Continuing to develop relationships...

This past Monday was officially the last day of the first quarter of school. It is still hard to believe that the time has gone past so quickly. Our grades were officially due by Saturday but I was able to complete and submit all of my grades by Monday, which made this week a lot easier for me! Laura was able to finish most of her grades early, so neither one of us had to fight any other teachers on Friday for computers (which there are only three of in the school for teacher usage). Report cards are officially handed out this week, so pray that kids who performed well would be encouraged and that those who didn't perform well would be optimistic about what they can do throughout the next quarter. We will also be having parent-teacher conferences throughout this week, so pray that we would be able to properly communicate with parents and students.

We were able to spend a great deal of time with a number of people throughout this week. Since we have move here to the D.R. we have had dinner on almost every Tuesday night with Daniel and Teresa Peterson (the director of JCS and his wife), along with their little boy Jeremiah. This week we had another couple join us and it was great! Jake and Kyla, who I spoke of a few weeks ago, joined us for our Tuesday night dinner and it was great to have several young married couples together for dinner. We even got to play some "nerdy" board games after dinner because Jake is a huge fan of many of the games we brought down here from the states. Jake and Kyla also shared with us that they are expecting a little one in the near future, which they are incredibly excited about!

On Thursday we spent dinner with the couple, Juana and Ramon, who we are currently renting our apartment from. They have been an absolute blessing to us since we have moved here and we always love getting together with them because they only speak Spanish which forces us to have to use our Spanish. Ramon is quite a master with chicken and for dinner he spent 4 hours slow cooking several whole chickens for us (necks, feet, and all!).



I had my first roasted chicken neck, which wasn't bad but the spinal cord is something I am not use to eating around! They make us a ton of fooding including "Dominican potato salad" which has beets, and potatoes in it, and also boiled yuca, which is a type of root that tastes very similar to a boiled potato in the U.S. Below is a picture of Juana and Ramon...



The chicken was so good! We were also able to spend some time with another middle aged couple that is currently living with Juana and Ramon, whose names are Milagros and Augustine. We may actually start working with Augustine on our Spanish and we may be teaching him English as well (a clean swap, which we need because we lost our Spanish teacher this past week... she is simply too busy with two young kids, which we completely understand).

We also had Robert and Alida over for dinner on Friday night. We have spent a great deal of time at their house watching sports the past few weeks, so we figured that it would be nice to invite them over to our house. I cooked tostadas for them, which is becoming the meal that we cook for new dinner guests. We spent some time getting to know how they came to know one another and they have a sweet story about how they developed there relationship over the years with one living in the U.S. and one of them living here in the D.R. At the end of our dinner date with Robert and Alida, I was invited to go golfing with him in the morning (Who knew there was a golf course here!).

We'll just say that it has been a while since I last golfed, and you could tell! It was a beautiful day, in the upper 80s with a slight breeze, so it was perfect for walking 9 holes. I managed to shoot par on the 9th hole which is about all I will admit to scoring on any of the holes throughout the day. It was a blast to simply be out on such a peaceful course where we saw only 3 other golfers in the 3 hours that we spent there. You can check out the pictures on our picasa website...