La Republica Dominicana

one more week...

2009-07-28T11:02:00.000-07:00

im so tired. ready to come home...

we've got one crazy week ahead of us, including vacation bible school (stay tuned for pictures) and then i'm home free, literally. :)

i will admit, i'm going to miss living here. it took me a couple weeks to adjust to living here, and i think it'll take me a couple weeks to adjust living in the states again. driving will be especially weird, i think, since i haven't done any while i've been here, and when i am a passenger, my stomach is constantly in knots over each near-death experience.

i'm going to miss the ocean breeze, i'm going to miss how refreshing a cold shower feels... i am going to miss the street vendors and cheapy cheapy fresh fruit. i am going to miss the friends i've made here, both dominican and american... im going to miss the motoconcho rides, feeling like im going to fall off... but feeling the adrenaline and excitement as a direct result of the imminent danger. i'm going to miss Bon ice cream! soooo good. and yogen fruz (frozen yogurt with fresh fruit mixed in)......

i'm not going to miss the giant subwoofers in the trunks of cars that pass blaring their reggaeton music. i'm not going to miss the fishy smell in jumbo, the grocery store here. im not going to miss the "pst pst" attention-getting attempts from all dirty men passing by on the street. i'm not going to miss the random blackouts throughout the week. i'm not going to miss sharing a bathroom with four other girls. i'm not going to miss not being able to go running or walking or anything outside of the apartment, really, by myself.

i'm going to miss every week at church singing the same song, "hermano, te amo" and greeting all the women with a kiss and men with a handshake while we sing. i'm going to miss the simple satisfaction of doing chores and having a (relatively) clean apartment.

i'm going to miss my crazy friend Josue. i'm going to miss the girls in the college group bible study. i'm going to miss speaking spanglish in the apartment. i'm going to miss getting better at spanish because i have to. i'm going to miss the crazy and adroable kids in the church, Mercy and Lara and Marlin and Emily... i'm going to miss my students at the baseball academy.

i'm praying (please pray with me) about what God has for me in the future. i need a vision for my life, what God wants for me, what i want for me, too. i don't know what i want yet, and i don't know how that lines up with God's plan for my life. i'm trying to make the two things synonomous... it's hard though.

we shall see... because... well, I really love it here. i am quite paradoxical...

Jarabacoa... a retreat to the mountains

2009-07-23T08:57:00.000-07:00

I am back from our retreat! And wow, I don't think it could have been more relaxing and enjoyable.

To begin:

We drove an hour west to Santo Domingo, the capital, to do some historical sightseeing and souvenir shopping... this was awesome. I spent all my money pretty much.... and got some really great pictures of a gorgeous Catholic church, and the old-timey part of the city (where a colony of Christopher Columbus was formed!)... If I could live in a town like that, I would be happy. :)

Then, we headed off to Jarabacoa, a small mountain town in La Vega, a central state in the DR. An hour into the drive, we came upon the mountains.... they were gorgeous; verdant and majestic.

We also stopped at a little bakery called "Miguelina's"... it was sooo good there! They had cute little double chocolate cookies, powdered cookies filled with guavayana, cappuccino, and tons more. They also had one of the cleanest and most luxurious bathrooms I'd ever seen. It was awesome.

We continued on our trip, and about an hour and a half later, we arrived in Jarabacoa. We stopped for dinner at an open air Columbian restaurant on the side of the road. It was surprisingly tasty. I had a sandwich-type thing with corncake type things for bread. When we finally finished, we left the restaurant and 15 minutes later, got to our hotel! We got settled in, and I took the first hot shower I've had in over 6 weeks! Then all the girls relaxed in the gazebo overlooking the river below and had a nice little chat.

