Copán Ruinas

Right after our weekend in Tela we had the blessing of yet another 3-day weekend, so we took off to Copán Ruinas. Simply put these are Honduras’ biggest and most impressive Maya ruins, and the most tourist-ready town we have been to. It wasn’t the relaxing, white-sand beaches of Tela, but it was my favorite place that we have visited so far!

This time we left at 5 in the morning for a long day of traveling on 4 different buses to get to our destination. All of our rides were smooth and problem-free (thank the Lord!) except for a little overcrowding and invasion of our personal spaces, but that is to be expected. We made it to Copán by 1 and checked into our hostel, the Blue Iguana. It was actually a very nice hostel! We had well-pressurized, hot showers and internet (unlike our homes in La Unión), and it was a very clean place with decently comfortable beds. My only complaint is that both mornings we were rudely awoken with fireworks (once for some unknown reason and the second time for another wild birthday party) – so much for a quiet get-away! The bulk of our trip was dedicated to embracing our inner tourists: we spent a lot of time souvenir and gift shopping, eating amazing meals, and visiting the ruins.

Souvenir and gift shopping. A little retail therapy is good for the soul, and we needed a lot of therapy. I can only speak for myself, but I am pretty certain everyone else would agree with me – I easily spent way too much money for only being there two days, but I would not return a thing that I bought! Is it too early to talk or think about Christmas? Not for me! I got all of my Christmas shopping done in one hit :) (I am extremely proud of myself.) In all fairness, like I said, Copán is probably the most tourist-friendly town in all of Honduras so we all had the mindset of getting our souvenirs here where they were available. I am not going to reveal any of my secrets of what I bought for whom, but I will share with you the treasures that I found for myself. I splurged and purchased quite a few things: a necklace with a royal blue charm, miniature statues from the ruins to use as book ends or as future classroom decorations, a painted mask, an English-Spanish book about the ruins for my future classroom, a fish puzzle-box, a hanging Maya calendar wall-piece, a colorful belt to jazz up my school uniform, a very nice leather backpack (this one is my favorite and was my biggest treat to myself), and a Honduran flag, button, sticker, and t-shirt. I am still excited about all my new goodies and I cannot wait to share more with my friends, family, and future students!

Amazing meals. Normally I wouldn't bore you with the details of what food I digested over the weekend, but we had such special meals and such treats that the re-telling of my trip wouldn't be the same without these descriptions. Saturday lunch we went to a place called Via Via and I had delectable chicken fajitas with cheese empanadas and a strawberry smoothie. For happy hour we experienced some fine dining at San Rafael Café. This place is a wine and cheese bar, and it certainly was the happiest of hours with our 5-cheese platter and glasses of Chardonnay! For dinner we ordered small plates at Twisted Tania’s because we were still quite full from our other meals. I shared a nacho platter and then finished my day off with a mouth-watering piece of carrot cake. Sunday morning we wandered into Café Welchez for coffee with milk and a ham and cheese croissant. For lunch we visited Mary’s Pupusería for pupusas (tortillas stuffed with your filling of choice) and smoothies.  I, of course, ordered a chocolate and banana smoothie to satisfy my sweet tooth. Then for our final meal we returned to Twisted Tania’s because all of their menu options sounds incredible the night before and we were sad that we weren't more hungry then to try things! Lori and I decided to share dishes because, as I said, everything sounded fantastic and we couldn't settle on one thing. We devoured tequila shrimp in spicy pasta, a rib eye steak with a jalapeño sauce drizzle over it, fresh sautéed veggies, and a brownie with ice cream for the grand finale. We ate so much rich and delicious food this weekend! You may notice that a lot of what I ordered had cheese in it because we do not have normal cheese in La Unión so that was the best treat.

The ruins. Here we bought tickets to see the residential and ceremonial ruins, and to go underground to walk through the excavating tunnels that archaeologists created to see hidden ruins. We also hired a tour guide to show us around because we figured he was worth the price to hear all about the history of these ruins. We visited a residential area first where it is believe that families would live in little compounds. It was common for a Maya man to marry multiple wives and then have all of his families live in the houses adjacent to him. (Sister Wives anyone?) There were pods of these ‘communities’ all around. The houses were small little structures that had mostly been destroyed. All that we could tell that was inside of them were beds. Around the homes archaeologists found skeletons and built replicas of them to show to visitors. When the people died they were generally buried with all their belongings right next to their houses. We also saw a well that served as that area’s primary water source.

The ceremonial center was the most impressive. It was a big open area that served for community gatherings. In the center was a small pyramid where the king would sit to look over all his people. There were a few still-standing statues here. These represented the gods that the Maya worshipped and the king(s) of their time. A fascinating sculpture that we saw was just a round sacrificial piece. Supposedly that was where the human sacrifices would occur; the heart would be placed in the center of this globe and there was a line carved around the rock to allow the blood to trickle down from the heart in the middle. We also got to get up close to the intricate carvings of the king statues. Our guide told us all about the last king that was believed to rule – King 18 Rabbit. He will tell you that the archaeologists named the king this because he was the 18^th on they found and all the depictions of him (that are carved in stone) look like a rabbit; I personally don’t see the resemblance and would be more convinced if you told me he was King 18 Goat.

