First Day of School

Today was our first day of school! What an interesting one at that! 

We feel like through all things we are learning humility here. Through the daily grind of getting rides places, having conversation while eating breakfast or dinner with our host family, having people help us find places we could rent (which also involves them communicating/translating and driving)--we are feeling that as of right now, we have little to offer this culture and our new friends. We know this will change with time, but ultimately we are feeling humbled in our positions of reliance on others.


This does connect to our first day of school...we promise....


7:00am--Meghan finds out that her teaching assistant has pink eye, and won't be able to help teach-not to worry-another assistant fills in!!! 


8:00--School Starts! We met in the amphitheater with all of the students in the school K-12 for announcements, a quick skit, and prayer.


8:00-3:00--School Day! Written from Meghan's Perspective:
I felt like today humility was something that was prevalent throughout the day. I have 22 kindergartners in my class this year, 3 speak English, the rest have not learned it yet! This means that while giving a direction that seems simple such as "come" or "sit" or "walk" I get 19 students with bug-eyed blank stares back at me like I was speaking a foreign language....oh wait, I am! SO! 


There came a point in the day where I broke down. I had a couple very challenging students, and while I was hoping (and trying to convince myself all morning) that I would be able to control these few, I realized that I couldn't "save" them from whatever was causing them to act out. With my limited Spanish, the directions that they understand do not come directly from me, so I can only expect so much from these little 5 year old bodies. 


Imagine watching a 7 hour long foreign film with no subtitles...haha, the thought makes me laugh!! I would go CRAZY!!! That is probably what much of the school day was like for these poor kids! :)


I realized today that I have met my teaching match. I am not "good" enough to be teaching here, these kids, or anything. I think about how many parents I have that are trusting me to teach their children, and at the end of the day they want to hear how their child was....I can't even tell them! I am learning that God will be the only way that I will get through each day--He will be my patience, my peace, my understanding. He will be what makes this school year have a positive outcome for these kiddos. To Him be the glory.


From Rob's perspective: I sat at a desk all day reading SAT manual books, perfecting my organization skills, sweating, color coding a calendar, and more sweating. I missed a meeting, and found out that I have pink eye.  Ha ha ha.  All in all a better day than Meghan had. Well it all looks up from here.


Please keep us in your prayers! We will try add school pictures to this post soon!

Our Home Away From Home

We have been living in our home stay for about a week and a half now, and we have taken a few pictures, but none with our home stay family! :( Hopefully we will take a few pictures with Minerva and Wellington soon and put those on here as well. 

Mangoes are the new apple! We eat them so much that Robbie has even made a little rhyme about them:

Coffee and Mango

Make everything a go-go

Well if thats not the truth! :) Our stomachs are trying to get used to some new foods here. A typical breakfast for us: ham sandwich on the foreman, coffee, mango, and sometimes hot chocolate. A typical lunch at school: grilled chicken or pork, rice (either white or dark with beans), salad, fruit juice (starfruit, passionfruit, or pineapple). Dinner: yucca or plantains, fried meat (chicken, salami, hot dogs, ham), rice, avocado, and juice or water.

Coincidentally we are both sporting St. Thomas apparel while enjoying our awesome fresh mangoes! We both love to sit out on the porch-any time of day-quiet times in the morning, fresh mango smoothies in the afternoon, or dominoes at night. From both of "our" chairs we can see the mountain, and keep an eye on town!

A few key things in this picture: our dictionary-we don't go anywhere without it, coffee (doesn't need explaining), and Meghan in jeans when it's 85 and humid-the madji bites are vicious, and her ankle swelled up the first week we were here! A few more pics to enjoy:

View of town from the balcony.

Praise and Prayer Post

As you can see we are doing alright-staying in good spirits, while occasionally loosing our minds! We are learning so much-culture, language, job expectations, ahh! Yesterday we moved into our home stay-we will be living with Minerva for the next month. We got to go to town with her to go grocery shopping to pick out foods that we like. After our grocery expedition we went back to our new home and Minerva started making dinner. She was preparing the yucca and I asked if there was anything I could do to help (in my super choppy Spanish of course), and she handed me the mini-machete she was using to peel back the yucca peel and the yucca...I took one hack at it, and figured that any more would result in me loosing a finger or whole hand. I gave her back the cutting tool and watched in awe as she had both yuccas (1 and 1/2 feet long) peeled and chopped in a matter of 2 minutes. Our dinner was awesome: boiled yucca and plantains, fresh aguacate, fried salami, and onions marinated in vinegar and salt then fried with the salami. Overall, a wonderfully welcoming first night in our new Dominican home. We are being humbled daily by our reliance on others for help, support, and transportation. It is amazing what God teaches us in the midst of putting complete trust in His plans.

We also wanted to take some time to update you with prayer requests:

• Praise: Welcoming and friendly hospitality from our new friends at Doulos and the Jarabacoa community!
• Praise: Some extra time to "get-away" to the beach for a few nights to relax and regroup.
• Praise: We have a home stay set up for the next month (at least). We will be looking for a place to rent at the beginning of September.
• Prayer for learning Spanish and communication with others. That we would continue to laugh at ourselves, and enjoy the frustrations of the learning process! :)
• Prayer for continued financial support and fulfillment of pledges.
• Prayer that we would continue to grow in our relationship with the Lord. That we would make time everyday to be in His presence and recognize His presence all around us.
• Prayer for the adjustment of living in and amongst so much poverty. 

