End of Week 4 + A Beautiful Night

Here's the rest of last week! Officially halfway through my time here... Craziness!!!

Thursday: We finally have everyone back at Casa! Yay!!! When weirst arrived, David told us about a cult that was in the newspaper – pray for them, won't ya? I feel like I'm throwin out prayer requests like crazy, but I also feel like being here is making me more conscious about all the prayer this world needs! Anyways, the end of the world was supposed to be on Saturday, June 30, but that didn't happen... so pray for them! English class at 2 – it was so encouraging, because the kids remembered stuff from Monday!! We're going through different vowels in the English language (yay Rachel for being a Speech and Hearing major!), and not only did they remember a lot of the vowels, they remembered the meanings of some of the example words we used! After class, we played hot potato with a jicaro and Xan's singing :-) After dinner at the church, Pastor Geovany spoke at an HLT session on idols. It was tough though, because our usual translators were all gone, and they literally just made someone from the audience who knew enough English translate. It was really hard to understand both Geovany and the translator. My head hurt! However, I caught enough of it to get some good things out of it! He spoke for a very long time (US time haha), even my attention span was challenged :-)

Friday: We hung out at Casa Amor for an hour until the exercise class was over, then Maura and David took us to the school! It was about a 10/15 minute walk down the road next to the office and store. In one room, there was about 20-30 kids working on math while we talked to the teacher – apparently, they received a whole bunch of laptops, but the teacher doesn't know how to use computers, much less teach it. There were also 3 that didn't work – but we didn't have any idea how to fix them :-/ In the other room, there were about 20ish kids finishing up homework (it was almost noon), and we didn't stay quite as long. David and I had a great chat on the way back about the educational system in Honduras. It's pretty awful... I'll do a post on it sometime. I'm much more determined to keep up with blogging now. I feel bad about not keeping everybody updated so much... After lunch, we evangelized as per usual. This time, however, we split into two groups because there were so many of us. April took most of the people who don't know Spanish, and Michelle, Mandy, Rachel and I went in a different group (only Rachel doesn't know much Spanish). It was hard! It wasn't even a problem of Spanish – it was an issue of knowing what to say! I didn't realize I'd have so much problems with that, but thankfully knowing Spanish wasn't the issue. We talked with Alma and her family, and Luis and hers. Two single women, both with HIV – they both talked about the discrimination they have received, both from some of the people in the community and some of the people in their church. However, they have found a home in God's family – so it was really cool to hear their stories. Pray for both – one's a new Christian and is still learning, and the other is a stronger Christian, but has received a ton of discrimination lately. After chatting with them, we had beleadas with Edith (She ROCKS! I love her beleadas!). Since it was Friday, it was pizza night, but thank goodness, it was much later than usual, because I was still very full from beleadas :-) Oh, I don't think I've told what beleadas are (probably a good thing, eh?) They are flour tortillas (Edith's are the best), beans, scrambled eggs, cheese (Honduran cheese... I don't know what it is, but it's so flavorful!), and maybe butter :-) (for more flavor haha).

The weekend was super laid back (yay!). On Saturday, I slept in super late, spent the whole day hanging out, posting photos on facebook (It was a complete day of posting photos... yay internet) Had Wendy's for lunch, chuch in the evening. We didn't get one of the headsets for the translator (the other gringos were gone, so it was back to headsets). I sorta kinda got it, but not really... Head hurt again hah. On the way home, we dropped off a man and his wife and baby. The man rode in the back of the truck with us, and we learned that they usually walk about half an hour to church every week – so crazy!

On Sunday, I rested in the morning, delicious! In the afternoon, there was a sudden scramble for laundry, because the wind was blowing it all off the lines and it was starting to sprinkle. We saved the laundry, then danced in the rain for about 5, 10 minutes. Sooooo fun! There was about 6 of us being completely ridiculous and getting SOAKED in about a minute. The wind was so awesome! :-) This has actually been a really dry rainy season. I think we may have had more days without rain than with rain. This is one of the few days that it actually rained “on schedule” aka around four or five in the evening. Weird! Colorado's been having a dry season too – Apparently there's been a lot of wildfires.... It's also been weird, a couple days, it was hotter in the US than in Honduras, and some people had power out because of a storm... sounds like we switched countries for a bit! Hahaha.

Dinner at the church, then milkshakes afterwards because it's Peggy's last night! :-( We had an impromptu party in our apartment! My favorite part is when almost all the gringos are introducing Bohemian Rhapsody to Criz and singing and dancing ong. Soooo fun! I think Criz was very confused :-P

Also, Caleb made a tumblr page! A lot of it is very accurate and made us laugh a ton! Not sure if you will, but it gives you a good idea of our time here :-P 

Monday, July 2

This morning I brought my laptop to Casa Hogar so I could write a ton for my internship... I´m planning on asking more about conflicts in Honduras and how people here view the conditions here. I´m hoping it can happen without tooooo much difficulty :-) Criz came along, which was fun! English class was good... there´s a couple kids who are super bright and willing to learn '' they´re picking it up like sponges! David, f e´s nine), came into the office earlier with his brother Ian (who is 4 and crazy), and David practiced English and Ian was crazy. David is so responsible and way super mature. Ian lives in his own world – one that I want to join! It seems so fun! My first impression of Ian was when April asked him to dance and he just stood there and pretended to fall asleep instead. Later I caught him dancing – it´s a crazy dance that reminds me a lot of Elvis :-P Half of what Ian says is just gibberish. Crazy kid! David learned the word ¨crazy¨ pretty early in our time here because of Ian haha.

On the way back to the apartment, we stopped by Espresso Americano, which is like the Starbucks here! They have great drinks for like 2 bucks – but the sizes are smaller. Okay by me. It´s just for fun, not because I need the caffeine.

It started pouring at 5ish again – it was cool when the sun was out, but then the power went out again, so no internets again. Ay, I feel like I´m living in Honduras!

Since Peggy left this morning (So glad we got to have at least one month with her!!! :-), we didn´t have Joshua Bible study tonight – plus the power was still out, so it was pitch black. Katie took her ukelele out to the pool and we all worshiped out there. Sarah and I actually paced around the complex and sang whenever we got near :-) It was just such a beautiful night!!! All the lights near us were out -- I was just sad it was cloudy -- but other than that, it was a perfect night! The temperature was balmy, I got to go barefoot through the puddles and soak in the beauty of the mountains and fireflies... Sometimes there would be lightning in the distance that would throw the mountains into sharp relief -- it was magical. Something you can't capture on film because it's so dark...  

After being here for a whole month and only having a month left, it was good to talk and pray and worship and just get ready to live this next month in anticipation of what God´s gonna do! Love it. So hey! We´ve made it halfway y´all! I´m excited to spend another month and share it with my readers :-P