Nights of Fear

So, quick little story: Sharla, Kendall, Ashley, and I had a little movie night in our room a couple of nights ago. We all sat on the "couch" (aka an extra bottom bunk). After a while, Sharla stood up, and Ashley saw this little visitor. Sharla goes, "I KNEW there was a spider in my hair!"

After this, Sharla and Ashley were totally fine with watching the end of the movie with a live spider wandering around the wall by our beds, but Kendall and I were on edge... We forced Sharla to kill the banana spider. No lie, these things are as big as the palm of your hand and FAST. Ashley says they're shifty. Anyway, we had to sleep with the windows closed that night due to fear (mine and Kendall's). This probably won't be possible in the 100-degree summer...

Training Day (minus Denzel)

Oh yea,

I forgot we have JOBS here, too. This week, we were able to attend a seminar thanks to our wonderful staff manager, Anne. All of the Makarios staff that works at the school (Anne, Robin, Cara, Cristina, Ashley, Kendall, myself) were able to go to another city, Jarbacoa to attend training in "positive discipline."

Sharla's friends, Krista and Chad, have started an amazing school in Jarbacoa called Doulos: http://doulosdiscovery.org/content/.It is truly an amzing place. They have 300 kids in a bilingual, Christian learning environment. It is a beautiful school in the mountains with some amazing people working there. They have a completely bilingual staff. Dominican teachers work in the younger classrooms, and at some point in elementary school, the gringos start teaching in English rooms. The goal is to have teachers all teaching in their native language. Anyway, I digress.

A lovely teacher/pastor named Jim was sent by his church to come and deliver this seminar on Positive Discipline. It really gave us some time to think about how we want to improve our classrooms. We were able to take these tools and think about how to apply them to our school, where kids are all preschool-aged. Although we all have a heart to improve the lives and education of our kiddos, most of us do not have teaching experience outside of this environment. Also, our kids are all ages 3-6, have never been in a school setting in their lives, and sometimes do not even speak much Spanish. There are a lot of challenges to face. The Doulos staff welcomed the 7 of us with open arms, and I am so thankful. I am also thankful to Anne for arranging sessions like these to help enrich us and make us better teachers!

Pray for us that we make the best educational environment possible for our kids, and that we are able to jump all of the hurdles along the way.

And, this has nothing to do with the seminar, but we drove up on Tuesday night, and stayed overnight to attend the Wednesday all-day seminar. Tuesday night, we ate....MEXICAN FOOD! There are Mexicans here, and they opened a restaurant! Yes! Since queso is pretty much tex-mex, the cheese we ordered was a little bit like a ball park, but the salsa was spot on, and just being at a table with tacos was awesome. Kendall and I almost cried when we found out where we were eating. Hallelujah! (The picture above shows the roomskies after Mexican dinner).

Cumples Dominicanos

http://picasaweb.google.com/katymkemp/EneroDR#

This week we had a few fun days. My new friends celebrated my birthday hugely! It was wonderful! My roommates had every little detail covered, including little notes and signs for me. Check the album above for a few added pictures.

The tweems turned 3 on Friday! It was a big day. They made a fort with their mom and watched horsie movies during the day. That kind of went like this:

Sharla- "Garrett, do you have any movies with a lot of horses or something?"
Garrett- "Yea, I have Blazing Saddles. It's basically just horses and cows walking around the whole time."

That seemed to work out well. Nana and Papaw came over for the boys' birthday celebration, and it was a lot of fun! They don't eat white sugar usually, so birthday cake is a big deal for them! Isaak looked at the candles and pointed and kept making the sign for "hurt, hurt, hurt." My wonderful family sent me a package complete with tank tops, toys for the twins, and salmonella snacks! (Love you, mom).

All in all, it was a great week, and it helped us stay positive during the 48 hours of straight rain-- that is not an exaggeration. We even had a hard time at school, since some kids are unable to make it when the water gets so high (a.k.a. the kids that cross a river on the way to school)...

