Learning Spanish.

I want to report that my Spanish is coming along. I am being told more often than not that people can understand what I am saying, no matter how rough it might sound. In fact, the other day at Eric's school I was able to talk to several of the other moms in Spanish. I have heard it said that the best way to learn another language is by complete immersion. The problem here is that I am only about waist deep in Spanish. You see, we speak English at home. We have always done this and to change that would really have an effect on our communication (although, some days this might actually help our communication!) Also, we are trying to raise a bi-lingual kid and I am his only English connection. Oftentimes I slip in a little Spanish when I am asking him to do something like "mira" which means look or "sube" which means up, as in go up the stairs. He has even started using some Spanish words for things that I haven't taught him. Like the other day I asked him if he wanted water and he replied saying, "agua", so I guess he's really learning to use both languages. I use Spanish everyday when I talk on the phone or talk to my family here or take Eric to school or anytime I am out of the house, but I am using more English than I would like to admit. Just being here in the country has helped me expand my language skills. I mean, if I wasn't even trying I think I would improve just by the immersion factor.

I have found that I am a lot less self-conscious about speaking Spanish. I just pretty much stick my neck out there and most times I start speaking without putting too much thought into it. Every once in awhile I wonder how ridiculous my Spanish must sound. I'm just glad the people I talk to are gracious enough to not laugh outloud, at least in front of me. The other day I was at a birthday party and I was telling someone about the church we have been visiting and I said that I liked the message...or at least that's what I thought I said. What I actually said was that I liked the massage instead of message. The words sound similar and I had been using (several other times before I found out my error) the wrong word. O Dios Mio!

The funniest thing is when someone from Eric's family tells me how to say some kind of Dominican slang idiom and I try to say it. There is usually a lot of laughter and then they want me to demostrate by setting me up to say it with someone else just so we can all laugh about it. I'm used to people laughing about the way I say idioms in English OR Spanish as I can hardly ever get one right in my own language.

I am pretty much able to say anything I want to say. It just might not sound very eloquent or educated, but at least I can get my point across. And, everyday I learn something new. I carry around a little notebook in my purse where I can write down new words I hear, although some phrases are so strange to me that I can remember them without having to jot anything down. For example, the word for ride as in giving someone a ride somewhere is bola which is ball. So, when you are giving someone a ride in your car you are giving them a ball. Funny.

And, my listening comprehension is improving even without me noticing. The other day I realized I could understand most of a conversation I was listening to. Of course, there are times when I just don't have the mental effort to even try to understand and I let my mind wander off to daydreams about nonsensical things like new sandals or my to-do list or whether or not I answered a particular e-mail. But, last week at church I really tried my hardest to stay focused on the message (during which I was NOT getting a massage I am sad to say) and I understood most of it...I think...or as far as I know! So, I think it's really starting to click.

And, I have to add that I really thought the language was going to be one of my primary struggles. It really hasn't been. Of course, there are a lot of times when I have no idea what anyone is saying until my name pops into the conversation, but to be honest I am guilty of that in English too, from time to time. I can only imagine where I am going to be a year down the road.

Semana Cultural

All week long at Eric's colegio they have been celebrating the Dominican culture. This is leading up to 27 de Febrero, which is Independence Day here. On the 27th there will be Carnival, which is supposed to be a really crazy parade celebration for Independence. I'm learning that it is not kid-friendly, so we will be heading up to Jarabacoa for the long weekend. But, today there was a party at Eric's colegio for the kids and their family all morning long. It was such fun and great introduction to all things folkloric in the culture. The kids were all dressed up in costumes, most in folkloric dress. Little girls has scarves in their hair and the boys had rolled up jeans and straw hats. Eric dressed up like a "Campesino" which is the typical boy's costume depicting a country man from the past. He had on a straw hat, red scarf and carried a tambora, or drum.

