How it feels to be robbed.

1.  Scary.
Once you realize that the guys are not just walking down the street, but really heading your way with bad intentions, your body may start shaking and your feet might forget how to work, and your Spanish skills might swirl down the drain.

2.  Outrageous.
After the initial shock, you'll become offended and insulted at the injustice of someone thinking that they can try to point a gun at your husband and take what they want, when they want, where they want.

3. Frustrating.
You might want to scream at them because other time the robbers have been decent enough to give you back your ID cards, which they do not need and which cause a great hassle to replace.  Or your favorite purse that a man would, seemingly, not need or want to carry around.  But no... not this time.  When asked a final time to return the identification, the robbers just might reply, "Come and get it" as they run off.   Jerks.

4.  Lingering.
You might be paranoid afterwards, triple and quadruple checking the street before you go anywhere near the gate.  You might replay the scene in your head a hundred times, wondering how you could have gotten inside faster and avoided it.  Or congratulating yourself for stuffing your wedding rings in your underwear when they were distracted.

You might hate the fact that your friend had to be with you that night, had to be exposed to such a thing.

You might try your hardest not to let events such as these ruin your perception of Honduras itself as you finish out your last few months here.

You might thank God that it was only stuff, and that nothing serious happened, yet still wonder why it had to happen at all.

And you move on.  Because it's happened before, and it could very well happen again.  And there's a life to live out there... free of fear and doubt. 

You might want to throw some humor into it...

Oh The Places You'll Go

Today I read, "Oh The Places You'll Go" to my class.  One of my students, recently back from a trip to Universal, bought it in Seussville and wanted to share it in honor of Dr. Seuss' birthday.  
It's been a while since I've read the book, and I really wasn't prepared for all the profundity it held for me.  

You see, today was the deadline to turn in contracts, or a letter stating your intent to not return.  It was a sad day amongst my closest Pinares friends and myself--those of us who, with heavy hearts, turned in letters, and not contracts. In two or three stiff, formal sentences it felt as if three of my most wonderful years came to an undramatic close. 
I'm sad. So sad to leave these children I've come to love so much, and these friends I can now call bests.  But even though I cry at the drop of a hat nowadays, thinking about leaving...I still don't see myself here next year.  I still feel like the decision to leave is right.  I feel peace.  Which is weird to say for someone who hides her tears from the bus kids almost every day (I don't know what it is--maybe the time it gives me to think--but I get choked up all the time on the bus lately; thinking about "my babies!")
I turned in my letter without any fuss... the secretary wasn't at her desk so I just dropped it off and left.  No questions, no talking... nada. I didn't think much about it after that, until Dr. Seuss had to barge in and spew profound nonsense at me.  At first, I did just fine as I read the last book Seuss published before he died. However, near the end it was hard not to cry as I thought of all the places my kiddoes are going and all that awaits them!


"You'll get mixed up, of course,
as you already know.
You'll get mixed up
with many strange birds as you go.
So be sure when you step.
Step with care and great tact
and remember that Life's
a Great Balancing Act.
Just never forget to be dexterous and deft.
And never mix up your right foot with your left.

And will you succeed?
Yes! You will, indeed!
(98 and 3/4 percent guaranteed.)

KID, YOU'LL MOVE MOUNTAINS!"

I want them to move mountains!  ( ... I'd like them to do it by having faith as small as a mustard seed (see Matthew 17:20).  I want them to succeed!  I DON'T wan't them to "mixed up with many strange birds" as they go!  I hope I've taught them, in some small way, how to "step with care and great tact."


And I hope I can keep it together when I start to tell them I'm not going to be here next year.  


You can read the whole "Oh the Places You'll Go" here.

Protection

"Yet no one seized him because his time had not yet come." (John 8:20...and 7:30 and 7:44)
The people who hated Jesus had a few opportunities to catch him but as this verse (and several others like it) says, it wasn't time yet.
I have been reading John lately and these verses stuck out to me in light of my not-so-pleasent (yet not too terrible)-event one month ago.

I'm not going to go into all the details. I wasn't even going to post it because I didn't really tell people from back home (lets just say there are some people who really do not need another reason to dislike Honduras.)

The essence of my story is this:  It was the morning of our 6 month anniversary and someone tried to rob me while I was waiting outside for my bus to come in the morning.  I had everything with me, and the guy could have gotten away with a lot.  He tried to pull me up the street, away from the direction I had been walking.  The whole time I was praying that my bus would come (or my student's bodyguard, whom I often see driving to work on the same street).  But no one came.
There was no one around... and yet, all of a sudden, he saw something and ran away.  I, of course, ran in the opposite direction... towards whatever it was that scared him off.  There was nothing there.  No car had passed and nobody was walking by.  God saved me... it's that simple.  My time had not yet come.

Spelling Bee Disorganization (or, Cancelled Weekend Plans)

This year I told my friend, Stacy, who is heading up the spelling bee at our school this year, that I would help coach the spellers.  In part, I signed up because I felt guilty about not doing Challenge Club this year, and I wanted to be helping out after school in some way.  

