Suitcase Surprise

Today at about 4:00 I decided that I should probably start packing since I have to leave in the morning. Well, Diasira and Jhoselyn came over for the event, and to help me. OK OK mostly they came over because I told them that I had caramel brownies. Jhoselyn was a big help with packing though, and 'D' helped a lot with Christmas decorations. They came into my room and being the fun person she is 'D' climbed into my suitcase right away and told me that she was ready. Well, Jhoselyn zipped up the suitcase and started rolling the bag to the living room. I called to my roommate Jennifer to tell me if she thought the suitcase weighed too much or not. Jennifer lifted the bag up and said "yeah, I think that it weighs too much...at least 70 pounds." I said "Really?" I knew 'D' was in there and even though she is small I knew that it had to weigh a lot more than 70 pounds. I was like "what should I do?" Jen then went to get her scale saying that she could be wrong. Well her scale is in KG, so we figured out how much I weighed then I stood on the scale with the bag that I could barely lift and then Jen did all the math...her mouth dropped and she exclaimed, "This bag weighs 110 pounds!!!!" I replied "well, can you help me decided what to take out?" We unzipped the bad and 'D' jumped out and screamed. Everyone jumped and started laughing hysterically. It was so funny. Diasira was please with herself and the laughter she caused.

Tractor Fun

One night I coerced Mr. William, one of the men that oversees construction at the Ranch, to let me drive one of the big construction tractors. I had been wanting to drive it for a long time, and just waiting for the right moment to ask. Being the nice man Mr. William is, he let me. I was so excited! He gave me a little run down on how it works, then he let me drive it around this little circle. I took it around a tree and I was surprised how well it handles. He also let me back it up and lift and drop the buckets. After I was done Tammy, the Ranch nurse and good friend, asked if she could drive it. I think that she got to drive it further, maybe she is Mr. William's favorite. Tammy and I both agreed that it made for an exciting night and something to do on an otherwise uneventful night. It was really fun and I hope that I get to do it again.

Classic Shots

It has been a while since I've written a blog. My excuse is that we have had little to no internet over the last three weeks. Things in Honduras have been going well. We are wrapping school up for this semester. It has just flown by! Days seem to go at a normal speed, but months go by in the speed of a week. My kids are keeping me on my toes while I'm trying to keep them on their bottoms. Marlon is my little kangaroo, monkey and parrot all wrapped into one. He jumps around all the time, has more than a healthy amount of curiosity (as in can't keep his hands out of EVERYTHING) and on top of that repeats EVERYTHING that I say. While it can be very frustrating I have fun with it sometime. It's fun to make little random sound and hear him imitate it. Also, it's a great self-esteem boost...all I have to do is say "your beautiful" and Marlon says "Your beautiful." It's great. Outside of school there's not that much going on. I'm working on a dance with some of the girls here. They are doing very well with it and seem to really be enjoying it...despite the fact that they say they don't like ballet:) We have been playing a lot of soccer like always, but besides that there have been quite a few game of American Football, and Baseball being played. Some of the boys have started running in the mornings, which has been fun. I just have to say that I finished first today...not that I care or anything. We had a cold front come through last week and it was FREEZING! It was in the high 50 several days last week. The sun decided to come back out this week and it has warmed up some, but left most of us with colds. Being a preschool teacher I just love when my kids have colds and walk around all day with runny noses, and sneeze all over me. Anyways life has been fun like always and I will try to put some more detailed blogs up later this week. I hope yall are all just pluggin away and loving life. I would love to hear from all of you, so please drop me a note!

Flour child?

One week for preschool everyday we focused on a different texture. We played with rice, shaving cream, water, sand and flour. The preschoolers sat down and played with whatever that days texture was for about an hour. ONE HOUR! They really seemed to love this I have never seen them quite so focused. I think that of all the different textures the four was their favorite. Maybe really it was just my favorite because they really seemed to like them all. I really liked the flour just because they looked so cute coated in the white powder. Plus I have always liked playing with flour myself because I think that it's cool how it kind of holds the shape of whatever you press into it. I remember when I was younger helping my grandmother cook. Whenever I would get out her four jar and scoop flour out I would press my spoon into the sided of the flour to make an imprint that reminded me of an egg. It was very entertaining. I was glad to see that I'm not the only one that can be entertained by flour. When the kids were playing with the flour we got out some of the "cooking toys" and let them fill those and "cook." Jennifer continued to pack the flour into a dish then flip it over and say it was a cake, Marlon would respond by knocking it down. I think that he was satisfied every time to hear scream. It was a fun week playing with all the textures, learning how the different one feel, shape, pour, move, and how quickly one is able to get his or her neighbor dirty or wet!

I'm very happy!

