Amundsons

Part of my sabbatical proposal this year was to work with students with disabilities.  I have been working for 3 months with three kids who are non-verbal, helping their teachers to set up a homemade version of a picture exchange communication system (PECs).  The boy that I am working with has made huge gains, turns out he loves listening to música and will follow almost any communication demand in order to get 30 seconds of a little Enrique Iglesias.  To be fair, so would I. The two girls have had more challenges.  I thought they were just progressing slowly, moving along at their own pace, and I was fine with that. But I was off for a week when the Greenville group came down, and I am pretty sure they had a whole week of tranquillo (chillin').  When I came back, one of the girls had completely forgotten not just what we had done for 3 months, but also forgot who I even was- that didn't feel great.  The other girl certainly remembered me, in fact she took one look at me a

Christopher Columbus landed on the north coast of the island of Hispañola in 1492.  He named the location Puerto Plata, meaning silver port because he had finally found silver.   Puerto Plata became an important location for the Spanish for the next 300 years, as ships would arrive at this port using it as an entry point to travel to other parts of the Americas.   Puerto Plata needed protection, and Fortaleza San Felipe provided military and arms to be used against pirates and other colonizers such as the French and the English.   In May of 1800, the fort was used in the Quasi-War between the United States and France. Fort San Felipe was first commissioned by King Felipe II of Spain in 1564 and completed by Don Rengifo de Angulo in 1577.  It sits on the hill of Puntilla Del Malecón and is strategically located as all other locations on the coast are protected by the reef and ships were only able to enter here.  There were many similarities between this fort and

................ The Dominican Republic has amazing coffee according to my mom.  The best coffee is grown in tropical climates, but up in the mountains.  We went to see how they grow coffee in a place called Jarabacoa. First the Dominicans grow the coffee, it takes about four years before a coffee plant is ready to harvest. Then they pick the coffee beans by hand, this takes a lot of work.  In my right hand are the coffee when you pick them from the plant, they look like berries.  The dark red ones are the best ones.  In my left hand the coffee beans have been through a machine above to take off the fruit. Next they dry the beans in these tents to take out the moisture.  They need to get the moisture down to 11% so that takes a lot of sun.  Fortunately, the Dominican Republic has a lot of sun.  Charlotte is standing here because my mom made her.  My mom says she has a case of the teens. Before you roast the beans you first need to hull them.  This means you take off the sk

Travel: And why I want to learn how to travel like a Dominican. I had to make a quick trip up to the States for a work thing.  When I say quick, I mean I was traveling longer than I was there type of quick.  In order to try and get a deal, this trip consisted of multiple layovers and a train. Although I love a train just as much as the next teacher for kids with Autism, the train created a very long two days of travel back to the Dominican Republic. On the way home, flying my last connection from Miami to the D.R. the plane was filled with two predominant cultures, North Americans heading to the beach and Dominicans.  As we were approaching Santiago the weather turned on us.  It is the rainy season here in the D.R. which means the weather is predictably unpredictable.  The plane started to shake and rock and when I looked up I counted no less than 4 rosaries in my row of 6 passengers.  A 4 out of 6 rosary ratio is certainly an indication that God had been notified, and we wer