The way Spelling Bee works here is this: first, each grade level does an in-class spelling bee; then, all the class winners from each grade level compete and are narrowed down to the top-three spellers of each grade.  In theory, speller #1 competes at the first competition, speller #2 at the second, and #3 is the backup.  However, we were never given any word about the secondary competition this year, so it looks like spellers 2 and 3 are out of luck. 

I found this picture here in an article about Indian kids
being good spellers.  But don't they kind of resemble
my students a little bit?  :)

Anyways, we went to the Discovery School (a bilingual, not-Christian school here in Tegus.) yesterday to a meeting for coaches. The idea was to determine who would help out in which way (as a word caller, a scribe, a judge, etc.)  

It turned out that our middle-man from our school must have forgotten to return some paperwork, because Stacy, Dan (another coach), and I weren't in the bag of names being "raffled" for helping positions. Since they had enough helpers, many of whom had traveled from across the country to be there and needed to participate in order to validate their long trip, we three were left job-less.  And a little bit resentful of attending a meeting from 4:00-6:00 on a Friday afternoon that ended up not pertaining to us at all. (In addition to pulling names to assign helpers, the meeting consisted of the leaders of the school trying to make motions to change the rules of the game the day before the event.  T.I.H.  This is Honduras.)

So (not-all-that-unfortunately), it is now Saturday and, instead of being stuck inside a room watching kids spell, I'm about to leave and buy some of my favorite things:  craft supplies.  I think I am going to make these for my students for Valentine's Day: 

Happy Saturday!

The Foot on the Bus

I'm choosing to write about The Foot on the Bus.

Not about how many times I've tried to contact the U.S. Embassy without success.

Not about the terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad (and yet slightly redeemed) week that I had when February began.

No. If I decided to give in and vent and rant and rave, I would release the seething rage I feel every time that snooty operator at the embassy answers the phone and gives me the her cold, curt replies.

I imagine she looks something like this.

Instead, I'm writing about something I've wanted to tell you about for a while now, and that is--there is a foot on my school bus.  Yea... a foot.

Believe me, the curiosity/suspense/confusion you're probably experiencing right now as you ask yourself, "what in the world is she talking about," is surely something like the feelings I felt during the several months I spent riding Bus 8 with Don Marcos (the driver) and Doña It's-been-too-long-for-me-to-ask-you-you're-name-now (the nanny) trying to imagine a reason or a purpose behind The Foot that sits in front of me every day.

Ever since the first day of school, there has been an artificial foot lying on the floor next to the driver's seat.  It's a left foot, and very realistic. Veins and all.  There's even a suspicious red coloration near the cut-off part that would be attached to the calf.  It's got a slight Morton's toe (which I used to call surfer toe, but I googled it and now know right terminology).  It's flesh colored... but more of of gringo color than that of a latino.

At first I didn't think much about The Foot.  It brought up images of those prank feet that you sometimes see hanging out of some jokester's trunk.  No one seemed to pay it any mind--not even the children (which is odd, don't you think?).
But then, I'm not sure when, I really started to believe that that Foot meant something.  I mean, why else would it ALWAYS be there, when other seemingly random items get tossed daily.  Could it be someone's prosthetic foot?

When that thought occurred to me, I tried a few times to get a good look at Don Marcos' left foot.  It wasn't easy from my seat behind the driver, so I'd try to stealthily turn around and sneak a peak while exiting the bus.  His foot seemed fine...  not like a fake-footless stump might look in a shoe.   Then there was one day when I saw him out of the bus, walking around the school, and that was when I was pretty convinced that his left foot was real.

So my suspicion rested, for one day, on the Doña.  Had I ever seen her feet?  I'd never paid attention.   Well, the next day she wore sandals, and two perfectly good feet stuck out of them. Wrong again.

And so, just last week, when I saw that the Doña was in a happier mood than usual, and Don Marcos wasn't paying attention, I just asked it; "Doña, do you know anything about that Foot?"

And after all the wondering and assuming, all the stories and possibilities that ran through my mind on my many tedious trips to and from school, the bus foot mystery came to a boring resolution--it was a gift from his father... a recuerdo.

Now I guess the mystery that remains is... why would his father give him a fake foot?

Here's the proof... I snuck a cellphone picture the other day while
pretending to listen to music.  WHY he chose to buckle up the foot
instead of his seatbelt that day is unknown... but it was a helpful
position to photograph.

Snooty Operator photo is from blogodidact.blogspot.com 

Chickenpox

Chicken Pox or Chickenpox?  I've seen it written both ways. Well...

Chickenpox are not so noticeable on darker-skinned kids, I now realize. 

3C has been attacked by a spreading case of the Chickenpox.  It began with a student who came back to school after a family trip, and realized a few days later that his cousin had given him Chickenpox.  No one realized that he had already exposed the class to the infection (probably because it is contagious before the spots show up), until yesterday, when a student's mother came by to let me know she was going to bring him to the school doctor (yep, our school has a real doctor, and some nurses too) to see if he had bug bites or ... something else.   It turned out not to be bug bites.  Today, two of my boys who commented about "bug bites" yesterday are also home with Chickenpox.  It appears that two fourth graders have it, too.

