Women's Retreat

One of the biggest blessings I have found in the DR is an awesome women's bible study. I have thoroughly enjoyed our Tuesday afternoon bible studies. The four other women in the study are also from the US, but opposite ends of the country. From right to left the women are Kim from Maryland, Melanie from Tennesse, April from California, and Micky from Colorado. We have some how all ended up in the small mountain town of Jarabacoa, DR. At the end of January, we all traveled to the outskirts of the town for a weekend women´s retreat through our church La Vid. The retreat was held in a Catholic retreat center in the mountains right next to the river. It was a wonderful weekend. The retreat center was one of the quietest places I have found in this country. I thought I was a social person, but this culture is on a new scale. It is hard to find time alone and a quiet space to think. The weekend was a huge blessing. It was also my first women´s retreat. I never would have thought my first women´s retreat would be bilingual in another country! I was hugely thankful for a quiet garden where I could sit, read, and pray about the teachings for the day. I also met lots of amazing women.....a few of which are working in other ministries near by. The retreat center was beautiful and I spent Saturday hiking up to one of the local waterfalls I hadn´t had the chance to see yet. Hopefully I will have more of a chance to travel out of the town into the mountains this semester. I posted a few pictures on my web album.

Back in the DR

I have safely returned to the wonderfully DRY and refreshingly warm Jarabacoa. It was 45˚F Monday morning in my bedroom, but it has warmed up to a toasty 85˚F in the afternoons. All of my students wanted to know what snow feels like. Hurricane season should be over and I am delighted to find the pipes in my apartment fully functional and the power hasn’t even gone out for 4 days straight! Now I just need to get used to cold showers again. Christmas break sped by so quickly that I still feel like I’m catching my breath. I recovered enough from an episode of bronchitis and sinus infections to jump on the plane without major ear trouble. I hit the ground running Monday morning at 7AM after having returned to my apartment at 10:30PM Sunday night. I am definitely in need of some rest and relaxation after the busy week. It has been wonderful to see my fellow teachers and friends in the DR, but it was difficult to leave my family and friends in Champaign-Urbana. My students have not seemed to calm down or miraculously become less rowdy over break, but we were happy to see each other. I seem to have quickly slipped back into the routine of life here. My teaching load has not improved, but I think I am learning how to handle it better. I am still working on funding for the year, but am very excited and thankful to have some donated art and science supplies to use this semester. I may be even more excited than my students to simulate a volcanic eruption with our new volcano kit! Returning to the states was a reminder of what an amazing family, small group, church, boyfriend, friends and support network I have in the US. It was hard to leave all of you, but I am blessed to have such wonderful support. It is wonderful and incredibly difficult to be here and I know that I would never be able to continue with this work without everyone’s support. I do feel a sense of peace and assurance that I am supposed to be teaching at Doulos even if I don’t feel like a superstar teacher every day. That’s it for now. I hope you are all starting off the year well and filled with joy in the Lord!

DR night

I hope you are all enjoying a blessed New Year and had a restful holiday season. After a delay in San Juan Puerto Rico, I finally made it home and spent some quality time with the many relatives staying in my parent's house in Champaign, IL. Unfortunately, I caught a bad cold and developed a low grade sinus infection and a touch of bronchitis just before New Years Eve. I am slowly recovering and am very thankful that I took some personal days to stay in the US until this coming weekend and attend a friend's wedding . It has been a huge blessing to rest, eat my mother's cooking, take hot showers, and visit with friends and family. However, I do miss my new friends and students in the DR. I think that you end up leading two lives once you have learned to love a new country.

You are all invited to hear about my experiences during the past 5 months while teaching in the Dominican Republic. I will be showing a slide show and talking about what life is like living in Jarabacoa and teaching at Doulos Discovery School. There will be coffee and juices from the DR afterwards. I look forward to being able to reconnect with many of you and hopefully provide you with a glimpse of what my life is like in the DR. I also want to be able to say thank you to all of the people who have been supporting me in so many ways. Please feel free to bring friends and family who might be interested in hearing more about what I’m doing.

