7/19/2013

My fondness for computers grows dimmer day by day as I try to figure things out on this new Windows 8.
Couldn't use the printer until I loaded it on and then it wouldn't work but kept pulling up this onenote thing that I have never used.  Sister Yturralde was here and with her experience, which is extensive, she finally got it to work an hour and a half later.  So my big plans of getting alot of work done on the history just vanished into thin air. Oh well!  I wish some of this Dominican laid-back stuff would run off on me...
  Thursday was a good day as I was able to get much of the writing for the history. Somehow I just managed to loose half of the blog.  We had a lesson at night that went from 6:30 to almost 9:00 because some of the kids stayed after class to practice more.  This time we were locked out of the church and had to wait half an hour in the rain for the missionaries to return with the keys to the building.  Five of the students were there waiting for us which is very unusual.  Jose, formerly referred as "cool kid" was even there early - he usually comes half an hour before the class ends.  I have actually come to be quite fond of him. His little buddy, Ralph, is out in the country for the summer so we may not see him before we leave.  They were to play one of their recital pieces at the end of class.  There were only two who could do it!  They have four weeks left so here is hoping they will actually work on getting them learned.  One of the funniest things happened with Jose.  He called me over to listen to his piece which he knew well.  So he had the hymn book open to these two hymns and as he played I realized, even with my lack of Spanish skill, that he wasn't reading the music on either one of them.  He had the pieces memorized.  They so often do that but then if they get mixed up they can't find their place on the music page so we encourage them to read the music to play.  He didn't realize the book wasn't open on the right page so it was pretty funny when I asked him if he was reading the music or playing from memory.Caught in the act!!  I would say at least half of our students memorize the music or they play by ear.  We have three older women in our class there that are so sweet but they all struggle with the piano.  One of them asked why it was that her children seemed to learn so fast but she didn't.  It helps me to realize that older minds just don't learn as quickly as young minds do.  Somehow I thought more mature students would do better - but they don't.  When I compare it with how much I have worked on Spanish and still know so little I completely understand where they are coming from.

7/17/2013

  A free morning to work on the history report!  We usually spend many mornings a week at the temple so with it being closed I have more time to work on the report.  The problem is on this new computer we have Windows 8 which I know nothing about.  Trying to relearn how to do everything is driving me crazy. I have so little computer skill anyway..
   We spent the afternoon and night teaching at Las Caobas.  Last week their lessons were the same day we had a tropical storm pass by so the rain kept us and everyone else away.  So this week many of the students were missing from the two classes. Almost every week we have little kids in class who are being tended by one of our students.  Sometimes are really good and others not so good.  Tonight we had a little girl that thought she should be able to play the teclado.  We kept unplugging the ones she sat at because it was so distracting to everyone else but she just kept plugging them back in.  She was probably two or three and cute as can be but was she ever determined to play the keyboard like everyone else in class.
   

7/16/2013

Eight hours of traveling and teaching and we are finally home.  It gets pretty tiring at times but it is good to be able to serve.  The Grays didn't go to Los Llanos with us today because they had to take Pres. and Sister Bair to the airport so they met us out there.  We only had three of the normal ten students show up.  You never know why they come sometimes and not others!  But it was great because there were three of us there to help and with only three students we had good one on one time with them.  Richard, who thinks he is playing a song perfectly when he never counts was a hard sell on the importance of counting but he finally caught on.
  Since we didn't have the Grays with us we didn't have to come back into the center of the city so we were actually early for our lessons at Santo Domingo.  I was visiting in the mission office with the Ewells when one of our students came down and said they couldn't start without me.  Ha!  I think he is afraid of Scott.  Wouldn't be the first person to be afraid of him! They don't know what a softy he really is..These students have known for a month that we will be having a recital this next month but worse is that we are leaving them.  Michelle has not been to a week of lessons so we have been worried about her - not really knowing what her life is like but guessing it might not be too good.  She wants to Skype with me when we leave.  That will be great so maybe we can keep track of her for a little while.  She is very talented and so self motivated that she learns very quickly and all of the other students think it is unfair.  If they practiced as much as she does they would be playing well too.  It was a good two hour practice for most of them and at the end they were to play one of their recital pieces.  Were they ever nervous!  Hope it helped get some nervousness out of them but probably not.
 One of our older sisters who dropped out of the class because she had to work came in to say hello.  It was so good to see her!
The temple is closed for two weeks so that frees up our mornings to work on other things but I will miss the peace I feel there.

7/15/2013

You know when I said we had seen everything on the back of a moto - well this was a first.  A toilet!
We have been off line for a week or so with no internet because our computer died and when we realized it would take months to get it serviced (assuming that it could be) we decided to just get a new one.  They are cheaper in the States but I have so many things I need to get done before we leave on the computer.  And to think I would have to go six weeks without talking to the kids was the last straw.. Our phone calls are made through gmail.  So after a frustrating week of looking for a computer and getting the information off our old computer we are finally back in business.  Sister Johnson from Park City was kind enough to see if she could get our old one working, then got all of the information she could from it before programing our new computer.  What a woman.  We are in debt to her forever!  It took many days of her time to do that for us.
All I can remember about last week is fretting about how I was going to do the area history report with no information from my computer - and no computer.  On Friday night we did go out with the Merinos to a fun little Chinese place:

  She is really a beautiful woman - auburn hair and bright blue eyes.  The two of them are so much fun to be around.  They served three years in Hondorus as mission president and wife and say the Dominican is crime free in comparison.  Would hate to be there!
  The president here has decided to use the military police to help with the crime.  Well it kind of backfired as the criminals went after the heads of the police and the president's daughter's body guard.  They killed three or four. Now we see this:

