Ten Apples Up on Top

School is out for the week and I find myself welcoming another 3-day weekend :)!!  Class has been going pretty well.  Slowly the kids are learning more, and I am not using as many Spanish phrases as I was.  Maybe I mentioned that in my last post, I don't remember, and if I did, then restating that fact just shows my excitement for it I guess!  We've continued to review our shapes and colors, and the letters A and B, and numbers 1 and 2.  They have been picking it up really well!  For art this week, we made necklaces out of paper plates: they were good for a chuckle!  For teaching letters I use zoo phonics, and for numbers I introduced "Ten Apples Up on Top" by none other than Dr. Seuss himself.  Let me show you how fun of an activity it was!  We balanced the Apples on our heads (1 apple by ourselves, and then for 2 apples the students had to use the wall to help, but it was still a lot of help!)  Let me just say, the apples were veryyy bruised after this activity!  But  the pictures make cute number posters in our room!  

Also, one of the main problems with my kids is when we have carpet time.  They pick and pull at the foam rug with the letters.  Regardless of my continuous effort to tell them not to touch the rug, they continue to do just that.  I've mentioned this frustration, and how I wanted a big blanket or something else to stop this problem, but the school said that big rugs cost too much money.  So the past two weeks, the problem hasn't been as bad, but it still has not been solved.  Then my assistant told me, on Monday, that I was getting a new rug.  Imagine my excitement!  Well, the next day, into my classroom arrives ANOTHER foam rug.  Oh, JOY!  I just had to laugh.  So this rug is very similar to my other one, but this one has even more small pieces in it for the kids to pick and pull at.  My assistant and I started to set this new rug up to add to the other rug so that we would have more space for the students to sit on.  We soon discover that letter G is the word GUN along with its picture.  Really!?  The rug is clearly a rug for teachers to use, and I can think of many words beginning with G that are muchhhh more appropriate (gorilla, giraffe, grapes, gum...just to name a few!)  So, I made a picture of a giraffe instead and covered it up and stapled it down on the rug, since we needed to use that piece still.  That picture lasted 10 minutes before a student ripped it off.  So, my next decision was to suck it up and by some fabric on my own to use as a rug.  Luckily, I remembered that we had a large curtain in our house that we are not using, so I decided that this was going to be our new rug.  It is very unattractive, and it messes up every time the kids sit down or stand up, but nonetheless they sit much better now that they don't have foam to pick it.  Talk about frustrating though!

Anyways, Enjoy the pictures :)  A few of us are going to Copan Ruins this weekend, which is about 4 hours away from us.  It looks like it will be beautiful, so I can't wait to share about that adventure upon my return!  Have a beautiful and blessed weekend friends!

Standing on the mountain of God

Celaque National Park contains the largest, highest and best preserved cloud forest in Honduras.  This National Park also has a beautiful waterfall that we see everyday at school.  So, today we decided to get a better look at the waterfall and hike up the mountain!  A few of us teachers set out this morning at 8am for our adventure.  We hiked an hour up to our school and then continued for another 45 minutes to get to the entrance of the National Park. 

We started off with five of us girls hiking, and halfway up it was down to just Kiley, Tabitha, and I.  It was a long and hard hike, but we were determined to get to the lookout.  The hard hike was definitely worth it in the end though.  It was a bit cloudy today, but the view was still amazing!  The cloud forest is just so neat to see, and we were much closer to the waterfall now.  

You can do a longer over night hike to get to the actual top of the entire mountain, and even closer to the waterfall, which we plan to do in a few weekends.  There are little huts that you stay overnight, and we would hire a guide to take us as well.  I'm excited for the full hike!  In Ghana we got to actually go in and under the waterfall, which was one of the most awesome experiences I've ever had, but  I am not sure if we can do that at this waterfall or not.  Either way, the hike will be worth it! 

On the way down the rain began to fall, but it felt nice after being hot and sweaty for hours.  God is good and his beauty is never ending.  He has made Honduras so beautiful, and I am so blessed with what I get to see and do here.  It was a wonderful way to praise the Lord today!

Inside Our Classrom

Here is an idea, in pictures and videos, of the learning that is taking place inside our classroom, ENJOY!

Shape pictures!

Color graphing

Art project: stained glass hearts

Shape graphing

Mixing colors

Letter tracing: dried glue on the letter to help them feel the letter formation

Apple Painting for the letter Aa

Letter tracing with whiteboards: I draw the letter, and they have to erase it (the correct way) with their finger

They make me smile a lot :)

We started learning our letters! 

