We get by with a little help (from family and strangers)

A big cloud trying to make it over the mountain


So, someone (aka me) should have written a blog entry about a month ago. There is a lot to catch up on. While its been winter in North, we’ve had some great weather here the last six weeks. January and especially February are supposed to be hot dry months but most of the days have been in the 70’s with a little shower every once in a while. Wherever we end up next year it will be hard getting used to the idea of experiencing winter again.

The last weeks of January were a little tough. We found out that the other three teachers from the United States at our school were going to be leaving. One of the teachers had to leave because her mother is sick and the other two teachers decided to leave because they didn’t like living and working here. They were all our friends, and it was really sad seeing them leave. It was an emotionally draining time, just thinking about them all leaving and wondering how many more classes we would have to be covering. It is a hard job and not always the easiest lifestyle, but is hard for us to imagine leaving the kids and the community. It was a stressful time but once the teachers left it turned out it wasn’t as bad as we thought. Although our schedules have changed we really haven’t had to take on too many more classes, since I think the school is scared that we will leave.

The first weekend of February we had a nice visit with a friend of ours from college. Amy and her cousin were spending a couple of weeks traveling through Central America and they were nice enough to make a detour and come visit us. We hadn’t seen Amy in 5 years and it was great catching up with her and hearing about her experience in the JET program, in Mongolia and all the other cool places she’s been. It was so unexpected to have this person we haven’t seen in five years show up at the bus station in Gracias, but it was a really nice break in routine for us.

In other news, I’ve started playing on the neighborhood soccer team. Luckily, I’m far from the best player and definitely not the worst, so it’s a good opportunity to get a little more exercise. We play a couple times a week on the field at school and then every once in a while, probably once a month, we have a real game against a team from another community. I thought that the soccer style would be a lot different here. The last time I really played competitive soccer was in high school, and even then the main strategy (not of the better teams) was to kick the ball as hard as possible down the field. When we’re just playing around here they guys show a lot of foot skills and touch but as soon as we got into the game it was the same old boot it as far as you can strategy. Here is a picture of one of the fields we play on taken by Dad. I don’t know if you can tell too well from the picture, but it is a steep grade with lots of rocks, more often a description for a road than a soccer pitch.


At school we’ve started having afterschool help classes twice a week. Melanie I and have been pushing for it for a long time (as well as a lot of parents) and while it is a good chance to give some students some extra attention it can be pretty exhausting. The kids seem to have more energy after 3:00 but I’m exhausted. It's also hard because while it is a smaller group than our class, it is still kids and I try to balance one on one time with group activities. The kids and the parents both see it as a desirable thing to have help class, so at least they aren’t griping about having to stay after. Both of us are really beginning to be able to notice progress in our classes too, so hopefully we can keep that ball rolling.

The biggest thing that has happened since the last blog entry was having my parents visit for a week. They flew from Raleigh to San Pedro, rented a car and drove the four hours to Gracias. They don’t speak any Spanish and they did a great job navigating the roads and potholes to get out here to the mountains, even with the clutch of the rental forcing them to drive in 4th gear for the last part of the trip. Dad did a quick fix on the car once they got to Gracias and we drove up to Guancascos where we had a nice dinner looking out over the town. After dinner we began our drive up the mountain to our house and quickly realized that the car was pretty unsuited for the road, scraping on rocks the entire way up. We finally made it up, gave them the thirty second house tour, and turned in for the night. The next day we headed to school and let them have a day to relax and explore around our house. They ended up doing quite a hefty hike up the mountain, getting to see the river and a little bit of wildlife. We just relaxed Thursday night and then Friday my Mom and Dad came to school with us. For our morning devotional Dad taught the kids a song and sign language to go with it and then Mom told a story I remember hearing a lot growing up about doing your chores. It was so nice having them at school, both so they could see it and to have the extra help. It was amazing how much more you can get done when there are three teachers in the room. They also were very helpful harvesting the radishes from the 4th grade garden. The students were foaming at the mouth to pull them out of the ground and having three people made things a lot calmer.
Mom keeping the washing of the radishes under control:


Juli with the biggest radish:


Dad overseeing the picking operation:



A happy gang

We’ve harvested about 150 radishes from the garden and the first day we picked them with my parents we made a radish salad that the kids are still talking about.
Here is Dani working on the salad:


And David and Claudia adding some finishing touches:


Friday after school I played a little soccer and then we headed down the mountain with our neighbor Mark to go to the hot springs. The hot springs here are nice, really big and deep with a couple different pools, but there are a couple of things that make the environment very Honduran. One of these is the music; you sit in the pools trying to relax and there is this thumping loud music playing, the equivalent of the music they used to play at roller skating rinks. The other nice touch that adds to the atmosphere are the armed guards. While it is a little strange having a couple of guys walking around with sawed off shotguns it does make me feel a little better about not having people rifle through our belongings. We had a nice soak in the hot springs and got into the car to head back up the mountain. By this time, it was about 10:30 and we were all looking forward to bed. We made it about a kilometer down the dirt road and then the tire went flat. After already having a little trouble making it down the mountain this just added to the annoyance and the stress level of everyone but we thought it would be a quick fix. We got the spare on, started off again and in about 100 yards it was flat. As you can guess, by this time we were all a little beyond the state of being annoyed with the car. I thought I would just call a friend in Gracias and see if they could come pick us up so we might get the tire fixed, but when I tried calling the phone went dead. So with this perfect storm of events we all realized we were going to be in for a long night. Mark and I walked back to the hot springs to see if we could find anyone who would give us a ride. Luckily there were still some people there that Mark had been talking to earlier and they agreed to give all five of us a ride. We got back to the car where everyone else was waiting and decided what to do, as it was now getting close to 11:30. The people who were giving us a ride were sooooo helpful; they offered to let us use their spare tire to get our car back to town. Then it turned out that the originial spare for our car was stuck, and it took a good fifteen minutes of hitting it with a basketball sized rock to get it off. Finally, we got the new spare on and drove back to Gracias with our new friends following us to help us look for a tire place that might be open at 11:30. We found one tire place on the highway but when we went over to try and rouse the owners there were five of the meanest dogs I’ve ever seen, ready to take a nice bite out of us. We gave up on getting the tire fixed that night and offered to bring their spare back to them a couple days later when we were passing through their town. It turns out the guy who’s spare it was happened to be driving to Mexico the next day so we had to give him back the spare that night. We decided to drive the car to Guancascos where it would be safe, leave it there for the night and then get it fixed the next morning. This still left the problem of getting home, and since we didn’t really have many options we all started the march up the mountain to our house a little after midnight. It was a long dark walk, but my parents did an amazing job and were really good about all the adventures we had that night. The two things that will stick in my mind from that night are the crappiness of the car and how amazingly kind and helpful the strangers were at midnight when they still had to drive an hour to get home.

