regrets.

This blog is about the things I regret doing/not doing with my life right now.

I regret that until this weekend, I'd only done my laundry once since being here. I know, I know. That's college behavior! But, I've been going to my students' games every weekend and the weeks are just too tiring and I really don't like doing laundry.... so I just kept putting it off. Well, enough was enough, I'd put it off so long that I was completely out of all the essentials. Sunday morning I got up nice and early (9!!) and dragged my over-flowing laundry bag outside (which I have since lost. awesome). I threw all the clothes into the pila (a big cement sink. It takes like 20 minutes to fill...) and let them soak in my detergent water for about a half an hour. Then.... I started in. I do my white shirts first (My school uniform is white button-up shirts and navy blue pants or skirts) because I have to scrub out the yellow armpits (this might get graphic kids ... sorry) and if I wait to do that hardcore scrubbing till later, I have zero arm strength. :) So I did my white shirts and then just started pulling stuff out. Most of my clothes are fine if they've soaked. The dirt and odors just come right off and I can just put them right out on the line. The exceptions are my tank tops. Since I haven't done laundry for some time, I've just been re-cycling through my tank tops to wear underneath my school shirt, as a weekend lounge shirt, or to sleep in. All that to say... my tanks were pretty stinky. For those, I employed the magic of Suavitel. This is basically like Downy I think, but it just makes the clothes smell so nice! I have a five-gallon bucket that I fill up with water, pour in a packet of Suavitel and soak the smelly items in for 15 minutes or so.

So Sunday, I did all this. Even with only scrubbing the white shirts and a few pairs of jeans, it still took me like 3 hours. I watched "Breakfast at Tiffany's" for the first half but that finished and I didn't really feel like getting out of rhythm to pop in another DVD. (I had pulled a chair out to our porch and set my computer on that :)) That's another thing I noticed this weekend. Our neighbors have been doing laundry their whole life and they're so good at it. They have this rhythm that they do everything by. I wish I could incorporate sounds into blogging because I can't really describe it. All I know is that I definitely don't have that rhythm so I end up being really jerky and awkward looking. It takes me like ten years to pull soaking wet towels out and wring them. Don Luis (our 'grandpa' neighbor) came over and helped me out which was a little embarrassing because when he saw how many clothes I had, he laughed a little and then went over to his house, got some more twine and hung up another clothesline for me. Awesome :)

I finally got most of my clothes washed and out on the line and was able to go inside in time to make lunch AND see the Broncos game!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It was on TV here so I was pretty pumped. And yes, I know they lost but I wasn't too upset about their general playing. (PLUS did you guys see John Elway??!) ok sorry. sorry. done with the ranting, be happy I'm not giving you the play-by-play.

Anyway, so I'm reformed. I'm never going to wait like a month and a half to do laundry again. Although my friend Geri reminded me of the time when I was in college and I didn't do dishes all semester. whoops. And there's the fact that all those clothes are still out on the line.....

AHH someday I will be completely put together and organized. haha. for now... I'll just work on being more reasonable on the laundry front ;)

just ain't my cup of meat

20 points to anyone who knows where the title comes from :) I put it because I did something this last week that isn't usually on my top ten list of things to do... I went to the beach. (I know, I know, hear me out!) Here's why I don't particularly love the beach- it's really hot and I hate sweating all day, it's really sunny and my skin can handle maybe 15 minutes before it shrivels up and dies, I'm not really the best swimmer so being in water where I can't touch freaks me out a little bit, and the saltiness just isn't my favorite either.

However, we had a five day vacation and wanted to go somewhere that we might not be able to go on one of our three-day weekends later in the year so we chose TRUJILLO! Trujillo is a beach town right on the Pacific Ocean. You can see the Bay Islands from the shore if you're up high enough.

We left after school on Tuesday and spent the night in San Pedro in a hostel. Wednesday we got up super early and took the 6 am bus to Trujillo. We got there about noon and got comfortable in the Casa Kiwi. Casa Kiwi is a hotel that's actually just outside the town of Trujillo so we basically had the place to ourselves- including the beach :) The place had a hammock hut (which we frequented daily with our books) and a pretty lax atmosphere. I actually had a pretty nice time sitting on the beach (lathered in sunscreen), reading and sipping sodas, talking with the other teachers (Shelly, Catelin, Jennifer, Maggie, and Tyler all came along), and hanging out with the hotel staff.

We visited the town of Trujillo and ate at a few seafood restaurants (one day it took two hours to get our food so we didn't have time to do much else. super annoying.) We also visited a Garifuna village and bought some jewelry and pottery. The Garifuna community is the community here in Honduras that are descendants of the African slaves. They have their own separate communities, language and customs. It's pretty cool to experience.

