Feliz Cumpleaños a Mí

Wow, I cannot believe that it is almost November and almost my birthday. I'm used to having frigged weather mixed with a few snow flakes. Honduras is anything but snow. But, before I get talking about my birthday  I will tell you about my week and weekend.

I never thought it would happen, but everyday at school gets a little better. Everyday it is a challenge to keep the children doing what I want them to do, but they are definitely learning my expectations. My first graders are so cute, but they are very sneaky. I had an issue with one of my students stealing from my desk this weekend and another one of my students cheating. I have a hard time explaining the concept to them about stealing and cheating and why it is wrong, but I went to the administration to talk to them about it and they are going to call their parents. I hope they will learn their lesson so I don't need to worry about it.

For devotions in my class we are memorizing Psalm 23. I am very impressed with how quickly they are picking up each verse. We will be on verse 4 next week...so I hope they can learn that one as well. Also, if anyone has any suggestions for songs or music that would be helpful in my classroom I would love the advice. Working with these ESL students I realized that it is so important to use music as a tool for teaching. The kids memorize and learn things a lot more quickly with music. So, if you have any kids praise song ideas or music for instruction I would love to hear your ideas.

Our whole group after our drama.

Alright, enough about my week. This weekend has been very eventful. The youth group in Gracias, which consists of a few Abundant Life kids, but mostly public school kids had a camp out this weekend. I was blessed to be apart of the camp by being involved in a drama. I had the part of death, but I tried my best to pull it off in my all black and with my knife and gun.

My 8th grade student, Angelica

The  cabin we stayed in. No hot water and bugs on the wall.

We also were in charge of supervising the High schools and helping with serving the food and starting the fire. Shannon, the missionary here, gave the message for the night. He did a great job focusing on how there are many distractions and sins in our lives that consume us. We need to get rid of them and focus only on Jesus. We spent the night at the camp and woke up early to walk back to Gracias down the mountain. (an hour walk). Kendall and I got back to Gracias in time to go to a Breast Cancer Walk. There is a group of people from Canada who are volunteering at the hospital for three months. They put on this walk so it was fun to get to know them better.

On Saturday night, I was really craving a salad. Of course, I convinced Kendall, but my other roommates refusing, to go out to eat with me...even though she had other ideas. We went to the nice hotel down the road where they serve delicious salads. She convinced me to split a salad with her. We ate our salads and she kept talking to the other teachers that live here. I didnt think much of it as we continued to eat. After eating, we headed over to Tabitha's and Stacey's house were we ran into some more people going to their house. Still oblivious to what was going on we entered the house, before we knew it everyone was singing happy birthday to Tabitha (Oct 31) Zak (Nov. 3) and me. I see a table full of food....too bad I just had my salad. Of course, if you know me I can still eat more. So I got two suppers last night. But, the fiesta was not over yet. Of course, all the other teachers got me my favorite... a dream come true... a Pinata. Just what I wanted for my birthday. Our birthday party was complete! Food, Candy, Pinita, Cupcakes, and friends. I thank the Lord for all these blessings. I had a wonderful birthday party... a little early but definitely worth it!!!

Emma, one of my first grade students.

The Birthday Kids.

What a great way to start a birthday week. Plus, I got a new hat. Love the clown!

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3 day weekend=more travels

Well, I know it seems like I've been traveling a lot lately, but I am trying to untilize my breaks I have. For the month of October we had one Monday at school. Therefore, all my roommates and I took a trip to Tela.

We began our trip bright and early on the 5:00am bus to San Pedro Sula. Nearly 7 hours late we arrive in Tela. We get off the bus and ask a friendly man if we were close to our hotel. And of course he said we werre within walking distance from the hotel. We begin our walk....20 mins later we were still walking....ok thats it we were sick of traveling and sick of carring all of our back packs. Us seven girls get ourselves two taxis to get to our hotel. We decided because we usually stay in a hostel when we travel that we would get ourselves a nice hotel...let alone a resort. We got a great deal for this resort because we have Bank Atlanta cards. The sight of the hotel was jaw dropping.