We were supposed to spend most of the next day making tamales with our neighbors but after the late night we nixed that and slept a good while and then walked back down to Gracias. It was a nice walk down, introducing Mom and Dad to all the acquaintances we’ve made doing this walk every week. We made it to town and Melanie and I took the tire in a mototaxi to one of the tire places in town. The good thing about places like that is that even in a foreign country there is really only one reason you would show up at tire place with a tire in hand. It made our job easy. We just sat their while they fixed the tire. It cost $1.50 to patch the tire and we did have to buy another tire for the spare rim but that was $25 well spent for a little peace of mind.


A picture of the house and the car, the Chevy Headache

After getting the tire fixed I showed Mom and Dad around town, the market, square, church, and of course the popsicle lady. We got a little lunch and then headed across the countryside to La Campa, our favorite nearby town. It's usually utterly tranquil and serene, but this weekend was the town festival, one of the biggest in the region. The ride over there was still really pretty, but there was tons of traffic and we got stuck behind a truck full of metal poles that weren’t secured to the truck at all so we had to stay pretty far back for security purposes. The festival was a lot like fairs and festivals in other countries with a bigger concentration of used clothes and hair gel products. We wandered around looking at and sampling some of the food, buying a little pottery and unfortunately finding a foosball tent where Melanie beat me, an event I won’t be allowed to forget for a long time. Here is some unfortunate proof:


A portable version of the wood cookstoves (fogon) everyone has in their house here:


Sunday morning we packed up a little to get ready to head to Copan and then went to our neighbors house to make pupusas, kind of a stuffed fat tortilla.


Mom and Melanie getting the cheese ready for the pupusas


Pupusa sounds like baby indian but man do they taste good.

It was supposed to be a women only thing but dad and I peeked our heads in the kitchen and got permission to give it a go. While the women finished up, I brought down the banjo that Dad brought down and let our neighbor, the church piano player have a go at it. He was playing tunes in 2 minutes. There probably aren’t too many banjo players in Honduras and he might already have the title as best in the country over me. After the good lunch of pupusas we hit the road for Copan about 3 hours away. It was a pretty easy drive and we made to the cobblestone town and to the hostel Iguana Azul where we had stayed before. We walked all around getting some pizza, people watching, and just sitting on the patio at the hostel talking, a really nice evening. The next morning we grabbed some breakfast and walked over to the ruins where we had a nice walk around looking at the pyramids and sculptures from 1500 years ago.
Mom and dad in front of some ancient dressing rooms:


Here is Dad checking out the pyramids from above:


The ruins are really interesting and its also a kind of spellbindingly beautiful place that you just want to walk around slowly and take it in with giant trees and cool moss covered stones everywhere. We got some lunch before we headed back towards Gracias and made it as far as Santa Rosa before the car had another flat tire. Melanie and I were in the big grocery store there stocking up while Dad walked over to a tire place and got them to fill it up. It didn’t fix it, though, and as soon as he put it on it started going flat again so we had to drive over as quick as we could. The rim was bent on the tire making it so there was never a good seal and they couldn’t really fix it, so after an hour and a half we put the spare on and drove back. The drive back to Gracias was fine except for the fact that the headlights of the car and everyone we passed flashed us because they thought we had our brights on. Mom and Dad just relaxed the next day to recover from a little stomach bug we all had caught. They did a really good job with their Spanish and went up in the park to a little restaurant there to buy some coffee. When we got home from school, we walked over to the natural hot springs near our house and had a soak. It was a little weird because when we got there, there was already someone in the pool and I didn’t really know the correct etiquette so we just waited for him to get out. After soaking we walked back in the dark which was pretty tough. We made it back to house, had some soothing potato soup and helped load Mom and Dad up with stuff to take back with them. We called it a night and woke up early to say goodbye. It was so nice having them here, to help us out, to talk to, to show them around our world here. It's been really hard being so far away from our families and friends this year and having them here made it not seem so far away at all. We're having a great time but we can't wait to see everybody this summer or even sooner if you happen to be heading down this way.

So many homes

Not a bad place to come back to...every sunset and sunrise (yes, I am awake for all of those as well) is beautiful.




Christmas break seems like a long time ago, but since that’s where our last entry left off, I’ll travel back in time for a minute. Stepping off the plane in one degree Chicago weather was a little rough after being on a tropical island the day before, but my mom and sisters brought some old winter coats to meet us at the airport, and from there, we just got used to the climate change. It was so great to be home and see everyone in so many places. We spent the first 3 days in Wheaton with my family, did 3 Christmases there—one on Christmas Eve, Christmas morning, and Christmas night in Wisconsin.

Here's Christmas Eve...my sisters, Caitlin and Rachel, and my cousins, Chelsea and Olivia:




...and Mimi and Aaron:



...and my parents:



In Wisconsin, we got to enjoy the snow a little more, and even cleared off an ice rink on the lake to play a little hockey. We just spent a couple of days, and then we headed back to Wheaton. A note on Hela, our cat: she is enjoying her year-long vacation with her dog cousins, and has learned to play with the border collie. They wrestle around and chase each other, and when they are tired, the dog lies on her back and the cat sits on the dog’s face. Very weird. Hela has also gotten pretty fat because she eats dog food all day. She doesn’t look like she’s been missing us too badly.

Here's the little fatty on Christmas:




Everywhere we went, the food tasted amazing, but going from mostly fruits and veggies to American-style holiday food was a rude awakening for our digestive systems. I don’t think either of us felt hungry the whole time we were back home, but we still pigged out as per tradition and felt happy and comfortable and loved the whole two weeks we spent visiting.

Here's one of the richer indulgences of 2009: Oreo Cheesecake! (With my mom and brother, Brad):



I thought we might experience a little more reverse culture shock, but once we were back, everything just seemed normal, like we had never left. When we got back to Honduras, again, it just seemed as if we had never left. It was a relief to be back here and not have to get used to things all over again like we did in August when we first arrived.

After Wheaton and Wisconsin, we met Aaron’s brother and sister-in-law (well, basically), and drove down to Virginia to spend a few days with Aaron’s family. It was a Christmas miracle that all of our stuff fit in the tiny Yaris along with four of us and a dog, but it all worked out. It was still nothing compared to some of the bus experiences we’ve had! There was a serious lack of bags of crops and grains, and there were no kids sitting on top of the seats hanging out the windows.

