.