Christmas Excitement

After coming back to Honduras post-Thanksgiving break, things have been moving on full steam, giving us teachers little time to catch our breath. Collecting late work, grading projects, making up quizzes, and all in a race to get it done before Christmas break.

However, even with the craziness of school, I have still managed to fit in quite a few personal activities outside of school. The main thing I am involved with is The Micah Project. I have grown to love the boys from the street who show up to play soccer with us. I ask that you continue to pray for these boys (and Rosa, the one girl who comes) and that they will turn their lives around and give up their addiction to shoe glue.

The past week at school has included lots of fun holiday activities as well. Monday we spent class time reading Christmas stories and playing games, Tuesday was color day (meaning the students were allowed to come to school in their own clothes instead of their uniforms if they wore red and green), and now today included the results of the high school door-decorating competition (which my class won!) and the 4^th and 5^th grade Christmas concert (which I had the best intentions to show up to early in order to get good seats so I could video tape the performances for my roommate, a 5^th grade teacher. However, as I was walking from my classroom to the teacher’s lounge to get the last of my stuff together for the day, I came across a soccer game going on. One of the guys called me over and insisted that I must play because they were a man down. Of course I couldn’t refuse and as a result I showed up to the concert sweaty, with stained dress clothes, and furthermore was banished to the back row. Oh my, why must my love for soccer be so strong?)

I can’t even imagine all the crazy events that will be included in the next 2 days, but what I do know is that in 3 days, I will be headed back to the States to see my family and I am pretty excited about that!

Recent happenings.....as of a month ago.

It seems like I am always apologizing for not updating my blog. Please do not see this as a sign that nothing new has been going on in Honduras because that is far from true – in fact, these past few weeks have been some of the most exciting and busy days so far.

Let’s go back to Thanksgiving: I spent Thanksgiving riding on a bus from Honduras toNicaragua. My Thanksgiving dinner was a Nicaraguan version of a hotdog. I went with a group of 5 friends and had an amazing time traveling around the country. We started out in Managuathen headed to Granada, a colonial town right on the lake that is extremely gorgeous. We did the typical tourist things such as eating dinner on a walking street while being entertained by street performers, visiting an art museum, and buying souvenirs from street vendors. We also went up into a bell tower of a church to view the city and explored an old prison (now I can say I have been in prison in Nicaragua!). The next morning we moved on again, this time sailing on a ferry to the island of Ometepe. This was by far the best part of the journey. We never planned where we were staying until we reached our destination, then we would pull out the travel books and see what looked good. This time we were drawn to a little hostel located on a coffee plantation at the base of a volcano…..doesn’t it just sound awesome?! The hostel was basically an old barn that looked like it may have been used previously for storing coffee beans. The plantation owners rented out whole sections of the barn to visitors and offered them cots to set up with a sheet and a pillow. The cost for this resort location: $2 a night. Why don’t they offer bargain deals like this in the states? We spent the night playing cards while surrounded by people speaking languages from around the world (we could have pulled off a great Tower of Babel reenactment with people from Australia, Belgium, Argentina, New York, and many more!) The night spent in our cots was much too short, but lead to the next great adventure of the trip: Volcano climbing! We woke up at 4:30 a.m., armed with flashlights and rather large water bottles, and began our hike up to the top of one of Nicaragua’s famous volcanoes. Starting out in the pitch dark was a bit tricky, but made it even more exciting. We ate lunch down in the crater of the volcano then headed back to the plantation to pack our bags and head back to Tegucigalpa. After the hike, we were muddy, wet (since the cloud covering poured down on us the majority of the time we were on the volcano), bloody (from falling on all the sharp rocks), tired, but equipped with lots of new jokes and stories to tell.

It was probably one of the most untraditional Thanksgivings I have ever had, but I think that’s what made it so wonderful!

(Our group on the ferry to Ometepe)

(The volcano we climbed up and down into the crater)

(On our hike up the volcano)

(We got MUDDY!!!)