The whole patio was decorated with typical Dominican things. A clothesline with clothes hanging out to dry, pots and pans and wooden bowls used to cook with, Dominican idioms decorating the walls, and lots of candies typical of the DR. I had a sugar stick that tasted like Coconut and a soft candy that is made with milk. After dancing to Merengue music and playing a few games, we were treated to a traditional Dominican dancing couple who danced on a bottle of rum. It's a very classic dance that I had seem before. Then, we ate Sancocho, arroz (rice) and aguacate (avocado), which is the most typical Dominican food you can eat. It's a thick soup or stew made with several kinds of meat and lots of veggies (sweet potato, white potato, yucca, plantains, etc.).
I was able to meet several other moms, which was great! Most I had little conversations in Spanish about mom and kids stuff. I met one woman whose son is a little younger than Eric and after we started our conversation in Spanish she told me in English we could talk in English. Well, we ended up talking the entire time about everything you can imagine. She is Dominican, but was raised in Spain and came back to the DR to live near her husband's family. It's kind of hard to explain, but she is the first Dominican woman I have met that is most like me in so many ways. We share a lot of the same philosophies about raising kids, which are a little different from how typical Dominican kids are raised. We exchanged phone numbers and decided to get together next week with our little boys.

It was fun to watch Eric at school today, as I was there from 9-12:30 for the party. He is so busy all of the time, going from one thing to the next. He would slide down the slide about 5 times and then walk over to where all of the things were for the kitchen display and open all of the pots and look inside, and then walk over to where his friends from class were gathered and then back onto something else, not spending more than a couple of minutes at each place and always moving. He was just kind of quietly going from one thing to the next. I kept thinking about how curious he is about everything and hoping he never loses that. I always kept thinking about how much he is probably like Eric when he was his age, curious about everything, not the least bit a troublemaker, and always on the move. I think it's one of the first times I have really seen his personality in comparison with other kids his age. Now I know why he basically collapses into bed at night. Well, I won't go on anymore, but here are some pictures from the day:

Eric with one of his classmates, Daniela. Behind them is his teacher Marissa, who is also in costume.

The little Campesino.

Playing with another little boy.

The kids art. Eric's doll is the bottom right one. His first piece of school art!

Comforting his cousin Paula Marie.
This was the cutest! Two kids from his class were dancing together and actually doing merengue!
The dancers who came to demonstrate traditional dancing.

Big Day!!

Well, our little boy started school, or colegio, yesterday! We found a great little pre-school that only takes kids up to 3 years old, so they really specialize in his age. They have lots of toys and are really organized in how they teach the kids things like colors, alphabet and counting. Of course, it's all in Spanish, so he is going to really be able to work on his Spanish language skills. I am sure he will soon surpass me in that department.

He did really well for his first day. I left him there alone for about 1/2 hour while I took Eric to work, and then when I got back I stayed with him for another 1 1/2 hours to see what they do with the kids. Today I was there for the first 20 minutes and left him, crying of course. I called back an hour later and they told me he was doing fine, playing and having fun. And, then when I went to pick him up at noon he was just sitting there playing and didn't even hardly look up when I sat down next to him. Everytime I am there and see him participating in directed playing and learning I get so excited about all he is going to learn and how much fun he is going to have.

And, I am going to have a little breather a couple of days a week. I was even able to go to the grocery store by myself today. And, I am hoping to start volunteering at the village I blogged about last week.

I also gave him a little haircut. He has these little whispy curls which look so cute, but were getting out of control and making him look a little bit girlish (dare I say). I saved the hair in a little baggie, just like my mom did with me. Of course, the whole time I was snipping away he was completely unaware watching sesame street and sucking his thumb.

Tomorrow I have my Bible study group in the morning, so I am going to leave Eric for the full morning. I'm sure he won't even miss me!

Pictures, pictures.

Here are some pictures of our apartment. Sorry it has taken so long to get these up. I just finished the curtains in the living room last week.

Our living room. The black and white wall followed us from Boston.

Part of the kitchen from the dining room door. The door to the dining room is a heavy wooden swinging door, which is fun for little Eric to swing in and out.

Eric's room.

This is our room.

And, this is the view from outside our window. We have a lot of construction going on all around us. So we have to contend with more dirt than usual and a lot of noise. But, at least the tree across the street is always in bloom!

The guest bathroom.

Also, you might have noticed that I put up a flickr sidebar slideshow. I am planning to keep it fairly updated with pictures. I am in the middle of updating it with all of the pictures from our move, the Holidays and trip to Puerto Rico before we got here.

Sunscreen, Missionaries and Good Coffee.