We wandered through the grounds to get a feeling of what it was like to live with the Maya. At this site is a famous staircase that boasts the longest hieroglyph in the world with 64 stairs etched with a single hieroglyph. The first ten stairs are the only ones that are guaranteed to be in order because the rest of the stairs were found in shambles and had to be pieced together to the best of archaeologists’ judgment. You cannot climb the stairs because they are well protected, but they look very intricate. You can walk through the ball courts where men would play some sort of ball game to decide who would be sacrificed to the gods. They would play with a ball, which was presumed to be about 8 pounds, that they would hit with their shoulder and hips to try to score points (can imagine using your body to launch a bowling ball?). The historians can only assume that it was the person who won who would be sacrificed to the gods because the Maya would only want to send up someone who was honorable. We also walked among various temples: the jaguar temple which had depictions of jaguars dancing which was used to praise and please the gods, and ask for favors; the underworld temple that was adorned with skulls to represent the entrance to a kind of hell; and a temple that represented the 13 layers of heaven that the Maya believed in.

At the end of our tour we traveled underground throughout the caves. They did a very good job at selling this part of the tour and convincing us to buy tickets, but the tunnels were not worth the $15 we spent to see them. They were just hot and muggy, and all you really saw were walls of previous temples. The only cool thing that I took away from the tunnels was that they proved that temples had been built upon temples by the Maya. Apparently, every time there was a new king in power, they would completely rebuild the city. So while it would appear that the city was constructed on a hill because it was raised up, in reality the city was continuously built upon itself. I did think it was neat to see how these structures had been built upon each other – it was like discovering a whole other world inside of this historic place. All in all the tour took almost 3 hours and it was well worth it with our guide. We learned so much about the Maya cultures and truly enjoyed seeing the remains of this ancient civilization.

*Side note about our bus ride home: on the last bus – from Gracias to La Unión – we managed to get on the bus that took the worst roads to get home. I have never been bounced around that much (it kind of felt like I was getting a good work-out)! At one point the seat that Beth and I were sharing fell out of its holds and we almost ended up folding in half and falling on the ground. There was also a lovely drunk man on the bus who was trying to chat with us; he did manage to get uncomfortable close to Beth’s face so we moved seats. Randomly he decided to get out his hand gun and just wave it around in the air as he too was bounced around like a rag doll. The worst part? Nobody on the bus cared! Apparently it’s normal for people to wave around guns on buses?

This week be praying for a student who decided to run away from home. The majority of these students, if not all, come from tough homes and their lives outside of school are dismal. A girl in 10^th grade, her mother just up and left last year to go work in Spain. A few weeks ago the woman returned, also unannounced, and this set off her daughter. Her anger was so strong that she felt the need to run away. luckily they were able to find her in San Pedro Sula and at least convince her to come back to a neighboring aldea where a family member lives. Currently they are trying to talk her into coming back to La Unión to keep up with her schooling. As you can imagine she needs a lot of prayers through this troubling time. 

Diary from my classroom

Our first partial is coming to a close and I am finally reaching an end in some of my units! (To a normal teacher this may seem absurd since we are 9 weeks into the year, but to me it is a huge victory and worthy of a fiesta.) I thought I would update you on how my students are doing and what’s going on in our classroom. So come on in, take your seat, and spend some time in my third grade class!

We use the Abeka – a Christian home-school curriculum – books here, but I have found them to be rather non-useful. In every subject I have either tossed the curriculum completely out the window or I have created an outline of what the book expects me to teach and then filled in all the information, materials, tests, and projects with my own ideas. There are a few problems that I see with this curriculum. First, it is designed for students living in the United States. All of the content in the book can only be truly understood by someone growing up in that culture. There are sayings and facts that you wouldn’t understand if English wasn’t your first language and you didn’t call the US your home. Second, being designed for US students, the English is above most of my students’, if not all of their, heads. The idea of letting them work from the book on their own is foolish because they would not understand 75-80% of the words. Third, the books are very much old in every way. They are the earlier versions so the information or the learning and teaching styles are outdated. And the books have definitely seen better days; every single one is missing pages, has a torn or bent cover, has drawings peppered throughout the pages, and is most likely falling apart at the spine. Don’t get me wrong, these books and materials have good intentions. I try to use them as much as I can so I’m not creating too much extra work for myself by writing all my own worksheets and tests, but I would rather go the extra mile when preparing for my classes than deal with the headache of trying to teach my students directly from this curriculum.

Reading – Originally my plan with reading was just to start at the beginning and build up my students’ abilities to read long(er) stories. I was picking 2^nd Grade-level stories to read from each week, and having fun with them! However, I quickly discovered that their comprehension skills are non-existent in both English and Spanish. They consistently failed the ‘questions’ section on their tests and whenever I asked them to do an activity such as ‘summarize’ the story, even when I explained the concept of a summary in Spanish, they had no idea what I was talking about. So I re-evaluated my plan for Reading and decided to spend more time on teaching comprehension skills rather than just asking them to read a story and translate a few of the words. If there is one thing they can generally do well, it is pronounce words so they are able to say sentences out loud, just are not able to understand them. These past two weeks we have been working on who, what, where, when, why, and how, and it has still been as much of a struggle as when I asked them to read basic stories. But, I am hopeful that if we keep working on these ideas with new stories we read, then eventually they will get them down!

