"How incredibly beautiful it is to suffer"

Wow…if there is a month that will go down in DR history it will be this one! I feel like so much has happened in such a little amount of time. And this month I marvel at how much God fills us up with his love in every moment, even in the ones where we feel totally abandoned and are at the deepest pit of anguish, he is there! One of my friends recently posted on Facebook (and I hope she reads this and knows she inspired me all month!) “I wish we could all realize how incredibly beautiful it is to suffer. Even if I had been placed on this Earth only to experience the most gruesome of sufferings, I would still want to live through each and every one.” Either she was super inspired by the Holy Spirit, or she got the quote from some really awesome movie! But this has gotten me through a lot this month!

In terms of missing home, this month has been the worst! A few things have attributed to this, I believe. My mom sent a package to me through USPS to the Dominican postal service…. #1, apparently this was a BAD IDEA. The postal service here is VERY unreliable. In fact, from what I’ve read online and what I’ve talked to others who live here, I’m probably never GOING to get the package. The postal workers (and service workers in general) here don’t really care that much about their customers. So I’m pretty bummed about the fact I didn’t get a package from home, but let’s hope some person who really needed two pairs of TOMS shoes and two pairs of jeans actually got/took the package. Another thing is that I feel like so many things are happening and I’m not at home! This is a big suffering for me to miss my nephew’s birthdays, or to miss my little sister’s college club volleyball games, or to miss my birthday at home. I know that my family is happy I am here and I know I want to be here, but missing them still happens, ya’ll! It doesn’t go away! Also, let’s mention that my BFF since 2^nd grade is about to have her first child…! And I’m going to miss his first little moments in this world… L

Many of you also know that Tom, my future hubby, my rock, my sweet sweet man had to undergo a very urgent surgery this last week to remove a part of his intestines. This is where the beauty of much of my suffering has happened for the last week or so this month. It was so hard. It is still hard to not be there with him during this time.  And I can’t even imagine what it was like for Tom (who is still recovering at this moment, but he is doing well, THANK YOU JESUS!). It was hard to be so far away and feel completely and utterly helpless. To literally be on the floor crying, begging God to please, please, please keep him safe while the surgery was happening. In those moments, I know that I was as close as I have ever been to Jesus on the cross when he cried out “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me.” How incredibly beautiful it is to suffer!! To know that even in THOSE moments, when I thought there was nothing, there was something….LOVE! HIS love. Pretty awesome, huh? Tom’s surgery went very well the doctors say, and they are hopeful that this will help a lot in the future as well! God is good! And I probably can’t say enough thanks to all the people who prayed that everything would go well and visited him in the hospital and gave me hugs when I thought I was falling apart. But biggest thanks to God for getting us through that part of our journey…it’s not over, but it’s beautiful to see the love we have for each other and for God flourish even more in these moments.  

Now, in this month, I’ve also had many REALLY awesome experiences, too!! And I truly believe that we don’t walk this journey alone and that you have people and situations in your life to help you embrace and feel love in EVERY moment! We had a retreat in Santiago with some of the young women around the Dominican Republic! It was an awesome retreat to build a really strong relationship with the other girls and also to see Santiago! Santiago has got to be my new favorite city in the DR! Beautiful parks! Beautiful monuments! And YAROA (pronounced ja-ar-o-ah), my new favorite food of the DR! Yaroa is essentially this: thick French fries topped with a mix of chicken and beef meat, ketchup, mayonnaise, and cheese!!! Oh my goodness Yummy!  I also got to go to my first discotec this month! Wahoo! Let’s just say that some Dominican dancers are intimidating…man they are good! And during this first outing, I (yes, me! Outgoing Amber Rose Brown!) was afraid to dance that much! I don’t want people to look at me and say “Wow! That white girl is lookin’ ridiculous!” But I also know I need practice with the dances! So, it was good that one weekend this month, I went to a concert of Ramon Orlando (one of the best merengue singers in the DR) and we danced all night! And I was with people who were okay with me messing up the steps a little and maybe stepping on their feet during parts of the dance. Which was really great!

