Free furniture and feedback

A nice picture Melanie took up in the park. The pictures this week are kind of random as they are leftovers from before, just think of them as B sides.


Thanks for the comments on the blog, we really enjoy reading them but haven’t figured out yet how to respond to them.
We were supposed to spend this coming weekend at the farm of the pastor of our organization but since the road is impassable we’re heading to Tegucigalpa, the capitol, for a Thanksgiving dinner (there will be turkey!!!) with lots of people from the organization. Although the farm would have been really nice and relaxing, it will be nice to go to the big city. We really haven’t been to a city since we’ve been here, so all of the noise and pollution will be quite exotic to us. Supposedly there are really big grocery stores, we can go to the movies, and check out some museums as well. We’re really going to miss having Thanksgiving (or two or three of them) with everyone, but it is really nice of the people high up in the organization to include us and do this for us.
So Thursday morning we’re going to take a moto-taxi from our house at 5:30 and then cram 14 people into a minivan for the five hour trip. We’ll let you know how it goes.
Last weekend we didn’t really do too much; we had our town day and then on Sunday we did our laundry and went for a bushwacking hike up to a knob that sticks out of the mountain above our house. We had to take off our shoes a couple of times to ford the river but after some steep climbing and some keen navigation we were perched on top of the ledge with, if not for the fog, what would have been a beautiful view of the valley below us. We still got a really good view of our “neighborhood.” It looked so lush from up there and we could see everything with acute detail, even Melanie’s pants drying in the wind.


Not really a great photograph but if you look closely you can see lots of birds nests that look like slings. The birds make these hanging baskets out of all sorts of things and you see them hanging from powerlines and lots of trees.

We also went to town last Wednesday to catch the soccer game between Honduras and Mexico. It was a huge game, as the winner got to go to the World Cup and its a big rivalry to begin with. We watched on the big screen at the posh hotel in town with some of the other teachers and a lot of Hondurans, all wearing jerseys and flags. Everyone was cheering and cussing in unison and a huge cheer went up in the 60th minute when Mexico scored an own goal. The whole place went crazy and fireworks were going off all around town. We left before the end of the game for our five mile walk up the mountain in the dark but we were able to watch the game all the way out of town because every house had it on. When the game ended and Honduras had won, everyone poured out of their houses and into the backs of pickups or motorcycles. Whenever Honduras wins this happens; everyone in town hops into the "parade" that circled the highway around town. Pickups would be loaded down with 30-35 people in the back with everyone screaming and motorcylces weaving in and out everywhere and people trying to hop into the back of the already full pickups. It was quite a celebration and got us energized for our hike.
This past week was a pretty normal week at school but on Saturday we had our first parents’ day. We weren’t really that nervous after all of our parents’ days at Landmark but there is still a certain excitement about meeting the parents. Melanie didn’t have a translator so she got a chance to practice her Spanish, but I was in need of one so that I could say more than “Good,” “Not good,” and “Its cold outside.”
My conferences went really smoothly. Everyone was really supportive and pleased with how things were going for their children, or with the prospect of their kid getting some extra help. We’ve been pushing the office to work out the logistics for having students stay after school for some tutoring and it seems like it might happen soon after getting the parents to start persuading them as well. There was pretty much the same range of parents as there is in the States, ranging from “Hi” “Thanks” “Bye” to questioning specific questions on homework problems their kid did. The most mentionable moment from my conferences was when a parent told me that her daughter wasn’t allowed to sing in the Fiesta Tipica because they said that her voice was too low. It was really sad, the student has so much energy and to be rejected for trying to sing in 4th grade seems wrong. The chorus that performed at the Fiesta Tipica sure didn’t sound that great, and what does it matter in 4th grade anyway if a kid isn’t going to be in the Met? Melanie had a couple of funny moments. One parent came in and listed the ten or twelve kids that had stolen pencils from her kid and another wondered why she was allowing the other students to tell her daughter that she looks like an old lady with her hat on (which she does).
Here is a picture of a couple of my kids at the river. It reminds me a lot of Tom Sawyer, you can see the pure adventure and curiosity in their body language.



We finished conferences a little after noon and then caught a ride down to town to do our shopping and such. We got all the stuff we needed for the short week and then relaxed for a little bit at Guancascos before we made the trek up the mountain.
It’s crazy the connections you make down here. A couple of weeks ago we met someone who taught at the school a couple of years ago who went to college with people we knew at Landmark. This weekend when were at Guancascos, we met some people from North Carolina and one of them actually works in the department at UNC, one of the schools where Melanie is applying for grad school. I don’t think the world is small by any means but it is really amazing how everyone’s lives intertwine.
The other big happening of the weekend was a new furniture acquisition. There is a serious lack of comfortable seating in our house and I’ve been trying to think of a remedy for a while. I wanted to make a couch but couldn’t really think of what materials to use. Finally, after looking around our house and some recycled furniture websites, I realized I could use the door that was serving as a support for our “closet” in our spare room. I pirated some wood some other projects and some logs from the champas (huts) of the Fiesta Tipica to fashion a verrrry rustic couch/sofa. With a little help and the tools of a student who is our neighbor, we put together something that might be made by some shipwrecked carpenters.



We’re going to pick up a mattress this weekend to throw on it and we’ll post a picture next time of a more polished version.
Thanks again for reading and we can’t wait to make our trip back to the States in a few weeks. It is just so nice to think of seeing people that we love and miss and get fattened up a little bit to fit into my clothes.