History – We actually made it through a chapter in the history textbook! I do not like the textbook because it’s all about US history, which is entirely irrelevant to my students. They would not be able to develop any kind of connection to the content even if they understood the words. However, I felt brave and attempted to teach them the first chapter – Christopher Columbus. He’s a man that affected all of the Americas and the vocabulary was pretty general and useful. It took us 5 weeks to get through that chapter, and it is fair to say that they did not ‘master’ the material, but at least we made it to the end. I tried teaching it to them through reading the story from various texts, drawing the story in comic form, learning vocabulary and places that are key to the story, completing fill-in-the-blank worksheets, and even acting out the story! We had the most fun acting out the story because I made them all hats of some kind based on their character or role in the story. I was hopeful that this would be the best way for them to remember Columbus, but they still struggled on the test. Since that has been over I decided to stop teaching history (temporarily) because the next chapters are extremely irrelevant to these students and the vocabulary would be pointless to teach. So I have turned my history class into an ESL class to focus on material that is more valuable to them. Right now we are learning “to be” so ‘I am, you are, he is,’ etc. and locations in the classroom and at home. Last week they drew their dream houses to practice the different rooms in a house!

Language – This has easily been my most challenging subject to teach. (If you have any ideas, please feel free to throw them out there because I am running out of them.) Pronouns. These have been the death of my students. Indirect and direct pronouns are extremely difficult to students with English as their second language. If I think about it, there are still times when I have to think about which pronoun to use or I make a mistake. So now try being one my little ones and try understanding the difference between them. I believe they get what a pronoun is and they are almost perfect at using them in sentences, so I am ready to end the unit here. They always groan when this class comes up so it’s about time we finished.

Math – Jake told me that if my students could multiply easily and quickly by the end of the year, then I have done my job. I have taken this challenge seriously. In fact, I have nightmares about going home and finishing the school year right now before my students have finished learning about all the multiplication facts! This week we have been working on multiplying by six. I have taught them many tricks such as songs for the X3 and X4 facts, or counting by 2’s or 5’s on their fingers for the X2 and X5 facts. Soon we will start speed drills to really solidify all those facts and work on getting them to answer multiplication problems quickly. I have elicited the help of the 11^th grade math class to come teach my students how to multiply two-digit numbers by one-digit numbers. I think it will be a fun project for them and a fun day of learning for mine! I am constantly requiring my students to practice adding and subtracting because they still make simple mistakes, and I want them to easily solve those problems too. Their biggest challenge has actually been place value. Since we have to use words to express place value, that language barrier rears its ugly head again and they struggle. Luckily we are moving into money next so I can still find ways for them to practice place value.

Science – The 5 Senses – that is what our unit has been about. However, if you asked my students, they would probably tell the 5 body parts we learned in relation to the senses. We learned all about the eye for the sense ‘to see,’ the ear for ‘to hear,’ the mouth for ‘to taste,’ the nose for ‘to smell,’ and the hand for ‘to feel.’ Now, when I say we learned all about these body parts, I mean we learned the basic parts of each one and any other important words related to the sense like different flavors for ‘to taste’ and different textures for ‘to feel.’ This may have been my most frustrating and yet most satisfying unit. I would come up with really neat or unique lessons for my students to get to experience the five senses, but because of their English level, the lessons usually flopped. I would primarily just feel disappointed that they didn’t get the full experience or quite understand the senses the way that I wanted them to. On the other hand, I am most confident about their test coming up! I have a very good feeling that all of them will pass the test so we can confidently move past this unit on onto the next – plants. I have not been totally defeated by the language barrier because I have been planning exceptionally cool lessons with seeds and plants for our next unit. I figure that hands-on activities are a lot better than me lecturing, them reading, or us just learning vocabulary words.

Art – This has been the most fun class to plan for! I love arts and crafts more than anything so I have let my creativity loose to create fabulous projects for my students. We read a story called “Sock Puppets” so naturally we had to make our own. Ironically, Jake and the guys he lives with have an abnormal amount of pair-less socks so I picked out suitably clean socks for all my students. We went as wild as we could while decorating them: we glued on googly eyes, yarn for hair, and pieces of fabric cut out in ties, bow-ties, mustaches, and shirts. They looked great! Then the students all put on their own puppet shows for the class. Last week we made masks out of construction paper. The students all cut out eyes, a nose, and/or mouth from their piece of paper and decorated them to their liking. The boys all made some kind of evil, devilish looking creature while the girls made pretty, clownish looking masks. I love letting them be creative! I especially love when they run out of my classroom with big smiles on their faces eager to show everyone at the school what they made. I am now in desperate need for new markers in my classroom because we color so often. I only wish I had access to more supplies to amp up our art projects or make some creations that I never thought we could.

So there you go, that is what it’s like to be a 3^rd grader in my class. That is what we have been learning; I am constantly looking for new ways to teach them and get the information across more easily. On a positive note, I have been receiving some encouraging compliments lately. Jake interviewed a few of my students for scholarships and commented on how impressed he was with their English. He said that they would have never been able to talk to him like that last year, let alone two months ago when school started. He was shocked that they understood him and could answer his questions with somewhat cohesive sentences. The used English almost the entire time, only asking how to say a few words in Spanish. He told me that I should be very proud of them! As well, some of the other teachers have told me that they have noticed that my kiddos are using a lot more English and are excelling in the language. I could not be happier to hear that they are finally getting a grasp on the language and others are noticing their progress! I have to give the credit to God for helping me daily to teach them, because I certainly do not have the strength or wisdom to do it on my own.

