Rainy Days

It has rained every day since we have been here. It's not super heavy, so we still go out. Last night we went to a really rich gated neighborhood for a concert. The 2010 bass guitarist of the year in the US came to play last week for a benefit concert and did another show last night that we got to go to. It was very interesting to be in that situation after having been to Caraballo earlier in the day, one of the most impoverished areas near here. I think I felt more pity for the rich people. Their lives seemed a little more pathetic. It was fun to listen to the music and eat pizza though. :)

Today we worked on various projects and continued registering students for the summer camp. We have less than 200 spots available at the camp I will be at and TONS of students have come to sign up. We will post the list of students that have been accepted next Thursday. David is working on writing a music curriculum as well as a camp theme song for this year that everyone will learn. I am currently working on putting together a workshop for the teachers next Saturday. We are going to focus on skills and strategies for increasing comprehension in reading. I am excited to be a part of it!

Right now we are hanging out with our new BFFs, Ashlie and Santos. They have been so welcoming and friendly. We are very grateful to have them here! We are going to plan a trip to the temple in Santo Domingo soon.

Cabarete

We can't believe that we are finally here! We have have a fun couple of days adjusting to our new surroundings and we are loving it. It has been very muggy the last few days since it has been raining each afternoon. We left from Salt Lake Sunday afternoon and flew to Denver,CO. Our plane was quite late and we made our next flight with 2 minutes to spare! We flew from Denver to Newark, NJ arriving around 11:45 pm. After finding our way to the train and down to the shuttle area, we finally made it to our hotel and to bed by 2:00 AM. We talked to a nice couple from Nicaragua in the shuttle on the way to the hotel. On Monday morning, we headed over to the airport at 7:00 after an appreciated complimentary breakfast and flew out at 9:15. We made very good time and landed 45 minutes early in the DR. We sat by a lady named Sandy from CT and talked to her the whole flight.

When we arrived, we made it through all of the foreign check points pretty quickly and found all of our luggage with no trouble. We even were able to check our additional suitcase for free when we told the flight attendant what we were doing! Score!

Ashlie, our new best friend who we have been communicating with for the past two months picked us up with our favorite taxi (guagua) driver, Marino. On the side, Marino is a merengue bands' manager. Our new apartment is much nicer than I expected. We are very pleased about it. We have a small kitchen to cook with and everything we need. The first day here, the thing that surprised me the most were the people riding around on donkeys in the street and random goats and chickens running around. David was surprised by the amount of poverty...which we realized today was actually wealth compared to another area we visited today about 40 minutes away. We went to a small village where we have another preschool called Caraballo.

Our first night here, we had dinner with Ashlie and her husband, Santos, as well as our upstairs neighbor, Molly who is also a volunteer with DREAM from Kansas/New York. Santos made us the most delicious rice with an eggplant salsa, fried bananas and Ashlie's favorite peach soda. It was a wonderful welcome!

We have been set up with an account at a little eatery (comedor) between our house and the DREAM center where we are allowed to go and eat every day at lunch for free. We are VERY grateful for that! It is extremely hot...but it will only get hotter. The rain and the humidity don't help, but it is beautiful. Everything is very green. The beach is a different world from where we are living two blocks away. You pass from fairly chaotic everyday business in our neighborhood called the Callejon into ritzy white laziness. It is weird. Right now we are sitting at an open air cafe/bar with internet on the beach called VoyVoy. I think we will probably be coming here a lot to use their free WiFi.

We are so excited to be here! We have met a lot of the staff now and spent a lot of time observing the Montesorri Preschools since their last day is Thursday. We are starting to get materials together for various projects. I am helping with a workshop we are doing for native school teachers on Saturday the 18th. David is setting up the music classes for the summer. He will be going out to Caraballo next week to help with a short summer camp they are doing their with international students. He may even be doing some construction!

Off to the DR

We finally got checked into our Hotel here in Newark, New Jersey and went to bed around 1:00 AM Now it's 7:55 AM and we are waiting for our 9:15 flight. We're kind of tired.

Oregon Trip

At the end of April we made the long trek on the Oregon Trail to visit mom and Jim. We had so much fun! My (Denae) favorite part was hiking at Multnomah Falls and seeing the whole family at Rashelle's for Easter. David liked getting to know everyone better since there wasn't much of a chance at the wedding. He says it touched his heart. :) We are still waiting for mom to send us pictures of everyone, but here are some that we took on the road.

Spring

We had a fun "Freshmen" date one weekend in March. We went to the Museum of Art on campus at BYU to see the Carl Bloch exhibit and ate lunch in the Cannon center since the Morris center doesn't exist anymore. We also went to visit one of my favorite roommates ever, Katie Johnson (We never actually lived together, but might as well have!). After that, we made our way down to the infamous Festival of Colors at the Krishna Temple in Spanish Fork. We ran into Pam from my mission and Jeff from home. What a day!



Dana, Robert, & Amy came up to visit for David's piano recitals. We had a great time staying up WAY too late! :)

The DREAM Project

We are going to the Dominican Republic for the months of June and July to volunteer with the DREAM Project, a nonprofit educational organization that strives to break the cycle of poverty through education. Denae will be a professional development trainer and David will be a music teacher and youth counselor. We are excited about this opportunity to serve and to develop our Spanish more fully! We are trying to earn enough money to donate whiteboards and dry-erase markers to the school so that each student can use one. If you would like to donate, please join us in this effort! Donations can be made to us personally (money or markers) or money can be sent directly to the DREAM office.

• Send a personal check to the DREAM Project directly. Please make sure to add a note that you are making the donation in our behalf! Make checks payable to The DREAM Project and send to:
o The DREAM Project, 35 Thasha Lane, Unit A-8
Essex Junction, VT 05452
• Write a personal check to Denae or David Love
• Donate dry-erase markers and we will take them down with us.
• Donate online by going to http://www.dominicandream.org/donate.html
• Donate other school supplies by going to http://www.dominicandream.org/supplydonations.html

Thank you for your support! Check out our blog this summer to see how the DREAM Project is going!

Best Friends

Since I had parent-teacher conferences this week, I got Friday off! David and I were grateful to take advantage of a free weekday and spent most of it together going on many adventures. We were able to go to the temple, out to lunch at our new very favorite, Costa Vida, and watch Les Miserables in concert. I love spending time with David. He is so kind and so much fun to be with. I just adore him! This weekend we are excited to watch conference and learn what we can do better and how to strengthen our family and ourselves.

This morning we went out for a little bike ride and took a picture of this poster.




The people who added the top two signs were sure jokers!