Virginia was a little warmer than up North, so we got a little walking and biking in…biking on a paved road was amazing. It was really nice to spend time with all of Aaron’s family at once, because they are so spread out that it doesn’t happen often. We had a little photo shoot out back on the mountain...

Here are Daniel (Aaron's brother) and Meghan (his fiancee), with their rarely-sitting-still-much-less-yawning-of-boredom dog:



And here are Jeremy (Aaron's brother), Meghna (his wife), and Alaina (our niece):




All four brothers:




And everybody:



Our Christmas tour had one more stop: Beverly, MA. We stayed there 3 days, did some much-enjoyed grocery shopping, saw lots of friends, and re-visited our favorite restaurants. It was hard to leave and fly back here at the end of the trip, but I think the part we were most dreading was just the long travel adventure we had before getting back to our house. We’re going to be so happy to be back with friends and family next year, though…our trip was way too short!

We left Boston at 4 pm, stopped in Ft. Lauderdale, took a 9 something flight to San Pedro Sula in Honduras, arrived at 1 am, and waited in the airport for several hours waiting for morning to come. Luckily, there was a little area to sit down in next to a closed Wendy’s booth (we were afraid that the whole place would shut down and we’d have to figure out somewhere to spend a few hours). Our bus didn’t leave until 6, so we killed some time just talking to another foreign teacher coming back to Honduras from the States, and then Aaron tried to use an ATM. There were two machines right next to each other, and they looked about the same. Aaron typed in the amount he wanted to withdraw (about $100), and the machine just shut down. He checked the balance of our account using the other ATM, and it turns out that the first machine had subtracted the amount from our account without giving us any cash! He asked a policeman about it, and the guy just laughed at him and said something along the lines of, “oh, you used THAT machine?! Everyone knows that machine doesn’t work!” So…not so helpful. After we found a ride to the bus station, took our two buses back to Gracias, and did some grocery shopping, we stopped off at the bank for a little chat about our ATM situation. This turned out to just be the first of three visits in order to get our lost money back, but eventually, it worked out. At one point, though, our account got down to about $15. Close call!

When we finally got up the mountain and home again, we got to unpack and relax for a day before school started. Our house was fine over break, and besides a missing rusted wheelbarrow and a sweater eaten by some animal, all was well when we got back. It didn’t take long to get used to wearing t-shirts again, and spending most of our time outside. No seasonal affect disorder here…there have been a couple of other cold fronts, but the rainy season is now over, and it’s just going to keep warming up from here on out. It’s really good that we live up on the mountain now, because it gets really hot and dusty in town without rain, and up here it gets hot during the day, but always cools down at night. One night during the cold front last week, we seriously considered moving the stove into our bedroom and baking bread to heat things up before we went to sleep, but in the end, it wasn’t worth the risk of something in the oven coming loose during the move. It’s easy to pick out the tourists during the cold weather, though…they are usually wearing shorts and a t-shirt, while everyone who lives here is wearing sweaters and hats. We did meet one really interesting couple from Quebec last weekend. They looked to be in their late 50s or so, and they had driven all the way down from Quebec! They had their yellow lab with them, and they were just road tripping for a couple of months before ending up in El Salvador to visit their son, who is doing some volunteer work/surfing down there for a year. They have an ecotourism business in Mexico and they do a lot of kayaking there, so who knows, we might meet them again sometime.

Our neighbors did a lot of work on their comedor (little restaurant in their house) while we were gone, and they stopped us and invited us in for some coffee and sweetbread one afternoon. We’re slowly getting to know them better—one of their kids is in my class, and she’s been walking to school with us every day. All the kids like coming up to our house to giggle and chat and play little games like “who can balance a stick on their head and walk across the road fastest” or “where is Abby’s stomach/nose/eyes/ears?” I don’t always rush out eagerly when I hear that “Oh Mrs. Seeeeeebens/Mrs. Melaaaaaaanie” coming through the gate outside, but they’re really sweet kids, and it’s fun to play with them…kids are so easy to please and so carefree. A couple of weekends ago, and probably tonight as well, we went to the neighborhood church. There are only about 10 or 15 people that go there, and it’s just a little one-room cinder-block building. It’s decorated inside with a sheet and letters cut out and glued on it, and there are a few simple benches and a table up front. One guy plays the keyboard, and they sing a lot of pretty long praise songs where everyone just sings and claps. While they sing and during the sermons/readings, which are also done by family members, the little kids just kinda run around and play with the odd broom or cup lying around, leave their bottles or toys on the table holding the keyboard up front, and just find ways to entertain themselves without anyone trying to make them sit down. We couldn’t understand all of the preaching, but from what I gathered, the message wasn’t fire and brimstone, but just more about acting out faith every day and not just at church. The atmosphere was so laid-back and simple, and my favorite moment was when the power went out for a minute or so during one of the songs. The keyboard didn’t work, but everyone just kept singing in the dark, and then eventually it and the lights came back on before the song was over. We’re probably going again today, not necessarily because we get a lot out of it in a religious sense, but just because it’s a good way to spend time with our neighbors and be able to share some experience with them. I wish we could go with them to pick coffee sometime or help them work in the field every once in a while, but we’re pretty booked every weekday with school.

We have a new neighbor now as well—another Gringo from the U.S. He’s just graduated from a Master’s program in Spanish, and he’s here staying at his friend’s house for a few months just to practice Spanish and figure out what he wants to do next. He doesn’t have electricity, screens on the windows, or any of the luxuries we have (like internet and a hot shower), so he’s roughing it a lot more than we are. He has more time to get to know the other neighbors, and he goes to town more often than we do. Mostly, though, I think he just reads a LOT of books. He’s had some helpful tips on our garden, though, so we’ve given that another shot. This time, the weather should be better, and we added a lot of manure from the road to the soil, so that should help fertilize. If all goes well, we should see some sprouts in a few days.

It was nice to see our kids at school again after break. Things in my class have been going really well, but I’m attributing at least part of that to the absence of my most high-maintenance student whose family is taking a vacation in Guatemala right now. He’s a nice kid, but he drains so much of my energy all day long, and it’s been nice to be able to put that energy into my other students and successfully carry out more creative lessons. The second quarter ends next week, so then we’ll officially be halfway through the year. The school just started 2 new classes, a younger one and an older one, for almost 40 new students. I’m not sure what that puts our total enrollment up to, but it’s a significant chunk of new kids. They are just learning English this Spring, and the plan is to have them integrated into the regular classes next fall. This means that there is no space for storage, library, or planning anymore, though. We just sit outside on the ground somewhere during free periods, and the teachers that have lots of free time (the music and art teachers) just kind of walk around and try to look somewhat busy by talking to the administrators or the cleaning ladies or texting on their phones. The new kids don’t have their uniforms yet, though, and one day last week I saw a girl wearing a white tank top over a t-shirt. The tank top said: “Buy me a shot…I’m tying the knot” in iron-on letters. I’m pretty sure she got that secondhand somewhere, and I’m also pretty sure that neither she nor any of the administrators knew what that meant.

