so i tied the shoelaces around them and kept walking! these pics were taken after our hike so you can get an idea of how wet we got from the rain :)

so we went on a 6 hour hike in the mountains. i bought these shoes in tela when we were at the beach and had never worn them before- 20 minutes into the hike, this happened. and then about an hour later, the other one fell apart too.

jacki and sarah attempting to hang up my hammock. so far our attempts have been unsuccessful- i'll let you know when we get it up!

that little egg/booger looking thing? that's what you eat :)

Lichas- a type of fruit down here. You peel off this prickly skin and eat the white fruit inside.

Us and our guide... see the waterfall in the back?

Our house and our beautiful view!

Azucena and me after she smeared chocolate on my face :)

my cake!

My kids celebrating my birthday

climb every mountain!

This week we didn't have school on Tuesday or Wednesday due to the political curfew, so Thursday was like a Monday and Friday was like... a Friday. So you can imagine the amount of work we got done and how crazy my kids were! I had two tests that I was going to give on Tuesday and there was no way I could push them back, but my kids didn't really study during their two days off so.... that was slightly frustrating. But hopefully we have no more interruptions and my kids will get back into the routine of things!
Things at the house are still really great. One of the teachers that lives in town came up and stayed with us this weekend just for fun. We talked, watched some of The Office, played Speed Scrabble, and stayed up really late (11!) Saturday we slept in (8!) and then went for a hike. I think I've mentioned how we live on the edge of Celaque National Park, but haven't actually gone in? Well we did this weekend! Our 55-year old neighbor is a Celaque guide, so when we mentioned that we'd like to go up sometime, he volunteered to go with us. Jacki, Rachel, Kirsty, Mr. Bran, and I all left at about 9:30 in the morning with lunches packed by Sarah, full water bottles and smiles on our faces. Don Luis (our neighbor/guide- Don is the same as Mr.) stopped frequently to show us different plants- leaves used to make soap, stems you could snif if you had a cold, flowers that you put in hot water and drink if you have arthritis, this fluffy plant that they use to make pillows... he knew everything! The frequent stops were great, but when we weren't stopped, Don Luis was booking it up that mountain- I really thought I was going to pass out :) Our ultimate goal was to get to this waterfall that we can see from school so I just kept hiking up, waiting until we got to this waterfall. The scene I kept picturing to keep me going was from Samantha Saves the Day! (yes the American Girl book)- Samantha and her friends go to this secret island and find this beautiful waterfall and they have a picnic lunch and play in the river and have a great time.... Well. It wasn't quite like that. We hiked up the mountain for about three hours and arrived at the place where you can see the waterfall... I'll post a picture but it didn't really seem any closer to me than it had from the bottom of the mountain. Also, there wasn't a spot to eat lunch! All the other girls said it was totally worth the climb but I'm not so sure. I suppose I'm glad I went. :) The walk down definitely made it worth it for me though. It was much easier and the scenery helped remind us of many songs from musicals. At one point us girls were running through the forest singing "Wonder of Wonders, Miracle of Miracles" from
Fiddler on the Roof, the next moment we videoed us singing "Climb Every Mountain" from Sound of Music. About halfway down, it started pouring rain, so of course we had to sing "Singing in the Rain". It was so funny. I'm sure Don Luis and Mr. Bran thought we were crazy jogging down the mountain singing operatic songs in English. It was great :) We arrived at our hosue 5-6 hours after leaving, completely drenched and we just lounged around the rest of the day. It was great and I'm not too sore so MAYBE I'll do it again.


Also, if any of you are interested, here's a quick update on Honduran politics...
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/09/27/honduras.president/index.html

It's not super informative, but it at least tells a little bit. We haven't been affected by it too much in Gracias or Villa Verde as far as seeing demonstrations or upset people, but it's something to be aware of!

PS Happy Birthday Grandma! Hope the Broncos win for you like they did for me!!! :)

birthday!

