Family Day program

Father's Day here is in March and Mother's Day the same as in the States, so to avoid doing a program for each so close together, we combined them into one Family Day Program.

Each class did something, a dance, a song, or something, and it went really well. It was held at the Lion's Club.

The first picture is the principals creative way to hang up the large banner. He tied a full bottle of water to the rope that was tied to the banner and threw it up and over the rafters. It took a long time and a few trials before he finally got it, and then they decided that because of the wind it wasn't in a good spot, so after trying to place it for about 30 minutes, it was no good and they had to move it, behind the basketball backboard, but hey, only in Honduras (we use that saying a lot!)

Two pics of bright costumes dancing: 1st grades doing a traditional Honduran dance in traditional costumes. The two girls for a close up of the dress. The kids in one long line are my 2nd graders showing posters they drew and painted of their families and said what they love most about their family.

Chiminike

Some pics from our field trip last Friday to Tegucigalpa to the Children's museum.

The boy laying with his mouth open is on a bed of nails. You lay down first and then they push a button and automatically the nails come up. This way you don't feel the pain. Pretty cool. I tried it.

The last picture is like a jungle gym but in a design of a cell nucleus. I loved the creativity at this place. There was a "Learn about your Body"room and on section talked about different bacteria and how they make you smell bad, your pits, your mouth, etc. and they actually had smell simulators. Of course I had to try it to see if it worked and boy did it! ugh! but it gave Amber a good laugh.

One of those days

Ever have a day like this?
I get up around 7 (no school today!) and decide I'd like to have chocolate chip pancakes during my devo time. But to make the pancakes, I need the kitchen utencils, which are dirty, so I clean the dishes. Bueno, I can begin. I start the mixin and alas! my milk has gone bad, so I borrow some from Beto but since his fridge is an overachieving refridgerator, it's frozen, so I have to hold it over the stove fire for about 8 minutes, making a mess of the condensation dripping down onto the stove. Finally I get enough milk in the mix and realize I don't have any baking powder. And I'm in my pijamas, so I have to change clothes to go to my neighbors to borrow the powder. Bueno, I get it and finallythe mix is ready. This all takes about 45 minutes, then I cooked the pancakes, got everything on the table, cleaned up the countertop, and after all that I finally had my breakfast/devo about an hour and a half after I woke up. And I don't even have KIDS!
Later I returned to the store where I bought bad milk yesterday, of course not knowing it was bad until I got home, so I returned to the store yesterday only to find it had already closed(on Sundays if something is open at all it will only be open from about 8am till noon or 1pm. So I went today but they said I had to bring in the empty bags I bought yesterday. See, they come in a plastic bag and then I putthem in a pitcher at home, but they were pouring in chunky. gross. So I had to walk all the way home(about 10 min.), dig the bags out of the trash(thank goodness I wasn't too ambitious and had already taken the trash out!) and walk back to the store. Pretty surprisingly, they gave me two new bags of milk, no problems! Yes!
Tomorrow we have off too, Honduran Labor day.

Field Trip!

Today the Kinders, Preperatories, First and Second Grades went all the way to Tegucigalpa on a field trip! We went on the busses that have a monopoly on running hourly/daily to Teguc. from La Esperanza (the owner's have a kid in the school). It was about a 3 hour bus ride, and a lot of parents went! That's the different thing here: there was at least one parent for every kid, it was almost mandatory. I was in charge of one sweet girl (the one who ate her work) because her mom went on the other field trip with her brother. The school split up into younger/older kids and the older kids went to a lake and some caves. This was all for Earth Day.
The Children's museum we went to is called Chiminike(chim-in-ikee). I called Amber ahead of time and she met us there and got in free as a teacher. We'd always wanted to go but never got around to it. I'd always thought it was more like a Chuckee Cheese's, but it was an awesome science and industry-type museum. On the way there we passed the Federal Court building and Dani, my "charge", said, "Oh miss, it looks like the White House! Except it's green. So maybe it could be called The Green House! But it also has some orange (bricks), so it could be called the green and Orange House.!"
The 3 hour tour was really cool and afterwards we got to go to the mall! to the food court! and eat....oh, the plethora of choices! The kids from school are so funny. Whenever they see a plane or helicopter they get soooo excited, like it's a space ship or something! Definately a different tribe than I had in Watts.

To conclude, a few prayer requests...

The family of Marta, a 60-ish woman in our church who died of cancer last night.

Our small youth group Bible study, to encourage more youth to come.

Those in La Esperanza who are living without any esperanza, "hope".

Pics of Tampa

A recent quote"

"Miss, I'm brushing with refreshing crystals! mmm!..." a 1st grader as she passed me on her way to the bathroom after lunch to brush...it's standard in schools here.

Here are just a few pics of the fun times we had in Florida. Lindsay strawberry picking, us in the van rocking out to Amy's favorite musack, and Caleb and Seth helping Hope to wave goodbye. So sad! The red-bearded lumberjack type guy in the foreground in the van isn't one of my sister's birth children, but he became my nephew while I was there. Vive the Groh's!

