Close Encounter

Hola a todos! I hope you are all doing well! I hear the weather has lightened up a bit so I hope you are having a chance to enjoy it!!

Here is a picture of the nice little surprise I had the other morning. As I was closing the door to my room something brushed my hand and then fell onto the floor. I thought it must have been part of my bag that was hanging on the door but when I looked down I saw two claws and a tail…SCORPION!!!! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! Think fast…I heard they are pretty hard to kill so I picked up a rock that was in my room *I always wondered why I had such a large rock in my room…but now I know why!* and I took it and crushed it! Threw it into a garbage bag and brought it out to the trash.

Uhhhh! As we say when we start seeing new things…because no one has been here for the full year “oh it must be the season” Well I hope the Scorpion season does not last too long!

Last week I had the opportunity to go to the beach for a few days. Me and my friend Patricia packed a few snacks and headed out and spent Wed through Friday at a beach called Tela that sits on the northern coast of Honduras on the Caribbean. We had such a wonderful time…the “hotel” I stayed in was $6/night…for a reason…yuck! But the scenery was beautiful and we spent all day on Thursday at a private beach…we paid $5.00 each to get beach passes and rented two chairs and a beach umbrella for $3.00! And stayed there for 8 hours! So nice just looking at the water and seeing the waves! We left Friday morning and ended our trip with a nice cup of coffee at a hotel that was built up into the hillside overlooking the ocean

The big news for this week was that I was designated to be the assistant teacher for la Classe de Computodora. I had my first class on Monday. Yeah sounds great! I think I am the most computer illiterate person on the planet that added with the fact that the head teacher was helping with a group of volunteers at an offsite project so I had three classes that were 50 minutes each that I had to teach all by myself. Oh yeah…did I mention my Spanish isn’t very good. Haha! It was definitely a sight to be seen...I felt like I was in the movie Old School where ??? get’s the question at the debate and all of a sudden he blacks out and is able to answer the question perfectly and then when he is done he comes to and is like “what just happened”! The kids seemed to follow along pretty well and we played a few games and sang a computer song that I made up…I was pretty desperate but the song ended up being pretty catchy!

Because Todd is the project leader I am thinking that there are going to be many more classes where I will be flying solo…but I think this will really help me dive into the language and start learning at a faster rate! I will have 6 hours of class a week plus PE for 3 hours on Friday…trim and bilingual…not bad! Haha!

That is all for now! I can’t believe I have been here for a month and time just seems to be flying…I hope all is well and will be thinking about all of you!

Take care!!

Joana

New School Year

Hola Muchachos! Well the Honduran school year is about to start up again and I was up at the school with Todd another long term volunteer and we are going to be teaching a computer class for grades 1^st through 6^th . More like I will be his assistant because I am not the most computer savvy even when it comes to the easiest of things!

When we got up the hill to the school all of the girls were out dusting and cleaning out the rooms…I felt like I was set back in time out on the Prairie where all the towns’ kids gather and lend a helping hand to get things moving. Imagine about 40 kids *age 5-13* moving desks and old time sewing machines picking up brooms and sweeping and moping the rooms out. Todd and I were marveling at how well they worked together and how they did not even need much direction…Maybe because it is the only thing that has happened in a while there…so they wanted to be part of the action. I don’t know…but it was truly amazing. Todd and I helped clean out one room that had about 30 table top sewing machines and a huge lawn mower that had a busted tire. About 5 little girls and Todd pushed from one end while 8 girls and I pulled from the other…there were so many hands on the machine it was hard to find space to hold on to…but after a long struggle we got the lawn mower out of there…wish I had pictures of this it was so funny! Then after we got that out there came a line of girls pushing the sewing machines one after the other…they snaked them through like a train and within 15 minutes the room was clean and good to be used as the new 5^th grade!

Later that day I went back up and played with the kids…I have a few great pictures of them playing this game with these tires…they would roll the tire up to the top of the hill and then a line of kids would gather going down the hill and one of the kids would roll the tire down and they would all jump up over the tire as it was rolling down…doesn’t sound like too much fun but you should have seen the kids they were sooo funny laughing and screaming as it came rolling down the hill! Pretty Fun!

