Year 3

So I am currently in year 3 of my life here in Honduras. Never did I really imagine that I would be here in Honduras this long. Things here don't even really bother me anymore. I am used to losing the electricity or water at any given time. I am used to things taking forever and just learning to relax and go with it. I often feel more out of place in the states then I do here in Honduras. Its kind of one of those really weird feelings I guess. So far this year things started out really crazy with two of our teachers leaving from Gracias due to their son passing away. However, thanks to the help of a lot of people we have been able to fill those positions. Tonight we have our parents orientation and on Monday we begin classes. Its pretty crazy how fast it all comes at you. I may try to post a bit more frequently then this quite a few month long gap. Blessings

Fumigation

Alright so there has been a confirmed case of Dengue here in La Union. Now it is not that serious but the problem is normally when you get one case more follow and it can turn out to be a large problem if it breaks out. So today the city I live in sent out people to fumigate our houses. So some man with a large leaf blower type machine came into our house and blew some crazy smoke all over. Smoke was coming out of our roof and every other hole that exists. They said it would take 40 minutes to clear out of the house however, they were quite wrong. We came back into our house 2 hours later and it looked very foggy and you could barely breathe when you entered. So we covered our faces and opened all the windows and set up a fan. Finally I am writing this post and things have cleared up. However, the smell still remains but at least I don't have to worry about mosquitoes tonight. Just another day in Paradise.

SAG

So this last week has been filled with 3 letters SAG. For those of you who are out of the loop that stands for Student Annual Gathering. This is 4 days of competition between the 6 different Abundant Life Schools. Now I am not going to lie I had been preparing for a long week of chasing students around not sleeping and eating cruddy food. What I witnessed in my opinion was a pretty well run event. Everyday we started with all of the schools gathering for devotions with Pastor Evelio. We would then proceed into a variety of sports and academic competitions against the other schools. We compete in all things from Soccer, Sudoku, Debate, Ping Pong, Volleyball, Cross Country and a variety of other events. It turned out to be an exciting week as we ended up winning 10 medals. As we are only up to 8th grade and all of the other schools are up to 12th Grade we felt we did quite a good job. We ended up even winning cross country. The food during this week was much better then other camp I had been to. We had things like Roast Beef, Tacos, Chicken, Hamburgers and a wide variety of food all that was cooked in a very tasty fashion. Even through this my students still complained about the food mostly because they just wanted tortillas, beans and rice. I guess La Union kids are just a different type of person haha. We then finished the event off by having a beautiful dinner at the Marriot Hotel with a meal of Chicken Cordon Blue. We even had street performers come in on stilts and large drums it was a pretty fantastic display. I must admit it was a fun time. Today I spent my day driving through the mountains of Honduras as we met with our coffee workers and eating bananas right off the tree. It is a crazy life.

Nicaragua

So it is Wednesday and it has been a few days since I got back from a wonderfully crazy Semana Santa. I ended up going to the country of Nicaragua. We started off in on the beaches of San Juan del Sur. We hit up the beaches and did some surfing and had a really great time. Next we got on some buses to the island of Ometepe another place that is in the middle of a large freshwater lake and the island consists of two large volcanoes. It is really crazy. So we hiked to the top of the volcano where a lake exists inside the crater. It was quite a fantastic day trip. From there we headed to Leon. This is one of the cultural centers of Nicaragua. We saw some amazing old churches and just some wonderful buildings. However, what we really went to do was Volcano Boarding. We hiked up this volcano with makeshift sleds, put on some brightly covered overalls and threw ourselves down the volcano. It was a great ride. I must say it was a good trip. We got back on the last bus on Sunday and prepared to work on Monday.

Currently 7th and 8th grade are preparing for SAG. They are playing all sorts of sports as well as cross stitching and making bracelets. They are keeping quite busy. Next week Wednesday all of the competitions begin and I am quite excited to be able to go along and be a part of it. We are into our last and final parcial of the school year so the year is really starting to wind down. Keep our school and students in your prayers as always.

The Joys

Today I woke up and as I was getting ready the smell of burning television set came into my room. Saying our electricity here in La Union is unpredictable is an understatement. Currently half of our city hasn't had power for the past 3 days. My part of the city has had power but its been flickering like crazy. It flickered to the point of setting my television on fire. After the television caught on fire we headed out to the coffee farm for a teachers party. We hung out went fishing and then ate the fist we caught. Tilapia are a great tasting fish. We also played a little bit of Ticket To Ride which is a great board game. Then I got back to La Union and now the power in my house doesn't even really flicker anymore it is just dead. So we are calling a repair man tomorrow. Then I went to our young peoples meeting where they decided to go and preach to other youth about Christ in the community. However, they set a time limit of like 15 minutes for our team. What we were supposed to accomplish in that small amount of time I am not sure but that is the life here. I currently am sitting here outside at the church because it has electricity. These are the days when I realize why I stay in Honduras. I just don't know if I could go back to predictable.

