So Far Today...

Okay, I know I owe you guys a blog about my sleepover, and it´s coming, probably tonight, but today has been quite a day already so I thought I´d share some of the insanity and maybe make you laugh.

So this morning I wake up at 6:00 am to take my dear child to school for the first day of the year. "Mom, no one wears their uniform the first week of classes, everyone wears regular clothes".  Okay, I don´t want to be the mom that makes her kid be the dork at school so "Okay, honey wear your favorite jeans with the giant hole in the leg and your soccer jersey, no problem, your hair that is too long for school standards is just fine too".
So we pull up and the first thing I notice, NO ONE is in regular clothes.  There are teachers at the door inspecting uniforms and hair length.  If you don´t pass you don´t get in. 
So up we come to the door and the teachers say, "Hey Darwin where have you been, we´ve been wondering about you." Of course he walks right in because he´s with his mom and I sit down outside the office to wait for the principal to pay the enrollment fee.  I have to admit I feel a bit like a failure as a parent as this point as I watch my child wander through all the perfectly dress students in his snazziest street outfit (luckily he hadn´t decided to wear his bright orange sequined tiger shirt, but that´s a blog for another day).
So then the principal comes in and we sit down and talk and low and behold, school started on the 11TH!!! That´s why everyone is in their perfect school uniforms.  Darwin had come by in January and the counselor had told him around the 20th so he told me the 20th, the 20th was Saturday so today the 22nd was the next logical day for class to start.  So after yelling at Darwin for a while and being assured that he hadn´t missed anything he couldn´t make up I brought him home to get his haircut and his school shoes so that he can go to school in his perfect little uniform tomorrow.  Now I really feel like a failure as a parent, but what are you going to do.  Luckily I do live in Honduras and everyone just laughs it off and says its no big deal.

So I come home and sleep a while longer (sidenote: I think I´m getting bronchitis so my energy level is extremely low) then we head off to buy Darwin´s shoes and some groceries.  Shoe shopping went great, grocery shopping went great, then we went to check out with our giant shopping cart full of groceries.  The girls decided to run back and get salad dressing and Darwin went to show them the way, leaving me alone in the grocery line. Cue ominous music.  So as I mentioned earlier, my energy level is low, my throat hurts, and I´ve been beebopping around the grocery store for over an hour.  I´m tired.  So I decide that while the people in front of me are checking out I´m going to sit down in the opposite lanes checker seat (which is empty),  Bear in mind this is a GIANT walmart style grocery store with about 30 checker lanes.  Mercifully most of them were empty.  So as I sit my large self down upon this metal barstool type seat it proceeds to very loudly explode into 100 pieces causing everyone in a 7 mile radius to turn and look as I tumble to the floor.  No injury except my pride, and the poor chair, but they both took pretty big hits.  God must be working on humbling me today.

Then this afternoon I got an email with a donation for two nights of feeding with Breaking Chains FOR THE REST OF THE YEAR!!!! That, my friends, is awesome and a huge boost to a sometimes wavering faith in the future of this ministry.  God definitely blessed today.

And finally so far, as I´m cooking for the homeless ministry tonight, I was cleaning up the kitchen and gettting ready to throw out some old limes that just aren´t going to get used here.  As I started throwing them in the trash I thought "hey, wait a minute, the homeless people love limes!" So I whisk the few that made it into the trash, out (I know, gross, seriously, it´s not that bad) rinse them all off and proceed to slice them up for my friends.  Again cue the ominous music.  I don´t even make it through the first lime when I slice my finger quite nicely and decide to leave the kitchen for a while and relax.  It wasn´t quite a repeat of cutting open the lice shampoo packets (I didn´t have to lay down on the floor this time) but it hurt pretty bad.  I¨m a total pansy when it comes to pain so here I sit typing out the blog of the crazy day so far with a bloody red bandaid on my finger and a smile upon my face.  It appears that I will always be clumsy no matter how old I get. 