At school, the administration has started doing teacher evaluations. This consists of pulling out two “random” students from class, checking their notebooks, and looking through their work-text books to see how much has been completed. Then, if you are a woman, they meet with you to tell you to use the books more or that you are doing a good job, or if you are a man, they just avoid confronting you and say nothing. Not the most effective evaluation, in my opinion, but I guess it’s just another one of those things that comes down to cultural differences in the workplace.

Aaron’s kids have been working on a garden in back of the school lately. They are really excited about it, and are getting pretty competitive about which garden bed will be best. Aaron asked them to bring in old clothes to work in, and some of them are pretty funny, too…for example, one girl just brought a pink dress to wear over her clothes. It’s funny to look out back of the school and see a bunch of kids doing manual labor, but they love it and it’s a great chance to get out of the classroom.

Here's Leonela in her pink work dress:



Jenny in the orange shirt and all the kids doing their manual labor/wandering:



David and Marquito hard at it:




My class took another river trip last week to catch tadpoles as part of our amphibians and reptiles unit. Again, there were some noteworthy outfits on display, like the girl who wore a ballerina leotard as a swimsuit, or the boy who just wore his boxers.

Jasson and Fausto, two of my favorites:




Kimberly catching tadpoles in her ballet outfit:




Maria Jose (Mary Joseph...actually a common name) in her swimsuit with the other kids:




Deyssi and Lorean, cold:




Fausto again, mid-action:




It’d be nice to think of more field trips to do, but it’s hard due to lack of transportation. I want to try to get my kids outside more in the second half of the year, though…they’re finally at the point where they can handle it and not just go completely nuts once we leave the classroom. One big exception to this statement: a couple of weeks ago, some students from the Abundant Life school in Tegucigalpa came to our school, half to do a mission presentation, and half to play soccer. We didn’t find out about this until a few minutes before the soccer game, but we were supposed to bring all of our students up to the field to watch. It had been raining a lot, so it was muddy and slippery, and most of the kids just made mudballs, slid down the hills on boards, climbed trees, collected seeds and flower petals, or found some way to entertain themselves besides watching the game. They were a bunch of monkeys, but it was a lot of fun to just let them go wild and sit back and take pictures and laugh.

A couple of kids "watching the soccer game":



And here's an average day in the lunch line:



This weekend, we did our usual town day, and then some friends came up and we grilled chicken and veggies on the fire and they stayed overnight on our spare mattress. We got sheets for them and everything, so now we’re all set for our visitors to come! Our first ones are my friend Amy from college and her cousin. They’ll be here in 2 weeks! After that, Aaron’s parents are coming for a week, some friends from Landmark are coming, my parents might come, a couple more friends are coming for a vet mission trip, and maybe a friend of mine from home will come, too! We can’t wait to have everybody and show them around our life here!

There isn’t a lot else to report, but life is good, and we’re happy to be missing out on winter! It’s hard not to think about next year, and we do think about it a lot, but we’re trying to just enjoy our time here and take advantage of everything we have.

December in Honduras

Its kind of strange to post to the blog now. I’m writing as we’re on a plane back to the States for Christmas, and there are lots of different thoughts swirling around but we’re both really excited to be going back to see everyone, we’re actually excited for cold weather and by the time January comes around I’ll think we’ll be plenty excited to get back to balmy Honduras.

Melanie left off with some discussion of the devotion of school resources to the Christmas program and I will fill you in on how that adventure turned out. As Melanie was saying before, the two weeks before school ended we didn’t really have many classes and when we actually did have class there were 40 kids practicing a dance outside of our classroom. We weren't exactly open minded when we heard about it. We both had kind of a negative opinion of the program going into the 2 weeks of practice, it was just very different from the type of Christmas programs we both remembered participating in. The bulk of the program (The 12 Voices of Christmas) was monologues of the Christmas story, interspersed with praise and worship songs that the kids danced to. One of the main issues we had with the play was how little the students got to participate. Each grade or two had one song that they danced to and then for the rest of the show they just had to sit in the audience while students from Tegucigalpa lip-synched the monologues. So for the two weeks leading up to the performance each grade practiced their dance somewhere between 40-50 times. The way we practiced was to watch a DVD of the school in the Tegucigalpa doing the program and just copy it, so there was little creative input from us. It was hard to see what was going on in the DVD because of all the changing camera angles, but after 20 or so times we pretty much got the hang of it. The other twenty times were spent with kids in my grade reminding me I missed some move or teaching them at what angles they should hold their fake trumpets.
Here is one of the snacks of the kids at practice for the Christmas program, potted meat and a frosted flakes "granola bar":

Everyday it seemed like their was some casualty whether it be someone’s maraca getting broken, someone getting elbowed in the face when they went the wrong way in the dance, or some tears breaking forth because they didn’t win the audition for air guitar solo.
Four of my students in "the band" for our dance. The guitar solo was the envy of the entire elementary school:
It was also kind of crazy because the performance was at a church in town and so the three days before the performance we had to go to the church and practice. The entire school went and watched while each grade did their dance once on the stage and the rest of the time was crowd control. We had a dress rehearsal the day of the performance with the students from Tegucigalpa and this was directed by the drama director at their school. I personally was not a huge fan of the drama director. He showed up in really short shorts and running shirt (think gym teachers from the 80’s) and proceeded to give a little speech to our kids. The main gist of the speech was telling our students that even though they were from Gracias they could be just as good as the students from Tegucigalpa. I don’t think he meant it this way and I don’t think many of the students perceived it this way but to me it was very patronizing. I have experienced a lot of bias against people who live in rural areas and it seems like it is a pretty universal thing. The drama teacher did not think of our students as equals, he thought that if they tried really hard they could be at the same level of his students. That was just a little thorn in the side but he did a couple of other things that made me question the way he deals with people. Before my class went up on stage to dance I was going around to each of them telling them good luck and have fun and he came over to shoosh me. Later on during the performance I started to clap along with one of the other songs and he signaled to me from across the room very demonstratively to stop clapping. Now I’m not one for dressing up or a dress code but while all the other teachers were dressed up in their school uniforms, he showed up in a wind suit to the most important school event of the year. That all is a little cynical and slightly negative and I don’t want to give the idea that the program was this torturous thing that was a flop, because it actually went extremely well.
The 4th grade before the show:

We only got to practice the play one time with everyone, so I was a little nervous how it would go with so little practice and preparation. In Honduras there are lots of times when I think, sheesh there is no way that can work, its slipshod, no preparation, but then it turns out that it works great. In the States we have all the expectations and laws for how things have to be done but in Honduras as long as it works then its ok. So in line with that, the Christmas program went great.
Some of Melanie's kids before the show:
The kids all had a lot of fun, the parents were really happy seeing their kids perform and the kids did a great job. This also hit home another point for me. In the four months that we’ve been here I haven’t been open-minded about a lot of things. School is very different than schools I’ve been to or worked at before and too often if something is done in a different way I assume that it won’t work or respond to it in a negative way, and that is something that I really want to change.

There was also some great news the last day when we were practicing for the Christmas program. The administrators from Tegucigalpa were in Gracias to check out the program and they decided that we wouldn’t have class the next week, that the program would be the last day of school for the year. We weren’t flying back until the 22nd so that gave us more than a week to travel. Eunice (the school superintendent) also worked it out so that we could have a free place to stay in La Ceiba, the third biggest city in Honduras and a hoppin beach town. Melanie and I cobbled together some plans very quickly and arranged it so that we could take Spanish classes during that week. We had a lot to do before we left on Sunday especially considering that we were planning on having a Christmas party at our house on Saturday to use up our food. So Saturday we had to pack, clean, and get ready for the party and get our house ready to be closed for a few weeks. The party was also the maiden voyage of our “grill”. The grill was some sticks with nails spaced evenly and one of those camping grill baskets that you can move up and down on the nails over our fire pit. We had some burgers and dogs and some tandoori chicken skewers that Melanie made and the grill did quite well, although I think it will be better served for smaller scale operations. We had a huge table of desserts, more than we’d had the entire time we’d been in Honduras. There were cinnamon rolls, brownies, key lime pie, sugar cookies, cheesecake, and eggnog. We had another big stroke of luck at the party; Someone who came to the party was actually heading to San Pedro Sula the next day and offered to give us a ride, and he even came and picked us up at our house! We didn’t even know how we were going to make it down the mountain with all of our stuff and we were saved the 5 hour bus ride as well. This made it seem a lot more like vacation. When you have to be crammed on 3 buses constantly watching your stuff it isn’t exactly relaxing.

We caught a bus from San Pedro to La Ceiba where our host met us at the bus terminal. It was really nice of our administrator to find a place for us to stay and it was really nice of the people to host us (they were very friendly and hospitable), but it was also a little awkward because they moved their daughters out of their bedrooms so that we and the other couple could sleep in them. Their house was really nice, with a really funky swimming pool, but it was far out of town so we either had to ask them for rides or take taxis everywhere. The pool looked like something from a mini-golf course with really intricate concrete work and decoration; it even had a grotto that you could swim into with seats to relax in.

We started Spanish classes on Monday morning, both of us with a different personal tutor. I think it was really good for both us in different ways. We spent four hours each morning of the week studying and speaking with our tutor. I think it will make a huge difference in my Spanish when we come back. I’ve picked up a lot of Spanish words during our time here, but having never studied Spanish formally, I don’t really know any grammar. Even though we had to start back at square one grammar wise I think I’ll be able to synthesize grammar and vocabulary pretty quickly. Melanie seemed to get a lot out of her classes as well, but for her it was more a review of advanced subjunctive forms and an opportunity to spend a lot of time talking to someone whose job it is to correct you. Hopefully when we come back to Honduras we will both have more tools for our Spanish and a little more confidence to go with it.

La Ceiba itself was not a town that we would probably spend a lot of time in again, but since we were there for a week we got to enjoy lots of things that we’ve been missing up on the mountain. Within the first two days there, we had already gone to Pizza Hut twice, which is more times than both of us had been in the last ten years. The first time we went to Pizza Hut for the food but the second time was for the super high speed (for us) wireless internet. Restaurants like Pizza Hut, Burger King, and Wendys are really different here. The buildings are extremely big and modern looking and since the food is a little more expensive than it is in the states, it is really expensive here and only upper middle class and upper class people can afford to eat there. The whole week we were in La Ceiba we had to eat out so we had ample opportunities to sample the fast food fare the city had to offer, and those Whoppers and Frostys sure tasted pretty good after a few months of not having any beef or ice cream. Another feature that appealed to us was the fact that it had two movie theaters. It wasn’t like they had amazing movies or anything (we actually sat through all of Stepbrothers) but since we haven’t even watched TV just sitting there with the flashing images in front of us made us feel right at home and it also helped that it only cost a dollar.

Everyday after Spanish class we would either explore La Ceiba (finished that in one day), or other towns and areas around La Ceiba. There wasn’t too much to see in Ceiba itself, with the beaches being contaminated and night clubs not really being our thing, but the thing about Ceiba is that there are beautiful places just a couple of miles away. From Ceiba itself you can see Pico Bonito National Park which is several gravity defyingly steep peaks completely covered with jungle. Even though the peaks are only five miles from the entrance to the park, it takes at least a week to reach them, and those days apparently are spent hacking through the jungle and fending off mosquitoes and vipers. Whenever a group does decide to climb the mountain everyone follows it in the paper and on TV because either something bad happens or they make it out triumphantly.
We didn’t brave the snakes and climb the mountain but we did get to explore lots of other good places. One afternoon after class it was especially hot and we wanted to go to a beach where we could actually swim, so we caught a bus and headed ten miles down the coast to Sambo Creek. The beach at Sambo wasn’t pristine by any means but compared to Ceiba it was paradise island. We walked down the beach to a place where we could change and realized that we both had forgotten our swimsuits. Normally this would have been resolved by skinny dipping but because of recent flooding the water had so much debris in it, skinny dipping didn’t seem like a great option. The solution we came up with was to sit on the beach and relax which served our situation quite well.

