Blog Numero Dos

So, since I don't really have anything else to do, I'm going to quick write a blog about the funny things that happened to us yesterday. Because it's funny and pretty classic for us. :)

So, in my previous blog, I mentioned that we have been exercising and that we ran to town together yesterday. We finished with school at 3 and the plan was for all of us to put our exercise clothes on, leave our things at school, run down, get a ride back, and pick up our school things before getting home.

I left my room to go change, but first I had to bring my copies to the office, so I dumped my clothes and tennis shoes outside the office and filled out my copy sheets. I was probably in the office for two minutes, but when I came back out, my tennis shoes were gone. I started looking around, couldn't find them, asked the cleaners, my principal, and the other teachers. The kids had just left on the bus, so I was kind of afraid that someone had taken them... on accident? on purpose? Anyway, the point was everyone was ready to go and I was still standing around in my uniform and only high heels to walk in. :) The other girls decided to continue looking for my shoes while I changed into everything else. When I was finished, the girls had just returned from their quest- with my shoes! Apparently, our other principal, Mr. Calderon, had thought they belonged to one of the kids and had taken them and gone around to all the buses seeing if someone forgot them. :) So, I quick threw my shoes on- by now it was 3:15 and we really wanted to make it down to town before the bank closed at 4. We all threw our things into Catelin's room and started down the road. It was a really great run! It's a nice, easy decline so you can still run and not feel like you're going to fall down the whole mountain, but it's not completely flat so the running is a little easier. All four of us (Jennifer, Catelin, Shelly, me)ran for basically the whole time. We got down to town at 3:40 and Catelin said, "It'd be really nice if a moto came by on this road to bring us to the bank so we make sure we don't miss it" and probably two minutes later.... a moto taxi came and we hopped in! We found all the things we needed, our moto taxi driver friend, Mauricio, picked us up at 4:58 - two minutes early!! (usually they're anywhere from 30-60 minutes late haha), and we were on our way up. All of us were talking about what a great afternoon it was and how there'd been no problems like we usually have. Shelly and Catelin had made some great, random purchases and Jennifer and I had bought popcorn and knock-off M&Ms for our Harry Potter marathon. As we were nearing the school, Catelin pulled out her key to her room and..... it was not the key to her room. It was the key to our house. We quickly remembered all the things that were in the room- all of our school clothes, our school work, our keys, computers, cell phones.... We stopped at the school anyway to see if anyone was there with a key to the classrooms... Shelly broke the fence (although if you ask her about it, she will say it was me. It wasn't), and Don Juan, the 'guard' asked me who all the girls were with me- I told him they were teachers and he asked if they taught at a different school! haha so he kind of thought the girls were just breaking into the school and besides that, had no keys to anything. SO, we got back in our moto taxi, without any of our things, and headed up to our house. Luckily, Catelin had left her computer with all the Harry Potter movies downloaded at home; unluckily my speakers were still at the school... but we still managed to watch some of the first movie as long as we sat very quietly. We still ate our popcorn and M&Ms, and had a good night together. This morning, we walked back down to the school, and someone was there with keys so we were able to get our things. Which is why I have my computer and am able to write to all of you! :) Pretty eventful afternoon and evening :)

You Make the World Taste Better.

Dr. Pepper. I am currently sipping on a Dr. Pepper. It is so delicious. We went to Santa Rosa last week and did some major shopping and I found DR. PEPPER!!! (It's not something they sell here in Gracias, so it was a pretty big find. :))

Some other things that I have bought/experienced/found that have made my world taste better.....


Four CDs for Four Bucks off the streets
* Selena (classic!)
* Michael Jackson's BAD (everyone here knows all of MJ's songs...)
* Vicente Fernandez (he's super famous here and every week when we drive down to
town in Mr. Rodrigo's truck, we listen to him)
* Shakira (she sang for the World Cup; I had to get it!)

Christmas
In my family, we always decorate and start getting into the Christmas spirit during Thanksgiving break. So, I'm a little early BUT last year I was not prepared for Christmas at all. There are no commercials for holiday shopping, no Christmas lights, no snow (!!!), no special church services, no trying to take a perfect Christmas picture, no putting together Christmas cards... you get the point. Last year, I got home and, besides the wedding craziness, I was shocked to find out that Christmas was coming... and the goose was fat! ha. Anyway, this year, I have started with the Christmas music playing, I've bought decorations, I found Rudolph on YouTube and watched it, and I try to wear hats and scarves as often as possible even though they're not that necessary. :) I also bought some EGG NOG!

Exerciseeeeee
We've actually been doing a lot of exercise as a group which has been pretty great. Last year, I started taking advantage of having a beautiful mountain trail to climb/run/walk plus I was dating the PE teacher so I felt a little pressure to be a tiny bit athletic. :) I'd usually go running on my own and enjoy it, but this year Catelin and I have been going pretty regularly and the other teachers will join us when they feel like it. We walk or jog or lift weights (the weights we use at the school are actually bottles filled with sand and some metal poles that the guys attached cement-filled containers to... pretty nifty even though I'm not great at explaining :)) and do some ab stuff. Yesterday, all of girls ran down from school to town, walked around down there and caught a taxi back up. It was pretty great. :)

Cooking
I've discovered that I enjoy cooking, and I can usually do a pretty decent job. We're thinking of making a Honduran cookbook of all the recipes we've used down here :) All of our meals are homemade so we do lots of internet exploring for good recipes. So far, I think our greatest hits have been our chicken strips with onion rings, Chicken alfredo pasta, delicious homemade pizzas (we're making that tonight!), and mashed potatoes (the mashed potatoes are just delicious; it's Catelin's recipe- we could probably eat them as a meal themselves :))

Well it is 10:25 on Saturday morning and I am out of things to do! :) Maybe I'll write another blog... :D

I got some money cuz I just got paid... now how I wish I had someone to talk to!