Be praying for their continued progress. It’s easy for me to not notice how well they are doing or how they are improving because I see and hear them every day. With other teachers noticing how well their doing gives me hope, encourage, confidence, and perseverance to keep moving forward. Praise the Lord that they are understanding me and finding it easier to use the language! 

Telamar

We had Monday off to give us a much anticipated three-day weekend. For our long weekend/short vacation we decided to go to the coastal town of Tela. They have a deal right now that if you stay one night you get the second night free. This meant that one room cost $160 for two nights, and you could fit up to four people in a room, which would bring the total price to $40 per person for the whole weekend… do you really need more convincing to go?

We left at our usual early-morning hour on Saturday for a long day of bus rides to get there. We had to take a bus to Santa Barbara, another to San Pedro Sula, and yet another to Tela. The total travel time is about 7 hours if you can transfer buses quickly, and if those buses don’t go too slowly or stop a lot. The trip seemed to take forever because we were just so eager to get to the beach and relax. Unfortunately, once we finally got there we had to wait an hour in the check-in line before we could actually run free and enjoy the hotel. But! it ended up being worth it because our plans were to meet some Gracias teachers there and share rooms with them this weekend (they were a group of 7 and we were a group of 9 which meant our group was a perfect fit for 4 rooms) but they got there before us and checked in then. Since our group was bigger, when we checked in we split the cost of 2 rooms evenly amongst the 9 of us, which meant… (if you have been doing your calculations you already know the answer)… we only paid $35 each for two nights at this beautiful hotel! Score!

The hotel: I’m not sure how many stars this hotel, Telamar, has but I would certainly give it a lot. Our room was luxurious with two big and super comfy queen beds, a hot and beautiful pressurized shower, cable tv, and refreshing air conditioning. There were three little pools connected together to make one giant one, which was well equipped with crazy slides and a swim-up bar. There was a gorgeous white-sand beach front with little cabanas to sit under in the shade and volleyball courts. The hotel also offered these things that we did not really use: a golf course, tennis courts, three restaurants, tour guides, a smaller and more private pool, a gym, and a game room. Every night they put on a show with karaoke, music, dancing, and something a little fancier like a fire juggler. We had intentions to go into town and explore the city of Tela a little, but we wanted to soak in as much of our hotel as we could so we never actually left, and I am not at all upset about it.

As soon as we were released from the hotel lobby we basically ran all the way to our hotel rooms and speed changed into our swimsuits. We waited for no one. We headed directly to the pool and jumped in quicker than the blink of an eye. We spent the whole evening swimming, playing in the water, rocketing down the slides, and drinking our tropical cocktails while floating merrily in the pool. There are two key details about that night: 1. Getting to swim in our bathing suits without wearing clothes over them like a shirt and shorts. 2. Getting to have drinks without being condemned by every Honduran in sight. We felt at home in this pool. That night we all fell asleep with big grins on our faces :)

Saturday we woke up quite early since we are exhausted teachers and went to bed early (yes, even on vacation we call it an early night), but we also wanted to get the most out of the day instead of sleeping until the afternoon. Cassidy, Lori, Heather, and I found the breakfast buffet. There weren’t a lot of eating options at the hotel besides the restaurants, and we didn’t want to have to venture into town to find something. We were a little hesitant at first because since it is a nice hotel the prices are higher, but we quickly figured that we could pay for the buffet and sit and eat as long as we could fill ourselves up so much that we wouldn’t need lunch. I have never eaten so much food in my entire existence. We ate for a solid two hours – from 7:30-9:30 – without stopping! I promise you that we each had at least 5 full plates of food and we ate every crumb. I was well past the state of stuffed and I was sure my stomach was going to physically explode. Although we were in pain for about a half an hour, it worked! We were not even remotely hungry until dinner time so I would say that we definitely got our money’s worth of food at that breakfast buffet.

We spent the rest of the day soaking up the Caribbean sun any way we could. We swam in the ocean and read in beach chairs along the beach. We went for a wild banana boat ride – the driver loved us and had us trained to cheer whenever he blew his whistle, he let us swim in the middle of the ocean far from the beach, and our trip was not without a little thrill as we almost got t-boned by another boat. We played and chatted in the pool whenever we needed a break from all that salt. We caught relief from the heat and rays underneath the poolside umbrellas by reading, taking naps, or browsing the internet. We played beach volleyball with all the teachers and some curious Hondurans. It was a top runner for the best day of my life. Giant smiles never left our faces and we kept reminding each other that we were truly on this beautiful vacation in the Caribbean.

We ended our perfect day with a marvelous dinner. We ate at the restaurant on the beach and each ordered some delicious seafood dish. I got grilled shrimp with sautéed veggies and mashed potatoes. Of course my meal was accompanied with a classic piña colada! Our day left us all very very tired but we did not mind since our exhaustion was from playing too hard (if such a thing exists). Sadly we had to wake up early again the next morning to start the trek back to La Union (which is disappointingly not on the coast nor with any body of water in sight). It may have been the quickest vacation but it was certainly the best decision we could have made. There were many times that we discussed cancelling school on Tuesday and Wednesday just to stay a few extra days in paradise! (Too bad Jake wasn’t going for it.) 