There has been so much happening around here lately that I haven't had time to blog, which is probably a good thing, since it is an indication that "life" is becoming normal. Last week was an amazing week with a lot of activity.

First and foremost I learned how to make a cup of normal coffee. We only have a stovetop espresso maker (a Greca), like most Dominican families, and I have been craving a regular strong cup of coffee. Dominicans drink a lot of coffee, which I love, but they drink cafe con leche (espresso with warm milk) in the mornings and straight shots of espresso with lots of sugar in the afternoons after lunch. I have been enjoying cafe con leche in the mornings, but haven't been able to shake the craving for that cup of coffee. So, putting my vast amount of knowledge learned from frequenting Starbucks all these years I remembered you can mix a shot of espresson with hot water to make an excellent cup of coffee. Ahhh...problem solved.

Next fun thing is that I have made friends! I sound like a third grader who comes home from their first day of school declaring that she has made friends to her mom, and last week that is precisely how I felt, too! I met a woman named Ina who is here in the DR doing mission work with a small village outside the city. Once I visit the village I am planning to devote an entire post to the work she is doing. She invited me to a Bible study she attends with other American women living here to serve the country. Thru Ina I met Kirsten who lives very close to us and has three young children. We rode to and from the Bible study together and immediately hit it off. We are planning a playdate at the pool with her youngest and Eric soon. If only it would stop raining! The women at the Bible study were all so friendly and accomodating. It's just great to be in a place where everyone else has been in your shoes adjusting to the new culture. I'm here under different circumstances than the women I met, but many of our experiences learning to adapt and letting go of certain cultural expectations are shared and I found it encouraging to see that they have adapted so well.

We also FINALLY made it to the beach, so you won't have to hear me complain about it anymore and neither will Eric. We went last Sunday afternoon for a couple of hours, and although it was a cloudy day and the water wasn't very clear we all had a good time. Little Eric especially loved swimming and playing in the sand. Thank God he is past the age of putting sand in his mouth every 10 seconds!

We went back to a church we had been visiting and had a really relaxing, peaceful experience. I say this because going to church has been a very stressful experience for me pretty much since Eric was born. It's hard to manage a baby in church no matter the age (unless you have an angel child who will just quietly sit in your lap the whole time). I mean if it's not figuring out how where to feed him when he was an infant, it's trying to keep him quiet as a toddler. The thing is, he hasn't taken well to the nursery. Believe me, from about 9 months I have wanted him to be in the nursery, but he just hasn't liked it. That and he is pretty attached to me and doesn't want me to leave. So, as you can imagine visiting different churches hasn't been too fun. The churches here really want you to take your children to the nursery or Sunday School. They go out of their way to politely inform you where the nursery is located. I haven't wanted to force Eric to go if we are only visiting a church, but at some point Eric (papa) says he is disrupting us and we end up taking him to the nursery leaving the service and spending the rest of the service worried about him. A couple of times we have heard him crying in the service and a couple of times they have come out to get us. I know this is a phase and he is probably not going to have to go to therapy one day for this, but it's not easy sitting in the service knowing he is crying and having an even harder time understanding the sermon in Spanish because I am so distracted. I know I am rambling on about this, but I want to express how much more happy I was on Sunday when he did GREAT in the nursery and they said he had fun. AND, we both really enjoyed the service. We think we are going to go to this particular church regularly, and we already have a few friends who go there, as well.

Ok, the last thing noteworthy thing that happened last week was a proposal I got from Eric's aunt to teach an English course to professionals at the staffing company she owns. AND, she is going to pay me! So, we are working out the details. I am so excited about this and think the extra money will really help us out by at least paying for the preschool we have signed Eric up for, which begins next week. I will post more about that later, because this is a really long post and I want to share some pictures. See, I need to keep up better with the blog so the posts aren't so long!

Pictures from the beach:

Pictures of Paula Marie's 1st birthday:

Eric's sister Zoila with Paula Marie, the birthday girl.

I made ladybug cookies.

Trying to take a picture of all the kids at the party with all of the moms.

Here is a picture of Eric playing with another kid at the party. Notice the empanada he is shoving into his mouth. He must have snuck a dozen of them off of the table!

Dancing with Abuela. He was LOVING it. He definately got that gene from his Abuela.