My Saturdays here in Honduras are a little different than my ones in the US. First difference: In the US, I try to sleep to at least noon, but usually shoot for 2. Here, I get up at 7:30 (on my own, without an alarm clock :/) and do something productive. I now understand why my parents always suggested that we do our Saturday lists as quickly as possible, without putzing, so we could enjoy the rest of our day responsibility free! The last few Saturdays, however, have been busy with our Fiesta Tipica, trips to Santa Rosa, and end of the quarter grading. I was feeling pretty stifled in my messy room, not to mention the fact that I again let laundry get out of hand. So, I woke up with the intention to do some pretty intense cleaning.... and that is exactly what happened! I took pictures so you could be a part of my productive Saturday!!


First things first, I decided to sweep out our kitchen. There was a box in our corner that has been there since we moved in and since I was doing the intense cleaning session, I moved it! Behind the box was this... a black, gross-looking thing attached to our wall by a webbish looking thing, surrounded by this weird yellow tint....




After dousing the unidentified object in Raid to make sure it wasn't a spider, (although, looking back, I'm not sure why a spider would be trapped in its own web) I pulled the thing off the wall and brought it out to investigate with my Exact-o knife. It was a cocoon! There was a butterfly/moth waiting to be metamorphosized inside!! It was pretty cool; kind of a bummer that I accidentally killed it, but I brought it to show my kids at school so it ended up as a learning tool :) I've also decided that if I could choose my life path over again, an entomologist (vocab word this week... a scientist who studies insects :)) or some other outdoorsy scientist might be a close second to teaching. :)





Catelin and I always get up early on Saturdays and make yummy milk-sugar-cinnamon rice. mmmmmmmmmmm so I ate some of that :)


Our neighbors offered to let us use their washer, so I collected all my school uniform clothes and combined them with Catelin's, Jennifer's and Shelly's. Catelin went next door to supervise. The family doesn't have a dryer, but after the clothes are washed, they keep them in the washer on spin cycle without water before hanging them on the line. sweet!



I decided to organize/rearrange my room. This is the before picture...


While cleaning, I had CSI on... I'd never seen the show, but this summer, I found seasons 1 and 2 at Half Price books for 10 bucks each! Now I'm addicted!!


Mopped and swept (I almost said broomed-darn lack of English! hahaha) the living room...



We decided to have a massive kitchen clean. All the roommates joined in! We dusted; we swept; we organized our food pantry....



We even cleaned out the fridge! While cleaning, Catelin knocked the olive oil lid behind the refrigerator, so she moved it and found a very, very mushy pineapple. Don't know how long it had been there haha




Our pila faucet decided to break this morning. Gushing water everywhere...



Here's the guilty party. The PVC pipe just randomly broke apart. And the key of the faucet fell off.



Burning garbage!!




I did some laundry of my own, and then Catelin brought over the laundry from the neighbors to hang up!




We solved the gusher by turning off the water (I did learn something about problem faucets last year...), stuffing a plastic bag down the pipe, and covering it with another plastic bag, and covering with tons of duct tape. The result looked a lot like a bird, specifically an eagle. We put some eyes, a beak, and named him George Washington. :D He lasted for a few hours...





Shelly and I wrung out a sopping wet, very heavy comforter. In the middle of it, I was quickly reminded of a scene from Swiss Family Robinson when Fritz wrestles an anaconda in the river. LUCKILY, Shelly was also raised on this movie and kindly re-enacted the scene!!!!




We have some metal chair and couch frames that are strung with this elastic string to make the seats. GREAT invention but... the metal legs do not sound that great scraping across our tile floor. So, Jennifer and I used the handy duct tape and cardboard to make some protectors. Perfect!



We add blankets to make it look more homey and comfortable :)



Saturday nights we have 'Favorite Movie Night'. We began with Tyler's favorite, "Tombstone", then Shelly's favorite, "Rookie of the Year", Jennifer and Catelin's fav "Wizard of Oz" and Maggie's favorite "The Notebook". This weekend it was my turn and all my favorite movies are epic three-four hour, so we constructed a massive bed to sit on. (Despite appearances, those couch things are NOT that comfortable :))



MY FAVORITE MOVIE OF ALL TIME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! TEN COMMANDMENTS!!!! Unfortunately, we got about 20 minutes into it, and the DVD decided to stop working, so we switched to The Godfather. Still good, and Marlon Brando is great but.... you just can't beat Charlton Heston! :/



All in all, it was a pretty eventful day. After I loaded all these pictures onto my computer, I fell asleep, kicked my camera onto the ground, and it promptly stopped working. Unfortunately, that means I can't show you my 'after cleaning' room picture, but I promise it looks much better. Little disappointed about the camera :/ I'm not sure it's going to come back to life, but if not, I suppose I can add it to the Christmas list along with a new Ten Commandments DVD :)