We enjoyed the weekend by relaxing, swimming, playing sports, and enjoying the shows put on by the hotel. I could not have asked for a better weekend filled with fun and wonderful friends.

Other than my trips, life in Honduras is going great. I am becoming more and more comfortable here and am feeling more and more at home here. I enjoying going on walks in the city or hanging out with my roommates. We always seem to have a good time.

Volleyball is now started in school and I did not realize how much I missed volleyball until I got to coach the volleyball girls. It is different to be in a community wherre volleyball is not a big deal at all. I am use to volleyball being the main sport that girls play. But I love the volleyball players and am having funn being back into the sport again.

Teaching....I am finally as much as I can at this stage in life am getting more and more organized and ahold of teaching 1st and 8th graders. It was a hard adjustment to go from 1st to 8th and often times would call my 8th graders 1st graders in class... but I finally am getting a little grasp of the whole ordeal. It is never perfect... but Im trying!

I hope everything is going well in the states and I am grateful for all your thoughts and prayers that you all do for me.! Have a wonderful week!!

Lago de Yajoa...and places in between

Leave it to Kendall and I.  Her and I just happen to get ourselves into interesting situations!  We can easily call ourselves "Double Trouble."  Kendall and I get along really well, and many people have called me "weird" in my life, and Jen even stated herself that Kendall and I are both extremely weird and have finally found one another.  We just had to laugh about it!

Here is a perfect example of what happens when Kendall and I are left alone.  Kendall and I both have the same kind of foam rugs in our classrooms, but I didn't end up using them.  So she brought them home the other day and we decided that we would use them for little mats to work out on.  Well, the rest of the girls left somewhere for a bit, and Kendall and I are extremely tired.  But instead of going to bed, we decided to become robot people.  We made robot heads out of the foam pieces and took pictures.  It gave us a good laugh!    Then, it just got better.  We pulled our two chairs in front of our house door, sat in the dark with our robot heads on, and waited for someone to come home.  We literally sat there for over 30 minutes chatting quietly until we heard someone at the door.  In walked Justin and Jen, and they turned on the lights and we got two reactions: Jen, immediate laughter.  Justin, "what...the...world."  Priceless.  It was well worth the

one hour less of sleep we got that night! 

This weekend Kendall and I decided to head to Lago de Yajoa and meet up with some of the teachers from La Union.  We got a little bit turned around and lost on our journey there, but after 9 hours of travel, we safely made it to D&D's Brewery (our hostel), where we were going to be staying for the weekend.   We arrived around 3pm, and it was just pouring outside!  We had planned to float down the Jungle River, but instead we just hung out at the brewery for the day/night.  We were stayed in a private cabin that held six people, and that night the hostel had a trivia night and live music.  It turned out to be a lot of fun, even though our team didn't win!  It was fun to be able to sit down and relax.

The next morning we slept in and ate a nice breakfast at the hostel.  We then traveled to the waterfall, which turned out to be quite the walking adventure!  Buses in the area were said to never be consistent, and we found this to be a fact!  We walked quite a bit (a beautiful bit) until a bus that was finally heading towards the waterfall area picked us up.  We got to the waterfall and enjoyed hiking around the area and seeing the beautiful falls.  We had the option of going behind the waterfall, but for this you needed to hire a guide, and no one really seemed too interested in paying to do this. Still, the falls were beautiful! 

That night we just hung out at the hostel again.  We got to know the owner and manager a little bit from hanging out for the night, which was fun.  They even brought us a free plate of delicious crackers, cheese, and olives to enjoy, since we were all the last ones to be awake. 
Later that night two men in what looked like some kind of army gear came to the hostel. Kendall and I were paying for all of our stuff and talking with the manager, who happened to be good friends with the two guys (twin brothers).  Also, the manager and owner of D&D's spoke English.  Anyways, we were talking with the manager and he told us how the two Russian guys were "hit men..." I kid you not, HIT MEN!  He said they had just come in from "fishing"...for people!! I wanted to ask so many questions, because it was just so crazy to me!  But they didn't want to talk about "details" because there were other people around.  Anyways, I can say that was definitely a first experience for me!  But they were very friendly to us and reminded us to "stay safe" always, and were in and out of the hostel quickly after eating.  Needless to say, good thing I wasn't on anyone's hit list! Yikes!