Goodbye Spring Break...boo hoo..

Well, my trip is almost officially over. I've already started my trip back, a day early. I tried to change my original ticket to leave from Tampa, but with my ticket that's impossible, with Contintental. So I tried to just change it to a different day and time. Again, it's contintental. So i tried to just change the day, but leave at the same time. Well, monday was already sold out but even if i could've gone tuesday they woul'dve charged me the same amount of money i paid in the first place!
so instead of renting a car and driving from tampa to jacksonville through the night, i got a cheap flight from tampa to jacksonville on southwest, which....oh my goodness. Their cheerfullness is just NOT WELCOME after the frustrations of going through security. You know that Bible verse that says something like "singing to a wounded soul only makes it worse" ? I think i'ts in Proverbs.
I had blueberry muffin mix in my backpack because i had to first take out 10 pounds of stuff from my suitcase so i would'nt have to pay the overweight fee (good thing they don't have a weight limit on people!) . The xray machine showed a mysterious green substance, so of course the lady took everything out of my bag and said, "Well, I'll let you go with your canned blueberries THIS time, even though I should'nt, because it's in a box. Ok, can I have you put your stuff back in your bag?" I wanted to say, "No, you put it back. You took it out." and of course i had to chug all my water and the rest of my coke. A minute later as i'm putting all my stuff back in my backpack, which is nearly impossible since it's 10 pounds of stuff i pulled out of my suitcase, another old lady comes over, picks up my almost empty bottle, and says, "oh, you still got food in there." well, you can imagine the thoughts that went through my mind!
so what should've been an enjoyable flight wasn't b/c i don't enjoy cheery people when i'm mad.

i get to the hotel in a shuttle just fine. but there was an old man who was also waiting for the shuttle and he yells, "he girl. you got that there big ol suitcase on the plane?" well, i'm standing here with it, aren't i? turns out he's on the same shuttle as me. oh joy. he and the driver, both named jack (like, oh my gosh! you're jack too? how cute! that's how it would've gone down in Los Angeles) jabbered away, one from NY and one from Georgia, so it might as well have been in Chinese for me.

I forgot my canned pie fillings in my sisters car, so once i got to the hotel, i walked to the nearest walmart, which wasn't far (surprise surprise...i'm in the south!) and got asked twice by two creepy white guys if i wanted a ride. after it happened the second time on the way back i began to think, hmmm....maybe that's not unusual here. maybe it's just that friendly southern way. but after i asked, i found out it was the creepy kidnapper way.

i'm safe and sound now in my hotel and will leave here tomorrow at 4am to catch my 6am flight and get home at around 4pm tomorrow. THen work on Monday! Happy happy, joy joy.
Hope you all enjoy your Easter more than if you're traveling!

Tampa

I'm here visiting my sister and her family on a last minute spring break trip. Let me fill you in on the adventures of traveling.

To get a cheap flight at the last minute i had to come contintental, which i swore 12 years ago i would never take again for other problems i had...but alas...and i knew it wold happen again.
I flew out of a northern town in hondruas and the flight was late leaving to go to houston. i had a one hour lay over there but since it was late i didn't make my connecting flight. i was in the next to the last row of the plane, so it took me "forever" to get off of it, and I had to go through customs, and had to pickp my bag and check it again before flying onto Jacksonville, which for those of you who know Florida know it's not that close to tampa, but like i said, it was cheap. i waited at the bag merrygo round for 30 minutes before i realized it was sitting on the ground next to it! i could've made my connection if i'd seen it at first!

the funnest/challenging part was the layover in houston. since i missed my connection i had to wait about 3 hours till the next flight. i got major culture shock within the first minute in the airport. for those of you who have been in the int'l. terminal in continental, you've seen the 100's of t.v. screens up on the wall that show lot's of visual moving images all at once...freaked me out. now i'm making myself sound real out of touch. i thought i would start crying when i called my sister.

i couldn't decide either what i wanted to eat! i decided that whenever i move back to the states i'll either be so skinny from not being able to ever decide what to eat and just giving up, or i'll be so fat from not being able to decide and eating everything. the terminal seemed to go on forever...on wing was about the size of our airport in honduras, and that's only one wing of one terminal of one airline! amazing! America truly just does have too many choices.

i was excited about the toilet seat covers, paper towels, and hot water in the bathrooms, (i like to wash dishes here with hot water even tho my sis has a dish washer),. and there was food in the bookstores i'd never seen before. there were more starbucks than i think i've seen in Long Beach, and even a Ruby's diner! it was probably the most exciting part of my trip so far! just kidding amy!

it's been great so far and i'm really blessed to be able to spend this time with family. yesterday we went to a strawberry farm and picked strawberries fora bout an hour and came home with literally at least 25 pounds of them, all for only 6 dollars. we've already made chocolate covered ones, strawberry bread, and had strawberry smoothies for breakfast this morning.

tomorrow we go shopping and i'm mostly going to stock up on food itemsi won't see again till december.
Have a happy Easter week everyone!