Week 6 in the DR!

This week was so long and hard!  Mainly because we had our Valentine's party on Tuesday and from then on the kids were cranky and just wanted more parties haha!  I posted more pictures from our Valentine's Day party in the blog post before this one so scroll down to see that :) On Valentine's Day a group of us decided to go to our favorite place, Tio Pan, to spoil ourselves with pizza, smoothies and treats :)

 

Today I wanted to focus a lot of my post on Jose Luis, who I spent a lot of time with this week most nights :)  He is the cutest little human.  His laugh and smile kill me every time I see him!  He is one of my after-school students and is such a little punk during class.  Anytime we see him outside of class though, he instantly screams "TEACHA AMBA!!!" and sprints towards me to give me a giant hug.  He also is a huge fan of giving kisses on the cheek haha.  He has the most perfect teeth, is so small and energetic and is seriously my favorite little kid here which is saying a lot!  His favorite little phrase to say is "I love you teacha Amba" and it melts my heart into a million pieces every time he says it.  

Valentine's Day!

Valentine's Day was so so fun!  We decided to have a little party with our Javillar and after school kids, and they loved it!  My station during the party was a photo booth, I loved getting so many pictures of their cute faces! These pictures are of some of my Javillar 1st grade class!  I spend 2 hours with them everyday, and am loving them more and more each day.  Our party got shortened unexpectedly once parents started randomly showing up to pick up their kids but it was still so fun! All of them were wearing lots of red which was so cute!
                   

And these are our after school kids!  They are crazy and all wanted me to hold them for a picture haha!  All of these kids live right in our little neighborhood so it is so fun to teach them and then find them after school to play with them!

 

Today made me so grateful for love, especially for the love I am gaining for these kids!  They really do come from the hardest of circumstances, and our eyes are opened to that every single day as we see their homes and everything they go through.  I love bringing them joy, and am so grateful for all of the joy that they bring to me even if most of the time they are the naughtiest little kids.  I love them so much and know how important they all are and how much potential they have!  Happy Valentines Day!

Week 5 in the DR!

This week flew by so quickly!  Teaching is getting better little by little, and the fact that the kids are starting to get to know me (and I'm starting to get to know them) really well makes all the difference.  There's nothing I love more than when we walk into class every day and the kids yell "teacha Amba!!" and run up to give me a big hug.  These cuties are so hard, but I love them so much.  The third picture is Ariel, just look at his eyelashes!!! So so obsessed with those eyelashes haha.  Also the last picture shows a few kids that are helping us hold up the rules of English class: 1. English only, 2. Hands to yourself, 3. Eyes on teacher, 4. Sit in your chair, 5. Have fun and be happy, 6. I love you teacher.

On Monday night I was craving a pineapple (as usual), and Angel was standing outside of our gate again so he joined us for the walk to the fruit stand!  We said hi to the cute boy in the pictures below who was walking around in cute little pink undies haha.  I also snapped a quick picture of the man who runs the shop, he is so kind to us and always cuts up our pineapples for us into little slices.  We love him and he is such a sweet man.  On the way home we said hi to a little girl in some of my friends' classes, she was running around with her two cute brothers.  I saw them eyeing my pineapple so I gave them each a slice and watched them quickly eat it up.  It was a humble reminder to me of how hungry these kids really are and what their home-lives are like.

Tuesday night we went to the basketball courts for a little bit to say hi to the kids there!  The boy that always calls himself my "novio", or boyfriend (Kevin) was there and hung around me all night which was super cute.  He's in the pictures below!  Right when we were about to leave for the night, a mom and two little girls (1 was her daughter in the bottom left picture, and 1 was just a little friend who is in the bottom right picture) walked in and we had to say hi!  The mom and her daughter were two of the people right outside of our gates the very first day we came here, and we discovered that it was her daughter's (Julianne's) 3rd birthday!  So we stayed and played with her for a while, she's is so cute and her mom kept asking up to keep coming back to play with her. It was so fun!

These are some of our after school kids! Ruth is the cute girl in the first picture, I got a picture of her mid-running up to me to give me a hug and yelling "teacha Amber!!".  She is for sure one of my favorite students, love her so much!  Abby is the crazy little one in the next two pictures, she is always making silly faces and smiling from ear to ear.  And the last picture below is the cutest little Kevin, we are obsessed with him.

Saturday it was raining on and off all day, so we skipped the beach and decided to explore around the "central park" area here in Puerto Plata!  There wasn't too much to see but we walked around a cathedral, ate ice cream, walked around cute tourist shops (where I found my nephew a little Cars drum) and walked to get tacos :)

Sunday made for a crazy morning haha.  We got up and got ready to church, and since it was still raining on and off we asked our neighbor Papi (the taxi driver) to give us a ride to church!  We are so glad we did that because as soon as we got there the gates were all locked up outside of the building.  So we had him take us to the Stake Center just to see if there were any meetings going on there.  Turns out it was Stake Conference that day and no one had told us haha, so we were there like an hour early!  The actual meeting went super long too, and we can't understand the spiritual spanish vocabulary haha.  So we sat there and wrote in our journals, read scriptures and talks on our phone and made it through!  Afterwards we walked down the street to a bakery called Tio Pan, which we had heard was super yummy but didn't know when to go there since it is kinda far away from our house.  But since we were already right there by the Stake Center (which is on the same street as Tio Pan) we headed over to eat!  It was seriously so yummy and had the best pizza, smoothies (the pineapple and strawberry smoothie is the best thing in the whole world) and cheap, yummy pastries and breads.  I have a feeling we will be here very often haha, it is by far our new favorite place to eat here!