A long weekend (finally!); good friends; a good story...

Well, it seems that Swine Flu is spreading itself around Tegus again. Unfortunately, several kids at Pinares caught it, including one of my students. On Wednesday my kids weren't allowed to come to school, and then when even more cases were discovered they just closed all of the elementary for Thursday and Friday. Which meant our first long weekend in a long time! If you read my previous post about Donald Miller, or if you've read his latest book, you know what I mean by living a good story. I feel that I did a pretty good job this weekend!
So, I started with a little TLC by spending a lazy Thursday meeting friends for lunch, hanging out by the pool at Hotel Maya, and dinner with the novio.
On Friday a group of 5 of us headed up the mountain to the entrance to the national park we live near, called La Tigra. Our amazing friend and coworker Janice borrowed a car and drove us there--she's the best! We took our time and hiked for a couple of hoursout to a waterfall where we ate lunch and then we kept hiking across the mountain to the other entrance that is in a tiny pueblo called San Juancito, it's an old mining town that still has abandoned wood-and-tin-roof-houses built by the New York mining company that split about 50 years or so ago. Once in San Juancito we walked out to a little hostel (really just a cabin big enough for 5) owned by a German couple who moved here about 11 years ago. They made us a delicious vegetarian dinner and we got a tour of their awesome property!

We left earlyish on Saturday because Sarah and I were going to meet up with Macayla that afternoon to head out to a transition home. The ministry that Macayla is very involved in, Manos Extendidas, recently started a transition home that houses 4 girls who were in orphanages or detention centers. This was their response after discovering that most of these young teen girls would wind up pregnant within 6 months of leaving the orphanages. So Sarah, Macayla, and I spent the evening baking, watching a movie, and just having fun with these wonderful, precious girls. Oh, and we got our hair done, as well. :)



And to top it all off, I even went to a little museum of Honduras' air force with Daniel on Sunday. Let's just say, by the time my alarm went off at 5:30 this morning, I felt quite accomplished, but also not really in the mood to let my long weekend of amazingness end!

I was told to share this...

For those who don't know, I'm getting my Master's degree in Language Arts and Children's Literature. This semester I am taking a class with the same name. It is focusing on writer's workshop and reader-response to quality literature. Anyways, we are instructed to write, edit, and polish pieces throughout the semester in the way we would conduct a writer's workshop in our classrooms. We recently turned in our first "published" piece, which could be anything we wanted (writing prompts are pretty disdained around here...). After we shared our pieces, my professor implored us all to share our pieces somewhere, with someone, "that's the whole point!", she said.
Therefore... here I am, and below is what I wrote for class. Aside from not wanting to just hand it over and say, "Read This!", to someone... I figured it kinda, sorta related to the nature of this blog. Here ya go:

Same Difference

I pushed through the bustling crowds, my quick strides appearing much more determined than the slow meander of your average extranjero in the street market. Colors danced all around me, but I didn’t let my eyes linger on anything—not yet. I was, in fact, quite as determined as my fast pace suggested—eager to distance myself as much as possible from the others. I’m sure you’re familiar with their type; those loud, overly-American tourists who draw everyone’s attention and give the locals a just reason to roll their eyes and scowl. Those people who think that, by yelling, their words will somehow translate and the Mayan women will understand that they want the same tablecloth in a different color. The kind of person who will order food at a restaurant and openly express her disgust at finding some unknown cut of meat or potentially amoebic salad.
The last thing I wanted was to be recognized as that kind of American, so I squeezed my way down the main strip, past the rows of shops and venders. I dodged groups of children calling, “Amiga! Compre algo de mi. Algo para tu familia. Si Amiga….”. Friend! Buy something from me. Something for your family. Yes, friend! I reminded myself not to buy from them; not to support families that keep their children out of school in order to make money from the soft-hearted gringos. Just beyond a man with a push-cart full of bananas I found my freedom in an alley full of locals selling fresh tortillas, cheap shoes, and pirated music.
Moseying away from the Americans with their dollars and their English and their cameras and their money pouches tucked into their neon-colored shirts, I tried to appear as separate as possible. Could they tell that I came to this country with them? Surely my manners, my Spanish, my appearance would spare me the automatic label given to my loud compañeros? I wondered what that label was. Rich? We buy seemingly everything in sight and stay at the nicest hotels. Rude? We snap a picture whenever we please. Arrogant? In everything we do, is there an implied superiority?
Marveling at the depth of my own observations, I found my way back to our beautiful hotel just in time for the three-course dinner served nightly. After stowing my bags of souvenirs, I took a couple choice pictures of the Marimba band playing in the courtyard before finding my seat at the table and promptly declined the steak dinner the waiter was serving.
“No, un plato vegeteriano por favor.” No, a vegetarian plate please.
Alas. Am I really any different?

Semillas Honduras

Please pray for, and consider supporting, my friend Macayla's new project with teen girls.

http://www.semillashonduras.blogspot.com/