quick update from the DR

we have been running around all over the place for the last few weeks... sorry it's taken so long to update!! here's a little bit of what we've been up to...

1. buying live chickens at the market.. and carrying them on conchos to the mission house...
2. teaching english classes every afternoon (lauren in algodon, elisa in los robles, alicia in don bosco) to varying degrees of success and noise making
3. helping out in the clinic every morning, today we finally finished updating files and next week we hope to start working in the bateyes so that yanet (the head nurse) can have a set of files for all the kids in the clinic AND the bateyes... so its much easier to access them.
4. we've had various adventures at the hospitals... lauren got sick on the 4th of july and had to run to the emergency clinic that night. everything's fine, but it was an interesting experience of being IN the health care system and dealing with some sort of a language barrier. alicia witnessed a concho accident and her family drove the victims to the public hospital... which was another experience in itself. people all over the place, little sanitation, sounds like it was chaos and defnitely an insight into what's going on in the public sector.
5. tomorrow we leave on a 3 day retreat at the PonteVedra hotel that we all know (almost) and love. we're going on some adventure in the middle but who really knows where. but really, a midway retreat?? its only been 3 weeks. but that's almost midway which is a little insane.
6. all in all, our spanish is getting better and better and we are more or less as adjusted as we are going to get to life here. the reality of what we are seeing is starting to hit us a little more, so we're working through that on a bunch of levels. but we are loving our time and the experience has been great :) we'll give more of an update when we're all together, this is lauren from an internet cafe with her host brother!!

we would love continued prayers for health, safety, and wisdom as we try to figure out everything that we are doing and seeing.

love from barahona,
lauren
alicia
elisa