The next day, we all had to be downstairs for breakfast at 8:15... I had some really delicious pancakes.. We also discussed the first couple chapters of Visioneering by Andy Stanley, the book we were reading as a group (which is a great book by the way). Then, we headed off to WHITE WATER RAFTING! I sadly don't have any pictures from ths experience, but I will tell you, it was AWESOME. We rafted for about two hours down the longest river in the Caribbean, the Yaque del Norte (or Jack of the North). It was so intense and scary, but so thrilling and so much fun! I didnt fall out of the boat at all, other people did, so i was pretty proud of myself... :) I did scream like a little girl, however.

The rest of the day, we relaxed at the hotel... I took like a 3 hour nap. Then we went out for pizza that night, and talked some more out in the gazebo. The next day, we were going to do some hiking and see some waterfalls, but it was raining pretty hard, so we just relaxed, and swam a little bit. Then, sadly enough, we headed back to San Pedro...

On the way back, we ate again at Miguelina's, this time I had French bread pizza (so yummy). We also stopped at a couple places in Santo Domingo on the way back, and had some Bon ice cream (even more yummy). While we sat in there enjoying our frozen yogurt smoothie things, a telenovela called La Mentira (The Lie) and Pirates of the Caribbean were on TV. Then a random guy came in and sortof evangelized to all of us in Spanish. He bought his ice cream, sat down, gestured upward talking about God and how we have to seek after His will, then left. A hit and run witnessing, kinda. Inspiring.

Anyways, with all that being said, I really enjoyed the time away from hot and sticky San Pedro... but it's also good to be back. I missed the youth, and our little apartment... my pillow, and most of all, teaching my students at the baseball academy.

I only have 4 classes left with those guys, which is crazy. The summer has zoomed by, and I really only have like 11 days left in the Dominican in total... So crazy...

I can't wait to see you guys though. I miss Ohio.

tomorrow

2009-07-19T19:07:00.000-07:00

Into the mountains we go.

Tomorrow, my team is going to Jarabacoa, an area in La Vega, a state in the Dominican Republic. We are going to be white water rafting, hiking, laying by the pool, and in general, not doing any hard or tiring work. I am utterly relieved... because, if you hadn't noticed from my last post, I've been really tired for the past week, week and a half, two weeks or so...

To be completely honest, I haven't been spending as much time in the word as I need to be, and I think some of the exhaustion and heavy-laden-ness has stemmed from this.

So...pray for me. :)

Rough...

2009-07-16T10:05:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was a rough day... So i decided it would help to write a poem and random essay/reflection. It helped. :) Here it is:

"if i could be completely honest
if i could let the words in my lungs
slip from my lips
if i could stumble and trip
and my words be thrown
expelled from my heart

they'd be out there
out in the open
rough and naked
cold and clumsy

Today is hard. Today I am impatient. Today I am tired. Today, I want, more than anything... solitude. I want the silence broken only by my own breath and shuffly motions. I want to read in bed, in my bed at home, my home in Ohio. Oh, Ohio. I want the road beneath my tires, the tires of my beloved blue car, the tires of my pretty pink bicycle. I want to feel the gusty winds, the smell of corn and grass and summer filling my lungs, I want my hair to fly wildly about my head, in my eyes, in my mouth.

More than anything, I ask for these last three weeks to tumble away. I want to once again embrace the ones I love. To laugh with them, to smile with them, to share my heart and love with them.

For now though, I am here. I am experiencing.... everything. Random blackouts throughout the week, we sit with our bowls of cereal at lunchtime, waiting for the electricity to come back on. Miscommunications and inability to make intelligent conversation with any passersby.

Music is my solace. The Weepies. Augustana. Lifehouse. Amos Lee. Matt Wertz. And the Dominican ocean breeze. Cold, refreshing showers. Smiles from adorable Dominican children. Smiles from anyone. The love of Christ shining out for me from the most unexpected places. In the laughter shared with my English students. In the stars. In the most delicious of apples. They are little blessings. Gifts that so often cannot be seen with the untrained eye.