I celebrated my first big holiday in the DR this month: HALLOWEEN!!! J This is not a holiday that is celebrated by many people here in this country. In fact, many people here dislike the holiday because of misconceptions about why people celebrate the holiday or religious beliefs. I LOVE HALLOWEEN, though! And I wanted to bring the joy and funness of the holiday to the students who I teach this month because this is not something they have experienced before! For two weeks we learned about this holiday and what people do and how much fun it is for kids! On the week of Halloween, we looked at a presentation of lots of different costumes for kids on Halloween, then the students picked a costume, drew themselves in the costume, and they got to “go trick-or-treating”! J They all left the room and came back in, knocked on the door, said “TRICK-OR-TREAT!” and got some candy for Halloween! I loved sharing this tradition with them, and they were super excited to get candy and get to go “trick-or-treating” for the first time! J Also, one of the 3^rd grade classes (who knew my birthday was the day after Halloween) had
a wonderful surprise for me! When I came that week, the super sweet teacher told me they had planned something for me. She gave me a sheet as a ghost costume, and told me I had to walk around to all the “houses”, aka desks, of the students and knock on their doors for trick-or-treating. She, the teacher, had hand made me a cute little orange pumpkin trick-or-treating basket. I walked around the whole class “trick-or-treating” and each of the kids, these beautiful, sweet, generous kids, had bought me candy for my birthday! These kids who don’t really have anything, who a piece of candy is like a piece of gold, brought ME candy for my birthday. And they loved giving me this gift!  A tiny, but significant gift of the love and kindness that they have! It’s probably one of the best birthday presents I’ve ever gotten, from those sweet kiddos from Café.

Another very awesome thing happened for my birthday! My friends actually threw a surprise Halloween themed birthday party to celebrate!! And it wasn’t easy to accomplish either!! They don’t sell Halloween decorations in the DR, so my friends hand-made paper pumpkins and spider webs out of trash bags to decorate! When I walked into our backyard garden area, they all were there, IN COSTUMES! Almost 20 people celebrating their first Halloween party! Haha! We ate candy and cake and even had a “run way” to show off all the costumes! We also walked around the Zona Colonial in our costumes giving out all the extra candy we had telling people “Happy Halloween!” haha! AND on our walk around the zona, I got serenaded by a mariachi-type band for my birthday! It was amazing and beautiful and I felt really loved by everyone who helped and came and celebrated with me! It will be a birthday I’ll never forget, for sure!

Well, this next month I’m going to try to bring another American holiday to the DR: THANKSGIVING!  I’m really excited about teaching my students about this holiday as well and continuing to walk on this wonderful journey I’m on! I count on your thoughts and prayers, and know you have mine! :) 

Let’s talk about mondongo…

Okay, so when someone says to you “Just try it! I’ll tell you what it is afterwards” you can automatically assume that whatever it is they want you to eat is probably something you usually wouldn’t, right? I guess that the surprise of what the mystery food actually is will be ruined when it looks EXACTLY like what body part it came from. Well, after this month, I can tell you that cow intestine stew (aka…mondongo) looks like cow intestines (see the picture) when prepared. And I can tell you that I don’t like it. Yuck!  However, I can also tell you that in the last month I’ve tried some foods that I DID like, including:  fresh coconut/coconut milk; quipe, a type of fried wheat; pastelito, a fried pastery w/ meat inside; and fried chicken feet (yes…the feet) . You can take a girl away from the Southern fried foods, but you can’t take the Southern fried foods away from the girl…! Aside from the mundungo, papaya, and pig’s feet stew, the DR is proving itself to be a mecca of yummy and delicious new food adventures for me!

This second month of being here in the Dominican has also brought me other exciting and different experiences! I got to see first-hand the effects of a strike on public transportation…apparently people in the DR make strikes and protests for a lot of things, and this type of demonstration happens more than a few times a year. A co-worker and I walked from the school for about 20 minutes to the only transportation stop working at the time. We waited for an hour for a bus that wasn’t already full, and when we DID get on the Onsa bus, people were nearly stampeding to get in the door. We saw a lady with a baby get pushed aside several times by people who were in too big of a hurry to jump in front of her to care.  A few private owned taxis were also working, but they jack up the prices so high when strikes on public transportation happen, that it was worth it to wait; stampede and all. But, the good thing is I now know how to take the Onsa! And a very nice old man insisted on giving me his seat, so I smiled the whole way home because of his generosity J

I also had the pleasure to help prepare and attend the wedding of the aunt of one of the girls I live with! My first wedding in a different country!! How awesome! It was a small and beautiful reception, with only close family and friends attending! But don’t think that the lack of massive numbers of people prevented us from having a true party! We danced for hours to merenge and bachata, and I would now consider myself an apprentice at both dances! A few things caught me off guard because they were different that the typical US wedding traditions. One thing is that the couple picks “godparents” for their wedding. These people are special people in the couple’s lives and are the ones who sign the marriage certificate and who stand with them during the ceremony (oh…and they have to buy the cake and the alcohol for the reception). Also, my mouth almost hit the floor when they brought in a 5 layer GIANT cake. It was beautifully decorated with butterflies and flowers, but I couldn’t fathom how 50 people could eat all of THAT and not turn diabetic by the end of the night. It turns out that this monstrous cake was completely fake…only meant to take pictures with. They had another (real) cake made for eating purposes, which was very good, might I add. At the end of the night I felt totally blessed to be there and be with an amazing family and wonderful couple!

