long overdue

It's so hard to believe that I've lived in the Dominican Republic for almost three months. Time has flown. So many things have happened since I've been here. Most of you know by now that I have decided to stay here until Septemeber 1 and train for leadership. I'm super excited to see where this will lead. Here's a summary of my time here so far:
March - May: I taught Level 2 kids at our English Institute. The English Institute is a school the organization runs. Here kids go to school for half days. If they want to learn English they can come to the Institute for an additional hour of schooling. My first few months I taught alone which was madness. They tried me everyday and knew just how to get on my nerves. My first week I didn't think I'd make it to the end of May. Well, I did. I am so glad I didn't quit. I am also thankful that Joe co-taught with me the last two weeks. He was a huge help. I learned so much during those few months of teaching. I didn't realize how much the kids meant to me until graduation night. They were the first graduating class from the Institute. Two of the kids that live here, Christopher (18) and Jessica (12) were in that Level 4 class. I was so proud of them. Various other awards were also given out to the other level students. I have so many pictures from that night haha. Bryson made a slideshow of pictures from the whole year. Watching that video reminded me of how awesome it was teaching the kids and what an amazing experience it was even through the rough days.
Summer: Summer has officially begin. We just finished our first week of the summer program. The Christian program is here in Monte Cristi for four weeks and then switches to the other site in Jaibon. At that time, the Secular and Social Work programs, who are in Jaibon now, will switch to this site. This week (M-Th) we did VBS camps at a sister church of the church we attend here in Monte Cristi in the mornings. We have four different stations (rec, art, english vocab, and reading/story time) set up and we divide the kids into four groups: younger boys, younger girls, older boys, and older girls. The kids all go to each section for 20-25 minutes. Overall the camp was amazing. It was awesome to watch how the numbers grew from the first day. There was unfortunately a tragedy one day right after camp had ended. Two lives were lost after a moto accident occured, one being one of the chidren who had been attending the camp. The rest of the children were sent to Santiago for treatmeat and are bad condition. Please pray that God be with the families involved. After some debate, about whether it was appropriate to return, we went and finished the last day. The funeral was that morning so many attended that service instead but while the people were walking by the church we were at to the burial site, some waived and smiled at us. I was glad they did that. In the afternoon, we went to a Batey. A Batey is a small community of families who live off of plantation farms. Workers were hired to field the rice and banana plantations. The companies they worked for made these communities for the workers to stay. Many of the companies have left but the communities still remain. We would pull up in our bus and kids would coming running from every direction. They basically see this camp as what we would see Disney as. I had been to two other Bateys before but for some reason this one was my favorite. I hung out with the two boys groups alot. They were absolutely crazy but so much fun. I jumped in with the younger boys (around 8yro) and played soccer with them. It was fun to run around and be crazy with them.
Dajabon y la playa: Fridays are culture/fun days. In the morning we go to Dajabon and tour through the market. It's about an hour away from Monte Cristi and we spend about an hour there observing and becoming part of the market. (I'll write a separate entry to elaborate more on this later.) After the border, we go to lunch and then head for the beach.

Gotta run for now but I'll try and update more soon. Updates hopefully will be more frequent. Thanks for reading. Oh and random adventure for the week...I went tarantula hunting. Maybe this week I'll catch one!