Wednesday-Friday, May 26-28

Wednesday
I did chapel and decided to talk about being yourself and that God made you just the way you are. The rest of the day went fine at school. We went to town and it was raining on the way down. I was in the back of the truck so I got wet. Awesome. I didn’t do much after I got home as far as schoolwork, just relaxed. Sarah came up with Gustavo later that night and took the dog back with him. I liked Fitz, but he was biting too much and sad to say I don’t think we all wanted the responsibility of him anymore. He will always be my first puppy though.

Thursday
There was craziness and confusion again in trying to explain the language bio report next step of making the topical outline a rough draft. The kids needed to take the outline they had made and now instead of just having facts, they would convert those facts into sentences. Each main idea, of which there are there are three, will be a paragraph and all the subpoints in those main ideas make up the paragraph. The kids had a hard time understanding. Like I’ve said before, a great amount of kids here lack the skills they need to do things that their counterparts in the States know how to do. Some middle schoolers don’t know how to find important details in a paragraph. Some my fifth graders don’t know how to write complete sentences. Some of it has to do with the language thing, but it makes it that much more challenging and rewarding to help these kids try to understand these skills they need. I had my kids make up homework and test in seatwork. It was rainy and chillier all day; it’s been pretty much the same all week. Welcome rainy season in Honduras.

Friday
Today was Founder’s Day, which is specific to Abundant Life. The day honors Dr. Evelio Reyes, who is the man who started the church and school in Tegucigalpa. The day is to celebrate his influence in Honduras, the organization of Vida Abundante, and his life. While I think this is all well and good that we honor a man who has helped to provide an education and been a good influence in Honduras, at times they went over the top of how they portrayed him. I mean no disrespect to Dr. Reyes at all, just the way he is presented at times glorifies him in a way that makes me feel uncomfortable, like it’s too much. They showed a video about him (which I didn’t see all of it and it was in Spanish) and Mr. Calderon talked for a little while about how this school and the students there will make a difference in the future of Honduras. I believe that with all my heart, but some of the things he said to motivate the students to think about that were not quite on target. Anyways, all of that aside, we got to have cupcakes and juice as part of the celebration, which was great. For the younger kids, the electricity went out halfway through the movie, so we had to come back later in the day (which interrupted our classes; not fun). The kids were dismissed for home at 1 pm, but the teachers had to stay til 3 pm to get our full work day in. I got a lot done during that time, so it was fine with me. The evening was relaxing with chicken barbecue pizza for dinner and movie to finish.