coming soon to an airport near you...

25 hours until I step foot on California soil. Getting prepared for flushable toilet paper, carpet, driving, chick-fil-a, taco bell, and most exciting: my family and friends!! See you soon.

a caribbean christmas... not quite

Well, i guess if Christmas technically starts on the day after Thanksgiving, then technically it was a caribbean Christmas. Casa Verde and Friend, consisting of Anna, Corrie, Megan, Melissa, Eduardo (Megan's bf) and I traveled by bus to the caribbean coast of Honduras where we caught a 1.5 hour ferry ride to Utila, one of Honduras's three Bay Islands. We were able to spend Thanksgiving Day and Friday riding bikes down the beachfront, playing frisbee in the water, reading in the sunshine and spending time with friends. It was a wonderful vacation.




Upon returning from the actual Caribbean, Anna and I returned to another Caribbean, in full force: "A Caribbean Christmas" this year's preschool Christmas program. Imagine for a minute, 200 children between the ages of 3 and 6 performing a number of songs with choreographed dances. Cute, right? Adorable. Now, imagine those same 200 kids 1 week before the actual performance, practicing for literally 3-and-a-half hours a day those same songs and movements. Those poor things: standing up, sitting down, shaking their shoulders, shaking their hips, flailing their arms, bouncing their knees, trying to smile while singing at the top of their lungs in a language they don't know. They hate it. We practice from 7-9am, do some phonics, have snack and recess and then practice again from 10:30-12, followed by some more classes, lunch, and then the occasional in-class practice of our own class song for the program. The look on their faces when I line them up for the second rehearsal of the day kills me. Now you know what my life has been like since Thanksgiving.

In other news, we did not end up going to San Pedro to visit Nandi and her family last weekend. Some things came up and it didn't work out. There is still a chance that a couple of us may go this weekend, but my confidence in that idea is quickly fading. Please continue to keep them in your prayers though as the dad is still going through some major surgeries, Nandi has about a month of recovery before she even begins to do physical therapy to re-learn how to walk, and the mom is having to be so strong going back and forth between the hospital where her husband is at, and her relatives house with her daughter.

in less than 8 days I will be back home in California!! I'm so excited, I can't wait. But there is yet so much to be done between now and then (homeless dinner, tamaleada, another filling, possible SPS trip, Christmas program, and more), so I'm sure the next 8 days are going to fly. And when I get back it's not going to slow down much either. Lots to see and do in Cali as well. Pray that I find time to rest. My love is with you all. Can't wait to see you!

::update::

Here is the latest of what I have heard on the family who was in the car accident. Maria, the mother, who suffered the least physically (several fractures as i understand), is now in a recovery room in the hospital. Nandi, the little girl, broke both of her legs and her wrists. She had surgery on Wednesday on one of the legs and yesterday on the other one. I think she is in the recovery room with her mother. Jose, the father, is still in intensive care. He has finally come to, but is suffering from memory loss. He apparently recognized his wife, but he has no recollection of the accident. I'm not sure how much of his memory has been affected. Elisa, the sister who passed away in the accident was buried in Nicaragua (where the family is from), while the parents are still in the hospital. Yesterday, a few teachers from the Bible department at IST drove up to San Pedro Sula to visit them in the hospital. Rumor has it that when the little girl saw Mrs. Nieto, her Bible teacher from last year, she was asking about me and my assistant too. Myself and a couple other Kindergarten teachers and assistants are planning to make the 4-hour drive up there on Sunday. Please, please continue to pray for this family, and for us as we drive up that same stretch of highway where the accident took place. Pray that God will give us wisdom and peace in the midst of it all.

you never know

This is Nandi. She was one of my smartest students last year. This partial she got High Honors in First Grade. Yesterday afternoon Nandi and her family were in a very serious car accident. Her twin sister, Elisa was killed on impact. Nandi, her mother, and father were taken to the hospital where Nandi and her father are both in critical condition and her mother is being sedated because she has suffered numerous fractures to her body. Please pray for complete physical and emotional healing for this family, and peace for all those involved in their lives.

http://www.latribuna.hn/news/45/ARTICLE/50216/2008-12-01.html

a.r.t. d.a.y.

my apologies once again for the long delay in updates. i didn't know anyone was checking the blog, so i got discouraged and stopped writing cause it felt like a waste of time. But now that I know at least 2 people check it, I will try to update more frequently. BUT, you have to comment on the posts so I know you're still checking them. Ok?

