We've been here for ONLY a week?!

Welp, I made it through my first whole week of living in La Unión! I imagine that if you and I were to sit down for coffee, just to catch up, this is kind of how our conversation would go:

cooking in the dark

Tell me about your house. – I am conveniently located on the corner of that one dirt road that starts to head up the mountain and the other road where the busses stop at 5 in the morning honking their horn for passengers. You know, the yellow house right by the park and the Catholic church? [This is precisely what I said to a woman, trying to describe to her where I live.] There was actually a political rally right outside of it the other day if you saw that going on. It’s a nice house! I have my own room and bathroom, except that I haven’t had a hot shower yet and my toilet constantly sounds like it’s going to explode.The light just went out in our living room, but we have couches so at least you can sit comfortably in the dark.

this is why we drink bottled water

Oh, and if you want to do anything in the kitchen, you have to do so in the dark too because that light doesn’t work either. We have a nice oven/stove to cook on! Just the back left burner doesn’t work and the front right one doesn’t get hot enough to do anything. The oven temperatures are set in Celsius so I hope you know your conversions to figure out how hot you are turning the oven on to! Normally I would say that it’s fine to use the sink water if you’re boiling anything, but it’s been raining so much lately that the water coming out of the faucet is brown so please use the bottled water.

How are your Honduran neighbors? – They are very sweet ladies! They do my laundry for me every week and clean the house. It’s a little humorous when they come to clean because they rearrange everything. This week they moved one of my tables to a different corner in my room and hung up my bag, belts, and headbands on random nails around the door. They are very attentive to our needs. They went to San Pedro Sula earlier this week to buy some new things: a pump for our jug of water, new and improved light bulbs for our rooms, and functioning shower heads. They’ve all been great additions, except that the shower heads apparently broke when they were trying to install them so now we have to wait longer for that treasured hot shower. Every time they pass by our front door, they stop in and say hello. I tried to explain The Big Bang Theory to the daughter the other day… she didn’t seem to think it was that funny of a concept. Then every time I talk to the grandmother, I have no idea what she says to me. She mumbles so much that I have to do my best to pick out words and piece together the message she gave me. It took Morgan and me 4 days to realize that the bananas on our counter were a gift from them.

this is how I spent my Saturday

Are you settling in to your new life? – I am definitely adjusting to the Honduran pace of life. The sun goes down around 7 every day and that’s when all [non-sketchy] activity ceases around here. That means I’m usually in bed by 9:30 every night because there is nothing else to do. But that makes waking up at 6:45 every morning fairly easy! Even when I get to sleep in on the weekends, I’ve been waking up at either 7:30 or 8, so I am very well-rested. Even during the day there isn’t much to do. Everything is just at a slower pace in this town. I spent my Saturday like any other Honduran, sitting on the porch and watching people walk by. I watched a movie, worked on Sudoku puzzles, watched some kids place soccer, and swept the floor. I will do a workout on a DVD some days; I usually do them when I know I need to shower, and that shower is going to be ice cold so I get all hot and sweaty before jumping in. [And yet, somehow that shower doesn’t seem any more bearable.] The other teachers and I have weekly game nights. We take turns going over to someone’s house to eat dinner and play card and board games. I always look forward to those!

What are you eating? – For breakfast I will have either cereal or fruit. I make the milk fresh each morning from the powder in the box, and then I add in the only cereal you can buy here – cornflakes. If I want to change things up I’ll cut up some fruit and add granola to it which can be depressingly more flavorful than the fruit itself. I have eaten a peanut butter and jelly absolutely every single day for lunch. A mission trip that was just here left a bunch of their granola bars, trail mix, crackers, etc. for us so we have those to snack on. I aim to start making dinner as soon as I get home every day for two reasons: one, I want to have as much light as possible in the kitchen before night comes because then I have to use a flashlight; two, the stove takes so long to heat up that it takes at least three times as long to cook anything. I make hearty meals of rice or noodles with sautéed veggies. Yummy, huh?

the storm rolling in

What’s the weather like? – The weather is very predictable. The day starts out sunny and hot. There has been a nice breeze lately so if you’re in the shade, it’s quite enjoyable. I am getting used to the heat because I have to wear pants when outside of the house. I feel hot all the time so now it’s perfectly normal. Around 2 or 3 every day, an afternoon storm rolls in. It will start thundering hours before the storm actually hits, but it’s typically short showers. At night is when the big storms roll through. Those are the ones that turn the whole sky a dark, ominous color. Then the winds pick up and the sky just releases a wave of water. Usually we lose electricity or water, or both, during those storms. I am lucky to have a house with a roof that doesn’t reveal new holes and leaks every time it rains. All this rain has made the streets into an adventure whenever we are walking. Every single pair of my shoes is covered in mud and there are small canyons forming in the middle of the streets.

Are you ready to start teaching? – Absolutely! I cannot wait to meet my students and get to know them. This entire past week, I have been working from 8am-9pm every day planning. I would take breaks to eat or just to walk around when my brain was fried, but other than that I was organizing and decorating my room, writing scopes and sequences for each subject that outline the whole year, and lesson planning for my first two weeks of school. It’s actually been rather hard to plan out the whole year, let alone the first few weeks, because I don’t know where my students are academically. I doubt they are starting at the level that the book predicts; I’m guessing my plans will have to change drastically once I figure out where they really are.

And that was my first week of living in Honduras. This morning at church the pastor introduced us to the congregation and he told them all that even if they couldn’t converse with us, to at least give us their blessing and pray for us because we all are making huge sacrifices to be here. We have left our homes, our families and friends, and the comfort of our lives in the States to live in poorer conditions and serve this community. I already feel their blessings while adjusting, and this place is starting to feel like home.

Pray this week that all of us teachers remain encouraged. We are all adjusting to our new lives, and we each have our own obstacles to overcome. Some are feeling more beaten down or homesick than others [they even dream about going back home or being able to get all the things we miss] but we all need support in one way or another. Pray that our first week of school, coming up, is beyond rewarding and makes this transition business worth it.