Saturday, Sept 26

Today we climbed Mount Celaque to the point where you can see the waterfall more up close. I see the waterfall from school everyday at lunch, so it was really exciting to be able to have a chance to see it up close. We had a big breakfast to prepare for our hike up the mountain and Sarah made us “lunches” of PBJ since she wasn’t going up with us and then we set off. Don Luis, one of our neighbors, knows Celaque well so he was our guide and Mr. Bran, the PE teacher who lives near us, went with us as well. I hadn’t been past our backyard really into Celaque so it was a whole new experience for me. Jacki had been up to the visitor’s center when her boyfriend was visiting, but otherwise we were all new to it. Don Luis showed us all these plants on the way up that you could use for different medicines, as well as different plants and trees that produced fruit or could be used to make other things. He was so knowledgeable about everything. He also speaks Spanish very fast so I often only caught the very general gist of what he was saying and I asked Jacki for specifics because she understood him more. We kept walking up the road until we got to the visitors center, which was very simple, but pretty nice. We had to pay about a dollar to get into the park, but it was totally worth it. We started up the path to the waterfall lookout point and at first it wasn’t too bad, but then it started getting harder and we all started breathing harder. Don Luis was just climbing up these hills and switchbacks like it was no big deal. Granted he lives here and has been in Celaque many times, but he’s still like 55 and he was hauling up these hills that we had to ask him to slow down so we could rest quite a few times. I was looking for a walking stick and he noticed; so he just took his machete, chopped a little tree down, lopped off the ends and gave me a walking stick! It was great and definitely helped when the walk got steep towards the end. It was hard going up and definitely a good work out, but it felt good to know we were working our bodies hard and getting some good exercise. Don Luis was like you’re going to burn fat; haha it was great! We finally got to the top of the trail and peeking through the trees was the waterfall more up close! It wasn’t as close as we expected; I think it’s like a two day hike to get to the actual place of the waterfall. But it was majestic view all the same and was worth the hike. We spent some time up there taking pics and resting our legs and then the thunder started rumbling. We figured we should probably head down since it was going to rain, so we started climbing down. It was easier going down in a sense, but trying to keep yourself from falling was more difficult. I just wanted to run down because it felt like it would be easier, but I would’ve fallen flat on my face after like 10 feet with all the roots and rocks. We stopped at a rest area to eat our sandwiches for lunch and then kept descending. When we were about a half hour out the rain started coming and at first it wasn’t very hard, and then it started coming down harder. We hadn’t brought raincoats (not smart on our part), so we just continued and got wet. It wasn’t that bad because once you got wet and soaked, what was a little more rain? We had to cross this river with slippery rocks, and my foot went in, but I was like no big deal they’re already squishing with water! We got back to the visitor center and kept going back down the road to our house after that, all the while it was raining. It was kinda fun, except I started getting cold because I was wearing shorts and a Tshirt. We finally arrived back home and there we were to greet Sarah and she was like “You’re all wet.” And we laughed and started stripping off our wet clothes to take warm showers and get dry. It took about 5-6 hours total for the trip, but a great way to spend our Saturday. It rained most the rest of the day, so we just stayed inside and were lazy: sleeping, playing with the neighbor kids, and making dinner.

Friday, September 25

It was a pretty good day at school today. Fridays are my busiest days; I don’t have any planning hours, so I teach straight through the day, except for recess and lunch of course. My fifth graders were pretty good for most of the day, but there were definitely a few times I sent a silent prayer up for patience to repeat my directions for the third time or to ask the class to be quiet for the sixth time in the same hour. Haha…I really like my kids and I understand it’s a long day to be in school, much less a bilingual school where they’re learning half of their subjects in a second language. I would like to think I’m growing in patience, but sometimes I feel like I take one step forward and two steps back. I need to be more consistent in the time I spend with God before the school day begins because I’m sure that would help more. After school we had a short staff meeting and then celebrated Laura Beth’s birthday with cake for dessert. Afterwards we headed home for our always eventful Friday nights haha. Kirsty’s spending the night because tomorrow we’re going hiking up in Celaque. She hasn’t been up to our house since we fixed it up either and we were excited to be able to hang out with her outside of school and seeing her in town. Sarah, Laura Beth and I decided to make corn tortillas, which wasn’t too hard. There’s this mix called maseca which you can buy, add water, shape the tortillas, and then fry them up. Dinner was our tortillas, eggs, avocados and beans with these homemade salsas…amazing as usual. Some of our neighbors came over last night all at the same time, so that was kinda crazy; it was like we were the house to be at on Friday night or something. After dinner we all just sat around the dinner table and talked about life up here in Villa Verde and how much we love it; Kirsty was ready to move up that night. Off to Celaque tomorrow!