Alright, so since it's been forever since the last post and it would take a really long time to update you on everything that's happened since the robbing, i will pick a couple random samplings from the time in between.

1. After my cell phone was stolen (as you read about in the last post), it took about 3 or so weeks to get a new one, and when i finally got the new one, I found out that they didn't have the same one I had before, so one of the administrators at school worked it out that I got an even better one. So my new phone is a 3G Motorola Razr with some pretty sweet features including Moto ID (which can listen to about 10 seconds of any song, analyze it, and tell you the name of the song and the artist who sings it), USB transfer of songs pictures and video to and from my computer, and the best feature: video calling. Sadly, I only know one other person who has video calling as well, so I haven't been able to take much advantage of this.

2. At school we have been practicing every morning for the upcoming Christmas program. One kid in my class is so funny when he sings. We try to get them to sing as loud as they can, but he is apparently incapable of singing loudly without making a sort of scowl on his face. So here he is, singing Feliz Navidad at the top of his lungs with a furrowed brow and a huge smile on his face. It's awesome.

3. Art Day! I've been trying for a couple months now to have an art day some Saturday morning, and it finally worked out. It actually ended up being saturday afternoon and it was quite a success. I was expecting it might go for about 3 hours, but we went strong with the art-making from 3pm until 8:30. It was great! There was cross-stitching, painting in various formats, coloring, baking, and different types of paper art. All in all, we had lots of fun, and I can't wait until the next one!

ay ladrones!

Today in continuation of our Community Helpers theme for Social studies we talked about Police Officers. The kiddies all made their little police hats (I wish I had my camera, they were so cute), and then took turns acting out scenarios for when a police officer would be needed. All they could come up with was robberies, so one girl had her purse stolen, a boy had his backpack taken and two more robbers stole some kids' play-doh as they were playing. As soon as they shouted "Police!!" however, two cops quickly chased down the thieves and recovered the stolen items.

If only it were that easy. Last Saturday I fell victim to my third robbery since being here in Honduras. While visiting a neighboring town, a group of seven of us were hanging out in the main square right next to the church when two men came around the corner saying (in Spanish, of course) "this is an assault, give us your things..." We were all very stunned and there was nothing we could really do 'cause one of them had a gun. By the time it was all over they made out with two cell phones (one of which being the new one I just bought) and three digital cameras. It was a huge bummer, but thankfully the Lord kept us all safe. It was a good reminder that we always need to be aware of our surroundings, and never to get too comfortable. Praise the Lord we are all ok though!! His hand of protection has been upon us all along. Sometimes it's just more noticeable than others. Thanks for all your continued prayers.

El Dia de la Biblia

In Honduras they celebrate annually "El Dia de la Biblia" (The Day of the Bible). That's pretty awesome. No other books, religious or otherwise, get a special holiday all to themselves... hmm, maybe this isn't just any other book. At IST we celebrate this national holiday by dressing up each class from nursery to 2nd grade (16 sections total) to represent a different story from the Bible, and then parading around the entire school accompanied by the High School marching band. It is quite a celebration! This year, my class was the story of Jesus' birth. We had Mary and Joseph, 3 wise men, several shepherds, a donkey, a cow, 2 sheep, and 2 angels. It was great fun, and the kids were super cute!