Finally Kendall and I went to bed, ready to wake up at 5:30 for our long journey home.  Everything was going fine until we were on our last bus home, less than an hour away from Gracias.  First, our bus got a flat tire, which took about an hour to fix.  After we got going again for about a minute or so, our bus stops again and everyone had to get off.  We didn't realize that up ahead the road was blocked by officers for some reason.  After figuring out that everyone was now going to walk, we started to walk, and then the weather decided to start raining.  So, soaking wet, with a bunch of grocery bags and luggage from the weekend on us, we walk a bit further.  We were able to pass the officers, and by asking questions in the little Spanish that Kendall and I know we figure out that there is some kind of protest going on.  At the point both of us were very nervous because no one spoke any English and we had no idea what was going on or if we were in danger (we have heard in big cities protests can become very violent and to just stay away from them).  All of a sudden an army vehicle pulls up and about 20 army men jump out with their machine guns and beating sticks, and they continued further down the road.  At this point my heart began racing quite faster than normal.  We stayed back for a bit, and then we continued to walk with some people close by and stayed by some women.  There came a point in the road where it was completely blocked off by people and we stopped to sit behind a parked vehicle and Kendall used her last seconds on her phone to call Kristi.  We let her know where we were and what had happened.  Luckily, her husband Shannon had been at a lawyers office earlier and heard that there was a protest going on in Gracias about the road conditions.  We were told that we weren't in any kind of danger, but to just stay out of the protest itself.  This was a relief to hear at least that we weren't in any danger! 

So we sat around awhile and then an elderly lady came up to us and told us that we were able to keep walking if we wanted, but vehicles just weren't allowed to pass through.  We didn't know if we were being set up for something, because no one else was moving.  So we made our way through the crowd just to see why they were blocking the road.  What we saw was a sight I will never forget!  About 50 army men now blocked the road further ahead with their shields in front of them and weapons in hands.  I wish so badly I had a picture of the image I have in my head!  The elderly woman and now elderly man said that there was no danger and that we could pass, and so the elderly man led the way and we followed him.  The walk seemed forever towards the army men, and was very awkward because close to a hundred eyes were on us two gringos, the only people making their way past the army men.  The elderly man told the guards that we wanted to pass and they said in English, "Oh! Of course." 

We finally figured out that the whole time we were sitting and deciding what we should do, we were sitting in the protest itself.  We had no idea because everyone was just sitting and standing around, but I guess I am at least very happy that it wasn't violent at all!  We continued to walk a bit further, and Kristi and Shannon called to say they were coming to get us.  Soon after that call, they called again to say that there was another protest just past where we were and that they couldn't get past in in a vehicle.  So again Kendall and I walk through all the cars this time, and finally we see Shannon and Kristi up ahead looking for us.  It was such a relief to see them, especially since they have played a parental role in our lives here.  And praise God they drove us home safely!  

 

Blog: written by Kendall...revised by me...

An Eventful Week (end) in Gracias

Another week in Honduras=another adventure. This past week at school went well. I finally felt like I was in the groove of teaching, as much as a first year teacher can be. But, then today started and I was lost at knowing what to do with my class. Wow, I cannot believe the ups and downs of teaching. Anyways, I will get to the pictures in my blog. 

This past Saturday I went to an orphanage in Santa Rosa (1 hour away) with Kendall, Sarah, and Shannon and Kristi and family. We had a wonderful experience. Supposedly Mother Threasa was visited this orphange at one time in her life. We get there and the lady at the door told us to go visit the church near by were we would find the sister. And boy did we find the sisters. They were busy decorating the church (I do believe this was my first time ever seeing a nun). The ladies were so sweet and led us into the orphange. We walk through the front door and child after child comes running to us with their arms wide open ready to hug. All the children were so precious. This orphanage has children ages 6 months to 6 years and 38 children in all with 6 helpers. So, it is really important for people to come and even old the children because they need touch in their lives.