Thursday, Sept 24

It felt like a Monday again today after our “vacation,” but today went well overall. The kids told me everything they did on their days off. Lots of them were bored as well because they couldn’t leave their houses; most of them played video games, watched TV, played with other neighborhood kids and stuff like that. So they were ready to come back to school I think. I had to rearrange my lesson plans a little bit because of the days off, but it worked out alright. We went to town again today after school on the bus because our house was getting low on food options after being home for three meals a day for two days. The curfew supposedly started back up again at 6pm, so we hurried to get everything, but there was conflicting news that only the big cities had curfews and places like Gracias didn’t. I don’t think things are communicated well here in situations like this. Either rumors start and spread like wildfire and stir people up more than they should; or they aren’t told anything so people have to guess; or people actually know the truth, but not everyone finds out. Grr..

Wednesday, Sept 23

I love my job, but sleeping in is glorious. Today was probably one of the laziest days I’ve had. We weren’t supposed to go into town so we settled in our house and our biggest events of the day were our meals haha. We had a big breakfast, then I read for a while, did my devotions, did some laundry on the pila, and read some more. Jacki and Laura Beth tried chopping a path through our yard full of tall grasses to find somewhere to put the hammock Laura Beth bought, but that didn’t get very far. It was hilarious to watch though. I climbed a little bit of the road into the forest and it’s amazing how even the slightest change in height can change your view of the road, my house and the valley; it looks even better. Laura Beth, Sarah and I sat around talking about relationships for a little while, which was really good. We decided we were going to go down to Julia’s house by the school and the river, but as we started down the mountain, these rain clouds came out of nowhere and it started pouring; so no river for us today. We had also wanted to learn how to make flour tortillas since we already knew how to make the corn ones. We tromped on over to Sonia’s and she showed us how to make them. It’s the same basic idea except you need to stretch the tortilla farther so it’s larger. She spent a good 20 minutes kneading the dough though and it amazed me how strong her arms must be from doing this so often. It takes a lot of work to make tortillas, especially these ones. We made some, which turned out ok and then she treated us to dinner and made us baleadas with the tortillas we made. We each ate four, which is a lot, but we were starving! We weren’t sure about school tomorrow, but then we got a call that we were going back since the curfew was only going to be tomorrow night. I went to bed on time, but woke up in the middle of the night to a loud noise in our kitchen. I woke up freaked out thinking someone or something was in our house. We had had a mouse and I was afraid it was back, so I didn’t want to go out there in the dark by myself right away. So I stood at my door, watching outside in the kitchen and then I see…a cat. It must have walked into our door because it walked right back out. I went into the kitchen and it had jumped on our counter and fridge and knocked some stuff of the shelves. So either it was looking for food or the mouse or something. What a night.

Tuesday Sept 22

Well today was our forced day off because of the political unrest and hence the curfew in the whole country. Well we decided to sleep in and then get ready to go into town because we assumed that things would still be open. We started walking down the mountain towards town and then hitched a ride with some people in the back of their pickup. We got to town and nothing was open, which we didn’t know because no one told us. This was very frustrating because we were going to try to have a birthday lunch since birthday dinner didn’t work out yesterday. We ended up walking around to see what was open, and then just used the internet at Guancascos. We searched for some lunch to no avail, only snacks. So Froni was nice and made us some baleadas and brought us back up the mountain in her pickup. We had dinner at the comedor that night, which was amazing as usual. We had a food coma after that so we went back to chill at our house, planning on school tomorrow until we get a call from Mr. Lara informing us the curfew is still on for tomorrow. Apparently we weren’t supposed to leave our house today so Mr. Lara told us to not go to town tomorrow. I decided to use my time to watch an episode of ALIAS and be entertained for a little bit before bed. Another day of forced vacation!

