It's Friday, Friday, Gotta get down on Friday...

Yes, I just made that the title of my post...  Anyway, I just had a quick thought to share with you guys tonight.  I absolutely love Fridays here!  For a couple of reasons:

1.  It is now officially the weekend (yes I still love them even though I'm not currently in school).
2.  Tomorrow is Saturday, which means it is my day off, which means that I can sleep in until whatever time I want (usually I'm woken up around 7:30 due to noise, but that is still 2 more hours of sleep that I don't get during the week).
3.  Friday nights are movie nights with the girls which means that we all crowd onto the stage in the auditorium to watch a movie (usually a cheezy middle school chick flick) and then I get to walk outside and look up at the sky and see an obscene number of gorgeous stars.  This really is my favorite part of Fridays and the reason I wanted to post this.

The sky in Honduras is absolutely beautiful!  And I can't get enough of it... one of these nights I'm just going to sit out there for who knows how long.  Walking back from the movie tonight I looked up and, I don't even know how to explain it.  Imagine looking up into the sky when you are camping, and you can see, like, a billion stars... well multiply that by, like, 100 and you get the number of stars here.  And there is no glow from lights in a city that you can see in the distance.  Like I said, gorgeous!

It really is the little things!

P.S.  Happy Lent, everyone!

Oh, how the time flies!

So, this post isn't going to say a lot and is mainly going to be pictures as today marks the end of my first month here.  For those of you who have not been counting... I left Milwaukee at 10:10 January 23 and it is now February 23 - one month.  I figured that it is about time to show all of you where I'm staying... so here are a few pics of the school. 

Our room... it's kinda a mess

My shower

The bathroom

Our dining area

The chapel 

One of the patios where the girls have recess

Same patio, another view

The other patio 

Where I do my laundry, close-up

Our pet rooster that wakes me up every morning
apparently it was bought to be eaten, but that
hasn't happened and it has been here longer than me!

The laundry I love talking about 

Sorry for the random arrangement of pictures... it is so difficult to place them with this website, so I gave up trying to make it look nice.

Also, we found out yesterday that Sor Mirna's father passed away in the afternoon, so everyone here would appreciate your thoughts and prayers for her and her family.  Sor Mirna was at a conference in Mexico when she found out and couldn't get to El Salvador (where her family lives) until this afternoon.  So all of the sisters (but one) left to go be with her family.  That means today was just Thalia, Sor Roselba, and me with 60 girls!

Where, oh where is the water?

On Saturday night, Thalia turned to me and said that our sink wasn’t working.  I didn’t really think about it – I’m not really sure what I thought was wrong, but I was tired, so I just went to bed.  Sunday morning, we woke up and there still wasn’t any water.  So, I went to go find one of the sisters to see what was going on… only to find out that our water tank was empty… there was going to be no running water for the day.  This meant that sinks, toilets, ect. would not work.  So, I was given a bucket, shown where the water reserve behind the kitchen was (it still had water – the water reserves aren’t really wells, more like a cement water holder that is located underground), shown how to retrieve water from the reserve, and was on my way.  We were able to use that water to flush the toilet, wash our hands and face, ect.  throughout the day.  And if we needed more water, well we could go fetch more (but try to conserve the water). 

Sunday night, we returned to our room with two buckets of water waiting for us outside of our door.  Thanks to whoever thought of us, cause otherwise we wouldn’t have had any water  that night or Monday morning!

Monday morning I had the pleasure of taking a bucket shower (but I didn’t wash my hair… I’m not entirely sure how I would have gone about doing that either).  It truly was an experience, not bad, but I sure am glad that I now have a working shower!  The water tank was refilled later Monday afternoon, so we are back to normal working water.  But if there is one thing that I have learned while I have been here is just how much I take for granted at home. 

