Thursday and Friday, June 3 & 4

Thursday
I had a pretty good day at school; my kids are getting a little more touchy feely with each other and with me, probably because they realize I’m leaving. I also think it’s the age where they start to unconsciously flirt by hitting or annoying each other. Ah…fifth grade. I had a frustrating end of the day, especially during seatwork. They don’t seem to understand that seatwork means staying in your seat and working semi-quietly. And they had plenty to work on. My kids are up and down, yelling, messing around and bothering each other; I just want to give up sometimes and let them run wild instead of constantly having to get up and down from helping students who want it to tell the others to get to work, be quiet and sit down. I had tutorias after and made up some more stuff with some students for grades, then stayed til 4:30 correcting. I walked home by myself again and just relaxed and read for a bit before dinner. The rest of the night I spent packing for La Union and progress reports for Friday.

Friday
I was excited for this Friday because Laura Beth, Tad and I were leaving early to travel to La Union. This is another small town, smaller than Gracias, that has an Abundant Life Christian School. This is the school where Jake Compaan works, as well as Laura and Renske, the two European girls we have hung out with before throughout the year. Tad’s friends are also doing a microfinance project in this small town, so we had to go visit and see what the town was like where our friends worked and lived. The day went quickly until we had to leave. My kids were happy because I had to push back their spelling test to Monday since I had to leave earlier than planned. Rodrigo brought us down around 11:30 to catch the bus to La Union. The ride there was one of the more interesting rides I’ve had here. Interesting in the fact that you are literally riding a school bus on the side of a mountain on unpaved rocky dirt roads, going up and down and round and round and side to side, sometimes all at the same time. Not for weak stomachs.

The views though were amazing and I was able to see rural Honduras like I’ve never seen it before. The mountain views were gorgeous, but also seeing the people and how they live humbled me yet again and reminded me that I am currently living in Honduras. I forget at times, but am quickly reminded of the lack of resources many of these people have. They do not seem to lack happiness though. One boy I met this weekend had the biggest smile I have ever seen and I think he could bring anybody out of a bad day. Life may be harder here and more ‘inconvenient,’ but the Honduran people are not lacking in generosity, hospitality, and happiness. There are problems and stresses, but they seem to handle it better, especially the ones I’ve seen in smaller towns such as La Union and Gracias.

After arriving in La Union, we called our friends to see where to go and met up with Renske and Laura, who took us to their house to relax a bit before meeting up with everyone else. Laura Beth and I stayed with those girls for the weekend while Tad stayed with the guys in their house farther down the road. Laura Beth had left her wallet on the bus, but thankfully we know the guy who owns the bus station in town and we quickly retrieved it. Renske and Laura gave us the La Union tour, showing us the Vida Abundante church, some stores, places they hang out, and the boys’ house. We met some important people to them like the pastor of the church and some students and then ended at the boys’ house. Pat (one of Tad’s friends) had started making peanut butter balls, so we chipped in to help. We had chocolate left over so we bought bananas, then saltine crackers, then marshmallows to dip them in the chocolate. We indulged ourselves in that. Later that night we were invited to a student’s family’s house for carne asada, which we readily accepted. The meat was great and the rest of the food as well. We chatted and spent time with the family, a few students and everyone, but we were spent from the bus ride and long week at school. We headed out around 9pm and crashed.