Please be praying for all of us teachers this week. This past weekend was exactly the medicine we needed to rejuvenate ourselves. Some of us are beginning to feel burnt out as the first quarter is coming to an end and our students are pushing our patience to whole new levels. We have another 3-day weekend coming up (with more vacation plans) so pray that with this past trip and our next one we are completely re-energized and find new motivation to keep teaching these students. We are all working very, in fact maybe a little too hard! But we absolutely cannot (and will not) give up.

A [much needed] Daily Devotional

I thought I would share with you my devotion from yesterday morning. I read these every morning at breakfast to start my day, but this one in particular really blew me away yesterday both in reading it and in practice.

(This comes from The One Year walk with God Devotional by Chris Tiegreen)

Confidence in God
“Though war break out against me, even then will I be confident” – Psalm 27:3

In word: Feeling besieged? Don’t be surprised. It’s a natural human condition. Few people go through life with a sense of invulnerability. We question our strength, and, when trouble strikes, we doubt our ability to stand. We don’t feel invincible, so we fear trials. When war or even minor conflicts break out against us, confidence often disappears.
            David was no stranger to conflict. He was also no stranger to fear. His understanding of God’s strength and sovereignty did not come by birthright, it came by experience. When he tells us in verse 1 that the Lord is his light and salvation, the stronghold of life, he can make such claims only because there were times when he was forced either to lean on God or to whither away and die. The truth of God’s strength is only learned during times of vulnerability. Strong, confident people learn to rely on themselves. Weak, helpless people learn to rely on God.
            David’s introductory question in this psalm – “whom shall I fear?” – is purely rhetorical. He knows the answer: no one. If we can honestly claim with David that the Lord is our light, salvation, and stronghold, we can ask the same question without any fear of a valid answer coming up. We can be afraid of no one.

In deed: If you’re trying to work yourself into a state of confidence, be careful of where that confidence is placed. The model of overassertive strength that the world urges us to follow overestimates the power of man. Christians are not called to follow it; we are called to place every hope in the almighty God. If we need a source of strength, our inner self will not encourage us very much. God will.
            Learn to speak the words of David. Say them out loud to yourself, if necessary. You are playing psychological games, you are rehearsing the truth. Though war break out against us, we have every indication that our confidence in God is well-founded. Our heart does not need to fear, because we are children of the fearless One.

Now, if you had talked to me within the last two weeks you would know how defeated I was feeling. My students don’t seem to be getting along very well with their English and I was running out of ideas on how to teach them. Everything I came up with, they bombed because they could not understand a word I was saying; my creative juices were dry. I know that I was not failing as a teacher, but it sure felt like it. There were multiple times that I had to physically stop myself from crying in front of my students because I was unbelievably frustrated. So you can imagine, coming off two very hard weeks and having to start again on a Monday, that I was not enthusiastic at all. I really wanted to play sick for the day and just quit on teaching. This was the war that was overwhelming my life.

After reading this devotional I prayed to God that he would help me that day. I prayed that he would use me as his tool and teach these students through me. He knew how to help them best and how they could learn best, so I needed his wisdom in teaching them. I was obviously out of energy and desperately needed his strength to start the week. I put my day in his hands and headed off to school. Now, I would love to tell you that clouds parted and a bright shining light poured out from the heavens with angels singing gloriously, and all of sudden my students knew perfect English. But I had another kind of miraculous victory that day! It was small but monumental at the same time. Every single one of my students stayed in green for the whole day! (In my classroom I have a behavior system based on colors: each morning the students all start out in green. Once they receive three checks for any sort of bad behavior, they move to yellow, and will owe me some kind of extra assignment. If they happen to get three more checks then they move to red and receive demerits from the office.) Therefore! although their English may not be spectacular and they still struggle in every single class, at least my students know how to behave. I was so proud of them all.

I cannot claim this victory as my own. I know God’s hand was in that moment and he guided me all day. I am learning to lean on him daily because this job is too challenging to try to do on my own. It was days like this that make me love my job beyond expressible words and so thankful that I have the strongest man on my side, God. 

T.I.H.

The Abundant Life teachers have come up with a saying around here: T.I.H. When something happens that we can’t really logically explain or that we find rather unordinary, we say T.I.H. This is Honduras. We figure that there is no true explanation other than that we are in a new culture where somehow what happened is socially acceptable in this country. This helps us keep a good sense of humor because we just laugh it off and shrug, T.I.H. Let me further explain it with my afternoon yesterday…

1. For whatever unknown reason a swarm of bees decided to make their home in a rafter just outside the 11^th grade classroom. They weren’t making a hive or anything like that but rather were oddly all landing on the rafter and sticking there. There was just a black, buzzing mass on the rafters. So after school, the handyman took charge of getting rid of them. Twice, he constructed this torch of death by wrapping a bundle of wood around a long pole and soaking that in gasoline. Then he lit the wood on fire and lifted the flames up to the rafters. The bees were either burned instantly or smoked out. Of course this sent the bees furiously flying away so I had to protect myself with my books and swat at them so I wouldn’t get stung. Also, a few of my students were still around and they thought it would be great fun to chase after the bees and trying to kill them in their smoky stupor… they quickly learned how angry those bees were and that mad bees like to sting. Oops!