Fotos

Hey all,

This link (hopefully) will take you to an album I made... http://picasaweb.google.com/katymkemp/EneroDR?feat.

As of now, these are pretty much the same as the ones on facebook, but I am going to start using Picassa from now on... Hopefully I figure out how use it effectively!

Playing outside during church...

Here is the proof that I spent beach day in a jacket instead of my pee shirt:



The tweems can only last for the first hour, so we resorted to playing in a courtyard for the second half. Apparently, they liked being swung off of benches and stuff.

For other updates about our adventures here, see Ashley and Kendall's blogs. (They should be "followers" over on the right side of this page). They are my new roommates! In the first picture, Ashley is in the middle, and Kendall is on the right. Obviously, they rock.

Sin los Jefes

Well, the last few days have been...interesting.

Our director and staff managers (Sharla, Ann, Garrett) left for Sudan on Friday. They are talking with some people who want to start a school there, since the country is in some sort of "peace" time for 3 years or something like that. Pray for their safety and that God can use them there to be a light in that nation.

Also, side note, why do they call it "the" Sudan? Seriously. We can't figure it out, even after consulting Google!

So, the next day was beach day, the final full day, for the mission trip group that was here for about a week from the Austin Stone. We woke up on Saturday to find that we were out of water. My roommate Ashley called the city to come fill up our tank, so after waiting around for that, we finally left for the beach. It rained off and on that day, but we still had fun. The tweems took a nap on the floor of a patio cafe, and after that, I took them back out to the water. They have these swim diapers that are reusable that pretty much just...hold in poop. (Thankfully, we avoided that). As it turns out, two kids are harder to move around than one, so I had Jakob by the hand and was holding Isaak. Then, something warm dripped all the way down my stomach/leg, so Isaak peed on me during the 30 second walk from the patio to the beach. I changed and spent the rest of beach day in shorts and a windbreaker I brought for the rain. It was pretty hilarious. I think either Ashley or Kendall has that documented on film somewhere for our "first official roommate picture."

After all 20 of us got back from the beach, we discovered that we still had no water. We could get a low-pressure drip from the outside faucet, so we filled up a few buckets. Basically, what this means is: the group of 16 people went to beach day, took a rag bath in a bucket they shared with 3 other people, came to church Sunday morning, and took a flight home...all with no shower. I believe the water was just returning literally 15 minutes before the group left the house, so we were forced to employ the "If it's yellow, let it mellow, if it's brown, flush it down" rule. Too much information? Sorry, but that's how it worked. We later found out that our pipes were probably just overheated from working while having no water in them, so by Sunday afternoon, we were up and running, which is about the time the internet disappeared. Ashley and I made some awkward, semi-understood phone calls to the company, and eventually decided to have a technician come out Tuesday morning. Apparently, when they say they will come, that doesn't really mean anything, so they didn't come. BUT, when I got home from preschool on Tuesday afternoon, our internet had miraculously appeared again! Hallelujah!

Other than that, all is well. The tweems used the potty on Monday! Hopefully that starts happening more often. We might make a sticker chart or something for them to do, even though just being able to flush seemed like a pretty exciting reward...

More to come later!

Los Tweems

So, this is Isaak (left) and Jakob (right). I took an individual picture of Jakob when I couldn't explain to Isaak in signs to take one, so after that, Isaak was super-pumped about getting his picture taken, hence the huge smile. These kids are thug life. I mean, look at them. I also upload a few more pictures on my facebook page. I am still working on finding a better website for photos...

WOW.

Where should I begin? I have so much to tell, so I will have to skip a lot of it to avoid completely boring everyone who reads this...But, if you have any doubt as to whether I have your email address and would like more detailed updates along with prayer requests, please, please send me your email (katymkemp@gmail.com)! I really want to send more information to all of my supporters, family and friends.