So yesterday was my birthday... it was a fun, crazy day. It started off with God giving me the most beautiful sunrise I've ever seen... the rest of the day we were in a cloud so that was pretty exciting. My kids gave me little gifts all day (I got some earrings, a bracelet, two teddy bears, a plastic flower.... and lots and lots of cards). It was so sweet. At the end of the day I had music class with the third graders where they had also made me lots of cards and had torn up construction paper for confetti that they threw when I came into the room (reminded me of New Year's Eve at my house :)). It was practically impossible to carry on a normal music class because they were all so excited. That ended up being ok though because about 10 minutes later the teacher that does Spanish with my kids at the end of the day came in and said she was taking over the third grade class and I needed to go to my classroom. I walked in and there were streamers, balloons, signs, and super-hyper kids all over the place. They sang me "Happy Birthday" - which apparently the entire school could hear. Some students had brought in a HUGE chocolate cake, some Ritz crackers, popcorn, and lemonade which we passed out in complete chaos. Apparently it's also tradition to take frosting from the cake and put it on the face of whoever's birthday it is so... by the end of school my entire face was covered in chocolate frosting. This would have been perfectly fine except that us teachers were going into town for a birthday supper and in order to do that we usually jump on the kids' bus right at 3 so I had to quick try and clean myself and my classroom up before the bus left!

We arrived into town just in time to find out there was a 4 o'clock curfew for the entire country of Honduras. Right before I came to Honduras, the government 'escorted' the president Zelaya out of the country because he'd been trying to put some things into the constitution that would make it easy to set up a dictatorship. Honduras has had a man named Micheletti in charge since then. Apparently Zelaya showed up in the country and everything went into lock-down mode. SOO. We were in town and everything closed so we just went back up the mountain. Today they cancelled school because the curfew went until 7 am and students wouldn't have been able to make it to school. We came down into town again to try and have a birthday lunch but... once again everything is closed. So we're using the internet and sitting around and we probably won't have school again tomorrow! Always something interesting here :)

But, all around, my birthday was wonderful. Thanks for all the birthday wishes!!

This week in Music I taught the fourth grade class the song "Lord You are More Precious than Silver" (I don't know the real name :)) except that I taught them the second verse because I felt like they might relate to it better.

Lord, Your love is higher than the mountains.
Lord, Your love is deeper than the seas.
Lord, Your love is wider than the oceans.
Nothing on this earth compares with You.

The fourth grade class is usually pretty rowdy, but on Thursday they were ridiculous. Sarah is their teacher and she had had a pretty hard day getting them to be quiet, so she wished me luck as she practically ran out of the classroom. So, instead of doing my usual warm-up songs, I used a breathing exercise to have them kind of calm down. That.... sort of worked... Most of the songs I teach the kids are upbeat and use lots of actions so that they're excited for Music but I decided that might not be a good choice for this day. I randomly remembered this song and thought I would try it out. This song is actually really special to me because (sorry in advance Zach!) when Zachary was a baby I used to sit in his room for hours rocking him (I'd maybe sometimes wake him up to rock him back to sleep :)) and I'd sing this song over and over again. It was always such a beautiful time singing in the dark to Jesus while rocking my baby brother. So, I decided to teach it to these kids and they loved it. A calmness fell over the room immediately. I had them do a few actions like lifting their hands way up for the mountains, dipping their arms way down for deep, and spreading their arms out wide for the ocean, but mostly they just sang from their hearts. A lot of the students had their eyes closed and THREE girls started crying. WOW. How precious to hear children worshipping God and to be able to join in. I had music with them the next day, and since it was a Friday I let them choose what songs they wanted to sing for the last half. I had some our usual songs brought up, but I had several kids (since they forget to listen to each other, they all just keep saying the same thing :)) raise their hand and say, "Can we sing the song of the Lord?". So we did.


I love my job!

random people in the crowd at the game

this maybe gives you a little idea on the amount of people at the game.

our precious neighbor luis. he was sad we were leaving.

abi hiding under the table :)

candido fernando and abigail. and me with one earring missing.

Sarah and me at the futbol game

my boys playing futbol against the fifth graders at Dia de Ninos (Children's Day)

We fashioned a bar to hang our clothes on! and our dresser thing is full too!-- but no more living out of suitcases!

my room. complete with pictures and letters to remind me of all of you at home :)

most of the girls in my class after they won their futbol game 4-1!!!

Weekend Happenings

HI!

All right, sorry it's been awhile since I've written, things have been pretty crazy. Let's see what all have I done....

