Eventful weekend!

All last week we worked on our rooms- getting them in order for school. My room was a disaster right up until the last day when it magically came together! I love when that happens ;) Friday night we had our Parent Orientation night and I had to speak to the 6th grade parents and then the parents of preschool-3rd grade about music classes. I had an interpreter with me, but I decided to try and just do everything in Spanish on my own- which I did :) I think it went pretty well; I was able to remember everything and the parents seemed to understand me. There was a little bit of 'indulgent smile syndrome' going around- as in, "Oh isn't she cute, trying to speak Spanish to us, let's indulge her' but... I just chalk it up to experience ;) Quite a few of the parents came up to me later and told me congrats on my improved language skills, and it was also really nice because I felt like by opening up the fact that I will try and speak their language, the parents felt like they could come to me with concerns/specific things I'd like to know about their child. I don't think the parents always like to speak through an interpreter so they just end up not telling me anything, but on Friday, a lot of the parents stayed and talked afterward which was great! I also had at least 6 parents tell me that their student really needs to be in the front row when I already had the 6 kids I really thought needed to be in the front lined up :) But we'll work out those kinks later. :)

Saturday morning Ana and I got up early and walked to town to the bus station where the other girls met us later with the mototaxis and we took our first group trip! We went to Santa Rosa (only about an hour away... we thought we'd take it easy the first time :)) and explored the town. There was a fair in Santa Rosa so in the afternoon we went and checked that out. They had a lot of stands with typical Honduran food and jewelry and stuff. I grabbed some elote (grilled/roasted corn with salt and lime. yummmmmm) and looked at some bracelets before it started downpouring. It's the rainy season here in Honduras so it rains like every day- and it rains hard. We stayed under the eating tent for awhile before the rain let up a little, and then decided to head home. There were basically rivers running down the street but we found some boards to cross so our pants wouldn't get so wet..... As I was walking across a board, I stepped right on a nail that went straight through my shoe into the arch of my foot. cute. I had a flashback to Fred Gering (my old busdriver) telling a story about how one time he stepped on a nail and when he took his boot off it was full of blood so I just braced myself for that.... then I remembered he was diabetic and had no feeling in his feet and that's why it bled so much. ANYWAY. so random thoughts, trying not to faint, acting like I was fine, but I let the other girls know I had to 'pull over' and take a look. It actually wasn't too bad, but I wanted to check out my tetanus shot update so I called home. Because of the rain, I had a really hard time hearing Olivia read me the numbers to our doctor's after-hours office, so sorry Olivia for my impatience! :) I called the number, explained my problem, asked if they could check my records and the lady on the other end was like, "uhh this is a dairy farm" hahaha. so. I just decided to wait til we got home ;) It actually didn't look infected and seems to be healing pretty well, but I did go get a tetanus shot just in case :)

Also today while getting my injection at the doctors' (where I also spoke Spanish completely by myself!) I got medicine for conjunctivitis (pink eye!!!) which I somehow got this morning -- YAY first day of school present! :) So I spent my whole first day with my kids thinking I was crying/trying not to touch anything. But other than that the day was pretty great. I really do get really excited to see everyone and I love that I already know the kids in my class. My students from last year were all excited to see me too, and kept creeping in my window during recess (I told them they could come back to my class and do some work if they really missed me that much and that got them to go away :)) Today we only went til noon so that was kind of nice for a good first day, but I'm pretty ready to get into real teaching tomorrow- I already did a Spelling lesson today so my kids better get their heads in the game! (hsm anyone? :))

Anyway, this is kind of a whirlwind blog but I wanted to get a semblance of an update out here. Thanks for reading! :) Pray for all my ailments ;)