The Long Weekend

Monday, September 15th, Honduras celebrated it's independence day. In light of the holiday we were given both Monday and Tuesday off, making it a 4-day weekend. Most of the North American teachers took advantage of the long weekend by taking a vacation to the caribbean coastal town of La Ceiba. But not the green house! Most of us had already been there and we didn't feel like spending so much money this early on in the schoolyear, since we've only gotten a third of a paycheck thus far. Instead of the vacation at the beach, we had many other adventures to keep us busy instead:


Saturday morning we got up early, Jake picked us up at 8:30 and we spent nearly the entire day building a classroom for a small church about 5 miles outside of Tegus. When we got there, we found a pile of rocks and dirt, 7 posts cemented in the ground, and a large pile of wood planks on the other side of the fence. 7 hours and a lot of hard work later, we left them with 4 walls, a doorframe, 2 windows and half a roof, while we took away some sore muscles, sunburns and lots of mosquito bites. It was great fun, but we had no energy to do anything else that night except sit at home and watch Friends.

On Sunday, Megan, Melissa, Bertha and I set out to find the CRC church that Gregorio Sanchez is the pastor of. BT had a bit of an idea where it was, so we commenced the search. We drove halfway up the mountain, keeping our eyes peeled on both sides for any sign of it. After asking a number of nice people and getting the same number of confused looks, we decided it was hopeless. But as Megan was quick to point out, "Who needs church, when you have Mas por Menos?" When we got back down the mountain, we decided to check out Mas por Menos, a grocery store that carries a lot of U.S. brand name items that you can't get elsewhere in Honduras. So after a little shopping, some lunch, and a visit to the big Catholic Basilica, we made our way back home. That afternoon, we hear Bertha holler down from her apartment, "Corrie! Megan! come look at this." Megan runs upstairs and comes back shortly announcing that Bertha had found and trapped a live chinche in her bedroom. Now, keep in mind, we just got our place fumigated for chinches on Thursday, and this is Sunday. We were all a little freaked out. After talking to a number of people, including Fu, who came over and looked at the bug and a suspicious-looking bite on Anna's arm, we decided it would be ok to spend the night that night (apparently chagas is fully treatable if you take care of it in a reasonable amount of time). We spent the night, but everyone was quite uneasy the whole night and I don't know how well anyone slept..

Monday morning the fumigator shows up again. We pack up enough stuff to spend 2 nights at Dona Bertha's house again and take off. This time they are fumigating our house again, spraying the whole mountainside, where the chinches are coming from, with the pesticide and then on Thursday or Friday the government is supposed to come and cut down all of the grass and brush on the hill above our house. So we're keeping our fingers crossed that everything will turn out ok. After dropping stuff off at DB's, we went out for lunch and then Melissa, Corrie and I took a taxi to the dentist. Dr. Marco Mass, a friend of ours from IST gave me a filling and Melissa a cleaning. When it was all finished we headed back to the mansion for spaghetti dinner and a game of hand and foot, which BT and I won!

This morning, after a quick pancake breakfast, we all piled in Bertha's Land Rover and took a trip to Danli, a town about an hour outside of Tegus that is famous for its cigar industry. We took a private tour of one of the cigar factories... that place was amazing! They get their tobacco from all over the world: U.S.A., Italy, Indonesia, Nicaragua, Brazil, and many more. There are 600 people who cover all parts of the process, from sorting leaves, to rolling cigars, to wrapping them with damp tobacco leaves, to putting brand name stickers on each one individually, to packaging them in bundles or boxes and shipping them to all over the world. It was quite an eye-opening experience. Now we are back at DB's, we just got out of the pool and are getting ready to go get dinner.

WHAT A CRAZY WEEKEND!!

Tomorrow we have school, and then hopefully we can move back into the green house which if everything went according to plan should be chinche-free!

El Chinche Picuda!