On another note, on Saturday I saw Sor Xiomara teaching some of the girls how to make bread from scratch without a bowl or a hand mixer.  I really wanted to join in, but I had just come back from a run and didn’t want to get the bread all sweaty.  I’ll have to join in next time, but I’m going to try to explain what I saw:

First, they mixed all of the dry ingredients in a large container and then poured them out and split it in two piles on a very large table (I’m assuming to make two different batches).  Sor made a ring with one half of the dry ingredients and cracked the eggs, opened sticks of butter, and other wet ingredients (minus the water).  She then started hand mixing the dry and wet ingredients together by pulling the dry ingredients in from the ring surrounding the wet stuff.  They then slowly began adding water to the mix and continued pulling the dry ingredients in.  Since there was no bowl, the ring of dry ingredients acted as the bowl.  After everything was mixed together, Sor split the dough between the girls to kneed.  However, this was no kneeding I have ever seen.  They threw the bread down onto the table and then stretched it out, wadded it back up into a ball and threw it onto the table again.  It was really interesting to watch!

Anywhoo, that’s all for now.  Love to everyone at home!

A bug's life...

At the request of my Mother, I am going to try to document the bugs that I see here.  This post will be updated periodically with pictures of the various bugs that I see.

This caterpillar-ish thing was in the girl's cafeteria floor.  Because Thalia and I moved it in order to protect it from the girl's feet, it curled up into the fetal position, but it was about the circumference of my finger and just about as long.

This spider was on the wall in our room... The pic didn't come out that well, but it was about dime-sized, but it's legs were really thick - and it was gross.

Hola, mi nombre es Inigo Montoya. Tú mataste a mi padre, prepárate a morir…

I brought a couple of books from home to Honduras to read, one of which was The Princess Bride.  I absolutely LOVE the move, and if you haven’t seen it, I would strongly recommend seeing it now.  Anyway, the girls have an hour-and-a-half long silent study time that I have to supervise at night, so I break out the book.  The past couple of nights the girls have asked what the title means (they tend to be able to understand that princess is princesa, but not the bride part).  The first night, I didn’t know how to say bride (and my dictionary was not around), so I had to try to define “bride” with my limited Spanish… I eventually got the message across.  For those of you who don’t know… bride is novia… which is the same as girlfriend and fiancé (who knew?).  Anyways, last night some of the girls took the book and were paging through it and happened upon the name Inigo Montoya… and what do they say but… “Hola, mi nombre es Inigo Montoya.  Tú mataste a mi padre, prepárate a morir.” – Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya.  You killed my father, prepare to die!  Apparently the girls saw the movie last year… and what other part would they remember?  So now whenever someone asks what book I’m reading, I just have to say, have you seen the movie with Inigo Montoya, ect. and they know exactly what book I’m reading.  Crazy!  Who would have thought that all of the girls here would have heard of The Princess Bride?  

On another note, I realize it is a couple of days late, but Feliz día de amor y amistad!  I was never one to celebrate Valentine’s Day at home, but here it was huge!  The sisters sold these cute little boxes (that Thalia and I put together) that were filled with candy and other assorted pink/red objects with tons of hearts.  You know, the general Valentine’s Day stuff.  Additionally, during their usual recess/study time the girls had a Valentine’s Day party that consisted of a ton of random games that were absolutely hilarious to watch. 

Pin the tail on the donkey

Trying to get the pen into the bottle

The first one was pin the tail on the donkey. 

They then played this game where they had a pen attached to a string that they tied onto the back of the girl’s shirt.  She then had to get the pen into the opening of a soda bottle (all the while wearing a skirt!).  It was ridiculous to watch!

Eating string

Next, the girls were given a piece of candy with a piece of string tied to each end.  The girls got into teams of two and put one end of the string in their mouth.  The goal was to eat the length of the string to get to the candy and the pair that got to the candy first won.

Trying to eat the candy

The next game consisted of taping a piece of candy to their cheek and other girls with candy taped to their cheek would try to eat the piece off of their competitor’s cheek.  This game often ended with the girls rolling on the ground.

Lastly, the girls played a version of bobbing for apples, except instead of bobbing for apples, they tried to get a coin out of the bottom of a small bowl.  