Another MAJOR highlight was snorkeling. We took about a 30 minute boat ride out to the middle of the ocean and we got out and swam all around the coral. I've never done anything like that before so it was pretty cool. I'll try to find some pictures of the fish I saw since I don't have an underwater camera :)

Anyway, it was a great way to relax and enjoy time with my friends. We saw some amazing sunsets and had some amazing conversations. I think I can handle the beach :)

la iglesia

went to church tonight. I sometimes have a hard time getting excited to go to church here. It's at 7 o'clock on Sunday nights so it's my last chance to have a weekend. It's also all in Spanish and it takes lots of energy for me to concentrate enough on the words, let alone what the meaning is behind them. All the songs are in Spanish with no words printed anywhere so I can't even really enjoy the singing, and the sermons, when I do understand them, seem so simple that I wonder why I even need to be there.

All this to say, I went into church feeling slightly obligated to go (never a good start in my opinion), but feeling like maybe I could write a blog (yes, I actually thought about my blog as a reason to go to church!) to describe the simplicity of the church service and how maybe I could see it as a good thing that we're reminded that our faith is supposed to be a childlike one. I even thought of starting my blog off with something like- "God is love. No matter how many times we hear this statement, it still needs to be said."

So, I'm sitting there thinking about all these things to make into a fantastic blog when our pastor tells us to turn to 1 John 4:7-8 ... which also happened to be the verses chapel was on this Wednesday so I taught my kids the song that I know with that verse all this week. 1 John 4:7-8......

Queridos hermanos, amémonos los unos a los otros, porque el amor viene de Dios, y todo el que ama ha nacido de Él y lo conoce. Él que no ama no conoce a Dios, porque Dios es amor.

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone that loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.

I kind of felt like I had a little smack on the wrist from God... I think I try really hard not to feel superior and above the people that I live with in a social or intellectual level, because I think people from the United States tend to have that attitude when going to other countries. I've noticed it in myself on occasions and really try to squelch it because I know there is so much I can learn from the people I live and work with. But what about church? I have this snobby snobby attitude about how I worship- and how worship should be done. I scoff at the simplicity of the messages and act like I am more spiritual and know everything the pastor is going to share already. I think it's cute that the men and women dance alongside the kids, but I even have a kind of attitude problem on that- like, we would never do that in our church because it's not appropriate, and really... the parents should get their children under control so no one is disrupted while 'worshiping' sighhhh... I remember one day at Westchester a little girl was dancing in the aisle and I wanted so badly to join her- sometimes I think dancing and throwing your arms around and kicking your heels up in the air is the only way to express how joyful I feel about God but since I know it wouldn't be allowed, I instead got it into my head that other people that act that way are in the wrong. What a terrible way to think! I really think God tried to teach me something today in my churchy attitude. Shelly and I decided we're going to start a dance club at Westchester so... prepare yourselves :) Maybe not... but I think in all areas of life I definitely make lines and boundaries of what's acceptable behavior and what's not... obviously those lines and boundaries can be very very good things but... sometimes I think living outside of your comfort zone allows you to see when you need to break those boundaries and realize why you put them up in the first place.

BUGZZZZZ

The bug season has begun in Villa Verde (I don't think it ever really stops, but it's begun for us. :)) We had our first major encounter with a bug the other night when it flew into the house. I'm pretty sure I posted a picture last year of what I fondly refer to as the 'pincer bug' - it's about five inches long with wings and nasty fang/pincers that move all over on its face. Well, one flew in and scarred everyone for life- seriously, it can be pretty traumatizing! Luckily, I dealt with having these kind of bugs in our house all the time so I was able to quite calmly capture the bug and release it back into the wild.... it was a pretty special moment for me; I feel I've grown so much :)

Back in the house, everyone had calmed down pretty well and I went to the bathroom... and found a spider just chillin on the inside of the bowl- not in the water, just crawling around on the porcelain... Luckily I had my handy-dandy bucket of water next to the toilet to flush him down. Still, I've been very careful in that area of life for the last couple days :)

I've also continued to have quite the problem with some kind of bug in my bed. I'm pretty sure it's not mosquito bites that I'm getting by the hundreds - although I'm getting quite a few of those too. I've decided there are either spiders, fleas, or bedbugs in my sheets that like to visit in the middle of the night. I've decided there's not much I can do about getting rid of the bugs (I've sprayed Raid, cleaned the sheets, aired things out... not much helps for long) so I've resigned myself to another year of unsightly legs but ... I just wish I could make them slightly more sightly :) The bites are SO ITCHY I just can't think about anything else and that is annoying. I have several kinds of lotion and itch sticks to help me out, as well as Benedryl and NOTHING helps. SO, I decided to look online for homemade remedies. Some suggestions?:

~toothpaste (tried this, it doesn't really help the itching, but it does make me not want to scratch cuz then I get blue minty paste all over my hands)

~deodorant (haven't tried yet, deodorant is on my 'ration' list so I'm not sold on wasting it just yet...)