Another fun experience I had was going to my first movie in a Dominican theater! You would think that this experience would be the same as a typical trip to the movies…but you would be wrong. A little. Most of the experience is the same: you buy your ticket, you get a popcorn, you sit down, you enjoy the movie. However, like true Dominicans, the people ignore the whole “Don’t talk while the movie is playing” rule. We went to see the new “City of Bones – The Mortal Instruments” movie. It was in English with Spanish subtitles. We were two of maybe 5 people in the whole theater…apparently this wasn’t a very popular movie in the DR. To my utter entertainment, a man sitting behind us felt very inclined to vocalize his opinions during the whole film. Loudly. I may have enjoyed listening to his personal emotional rollercoaster more than I enjoyed the movie itself. Because I also like to talk during movies, I think I’ve found my movie watching niche here in the DR! I’ve heard that during comedy movies people are much more talkative, so I can’t wait to go to one of those in the future!

We celebrated the feast day of Our Lady of Mercy here in the Dominican! It is a very special day for the people here and they have a deep respect for Mary which is very beautiful! Nuestra Senora de Las Mercedes is actually one of the patron saints of the Dominican Republic. There was a procession in her honor through o

ur part of town with hundreds of people walking in the street with a band and lots of priests and holy people and a statue of the Virgin that was on a base carried by people in the crowd. It was a really cool thing to watch! We actually caught the procession by surprise while we were walking back from the store, so we got lucky to see this special event!

Café con Leche (the school of coffee and milk! Haha!) is a wonderful place to be! I fall more in love each day with the kids at the school and their smiles and hugs and energy! The youth here put on a concert at the school this month and it went really well! Many kids and families from the community came to sing songs and enjoy the evening together!  My English classes are going well, and I’m pretty sure most of the students in K-4^th grade know their basic English greetings. J They like to practice with me when they see me in the halls and when I’m helping with the lunch lines. We are moving on to other topics in the month ahead, but I just hope these little lessons I give them will help them in some way. I put my trust in God for the well-being of the kids at Café con Leche. These children live a very different life than most kids in the United States. They experience and live in poverty, they have responsibilities you wouldn’t think children need to have, they often see violence right outside their doorstep. But they are kids. They like to have fun and play games and laugh, and this resilience against the sometimes hostile environment they live in to just be a kid is what brings me the most peace and joy for them. Maybe by the end of my time here they won’t speak any more English than they did when I arrived, but I hope at least they know “That Amber girl, she loved me”. So, I will continue to stumble through my English lessons with my not-so-awesome Spanish and continue to give out as many hugs and high-fives and play as many games with them as I can. I think this will be what I gain from this experience. Not so much that they learned so much from me, but in everything I do with them, I do it with love and I give them love.

My progress with the language is, well, coming along I guess. My classes with Mercedes’ brother are helping and I am definitely feeling more confident with the language in speaking and in understanding. If people talk very, very, very slowly I can understand about 65% of what they say, roughly. I am trying to expand my vocabulary by “reading” newspapers and writing paragraphs each night. It takes me about 15 minutes to “read” a paragraph, though, so I’m not very well kept up on the news these days. This week will start my ultimate test of tests with my Spanish. On Tuesday, we have made a pact to stop speaking English in the house…for the next 4 months. Lord help me…! Of course if I don’t understand I can ask, in Spanish, what a word means in English. I count on so many prayers for this…really. Pray for me. Now, please! And pray for the poor people I live with who are going to have to talk like deprogramming robots for the next few weeks while I get used to it all.

Of course I certainly miss home and I miss my family and I miss my friends and I especially miss my wonderful fiancé (who is reading all of the Harry Potter books while I’m gone! He knows the key to my heart is really a magic wand!) This week was especially hard being away from home because our super sweet dog, Holly, went to doggie heaven. This experience here in the DR is really such a beautiful one because I’ve had so many times that I am so happy and filled with joy, but there are also times when I’ve had sufferings and hardships. It’s in these sufferings and hardships that I know I grow the most, so I am trying to embrace these more difficult moments and be happy when they arrive. Of course I didn’t LIKE it when my dog died, and I don’t LIKE it when the guy on the guaguita tries to charge me more money because he knows I’m a “gringa”, but I can live these harder moments for someone else. Someone who is suffering more. Someone who needs my unity in living difficult situations. Someone who I know is struggling. It makes it easier to embrace these hard moments because I don’t do it alone, I do it for and with someone else. Even if they don’t know it.

So! I’m not sure what this next month will be like! I do know that I will have my first birthday celebration in a foreign country (how exciting!)! But I hope you all don’t stop reading my blog because this one was so incredibly long! J Until next time! Hasta luego amigos! 