Well a couple weekends ago, we took a five hour ride on various buses to get to San Pedro Sula for a Honduran futbol game. The first half was not quite what we were expecting .... couple things happened: 1) there was some tear gas when some people got a little too roudy waiting 2) they accidently made double numbered tickets so a) there were twice as many people there as usual and b) people were not getting the seats they paid for because someone was already sitting there 3) the crowds were absolutely ridiculous. People were completely squished together and as we got closer it just got worse and worse. At one point I had a little girl next to me with her family and she couldn't breathe because her face was being smashed into the person next to her and it was too tight for her to move. That was a little scary, but we pulled her up into the air and then they let her go inside. So. That was standing in line the two hours before the game started. When we got in, there weren't any seats because of the ticket mix up so we watched the first half on a tv in the vendor area. Second half we managed to find a spot right in the front row and it was FANTASTIC. Totally made up for the first half. Honduras scored 4 points total and won the game, the crowd was crazy and I LOVED IT. It definitely made me a futbol fan for life. We had jerseys and facepaint and went all out. It was great.

This last weekend we went for an 8 hour trip to Tela, which is a beach on the shore of the Gulf. Let me try and describe the bus system in Honduras.... it's insane. We may start at a bus stop in a school bus with a few other people, but along the way we pick people up at other bus stations or on the side of the road and by the time we reach the next town, there are three people to each seat and sometimes people standing in the aisles. Then we get off and as a group of American girls, we are immediately surrounded by 8-15 men yelling and grabbing us and trying to get us to get on their bus for the cheapest price. So we'd eventually find a bus and start the whole process over again. Like I said, insane. Oh, another thing that we discovered on buses is that people are constantly trying to sell things. We would stop to pick passengers up and people would swarm the bus and try to sell you food and drinks through the windows. Some people would even get on the bus and try to squeeze through the aisles to sell their things. One of the creepiest things I experienced was two 20-something-year-old men dressed up as clowns that would do an act and then go up and down the aisles asking for money. blech. Even better, in the last two weeks the exact same two clowns have been on THREE of our buses. yuck yuck yuck. Anyway, there's a picture of the bus for you!

This weekend we had Monday and Tuesday off - one day to celebrate Dia de Maestras (Teacher's Day!) and one day for Honduras's Independence Day. Five of us girls went to the beach and had a wonderful, relaxing time. My friend Sarah and I actually spent more time in our air conditioned room with our cable tv because we didn't really want to get sunburned but.... that was just about the kind of vacation I needed. :) We enjoyed the pool and the beach at night though! It was a great time to spend with all the girls and not just the ones I live with. We also met up with a couple girls that work at the school in La Union. They work with a British organization that places people in various countries. Renska is from Holland and Laura is from Scotland. It was so fun to hang out with them and get to know them! The whole weekend was wonderful. My two purchases were some sweet tennis shoes for $12-- to better play futbol :) and a hammock for about $7. Our house is looking wonderful and homey so we're going to try and find a place to hang the hammock up.

School started again today (16th) and it's really nice to have a 3 day week. I really missed my kids this week though so I was actually pretty excited to go back to school this week. I have a whole wall covered with pictures that the kids draw me, although I think I caught one of the girls drawing one today during my math lesson and after telling her three times to put it away, I took it away and didn't give it back until the end of class and ... I did not get a picture from her today. :) Today we rode down into town on the school bus which is always an experience. Today I had a crowd of kids wanting me to sing songs from Music- I love that all the kids know who I am and like the songs we do. Today they wanted to sing "I had a little turtle", "The Bumblebee Song", and "Apples and Bananas". So good. So funny.


This weekend we are probably just going to sit around the house. My birthday is on Monday (!!!!) so we might celebrate by going out to eat or to the hot springs, but nothing too crazy since our last couple weekends have been pretty full! I'm excited to see what the rest of the week is like. I can't believe I've already been here a month!!!

I have had the most enjoyable last few days. On Friday evening, our friends Dennis and Vicente were in Villa Verde with three people from a church in Michigan that buy supplies for our school. We went out to supper with them and then spent time with our friends. Saturday, we cleaned up our house a little bit and brought our laundry to be done by some of our neighbors. Us girls attempted doing one load of our white shirts last weekend, and while we were fairly successful, it took us a long time. Since we haven't really done any other laundry since being in Honduras, there was a lot between the four of us and our neighbors offered to do all of it for us. Paying for it is definitely worth it- my clothes were clean and dried in the sunshine. Wonderful. It's pretty much decided that Sarah and Jacki will just stay in the house with Rachel and me. We seriously enjoy every minute of our time together- every night is full of ridiculous laughing and dance parties and getting to know one another. It also is going to save us money! So on Saturday, we went into town and picked up a bunch of groceries and some things to make our house a little 'homier'. We bought a bunch of mats four about $2 each, a shower curtain rod (up until this point we've been using the shower curtain as a bathroom door because we didn't have a rod big enough for the shower, but this meant when someone showered, the bathroom was inaccessible, so the rod is a drastic improvement!

