A hint of Fall

Today is exciting for many reasons.

1.) It is Halloween and I love any excuse to dress up as something silly and go hang out with people.

2.) Despite the Honduran heat, our house feels like Fall after baking pumpkin sugar cookies all afternoon.

3.) I decided to put aside school work for the day and I actually had a very productive day making my costume, rearranging the kitchen, and just taking a well deserved break from thinking about school and students.

In Honduras, Halloween is not celebrated. In fact, Christmas decorations are popping up left and right because without Halloween or Thanksgiving to celebrate, Christmas is the next holiday Hondurans have to look forward to. The North American teachers are all getting together to have a costume party anyways and I'm interested to see how many looks we get walking down the street with our costumes on. I'm hoping that if we use our imaginations and pretend really hard, we can trick ourselves into thinking it is Fall and that it is chilly outside instead of just another hot day.

For those of you wondering, I am completely healed after our car accident and I was in school teaching all week long. It was so good to be back with my students after not seeing them for a few days. Again, I am so thankful for all of the prayers!

Well, I better go put the last few finishing touches on my costume and get ready to celebrate Autumn :) .....oh how I miss it!

Accident Update

I'm aware that it has been a while since I last posted on here. I apologize. I think it is about time I caught you all up to speed though, so here we go:

Last Saturday, I was in a car accident with 2 other teachers. We were riding in the backseat of a taxi, driving down the "highway" going about 60 mph, when we unexpectedly came up on a line of cars that had come to a standstill. The taxi driver slammed on his brakes, slowing us down to about 45 or 50, but we were unable to avoid the collision and slammed into the back of the truck in front of us. None of us were wearing seat belts. We were all watching out the front window, realized what was about to happen, and had a few split seconds to decide how we were going to prepare for the impact. My roommate chose to curl up and burrow into our friend Kristin, while Kristin and I just sat there, realizing there wasn't much we could do to protect ourselves.

I was sitting behind the driver and hit the seat in front of me with my face pretty hard. After the driver hit the airbag, he flew back and hit me again, so essentially I had a double impact. My lip started bleeding pretty bad and started to swell right away, but the adrenaline from making sure the other 2 were ok kept me going and distracted me from any pain I may have been feeling.

It is only by the grace of God that we were able to climb out of the taxi, relatively unharmed outside a few bumps and bruises. No matter how many times we replay the scene in our heads, we have no idea how we stayed in our seats and did not go flying forward outside of the fact that God's hand was on us and he was looking out for us that day.

The next day we were all pretty sore and I had a very bad headache and kept getting pretty dizzy. My roommate and I decided to go visit the school doctor Monday at school, just to make sure everything really was ok. I taught my first period class, then went to see the doctor and he told me right away that he was going to get me a doctors appointment because he felt I needed x-rays, just for precautionary reasons. I went back to class and kept teaching, then was pulled out in the afternoon to go see a neurologist.

The neurologist did an extremely thorough examination and after fully assessing the situation, told me I had the symptoms of Vertigo. To test this, he had me stand up, stick my arms straight out, then close my eyes. I immediately fell over (don't worry, he was a good doctor and caught me before I hit the floor!). He then had me walk, one foot in front of the other while looking down and again I became extremely disoriented, lost my balance, and fell over. He prescribed 3 pretty strong medications to help with the pain and to help get the fluids in my head circulating the right way again (this is the reason for the dizziness and feeling disoriented), had me get a shot, and the kicker: told me I would need to wear a neck brace and rest at home for the next 5 days.

I am almost done with my 5 day rest period and I am feeling much better. I am so thankful for all the prayers and encouraging e-mails that were directed my way and I am still praising God for His protection over us! He is SO good!!

WE'RE GOING TO THE WORLD CUP!!!!!!!

Tonight has been a night full of miracles. Honduras, on the verge of elimination from the World Cup, was doing all it could to qualify for a coveted spot to South Africa for the 2010 World Cup. Things looked dim. Even if they beat El Salvador in their match tonight, they were still depending on a win (or at least a tie) from the U.S. to earn them a direct ticket to the cup. In the second half of the game between Honduras and El Salvador, Honduras put in a beautiful goal, off the head of Pavon in what probably had to be one of the most challenging headers to pull down I have ever seen. It was pure magic.

However, the United States was currently losing 0-2 to Costa Rica. Soon after, the States pulled off a goal putting them at 1-2 with about 20 minutes left in the 2nd half. As time ticked down, I sat on the edge of my seat, praying the States could get their act together and put in at least one more goal.

I guess you have to live in this country to realize how important it is for Honduras to go to the Cup. In case you haven't been reading my blog (or the news), Honduras is in a time of political strife. Their national soccer team is the only thing keeping this country united. They needed this.

With mere seconds left on the clock, the U.S. was able to bang a shot into the back of the net, clinching a spot not only for themselves in the Cup, but for Honduras as well. Cheers erupted from houses up and down the street as people began celebrating their long awaited dream-come-true. It was glorious.

As we walked back to our house tonight, Hondurans leaned out of houses, car windows, and stopped on the street to scream "thank you" to us North Americans. They realize that our tie is the only reason they are going straight to the Cup, but what we all also realize is that Honduras, "the little country that could," put their heart and soul into these qualifying matches and their efforts have finally come to fruition. They did it. And it is a beautiful thing.

In this moment, right now, this country is more unified than it has been in months. What an amazing answer to prayer :)

WORLD CUP 2010 HERE WE COME!!!!!!!!

P.S. - Tomorrow was just declared a national holiday since Honduras is going to the World Cup, meaning there is no school!!!! A country that loves soccer so much, they shut down in order to celebrate?!?! God DEFINITELY knew what He was doing when He called me to live down here!!! This country was made for me!