The night ended with the returning girls putting on various skits in the auditorium.  All in all, this was the most I have celebrated Valentine’s Day in a long time!

Peace and love to everyone at home!

There is no cruise control in Honduras…

Saturdays are our free days.  As of yesterday around 5:00 PM, the plan for today was to sleep in (and when I say sleep in, I mean we would wake up around 7:30, due to the light coming in our room and the noise in the hallway outside, which is two hours later than usual), eat breakfast, do laundry, go for a run, take a shower, and wander around Santa Rosa.  However, last night around 8:30, Sor Yolanda asked if we would be at all interested in going to La Esperanza with Sor Roselba because she was going to pick up some produce and it would be a great opportunity for us to see more of Honduras – and the town in beautiful.  Of course we wanted to go, the only drawback being that Sor Roselba was leaving at 6:45, which meant we only got to sleep in for about 20 minutes. 

We traveled to La Esperanza today.  On the way we not only saw a herd of cows walking down the road, but we also saw a chicken run across the road.  I was able to legit ask Thalia, “Why did the chicken cross the road?”!  Unfortunately, I was not able to get pics of either event, though. 

Driving in Honduras is always an adventure as there are pot holes everywhere which means that you don’t always stay on the right side of the road… you pretty much drive where ever there is a flat space, and speed bumps that you practically have to stop in front of before you can drive over them.  Hence, cruise control is not really a possibility. 

We picked up the produce in La Esperanza and walked around the town a little bit.  Today was the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes, so we visited this little chapel built into the side of a hill.

The church

 It may not look like it, but each of these steps went at least mid way up my shin... they were HUGE!

Me and Thalia 

The shrine inside of the church 

Additionally, we went to a park/public bathing area called Baños Elquiscamote which was absolutely beautiful!

 One of the waterfalls at the bath house

 Julie, this one is just for you!

 Another of the beautiful waterfalls

There was a "shower" inside of and enclosed area that people used to bathe, but there were two outside too.  I thought the water spattering on the cement looked cool.

Lastly, we visited the Fuerte San Cristobal.  

 The fort 

 One of the really cool/interestingly carved statues that were outside of the fort.  I personally like the mountain in the background 

Just another cool pic.  My artistic picture-taking skills are amazing!

I also have some cool pics of the drive, but I thought that this would be enough for now... so you'll just have to wait for those.  Sorry... I need to keep all of you in suspense somehow.  Loves from Honduras! 

School has started!

Yesterday (Tuesday) was the first day of school for all of the girls and today is the first full day of school.  This means a couple of things for Thalia and I (yes, Thalia got her late on Saturday night.  My very own, living, breathing Spanish/English dictionary has arrived!): 

1.  All 60 internas are here which means I have even more names to learn.  YAY!  I’m getting a couple of them already, but there are still a ton that I don’t know.

2.  I have the pleasure of waking up at 5:20 so that I can oversee the girl’s breakfast at 6:00AM.  I haven’t woken up that early on a regular basis… ever.  I’m pretty sure that I woke up around 6:00 for high school (maybe 5:45 my freshman/sophomore year when I had to catch the bus).  

3.   Thalia and I are starting to teach classes.  However, for the first 6 weeks we only have classes (really more like review sessions) for the internas after their normal school day is over. 

The first day of school was nothing like I have seen before.  In the States, students are rarely excited to go back to school (especially middle school and high school age students which is what these girls basically are).  Here, the teachers all lined the hallway in front of the auditorium holding balloons, cheered, and hit the girls on the head with the balloons.  The girls were all excited and cheering as they were filed into the auditorium for their welcoming ceremony.  As all of the girls were filing in, one of the teachers was emceeing the introduction and had them cheering on a regular basis (I couldn’t understand what he was saying or why they were cheering, but it sure was loud).  We then proceeded to have an hour long (at least, I think) welcome ceremony complete with an introduction to all of the girls who will be graduating this year, a skit about school, and a skit in which the teachers dressed up as saints or angels (either that or the Greek gods – I’m betting it was saints or angels).  Additionally, at the end of the ceremony, Sor Mirna cut a ribbon that had a large 2012 on it... welcome to the new school year!  (Unfortunately, I didn't get a good pic of it.)  Here are some pictures of the welcome ceremony, I was sitting kinda far away, so I apologize for the poor quality:

 I didn't hear what all of the different flags stood for, but the senior girls carried them in at the beginning of the ceremony.