And this moment, I have only to open my eyes to see all that has been given to me in this place."
I went to one of my English students' baseball games with some of the other girls, it was a lot of fun, and another blessing... :)

this video is from English camp... so cute :)

In the thick.

2009-07-08T17:54:00.001-07:00

Kids. Are. Crazy.

But a lot of fun.
And lately I'm feeling like maybe I want to teach little kids Spanish. Or even English. I like it.
Yes, it's hard, but quite rewarding. And what's hardest is to keep from smiling the entire time, even when the kids are acting up... it's so hard to keep from laughing at them! I know that sounds terrible, but it's true. They are such goofy little characters. Many of them have attitudes or minds of their own ALREADY and they're not even in grade school yet.
But they keep me on my toes, and teaching is giving me an effervescent (yeah, I did just write that) joy.

Oh yeah, I should probably clarify that I have been doing English camp for some 5-year-olds with the other interns. It's meant to be a tool to help out the kids who are enrolled in the new Christ-centered and bilingual school that Daystar is starting in August. We started on Monday... :) It's been a "funky adventure" as my fellow intern and now close friend, Olivia would say. (She's from Georgia)

I have... about 3 weeks left here. Which is insane. Intense. My summer is drifting away, and interesetingly enough, I feel no remorse. I feel like, because of this trip, I have done something worthy of time, worthy of doing. I feel that I am being changed for the better because I have spent this time (when I usually do nothing but spend my days working in an office and my weekends by the pool and my nights in a craze with my friends) doing something that is difficult and challenging. I am forced to evaluate what I want in life, and whether or not I can do this for the rest of my life (...or maybe just a few years after I graduate).

Tomorrow, I hope to:
*laugh until I cry with my girls Olivia and Jess
*listen to Sigur Ros, because they are beautiful
*take 3, cold, refreshing showers

..My hopes aren't high. But I'm okay with that...the question is, are you?

Oh, so we received a 5,000 volume library for the new school (which will be called Las Palmas, by the way) and we found this kids book called "Whose Mouse Are You?" and it was quite depressing at the beginning, an had strange illustrations. The picture below is a depiction of the mouse in question shaking his mother out of the stomach of the cat who ate her. Yes, very strange indeed. We had a good time reading it.

On another note, I have been drinking lots and lots of coffee here. I also have been eating a lot of food too. I think I have gained a substantial amount of weight. But I can't find out, our scale needs batteries. I think I'll be just fine though. ;) I even wrote a poem about how much food I eat here.

"rice and beans
pork chops slathered with barbecue sauce
corn and pepper flecked rice
bananas and cantaloupe and pina
chicken that falls right off the bone
sweet sauce that i don't bother wiping from my lips
rico sancocho soup and rice
crispy salty fried plantain chips
hot strong sweet black coffee,
three tazas a day
stringy sticky sweet mangoes, juice running down my chin
apples that crunch, the perfect sweet with a small dose of sour
i'm getting fat."

Yep.
Here's a picture of me drinking a taza which is a really small cup of coffee. Yum.

That's all.

some random writings/observations/narrations of dominican life

2009-07-03T08:37:00.000-07:00

at the beach...

hot sand slipping through my fingers
sweet sun draping and dripping its rays
over and under and throughout everything
it's bleaching my hair
and reversing my pallor

cool, salty water
rinsing the sand from my limbs
pulling away my stress and worries
with every tug of the tide

the clear water
the clear sky
an optional horizon
the wind the trees the waves...
...they pull me away
they take my hurt
they leave me
with nothing but
peace

the people...the characters...
I.
a vinyl umbrella
gripped by an aged but strong hand
weathered and tanned
a beautiful hand
a face peeks out at me from under as we pass
a smile... no teeth, just gums...
full of joy
full of welcome
a beautiful smile seeks another
"Buenas" she says

II.
a man on a curb
on the edge of the calle
no shoes no shirt
pants nearly slipping from his waist
his belly bloated
his hips jutted forward
he's waiting for something

III.
crazy Dominican men
their heads turn
wolf whistle sounding
their eyes, black and brown and amber and green
stuck to our faces and hair and eyes and skin...
they call out things in slurred Spanish
things in broken English
things so ridiculous
"You are my dream, baby..."
i have to bite down on my molars
to keep from snickering
pst pst pst
a hiss to call for attention
they are crazy about women
they are crazy about American girls

(thanks for reading... I should have something less abstract up later)

There's nothing like it....