This is our good morning song that the kids enjoy a lot, and that I enjoy even more hearing them sing it with me (they picked it up quickly!) anyways...their cuteness always starts the day off wonderfully :)

We did a scavenger hunt to find the letter A, and numbers 1 and 2.  This is typically how chaotic things are if we try and do something fun...some kids decide to play on the toys instead and not listen.  It looks very out of control, but this is in fact an example of a "successful" activity in my class.  And this is why God has provided me with the patience I need for this year!

We were reviewing our colors in this video.  I couldn't find shaving cream anywhere (which is what I wanted for inside the bags) so conditioner worked somewhat well instead.  Anyways, hearing them say the colors in their excited little voices, never gets old :)

What an Adventure!

Break in La Ceiba was every bit of an adventure!  I will sum up quickly my adventures, most will be shown in pictures, and I will tell a few enjoyable (hopefully) stories.  Enjoy!

Wednesday after school we took off on a chicken bus to Santa Rosa.  We stayed with a missionary family we had as a contact.  They have lived in Santa Rosa for 2 years, and plan to stay for 10 years.  It was a really great night eating pizza and sharing stories.  Their house was beautiful and I fully felt like I was in the states for the night.  We got little but comfortable sleep that night, waking up at 3:00am to catch the bus to San Pedro Sula, which was about a 4 hour bus ride.  These longer bus rides had nicer buses, which was nice surprise!  From San Pedro Sula we traveled to out destination La Ceiba.  I woke up as we were entering the city and saw a Wendy's sign--I thought I was dreaming.  Luckily, I wasn't :)  I enjoyed Wendy's later in the weekend, of course!  If you know me well, then you know my love for fast food, I was a happy girl needless to say!  We enjoyed the city with friends for the evening and stayed at a beautiful hotel.  

The next morning we were picked up by George, who owns the company we were going rafting through.  We spent the day with our guides Victor and Ismael swimming in the Jungle River, rafting (sometimes in the rain) and climbing boulders and cliff jumping.  We had class 1, 2, and 4 rapids, and at one point I did fall out and had to get pulled back into the raft.  It was funny!  Kiley and I shared a raft with our raft guide Ismael, who spoke very little English, so it was a lot of fun getting to use my Spanish with him, and I do think I am slowly getting better!  The day was absolutely amazing, and it was extremely beautiful and relaxing.  On the way home George stopped and purchased some sweet corn for us to try.  The sweet corn was grilled and then they put lime and salt on it.  YUM!  I definitely recommend making it!! 

After our day on the river, we headed back to the hostel we were staying at for free that night (George owns this hostel as well, and since we rafted with his company we got free lodging).  It was about 3:30pm when we arrived, and Kiley and I decided to walk 5 minutes down the road to the bank and to get some Wendy's.  And this is where the scary story begins.   

