Birthdays and Racing

On Thursday I turned 30!  I was planning on having a couple beers and a very restful night, but some friends had been preparing a birthday dinner and hang out time instead, needless to say it was much better than what I planned.  Peppers stuffed with all sorts of cheesy goodness, guacamole, auyama (sort of like pumpkin or squash) tacos, solid deserts, and a few choice beers shared between all of us was enough to satisfy my belly for a long time.  I really couldn't have asked for a better low key birthday.  Even Friday at school was very restful as our freshman had gone to the capitol to see the Body Work exhibit.  All in all my time leading up to the weekend was very nice.  
Once the weekend came things took on a different feel.  Saturday myself and 3 friends hoped into a car and headed to Santo Domingo.  I had never been to the capitol but felt like I was doing okay without it.  Although I still think I am doing okay without it, I really did enjoy our time there.  We stayed in a friend of a friends apartment which was in a really neat part of town and enjoyed a night driving around town and some fine dining pizza.  The reason we went to the capitol was for a race on Sunday morning just North of town.  We woke up early and headed toward El Higuero were the race was and a beautiful morning followed.  The race was 17k a little under 10.5 miles, and was on old dirt roads, single track trails, creek beds filled with rocks, and many other surfaces.  It was a well put on race and a lot of fun.  Our group was all satisfied with our performances and we headed back to Jarabacoa happy and hungry.
Its Monday morning again and this week at school should be a really productive one with my Revolutionary Leaders expedition taking full flight and switching over from the Protestant Reformation to the Scientific Revolution.  This morning I even discussed what Jesus says about Zombies with my Freshman guys devotional group.

I forgot to mention its Carnaval

After conquering the course

Prerace team photo 

 The view from our apartment in Santo Domingo

Birthday week!

This last week has me feeling like I am completely back into the normal routine of life here in the DR. Ever week has some different things going on, but it general things have been rather normal.  The highlights of the week were a surprise b-day for a friend, a day of seeing other ministries around Jaraboacoa, and an evening grilling out with friends (veggies of course).  

Yesterday we had a professional development day and spent half of it touring the other ministries here with the people involved in them.  Our first stop was the local YL camp (Pico Escondido) which I have had the opportunity to go to many times before.  After Pico we went to Caribbean Mountain Academy, which is a sort of reform center for children who have been sent by their parents because of a loss of control.  If you dig into CMA you will find lots of dirt from the past, but a lot has been done recently to fix the problems there and I am hopeful that it is only a place of healing now.  The third stop was at the Students International base.  SI has a lot of local ministries here but their main one is occupational, with the goal of educating, training, and finding work for people so they can support themselves.  We only visited their base but SI has different sites all over the city.  The fourth stop was the Ark and was by far my favorite of the day.  The Ark can be best described as an orphanage, but it is by no means what you would expect of an orphanage.  Kid's Alive runs the Ark and have implemented a system that is one of the coolest things I have seen.  At the Ark they have multiple building/homes that are the homes of the kids, but the kids do not live in the homes by themselves.  Each home has a host family (with their own biological children) that lives there and are the parents of all the kids in the home.  All of the kids also have the opportunity to go to a local private school run by Kids Alive called ANIJA until they graduate form there after 8th grade when they go to another local school.  The final stop of the day was at Doulos, which is our school!  During the tour of the school the people from other ministries watched this video...

Upcoming fun...

I turn 30 on Thursday!

Running a Trail Race near the capital on Sunday!

Free Honey

So here is a fun thing that I came home to last week.

We had a bee infestation in some of the siding and I guess guys hired to take care of it decided it would be better to catch the queen and put her in this box.  Once she was in the box the bees went back to life as normal and we had a bee colony on our porch.  The upside to this experience was that I ate honeycomb and it was awesome.  The guys came back and picked up the box so there won't be anymore free honeycomb, but the slight inconvenience of thousands of bees was worth it for a couple days.

So the weather here is kind of perfect.

In the mornings I wake up and am a little chilly, it is actually cold enough to warrant gloves, sweater, and jacket for my 5 minute moto ride to school.  By the time afternoon hits I find myself comfortable in basically anything from a t-shirt to a hoody.  This wonderful weather forces me outside and the last few days have seen a lot of time spent under the sun.  Every Friday there is a "intramural" soccer game that teachers and staff are invited to play in with the students, and with the great weather there was no way I could say no.  Saturday again was beautiful and I found myself out running on the country roads that surround the side of town I live on.  Sunday is ultimate frisbee and I made my debut there this weekend which was a lot of fun and a good chance to meet people outside of our Doulos community.  Leading up to yesterday we had been trying to get a group of our guys to climb a local mountain with us, but there ended up being a lot of confusion and in the end my friend Brad (math teacher) and I were the only ones that made the journey.  Today will be the finale of activity outdoors, at YL tonight we are playing kickball!  As long as the weather stays this awesome you will find me outdoors every chance I get, even tomorrow when you can find me in my hammock reading a book.  Hopefully when I return to the states next time I will at least look a little bit like I live in the Caribbean.

Traditions.

Before Christmas there was a chili cook off at the house of some friends.  The reason I mention this is that on that evening I decided to make some chili by adding the spiciest things I could find and as many veggies as I could as well.  This chili never made it to the cook off, but it did become multiple days of lunch.  When we returned after the break we had a veggie kabob night in celebration of a friend's bday, and again this ended up being lunch for 4 people on Monday and Tuesday.  This weekend I invited some friends over to make a stir fry of potatoes and whatever veggies they might want to bring.  Between the three of us we had 10 potatoes, 5 peppers, 4 onions, 2 bulbs of garlic, a few dozen baby okra, 3 giant carrots, and 3 eggplants to cut up and eat.  Before we got the piles of veggies cut up we managed to create a bunch of guacamole with 2 and a half giant avocados.  The downside of the guacamole was that by the time we finished up the veggie stir fry was that we weren't hungry for the dinner, but now we have lunch for the week.  This is now a tradition that I hope to make part of my weekly life.  The time spent with food, friends, and board games is something that I really appreciate here in the DR.
This is the last week of the first semester and I am excited for the change that the new one will bring us.  When I update this next week my day at school will be about 50% different which should be fun.

Back to School

After nearly 3 great weeks in KC it was time to head back to the DR.  Originally I was a little disheartened by the fact that we had to be back on a Friday but I quickly learned how much of a blessing it really was.  Being back this weekend and preparing for another long stretch of school by doing a whole lot of nothing was really nice.  I set up my new slackline which was gift from Jordan Carey and went for a run with one of my fellow teachers here, but that was about as energetic as it got.

Today the pace changed and we entered back into the world of school.  Although we don't actually enter into our second semester until the 22nd of January things have already started to feel like they are changing a bit.  We have lost one exchange student and picked up 2 new ones with another returning after a semester in the states.  Some new faces have joined us at Doulos and it looks like the beginning of another good long stretch.

Expedition Video

This semester the Junior class and I have been working on an Expedition about cultural conflict. There were three main questions that were answered over a little more than a month.  A rough translation of questions that the students are responding to are.

1. Should I love a person that is from another culture but refuses to accept and respect mine?

2. Should another country be used to resolve problems between 2 other countries?

3. Is a person influenced by their culture?

The students selected the questions they addressed, filmed the video, and it was all put together by one wonderful student named Sthersy.

If you don't speak Spanish it might be hard to understand, so good luck, and I hope you enjoy the two girls that decided to speak in English.