One thing about shopping in Gracias is that there aren't any Walmart or Target-like stores. We had to go to one store for our shower curtain rod and a pot; another store for our cereal, peanut butter, sauces, and other more American food; several stops through the market for various fruits and vegetables; and then we always stop at a place that sells homemade fresh fruit popsicles that are delicious! The lady who owns the store gave us some sample bags of her chile salsa and pico de gallo salsa that were wonderful as well, so we'll have to go back for some full jars.

One of our favorite treats to make involves cookies called Intensos (they don't really do candy bars here, it's more cookies or chips). Intensos are kind of like those Kuebler elf cookies except better. This weekend we discovered that if you add peanut butter and sprinkles... oh my goodness, they're so good. We've maybe gone a little overboard on eating them but that's ok. We realized this weekend that we haven't really had any snacks since being here so we're just trying to change that a little bit!

We've actually eaten really well and I like almost every food I try. On Sunday, our neighbors who own a comedor (a small restaurant) invited us down the road for breakfast. They made us baleada, which are basically tortillas folded in half filled with beans, cheese and mantequilla- which is kind of like a creamy sauce they use for all kinds of things. We also had some coffee that they make with pepper and cinnamon- something I'm probably going to have to keep drinking when I come back to the States because it was SO good. Paola also ran up to a little vineyard and got us some little grapes.

Our neighbors are absolutely wonderful. Paola is in fourth grade and it's her grandma and aunt that own the comedor. Her aunt, Sonia has two kids- Abigail (pronounced Ah-be-guy-yil here) who just turned three and Luis who is a year and a half. Sonia is 23, so basically the age of all of us girls. We went swimming with all of them on Sunday afternoon and it was so fun. That afternoon, Sonia came and taught us how to make tortillas and we ended up doing a pretty good job! The kids came over and played in our house- Sonia told us they ask all the time to come visit and we love having them here. They are so precious. That evening we went to church with the family. All in all it was a wonderful weekend.

School coming on Monday morning wasn't that bad either. I had one of those days where I just loved teaching. I have always, always loved kids and wanted to be a teacher, but yesterday I just loved the TEACHING part of it. I'm not sure what it was- it wasn't that my students had this sudden breakthrough of 'oh! I get it!" but they try so hard and I love explaining things to them. I really love sixth grade. My kids are wonderful and sweet and understand humor. Today, the people that are working on our courtyard were using lots of loud tools. Since our classrooms are all open, it made it very difficult to teach and I kind of made a dirty look in the direction of the workers and said something like, "Can you please just be quiet?" One of the boys who gets in trouble all the time for talking piped up, "Miss! Put their name on the board!" since that's what I do if the kids don't stop talking. It was so funny, and of course I wrote 'workers' on the board with several checkmarks. My kids loved it.


After school on Monday, a lot of the Honduran teachers were getting together to play soccer (or as they call it here, futbol). They wanted us Americans to join but none of us play futbol so we were pretty hesitant. The second reason we were hesitant is that our PE teacher, Mr. Bran (who is also our neighbor) was going to be 'coaching' us. Mr. Bran spent last year as a trainer for the Honduran Woman's Futbol team. He told us they're not very good at all but... they're still a professional tean and for someone like me that about the only things I play are a musical instrument or ping-pong... was a little intimidating. However, we girls decided we should probably start bonding with the staff and just play. It ended up being a lot of fun and if I stay on defense, I think I could be a fantastic addition to the team! :)

This weekend we are planning on traveling to San Pedro Sula to see the Hoduran mens futbol team play against Trinidad and Toboggo. All of us girls are really excited. I've been missing my BBroncos so it will be nice to cheer for someone again. We had such a fantastic weekend this past weekend that it will be hard to beat, but I think it's possible. I'll let you know how it goes!


Oh and sorry, I want to post some pictures but sometimes the internet at the place we go is waaaaaay too slow and it's just impossible. I'll try to soon!