We followed one on the way to Oriental lessons.  Scott kept telling me to take a picture and we were much closer than that first picture looks.  The men setting in the back of the truck had on masks and were pretty formidable looking.  I was afraid they would shoot us!  But they finally turned their heads so I took a quick shot.  We decided they were wearing masks so no one would recognize them and try to hunt them down.
On the way home we were stopped by backed up traffic where no less than ten of these military police had a car stopped and surrounded at rifle point.  It was scary!  They are all over on the streets wearing their bullet proof vests and carrying their rifles. Until then I hadn't seen as many as as there were in the beginning.
If we are supposed to feel safer, I don't think it is working!
   We picked up the kids for church - only to find two new ones also.  These were two little girls, five and four.  They were all dressed up for church and climbed in the back seat with the others so we took them and no one came looking for them so I guess it was okay.. Hope they come again so I can take a picture because they were such cute kids.  We walked in the church as the primary president was coming out.  She just looked at all of the kids and started laughing.  We probably bring half of the primary each week.  How we love them!
   MONDAY
We first of all called to have them reset our password so we could hook up to the internet and now we are in business!!  Then we picked up Sister Dunford to go to San Cristobal to the doll factory.  I wanted to look at their little nativity scenes which are so unique to this area.  It was fascinating to see their little "factory" at work.  Each worker was putting on hair, a shirt, a head, flowers, etc.  The shop was about the size of a small bedroom.  Then we went to her little store which was about the size of a big bathroom and just crammed with things that she and her husband had manufactured.  Sister Dunford and I are standing in front of the store - which looks much bigger than it is inside!

  

7/3/2013 A day with the kids

Kids visit!  We picked up the usual "take to church" gang on Wednesday morning and brought them into the city and to our apartment.  That is back row:  Leni, Gregory and Carlos.  Front row: Pamela, Cati, and Eliana.

I didn't realize how small William's girls are until these normal size girls started going to church with us.  Pamela is five and taller than Eliana who is ten.  We will always love these kids and hope that some day we get to see them again.  They wanted to come to our apartment before we went to the park.  Leni was fascinated with the keyboard and spent most of her time here with song settings that played by themselves and she would pretend she was playing - pretty funny.  She had never seen anything like a keyboard.  Eliana wanted to exercise with my Richard Simmons video - she never missed a step.  The boys spent lots of their time looking out the window with the binoculars.

Then we went to the park across from the temple that they have spent a fortune redoing.  None of the kid's stuff is finished yet but they do have a big area filled with exercise machines of different kinds.

Scott has decided he needs to go every day to work out so he can regain some arm strength!
The pictures of the kids working out won't load for some reason.
Then we went across the street to the temple grounds where there is all kinds of beautiful lawn.  The kids were in heaven just having somewhere to run and play.

Then of course the girls wanted their pictures taken (this is the typical Dominican pose)

Then it was time for lunch so we headed for McDonalds.  These kids love french fries! 
Making sugar cookies was fairly disastrous, but they did have fun.  The dough was too soft and by the time we added enough flour so they could cut them out - and with the girls that was a lot - they tasted awful.  But all in all they had a great time.

Then it was time to take them back home because we had two lessons in Las Caobas.

In the elevator with their "delicious" cookies - ready to head back home.
We didn't even have time to paint nails.  All in all it was precious time that we got to spend with them!  We are so grateful for their being a part of our lives here.

7/2/2013

  Home at last!  The Los Llanos days are always long but today was much worse than usual because it was raining so hard every low spot on the freeway, and there are many here, were a foot deep in water.  It was so scary plowing through those.  Scott didn't seem to be bothered driving even though he kept making comments about fishtailing and running into the back of the car in front of us, but the rest of us in the car were nervous as can be.  I don't know why it can't just rain just normal amounts here.  Or why some of this rain doesn't fall at home where it is so dry...It was actually better in Los Llanos than it was here in the city.  We have forded many streams to get to the building in Los Llanos!  Richard was so excited to show me that he could play a song in the simplified hymn book.   When he started to play he didn't hit one note right.  It was a song they are not familiar with here so he didn't realize he was playing it wrong and he is just learning to read the music and find the keys on the keyboard.  So we worked on it for some time!
    Coming back was much better!  We got everything unloaded at Santo Domingo and only three students showed up.  Have no idea where all of the others were..  It did give us time to work with the ones who were there though.  Coolest thing happened:  Michelle, goth girl, had gone to the bookstore on the temple grounds and bought two hymn books, one in English and one in Spanish.  She went to church on Sunday and they had sung "How Great Thou Art" and she loved it so much she is determined to learn it even though in the hymn book it is pretty hard for her.  Then after class she said she had something for me.  She said she had been to the store and when she passed this "dulce" she thought of me and just had to buy it.  What a sweet thing for her to do!  Scott says it tastes kind of like fruit cocktail but a bit sweeter.  Just to see the change in  her is the most amazing and heartwarming thing. 

7/1/2013

How fast can a day free of teaching keyboarding go?  Pretty darn fast!  It was wonderful to have some time to study and practice - and get the car serviced.  Made some cookies for FHE 4th of July celebration.  Scott went to Spanish class and I stayed home to finish the cookies and waited for him to come get me for the missionary investigator hour ( you pretend to be non-members so the missionaries in the CCM can teach you) but he never came back.  His phone was here so he couldn't call so I watched out the window for 1/2 and hour so I could hurry down to the car but just like the pot that never boils if you watch it - he never drove around that corner.  The Yturraldes were going to pick me up for FHE but he came just before we left.  We had a wonderful 4th of July program that left us all a little depressed about the high intentions of the writers of the Declaration of Independence and what our country has become today.