2009-06-23T17:56:00.000-07:00

A huge, grayish whitish blue cloud. It's the only thing I see as I look up at the night sky, the dark blue and beautiful Dominican night. No moon. No stars. Just that big cloud, proof that only an hour ago, rain fell from the skies.

There: it is the crunch of the black stone gravel beneath the balding tires, the sound that I love so much, that I wait for on nebulous nights such as this one, that I hope for on sunny afternoons back home.

Here I am, riding in the passenger seat. We're driving slowly through the night, through the Dominican countryside. Trees, tall and leafy and dark, stretch their limbs up to the sky; they are thankful for the rain; they are waiting for the sun to appear yet again. That faithful sun.

We swerve along the rural and mostly deserted road, and I sway in my seat as we narrowly miss the gaping potholes that speckle the asphalt (as numerous as the freckles on the face of a ginger during summertime). The trees speed by. A cow. A horse. Or... maybe it was a man. Our headlights do not illuminate the figure. I will be wondering what it was for a several minutes.... well. Probably not. There is too much else to think of.

I smile to myself. I can't quit. Yes, ladies, and gentlemen, I am addicted to smiling. My heart swells with pride, with joy, with gladness. My thoughts have bounced back to something euphoric. I am learning to teach. I am learning. To TEACH.

Estoy Aprendiendo (I am learning)

2009-06-11T16:56:00.000-07:00

The rain. The heat. The humidity........ and the ocean breeze. Thank you, ocean breeze. I couldn't make it without you.

There is so much to take in here. I am a little blonde white girl, and I speak little Spanish. I am, as they say, wide-eyed and bushy-tailed, overwhelmed with all of my senses.

This past week has been so full and so busy, I haven't really had time to collect my thoughts. But here are some of the major things that happened:

1) The team from Alabama arrived, they were mostly high schoolers.
2)Church! Which was entirely in Spanish, and very exhausting to follow.
3)Ministry with the Alabama team, passing out brochures in various barrios or neighborhoods for the Christian school that Daystar is opening in August and also, Bible club in a really impoverished neighborhood with some adorable ninos.
4)I got really close to some of the girls. I am going to miss them! :(
5) I went to the college girls small group again, and learned a lot about how much our thoughts and feelings are interconnected, and reminded of how much i need to work on my thought life so that my feelings will follow.
6) I went grocery shopping by myself for the first time!!! And was laughed at by some workers in the produce section who thought I was just a stupid American who didn't know what she was doing, which partly was true. :)
7)Rode a motorcycle taxi (un motor) for the first time! So fun!
8)Burnt my leg on the muffler of the motorcycle taxi. Awful. See facebook for pictures...
9)Said good-bye to the team... :(
10) Had my first English class at the Braves Academy! It was...difficult!

I also received some bad-ish news Saturday night, and it was really difficult to handle on my own.. fortunately, I have some really good friends that have helped me through everything. I miss home a lot, but I know that God has me here for several reasons. One of them, I learned through this situation, is that I must depend on Him for everything.

I've been trying a lot to write in my journal every day, and of course, get into the word of God every day, but I haven't been sticking to that, so pray for me.

Pray for me also that I would continue to have success teaching the guys at the academy, and that I would not be discouraged by their laughter (they laugh ALL the time, haha... sometimes it's at me, other times, something completely different, but most of the time I can't tell...)