On our way home we were greeted with some unexpected company.  We got onto the loop our hostel was on (which is a very nice road with very nice houses), and were less than a minute away from it.  I heard someone coming, and turned to see a man riding on a bike riding close to me.  I thought in my head, "I wonder why he is riding so close to me when he has the whole road."  Well, as he passed us he decided to smack my butt, and continue on.  Soon, he turned his face around and gave a very creepy look towards us.  Kiley asked me if he touched me, and as I was rather upset about that incident alone, I told her what he did and said "that's not okay!"  We had also just passed four women behind their locked house gate, but they were outside and could see this all happening.  Well, the guy turned around and started riding towards me showing me the money sign with his hands.  I started to back up and shake my head no.  At this point the guy is in the middle of Kiley and I, and he kept coming towards me and then proceeded to act like he has a gun in his pants and acted like he kept going to get it.  I was saying "no, stop!" a lot and then as he continued to grab at me and my little purse I decided I just wanted him away from me.  So I threw my purse.  It ended up by Kiley and she put her foot on it.  The guy grabbed at it, broke my keys off and threw them since they weren't what he was after, and continued trying to grab the purse.  The ladies down the street were yelling for the man to stop, but not coming out to help.  The guy stopped and took off.  At this point I am shaking and starting to cry and I guess Kiley told me not to worry because she had her pepper spray out now, but I don't remember her saying that, as things started getting blurry here with my memory because I was so scared.  Well the guy immediately comes back and that's when I yell to Kiley to run with me backwards to the ladies house (this is all happening 2 doors down from our hostel).  The guy starts to go after Kiley with my purse now and that is when she pepper sprays him, AND GOOD!  I remember that image perfectly.  Kiley ended up running through some of the pepper spray to get back with me, and her eyes and skin were not mixing well with it.  So we ended up locked in the ladies house (with my purse and all), and they couldn't believe it all happened so close to where we were staying, and that it happened in broad daylight.  Their friend drove us down the road back to our hostel, and reality fully hit, and we were really upset about what had just happened.  George's younger brother Nino, who was still at the hostel saw the end of what had happened and heard the guy got away, so he took off in his car to hunt the guy down.  It ended up that Nino tracked down the guy (who was riding all over town trying to get lost) and hit him lightly with his car to make him fall off his bike.  Nino brought him back to the hostel to make sure he got the right guy, and then the cops came.  They made sure I had my purse, and were very curious as to what we did to the guys eyes!  We showed them the pepper spray, and they were very impressed.  Who knows what, if anything, happened to the guy.  We heard that he is a "little rat" and does things like that all the time, unfortunately.  SO, my first mugging experience was very scary to me at the time, but there were a lot of blessings throughout the whole experience.  I made myself find the good in the situation.  There were people around to see, it was daylight, he didn't have a weapon, he didn't get any of my money, Kiley had pepper spray, and we are both safe again.  Maybe he even learned a lesson, because that pepper spray in his eyes did not feel good!  It was scary, but God was definitely with us and had His angels guarding us as well.  I found myself singing in the shower "God is good, all the time, and all the time, God is good."  I keep on replaying the incident over and over in my head, and thinking about what I would have done differently.  The whole time I didn't even think to try and kick him or hurt him, which is what I always thought I would do if that happened.  It just goes to show how differently things can turn out once you are actually in the situation.  But it has helped to talk about it with the girls about how to be more defensive.  I am looking into having my mom send me pepper spray if she can (I should have listened and got some before I left) and I definitely have my guard up way more now.  I don't like having to feel that way now, but it is kind of inevitable now. 

That didn't stop the fun break we had planned.  The next morning we got picked up at 7am to go to the islands to go snorkeling and hiking.  We took a 35 minute boat ride out to Cayos Cochinos, which is a group of about 15 small islands including one major and minor island.  The minor island was where Survivor was once filmed on, and we saw some of the old game towers from the show on the island from our boat.  Grandma, I know you will enjoy that little fun fact!  We went snorkeling in the Caribbean Sea in the Meso American Barrier Reef, which is the second largest coral reef in the world.  It was so beautiful!  We swam with beautiful schools of fish and I even saw a sea horse!  Sadly I didn't see a turtle or anything else, and I didn't have an underwater camera either.  But I don't need pictures to remember the beauty of the sea!  We then went hiking on one of the islands to look for the Pink Boa, which is almost extinct.  We saw 4 of them on our hike!  They looked more brownish, but when our guide picked one up, it slowly started to turn slightly pink.  Our guide explained that this snake has no other predators, as no other animals can eat the snake, so it dies only from old age.  After our hike we went to another island where we had a lovely fish lunch made for us, and we enjoyed swimming some more.  Our boat ride home was really fun.  We had to leave the island by 2pm because soon after the weather changes and the water gets really rough.  We could tell we were headed straight for rain!  Water cyclones were forming all around us, which was so neat to see!  About 10 minutes left into our ride the hard rain began to fall.  The waves quickly got bigger, and I felt like I was getting hit nonstop by paint balls.  Kiley and I were sitting in the second row on the boat and were getting drenched.  So, naturally, we decided to put on our snorkeling masks so we could at least see!  It was HILARIOUS.  We had on our old school orange life vests, and snorkeling goggles on the boat.  I kept laughing out loud when I would look at her, and knew that I looked just as ridiculous!  Good times.  It was a good end to our adventures in La Ceiba.  

We woke up at 5am the next morning to start our journey back to Gracias.  The last bus ride had music and music videos playing, with a lot of Bob Marley.  One of his great songs came on, and I simply sang along with a smile on my face. 

One Love, One Heart
Let's get together and feel all right
Give thanks and praise to the Lord and I will feel all right

Let's get together and feel all right 

 

I hope you enjoyed this post and pictures...and remember two things: first, find the good in every situation (even if it's hard) and second, remember God is good all the time, and all the time God is good.  Because it's true :)

Enjoying the beach life!