You might be wondering why I'm so happy on this obscure Tuesday. I woke up today and it was bright and sunny outside. For most people that might not mean that much, but to me it meant everything. It was the second morning in a row that I woke up without rain! Hallelujah!!! When I sat down to write this blog it seemed like it had been even more days than just yesterday without rain. I'm sitting in detention right now with two other teacher and asked them, "has it been 5 days without rain?" They kind of laughed at me and said "no." So I asked them, "but it didn't rain yesterday?" "Correct." I didn't think that it rained Sunday, but apparently it did. Although, I didn't think that it rained on Saturday, I was quickly reminded that it poured bucks for a couple of hours...You might wonder how I could forget it raining bucks for hours, but if you lived here I think that you would understand. That kind of rain is not out of the ordinary. Anyways, we have had some sun this last week which was SO needed. Our poor dirt road is just washing away. Most everyday here recently we have had to go pull someone out of the mud. Mr. Ed has worked very hard to keep the road in some kind of shape. Rain, or no rain I have been thankful for even the small amount of sun that we have had, it has helped dry out the road a little. Also the creeks have gone down a lot and don't pose near the threat that they did there for awhile. There have been many days in the last month or two when we have questioned weather or not it was a good idea to travel down the VERY muddy mountain. As I walk out to feed my dog or go really anywhere I can hear the ground squishing beneath me. I never go through the grass without changing first, because I will have mud splattered on me when I come out. On Sunday I went out to watch the boys play soccer, my friend Tammy joined me. We hadn't been there long when she let out and exasperated sigh and pointed at her dirty pants. She said she could not believe that they were dirty already. Apparently she had washed them right before coming to the soccer field. I looked at her mud splattered pants and felt her pain. It's hard to keep your house and clothes clean when everything around you is wet and muddy. I'm thankful though for my nice DRY house with a good tin roof on it, for my sturdy walls that can withstand the rain. So many people on the mountain have houses made with mud bricks or wood with holes in it. Often times the roofs have holes in the tin and so many live on dirt floors. I'm blessed with where I live. Well, here comes the rain again. The dark clouds quickly fill the once beautiful blue skies and the the rain beats against the roof like it's angry at something, it's pounding makes it hard to hear the people in the same room as you. Hopefully it will pass as quickly as it came. Either way I'm so thankful that the sun was shining bright and hot most of the day today. It brought a smile to my face!

Memories from long ago...

It's funny to me what brings back memories. It's like finding a buried treasure when your trying to plant something. Your going along trying to create something new, and low and behold you come across something that you had forgotten about. Tonight I found myself in my childhood. I was in my house with Tammy cutting up potatoes for French fries when surprise surprise the power went out. At first it was just annoying, me and Tammy just took a big sigh and said there goes the power again. It's truly the worst when you are trying to cook. The ranch does have a generator for back up, but they decided not to turn it on for a while, hoping that the power would come back, so that they wouldn't have to spend the money to run the generator. I was making the French fries for one of the boy's houses close to the soccer field. They were having hamburger and it was my contribution to bring the fries. So, in the dusk I took my already cut potatoes and cooking oil up to their house to get them started. Since we have gas stoves I wasn't hindered from getting them cooking, just hindered from being able to see very well. We had one small candle burning, so it was pretty dark. Since it was so dark most of the houses just lingered outside waiting to be able to get dinner going once the lights came back. So, as the fries fried I went outside to hang out with everyone. It reminded me so much my childhood summers. No one in any kind of hurry to get inside, dinner could always wait a little longer. As long as there was still a soft light to see what was going on then people (or at least me and my siblings) would stay out to get a little more fresh air. I remember coming home late from swimming and riding bikes and my mom making some kind of comment about how late we were sitting down to dinner. I think maybe she felt like a bad mom for getting dinner on the table late, but really I loved when we would stay out late playing and eating later into the night. It also reminded me of going outside after dark during the summers to play flash light tag. I'm sure me and Joseph weren't really out that late but I remember feeling like we played half the night away. I miss those childhood summer nights. All of those memories came rushing back at me like it happened yesterday, as I stood outside in the crisp air and watched kids running around yelling at each other in Spanish and laughing, and as the teenagers stood around talking and enjoying getting an extra 30 minutes outside just to hang out. When the lights finally did come back on everyone slowly made their way back to their houses to get dinner going. I got to enjoy some homemade hamburger off the grill and some really good fries. The American style meal only served to keep me in my childhood memories longer, I savored all the memories that quickly rushed toward me on this beautiful evening.

Boys, Balloons, and Birthdays

Today is Junior's birthday! We celebrated Junior's birthday at his house. His house parents got a Piñata and the kids had a blast trying to hit the moving man full of candy. They were thrilled when they beat that little man to death and his insides started spilling out. Sergio, Juniors house dad, had also bought some of those long balloons that clowns have to make things out of, like little animals, swords ect. Sergio made a sad attempt to make something..anything, but it wasn't really working out. I knew how to make a few things just from watching people do it over the years, so, I started making little dogs, then a flower, but the big hit was when I made a sword, then EVERYONE wanted a sword. While the kids ran around and laughed I "mass produced" balloon swords. The sad part was Junior's family recently got a puppy, and the puppy popped the balloons as fast as I could make them! Junior also had a cake. First, he blew out the candles and added a nice layer of spit to the top of the cake. Then, as tradition goes, stuck his face in the cake for the first bite. By the time Junior was done with his part I highly doubt it was sanitary, but it was still really good. Junior is such a sweet little boy, and I'm so glad that I have been able to celebrate his past two birthdays with him.