Injury Prone

Wednesday afternoon I organized a soccer game at school amongst the teachers at International School (the school I work for). The Honduran teachers said that the North American teachers would never be able to beat them at their own game so we met on the field after school to prove them wrong. We had so much fun playing and the North Americans were actually winning the whole game until the last 5 minutes when we started falling apart. None of this is the point of the blog post though.

Anyone who knows me at all knows that I get injured all the time so it won't come as a surprise when I say that during our game on Wednesday I injured my wrist and now it is in a lovely, bright green cast.

Halfway through the game, one of the players from the Honduran team went to take a shot and when he rocketed off a solid shot on goal, he nailed my wrist with his foot in the process. It hurt really bad and started swelling right away, but I continued playing the rest of the game in true Leslie Jones fashion, despite the throbbing pain in my arm.

That night I did not sleep at all and by the time I got to school the next day I could not concentrate on work so I decided to go see the school doctor to get some pain pills to help out. He looked it over, gave me some pain pills, then said I needed to go to the hospital right away; I however had a class starting in less than an hour, so I thanked him for his help and told him I would go after school. As I stood up to walk out the door he told me in Spanish in a loud, stern voice, "Sit down! You are going now!" There was no arguing with him, so I took a seat and waited for him to call the North American Coordinator to take me to the hospital.

We went to 4 different hospitals before I was helped. All of the doctors we needed were not in at the time we visited so we kept moving from hospital to hospital, even trying our luck at the emergency room on the military base - no doctor ready to see us there either.

6 hours later, I walked away with my right arm in a green fiberglass cast. It didn't slow me down too much though because that afternoon I was back with my students in school and that night was out on the soccer field playing the best game I have had in a long time (I had 7 goals)!

I will admit that I am extremely frustrated though. I have decided that my left arm is in no way attached to my brain because it is useless. I cannot grade, I have trouble typing, I can't even sign my students' hall passes when they need to leave the classroom or write down the attendance for class and I am relying heavily on help from others.

Please pray that I can overcome the frustration and survive these next couple of weeks.

Pretty sure this was the longest week of my life.

It is finally the weekend! I know we are only 3 weeks into the school year, but already I am living for the weekends. This year I have a lot more students then I did last year, meaning I am teaching a lot more hours as well. By Tuesday afternoon, I am ready for the week to be over and yet I still have 3 more days to go. It really isn't all bad though because I have been enjoying getting to know my new class of freshmen and it has been such a great encouragement seeing students who usually hate reading asking me if we can spend more time reading. I realized a long time ago that in my life, I have to stay focused on the positive or else I don't know how I would be able to keep going, so despite how tired I am by the middle of the week or how frustrated I get over school issues, I couldn't see myself working anywhere else at this point in my life!

Highlights from the week:

- On Monday in chapel, we played "Minute to Win It" with the students, during which I walked away with the grand prize of L.58 and half a watermelon.....great day!

- Tuesday included a flag ceremony for Honduran Independence Day, which ended up being 15 minutes of saluting the flag, singing the national anthem, saying the pledge of allegiance, and then digressing into 50 minutes of us watching people play tug-o'-war, jump-rope, and write on pieces of paper (still not sure what that last one was about).

- Wednesday my wonderful roommate Josie started up a Bible Study that will be taking place at our house each week. We decided to go through the book of John to begin with and I am excited to grow closer to the girls in my neighborhood through this.

- Thursday was an all around rough day (mostly stemming from my Honduran "sister" having health problems at school that left me scared to say the least). I can't give details, but please be praying for her and her family. Her mom called me this morning and said they are extremely tired and just need prayer. This was also the day that the power decided to go out at school so teaching was difficult without any lights/projectors/fans/etc.

- Friday ended with going to street kid soccer with the Micah Project. Afterwards we decided to walk up to the market for dinner and were caught in a terrible downpour that left us completely drenched. The delicious baleadas we ate for dinner made up for it though! We were then back home and asleep on our couches by 9:30! We were all very tired!

- Saturday (today) I finally talked to Emily on Skype - which I have never ever done - and I got to see my nephew Landon!! He is getting big and is still very cute :) The rest of the day will probably include grocery shopping and hanging out with friends.

So that about sums it up. I am headed to El Salvador next week to hopefully climb a volcano and learn to surf, so we are hoping everything works out to go! It will be nice to have a break from the students and have 5 days of not thinking about school at all.

I know this isn't a great blog post, but I am tired and don't feel like writing a lot, so I hope it suffices until I update again. I miss all of you back in the states and think about you often!