So thanks for taking a minute to read about my craziness.  I love you guys.  If anything crazy happens tonight I will let you know and hopefully I´ll have a blog post on the sleepover for you soon. 

Saturday, February 20, 2010

No story to tell, just a few pics from tonight.  As I´m writing this the 13 kids who are spending the night are STILL (it´s 12:00) watching a movie, so I´m sure there will be plenty of stories tomorrow ;)

Suyapa

Laughing at Pilo checking out Darwin´s muscles.

Yessica

Serious Douglas

Laughing Douglas

Sweet, sweet Josue

Fernando, it´s been way too long since we´ve seen him, but he was there tonight.  He´s from a great family and I love all of them.

Friday, February 19, 2010

On Friday, the Shine! kids didn´t have much homework at all so we decided to take them down to the river and just have some fun there.  It was a blast.  We made a little biosphere in a bottle for a bunch of snails and tadpoles and we´re hoping to grow frogs (´we´ll see how that goes :) ).  Here are some pics from that day.  I had a hard time picking my favorites and there are more on facebook. 

Look at all the minnows!

Tadpole hunting with Alli

Off on an adventure with Mackenzie

Jose contemplating life over a mini can of Pepsi

Escarleth, I have a thing for reflections in the water!

Escarleth and Dayana

Too Cute!

"Jose, look up!"

Claudy HATES to have her picture taken, this was her attempt at being happy about it.

Dayana

Some serious tadpole hunting

Best Friends

Friday, February 19th, 2010

I just had to share with you these precious babies.  I want to bring them home!  They are beautiful.  They´ve been coming recently with a regular church family and they are quickly becoming some of my favorite kids.

This is baby Luis, Big Brother Carlos, Big sister Naomi, and I don´t know the little girl´s name (she´s not in my class) but they are so so sweet. 

Tuesday, February 16th, 2010

Well, as you may have noticed I have given up on cute titles to my blogs.  You are more than welcome to suggest cute titles, I love comments, but it´s one of the hardest parts of blogging and I feel unnecessary.  So, now you get dates, unless I´m feeling particularly creative.  Interestingly, I could probably come up with a cute title for this post but I know I´ve got several more behind this one and I´ve decided to do them all the same. 

Feet and Hair at the same time.

Some friends of ours here in Honduras have a program that teachs women how to run a beauty shop so that they can make some extra income. They also do a lot of other great things.  If you´re interested in learning more about their program please visit their website: http://thewomenofmyhope.org/  Last week Lori called me and asked me if my interns and I would be interested in getting free manicures, pedicures, and hairstyles in order to help out the class.  They needed practice and we were more than happy to give it to them.  Somehow I think this may turn into a regular event.  :)  It´s a rough life, but someone has to do it. 

Rachel and Cammy getting their feet done.

Straightening Mackenzie´s hair

Hair and Nails at the same time

My new haircut

They did really cute little designs on all of our feet.  We tried to do a group shot but this was the best we got.

Some New Kids at Church

Recently a couple of new families have started coming to church, so I have some new kids in my Bible class.  I´d like to take a little bit of time to introduce you to these precious kids.

This little boy who I think is named Luis and his sister (who didn´t want her picture taken) come regularly.  They are very quiet and I don´t know much about them but they are very well behaved.

This is Braysi. She is an absolute sweetheart. That grin is on her face constantly.

The little boy in the middle is Levi, he is Braysi´s brother and a little clown.  I ALWAYS forget his name and he just rolls his eyes and laughs and tells me again. 

And finally there is Wilmer, last night was Wilmer´s first night.  He and his family came with Braysi and Levi´s family.  Wilmer has some physical handicap, possible Cerebral Palsy, but he was great in class.  I was a little bit worried about him in a class full of 30 other rowdy kids but he did great.  And after class he came up and gave me a big hug.  Special needs kids have a special place in my heart and I hope that I´m going to be seeing more of Wilmer and his sweet mama.