Good Times Remembered

My friend, Kristi just tagged me to post a photo of the 4th picture from the 4th folder of my pictures. This is the first one I found, but when I went to actually upload it my pictures were resorted and the 4th picture of the 4th folder was a picture showing Little E's "wee-wee" and I didn't think that was appropriate to post in cyber-space, and this one is much cuter anyway.

It's a picture from the last day Kelly and I spent together in the fall with our kiddos in Boston before we moved. We went in to visit places I didn't want to miss seeing one last time before moving. These ducks are in the Boston Public Garden and are a tribute to the famous McCloskey book Make Way for Ducklings. Every kid should have a chance to play on the ducks when they are in Boston. What a fun day it was...thanks, Kelly. So many of my recent memories include you!

OK...so now I have to tag friends to do the same. You know I never do this, so don't disappoint! (I actually still owe my friend Sandy another tag thing that I keep forgetting to do...sorry!)

Consider yourself tagged Kelly, Sharla, Sandy, Laura and Amy!

Drip, Drip.

You know, there is something I have always taken for granted...until now. Access to running water. I really can't think of a time in my past when we were without water. I am sure it has been shut off by the plumber a few times when something was being fixed, but I can not recall one time when I came home to my apartment in Boston turned on the faucet and nothing came out.

And, being able to drink the water from the faucet is another luxury I will not take for granted again. We have to buy big bottles of drinking water. It doesn't sound like such a big deal, but I have to use this water to wash all of our vegetables and fruit and I sometimes have to add a drop of bleach to the cleaning water to make sure all of the bacteria is gone from our food. We even have to use this water to brush our teeth sometimes when we don't trust the water from the pipes. And, I have to give Ericito flouride drops each day because our drinking water in the U.S. is fortified with flouride, but bottled water is not.

Times have changed.

We are without water on a regular, but completely random and unpredicatable basis here in Santo Domingo. I have heard a couple of explanations from my familia. For one, the water comes down from the mountains and by the time it hits us has a very weak flow, meaning that we have little or no water pressure. So, the apartment complex shuts off the pump so that our holding tank (or bomba) can fill up, which I have calculated takes somewhere between four and six hours. I have also heard that the city just randomly shuts off the water supply because there really isn't enough water to go around and this is the way they conserve it. Well, for whatever reason there might be we have had an especially scarce week with water. We were without water at some point each day and some days it was off and on all day.

Usually the maintenance guy in our apartment will call us up and tell us that they are going to turn the water off, so we have just enough time to run around and fill up buckets in the kitchen sink and in each of the bathrooms. But, last week "it" happened without warning. I was in the shower soaping up and the water pressure dropped. I looked up at the shower head to see a trickle. So, Eric had to bring me an emergency bucket of water so I could rinse off, luckily I didn't have a head full of shampoo!

Taking a shower with a bucket is really not nearly as bad as it sounds. It's a little bit of a rush when you pour the first cup of cold water over you, but it's like jumping into the pool, you just get used to it and then it's what I call "refreshing". AHHH! It takes a little finess to get your rythmn down, and to make sure you have enough water for the entire shower. You douse yourself with water, soap up and rinse off. A bucket, a cup and a bar of soap are all you need.

The worst part of no water, as you might have imagined is the toilets. We follow the golden (haha) rule of the toilet flushing. "If it's yellow let it mellow. If it's brown flush it down." What I didn't know was all you need to is a gallon or so of water to pour into the toilet to create enough pressure to flush.

As you can tell from the pictures, Little Eric doesn't really care if there is water or not. He actually loved having the bucket in the bathtub where he could submerge all of his toys. Unfortunately, though, I caught him trying to drink the water from a cup. Thank God no diarrea!

Ok...I know this might be TMI, but this blog is all about sharing our new life, right?! And, maybe it will make you appreciate that sweet sound of a toilet flushing and the water pressure of the shower! I know it makes me appreciate these things more now than ever before.

Eric LOVING the bucket-bath.

A few other pictures from the week:

Eric helping Papa build bookshelves.Watching President Obama give his inaugural speech.Playing Chess with papa. I mean, you knew this was in his future, right?

Cool sunglasses on, ready to go out with mama and Abuela.