Laboring on Labor day

I hope all of you who have off today enjoy it; the DR Labor Day comes in May, so i am back to work today. It's kind of like being at Messiah again and having to go to class.

It was a great weekend, although I am pretty sure we spent more of Saturday without power than with. When that happens I usually sit and read until the light ceases to be enough, and then I move outside, where it's better. My roommate Cecelia is Colombian, and she has been spoiling me by cooking alot of Colombian food, and thus letting me not learn how to cook. I did, however, make some soup last night and we ate with the girls upstairs.

On Saturday we used Holly (HS Lit teacher, lives upstairs)'s laptop battery to watch The Happening. Her battery ran out, and we had just gotten in from below when the power came back on. Thank goodness; I wasn't sure how I was going to handle another fanless night.

Sunday morning 6 of us girls took a taxi truck to the outer limits of the town, and went swimming by a waterfall!! I took pictures. It was pretty great. We had to go right through/past the really poor section of town, and it was really sad to see the conditions that the people there live in. One of them had an outhouse that looked like it was barely in one piece; it was like a patchwork structure.

Sunday afternoon we ventured to a church right behind us, and I missed alot of what was said. Definitely going to have to polish up on the Spanish.

My morning class was a mixture of exultation and frustration, as we were learning how to write the letter D. Two of my boys (well, 3, but one wasn't there today) don't really "get" things...so i sat down in between them to show the the proper way to write D. I almost pulled my hair out, but by the end of the morning when each of them could correctly trace a lowercase d, I was pretty exuberant. Fortunately we have the rest of the week to practice the D's.

They're also learning the story of Noah, so today I started the teaching of Arky, Arky. Good memories.

Speaking of which, on Saturday the teachers for middle and high school were discussing some of the dress code issues and it was definitely a flashback to LCS. Anyone remember how the girls would roll their skirts?? I feel like that is an age-old trick that will never die.

Well, this is long, and I don't think I would have made it this far if I were reading this, so I'll stop here. If I'm motivated later I'll post the waterfall pictures!