The Craziness of Life

Well, I'm sitting here in my room getting nothing done, so I thought I would update my blog. Always a good thing to do when you're distracted, right? :) I am leaving to go to a student's house for dinner in about an hour, so I have some time to kill.

Where to even start? We are in our sixth week of school here at Santiago Christian School. My kids are starting to get a little more used to the way I do things. The problem is, sometimes I don't know how I do things! It's coming together though. We play a lot of games in my classroom (learning ones of course), and they love that! One of my boys always asks if we can play "Math around the World," as he says. My answer to him is "Maybe, we'll see," in which he responds, "You ALWAYS say that!" My answer definitely reminds me of something my parents used to say to me, and I'm sure I sounded a lot like my little boy too :). They make me laugh every day. One of the little boys split his pants open today. He tried to staple them shut himself. 3rd grade boy+stapler=not good. It definitely did not hold his pants together, so I went to the nurse to see if she had safety pins. She did, but the rip in his pants was too big. She ended up sewing his pants together! Our nurse not only helps sick kids, she sews split pants up too! When one boy hear that, he said, "She sewed your pants?!?! She's a doctor, not a sewer!" Another girl wrote in her journal that she goes to the beach to get a "tang." So next time you are in the sun, enjoy your "tang." :) They say the cutest things! I am definitely starting to speak like a Dominican though. Instead of "Mindy's pants," I have caught myself saying, "The pants of Mindy!" AAAHHH! Oh well.

One thing most of you probably don't know is that Dominicans hate the rain. My kids will get out their umbrellas to walk 100 feet in the rain from one building to the other. You rarely see people out in it unless they have to be. On Sunday, it was raining off and on. My roommate Amanda and I really wanted to walk and get empanadas (a meat-filled pastry) and frozen yogurt. It wasn't raining when we left, and of course we didn't bring umbrellas. We bought our empanadas and started to walk to get frozen yogurt. I bet you can guess what happened. Yep, it started raining. It wasn't pouring, but it was raining pretty good. So here we are, two white girls walking down the street IN THE RAIN eating empanadas! I'm sure the people who walked by us thought we were ridiculous! It was exciting though and makes for a good memory now.

The Lord has given me many more moments in which I have seen how great He is and been reminded of His faithfulness. My kids' favorite song right now is "Our God is an Awesome God." It is so cool t hear 21 third graders, many of whom do not live in Christian homes, shouting out that our God is awesome. I will have to videotape it sometime. What a great reminder it is to me that our God indeed is awesome! He has given me more beautiful sunrises and sunsets. The day we found out the staff member died, the sky that night was gorgeous. It reminds me of the Twila Paris song that says "God is in Control." He sure is, even when it doesn't seem like it. I am so glad He cares about us. I'm sorry if you are getting sick of sunset pictures, but some of these are too amazing to pass up!
Sunday night. Isn't our God creative?
One morning last week. This is from my bedroom window.

We finally have furniture! We still need a few more pieces, but we are getting closer. Amanda and I bought desks on Saturday. We opened mine on Sunday to try to put it together. Let's just say it's still sitting in pieces on the floor :). Hopefully we will figure it out soon! Here is a few pictures of our couches and our dining room table. They double as clothes dryers!
I will try to take more normal pictures again soon. If you look closely, you will notice bright yellow plastic bags on the furniture too. In this country, they use so many bags when you buy groceries! We have a TON of them and we've only been here a month and a half. If you buy three bags worth of groceries, you will probably end up with twelve bags, and that's not an exaggeration! It makes me laugh, that's for sure.

Thank you to all who have been praying for the family of the man who died on Sunday, Rane. He was the sole income provider for not only his immediate family but also his extended family. Please pray that their needs would be met. Continue to pray with me that I would be able to reach my students and that they would have open hearts. I really appreciate your prayers!

Please Pray with us

Hello on this Sunday morning. I just wanted to ask you all to join all the families and staff at SCS in prayer this morning. Renee, the driver at the school, was in a car accident last night and died. He is married and has at least one child. They are holding a visitation today and a funeral this afternoon. Please be in prayer for the family and friends during this very tough time.

God is Faithful!

Hello all. My brain is full, so I won't be writing too much or too intelligently this post, but I wanted to let you know a little bit about life here lately. The one thing I have been most overwhelmed by is God's faithfulness. He is continually with me and providing for me and showing me that He cares. He will never leave me. I am learning to let go. I am learning to trust. I am learning that I can't be such a people pleaser. I am learning that He gives me good days in the midst of the hard ones to remind me that He is there and that He cares. I have both good days and bad days with my students. The last two days have been amazing, and it totally has made me realize that God is in control and He knows what I need. He has blessed me with two great days with my students. They are really chatty, so that's always a problem, but the last two days have been better. I started to lose my voice two and a half weeks ago and it is still bad. I can talk, but I can't really sing and by the end of the day it's pretty scratchy sounding. I think it's partly from having to talk above 21 super chatty third graders. Hopefully we will continue to have more good days with less chatter so my voice can come back!

I definitely feel like I am learning more than my students. I love being able to tell them in the morning, "Miss Seeman is having a great day today. Who can tell me why?" I love their answer back to me. They now tell me "Because you spent time talking with God this morning!" I love it! It brings tears to my eyes just thinking about it. It is so true. I can be having a lousy day but have a good attitude because the Lord has helped me to get my heart right. I have been learning a lot about surrender and giving Him all of me. I have been learning a lot about trusting Him that when I surrender, He will honor that. It has been so good.

One day I will try to post some of the funny adventures of living here in the DR, like trying to cross the street without being killed when you walk for forever to pay your electricity bill only to find out you could have paid it at a location much closer. Or when I asked my students what a synonym is and one little boy raised his hand and said, "It's the stuff you put in your coffee that makes it taste really good!" I do have to say that cinnamon sounds a lot like synonym. I love being able to work with students with a different language as their first language even though it brings challenges. It is cute to see "tree hundred" on their math sheets and "a baby sheep is called a land." I love them a lot! Here are some pictures from math centers on Monday. They love to work together in groups, though it gets a little crazy at times!
Thinking hard about place value. They love whiteboards!
Let's see, did we get it right? :)

God has given me many moments where all I can say is "Wow!" Here are some pictures I took from my apartment recently of both the sunset and the sunrise. He gives us beautiful pictures everyday to remind us of His faithfulness and that He cares for us. My prayer is that you would see Him in these incredible reminders of the great God we serve!
The view of the sunrise on Monday out my bedroom window. I love the views God gives me in the morning!
Sunset from our roof. These colors just blow my mind! I would have never thought to put pink in the sky!
A broader view of the same sunset.

Thank you to all who are praying for me. Please pray that I would be a light to my students. Pray too that I would learn to balance school and having a life outside of school. Those who know me know I'm a bit of an overachiever :), but I don't want to burn myself out. I am excited to see how God will use me here in the next few days and weeks. Thanks for being interested in what is happening here!

Switching Websites

I now have a new blog because people were typing the other one wrong and getting sites they shouldn't. Sorry if it caused any confusion. I will try to figure out how to post the information from the other one over here, if I can figure that out. Thank you for all who are following my blog. It means a lot to know people are praying for me and thinking about me. Things here are going well, though they are sometimes tough and difficult. I will try to write more this weekend about life here.