 The senior class.

 The teacher's skit.

A majority of the teachers, I think one or two may be missing.

While school is going on and I’m not yet teaching actual classes (the girls have 6 week sessions in which they have only certain classes and I’m not going to start teaching English until the second and third sessions), I’m pretty much doing whatever Sor Mirna asks me to do… so yesterday and today I was helping her enter things into the computer and I traced and cut out an obscene number of flowers (I don’t know what they are for, but the scissors started giving me a blister on my thumb)! 

Yesterday was also the first day that Thalia and I took some of the girls out shopping in Santa Rosa for various things that they need.  This will occur every Tuesday.  Let me just say that I’m not a huge fan of shopping… much less shopping with a group of teenage girls who pretty much just want to spend all of the money they have on random things… and when there are 10 of them that I’m in charge of…  and I’m in a city that I don’t know that well… and we are walking very  close to cars that don’t stop for pedestrians… and we go to the market which is extremely cramped and I can’t always see all of the girls at one time and they are all going to different booths to get different things.  Oh, well, I’m sure I’ll get used to it and it will be easier once I get to know the city better.

Well, I guess I should get ready for the English/Math review session that I have to lead this afternoon… wish me luck. 

P.S.  It’s still cold here… as in I’m wearing a sweatshirt and my jacket everywhere.  Because although we are “inside” it is all open air and the walls don’t really retain heat even if it were warmer inside.  So basically I’m outside 24/7 and it feels like it has to be somewhere in the 50s.  (I actually just looked it up and it is really in the 70s, but there is no sun.  It feels so cold, though!)

Oh, the fruit!

I believe I have mentioned before the difference in the food that is here… but one thing that I will never complain about is the complete abundance of fruit.  There is always a fresh supply and I could have at least one fresh piece of fruit with every meal if I so desired (it has been pretty close to that too!)  We always have bananas, kiwi (YUM, my favorite!), mangos, apples, pears, we had fresh pineapple the other day, and other types of fruit that I have never seen before and have not gotten the names of.  And if you don’t feel like eating a piece of fruit, there is always fresh fruit juice – just don’t drink the watermelon juice.  I love watermelon, don’t get me wrong.  But I think that the best part of watermelon is the eating it.   It is fun, has an interesting texture, and you can have watermelon seed spitting contests when you are done.  It is the fruit of summer.  But in juice form, it’s just not good.  You would think it would be, because watermelon is, after all, a majority water.  But it really is just watered down watermelon with little chunks of grit in it – like I said, not my favorite.  But oh well, now I just know to stear clear of it. 

PS if anyone has/knows of a good way to eat mango, please let me know.  I have yet to find a good way to eat it without becoming completely drenched in mango juice… sticky hands and face.  

I have clean clothes!!! I think…

I just spent the last hour or so doing my laundry (it is currently about 11:45 on Saturday morning, I’m not sure what time I’ll be posting this, though).  For those of you who know me/have lived with me at all, you know that I’m not a huge fan of doing my laundry… especially in Madison.  I mean, you have to keep track of what time it is to make sure that you take your clothes out of the washer or drier so that someone else doesn’t throw all of you laundry on the floor.  And I have the tendency to forget that I’m doing laundry.  I was kinda dreading doing my laundry here. 