Pray for me that I would grow some PATIENCE... for the things I cannot control or the things that I want most in life.

And finally, pray for intimacy with God... that I would grow to love Him increasingly more, so that I can serve and love the Dominican people, GOD's people, even more.

I love and miss you all...

Living in the fullness

2009-06-05T21:20:00.000-07:00

Noteworthy occurrences from the past two days:
*I said good-bye to my family and got on a plane
*I arrived in Chicago and saw the nice skyline. Lake Michigan is a lot bigger than I expected.
*In the airport, smelling like McDonald's, and a face full of zits, this old man came up to me and said, "Sweetie, you're a sight for sore eyes, and my eyes ain't even sore."...Um, thanks.
*I got on another plane
*We flew past a storm, and I saw lightning. It was really, really cool.
*Arrived in Miami to a freaking blast of 100% humidified air. (That's probably not meteorologically correct)
*Got on my final plane to the DR, sat next to this newlywed couple that were Christians doing mission work and we had some really good conversation, exchanged e-mails and prayer requests... (What a blessing)
*Landed, had an uneventful time through customs, got picked up by the missionary couple I am staying with.
*Got to the house where I have the upstairs apartment to myself, and unpacked, took a shower (It's, amazingly, even more humid here than in Miami) and went to bed
*Woke up, had a meeting with the head missionaries here, Gary and Alli Hale, and discussed what I'll be doing for the next couple weeks
*Met some girls in the grupo de jovenes (That's "youth group" for all you silly Americans out there)
*Went to Jumbo, a Wal-mart-esque grocery store to get some groceries for my apartment with Wendy, the female half of the couple I am staying with
*Took a really amazing siesta
*Ate the best apple I've ever had (sorry to make you all jealous, the fruit is amazing here)
*Went to a small group for the college girls, shared my testimony, mutual blessings were shared by all, which was awesome
*Came back to my apartment! Reading! Ate another apple... and bedtime.

I love it here. I am learning a new culture, and it's awesome. I listen to people speak in rapid-fire, slurred and abbreviated Spanish, and catch a word, phrase, or idea here or there, but mostly am lost. I am catching it, though. Maybe in a week or so I'll be able to interject a word into a conversation. :)

Pray for continued blessing from God with the people that I meet. So far, He has orchestrated things so that I have established real relationships with some of the girls already. Awesome.

I love this Ephesians passage in The Message version:
"My response is to get down on my knees before the Father, this magnificent Father who parcels out all heaven and earth. I ask him to strengthen you by his Spirit—not a brute strength but a glorious inner strength—that Christ will live in you as you open the door and invite him in. And I ask him that with both feet planted firmly on love, you'll be able to take in with all followers of Jesus the extravagant dimensions of Christ's love. Reach out and experience the breadth! Test its length! Plumb the depths! Rise to the heights! Live full lives, full in the fullness of God." (Eph. 3:17-19)

first blog...not in the DR quite yet...

2009-05-11T12:25:00.000-07:00

Hey, everyone! I decided to go ahead and get my Blog set up so I can send all of my supporters a link that works... :)

Today is May 11, 2009, and I leave for the DR in 23 days! (if you aren't good at math or just too tired to figure it out, that's June 4th) My plane takes off at 2PM that afternoon, and I will arrive in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic at around 11PM.

There were some problems with my passport picture, so I had to go into the post office today and get it fixed, and had to have it expedited so it would return on time... :/ That was a hefty fee. But God is providing...:)

For now, I am taking a May term class at Cedarville, Christian Worldview Integration, which is the sixth and final course for the bible minor here at Cedarville! I am also work 12-5 in the Admissions Office Monday-Friday. So not much time to relax, but I am okay with that! :) I am getting things done and making money, so I feel accomplished.

I still have a lot of money to raise for my trip, so be in prayer that people would be willing to support me! I need it desperately.

I'll probably post again in a week or so to update.
:)
Hillary