Living without water.....a blessing in disguise?

I hope you are all well and blessed. I have moved once again (Lord willing for the last time!) to the second floor of a house close to the school. I am now living with two other teachers instead of just one. The new place is slightly bigger, cheaper, and has fairly consistent hot water. I have traded in my solid cement ceilings and broken water pipes for a slightly rickety tin roof that allows occasional bats and mice into the house. Both of the latest apartments do however have a remarkable view of the mountains and a fresh breeze. The latest mouse provided no end of stories for my students. They all wanted to come over and show us how to kill one. Time will tell if this move was a wise decision. Unfortunately, the water supply has become much more variable since our landlord moved out from underneath us to a quieter neighborhood across town (the endless crowing of the roosters and bachata music from the neighboring vegetable stands now seems like a natural background). Their moving has led to a series of water problems…….. I am grateful to be living in a house that has well water instead of city water. The city water supply is pumped directly out of the nearby river with no filtration whatsoever. I prefer not to think about all of the things that you can find in the river water. The pump that supplies our water tank is probably the oldest, rustiest piece of machinery that I have ever seen in my life. The first time we called the landlord to find the on/off switch we could not locate it since it was described as green. In the pump’s rusted state it looks more like a dull red piece of junk. It must be handled with great care and ghetto rigging. Unfortunately, the landlord was the only person that truly understood how to fix the pump, and we have been without water at least 2- days a week since his departure. The water supply is currently becoming more consistent. As far as local landlords go, our landlord is very contentious with a multitude of sons and employees that he has promptly sent to our rescue. I think they even started to recognize our phone number……….. In the past month, we have run out of gas for the stove, water, and periodically been without electricity. Water truly is vital to life. It is by far the most frustrating resource to live without. We have adapted and now keep more jugs of water around the house and in bins outside. Despite the annoyance of running out of water mid-shower, I have been truly blessed by the graciousness of my neighbors. Several of my students live in the surrounding houses and when one father saw me struggling to drag an extra bucket of water up the stairs he offered me his house. I enjoyed an afternoon of laundry and sweet tea across the street with two of my students and their mother. The next time we ran out of water I had just returned from a long run. Out of consideration for my roommates, I felt the need to find a way to shower. The school secretary that lives next door immediately offered me the shower in her house. If I was living in a wealthier country, or just in a wealthier area of town I might never have the opportunity to be so blessed by my neighbors. It is humbling to be so in need of life’s basic resources, but it has allowed for huge blessings and new friendships.

A forming family?

As my homeroom class of seventh graders continually changes, we are still struggling to become a family. We have lost our German student and gained a new girl. I am still struggling to change this energetic and slightly wild group of middle schoolers into a family. There have been definite improvements in behavior, but there is still no sense of family. I still frequently have to talk to them about using kind words and taking care of each other. Despite my efforts to have times of sharing, prayer and games, there is still nothing like the solidarity in the 7th grade class that I see in the 6th and 10th grade classes. If nothing else, I have finally realized that I can do nothing on my own. I can plan as many team building activities as will fit into our schedule, but I need to spend more time praying for my 7th grade class. God is the only thing that is going to change these kids. I think about the college group I had and the small group I have at New Covenant and what an amazing blessing it is to be part of a group of Christians that are earnestly seeking God and fellowship with each other. I want them to experience a piece of God's family, but I need His help to teach them how to be a family. We did have a class lunch together this past Friday. About half of my 16 students crowded around one little picnic table. I am so busy here teaching 7 classes that I don't always have enough time to just enjoy my students outside of class. This was the first lunch where I could just enjoy them and I didn't have to talk to any of them about saying mean things to each other. I am convinced that the change I have started to see is due to prayer and my giving up the idea that I could think of the perfect activities and classroom management to create a family out of the 7th grade class. This past Tuesday we had an all school Independence Day Celebration. Each class sang a song, performed a dance or read stories to celebrate the history of the Dominican Republic. I was so proud of my seventh graders for their performance. It was well rehearsed and quite entertaining. Please pray that God continues to work in my seventh grade classroom. There are certainly the wildest class in the school at the moment, but they have great potential.

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!