We heard about a good swimming hole the next day that was freshwater and set out to find out about it. We rode the bus a couple miles down the road again and got off a little ways down the river from the swimming hole. There was a road/ path next to the river and we followed it for 20-30 minutes until we could hear the waterfall. All along the way there were houses with small farms situated along the river with huge trees shading the houses and water, very peaceful and picturesque. After walking for a little while the path headed uphill and we got a nice view of the land between us and the sea, full of banana plants and nice places to live.
Eventually we heard the loud water and plunged down through thick plants to the waterfall. The waterfall was probably 20 ft high and 20ft wide with a deep blue tennis court sized pool at the bottom, in other words exactly what we had been looking for.
The waterfall on the Rio Maria:
As soon as we got there some local kids showed up and started playing around on the waterfall. I’ve seen people jump off of waterfalls and stuff but these kids were sliding down the waterfall, which to me seemed really scary and like instant death (who knows what kinds of rocks are under the fall) but each time they emerged unscathed. We spent a couple of hours there swimming, jumping off lower rocks, lying on rocks, and just enjoying the cool air courtesy of the river. We didn’t really want to go back to Ceiba but we figured we probably should before it got dark. We spent another afternoon just figuring out bus service for getting to the airport and then on Friday we headed back to the Rio Maria waterfall for another dose of cool water relaxation. We finished up classes for the week and although we liked it a lot and got a lot out of it, I can’t imagine doing Spanish classes for a month. A week was a nice boost for us and hopefully we’ll be a little more motivated to practice.

One of the sailboats they use in the Cayos, with a sail made of trashbags

The crown jewel of our adventure in Ceiba though was our weekend trip to the Cayos Cochinos, a protected marine reserve of keys about 15 miles off the coast of Ceiba. There are two big keys which are used for marine research and most of the smaller keys are private and either are someone’s vacation home or uninhabited.
Some volcanic rock off one of the keys
We went out with a local tour operator and learned a little about the islands before doing some snorkeling. I didn’t know before we went but off the coast of Honduras is the second largest barrier reef in the world after Australia. We got on our gear and headed under to check it out and it was stunning, stretching for as far as you could see were probably ten different kinds of coral, some 20 feet high with 5 or 6 different kinds of fish swimming in and out. We snorkeled for an hour or so swimming in and out of the coral before getting back on the boats and heading to the one island in the keys that is inhabited called Chachahuate. Its pretty small, maybe a little bigger than a football field and somewhere between 50-75 people live on the island.

A view of the entire island of Chachahuate

Another perspective of the island
There is one restaurant on the island and we had the best fish I’ve had in years with really good red beans and rice. The rest of the tour group went back to Ceiba but we wanted to do something on our own so we decided to stay on the island in a little hostel/cabin thing they have. All of the people on the island are Garifuna which means they are a long way descended from shipwrecked slaves in the 1800s. Living on a tiny island with 75 people might seem like some kind of tortured reality show but after spending a day there we saw what they had going. We spent the rest of the afternoon snorkeling at a part of the reef just off the island and then when it got dark we just sat around and talked to the people who live there. There is sometimes electricity for a couple hours a day but most of the time it seems like people spend a lot more time relaxing and talking rather than watching TV and surfing the internet.
Here are two kids who had apparently gotten in the water and rolled around in the sand:
Everyone just seemed to enjoy living, talking to all their neighbors, going fishing for the day’s food, just going for a quick dip in the clear water whenever you feel like it. We were just sitting on the beach and half of the kids from the island went bodysurfing and a few of their moms came with them. I know this is probably idealistic and short sighted but it seemed like it was summer vacation all the time. We talked politics and soccer with the people for a couple of hours then called it a night but not after watching a rap battle and forced grinding/dancing content among the younger kids.
Some of the lobster traps they made to catch the clawless lobsters:
We woke up the next day, drank some coffee, did some more snorkeling and spent more time relaxing and just enjoying the island. The tour group for that day picked us up and we did a little more snorkeling before coming back to Chachahuate. We left with that tour group to go back and after a little seasick ride we made it back to Ceiba where we got some food and started to pack to come back. We went out to a restaurant to eat and made sure that they had the Panthers game on and unfortunately we got to see them lose along with a British and Canadian guy we’d met through the language school. We went back and finished packing in our kind of slummy hotel room, and tried to fall asleep despite being really excited about going back, two very loud mating geckos (it sounded like there were birds in our room), laying in an uncomfortable bed and being really hot. The next morning we woke up early to catch a bus and head back to the States and that’s where we are now. This is getting posted after the fact but the travels back went really smoothly and pretty soon you’ll get to read Melanie’s post about all the good times we had back in the States.

Campesinos in the Big City

Here it is, December 8th, and it was 75 degrees or so this afternoon. There have been a few cold spells, but for the most part, the Honduran "winter" has been treating us well. We have to shut our window shutters sometimes, but we try to hold out as long as we can when it gets chilly because we then have to decide between relative warmth and light. When we went to the capital for Thanksgiving a couple weekends ago, we drove through areas where the houses looked different, not necessarily in size or color or maintenance—I couldn't put my finger on it for awhile—but I finally realized that they had glass windows. That's a sign of real luxury down here; it's a little bit like Little House on the Prairie sometimes, especially when the electricity goes out.

So, as I mentioned, we went to Tegucigalpa, the capital, for Thanksgiving. The school was originally going to put together a little farm weekend getaway for us, but the road was washed out (excuses, excuses…), so they basically paid for us to spend four days in the big city. Hopefully, we'll make it out to the farm another time, but we weren't too let down in the change of plans because the city meant restaurants, movies, and grocery stores. Tegucigalpa is about 150 miles away by road, which sounds like it should be a simple trip, but of course, that wouldn't have made for a noteworthy experience. We had 14 people in a van with all of our bags on top, and we left town around 6 am after taking a mototaxi down the mountain to catch the van. We left the paved road 20 minutes later (the highway right around Gracias seems to be one of the nicest stretches in the country), and must have stopped to yell out the window and ask for directions to the next town on our mental maps at least 15 times after that. The road washes out so often that most of the so-called "highway" looks like a permanent construction site. We came to several forks that looked equally attractive, but after trying one, we'd find out that it led to just a dirt hill or a deep pit. We made a stop about halfway for some comida tipica, and then we knew we were getting closer to the city because we started seeing fast food restaurants. The American fast food places here are pretty much the same as they are in the States, except that most of them are HUGE and all gussied up. Going out for fast food is a treat for most city people, and the prices are higher than they are at home, too. The food is the same, though, except for the addition of some bean/egg/tortilla/plantain concoction at each place. We did see a mariachi band hanging out with Ronald McDonald at one place, which, from what I remember, doesn't happen back home.

