Settling In...

We are still waiting for the modem and filter (D.R. thing) so that we can have internet and phone access. I have been told that we will be getting all that we need sometime today. Sorry to family and friends for not calling but we have not had access to a phone since last Friday. We will talk to you soon and we miss you...

We are still settling into our new home. We absolutely love the people who we are renting from. The landlord loves the Red Sox and has cable so Laura and I watched a game with him a few nights ago. It has been a blessing to have such nice and helpful people. They only speak spanish so there is a bit of a barrier but luckily their grandson has been in town and he has been incredibly helpful when we need to communicate things that we do not know how to say. Jordanni has been our translator for our local phone service, and his grandparents, and there have been several times where I don't know what we would have done without him.

Our 2 year anniversary was yesterday and we enjoy dinner at one of the nicer places in town. We were a huge plate of meat, rice, and salad, with the meat all coming straight off of the grill. We have not eaten very much meat since we have arrived and so last night was quite a treat. We followed it up by some ice cream, which was good but not as good as ice cream in the states (I can tell this will be one of the things that we will really be looking forward to having once again!). We also ran into a group of Americans (who stick out like sore thumbs) while we were out, in addition to our landlord's family and another teacher at JCS. It feels good to run into people who we know while we are going around the town.

We also started teacher training yesterday and it is going well. It is mostly on interacting with people from another culture but it has been helpful to do this training with other Dominican teachers. We have had plenty of laughs and time to learn names, which Laura and I have been really intentional about doing.

More updates to come...