What's new?

So... I left home almost a week ago and have been in Santa Rosa de Copan for five whole days now – I can’t believe that it has almost been a week already but at the same time it feels like I have been here forever.  This past week has definitely been a learning experience to say the least.  I was finally able to talk to my family yesterday.  My dad asked what was new, and the only thing that I could logically say as a response was "everything."  

This past week I have:

·         Eaten more beans (in various forms) and corn tortillas that I have in my entire life.

·         Learned that I can communicate in Spanish (not well).  I typically understand about half of what is told to me and the other half, well, I nod, say okay, and hope that the half that I think I understood is in fact what they said and I can, for the most part, piece together what is being told to/asked of me. 

·         Gotten used to taking cold showers and am in fact very thankful that I have a working shower that I can use on a daily basis.

·         Swept outdoor patios on a daily basis.  I suspect that I will have broom calluses on my hands when I return home. 

·         And many other things that I’m forgetting at the moment.

That being said, Honduras is AMAZING!  The girls here are incredibly loving and have accepted me with open arms.  Often times it feels as though there are here to help me out rather than the other way around.  They are continually helping me figure out what I’m supposed to be doing at any given time, or leading me to where I’m supposed to go, because, as I said before, I really only understand half of what is told to me.  There is such a feeling of love here!  The girls are continually giving each other hugs, holding hands, and walking with linked arms (and of course I’m included).  Although a majority of the girls only got here on Monday, they already appear to be a family – and new girls are arriving on a daily basis and are welcomed immediately into the family.  There are now 18 girls here (and I can name a majority, SCORE!  as 1. I never have been very good with names and 2. their names are all Spanish).  I was told when I first got here that a lot of the girls are from the campo.  However, the part that I didn't understand about this fact is that when you are living in the campo, there aren't really walls... there aren't houses as we know them.  So while I am absolutely in awe of the open air courtyards in the middle of the school where I am literally outside after I walk about 10 feet outside of my room (Friday night after the girls and I watched 101 Dalmatians, I happened to look up into the sky and have never seen so many stars, not even when camping!)  So while I am in awe of the open spaces that I find, some of these girls feel trapped by the walls in addition to being homesick.  I can't even imagine!   

The sisters here are all hilarious!  Their favorite pastime while we are eating together is to ask me how to say various things in English.  They attempt to repeat what I say, butcher it, and then laugh at each other’s horrible pronunciations or the shape of someone’s mouth or how they stuck their tongue out in a certain way to try to produce the word.  (In Spanish, they don’t have a whole lot of dental sounds, so for example, this evening while eating dinner, Sor Virma was trying to say the word “Thursday” and when trying to produce the beginning ‘th’ she stuck out her tongue, but she had rolled it as well.  After she butchered the pronunciation, Sor Rose proceeded to stick out her own tongue and made various faces all the while laughing.  One of the sisters actually started crying because she was laughing so hard!) 

Classes for the girls start tomorrow, which means that I’ll really have to start teaching English… YIKES!  We will see how that goes.  I have a lot of ideas, but not sure how to put them into cohesive unites that I can test the girls on… I know it will work out, but I want to do it right, and I’m not quite sure how to do that yet. 

I guess that’s all for now… talk to all of you soon.  Keep me in your prayers – you are forever in mine.  

Oh, the adventures of traveling…

I finally made it to Santa Rosa de Copán at 6:00 on Tuesday night, not without adventures.

My plan for travel was: bus from Milwaukee to Chicago, fly from Chicago to Miami, and then from Miami to San Pedro Sula, stay in San Pedro Sula for the night and then drive to Santa Rosa de Copán on Tuesday.  The weather was absolutely wonderful on Monday.  The one thing that I was really scared of before the trip was that there would be a snow storm on Monday and the airport would be closed, and I wouldn’t even be able to get out of Chicago.  I left for the bus stop at 9:30 on Monday morning with my Mom and sister (my Dad met us there) in order to catch my bus to O’Hare at 10:10.  We said our tearful goodbye and I was off.  The bus ride was great and I made it to O’Hare with plenty of time to spare, made it through security super quickly; there practically wasn’t a line. 

And that is when my good luck ran out... 

Even though the weather was great, my plan was about 10 minutes late arriving… which in itself isn’t bad, that can usually be made up in flight.  However, after everyone was boarded, we found out that the plan hit a bird on the previous flight, and although nothing was wrong with the plane, they had to do some last minute checks to make sure.  This pushed us close to 30 minutes delayed.  The flight itself was not bad… I read a little bit, listened to music, watched the shows that were being broadcast, you know, the general in-flight activities.  However, when we landed, 25 minutes behind schedule, our gate was occupied which meant that we were just sitting in the plane for another 20 minutes.  At this point I started freaking out because I only had an hour and 15 minutes layover.  My flight was supposed to leave from Miami at 7:15, my boarding pass claimed that the plane would start boarding at 6:15, and it was currently 6:25… FREAK OUT! 