Wednesday afternoon, I walk over to the office to sign out, in a bit of a hurry because I had missed the bus the day before. When I got over there, though, I saw all of my housemates, including those in the 3 apartments connected to mine having a bit of a discussion. I walk over to find out what's going on. Turns out Megan had had some termites in her apartment, so the exterminator had come that afternoon to take care of them. In the process, he found in her ceiling at least six chinche picudas (chinches picudas... chinches picuda? not exactly sure how to pluralize things in spanish yet). Now, if you've never heard of this bug before, you're not the only one. But almost every Honduran we mentioned it to warned us that Megan dare not sleep in her apartment that night and highly recommended that all six of us get out. So, being that we had Bertha with us, she decided we should go to Pamela, one of the top administrators, and see if she could get us a hotel room for the night. We told her the situation and instead of getting us a hotel, she told us we could stay at her mom, Doña Bertha's house for the night and they would fumigate out entire house the following morning. Doña Bertha, who is THE owner/director of our school, is in Mexico for the month, and boy does she have a NICE house. So the six of us, Megan, Melissa, Bertha T, Anna, Corrie and I went out for some Chinese food dinner and then to DB's house. It is a very nice house, but there weren't enough beds so I ended up on the futon that had no mattress... it had little couch cushion things, but not comfortable at all. Not the best night's sleep, but I do have the privilege of saying that I have spent the night at Doña Bertha's house, so I'm not complaining.

Whoa... sidetracked, this was supposed to be about the chinches. Chinche picudas are a black and yellow bugs that are about an inch and a half long and carry a parasite called chagas, which apparently if you get bitten, it releases the chagas into your muscle where it grows and eventually can cause heart problems if not treated. And the ones that were in Megans ceiling were apparently dead already for who knows how long. But when we heard the story, it went something like this: Megan has chinche picudas in her house, if you get bitten, it stops your heart. Thankfully though, we were not in as much danger as we originally thought, and we survived our two daysaway from home and our now safe and sound back in the recently fumigated green house, about to head out for a green house dinner at chili's. I will post pictures later, cause I have to go right now. Thanks for reading, feel free to respond.

i can finally send text messages

I got a brand new phone about a week and a half ago. it is very nice compared to the old one which looked like a toy phone and could only fit 6 letters on the screen at one time. But for some reason it would not send text messages. I bought the new one from IST who put me into their cell phone monthly plan as opposed to the prepaid one i had been using. So I talked to at least three different people in the office, who all tried to get ahold of the cell phone company in different ways to get it fixed, but to no avail. Finally yesterday I went myself to the cell phone store and asked the guy about it. He pushed a few buttons on the phone and voila! Now I can send texts!! Yay. The school plan allows us 50 or 100 free texts a month, and I think I probably used all of them yesterday cause i was so excited!


can you guess which one is the old one and which is the new one?!

how do YOU spend friday night?

just got paid, friday night, party hoppin', feelin' right

well, we got the friday night and the feelin' right part... forget the other two.
it started out as any ordinary friday: granitas after school with all the other NAT's, ride in the back of a truck to the bottom of the hill, 14lemp hot dog from the stand at the corner, taxi to the mall...... but then........ we finally broke down and made the big purchase we've been dreaming about for so long......... A MICROWAVE!!! HEYYO! And isn't she a beauty?!

Welcome to Kinder C

okay guys I'm 2-for-2 on the Monday update thing. We'll see how well I keep this up.

School last week was crazy, with Monday cancelled because of the strike, this is how the week went: Tuesday: half day, Wednesday: full day, Thursday: half day, Friday: full day. And because it was the first week, we hadn't started with any actual lessons, but were instead teaching the kids how to line up in a straight line, how to flush the toilet, how to raise their hands, how to use glue without making a huge mess etc. But if you know me at all, you know I need more structure than that. I have a hard time when I don't have specific things I'm supposed to be teaching. Plus, the kid I mentioned in the last post has turned out to be quite a handful indeed. So all that said, last week was not the greatest.

The weekend was fun, though! Bertha, who lives upstairs from us took me and my roommates grocery shopping on Saturday, which is always fun (except when you check out and see that you are spending 1,900L!!) Then I stayed home in the afternoon getting some work done and catching up on some phone calls. Then Anna, Corrie and I went out to La Creperia for dinner, a cute little crepe cafe, which was delicious as usual. Sunday, I went to church downtown and then met up with the roomies and Bertha for lunch before coming back home to a somewhat productive, very rainy afternoon.

