Happy Birthday Courtney and Janette!!!

Friday night, while we were just starting to feel the storm, we invited the teachers over for another "Casa Benny Party". So many teachers came to this one...almost all the teachers atleast stopped by. We did the usual..eat, drink, and dance salsa ( no karaoke this time..sorry Kelly).



We were taking a shot for our friend Kisha, who moved to the states..we miss her so much!!

This teacher NEVER dances...everyone was shocked!!

Me and Kelly

All the ladies

On Sunday another friend, Janette who also had a birthday, invited us to Cayey to a restaurant. She told us the view would be beautiful but the drive up there would be difficult. She was right!! We took a very steep, windy hill up to this place. We even beat her there...and we were 45 mins. late ( that is so Puerto Rican) The name of the restaurant is the "Sand and Sea Inn"...until we got there and saw the view, we thought that was a crazy name for a restaurant way up in the mountains. So beautiful!!!

Brent and me

Tori and Tom

Courtney and Kelly

Hurricane Dean Came By....

About an hour ago we got our electricity back, after 24 hours of not having it. Power loss, strong winds, a lots of rain was pretty much all the damage hurricane dean did...for us. Now it looks like Jamaica is going to get hit pretty hard.
We had been watching the news all week and started getting prepared long before any of the Puerto Ricans. In fact, they told us we didn't even need to worry about it. We thought it would be better to be prepared just in case..so we filled the closet with bottles of water, candles, and canned food.
Friday after school we noticed the winds were picking up and the rain was starting to come, but we were too busy celebrating Courtney's birthday to really care!! We had such a good turn out for this party. Probably around 30 of our co-workers came by. And of course..we had a fabulous time. We started around 3 o'clock and people left before midnight...we even forgot about eating dinner!!
Saturday morning we woke up to really strong winds and rain. All of us, including the dogs, decided to stay together over at the Marshes. It really didn't last that long..and afterwards we decided to drive around looking at the damage. We went to a few beaches and couldn't believe the size of the waves. Actually, we couldn't believe that there are people stupid enough to go surfing in those conditions...but they were several!!

We are just getting ready to head to our friend, Jeannette's birthday party up in the mountains. I will put the pics of our party up sometime this week. I need some of Kelly's pics because I did a horrible job of taking pictures.

Oh..I almost forgot about school!! Tomorrow begins our 3rd week already. This year is definetly different than last. We are both looking forward to very challenging, but rewarding years!!

This was right before a huge wave came and drenched Clate!!

Isn't this a smart man???

Time for another staff party....in a plantain field???


After a very crazy week of preparing classrooms, meetings, last minute changes, and helping new teachers- we were ready for a little party. Last year, if you remember, they took the entire staff to a fancy restaurant over-looking a dock. Well, this year they wouldn't tell us where we were going. They said you have 5 minutes to go home grab chairs, put bug spray on, and try to follow the caravan to this place. We were pretty suprised when we pulled into a plantain field. Plantains are like big bananas...so popular down here. Turned out to be a very fun place. We enjoyed taking pictures and walking around the field. We sampled guineaos ( little bananas), peppers, papaya, and Brent's favorite...sugar cane!! For dinner we had chicken and tostones. As you probably know...these teachers like to have a good time...and we did just that. Once everyone started to leave, the secretary invited us over to her house. Tonight the science teacher is having a karaoke party at his bar..everyone is prepared for Kelly and my singing!! Well next week we will have finished our first week of school. Hope it goes well!! Have a great week!




















kelly, sara, and I trying the guineos

Little boy showing Brent how to cut the sugar cane




I love this pic...Kelly had her mouth full of the sugar cane

the secretary's puppy, Scooby