I love weekends!!

It's not that I don't like being with my students or going to work 5 days a week because most of the time I really do, but no matter how great the week is, I am always looking forward to the weekend. I love having the free time to be with people and build relationships.

This weekend has been exceptionally great and it is only half over at this point. Right after school on Friday, we went to play soccer with the street boys. After a great time of play, feeding the boys, and washing their feet, we packed up and headed to Agafam (the Honduran version of a county fair). It was great! We ate great food, played some carnival games, threw a frisbee around, and rode the farris wheel. It was fantastic!

We got back kind of late so I was excited to sleep in today.....I guess I should learn that sleeping in here is just not ever going to happen. I woke up to a super loud pounding sound coming from our kitchen. I eerily crept out of my bed and into the living room, then peeked around the corner into the kitchen to see a man's hand reaching up under our door into our house. Needless to say I panicked a little bit and ran back into my room. I had no idea who this was but assumed they must be trying to break into our house. I ran into the bathroom and looked out our tiny little window to see the man hired by our landlord to make repairs to our house, standing on the platform attached to the back of our house with a sledgehammer and chisel, breaking away the cement underneath our kitchen door leading into the ally. I still have no idea what exactly his purpose was for breaking our wall, but now we have a nice hole under the door and more cement chunks keep falling off, so hopefully they have a brilliant plan to fix this little problem or the bugs are soon going to become even worse.

However, I didn't have long to worry about this issue because today is birthday-day and full of lots of birthday fun! :) This morning we went to celebrate our friend Jenna Miller's birthday (she works with Micah Project). She loves baseball so we went to a baseball field and had a kickball tournament with about 60 people. She even made team shirts for everyone to wear (my team was the Dodgers). It was so much fun seeing all of the Honduran boys trying to figure out this "baseball" form of soccer and hardly ever did I see them throw the ball when out in the field, they just kicked it all the time. I guess I just never came to the realization that not everyone knows how to play by baseball rules because we in North America just grow up knowing the game so I found it kind of funny that they even had to explain to these teenage boys how to run bases. (Sorry Travis, I know you will be a little disappointed by this).

Now it is time to go to the next birthday party for our friends Julie, Merideth, and Kaytie. We are going to go bowling and I have never been bowling in Honduras so it should be fun! Tomorrow will include church, frisbee with other teachers and some Micah boys at IST, and hopefully even a little afternoon nap if I'm lucky.

.....and this is why I love weekends :)

New President!!

Today Honduras' new president (Pepe Lobo) was put into office. Not only was this history in the making as Honduras is taking back their country and trying to get back on their feet again, but it also meant no school for us because many streets were shut down for the inauguration. I want to thank all of you for your prayers these past few months for Honduras and the lack of peace we had been experiencing. Things have definitely calmed down and returned to normal......let's hope now that the new president is in place that things continue down this path.

With a full day off of school, us teachers were free to do what we wanted = which resulted in a picture scavenger hunt all over Loarque (our community). It was a lot of fun and good to be outside for a long period of time since that doesn't happen often. Lots of laughs were shared as we traipsed all over our neighborhoods while the Hondurans looked at us like we were crazy. We even ended up in the middle of a pick up soccer game with a bunch of Honduran guys who had no idea why a bunch of white girls were jumping in their game. I seriously am blessed to have such a great community of North Americans to hang out with because we find plenty of ways to entertain ourselves!

The rest of the day included lunch with friends, a little down time to myself, and now Bible study in a little bit. Not a bad way to spend a day off of school, that's for sure!

Fish heads and fun times

It seems that I have become very comfortable living within the little bubble we refer to as the North American community here in Honduras so it is nice when I am given the opportunity to branch out and see what Hondurans accept as "normal."

Today after church I was invited to go to lunch with the Honduran family that adopted me. They asked me if I like seafood and to be honest, I have never been a huge fan, but I haven't tried it in a very long time and I have been surprised at what foods I do like now that I am older so I told them seafood sounded great! I didn't know what the menu said because it was all in Spanish so I just ordered what everyone else was getting (which I was told was fish stuffed with shrimp - sounded pretty good).

When the waitress brought out our food, I was shocked! It was an actual fish stuffed with shrimp! It tasted amazing, but took a second to get over the fact that I was opening up this fish and eating out his innards while his head was flopping off the side of my plate and his tail and fins were scraping my arm. I was told real Hondurans eat the eyeballs as well - let's just say, in this case, I am happy to claim that I am not Honduran as I did not eat them.

I love fishing and even playing with dead fish (as my family can attest too); however, this was a whole new experience! After the meal, the waitress brought us a bowl of water with a lime slice in it, which we were told to wash our hands in because apparently lime is the only thing able to get rid of fish smell. It was a great afternoon, full of lots of laughing and new experiences and I am so blessed to have a family down here that is willing to take me in and spend time together.

But from now on, I think I will make sure to order food that doesn't have a head :)

Back and in the Swing of Things

I returned to Honduras a week ago after a refreshing trip back to the states to visit my family over Christmas break. It was fun to be home and great to see family and friends again. However, several people accused me of slacking on the blog writing, and all I have to say to that is, I am guilty as charged. When things get busy, the blog is the first thing to be ignored. So, I will attempt to get better at updating the blog and in the meantime update you on my first week back in Honduras.

School started soon after we returned and as much as I was dreading returning to the daily work schedule, it really hasn't been too bad. It took a few days to get my students settled down and focused back on school, but now I am surprised at how smoothly class is rolling. I don't know why, but my students are particularly excited about our class this Partial (Quarter). Maybe it is because we are currently studying William Shakespeare in preparation to read Romeo and Juliet and for the first time I actually know what the book is about and how it will end before I start teaching it and I'm sure some of that excitement is rubbing off on my students. Whatever the reason, it is nice hearing students say, "I'm so glad we have your class first today! It's a good way to start the morning!" {Which reminds me, one of my students in class the other day told me (after I told them writing 3 paragraphs should be easy for them by now), "Ms. Jones you play soccer like Ronaldinho, write like you are Dr. Seuss or something.....everything in life must seem easy to you!" - it made me laugh}

As far as soccer goes, we have 3 days left of regular season play. Yep, that's right, with only 4 girls soccer teams in the conference that means we only play 3 games. Our first one was on Saturday, we have one tomorrow, and one Thursday. Saturday's game did not go so well, so I am hoping things go better tomorrow, but after a miscommunication that left us with no soccer balls and no equipment at practice today, I'm getting a little nervous. As long as they give it their all, I couldn't be more proud of them.

Well, back to the school work now, but I will update again soon!.....hopefully :)