Date: Wednesday, January 9th 2008
Time: 7:30-8:30 PM
Location: New Covenant Fellowship
Directions: corner of Randolph and White St. in Champaign, IL

Teaching on the Beach

I thankfully returned from an amazing week at the beach with my sixth grade class before the current tropical storm hit the island. I teamed up with Reef Check for a week of studying coral reefs in their natural environment. I was reminded why I wanted to work at this school in the first place; to teach students in the most hands-on, experiential, Christ focused manner. It was a blessed and highly enjoyable week filled with snorkeling, searching for critters in the sand, rock climbing, and adventure. I don’t think that learning can become more hands-on than this! My students learned more about coral reefs and the global problems occurring with them in one week on the beach than they would have in sixth months of classroom work. Living with my students was an awesome opportunity to bond with them as individuals and learn to appreciate the differences in our backgrounds. Before I knew it, my 12-year old boys were shimming up the palm trees, kicking down fresh coconuts and hacking them open with their machetes. We spent our days snorkeling and having class on the beach with one of the few marine biologists on the island and our evenings around the campfire or collecting plankton from the ocean. It was a bit crazy to write sub plans for the other 6 classes I teach, and come back to the two weeks of madness before x-mas break, but school was canceled today due to the rains. I live on the same street the school is on, which is fortunately on a hill, so I will be high and dry. Please pray for the families near the rivers in town that are struggling to keep their houses from flooding and energy and patience for the teachers as we finish out the semester.
I have uploaded more pictures from my week at the beach with 6th grade on my webalbum.
http://picasaweb.google.com/ewissema/PlayaFronton

Staff Appreciation

Several of the board members for the school came to visit this week and took all of the staff out for a relaxing dinner at a restaurant in the mountains. It was encouraging to have an evening where the staff were thanked for all of their hard work. It was also wonderful to see all of the staff outside of school, enjoying themselves, and connecting on a new level. We have staff from the US, Haiti, Columbia, and the DR. I am constantly amazed by how loving and supportive the staff is here across all cultural and racial boundaries. I really do feel like the staff is part of my family here. The local staff even let me practice my Spanish with them!

Cultural Weekend

One hour after our return from living on a mountain with our students, the new teachers headed off to the capital in public transportation to spend the weekend learning about the culture of the Dominican Republic. The conference was held in a Catholic retreat center on a cliff overlooking the seascape. I learned a lot about the various family structures of my students and my own reactions to cultural differences. The weekend was exhausting, but I was thankful for the opportunity to learn more about the culture I am living in. There are so many miscommunications that occur due to differences in culture and I hope to be able to avoid more of them now. Living in a different culture is humbling and a great opportunity for personal growth. I highly recommend it to all of you. This picture is of all of the new Doulos staff. I thoroughly enjoy all of these teachers and we always have a lot of fun together. For more pictures, visit my web album: http://picasaweb.google.com/ewissema/

Living in the Mountains......

Every year the school takes the students up on top of a mountain in the midst of a coffee plantation for a week of outdoor education. Many of the students look forward to this week all year and talk about it for the rest of the year. Classes are held in the woods and students learn to appreciate the amazingly beautiful natural world around them. Living in the mountains with 55 12-16 year old students is slightly less relaxing than the usual camping experience, but it certainly was an adventure. The mountains were breathtakingly beautiful even through all of the rain. I had the opportunity to talk to many of my students on a more personal level and build better relationships. This picture is of the girls in my cooking/sleeping group in our outdoor kitchen. It poured for more than half of the 4 days that we were on top of the mountain and many of the sleeping bags were soaked, but thankfully no one was hurt in the slippery mud and everyone saw the rain as more of an adventure. I was exhausted after this trip, but delighted with the experience.