Viva Santo Domingo! It’s been one month since I have arrived in this beautiful place! It’s hard to remember that I am not on vacation because the Mariapolis Center and the street we live on looks right at the Caribbean Sea! I am living in a house with two other youth (gen) of the Focolare, Juanny and Inmaris, and an older lady who is also in the Focolare named Mercedes. When I first arrived, the other girls were not here, and it was me and Mercedes for a few days. She doesn’t speak much English, and I don’t speak much Spanish (yet!), but they are all sweet as pie and have taught me a lot in just the one month I have been here.

In the first few days I was Mercedes’ shadow; following her to the store to learn how to navigate the streets, cooking and cleaning in the kitchen, taking and learning how to use the public transportation, and visiting some of the sites in the area of Ciudad Colonial, which is where I am living. Ciudad Colonial (or in English, Colonial City) is the first established city in the New World and was erected by Columbus’s brother, Bartholomew, and his son, Diego. A lot of the buildings here in Ciudad Colonial date back to the 1500s, so it’s kind of cool to think that I am living in the place where the first Europeans came to the New World. Mercedes has taken me on tours of the Cathedral Primada de América (deemed the first cathedral of the New World by Pope Paul III in 1542) and Alcázar de Colón (the home of Diego Columbus).

She also showed me how to get to El Café, which is the part of town I work in.  I’ve been teaching for two weeks now, and only two of the teachers speak English, so they translated for me a lot! The staff at the school welcomed me with open arms (literally…I got a lot of hugs!) The building itself is a very nice place for the kids to come and learn. It has a gym, a cafeteria, nice bathrooms, a recess area, many classrooms, a technology room, and a beautiful view of the mountains. The children at the school are so awesome! They have amazingly big personalities! When I first started at the school, the kids thought it was really funny when I spoke English…and even funnier when I tried (and try) to speak Spanish! I am really trying to learn some classroom phrases I can use while I’m there so I don’t sound so goofy! The kids also really like to say “Hello” to me and they also like to touch my hair! Haha! I don’t know why they would want to because it always looks so terrible from the ridiculous heat! Sweat is, and will be a part of my everyday routine here in the DR…!

I’ve learned a lot of Spanish while I was here, and the language is not the only thing that I have had to get used to in this new country. There is the wonderfully exciting and exhilarating experience of taking public transportation in Santo Domingo….! Aye! Take all the rules of driving in the US and throw them out the window! Seat belts, not important. Stop signs, not important. Doors on guaguas, not required. It’s a different world! I find myself holding my breath sometimes when I ride around this town because things are just not like they are in the US. There are a lot of other things I’ve learned here too: dominoes is a way of life and building neighborly connections; in the streets it’s normal to play bachata, merengue, and salsa at any day any hour at any volume level; ask before you eat because you might have just eaten pig’s feet.

I’ve also gotten the chance to go with friends to the beach twice already! My friends here are so awesome and their families are so welcoming of me and have allowed me to become a part of their families as well! Today I will travel to the north to Santiago Rodriguez with one of the girls I live with! We will stay at her family’s house, and I’m excited to get to experience a new part of the Dominican Republic for a few days! I hope to update my blog at least once a month, so I hope you all can continue to follow me on this adventure!

Saludos de mi parte! 

The time has come to start my life long dream of living and teaching in a foreign country! I leave for the Dominican Republic tomorrow, August 6th, at 7:00am, and you can't imagine the emotions that are running through my mind and body! (Literally...I think my body is revolting against me...a sinus infection, impetigo, and a bad case of the Ds due to being nervous!) My body and I are apparently having a hard time coming to the realization that THIS IS REALLY HAPPENING! There are times when I think about how amazing and exciting this experience is going to be: the new people I will meet, the students I will teach and learn from, the new foods I'll try, the opportunity to go to the beach every weekend (oooh yaah!), learning a new language! And there are times when I think about how intimidating and scary this journey could be: not knowing the culture, people judging me because I'm not from there, being vulnerable, missing out on things in the states, LEARNING A NEW LANGUAGE!

I've already said some tearful goodbyes to my family and friends in Kentucky, but I get to spend my last moments before I leave with my one and only, Tom! :) I'm so blessed to have the opportunity to go on this journey, but I'm mostly blessed with amazing friends, family, and a fiance who support and love me and my dreams and help them to come true! I can't say enough "Thank you!"s to all of you who have helped me discern the choices I made to get here, prepare me spiritually/emotionally/financially/physically, gave me helpful tips, and even taught me some basic Spanish! Yo necesito un gato! :) I wouldn't be on this journey without you, and I will continue to count on your prayers and love throughout the 6 months I will be in the Dominican Republic. I hope to update my blog while I'm there, so I hope you can follow me on my adventure of a lifetime!