We spent a few hours just walking around near our hotel and sitting with some friends at a coffee shop chain (kind of like Honduran Starbucks). It felt so surreal to be in this place because it seemed like we were back in the States. The mall and chain restaurants are such a far cry from our rural landscape that it didn't seem possible that we could still be in the same country. That night, we went to the fanciest Thanksgiving dinner I've ever been to. One of the administrators from the rich Tegucigalpa Abundant Life school hosted, and most people were wearing suits and dresses. The house was very posh, and they had obviously hired a party planner to make elaborate centerpieces out of real fruit and leaves, decorate the tables with gold chargers and glittery leaf coasters, and do the lighting scheme and background music and all. The food was very authentic Thanksgiving, though, complete with marshmallow fruit salad, which I've always found a bit odd, but it just went to show that they had pulled out all the stops. Their house, and most Honduran houses, had such a great design that blended both indoor and outdoor space. Sometimes in houses here, you actually forget whether you are outside or inside, or you can't really decide even if you think about it because the distinction is not really important here. Lots of rooms in houses are covered but there aren't really any walls or there aren't any screens, or there could be a high wall around but no ceiling, or you're sitting in a garden but it's more or less just another room in the house. I wish that the weather back home made this kind of design possible, but it's just not practical when it gets down below freezing for months at a time. I've gotten so used to being connected to the outside, though, with our pane-less windows and the courtyard with the mountain view at school, and then our porch/carport and screen-only windows at home. It's going to be an adjustment going home in a couple of weeks and hiding out in the always-68 degree-houses except when going in between buildings and the car.

Anyway, to say that we enjoyed our meal would be like saying that pie is alright. All of us foreign teachers wolfed down the cheese and nuts immediately upon arrival (we don't get those things here in Gracias), and then shamelessly stuffed ourselves, in keeping with Thanksgiving tradition. We Americans do not take our holiday feasting lightly. After our meal, the driver that the school hired to take us around the city for the weekend brought us up to a high viewpoint for a look at the city at night. It's not beautiful during the day, and it's not like a big city with skyscrapers—it really feels more like just a really huge, sprawled-out town in the mountains. At night, though, the city is just a lot of lights spread out without pattern all over the valley and climbing up onto the surrounding mountains:


On our way back to the hotel, we passed by a train made out of some cars and other assorted vehicles with Christmas lights strung out connecting them together. It was called the "Kobs Express" and apparently takes its passengers to the nearest "Kobs" (an ice cream store chain). It was kind of a mixture of a kids' train at the mall, and a college campus "safe ride" kind of arrangement.

The next morning, some of the school administrators showed us around the organization's headquarters complex. We saw the big school there, the TV station, radio station, church, and they even took us to their hearing and eye clinic. We hadn't really known much about Abundant Life, the organization that bought the school we work at here, but it was good to open our eyes to all the good that they do in Honduras. They have a nightly AA meeting in their church facility, and nothing seems excessive or wasteful—they just make the most of what they have. In other areas of the country, they also have an orphanage and an elderly care facility. It's rare to have an organized Honduran group that is working successfully toward social improvement in their own country. They do not get many donations or volunteers from wealthier countries, and although some of their top administrators have a lot of money, most of them seem to have acquired their wealth before becoming involved with the organization, and it's admirable that they want to do some good with their money. While we were at the eye clinic, I mentioned that I needed a new pair of glasses, and they gave me a free eye exam and a pair of nice new glasses that cost about a quarter of what they would have back home. Ah, American health care. I was really impressed with the doctor, the optical shop, and not just the eye care but the whole organization in general.

We saw a movie that afternoon—The Hunting Game—it was alright, but the best part was just going to a movie theater and seeing a movie in English. Most of the movies they get here are action/adventure or scary ones in English with Spanish subtitles, or kids' movies that are dubbed in Spanish. After the movie, it felt as if we'd just walk out of the theater and out into the parking lot and get into our Honda and go home to our apartment in Beverly, but we snapped back to reality when we passed by the "Kobs Express" again and the big lighted up Jesus statue on a hill right above an even bigger Coca-Cola sign (like the Hollywood sign) that became our navigational landmark in the city:


The next day, we headed for some towns outside of the city, which were pretty, but more like our everyday surroundings here than anything else. I guess at this point, we aren't the usual tourists. We did buy our fair share of souvenirs, though, and we'll see how many make it home in one piece to give away for Christmas. We also went downtown, and walked through some historic areas where the buildings printed on the money here stand. It's an interesting view to be able to just see uninhabited mountains as a backdrop to a big city:


We also walked through some seedier areas, and turned around after we crossed a bridge that apparently led to a rougher neighborhood. The discrepancy in the distribution of wealth in the city is ridiculous, but I guess most cities are like that to some extent. About half the people that live in Tegucigalpa don't even have electricity or reliable plumbing, and then there are those like the house we went to for Thanksgiving that could easily be featured in some architectural or interior design magazines in the States. Here are some of the buildings right downtown, intermixed with shops and fancy government buildings:


We didn't do a lot more sightseeing in Tegucigalpa, but we did do a lot of eating. We had Japanese food, good pizza, subs, iced coffee, ice cream, and we went crazy at some grocery stores. We found pesto, cheese, plain yogurt, and even Ghirdelli brownie mix. We got a big fruitcake wrapped up in Christmas bows as a favor from the Thanksgiving dinner, and even though we quickly re-gifted it when we went to another little get-together in the city, we somehow ended up eating the whole thing by the end of the night. We all just sat up on this rooftop that looked out over the city and felt full and relaxed and strangely urban:


The trip home was much like the trip there, with scattered butterfly-in-the-stomach moments sitting in back when we'd hit the extra-deep, unexpected potholes. Aaron did get some nice shots out the window, though:






We got home in time for dinner, and spent the next couple days trying to recover and get back to normal at school. This last part has been challenging lately, with the long break approaching, and with our administration telling us to not focus on the curriculum, but rather to just work on the Christmas program. I wouldn't mind this so much except that this is not your typical school concert or play. We are having a group of drama students from the Tegucigalpa megachurch/school come and perform, while our kids act as background dancers. We don't get to make up the dances; this has been done by people in Tegucigalpa and put onto a DVD that we had to learn with our kids. This was even more of a letdown compared with what one of the other AL schools is doing for their program: spoof songs and dances (think Weird Al) with a Christmas theme. The teacher we talked to was supposed to have his class dress as fighter pilots and sing/dance to "Manger Zone" (Originally "Danger Zone"). It's ridiculous, obviously, but at least it's not supposed to be taken seriously, and it'd be fun! As for our extravaganza, each class has spent at least one class period every day since Thanksgiving working on their dance. My class is combined with the notoriously wild second graders (not that mine are angels on their own, either) for a total of 29 kids dancing to about an 8 minute song that I only know half the words for. Wrangling them for each practice session definitely takes both of us teachers, and most of the dance suggestions and critique on our part goes something like, "Stop running!" "No maracas right now!" "Stop touching him!" or "Hey, come back!"