I am slowly but surely getting to know "los tweems," Isaak and Jakob. When Spanish-speakers say "twins" in English, it sounds like tweems, so that nickname sort of stuck. They are little balls of energy, and a ton of fun. I wanted to show you a picture I conned then into taking today, but that will have to wait until I can get downstairs where the internet connection works faster! (There is currently a mission trip group down there having bible study). A few facts about the tweems:

- They will turn 3 on January 23, the day after my birthday. I told Jakob we can have a joint birthday party, and he can pick the theme. He has not decided on a theme yet, but he would like us to have raisins there.

- Isaak is completely deaf in one ear and partially in the other. Kendall and I are trying to learn signs he knows and also new ones to help us communicate better. The goal is to get a more precise hearing aid for him once Sharla gets them to the states.

- They eat almost anything! Even vegetables. Onions, bell peppers, whatever, as long as they aren't trying to make a statement that day by pretending like they can't eat.

- The last thing was a lie. They actually don't eat any white sugar... I have no idea how they are so happy. (it's because they don't know!)

- Jakob is making leaps and bounds with talking. He is a little behind, but is bilingual, and can understand anything you tell him. He is getting better any better about responding in full sentences.

- They are both becoming quite the little artists.

- This year we are going to try and conquer potty training...Yay?!

I also went to the Makarios school for the first time today. I am going to be helping with Cara and Ashley. Ashley's class was a lot of fun. The kids are such characters. It is a really great environment for them to come in their uniforms, get two hot meals, sing songs, and learn preschool curriculum. I am really looking forward to continuing on in her class. The kids are much more forgiving of broken Spanish and partial comprehension on my part. Also, they are so cute. I almost kidnapped a little girl and brought her home with me in my pocket. I will try to set up a flickr account to throw all of the pictures I take. (This the most technologically advanced year I've ever had, so please be patient with that)!

I am surrounded by some amazing, Godly women (and man, haha, only one) right now, and it's really forcing me to assess my walk with Christ and redefine what that looks like. This is going to be a season of growth in my life, and I am so thankful for it!

Besos.

Well it has been a while! So many things have happened. I guess I will have to skip over the holidays and go straight to the D.R. stuff. But I will say that two loves in my life bought me a brand-spankin-new camera, so once I get the swing of things here, I can start documenting some of it on film, or uh, digital-ness. I should post some things soon.

So, I have been in Puerto Plata for about 20 hours now.

I woke up around 3am on Saturday morning for my 6am flight out of Houston. My family (including the wiener) plus Dave drove me to the airport. I got to Miami, where I wandered around aimlessly, ate some Doritos and had a coke around 9am, and tried some questionable airport sushi when I thought it was about lunchtime. After that, my old bible study leader who works here, Cara, found me, and we talked with Ashley (my new roomie) until the flight to Puerto Plata.

We arrived along with Kendall, another new Makarios person, stood in a line to pay 10 dollars for a "tourist card," got the tourist card, then walked promptly through a line that took the newly acquired tourist card back from you. Sharla (the director of Makarios) picked us up, and we went to the house! The house was lovely and crowded. A mission group from the Austin Stone arrived hours before us, so there were many many new faces.

The two things I will have to get used to the most are: brushing your teeth with only bottled water and remembering to put all toilet paper in the trash can... You can't flush!

These two things are more difficult for me to handle than the lack of air conditioning. Pero, this is nothing compared to how many people in the world live. We have it good here at Makarios.

This morning we went to church, which lasted for two hours. The women wear head coverings and everything. For the first hour, random men throughout the congregation will stand and speak a word from God, and someone will suggest a hymn to sing. During the second hour, a preacher preaches. Thankfully, I was able to understand the sermon pretty well. Unfortunately, the people who spoke to me after church were much less understandable. My Spanish is hilariously out of practice, and these accents here are very different.

Anyway, praise God I am here and alive for another day, and safe! I can't wait to see how he moves here.