This video is of a young girl that I just got done feeding and she went into a nice food coma. It was  really funny to see her slowly fall asleep.  

I was really impressed with how kept together this orphanage was. They had clean spaces for the kids to play and the children were kept up very well.

It was so cute watching all the little children getting fed. I guess this is one way to have all the children in one spot at one time.

When we came back and went to an Abundant life Christian School soccer game. It was the championship and they one 1-0. It was pretty exciting to have them win and to be apart of the competive match because soccer is BIG out here.

On Sunday morning there was a parade in town of all students dressed in trash. They were trying to teach people to recycle and to throw away their trash. Having trash here is a big issue because people are not educated to know what littering hurts the enviorment. So, it was really cool to see these schools marching for recycling!

This Sunday we went to a house church up the mountain, It never fails that we get stopped by some type of animal. It is always an adventur driving any where.

The picture on the right is of one of the grave stones in the cemetary. Kendall and I have been dying to go look at all the "houses" of the people that have died. (Wierd I know, but it amazes me that they actually build a house for the person that died). In a way it is a big sad because people dont understand that concept that once we die our bodiees are lifted up into heaven. We have no place here on this earth.

And to end my wonderful week and weekend I recieved an early birthday present, card, and care package from my family and my church. It always brightens up my day (week) when I recieve something in the mail So thankyou.

I hope all is going well in the states. Love and miss you all.

Copan Ruins

Another break, another trip. I just love traveling and seeing new and beautiful places. I am always amazed at all the trees that God has created and all the natural beauties I see looking out on my 6 hour bus trip. Kendall and I took off bright and early on Saturday morning for Santa Rosa where we were to meet the La Union girls. With our hands full and backbacks on we crammed all of or things onto the chicken bus.


We got to Santa Rosa a bit earlier than Erin, Gayle, and Heather, so Kendall and I grabbed ourselves a nice cup of hot green tea and did a little grocery shopping for the trip. When the girls finally arrived we got onto our next bus headed to La Entrada. Once again a packed bus with chickens and humans all crammed into their seats. It was a short trip, about an hour, through the beautiful Mountians. We made it to La Entrada and had to wait there for nearly an hour before the bus would leave because they needed more people on the bus. Well, in Honduras, they dont care how long you wait, just as long as the buss is packed to its max before departing. in a little 8-10 foot bench we squeezed at least 5 people plus the mothers with their babies into each row. I couldnt help but laugh at how we looked so crammed into a small spot. Boy, you really start to feel like family.

We finally arrived to Copan, being bombarted by so many children trying to get us to stay in "this" hotel. We had at planned we would stay at the "Blue Iguana" hostel. Known as one of the best and cleanest hostels in all of Honduras. We took all our baggages and trucked up and down streets to our hostel. And it was true, it was a very well kept hostel.

We then headed of to eat and to do some shopping in the stores. It was fun to look at all the honduran crafts and artwork. We just had a great time exploring the town.

The next day we took our time getting ready and headed out to Welches, a coffee place in Copan. It was a good breakfast with great smoothies. Afterwards we headed off for the Mayan ruins. On our way over we met a girl from Germany who was busy traveling by herself, so she ended up hanging out with us and taking pictures for us the rest of the day. I've added a few pictures of the ruins, so you can get an idea of what we got to see.

The next day we took our time getting ready and headed out to Welches, a coffee place in Copan. It was a good breakfast with great smoothies. Afterwards we headed off for the Mayan ruins. On our way over we met a girl from Germany who was busy traveling by herself, so she ended up hanging out with us and taking pictures for us the rest of the day. I've added a few pictures of the ruins, so you can get an idea of what we got to see.

We were so close to Guatamala, but yet so far away.

 Myan Cemetary.

 Some animal... this time I'm not sure what it is but it looked like a Taper, but I don't even know if they have them here :D But I thought it was cute!

Everything in Copan was absolutly beautiful, and I really enjoyed my trip. We made it back safely with minor problems. We are tired and exhausted after waking up at 4:00 am this morning but it was all worth the wonderful trip to see more of God's creation. Hope you all are doing well. Miss you all.