house cleaning

The day before I moved in to our new house, a group of friends came over and helped us clean the house from top to bottom and fix up the yard. They were such a huge blessing as it was a huge job.

Here are Nany and Jhon inside the house. Notice the hose and the floor full of water. :-)

Here is Chulo taking a water break in the shade after pulling out old bushes.

I will post some pictures soon of the house now that we are all moved in. I am still working on sewing some curtains, etc, and getting things organized.

finger paint

A few weeks ago the kids had a grand time painting with finger paint.

It started out as lots of bright colors but ended up all mixed together as brown.

I was pleased to see a few of the kids practicing writing their names in the finger paint.

Isaias has all the letters there, but they are in the wrong order. :-)

Llaves

Each week at school we study a "letter of the week". The kids learn lots of words that start with that letter, practice writing the letter, and do activities that have to do with that letter. A few weeks ago we were studying the letter "LL" and I made a puzzle activity with llaves (keys). I had a bunch of old keys and I traced them on butcher paper and then colored the tracings with bright colors. The kids loved trying to find the matching key for each tracing and also tried to find which keys would fit into the doors at the school. :-)

April Birthdays

On Friday we celebrated April birthdays with blueberry muffins at school.


Katerin turned 3, I turned 26 and Adrian turned 6.

My birthday

My birthday was on wednesday and I wasn't expecting much, what with the wedding taking first priority this year. :-) I received a box of Thin Mints in the mail from my parents which was a WONDERFUL surprise! Then, on my birthday, I had to spend the whole day in the Capital completing the process for my permanent Dominican residency. When I arrived back in Jarabacoa at 8:30 pm I figured that my birthday had been wasted in the Immigration building and there was no time to do anything fun. However, much to my great surprise and delight, Cristian picked me up and took me to a friends house where he had a whole surprise party waiting for me! A bunch of my friends were there and we had dinner together. It was so fun and I felt so special and loved. To top it all off he had purchased this beautiful, delicious cake for me.

It turned out to be a good birthday after all. :-)

Please Help!! Special Donation Request.

This is our playground. From far away it looks beautiful, especially since it just got a fresh coat of paint.

Now take a look at the slide.

Not so beautiful, right? Our slide has looked like this for about a year now and it is turning into a hazard for the kids. We are asking for donations to be able to buy a new slide for our playground. We estimate that it will cost about $200. If you would like to make a donation please make checks payable to Students International and include a note on a separate piece of paper indicating that it is for Mata Gorda School playground. Please send checks to:

Students International
PO Box 2733
Visalia, CA 93279

Thank You!!!

Fun Sunny Day Activity

This past week we had a wonderful group come down from the Chicago area. They brought with them so much love for the kids, great ideas for projects and WATER BALLOONS!!!! I think that some of the kids had never played with water balloons before and we all had so much fun. We started off the activity with a water balloon toss to see who could toss the balloon the farthest without it breaking. After two round of that, we teachers had lots of fun throwing the remaining water balloons at the kids. :-) What a great activity! We will definitely have to do this again during the summer.