Lost in Translation

My students will often get extremely frustrated with me when I do not understand what they are saying. However, other times we both just end up laughing over how ridiculous some of our conversations can be. For example, the other day I had my students working on creating their own utopia that they will present to the class next week when a student came up to me with a rather interesting question - here is how the conversation played out:

Student: Can our community be an Aslan?

Me: An Aslan? Don't you mean Narnia?

Student: Um no, Aslan.

Me: You want your country to be a magical lion?

Student: What?! NO! Aslan!! Like a piece of land surrounded by water!

Me: OH Island!! Got it.

Off and Running Once Again

School is back in session! Yesterday was the first day and everything went extremely smooth after a week of planning and organizing the classroom. It is great to be back in the classroom getting to know my new group of students, but tiring at the same time. Life has been extremely busy the past few days, but I am sure things will calm down once I get back into the swing of things and the students have gotten used to being in the 9th grade.

One of our most interesting adventures from this past week included coming home to a flooded house. While we were still at school, a bad storm hit, flooding parts of our elementary building and other areas around the campus. When we got home and opened our front door, we found a nice layer of water coating our entire house, measuring anywhere from a couple centimeters in the highest places in the house, to a couple inches in one of the bedrooms, bathrooms, and kitchen. We found out that the drains outside of our house don't work, forcing the water into the house. The next 2 hours or so were spent with mops, brooms, and dustpans in hand, trying to push all of the water out of the house. It was quite the task to push all of the water from the farthest bedroom clear up to the front of the house and out the garage, but with a little teamwork and a lot of optimism, we made it happen.

A man came to our house today to fix the problem, so we are hoping we will no longer be found scooping gallons of water out of our precious home (especially since we are in the midst of rainy season), but I can't say I expected anything less from my first week in Honduras and despite the flooding it is still good to be back!

Please pray that I find a way to stay energized as I am teaching a lot more classes than I was last year and that my health remains good these next few weeks!

I have returned!!

I am back.

I flew into Tegucigalpa on Thursday, August 12th and although I wasn't entirely ready for the summer to end, I am so glad that I had the chance to be back in the states for 2 months to see my family and friends and relax after a busy first year of teaching. Summer included working as a counselor at church camp, hanging out with my brothers a lot building soccer goals and skate ramps, getting to re-meet my 1 1/2 year old niece and welcome my nephew into the world in June, and travel to Alaska to see family and friends......and so much more!

Like I said, I wasn't completely ready to leave again, but now that I am here I wouldn't want to be anywhere else. The first few days here have been a whirlwind of activity as every start to a new year is, but I am living with 3 new teachers in a beautiful house (5 bedrooms/5 bathrooms) so it has been quite the adventure exploring our house and trying to remember what each door leads to and where all the storage closets are. We are so spoiled we almost feel guilty about being allowed to live in such an elegant house (pictures will be coming soon). I guess I am just telling all of you this because after all the troubles I had with my house last year, I know most of you were worried I wasn't going to survive another year in Honduras, so to ease your fears let me assure you that I am living like a queen!

I cannot tell you how great it was to arrive in Honduras knowing what to expect, where we were going, and feeling like I was home instead of like a scared little tourist lost in a foreign country. My house-mates are fantastic and I can already tell this is going to be a good year.

We are about to head out into the city to take the 1st year teachers on a tour, but I will update again soon - just wanted to let all my faithful readers know that I am back and the blog is up and running again :)

Thanks for the thoughts and prayers as I moved down to Honduras again - keep me in mind these next couple of weeks as we settle back in and adjust to life in a 3rd world country once again!