2. As I was walking home from school, I ran into the crazy lady who asked to borrow money from me a while ago. Now, I was with two of my students so I was desperately hoping that she would not bother me. Such wishful thinking. Sure enough she stopped me and shooed away my two little ones. Then she dropped her voice and began her ‘business talk’ with me. I pretended to not understand her and not remember our last encounter, hopefully avoiding it altogether so she would let me keep walking. Nope, she was too persistent. This time she asked me to lend her 3,000 Lempiras! I was so blown away! Not only had I denied her last time, and I was playing stupid this time, but now she had the nerve to ask me for even more! I simply looked at her with shock and disbelief, and told her that not only did I not have the money but there is no way I would give it to her.

3. This one takes the cake: last night one of the other non-teacher gringos in town, Mike, was making his rounds and saying goodbye to everyone because he left (for good) this morning. He stopped by our house and usually when someone is over, we just leave the door open. It wasn’t long until a woman poked her head over our fence and said “allí están.” This means, “there they are,” so naturally I thought she was looking for either Mike, who had just walked in, or Heather, who was here last year and is involved with various activities in the community. This woman had on a Jesus shirt, a rosary, and some prayer beads so I thought she was going to come evangelize to us and/or ask us for money. She was acting really weird and twitching a lot so then my mind changed to the idea that maybe she was possessed, by the holy spirit or demons (you choose), at the moment and was going to start speaking in tongues or something. What happened next was NOT what I would have ever expected… She took her shirt off! In the middle of our living room, with the door wide open, in front of people she didn’t know! Thankfully she had a bra on, and I was prepared to physically push her out of the house if anything else came off. Every single one of our jaws hit the floor. I was terrified and amused at the same. And, excuse my language, but all I could think was, “What the hell is going on?!” Because I was paralyzed with disbelief, I didn’t catch everything she said to us, but it was something like this over and over again: “I know it’s a sin to be naked but I have God in my heart so I am not sinning. He has sent me here with an important question for you, so please if you could help me figure something out. I know it’s shocking for you to see me standing here, but I must ask you this question.” I wish I could say that she had a very legitimate question that warranted her taking off her shirt, but sadly friends, I cannot. She wanted me to translate the tag on her shirt for her so she leaned her nearly naked body over me and held it out for me to read. However, when I went to go read it, it was already in Spanish! I kept looking at Heather and Mike for some kind of help or answer as to what was happening, but Mike was staring at the ceiling and Heather’s was too busy picking her jaw up from the floor. What other choice did I have but to answer the poor woman’s question? I told her that it was already in Spanish and read, “hecho en Haiti” which means “made in Haiti.” Feeling past the point of uncomfortable now, she agreed and then pointed to another part of the tag that she needed help understanding. So I looked at it and translated “XL” as “extra grande” for her. Then she sighed with relief and put her shirt back on. Yup, that is what she wanted me to do for her – tell her that her shirt was an extra large. Heather and I both quickly got up to imply that we were ready for her to go, but before leaving she had one more thing to say: she looked at Heather and said, “I know it is shocking for you to see me like this, but at least it’s not as bad as going out in short shorts.” What good advice seeing as Heather was in jeans and a sweatshirt and doesn’t even own a pair of short shorts here in Honduras. As I was ushering her out of the door, I started to close it and she told me, “No! Don’t close the door. You don’t need to do that! Just leave it open.” I wanted to scream at her, “are you kidding me?! After YOU walked in? I am never leaving my door open again!”

T.I.H.

Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream!

This past weekend we had a 3-day break because Monday was Teacher’s Day. We knew this long in advance and jumped at the opportunity to leave town, so we had been planning our getaway to Lago de Yojoa for quite a while. It was another beautiful weekend away from La Unión as we spent time getting to know another place in Honduras.

Saturday
Once again we hired a guy to drive us to our destination in his truck so we could avoid the bus. We left early in the morning and began our drive. It was your typical bumpy car ride through the beautiful countryside. We did get stopped along the way in a town along the lake for a parade. (Yup, if you read my Santa Rosa post you’ll remember that we ran into problems because of a parade there too.) Saturday was Honduras’ Independence Day so there were parades everywhere – we were bound to get stopped by one. The parade was in the precise middle of town and it was not moving, so neither were we. We got out of our truck to go enjoy in the festivities, but like usual we quickly became more intriguing than the parade and everyone turned to stare at us. There was a band playing and girls dancing in the street along with the tunes. We were not the only ones eager for the parade to finish so we could continue on our way, so we followed the crowd of cars trying to surpass the parade via side streets. That turned out to be a poor decision because we started up a hill only to get stuck up there in a line of cars because no one was able to drive all the way through the road. We awkwardly had to turn around and crawl back down the hill to wait once more for the parade to finish.

We finally made it to our hotel – after getting lost for about half an hour – around lunch time. We checked in and decided to eat lunch there because they had… wait for it… cheeseburgers! That cheeseburger made the almost 5-hour car ride completely worth it :) We stayed at the D&D Brewery all weekend (the cheeseburgers and beer were the main appeal of the place); the only negative was that it wasn’t actually on the lake. It was a hotel established by an American so there were lots of tourists there, which made it fun to see other gringos and talk to them in English. The rest of the day was entirely uneventful: we decided to go into town to get money and shop around. However, the ATM was not working and all the banks were closed so we couldn’t get money; as well, there wasn’t much shopping to be done and then it started raining. We had a very relaxing evening eating and playing cards together. That night, all 6 of us girls shared a room and we decided to push the three double beds together and have a giant slumber party!

