Christmas?

Sometimes it just doesn't feel like Christmas. I live in a place where there are no Christmas lights, hardly any Christmas music and no worry about buying the new holiday gifts. Currently the weather has been warm and we just had a BBQ outside with all of the teachers. Other then the Christmas drama it feels as if Christmas still could be half a year away. I sometimes without thinking clearly, ask my kids what they hope to get for Christmas. Normally they kind of look at me almost confused and if they say anything they will say something like a pair of shoes or a pair of pants. Very rarely does anyone mention anything fun. I have had one of my students on occasion sleep over at my house on the weekends. He says its because he doesn't have electricity or anything at his house. He is 18 years old and I can hardly blame him for wanting to do something mildly fun at night and hang out with his friends. Sometimes I almost get this feeling of I am getting taken advantage of because they will stay here. Then I find myself looking at myself and telling myself how selfish can I be. My students may ask for something as some beans or cheese or fish because they are worried they have no food in the house. This is something I have never even been close to dealing with in my life. As I approach Christmas I begin to look at my life and see how much I have been given. It makes me thankful to God but at the same time it humbles me because even on my worst days I still have everything I need. Meanwhile many people right next to me or in my class maybe are lacking something as basic as food or a toothbrush. I have so much to be thankful for.

A 3rd World Teeth Cleaning

So after waiting about a year and a half I decided to go to the dentist. This for me is something that I absolutely hate doing. Now if I would decide to go to a dentist in the states it is going to cost me a lot of money. Then if I had any cavities then the cost just goes up like crazy. I make a Honduran salary so paying a United States dentist is a pretty difficult thing for me to do. So I did the reasonable thing and visited the dentist here in La Union. Not knowing exactly what I was getting myself into I decided it was worth a try. The dentist here charges me 150 Lempiras for a teeth cleaning. This is about 7 dollars. So I sat down in the chair trusting the dentist who is also a man from my church named Dr. Bonnie who actually speaks quite good English. In fact he is the only other person here besides the teachers who speaks good English. An hour later I was quite surprised he did a job equal or better then any dentist I have ever had before. As I thought about it in the states you never really have the dentist work on you unless something is really wrong. Normally you just have an assistant so having a dentist work on you the whole time should be much better. Now I do have cavities which is kind of a bad thing but at least I am no longer freaked out about visiting a 3rd world dentist. They actually do quite a good job. So if anyone wants a good cheap teeth cleaning I would recommend coming out here to La Union.

where are the people?

Every once and a while I read something that makes me kind of laugh and get angry at the same time. I am always happy to know when journalism is being used to its fullest extent. I just read an article from a Canadian Journalist called "where are the people?". This was one of the first things that came up when I searched Honduras news in Google. Now I realize there are biases on all sides of this article. This article basically talked about how no one really came to vote and there was close to 80% of people who didn't vote because they were angry with Zelaya being kicked out of office. Now my favorite statistic in the article was when he used the statistic that only 1.7 out of 8 million people actually voted in the election. Now this sounds like a great statistic showing that people didn't vote until you actually look into it. I could also throw out the statistic that 0% of our Abundant Life Christian School students voted in this election. This is a true statistic just like the other but it fails to say that anyone under the age of 18 can't vote, this rules out all of our students. This age group makes up a large portion of Honduras. It fails to also mention that many people who are Hondurans live in the United States and also many are in jails who cant vote. Also I am sure many people didn't register themselves. I know many people who didn't vote not because they were angry about Zelaya but because they were to lazy to do it. I realize there were some people who didn't vote because they were angry about Zelaya but before you start throwing out a fact like 80% of people abstained from the voting because they were angry about Zelaya. First you better check your statistics and try to be unbiased. I drove around Tegus a lot during Sundays elections and the days before and after and very rarely saw anyone protesting on the streets for Zelaya.