I also wanted to share with you this story about Katy.  Katy has been coming for over a year now, but she has a sweet story.  Katy and two other little girls live about a block down the mountain from the church.  This picture doesn´t show it well but they are tiny tiny little girls and Katy is the oldest.  These three girls just took it upon themselves one day to come to church and have been coming ever since.  I´ve never seen an adult with them and they rarely miss a service.  They are always well behaved, clean, and participate in class.  Katy just turned 8 and has started coming to my class.  I would guess the other two girls are 6 or 7 but I´m not positive.  I´m just so impressed by their desire to learn more about God without the prompting of an adult.  They also occasionally bring their tiny little brother but he usually wants to go home early.  On those days one of them will sweetly come up to me in the middle of church and whisper in my ear asking if they can take him home and come right back, and they always do. 

Amapala Vacation

Taking off on a great adventure with some wonderful friends. 

Somehow we managed to never take a group shot but all together there were 9 of us: Amber, Darwin, Alli, Tess, Mackenzie, Kelly, Paul, Cammy, and Nate.  Kelly and Nate are VCOM med students on rotation at the Baxter clinic and Paul and Cammy are their spouses.  Paul left on Monday so we snuck in a quick beach vacation before he had to leave.  We all had a wonderful time and plan to return as soon as possible.

The first evening we all ran to the hotel dropped off our stuff and headed to the beach as quick as possible.  It was already around 5 and we wanted to pack in as much water time as we could.  So we race down to the beach and into the water.  My initial reaction is oh, this salt water stings a little bit, not enough to be a problem, but enough to be noticable.  Then Mackenzie begins HOWLING in pain, she´s more than mildly overdramatic.  For some reason there were THOUSANDS of tiny jelly fish swimming through the water.  The tiny, tiny ones couldn´t sting us but the bigger ones (at their largest the size of a quarter) packed a pretty good punch.  Mackenzie and I think Alli made a hasty retreat from the water.  The rest of us just decided to deal with the pain, we weren´t wasting any water time.  Well then the little kids that were all over the beach decided to catch the jellyfish.  At one point Cammy and I looked over and there were kids all around Nate handing him these tiny jellyfish.  Cammy and Nate then moved up onto the beach and the kids filled up the plastic pop bottle in the middle of the picture with jelly fish.  It was so fun to watch. 

They raced up and down the beach bringing jelly fish for over an hour and laughed hysterically the entire time.  As much fun as that was, we weren´t disappointed when the jellyfish did not return the next day.

This was my favorite picture of the weekend.  So gorgeous.  This is what God´s creation looks like.  No sign of the pain and destruction created by Satan.

A few more of God´s beautiful creations

The kids loved playing with us

I love their reflection in the water on the beach.  I think this may have still been during the great jelly fish catch.

On Saturday morning I woke up early and decided to go down to the beach for some peaceful reading before the world woke up.  Well that plan worked for about 2 minutes.  Then I was spotted.

By Alessandra

and Magin

Alessandra and Magin came and quietly sat down beside me at first.  Once they decided I probably wasn´t going to bite they started asking me 100 questions, mostly about where the rest of my friends were, how long we were staying, and why I lived in Tegucigalpa.  I had a great time sitting and talking with them.  Magin is mentally handicapped but an absolute sweetheart.  She loved to hold our hands, give us hugs, and say funny things to make us laugh.  After a little while four more kids came up and they decided to bury my hilariously white legs in the sand.  Good times were had by all and my legs appreciated not being exposed too long to the sun. 

Making my kiddos climb a tree on Seashell island for a cute picture. 