Sunday
We started the morning with a lovely rowing adventure. The deal is you rent oars from someone in town and then head to the canal to hop on a boat. As simple as that sounds, you should also realize by now that nothing is easy in Honduras. We marched through a swamp and barbed wire to get to the boats, and then we had to convince the boatman to let us use a boat.  Since there were 7 of us we had to split up into two groups – Beth, Harriet, Cassidy and I were in one boat while Lori, Lenny, and Kara were in the other – and because our sets of oars were not matching, the man did not believe that we rented them from the same place and would not let my group on a boat. His logic was absurd but we finally got in our boat. Beth and I took over rowing first and it may or may not have taken us a while to figure out a synchronized pattern of rowing that had us going in a semi-straight line instead of zig-zagging and circling our way down the canal. However, the other boat did not have our skill (or luck) and ended up hiring a man, in the middle of the canal, to join their crew and row their boat. (If you’re trying to imagine how this happened, two men were in a boat going in the opposite direction and they flagged those men down to have one of them switch into their boat while floating in the canal.) At least they made the valiant effort of rowing, and let’s be honest, none of us will be going out for the next Olympic rowing team. 

It ended up being rather nice because he became a sort of tour-guide for us. 

He was a very smiley man and clearly loved being with us – we guessed that he was having the time of his life getting to spend the day with 7 uncoordinated, goofy gringos trying to row across the lake. We followed the shore line for a while and saw magnificent views of the entire lake, cool rock cliffs, and trees along the edges. We stopped to swim for a little bit (when you swim here, out of cultural courtesy, you have to keep your shorts and tank top on over your swimsuit) in the clear, yet not-lacking-in-algae lake. After that we decided to head back because we still had other plans for the rest of the day. On our way back the ‘guide’ tried to give us rowing lessons on how to be more efficient. Our boat made it back just fine, slowly but surely, with Harriet taking over as the sole rower; and the other boat made it back a lot quicker than us by the hands of their professional, local rower (Lenny did take another crack at trying to row, but he failed). We thought that lives could have been but a dream if we had wine and cheese with us for fancy dining on our sweet rowboat trip.

Our next destination was the Pulapanzak Waterfall. This is the tallest waterfall in Honduras at 43 meters and it is absolutely magnificent. It was actually here at the park that we received our first teacher discounts! We got a discount on our entrance fee and tour price; it was such a nice gift to us. We really wanted to do this tour that takes you behind the waterfall, but we decided to first go see the waterfall and take our glamour shots. Of course the pictures don’t do the waterfall justice but try to put yourself in my picture. The mist from the waterfall covered us and we all just stood in silence marveling at it.

Then the real fun began. Our tour behind the waterfall. Now, when I hear about a tour behind the waterfall I think of something sophisticated and organized: perhaps there is something like a boardwalk to walk across with the waterfall rushing overhead, or maybe there’s even something a little more dangerous like traversing an edge with harnesses and some kind of rope system. Welp, this is Honduras and there is nothing as secure as that to be found. We started by trekking through mud and intense mist to the base of the waterfall. From there we jumped into a pool that we had to quickly swim across without getting sucked down by the current. Then we crawled along the rocks to a cove for brief protection from the forceful waterfall. Our guide told us that for the next parts of the tour we all had to hold hands tightly, look down, and breathe out of our mouths. Um… what did you say?! So we grabbed a hold of each other because our lives depended on it and slid into chest high water. The power of the waterfall was unbelievable! It was pounding down on our backs and heads. He was right – it was incredibly hard to see even when looking down, and breathe even through my mouth! We paused briefly in another overhang to seek refuge. Then we ventured back out there as we walked blindly across the base of the waterfall clinging to the rocks. Our final destination was a hole in a wall that we had to crawl through to get inside a cave. We had no flashlights or anything else to see inside the cave so we all just sat in darkness, in shock over this ‘tour.’ After a few minutes we wandered back to the start of our adventure, once again holding tightly to each other and grasping the rocks while trying to navigate the route. But, our guide wouldn’t let us go without one more daring activity: we jumped off a 25-foot cliff into the river below. He didn’t really give us much time to think about the jump and be scared. Instead, we each took our turn of standing on the ledge, looking down, figuring out how far to jump out, and then launching ourselves into the river, all within a single minute. What a thrill! We were screaming and cheering throughout the whole tour, and our excitement didn’t end. The whole tour was fantastically amazing and we were still on such an adrenaline high well into the night. Our crazy day ended with feasting on juicy cheeseburgers and luscious chocolate cake.