~small vacuum pump to remove the venom (not available in Gracias haha)

~wet tobacco kept in place with a bandaid (not a huge tobacco hoarder, plus i would completely exhaust our bandaid supply in about two days)

~baking soda/water paste (this is the one I've been using for the last couple nights and seems to work pretty well, although Tyler and Maggie told me I looked like I had leprosy tonight :))

So, we'll see. If anyone has other ideas... send them my way :)

Tonight, we also found what we think is a chinche... an icky bug that makes a very annoying, loud noise when you capture it in a jar.... which I did :) We're going to bring it to the neighbors tomorrow to find out for sure if it's the bug they talk about. Catelin read up on it, so we're slowly becoming bug experts here in the mountains. :)

Although the bug situation is MUCH better than last year, it's still quite the boredom killer :) As soon as a bug comes in the house, everyone's adrenaline is up for the rest of the night :) Take that coffee! :)




PS. I just ran to the kitchen to cook up another baking soda concoction and when I poured the baking soda into the water, a dead spider fell out of the box. OH the irony!

ration-alizations.

I got paid today. I've had 190 lempiras in my account for about a week and a half now (thats a little less than ten bucks) so I've been rationing things like crazy. I haven't called anyone from my phone because I figured I'd better save my few minutes for an unforeseen emergency and ... that got me thinking. I do quite a bit of rationing here :) I'm pretty sure most people ration money so I don't feel like I need to go into too much detail on that one but here's a list of somethings that I might ration out a little more here than I do in the States. :)

Water: This isn't always an issue, but at least once a week our water gets funky and stops working or trickles. We keep our pila filled up in the back and, as a new and fun development, Shelly's and my toilet has stopped working so we have to keep a bucket in there to self-flush. So sometimes I (I don't know about Shelly, I suppose I should inform her of this before posting it on the world wide web) but I go with the 'if it's yellow, let it mellow; if it's brown, flush it down.' philosophy.... I don't want to have to be filling up that bucket every time! So I ration! Also along the lines of water, I'm sure faithful followers, and anyone else that has been to a Latin American country knows... we CANNOT drink the tap water. So, we have to ration our filter water. I usually bring a water bottle to school and make sure to fill it up before I leave for home :) I think between the four of us, we finish 2-3 five-gallon waters a week. That's not so bad right?

Books: I just love to read. But I have to ration out my books because I only brought so many. I've been reading "Snow" (sorry fellow grammar teachers, I can't underline things in my blog :( ) by Orhan Pamuk but I have to read it SO SLOWLY because I don't have a library to go to after I finish all the books my roommates and I brought :/ I also have some audio books so maybe that will keep me going for awhile but really... who likes to cuddle up with a hot chocolate, a blanket, and your itunes book library playing? :)

Movies/TV shows: along the same lines... only have a certain number of movies to choose from and no redboxes nearby :) The girls and I have been watching Smallville almost every night for fun, and we've also started Glee but... we have three seasons of Smallville here and only half a season of Glee so we REALLY have to ration those out. I think our first night we watched three episodes and Catelin (our Glee Nazi) told us we had to limit Glee to like one episode every three weeks. HA. thank you Smallville for your distraction :)

Sweet things: Ahhhhh. This is the hardest for me. I'm trying to keep a tight budget so I haven't done a lot of 'frivolous' spending- like on chocolate, pop, cookies... all the things I crave all the time :) So I've conditioned myself to get a Snickers on Wednesday when we go down into town, take a bite and then keep it in the fridge and ration it out for the next week. Pretty impressive huh :) Another thing that keeps rationing alive and well in our lives here is the fact that we really can't buy things very often. So if we want two grilled-cheese sandwiches for supper, that's fine but then that means we probably only have enough bread for one more meal, or maybe for a slice of toast one morning. OH the decisions....

Computer power: Along with our water, our power goes out all the time, so I am often left with a computer with, at the most, three hours of power left so I have to decide what I'm going to do with it and when I will spend it all up - for a two hour movie? three hours of music? journaling?


I think that's all I can come up with on the top of my head. (OK. rewind. OFF the top of my head.... I'm just going to keep that in there to show you how terrible my English is getting haha) We didn't have school Monday or Tuesday this week because it's rained everyday and the road up to our school was way too muddy for the buses to bring the kids up so today was like a Monday which is great because Friday is still in two days! Things are going well at school; still like it :) Enjoy your not-so-rationed lives this week!