We had a half day practice at the church auditorium in town where we'll be performing, and we have more tomorrow through Friday. Before we had the first practice day, we had a staff meeting to discuss what and where this would be happening. Someone naively asked for the address. There are no road names or numbers in town. I don't really know how people get their mail—we just get ours because there are so few Gringos around that we're easy to identify. Explaining the location of the church took at least 3 or 4 drawings on the board, about a dozen landmarks thrown out in reference, such as "the big market," "the big speaker store," and "the Garage of Flavor (Garaje del Sabor)." The discussion lasted a good 25 or 30 minutes, and after draining our attention spans, we were satisfied with the only directions for the practice given as "We will have snack rotations." A few of the highlights from practice day:

-Seeing what the kids brought from home for snacktime. One 45ish pound kid brought a hamburger, jello, candy, and a pint-and-a-half size peach nectar, which must have had at least 75 grams of sugar alone.

-One of the other foreign teachers was stung by a scorpion. This was obviously not a good highlight, but we did find out that unless you are allergic, it's just like getting a terrible bee sting that we hear burns like fire.

-Playing rock, paper, scissors, doing yoga moves with my kids, having my eyes covered and trying to guess whose grimy hands were on my face (usually I didn't know the kid's name because they were in another class), and watching Aaron's kids do tryouts for an air guitar solo that he's supposed to have in his dance. 4 hours of chaos and no one was hurt!

Here are some of Aaron's kids hamming it up off-stage during some of the plentiful down time:


Friday is the big performance night, so we'll have just 3 more days of class after that! The program is being broadcasted internationally on some Christian Spanish channel, so if you have a cable or satellite package with a lot of channels that you have never watched for more than 3 seconds, you might be able to see us at some point! Not sure about what the channel is called, but I'm guessing it will be aired sometime between 1 and 5 am on a weekday.

Besides the program, though, we've been able to do a few Christmasy things. We've taught our kids lots of Christmas carols, decorated our classrooms, done a little Christmas shopping, and been around lots of trees and lights in town. We went over to our friends' house for dinner the other night and even had some homemade eggnog. They make a really good milk-cinnamon-rice punch for Christmas here, too, which I hope to learn to make. Most of our neighbors are fattening up their chickens for their big meal in a couple of weeks, and they make tamales and go to church, but it's not as big of a commercial holiday as it is in the States. I don't think anyone wishes for snow, either. I have to say, I get a little satisfaction from listening to the Chicago and Boston NPR stations and hearing the weather there, and then going outside in my t-shirt for a walk down to the river or a nap in the hammock.

Lately, we've been to town more than usual. We had practice down there Friday last week, so we got our grocery shopping done a day early and hiked home under a bright moon. We did have a brush with danger on our way, though! We got to our friend/pulperia (tiny convenience store out of someone's house) owner, Jesus's house, and he stopped us for a chat. Some guys drove by in a pickup, and then stopped a few feet beyond the house. We weren't sure what was going on, but after a minute, Jesus asked us if we wanted to see a huge snake on the road where we had just walked. We went down to where the pickup was stopped, and there was indeed a HUGE snake lying in the road! It was probably there when we walked by, and we hadn't even seen it! The guys in the pickup had apparently stopped and thrown rocks at it to kill it because it's so deadly. I'm not sure why they didn't just run over it in the car, but I guess someone was a pretty good shot, and then they just pitched it over the rock wall and went on their way. Jesus told us that if we had been bitten, we "would have immediately died." Needless to say, we kept our eyes peeled the rest of the way home.

On Saturday, we took a day trip to La Campa, a picturesque little town just 10 miles away from Gracias. We'd been there once before, but some friends wanted to go, and we figured it'd be fun to go again, take a little hike, and get some more pottery. There's only one bus per day, and we didn't even know when it left, so we just walked along the road a little ways and got lucky within a couple of minutes when a missionary van picked us up and gave us a ride there. We walked along the river there and into the canyon a little ways once we got there. The rocks were carved out in such beautiful patterns, and they were all studded with fossils.

Here's a picture at the river:


We went to a little pottery museum to see how the Lenca people make the pottery, just out of a mixture of the dirt found in the area. They just fire them in a bonfire, and they've been making them the same way for generations. Some people use a wheel now, but for the most part, they haven't changed in their design or function. La Campa is so quiet that it's hard to tell if anyone is really there. We did manage to find the one restaurant in town, though, and it was one of the nicest settings we've eaten in. Like most of the comedors, we had to confirm with them that there was actually food available, to which the answer was, "yes, tacos," but the patio and the quiet breeze and views were beautiful.

Here's a view from a church overlooking the town:


And here's a man napping and sunning himself in a pile of beans...proof that there is life in La Campa, however quiet it may be.


We got lucky on the way home, too—we only waited for 5 minutes or so before a pickup stopped for us and brought us back to Gracias on the winding road around Celaque, the mountain that's our home.

One of the pictures taken from the jalon (pickup) ride...you can see one of the classy cow stickers in the window and and mountain ahead. It was NOT easy to take pictures in the back of a truck on a bumpy road! The driver was nice, though, and handed back some pixie stick sugar in a plastic orange for us to eat/have blown all over our faces in the wind.


We ended up staying in town late (haha, 8:30 is late for us here!), so a friend's parents who were in town lent us their truck to drive home for the night. It was so weird to ride in a truck with just us, and I hadn't worn a seatbelt since the plane ride in August!

Sunday we brought the car back, and continued our lucky transportation streak. A friend offered us her horses since they needed to go back to Villa Verde, where she keeps them and where we live. They weren't fast horses by any means, but it was a nice change of pace, and it's amazing how different the same scenery looks from just a few feet higher, when you can see over stone walls and don't have to watch the ruts and rocks under your feet. Our friend's dog followed us home, too, since she loves barking at the horses, and so it was nice to have a dog on loan for the night.

That just about brings everything up to date! If you've made it through the whole entry, congrats and thanks! Just one more week of classes, a few days at the beach, and then we'll be home! We'll be in Chicago until the 28th, then a quick stop in Indianapolis, down to Virginia for some time down there, and then up to Boston for a couple of days before we fly back here to start back up (after having a bug massacre to reclaim our house!). We miss you and think about our friends and family all the time. Hope you are enjoying everything that comes with the holidays, and maybe we'll see you soon!!