Today was so much better as far as school goes! We were having actual classes and the kids had real work to do, which was great. Plus, they had Bible, Music and Library today which meant that I finally got some free time during the day... yay!

Ok, I promised pictures, so let me give you a few of the kiddos...

first day of school... false

so one of my goals this school year is to update this thing at least once a week (i'm trying out mondays for now), so that you all can keep up with the fun and exciting things that are going on down here. one of my other goals, however, is to be a better teacher and more organized, so if the first goal conflicts with the second, please have some grace and know that it is only for the sake of my students that i forsake this blog updating thing.

that being said, let me give you a rundown of what has happened so far.
Sat 16th: arrived in Tegucigalpa, met new roommate, Corrie, and had dinner with all of the new North American teachers
Sunday: church downtown and lunch at a school administrator's house
Monday-Thursday: workshops and classroom preparation
Friday: Open House - got to meet the parents of 13 of my 20 new students
Saturday: started unpacking my suitcases (yes, one week later)
Sunday: church, lunch at the mall with the roommates and Bertha
Today:FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL.... but it was cancelled, due to a strike in the city. Ahh the life of living in the capital city of a third world country! So in lieu of school we went to campus for a few hours to finish up some last minute details in the classroom. And the best part, we finally got internet in our house. Sadly the girl with the router has not arrived yet, so the 4 of us are taking turns plugging our computers into the modem to use it. But hey it's way better than nothing.

Tomorrow will be the real first day of school. I have 20 students this year as opposed to 24 that I had last year. I also have one year of experience under my belt which I'm looking forward to employing. Please pray for me though. I have gotten several warnings about one specific student in my class who has been known to be a troublemaker in the past. So hopefully I will be able to start the year off right and we can work together and be on the same page this year.

Ok, i have to go finish up my bulletin board that I'm working on and then get to bed. Big day tomorrow. I promise the next post will have pictures.

long time...

dustin' off the old blogger. been a long time since i wrote on here. guess school just got so busy i kinda forgot about this thing. plus, i didn't know anyone read it so i felt like i was wasting my time. now that i know some people are checking, maybe i'll be better at keeping it updated. we'll see. summer is under way. cleaning the sisters' apartment and catching some rays.

one foggy morning

Walked out the door to go to school this morning. "Whoa, it's foggy," i mentioned to my roommate as if she couldn't tell. It wasn't incredibly foggy, it was just the first time it had been foggy that I remember since being here in Tegus. Now, being from Arroyo Grande, CA... i know fog. People from Colorado know snow,people from Seattle know rain, but if there is one type of weather I'd say I'm fairly familiar with, it's fog. I remember chilly mornings at CCS, I hardly can think of one that began with sunshine. I remember fog so thick you couldn't see more than 7 feet in front of you. I remember Jared accidentally getting off the freeway because the fog was so dense he didn't notice the road turned. Fog can be a nuisance, but you live with it. Oh, and keep in mind, the fog this morning was nothing compared to these experiences.

So, I get to school and my assistant comes into the classroom. "I've never seen it like this before!" she says. "The fog?" I ask. "Yeah, this is crazy. I thought school would be cancelled... I couldn't even find the school!" I thought to myself, if this weather warrants a cancelling of school, I would have finished High School having attended maybe once a week, if that.

......another example of the difference between home and here.......

oh, and then this afternoon for lunch I was eating apples and peanut butter. my students thought that was the craziest/nastiest thing ever. they all gathered around my desk to watch. Oh the things that so deeply affect a five-year-old!

after the break

So I went home for Christmas. It was nice, busy though. And here I am, back in Tegus, dealing with a lot of different feelings. I can't even put most of them into words, and when I tried, I just started crying... hmm. I have a feeling i'm just going to bury them, cause it's easier than dealing with them. I've never been very good at talking about my feelings, so why should I start now, right? God, give me wisdom. Help me in my weakness.