Honduras vs. U.S. - My dream come true :)

As a fanatic soccer fan, when I was offered the chance to travel to San Pedro Sula to watch a World Cup qualifying match between Honduras and the U.S., I accepted literally as soon as the offer was made. This was the offer of a lifetime!! Watching my original home team play my new home team....it was going to be epic.

After a fun Friday night full of soccer at The Micah Project, dinner at my student's house, and a rousing game of Spoons with fellow teachers, we were awake bright and early on Saturday in order to leave for San Pedro by 6 am. Packed in a small busito with 15 people including our bus driver, we were all in a funny mood and wished we had a video camera to start filming our new mock-umentary to air on tv.

7 hours later, due to road construction, we finally arrived. After a quick lunch, we headed to the stadium (at this point, you need to realize we are 4 hours early for the game so that we can stand in line to get in. Although we had tickets, they oversell the seats so you have to be early to assure entrance). We had to park a long ways away and hike up to the stadium, surrounded by flocks of other Honduran fans, swept along in a wave of white and blue. Everyone stopped and stared at the large group of North Americans dressed in Honduran jerseys. They could not figure out why these gringos were not cheering for the U.S. Pictures were taken of us, news crews directed cameras towards us, and still we hiked on, getting more and more excited the closer we got.

We got to the stadium and took our place in a line that wrapped around all over the place, waiting among hundreds of Honduran fans for our chance to enter the stadium. Almost as soon as we got in line, a police officer walked over to our group, handcuffs in hand. He got a few of his military buddies together and informed us that they were going to escort us to the front of the line and get us into the stadium right away. As we were walked to the front, angry cries erupted from all around us from all of the Hondurans who had already been waiting for hours. I gripped tightly to my friend Kristi and whispered, "Please don't let them kill me."

We made it in and found a seat in section "Sol" on the hard concrete seats. 3 1/2 hours till game time! I was SO excited! We passed the time by talking about the game, playing cards, doing the wave, watching 3 men jump out of a helicopter and parachute down to the field with Honduran-Flag parachutes, and all the while, taking in this beautiful culture I have grown to love so much.

Honduran fans are intense. Their team scored the first goal and shouts and cheers erupted. The U.S. quickly responded with a goal. Or so I thought. As soon as the goal went in, the stadium went eerily silent. Not a sound was made. Not even a hissing boo. Was there a call on the shot that I somehow missed?! Nope, they really did score. It was almost depressing watching the U.S. players run to the sideline to celebrate with their teammates in this dead silence. The U.S. ended up winning 3-2.

After the game we went to Quiznos for dinner and all eyes were on us as soon as we walked through the door. Despite our Honduran jerseys and insistence that we were Honduran fans, we were the enemy.

The next day we left San Pedro around 10:00 am. Packed back in our busito, we had a pretty uneventful journey until our driver decided he was tired and wanted to stop for coffee. He was gone for quite a while and we all just wanted to get home. He finally reappeared and that is when we discovered that if you spend L50 on food, you got a ticket to ride a horse, so he was off horse ridding. Go figure. Soon after, my friend Meridith was kicked in the leg by the same horse (which led to many humorous retellings of the time Mer was kicked by a horse at a rest stop....only in Honduras). She is doing better now but is still pretty bruised.

The journey continued, now about 2 hours out of Tegus, and the bus broke down. Stuck on the side of the road, people sat on rocks grading papers, making lesson plans, or just trying to knock plastic bottles down by throwing rocks at them. Our bus drive hitchhiked to go get gas, put it in, then we pushed our bus down the hill in an attempt to jump start it and sat on our rocks waiting and hoping he could get it started and wouldn't just keep rolling down the hill.

Hours later than expected, we made it home, tired and overwhelmed with things we had to get done for school the next day. With everything that went on, it all combined to create one of the best, craziest, most amazing weekends I had ever had in my life!!!! Friends, Landon Donovan, horse kickings, and broken buses - This Is Honduras :)

Postal Experience

I just recently received 2 boxes from my parents at the post office by the airport in Tegus. I didn't know what they were going to be sending me, so receiving the boxes and opening them to see what was inside was equivalent to Christmas morning. (By the way, I want to thank you (Mom and Dad) again for being so generous and shipping my stuff down here for me. You have no idea how nice it is to have all of the stuff you sent!)

Basically, here is how the post office works:

You walk in a sit on a bench along the wall, waiting for your turn to be helped. Then you walk up to the counter and flip through a notebook where they hand write every package that comes through the post office and find your name. Packages are piled everywhere, stacked on top of each other in what seems to be mass chaos (I'm sure they have some sort of system, but to the untrained eye, there seems to be no rhyme or reason). After providing identification, the postal worker will go in search of your package. Once they locate it, you must sign the notebook and pay to receive the package. This whole entire process can take quite a while, between flipping through pages of names to searching through hundreds of boxes for the correct package.

This is yet another Honduran experience to add to my long list of things I find humorous or amusing about this country. Oh and by the way, receiving mail and packages from the U.S. can take up to 2 months, so by the time something is received here, the sender usually completely forgets what they had sent! :)

Trapped under a pile of school work. Be back soon.

I'm sorry I haven't updated my blog recently. I have so much to tell you all, but I am currently trying to dig my way out of a constantly growing pile of schoolwork. First partial (a.k.a. first quarter) is ending soon and I am busy getting all of my grades entered online for the students, writing my partial exam, and keeping up with the daily task of lesson planning. Please don't give up hope on me!!! I promise to write a real blog post soon, so keep checking back for updates.