Monday

We asked the guy who drove us to the lake to return on Monday so he could drive us back – aka we successfully avoided any kind of bus all trip! Never mind that he was three hours late picking us up, it was nice not to have to suffer on a bus home. We spent the morning waiting for him in a very relaxed state. We read and surfed the internet at the hotel, went into town to finally get money out of our bank accounts, and drank refreshing smoothies. This time our space in the bed of the truck was even smaller because he had done some shopping along the way for everyone in La Unión, so we squeezed four of us and everyone’s bags into the bed. Once he picked us up it didn’t take long for our ride to get interesting. We were driving into some very dark clouds and knew there was no avoiding the inevitable – rain. He stopped the car and told us that he could either cover us with a tarp or wait for the storm to pass. Those of us in the back decided to just cover ourselves with a tarp and keep going. So we stretched this very dirty, nasty tarp over us and proceeded to drive. It was a serious rain storm! It was pouring and even started hailing on us! The tarp wasn’t doing a great job because we were all still getting wet and so were the bags. At one point I had to lie across all the bags and stretch the tarp as far as I could and hold it down just to cover the bags and try to keep them as dry as possible. Needless to say, we could not wait for the rain to stop so we could take off the tarp, and we were especially eager to get home. Thankfully we had another incredible weekend that made the uncomfortable ride home completely worth it.

This week please be praying for our health. We had a very unlucky week with everyone getting sick! Lori had a water amoeba attack her digestive system, Cassidy had an allergic reaction to the soap used to wash her sheets and is starting to get a sore throat, Kara had a sinus infection, Beth felt queasy for a few days, and Harriet suffered from the 24-hour flu. Pray that everyone recovers quickly and that those of us who slid under the radar this week, continue to be healthy. 

A day to just be a kid

September 10^th was national Kids’ Day in Honduras! Think of “Mother’s Day” or “Father’s Day” except apply that to children and you’ve got yourself a national holiday. Now, I’m not entirely sold on the idea that kids need a special day dedicated to them (no matter how good of an idea it sounded to me when I was younger) in this country, because parents do a pretty good job of glorifying their children on a regular basis. But, that is where my complaints will end because it meant a day of no teaching and letting my inner kid out while playing with my students.

The best I can compare this ‘holiday’ to is Halloween. First of all, they do not celebrate Halloween here because it’s a satanic holiday with all the magic and witchcraft, and in a country as religious as this one there will be none of that nonsense. So secondly, rather than pass out candy then, we just sugar up all the little ones on Kids’ Day! I was told (no asking, no giving me a choice) that I had to buy treats for my students. All of the elementary teachers were given 10Lemps per student and then we could spend the money however we wanted, but it had to be used to purchase sugary foods. I made all of my students cupcakes and then bought some lollipops to pass out too. Now thirdly, I am sad to report that they do not get to dress up in any sort of costume, but they do get to wear their normal clothes to school. So they are wearing clothes of out the ordinary. Now what do we do with all these normal-looking, hyper kids? Play with them!

Before embarking on our day of pure fun, we made time for God. We had a nice devotion in the morning led by the Honduran teachers. The kids were a little anxious about getting to all the fun, but they still have to praise and worship God, and learn a little more from the Bible. After that, the wild beasts were released. They had snack time and recess; I played ring-around-the-rosie with a few of my students which turned into a giant group of kids and myself holding hands and running around in circles. We always started in a circle but it quickly turned into this kind of clump of students running around each other and dragging their friends behind them. I love how simple games can be and yet all the kids go crazy for it :) After recess, the 1^st-3^rd grade students went down to the basketball court to play organized games. In true Honduran style, the teachers in charge had not set anything up so we all stood around, roasting in the sun, and doing photo shoots with my camera. You know how a photographer always tells his model “the camera loves you”? Well, it was the opposite for me – the kids loved the camera. Everyone wanted to be in the pictures that I was taking! Then, they all wanted a turn to take a picture. After making sure that I got all of my 3^rd graders in at least one picture (with whoever decided to photo-bomb their picture), I let them each take one picture on my camera. I was just as nervous as you are right now thinking that I handed over my camera to a bunch of 9-year-olds who had never held, let alone seen, a camera before. But, I monitored their time with my camera like a Nazi. Now I have tons of pictures with my precious little kiddos!

Finally the ‘organized’ games began and the kids were divided into teams. I was in charge of the blue team and we had to compete in a multitude of races. They always had to run around a giant circle but after that varied – in one race they had to run to the middle and snag the soda-bottle or bean bag first, then in another game they had to throw their bean bag to knock over the soda-bottle first. After we sufficiently wore out all the students (many thanks to the blazing hot sun) we went back up to the classrooms to play and eat. I spent most of that time swinging kids around upside-down or giving out piggyback rides. Needless to say, I was extremely exhausted and sweaty by the time Kids’ Day was over. I handed out my treats to my class and then sent the kids home on a sugar-high to go terrorize their parents. It was only a half-day at school, but it felt longer than any normal day – those kids completely sucked out all my energy! I had too much fun with them.

While all the elementary students were playing at the school, all the secondary students were sent to neighboring aldeas to put on Kids’ Day activities for those elementary schools. Obviously I did not go with any of the groups, but I have an idea of what happened. The groups each had student-leaders that organized and ran all the activities, with the help of their peers. They were all supervised by teachers, but the students were essentially in charge. It was their responsibility to bring candy to those kids and play games with them too all morning. I heard they all went well and every student had a blast!

This week be praying for one of my students in particular: Wendy. Her grandfather died last week and I can imagine the heartbreak. It is my understanding that he has been sick for a while, so at least his pain and suffering have ended. She missed school on Friday which was a big test day, so pray for her strength to continue on with school this week and to perform well. She is one of my lower students and I don’t want her to get further behind everyone else or to lose focus. Pray for her whole family that they find some peace throughout this experience and find strength in the unity of this community.