On the last day we went on a boat tour around the island.  It was neat to see the whole island and we even got to walk down into a cave.  They took us to an uninhabited island that was COVERED in sea shells.  I was amazed at how many sea shells there were.  When we headed out they told us we were going to Seashell island, The island of the dead (where there was a small cemetery), and the island of the birds.  When we were on seashell island there was a little land bridge over to a small piece of land where we could see a cross.  Nate said "I wonder if that´s the island of the dead".  My response was, "We´ll see I guess".  So we finish up at seashell island and hop on our boat and are moving quickly away from where we were.  I said to Nate "I guess that wasn´t the island of the dead."  And we continue on.  We begin talking with the boat driver about possibilities of seeing caves and going fishing and possibly skipping the island of the dead.  The boat captain looks confused and says, "we already went to the island of the dead."  Turns out seashell island, island of the dead, and bird island, are ALL the same island.  We cracked up.  It was definitely a classic honduran moment. 

Since before we even arrived in Amapala, Paul had been talking about wanting to go fishing, so I told him we would see what we could do.  We talked with a guy at the hotel about setting it up but he was very vague about it so we didn´t hold out much hope.  Then we talked to a fisherman on the beach about it and he said come back tomorrow at 9 and I´ll decide.  Silly hondurans.  So the boys came back at 9 and all the fishing boats are gone fishing and we laugh about how the Hondurans gave them a blow off.  So we play on the beach and have a fine morning and decide to eat lunch on the beach.  We walk down to the little stick shade that is set up and where several of our kids live and sit down for lunch.  Evidently this family just lives in hammocks on the beach during tourist season and makes lunch right there in a tiny room for whoever wants it.  We had eaten dinner at the hotel the night before and it was good, but very pricey.  So here we are sitting in the sand looking out at the beautiful ocean and waiting on our shrimp, and the fisherman from the night before comes up and says Hey do you want to go fishing right now.  So Paul takes off with the fisherman, looking very much like a tourist gringo in a small boat. 

And returns with fish!!! He was so proud.  He ended up getting to eat one of his fish for dinner that night for only $5. And the fish was HUGE!!.  I don´t think Paul stopped smiling for the rest of the weekend.

Darwin enjoying his whole fish.  He was in heaven all weekend.

Our final dinner at our new favorite restaurant.  This tiny little shack on the beach had AMAZING food for incredibly cheap.  Whole fish for $5 a plate and 8 huge shrimp for $8 a plate.  And they were such a fun family to get to know. 

So now we´re home and sunburned but we had a great time. 

Side Note: For anyone coming to visit, Amapala is only about 2 and half hours away if you´re interested in going for the weekend or even just a day trip let me know. 

VCOM Team

Hi my loyal blog readers.  I´m so sorry I´ve been on such a long hiatus.  It´s so hard to get back up to speed once I´ve fallen behind.  Not only have I not been blogging but I haven´t been keeping up with the blogs I normally read.  So naturally as I procrastinate blogging I have to catch up on all my missed blogs.  Well let me tell you, you guys are doing much better than me, I was 140 blogs behind!!! Well needless to say I didn´t read them all but I did a quick scan and hopefully I didn´t miss any vital information. 
So lets get back on track.  The first week in February we had a team from VCOM here.  I love these teams.  They get here the first day and you´re not even sure they know where to locate the heart, but they learn all week and by the end of the week they are legitimately diagnosing patients.  I always make lots of friends while they are here and I also enjoy seeing patients I´ve met in the years past. 

This is Sara, she was one of my favorite med students.  Such a sweet, sweet girl.

While we were in Campamento I met a precious, precious 2-yr-old Down Syndrome baby.  I fell in love immediately.  Josue sat on my hip as I walked around translating for a good 45 minutes.  He was perfectly healthy and his momma was just bringing him in for a checkup.  Unfortunately I don´t have any pictures of him but I know other people do so I´ll try and get one and post it on here later.  Every year that passes I get a little bit closer to adopting a baby.  I´m really feeling baby fever right now.

Mackenzie signing in the patients.  She did a great job in triage.

Alli and Tess hanging out with some of the kids waiting to be seen.

Another favorite, Anna, checking out a sweet little boys ear.

My whole crew at the end of the week meal at La Cumbre.  It was delicious.

Okay so I didn´t take any pictures all week.  These pictures are almost all Darwin.  I need to get back into the habit.  But it was a great week and it blessed a lot of people, including us.