Last night something pretty amazing happened. We had a family show up out of no where. A mother and 4 kids *ages 9,8,3, and 1* The younger boy who was 3 had no pants or underwear and no shoes. The entire family was so dirty and from the looks of it probably had not had a shower in a few weeks. They were only carrying one small bag with them…who knows where they came from and how long it took them to get here…by bus or more likely by foot. The past few nights have been really cold and you could tell they were freezing. The young boy was crying. We had an empty house open in the moms project so we opened that up for them and brought them a few clothes from donated goods that had been brought down by a volunteer group along with a bar of soap and some shampoo and tooth brushes. Every Saturday night the Moms make bread so they fed the family with the bread they had made along with leftovers from their dinner.

There is one woman here who is the director and she okays whether or not a family can stay and the other Moms were worried that she would not let them because they were so dirty. Yojaira *one of the Moms* even told one of the volunteers that they were going to try and wash them before the director came to see them so they looked a bit cleaner. Fortunately the director said they could stay but I went up to see them last night and bring them the clothes and all 5 of them were huddled under one blanket…looking so happy to have a place to lay their head. I just hope that they stay long enough that we can really help them get on their feet and maybe put the kids into school here. Pretty crazy to think that I look at some of the moms that are currently in the Moms project and think that their lives must be really hard and then to see the shock on their faces at how dirty and how little the new family had was a true eye opener.

I hate to leave on a sad note…but hopefully things will turn around for this woman and I know we will help her in anyway possible!

I wish you all the best this week!

Adios amigos!

Joan

My New Friends

Hello Everyone

Say hello to some of my new friends- Coni is on the right and Carolina below her and i am forgetting the girls name in front of me but will get that later this week!

Well I have been here for a total of 13 days and to date I have spent about $35.00 which is actually a bit high…I could have probably gotten away with spending about 20 if I didn’t have such a sweet tooth. It is crazy to think that I am living at little to no cost!

Last Sunday I went to the Cathedral in Comayagua…absolutely beautiful…a real pretty light yellow color with carved embellishing on the outside and then on the inside it was nice and airy and they had beautiful silver lanterns hanging from the ceiling all the way down the aisle.

As I was sitting in my pew I saw this beautiful old lady coming back from the communion line and she looked so put together and looked like she belonged back in the old days of spain...with a black veil that covered her silver hair and a cream wrap covering her shoulders and nice floral dress underneath. But as she turned the corner I realized that she was not wearing any shoes and then looking even closer the cream wrap that she had on was actually an old towel. And yet she looked so beautiful to me. She looked so well put together and used what was available to her. Totally unbelievable!

This week I signed up to hold a Library class for the kids a few times a week and will also be helping out with PE. Which should be fun…I am sure we will be playing a ton of futbol! I find that the days where I feel 100% and full of life are the days I hang out with the kids. Because our housing is a bit separated it is easy to fall into the funk of not seeing them everyday and the language barrier can be kind of intimidating at times. So I guess my biggest struggle right now is to force myself to make time everyday to go and hang out with the kids. And you can tell it brightens up their day as well. I have been teaching the girls some dance moves…thinking of maybe doing a dance class! They love the chicken dance...i will have to get a video!

Right now there big thing is they have this really long piece of heavy duty black plastic / something I am sure they found out of the trash pile/ and they loop it around a tree limb and make a swing out of it! It looks like so much fun and i would love to join in but i have to remind myself that if I were to hop on the swing that I would definitely break the plastic if not the tree limb and the plastic…and that would ruin all of their fun!!!! But it looks so fun and free…maybe I will have to make my own swing!

Daniel, one of the kids who lives in the Margarita Cook which is a cluster of about 13 houses where single mothers and their children live, tried to get me to climb up to the top of the tree where the swing was tied around one of the branches…he kept saying ¨venga, venga!¨Come on come on...climb the tree with me. And just like a monkey he was about 30 feet in the air in no time. I said “no puedo, no puedo” I can’t…but you know what…I think I might climb that tree later this week. If I can’t get on the swing I can at least climb the tree. My big “to do” list! Haha!

Other than that not too much is going on…the weather continues to be absolutely beautiful…blue skies and nice sunny days! But I hear we only have a few more weeks of this until it is brutally hot…not really looking forward to that. But I have found a nice place on the top of the hill where the girl’s school is that gets a nice breeze so I am sure that is where I will be heading most days in the next few weeks.

In Mid February we are due to get 3 volunteer groups at once and then they will keep coming from then through the end of march...so I am enjoying a bit of down time before we get really busy!

I will send a separate email with pictures from ophoto!

Hope you are having a nice weekend!!! I am thinking of all of you!!

Adios Amigos!

Joan