Although the sisters have two washing machines, they do not currently have water to use them, so they are temporarily being used as very expensive counter space.  This means that I got to wash all of my clothes by hand.  And I actually kinda enjoyed it.  I have been kinda concerned the last couple of days about the notion of having to do my laundry for a couple of reasons:  

1. I have never done all of my laundry by hand before.  There are those few items that say hand-wash only that I kinda spot wash when needed or that I swirl around in soapy water when I decide that they actually need to be washed.

2. There are little washing stations on the porches that we use to wash out the mops that are completely  made out of cement and I was concerned that by washing my clothes, I would eventually ruin them/put holes in them. 

3.  I really had no idea what I had to do (did I mention that already)

However petty these fears were, I had been putting off doing my laundry for the last couple of days. 

When I got down to the washing area, I realized that I actually had nothing to worry about.  I had watched some of the girls wash their clothes, so I had the main idea of what I had to do… it couldn’t be that hard.  In addition, this washing station had this plastic-like covering over the groves you rub your clothes over so not to ruin your clothes.  I could totally do this. 

So I started washing my clothes.  Get water out of the basin under the scrubbing board (I’m not sure about the correct terminology.  If anyone knows and wants to enlighten me, I would greatly appreciate it), pour it over my clothes, rub on some soap (the soap is a cylinder solid chunk of soap that you roll over the clothing), add more water, scrub the clothes, rinse, and ring dry.  After a couple of shirts, I got the hang of it – I’m not entirely sure how clean those clothes got.  However, dirt definitely came out of the pair of jeans that I washed (they were really dirty, but I didn’t realize how dirty), and a bunch of blue dye came out of one of my shirts that is rather new and I haven’t washed a whole lot, so I must have been doing something right. 

So, now the clothes I’ve been wearing for the past two weeks are currently hanging out on some clothes lines behind the convent for the world (or who ever happens to be back there) to see.  But doing all of this laundry got me to thinking that I really have too many clothes… I mean, I only washed one pair of jeans and about six shirts (less than half of the clothes I brought which is nowhere close to the number of clothes that are still at home)… and I have been here two weeks.  I don’t know… something about that just seems off. 

On a slightly more up-beat note:  I had been slightly concerned because I have yet to figure out a decent way to get a workout when I’m here (if anyone has ideas for me, once again, I would greatly appreciate them), hands and wrists will at least be stronger when I get home due to washing clothes and wringing them out before hanging them to dry. 

Peace to all my loved ones at home!  Miss you and love you all!!

When I was a hen…

We have a Zumba DVD here at the school that the girls occasionally use at night for gimnasio (exercise).  And because I am young and here, the sisters have given me the responsibility to lead this nighttime exercise.  Last night, the girls wanted to dance, but we couldn´t find the DVD and Sor Yolanda was nowhere to be found (she is the guardian of the DVD).  But… the girls wanted to dance, and because I have been doing Zumba with them, they have gotten it into their head that I can dance and that I can lead Zumba without the DVD.  Which everyone who knows me should know that I can´t dance to save my life.  But these girls wanted me to dance… so I pulled out the typical dancing with your fingers move, you know, the one where you move your index fingers from side to side simultaneously.  Well, no one here had ever seen that before and thought it was the most hilarious thing.  I spent the next 10 minutes trying to teach the girls how to do it… and only about 3 of them got it.  

Still trying to get me to dance, they asked if I had ever taken dance classes.  In my broken Spanish I tried to explain that the only dance classes I had ever taken were when I was little.  Of course me being me and needing to talk with my hands, when I said I was little, I put my hand, palm down, at about my waist – indicating little as we do in the US.  The girls all looked at me like I was crazy and Sor Berta explained to me that when you talk about people in Honduras your hand should be positioned up and down, palm facing away from you (like you are giving a high-five).  The way I positioned my hand, they use for talking about hens (at least I think that is what she said, I´ll have to ask again).  So apparently when I was young, I was a hen.  YES!  

On another note… yesterday it was 55° at home in Milwaukee… and guess what, it was somewhere between 50° and 60° here in Santa Rosa – and we are outside all day.  I thought I was escaping the cold of Wisconsin winters this year!  So not fair!