La Union Vs. Gracias

Alright so today was the first time La Union has ever played against Gracias. So the Abundant Life School in Gracias came out to play against our school in Soccer for both men and women. I must say the kids were incredibly excited to play against them. Especially after I read to them a text message from Mr. Lara that said Gracias was going to massacre our team. While the boys game was first and after Miguel put in a head ball it put La Union up 1 - 0. The second goal was scored by Alan from 5th Grade making the final score 2 - 0. I must say my kids were extremely excited. The next was the girls game and our team ended up winning by a final score of 6 - 2. So earlier in the week I had made a deal with my kids that if they beat Gracias they wouldn't have any homework for a little while. So I will be following through on that promise over the coming week. We also have a teachers party on Saturday and Mr. Perdomo's farm. It should be real good especially with some fresh fish. Oh I forgot to add after the soccer game we had a big party at my house with the students so I must say chaos reigned for a good hour before we kicked the students out. Next week more SAG preparations begin as we have eliminations for SAG in Tegus. We also have another soccer game currently planned against Gracias this time in Gracias on Tuesday. SAG sure keeps things interesting this time of the year.

Missionaries

There are currently missionaries in La Union and I must say I am not extremely impressed. I have heard there are around 40 of them here so you would think you would see them around a lot but that isn't exactly the case. Now I saw a few of them walking around yesterday so I made a point to go say hi. Well as I walked up to say hello they just sort of gave me this head nod and kept walking. So today I saw them outside of where they are sleeping and there was a guy by the gate so I said hello and chatted a bit. Well about a minute later the pastor came up and told me I was spreading false truths of the gospel. Thinking he was joking I played along with it. As he stood there stone faced I kind of gathered the picture that he wasn't joking with me. Well there was kind of an awkward moment then I said have a nice day and let them be. As we kept walking I ran into a few more missionaries we stopped and chatted. They said they have had 400 "salvations" since they have been here. Now either they are bringing a lot of people to Christ or every time they pull a tooth it counts as a salvation you can be the judge of that. They also talked down to us like they were here spreading the gospel and we weren't. Nonetheless we came out of our conversations feeling worse about ourselves then when we began. As we talked we figured the pastor probably thought we were Jehovas Witnesses since we had ties on and we coming back from school. Even so shouldn't you have some respect when you greet someone. After today I became a little bit disenchanted with missionaries or at least this group.

Bonfire

It has been a pretty laid back weekend thus far. Last night we enjoyed a nice bonfire with a bunch of friends sitting back cooking marshmallows, hot dogs and sausages. We then went out to the top of a hill and watched the stars for a while it was a pretty nice night overall. Today so far has consisted of sleeping in and catching up on the news.

For those of you who read this and were worried about my stove problems they have been resolved. Some electrical tape and someone who actually knew what they were doing made the situation go away.

As for a few quick updates I am currently planning on being back in the United States at the end of February to do some more recruiting I will be in the Iowa and Illinois area I think the most. We are doing some planning for our spring vacation trip currently me and a bunch of the La Union teachers are planning a trip to go to Nicaragua and Costa Rica. On the agenda hiking volcanoes, bungee jumping, and some islands. I don't have much to complain about I would say. I can't believe it is almost February already. Specially when it is a beautiful warm and sunny day here.

Burned out stove

Tonight started out like any other night. Till I started cooking myself dinner. I would say I was about half way through cooking my dinner when a mini fireworks display came out from underneath my stove. I am not genius but I figured out quite quickly this was a bad thing. After the fireworks were over I tried very cautiously to turn on my stove but nothing happened. After I looked behind my stove I realized that my wires were burned through. This is probably a bad sign. So I currently have a half cooked dinner that isn't really edible sitting on my counter. I am not real sure what I should do I am pretty hungry but cooking food currently isn't possible. I am kind of in one of those moods that all I have left to do is blog about my problem because everything else is already closed up here. So yeah... life could be worse but I am just not thrilled with my current situation. Its amazing how important two little burners are to my survival. Well I guess that is all.

Its Cold

Alright so its Honduras and I am currently wearing under armor, a t shirt, my button up shirt and a winter jacket. This is so not supposed to be Honduras. To top it off I tried to put some oil in a pan to cook but it wouldn't come out because it is hard and to cold. So much for the warm tropics. We started playing some table tennis so we are going to have a pretty great team for SAG as well so I am looking forward to the competition. The kids have really gotten into it. I just checked the weather and it says we are at a strong 50 degrees. Now if only there was heat for the house.

Well this is the New Year

It is officially 2010 and I am back in La Union. As I left Michigan I was bragging to my parents how I was going to be sitting in my hammock with the sun shining on me. This isn't exactly the case. The weather is quite chilly right now and it is has been this constant drizzle here. So the sun isn't shining and I am not in my hammock however, life here is good. As I began to try to get into the swing of things we started reviewing in my classes because I felt like my kids forgot everything. What is exciting though is we began to prepare for SAG. For those of you who don't know this is a yearly event when our kids go to Tegucigalpa and compete in everything from Soccer and Basketball to Sudoku and Rubix Cube. Its a great event and our kids look forward to it a lot. This year I am working on ping pong as well as debate and volleyball with my kids. They are quite excited. If any of you girls read my blog from Gracias just to let you know I tell my kids all that matters is that we beat Gracias haha. Last night I had some friends over and we made empanadas and hung out and talked. It was really quite a pleasant night. Tonight we have a concert with people from all over this community so it should be an entertaining night. I am also working on preparing my United States recruiting trip so if you are interested or know of anyone who is interested in working for our schools please get in contact with me or have them get in contact with me it is really a great opportunity to serve. Feliz Ano Nuevo y Dios Bendiga