Anyone seen the movie Contagion yet?  I just saw it, and this situation keeps bringing to mind.

How old were you when you got the Chickenpox?  I think I was a baby.  Most people I know got it really young.  A few of my students say they've had the vaccine... but many have not had either the vaccine or the real infection.   I don't know... I just find it strange.  Maybe they're more sheltered than I was... but to have various third and fourth grade students who have yet to catch it seems odd.

Let me just say that the peace of having 4 students absent from an already not-too-big class is making for some calm days.  We are getting extra great behavior reports from special teachers, too.  I think I'll take some Chickenpox now and again...

My class rocks.

It's Friday and I love my class.  

That's all I have to share today.  

:)

Aren't they precious?

Friday News

1) I have a student teacher!

After a day's delay due to all that alleged snow in the north, Kelley arrived safely and has spent two days in 3C with me and my wild things. It is unnerving and yet feels slightly natural having her there. I'm excited about what this means for the next few months of teaching. Already her help has been amazing. Today I left school almost all caught up--something that hasn't happened on a Friday afternoon in a long time.

2) Something I've been happy about in the classroom lately is how well my kids are responding to a kid's book I really enjoy: The Thing About Georgie, a fun chapter book about a 4th grade boy who is a dwarf, struggling with the fact that he'll never be a musician like his parents and fearful that the new, normal-sized baby on the way will be.

3) Pray for Honduras. Think Mexico City and Man on Fire and you'll have an idea of what has been going on around here lately. Nearly every day my students' prayer requests relate to some kid or another (or adult, actually) who has been kidnapped. Praise the Lord that one 15 year old in San Pedro Sula made it home this week! In our latest staff meeting we learned that the climate of our school's families is one of fear. Our kids are the kinds of kids targeted, and many of them are terrified. It makes me feel ill just thinking of the possibility of something like this happening to one of my own.

4) These verses from Jeremiah chapter 9 spoke to me this week. Hmm... reading it again after writing the above makes me think about them together. What do you think?

v. 23-24.....This is what the LORD says: "Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom or the strong man boast of his strength or the rich man boast of his riches, but let him who boasts boast about this: that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight,"

Much needed weekend!

Every weekend the school provides transportation down the mountain on Saturdays and Sundays. The Saturday trips alternate between an outdoor market trip and a mall/grocery store/Sams Club kind of trip. This past Saturday was the latter trip. Now, I tend to be more of a market kind of girl, but this mall trip was necessary for us to stock up on essentials (including the typical essentials we Gringas must have: Raid and a wireless internet router.)
After the long and exhausting shopping trip, instead of heading back up our mountain I stayed in the city with Macayla (my friend who is going on her 4th year here in Teguc.) until Sunday afternoon. I must admit, it felt delightfully liberating to spend a couple days down in the city instead of up on our fairly isolated hill. Macayla lives in a great, super old, Colonial style neighborhood not too far from El Centro. AND she has a car, which is another amazingly freeing bonus!
I got to check out Macayla’s church this Sunday, which was in a pretty poor and supposedly sketchy part of town (another great reason to have a car!). It is the kind of place where orphans attend and addicts fall in from the street, but the pastor who preached was a tall black man from South Carolina and a decent number of Americans are involved as well. All in all, an exciting place to worship! ☺ I’ve been hearing about so many churches in the city and I’m looking forward to experiencing more!
In work-related news, school starts on Thursday and I have more to do than I would have liked. But, in my defense, Hannah (the other 3rd grade teacher) and I could only do so much because our grade-level team leader was stuck in the states unexpectedly after losing her passport. Since Academia los Pinares is very big on grade-level cooperation, we needed her input before we could create our rules, behavior management plans, or lessons. Thankfully she arrived on Friday so we can now get seriously to work!
Please pray that I can do a great job and not be anxious or stressed about starting this new year!

I will post pictures as soon as I find a way. ☺

August 8

I've always liked my birthday. No, not simply because it's my day to eat cake and open presents... I have actually always just loved that it is on the eighth day of the eighth month. It's a good time of the year.
Well, this year, my birthday is a big deal for three Important Reasons. First and foremost, I will turn 25 years old. Let's not dwell too much on that fact, it's pretty straightforward. The second Important Reason that this August 8th is great is that it is my graduation day! In just two days I will officially be finished with grad school and in possession of my M.Ed degree in Language Arts and Children's Literature. I won't be going to my graduation ceremony, however, because of the Important Reason #3: I am moving to Tegucigalpa, Honduras on the same day. That's where I'll be teaching next year, at Academia los Pinares.

So, this Saturday, when you may think it's neat to write 8/8/2009 if you happen to be writing the date somewhere... just remember that it's a huge day for lots of reasons--in my world, anyway.
As my mother would say, Peace Out.