Settling in.

What a whirlwind. Nick and I have been living in the DR for a little over two weeks, and we have been married for one month. It feels like we have been here longer...it even feels like we have been married longer. I think it has to do with the fact that we have crammed in so many big events into such a short time frame. While some worry that going through so many changes so quickly after marriage can be detrimental to your relationship, we have only found it to be encouraging. We have had a great time here so far, despite some little blunders on our part here and there.

Nick and I moved right into our apartment when we arrived. We love it! Here are some pictures of the apartment:

This is our kitchen. We have already been able to cook some really good food in this place :) We also have had people over for dinner two different times. Which reminds me...I have a funny story. The first time we had people over, our power was out. This is typically a normal occurrence in the DR, so we let it go. However, it lasted much longer than usual, so we began to wonder. I walked out on our porch and realized everyone else had power except us. Turns out we didn't pay our electric bill! There is no mail service in the DR, so the way you get your bill is someone brings all of them in a bunch and puts them in the handle of a door near the front gate of our apartment. We did not really know this...but, thankfully we took the bill in the next day and it was fine. We could still cook because we have a gas stove, and the fact that the power was out gave us a great excuse to make shadow puppets and lay on our hammock.

Yep....we are getting plenty of use out of our hammock here. It probably looks like we don't do any work, but we do! I promise! But, I'm not going to lie, you should probably be a little jealous of the hammock, because it is pretty fantastic. 

Also, here is our room! We like the colors a lot. 

For those of you who don't know, we rescued a street puppy! We named her Kenya, and she is adorable. We are thankful that she is amazingly well-behaved for a puppy. She does get hyper, but she listens really well. She already knows how to sit and that she is not allowed to go into the kitchen. She's pretty much the cutest (see below).

The only bad part about having a puppy is that Nick and I now spend our time at home doing voice overs for what we imagine Kenya would say if she could talk. Not that she would, because she doesn't even bark! 

We love her :) 

Just want to say thank you to all of the people who helped us get here! We hope that we can make good use of our time here and really make a difference for our students. School starts Monday, so we are busy preparing for the craziness to begin. Keep those prayers coming! We love you guys.