As we are acclimating to our new life here in the DR, there are a few comforts from home that we miss. We have had a few people request ideas of things that they could send us in care packages. Please don't feel obligated to purchase anything! However, if you do, please comment on our blog about what you got, because as much as we love coffee, we don't need 3 coffee bean grinders! :) A few of our current favorites: 

• A coffee french press. We have found that electricity is not always a stable resource--however, propane is much more reliable. Heating water to pour into a french press makes our slight "coffee addiction" possible. :)
• A coffee bean grinder. The school has a coffee plantation that only comes in whole bean. We are interested in supporting the school in our fresh bean purchases!
• Crystal Light packets! YUM! (Special flavors: peach iced tea, strawberry-kiwi)
• Cliff Bars/Special K Protein Bars (Chocolate/Peanut Butter flavors are our favorite!)

Thank you for keeping us in your thoughts and prayers. It has been so refreshing to catch up with you on Skype, receive your emails and Facebook posts! Please continue staying in touch-we love hearing from you all! 

Part of the Job

This weekend we learned what it meant for Rob to take a work team to "the beach." Some work teams add on this day to their trip, and others opt not to in order to save some money. After the physically exhausting week of painting and hauling cement--a day at the beach was definitely welcomed by all! We headed to the beach on Friday with the work team. We stayed at a small all-inclusive resort, also called a "boutique resort"--in Sosua. The kids went into town to do some shopping, we opted to stay with those who were interested in swimming at the beach. The water was so clear!! Standing up with the water at about my chin I could still see my toes! The beach was clean and quiet--very relaxing. The room we stayed in pumped the A/C out hard and cold--our first A/C experience in the DR!
After the work team left on Saturday, Robbie and I headed to Cabarete for 2 nights to relax. We were hoping for a really quiet and relaxing time, and it was, but we still had to be on our toes with language and our environment. Next time if we need some quiet time away we would probably stay at the small, quiet all-inclusive resort where we didn't have to do much thinking. Cabarete has a huge beach in comparison to Sosua, and it had lots of wind surfing and kite boarding. Bet you all know who wants to try out a new hobby!!! :)  Cabarete offered a variety of restaurants and small shops; people were also busy selling their goods and coming up to us quite frequently. Our final adventure of the weekend was getting home all on our own from Cabarete. We took a public "gua-gua" which is a 12 passenger van-ours was quite full with about 17 people in it or so. Then we boarded a Caribe-Tours bus (like a coach bus) for a 3 hour trip to La Vega. In La Vega we met a really nice Dominican girl who is about our age, who has been living in New York for 7 years with her mom. She helped us get to the "gua-gua" station-her friend gave us a free taxi ride. We took another "gua-gua" from La Vega to Jarabacoa--home sweet home! Here are a few pictures from our adventure!

Our awesome work team!

The beautiful beach in Sosua.

Relaxing by the pool in Cabarete. :)

Bienvenidos a Jarabacoa!

Friday evening we went to the Santiago airport to pick-up and welcome a work team that came in from Texas. Since then we have been hosting them at the Villas which are just a short walk from school. This work team is a mix of high school and college students who have been helping to update some classrooms, the library, and the grounds of our school. They have been hauling dirt, mixing cement, chipping off paint, pulling staples, taping, painting, etc. WORKING HARD! They are such a fun bunch! We had one night to sing karaoke-which this group loved! Last night we got the chance to spend about 3 hours hanging out with and eating dinner with some of the families of students that go to Doulos. Below is a picture of me with 2 of the girls who are part of the work team, and our Dominican host family at their home. We had a blast playing Pictureka!

Group Photo!

On Sunday we went to church with the work team. Worshipping with open walls so that we could see the outdoors was such a wonderful experience. Nothing that we could do weekly in Minnesota!

The front of the church.

The view from where we were sitting at church.

Yesterday I was given a tour of Jarabacoa. We went to the biggest supermarket in town, the vegetable market, fruit market, hardware store, cell phone store, found the store where you go to pay your electric bill, where to go to get cash, and a few others. If you asked me to find them again today...it might be another story, but with time, this will become home. We love and miss you all! :)

We Made It!

Kitchen/Balcony of where we stayed our first night.

We have safely made it to Jarabacoa! We stayed at Shelly and Jonathan's house for our first night! We slept great! In this top picture you can see the view from where we ate breakfast in their outdoor 2nd story kitchen. It has a covered roof and partial walls. A very beautiful kitchen!

Breakfast!

Here is our breakfast. We had mangoes (on the left) and bread (made by the monks at the monestary up the road), with peanut butter (homemade by our hosts) and honey on top. We had fresh organic coffee from a coffee plantation just up the road. You can see the white stuff in Robbie's glass---thats yogurt. YUM!!

Ellis Family Update

There have been a lot of big changes in the past month since school let out! We went camping with friends, attended festive grad parties, celebrated Father's Day with a "bang," Robbie went camping in Colorado, and I packed up our townhouse with the help of the best family moving crew in town! Here are a few pictures to highlight the memories!

The only picture we have of all of us. We were grilling kabobs for lunch.

The men of the hour-shooting their guns.

And the moms with their turn.

Summiting Mt. Huron at 14,005 feet

Lake Ann crossing the Continental Divide

Napping in a hammock after a week of packing our things.
Couldn't have done it without everyone's help. THANK YOU!

We have now moved into my parent's home. We're downsizing a bit. A two bedroom townhome to a one bedroom room. Things are fitting in nicely, and we are enjoying the company (and delicious meals). We will be leaving for Jarabacoa on July 15th--10 days from now! Hope you had a fantastic 4th!