We finally got off of the plane, but I had not heard what gate my flight would leave from, so I picked a direction and started walking in search of a departures board.  Since I couldn’t find one, I asked a stewardess at another gate to look up the gate for me… which happened to be the gate directly across from where I was.  SCORE!  They had just started boarding, I made it.  I got on the plane, found my seat, had the entire row to myself, it was going to be a great trip.  Until… the stewardess stopped the safety video to say that they were re-opening the door but didn’t know why.  Long story short, the auxiliary power for the plane wasn’t working… we needed to move to another gate were a plane from the hanger would take us to San Pedro Sula. 

At training, I was told a couple of times that I would meet some awesome people completely by chance, and on my walk to the gate I was able to experience this first-hand.  I started talking to a woman named Angie who was also traveling to San Pedro Sula.  Angie is originally from Alabama.  Fourteen years ago, she was a volunteer at an orphanage in Honduras for three months.  That tree months eventually turned into 14 years.  She now lives in San Pedro Sula with her husband and is running her own orphanage.  Like I said, she is an amazing woman. 

We finally made it to our new gate to find out that our flight was going to be delayed until 9:15.  This started a flurry of calls to Sister Gloria as well as home in order to inform every one of the flight changes.  We boarded the plane, I got my own row again, and we waited… apparently the catering service had not stocked our plane so they did not have any beverages for the flight.  Catering decided to take 45 minutes to give us beverages.  The last text I sent my mom to say goodbye was around 10:00 at which time I decided to take a nap and I slept through the take off.  I’m not entirely sure what time we actually left the ground.  I landed in San Pedro Sula at 11:15 (Miami is an hour ahead of Honduras), almost 3 hours behind schedule.  By the time I made it through customs, it was midnight.  I was greeted by one of the sisters (I am terrible with names and have yet to learn everyone’s), and her family.  Everyone was super nice, but I was barely able to coherently think in English, much less speak Spanish.  I was basically catatonic for the entire ride to the school. 

So… after traveling for 15 hours, I went to bed at 12:30.  YES!

I spent all morning and into the afternoon on Tuesday running errands in San Pedro Sula with Sister and Luis, the man who was going to take us to Santa Rosa.  I finally arrived in Santa Rosa at 6:00 PM at which time I met the “internas,” the girls living at the school and most of the other sisters.  Everyone here is absolutely wonderful – you will hear more about them in later posts.

Today, I spent a majority of the day with the internas.  They had computación (computers) where they were learning how to use word in order to write a letter to their families.  A lot of these girls have not ever used a computer before.  So I spent a majority of the hour showing girls how the shift, caps lock, and arrow keys worked.  Some of the girls, however, are really good with computers and are more than willing to help the younger ones.

We then had lunch, after which I was informed that I would be teaching my first English lesson at 2:30 this afternoon… and it was currently 1:30.  SURPRISE!!!  That gave me an hour to prepare, luckily, English is my first language and we really only went over the alphabet and numbers.   But I get to do it again tomorrow, and I have no idea what I’m going to do.  Late night, anyone?

Then it was math… which I sat in on so that I can help the girls with their homework.  I’m not sure if the math professor completely understood what I was there for because he told me to practice my multiplication tables before he left. 

We then went to mass (an hour and a half weekday mass, unheard of in the states), ate dinner, and I was told that I was going to lead the girls in exercises afterwards and the sisters had a DVD that they wanted me to use.  Guess what, I just finished a ZUMBA lesson with the girls (Francine, I should have been paying better attention in Austin)!

Well, that’s all for now.  It sure has been an interesting three days!  Seems a lot longer than that.  I’ll try posting again soon and hopefully it will be shorter. 

Its all starting...

I don't have a whole lot to say at this moment as my life right now pretty much consists of anticipation for my trip.  So, after waiting for what seems like forever, I'm leaving for Honduras early on Monday morning.  I'm still not entirely sure sure what I'm getting myself into, but I am tremendously excited to leave and live in Honduras until July.  However, as I was informed by Tim and Steph today, I'll miss both of their birthdays, Valentine's Day, Groundhog's day, President's day, Steph's graduation, April Fools day, February 29... you get the drift.  It's weird thinking that I only have one more day...

Please keep me in your prayers over the next couple of months, I have a feeling I'll need them.  And I will be praying for everyone here.

I love you all, and will see you when I get back!

**Not only was I asked to start this blog for VIDES (the organization that I'm volunteering through), but I also thought that it would be a good way to keep in touch with friends here.  I can't promise that it will be anything interesting, and I'm not sure how often I'll be able to post, but if you want to know what's going on in my life... here it is.