Last night was the celebration of the 5th Anniversary of Doulos Discovery School. It has been an amazing journey to be a part of something so new that God is doing here. It was also lots of fun to dress up and eat a really, really fancy dinner (we don't do that very often). There were 5 people who have been with the school for all 5 years. One of them is Fransico, the day guard. He is pictured here. They recieved an all expenses paid trip to the beach for the weekend. Typical of most Dominicans in Jarabacoa, he has never been to the beach or seen the ocean. I am so excited for him to be pampered, though I know it will be hard for him to experience so much abundance after a long life of poverty. It was so much fun to remember...

Vacation!

Easter break was amazing. We got to camp on the beach for four days. We only got to snorkel about a day and a half of that because a cold front from Florida made the ocean so scary that the Dominican Republic's North Coast was closed for two days. It was very refreshing and gave me the little boost I needed. I also spent one of the best days ever at a nearby river in Jarabacoa. Check out the pictures under friends on my picture page. The quote for this week:
"Guess What? Guess What?"
...Pause...
"We live here!"

Practicing new stuff...

Today I put into practice one of the things I learned in my Multiple Intelligence masters class. I gave the kids an option of how they wanted to do the activity - write, draw, act, or build. They picked the one they thought they were the best at and loved most. Then they had to come up with something that represented a part of our project on Australian aniamls or something they learned. Check out some of the pics of the drawings and the things built. They are awesome. It is so neat to be able to apply what I am learning in my masters classes to see improvement in my students.

Master's Class

I am in the capital again for another class. This class in on Multiple Intelligence in the classroom. I have learned a lot. Especially differentiating instruction which, for those of you non-teachers, means teaching to kids abilities and not where they are supposed to be. It has been a very interesting class. One of the spatial ways we learned to teach all sorts of subject areas and interests is through mathmatical oragami. It's not animals, it's shapes. The picture is of some of the shapes I learned to make with one of the teachers, Rachel. She is 72 and is studying her Doctorate right now. Can you imagine all the changes and fads she's seen over 50+ years of teaching? It's very inspirational.