Rest and Thanksgiving

Posted by Maddy November 27, 2023

Rest and Thanksgiving

Hello everyone! Just a quick heads-up, this may be the last blog post I do before I get back home on December 11th! Two weeks from now is in fact, December 11th, and will be a busy travel day for me, so I won’t exactly have a lot of time to write a full-blown post. I may try and write a small update in the few days beforehand, but I’m not sure what my schedule will look like. I can’t wait to see all of you guys! It’s been an amazing few months, but I’ve been missing home a lot recently, so I’m thrilled to be seeing you soon!

These last two weeks have been a thrill at the tutoring site. We’ve gained a few new students, and every day I find myself able to converse more with the kids. One of the new boys, named Junior, was confused when I told him I was learning Spanish. He hadn’t heard me speak anything other than Spanish yet, and so he asked me if I spoke Creole. In English, I said, “No, I speak English.” He lost his mind and it made my day.

One morning, during one of the Spanish classes, a young girl named Marlenis came to hang out at the tutoring site. Corey (a Global Bridge student who works at the Baseball site) and I played Spot-It with her out on the porch while Elizabeth and Kendra taught class. We attempted to play the game in mostly Spanish, but my vocabulary isn’t all-encompassing (and probably won’t be for a very, very long time). Marlenis didn’t know all of the words in Spanish either, so the game became a mixture of butchered Spanish, English, and sometimes Creole.

These past two weeks have been filled with get-togethers between different groups. My small group met up and had a sleepover at Jhanna’s house (my homestay host from way back when!). We made tacos (amazing!) and had a full night of dancing to High School Musical and Merengue. There was also the girl’s night, where Courtney and Katie came to the base and we all watched Mulan, played games, and had cinnamon rolls in the morning. Quinn painted my nails for me, and in general, it was an amazing night of fun and community.

Another thing of note was the baseball game we went to! Baseball is huge here in the Dominican Republic, and I’ve been told that the rivalry between fans sometimes gets more heated than politics. The game got canceled the first night (due to lots of rain) but was rescheduled for the following day. Clothed in yellow and black for the Augilas (or Eagles), we got to the stadium and set ourselves up right field behind the foul line. We played the Leones and sadly lost. That wasn’t to say that the game wasn’t fun though. We ate all kinds of snacks: hot dogs, empanadas, and pizza were the most popular. Soon we realized that there weren’t going to be many fans in the stands (due to predicted rain that didn’t really show up) so we moved closer to the field, where three of the people in my group caught (or were thrown) foul balls! It was fun watching them scramble across the bleachers, and I wished I had brought my baseball hat so that I would have had something to catch with other than my bare hands. Although I didn’t bring home a ball, it was a great experience.

November 23rd was Thanksgiving, as I’m sure you all know. Because Thanksgiving is solely a United States holiday, it was a bit weird celebrating it here. We had the day off of sites, and we spent the morning baking Christmas cookies (which we decorated the next morning at Courtney and Dustin’s house), doing puzzles, and decorating for Christmas. The living room has been sufficiently covered in Christmas lights, and we have a small tree set up in the dining room. Some of the other North American staff joined us for dinner, along with Courtney and Dustin’s family. We ate what a normal Thanksgiving dinner would consist of turkey, rolls, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, the whole shebang. Myself and the other students provided a variety of desserts. I made pumpkin cake with my roommate Ava. (Thanks again Nana, for the recipe!) We ended the night with karaoke. Dustin gave us a wonderful rendition of “Tequila” by The Champs, and there were plenty of Disney songs to go around, as well as “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.”

On the 25th, Saturday, our church had a family day! They set up tables in the Botanical Gardens (see my post about that here), and had a garage sale type market, where those from the Church donated clothing items that they no longer needed so that they could be sold to fundraise for the Church and its ministries. There were carnival games, like Head, Shoulders, Knees, Toes, Cone! Where the leader calls out one of the aforementioned body parts in rapid succession until they shout cone, and then you try and grab the cone from the person you’re competing against. Others brought checkers and chess, and I was able to watch Josue (leader of the boys' soccer site) beat both Natalie and Eli in checkers. It was a lively day, and I’m so thankful that I’ve been able to become a part of this community.

These past two weeks have been weeks of rest, due to the fact that it was Thanksgiving break for my college classes, but also because I’m really starting to feel at home in my site and here at the base. I know the routines, and I’m slowly gaining confidence in my ability to interact in a different language. I’m looking forward to these last two weeks here, and at the same time, looking forward to coming home. I can’t wait for it to be cold!

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, even though it’s a couple of days late, I want to take this time to truly thank all of you for your support. I wouldn’t have made it here without your giving and without your support on this journey. God has been working in this community, through the Global Bridge program, and in myself over these past three months, and I’m so blessed and thankful to have been a part of it. Thank you.

Again, I’m not sure if there will be another post before I return home or not. I can’t wait to see you guys again and meet up with you. There’s so much I haven’t been able to include in these posts, and I want to share about everything that I’ve learned. Thanks again for reading, and have a blessed week!

¡Hasta luego, y'all!

Maddy <3