Monday Sept. 21

Today was pretty good for a Monday. I think it’s because I felt more prepared for this new week with a good weekend behind me. My kids were good today and there were a few times I was like wow you are being really quiet and attentive right now. The only exception was in our last hour of spelling they kept talking. Therefore, I didn’t let them play a game to study for the test tomorrow; they had to write out their lists over and over instead. Sometimes I wonder if I’m too strict, but I think that if they want to be able to play games to learn, they need to be able to listen and they weren’t. Anyways, it was also Laura Beth’s birthday today, so she got a lot of Happy birthdays from her music classes and her 6th grade gave her a birthday party the last hour of school. It was fun to see the kids get really into it. We headed down to town on the school bus after school because we wanted to have a celebratory dinner for Laura Beth and Julia’s belated birthdays. We arrived in town and Kirsty called us to let us know that Zelaya was supposedly back in the country so there was a 4pm curfew in the entire country. Now granted we’re in Gracias, in the mountains and the curfew won’t be as strictly enforced as it would be in Teguc or SPS. But to be safe we started making plans to head back up the mountain. Thanks Zelaya you picked great day to “come back in the country.” It wasn’t even confirmed he was actually there, but a curfew was out just in case to keep riots at bay. Most of the stores were closing anyway so we probably couldn’t have found anywhere to eat. So we headed back up the mountain! We made a dinner for LB here and then we got a call that because of the curfew, we don’t have school tomorrow!! The curfew is from 4pm til 7am Tuesday morning so the kids can’t come to school. Crazy…it feels like a snow day except there’s no snow! So we enjoyed our night and watched ‘What about Bob’, which was hilarious and just what I needed.

Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 19 and 20

Saturday we “slept in” til 7:30, had breakfast and got ready to go into town. We got down there the earliest yet, by like 9:30 and did our market and supermarket shopping. LB and I bought some more rugs for our room. We spent some time at Guancascos; I was so happy to have MY computer back and be able to use it to check MY email and have MY things on it….it was great! Afterwards I was craving ice cream so we had our mototaxi guy stop by this place we knew sold good ice cream, but of course, it was closed! I was so sad; he took us down this other street to a place that sold licuados, so I settled for that instead. It was sweet of our driver to find another place for us and it was a good licuado-pineapple with milk. Licuados with milk are kinda like smoothies; they’re basically blended fruit and then you choose either milk or water. I like milk because it’s more like a smoothie, but the water ones are good, too. So we headed up the mountain and spent the rest of the day relaxing at the house: grading, planning, napping, eating. Pretty lazy day.
Sunday was much of the same. Sarah made pancakes for breakfast with bananas and granola…so good. J I did some of my own laundry on the pila again, spent some good time with God, which I really needed. It’s really easy here to just go to school everyday and not spend enough time with God to make it through each day. I’ve been slacking in that and I can feel it in my spirit and so this weekend of relaxing and having time is what I needed. We went to church at 7pm and it just amazes me every time that no matter where you are, if there are people gathered in the name of Jesus and they love him, He is there. There were about 20 people there, most of them our neighbors and we sang songs, prayed, shared some of the Word, and had a message. It was just so simple, but there was such simple and profound joy felt in that room. It really refreshed my spirit to sing and have a message and just be with other believers; even in this small mountain church.
I realized something else. It seems to me that often the Hispanic/Latino culture talks about “el Corazon” or the heart; I swear I hear that word in every song: love songs, worship songs, old songs, new songs. But that’s because the heart is so central to one’s life; it is the center of and source of all things, especially passion and fulfillment. Relating to my faith, the heart is the wellspring of life; I think often in churches in the US we don’t acknowledge the depth and importance of the heart in our lives as human beings and in our spirits as Christians. I just think it’s something we can learn from our Latino brothers and sisters to not be afraid to put our ‘corazon’ into everything: our faith, our life, and to not be afraid to express or explore what is there since it is the center of all things. Just my deep thought for the day :-)