Water cyclones on our boat ride home!

The beautiful hotel we stayed in the first night! Kiley and I

I loveeee cliff jumping!

Just another day! Floating down the Jungle River

So fun!

Headed out to snorkel!

The day got 2 thumbs up from me!

Me and the pink boa

lunch!

Such a relaxing day! Tabitha and I

Snorkeling!

I love you in ASL

Kiley and I after a snorkel loads of fun!

What a great break :)

 

Break Time

I bought a tambourine for my class the other day.  We use it in the morning as we sing our worship songs, and the students take turns playing it themselves.  They were excited about our new classroom instrument!  I have started a routine of saying "good morning" and "goodbye" in my classroom.  Every morning after our Bible time, I use a puppet (Button Bear) he calls each student individually up from the rug (starting with those sitting the quietest).  Button Bear says "good morning _____" and the student has to respond saying "good morning" and then they may go sit in their chair.  They do a REALLY good job saying good morning, and they love when Button Bear tickles them after saying it.  It's pretty cute.  To end our day, after praying, Button Bear does the same thing, but this time he says "goodbye" to them, and they respond saying "goodbye" as well.  

Today I overheard two of my students talking while they were eating snack.  They were discussing the color of their chairs, saying one was blue and the other was yellow.  Do you want to know what (besides that being super cute as well)?  They were right! :)  One in fact was blue, and the other was in fact yellow, and they pointed to the right chair when saying the colors.  Talk about the little joys in life right?! :)  

Tomorrow is the last school day for this week--our first break is here!  After school a group of us girls are taking a chicken bus to Santa Rosa for the night.  Early the next morning (4am ish) we are heading to La Ceiba for the long weekend.  It's a beautiful city on the coast!  We plan to do lots of fun and relaxing things while there including rafting, hiking, snorkeling, and enjoying the beach.  It should be an awesome time, afterall...

The sun and the sand...no problems (thank you Kenny Chesney)

Sickness Abroad

Well, the fun-filled "Kid's Day" at our school turned into anything fun for me!  I started feeling sick the night before, and I almost didn't go to school on Friday (since we only had a half day), but I decided to try and fight off the sickness.  I was just feeling very nauseous and my stomach was cramping up.  Soon into the day, I was just feeling worse and, Jen (who was having the same symptoms as me) took a turn for the worst too.  Mr. Lara (one of our principals) decided to have us sent to the public hospital to see a doctor.  So, Jen and I left the fun-filled school day before our parties even really began, and Mr. Rodrigo drove us to the hospital, and Raquel (a teacher at our school too who is originally from Honduras) came along to translate for us.

Now a few weeks ago Zach had to visit the Public Hospital and we heard how unsanitary and awful it was, so we were not very thrilled to be going there ourselves.  But it turned out that we were going to a separate clinic at the hospital, and the doctor was Raquel's family doctor, who was very nice.  After seeing the two of us, and feeling our stomachs to see that our colon's are a little swollen, she decided that we have either a parasite or food poisoning.  Not fun!  She gave us a ton of medicine that we have been taking since Friday.  I feel a lot better than I did on Friday already.  Friday was absolutely horrible.  It is not fun having whatever we have, and also being abroad.  When I am sick, I like that comforting feeling of my own home and bed and my family nearby.  Thank you mom and dad for always taking such good care of me when I am feeling ill!  It's hard for us to put together how Jen and I got sick, because we hadn't eaten out in a few days, and anything we ate, all of our house has eaten, and only two of us are sick.  And we don't drink the water here at all, so it's very strange!  But I am just so thankful that I am starting to feel better, and hopefully it will just get better from here.

We only have school through Wednesday this week, and then it's our first 4-day weekend, wahoo!  We are planning on heading to a beach somewhere in Honduras, but plans are still up in the air for where we go!

Here are some more videos and pictures I thought you might enjoy though!  Until next time, please pray for our health! Thank you so much, you are all loved and appreciated so much!

The president of congress making his entrance at our school!

Me, Kiley, Sarah hanging out!

Headed to the hot springs!  The car was SO packed!

The rain one day--The street floods quickly!

Driving through the farm to try and get to school!  It didn't work out, school just wasn't meant to be that day :)

Washing some of my clothes!