Thursday, August 13
Today was our busy day of getting all the major things set up for us. We (all of us girls) met at the school in the morning and just sat around for a while by their basketball/volleyball/indoor soccer court and watched the kids play during recess. It was so cute because this one group of little girls kept coming up to us and saying hi and asking our names; then they would run back to their classroom because they thought it was time to start class again, but it wasn’t so they’d come back and talk some more and then run off again.

Then we went to the police station (with Vicente) to have all of our information given to the government. After that we headed over to the bank to set up our Honduran bank accounts so we could receive money from Abundant Life when we got paid J After that we were starving so we headed back to the school to have lunch in their cafeteria. After lunch, Vicente gave us the tour of the school and the church. We got to see the classrooms, meet some important people, and see the TV station and production part of the complex. Abundant Life is connected with the Spanish version of TBN and so from Abundant Life, they film and produce many of the programs which go out all across Latin America. We met the man who is the voice of that station as well as some other people associated with it. The church is connected to the school and it’s quite large for an evangelical church here. It has 3 services and about one to two thousand people attend Abundant Life. The sanctuary probably holds two to four hundred people and looked very nice. After this, we all piled in the van again and headed to the mall to get our cell phones! All of us girls got the same exact cell phone because it was cheap. The whole deal here is very cheap compared to stuff in the States. With Digicel (the company I have) if you talk for 3 minutes to the States, you get 15 free and those 3 minutes don’t cost you much anyway. It was hilarious to see everyone sitting around, trying to figure out our phones and getting everyone’s numbers; it was like we were technologically deprived for a few days without a cell phone and we finally got our fix J We headed back to the school and then back to our respective houses. Kirsty and I just spent a ton of time on the internet in the evening.




We had dinner and talked to Santi, the cook/maid for a while; well she actually talked more and Kirsty and I listened and tried to answer her questions and comment on things we understood. She talked so fast, but overall between the both of us we understood what she was saying. It’s much easier for me I’ve found to understand Spanish spoken than it is to speak it. It was great to practice our Spanish, as we both want to improve the basic Spanish we know.
My goal, which I think is realistic, is to be fluently conversational by the end of the year. And while I’ll teach in English everyday, hopefully the kids will agree to talk to me in Spanish outside the classroom, unless they want to practice their English. Kirsty and I have already been asking Jacki and Sarah, the girls who are fluent, what this and that mean, how to say this, and if this word is correct. Overall, it was a good evening.