God is Good!

So, I have not been sick for over a week now and am feeling great! My rash and bruising that lingered on my legs after my fever finally went away as well a few days ago! I loved how concerned the community was about my health and all the home remedies that everyone wanted to try on me to make me better! My friends treated me to a beach excursion once I was feeling better which was wonderful! We weren't really aware that we were going at the time though so we didn't have our swimsuits but it did feel great to just be outside and put my legs in the water. The picture below is at the part of the beach that we usually go to but on this particular day there were much more people than usual! Sunday's in the DR are beach days. The whole family goes and they cannot forget the big pot of spaghetti! Yes, spaghetti, that is one of the wonderful traditions in this country! Anyway, on this particular day we weren't with the whole family and were just with a few friends so we didn't have spaghetti with us, but I am hoping I do get to experience spaghetti on the beach at some point!

Me on the beach!

We have also made some other types of art such as bracelets, earrings, and wind chimes have probably been our favorite! We have made all different types with beads, shells, bottle caps, or just about anything we can find! We have loved making crafts where we just use things we find instead of having to buy stuff!

This is another part of the beach that we spent more time at collecting shells and just hanging out! We were the only ones in this little cove and we spent a good part of the day enjoying the sun and making memories with one another!

This is Jhondrayli(John Riley). I have no clue why he has such a normal American sounding name with such an odd spelling! Anyway, this is him cracking open almonds from the trees surrounding our little cove that we were at! He now has a new nickname, "mono," which is monkey in Spanish because of this particular behavior pictured above! The raw almonds were so tasty and he was pretty good at opening them up for us!

I don't have a picture of what we had for lunch, but it was pizza and it was great! The guys ran into town and ordered Canadian bacon pizza and brought Coke to drink for us. I can not explain how much I have missed pizza and just simply eating it on the beach was wonderful! Later, they brought back another pizza but this time Canadian bacon with corn. It was interesting, but pretty good! After we were done in that little cove we went to two other beaches and finally actually got in the water with our clothes on! It felt so good and was such a great day hanging out with wonderful friends! I will hopefully post more pictures later! Anyway, I took the rest of last week pretty slow because I didn't want to wear myself out after being sick for a week! 
Here are some pictures of things I spent my time doing!

Mama Luisa, Taylor's mom, showed us how to make peanut brittle and it was so good! We have decided this is something that we are going to try to make when we get back to the U.S.

 We still haven't started planting the garden at the school yet, but we have actually realized that we were not ready to start anyways. We thought we were prepared, but have started to understand the purpose of the stumbling blocks God has placed along our way. He needed more time to prepare us for something greater! We have started doing some of the activities in the curriculum with some of the kiddos that hang out with us to start teaching them about gardening! Below are some pictures of one particular activity!

We started by collecting plastic bottles that we found in the backyard and proceeded to cut them in half. 

This is Johanny and Trini digging for soil to place in our "mini gardens"

After cutting the bottles, we inverted them and placed the soil and a seed in the top. Then, we put water in the bottom half of the bottle. After, we unscrewed the top of the bottle just enough so that water can be draw into the soil, but the soil doesn't fall into the water!

This is Trini and I. She is such a sweetheart and loves to learn how to make and do new things! I have loved getting to know her and spend lots of time with her!

Here is an example of one of our wind chimes with the flag of The Dominican Republic painted on it!

So, something else that I have been doing this week is researching stuff about keyhole gardening because we have decided that type of garden would work wonderfully in this community. I will give a short explanation of how keyhole gardens work because I am not sure if anyone is familiar with how they function!

This is a diagram of the way keyhole gardens look.

This an example of a finished product!

So, keyhole gardens... They are made entirely of items that can be composted. A barrier is needed such as rocks or bricks for the outside. Then, a 3:1 ratio of brown to green items is needed to create the surface to plant on. Brown items consist of cardboard boxes, paper, newspaper, magazines, feed sacks, clothes, and anything else that can break down.  Green items consist of soil, manure, branches, leaves and other such things. To build, you place cardboard boxes all on the bottom and outside of the structure putting water on top to attract the bugs. You also place a sort of trashcan in the middle right behind the path to use later. You continue to do this alternating between brown and green items until the area is full. Then, you place real rich soil on the top and plant! The "trashcan" in the middle serves as a place to continue to place items that will compost and create more nutrients for the soil!  I hope this was an accurate explanation and that you understand now. I have spent some of this last week maximizing my vocabulary in Spanish so that I can explain this same thing but to people here. I have successfully explained the garden to around 10 people and have asked them to start collecting any of these items that they have! It has been great because they have told me what they have started to collect and let me know that they have started telling others to do the same!  It is really becoming a community effort which is what we wanted all along. Now I am beginning to understand the reasons why we haven't been able to start planting the garden yet. The Lord wanted us to inspire the whole community to become involved and we needed time to gain knowledge for explanation! The Lord works in marvelous ways and I love when he reveals the purpose of his plans. I also enjoy thinking back to the times when I was frustrated that we hadn't started yet and realizing that there was much more God needed to still prepare. So, I have been spending time having conversations with people in the community explaining keyhole gardens and showing them how they can help! It has been very rewarding and I am loving every minute of it! When I ask people if they understand, their response is usually "mas o menos," meaning more or less, so I still have work to do but hopefully people are getting it! Anyway, there was a special holiday this last week in the U.S. that of course we still celebrated here in the DR. Our initial plans didn't happen, but nonetheless, The Fourth of July happened. We had wanted to build a bonfire and roast marshmallows and make S'mores but we had a hard time explaining marshmallows or finding them! So then we decided we could get hot dogs and roast them instead. Well, that didn't happen either because someone mentioned pizza and we decided that was American enough! So, we went to a nearby town called Cabrera with about 12 of us and had pizza and ice cream! It was wonderful! The food here has a lot of flavor, but definitely isn't very spicy so my friend Alicen and I spotted the Tabasco sauce on the table and made sure to douse our pizza in it! We got very strange looks, but it tasted SO good! I think we have a few pictures from that night which I will post later! I am sad because we also wanted to teach the community how to "Two-Step," on Independence Day but like the rest of our ideas, that didn't happen. But, we are definitely still going to do that at some point! Another thing we wanted was sparklers, but hey, the pizza and ice cream was a success! Anyway, this weekend we went on a trip to a town called Jarabacoa where our professor, Christine, is staying right now with a group of study abroad students. It was a great weekend, but I think I am going to wait to explain about it because this is already long and I want to post some pictures too! Thanks again for your love and support for me this summer! It is going by so fast but I am enjoying it SO much!