Utila adventure

We recently had a visit from my mom and brother Casey. They came to Honduras for 2 weeks and we got to spend a week with them on one of the bay islands and then a week showing them around Copan. Here are some pictures from our adventure on Utila.


My mom rented a house on the beach. This is a picture David took of the sunrise the first morning we were there. He was sitting in the backyard. Out in the water about 50 yards from the short wall was a coral reef. We carefully walked out there on the sand then then snorkeled and saw many beautiful fish.
David and Zach were very excited to go out in the reef and had to try on the gear for size. They also wanted to try and improve their tan since the only tan they get here in Copan is a farmers tan due to the polo shirts we have to wear for uniforms. When we were snorkeling we saw a stingray, brightly colored fish, many parrotfish. We couldn't help but think of finding Nemo as we explored the reef.
The tans however did not work out as planned. This is after applying a lot of sunscreen. Zach's back was the best. He put on sunscreen and then sat on a wooden beach chair waiting for us to be ready. The wooden chair absorbed the sunscreen so he burned in a nice striped pattern.
One of the days in Utila we rented a golf cart and set off on the island. We had a lot of fun testing the limits of the cart. Another day we took a boat trip to a couple different beaches and the keys off of Utila. We had a very strange driver who barely spoke to us about what we were going to do. At one point we found ourselves stranded on an island hoping he was going to come back and pick us up.

On the last day we went to swim and it started raining while we were there. As we were riding bikes back to the house it started to downpour. We later admired the tropical storm from our back porch.

Overall we had a very nice trip. Our only complaint were the sand fleas who despite the amount of bug stuff we applied still seemed to eat us up.

David and Zach went exploring some caves. We were able to eat a nice variety of foods and celebrated many GOLDEN birthdays. Casey turned 21 on March 21st which was while we were on the island. David turned 24 on March 24th which was after we got back to Copan.

For his birthday I got David a GPS which is something he has been wanting. He thinks it is awesome and has been using to track all sorts of things. He informs me now that our walk to school is 1.4 miles. Thank you GPS...now we know how far we walk and our average speed not to mention so much more.

Happy Birthday David!!!

Also, David really likes coconuts. At the house where we stayed there were many coconut trees and David cut a coconut down each day.

We have had quite an exciting week this week and want to share a little bit before we head out to our next adventure. First, our friend Lissa is visiting. She and her husband Eric have been living in Costa Rica and Nicaragua for the past 6 months. They are now traveling around Central America before they head back to the United States in May. Currently Eric is in El Salvador participating in the election they are having there and Lissa came to visit us for the week. We went to the bird park and got to hold some of the beautiful Macaws.

This is a picture after Lissa tried to pick up one of the bird and he bit her finger. The blue on on the left likes to leave his mark by biting a hole in your shirt. He did that to everyone there that held him.
Friday the fifth grade classes had a field trip to the ruins. They have been studying the Mayans in their Social Studies class and so the Spanish teacher organized a trip. We luckily got to go along and better yet got a day off of teaching classes. We had a very long tour but enjoyed our day. Lissa got to come along.

This is my 5th grade class. There are 14 students and recently I am coming to realize how much I love these students. Lissa came in and taught art classes this week. I think sharing my class with her made me realize how lucky I am to have such great students and how I have a good relationship with all of them.
In David's classes this week they had Mathlympics. What is this...you may ask. Pretty much it is a way fool kids into taking many quizzes. He had a topic for each day and all 4 classes in secondary took the same quizzes. Everyone's scores were tracked and each class had gold, silver and bronze medal winners. On Friday they had the closing ceremony complete with ribbons, pie or cake and a movie. This was all started to celebrate pi day which actually is today (3.14 or March 14). It was a success and many students came by all week to check their standings in the competition.
Medals for the winners made out of....chocolate.
Proud medal winners in 7th grade. They even showed off their medals to other teachers in other classes.Last of all...last weekend we visited a waterfall in a nearby town. We hiked to it and it was in a beautiful spot between some nice rocks.

Well thats about all. We are heading out for Utila, one of the bay islands, tomorrow. My mom is coming to visit and we are taking some time off of school to spend with her on the coast. We are so excited about a vacation!

Fun Day and Field Trips

The school's anniversary was this month so we had a full week of fun. Each day was a different theme day all week. At the end of the week we had a 'Fun Day' which means a half day of school where the teachers put on a sort of carnival. We had frisbee toss, face painting, food, a water slide, music, a soccer tournament, an eating contest and much more. These are some brothers who are competing in a tortilla on a string eating contest.
Some of the 5th grade boys as they wait for their team's turn in the soccer tournament.
The teachers having "FUN" on Fun Day. Perhaps this is after the kids went home.
A couple of weekends ago we went to Agua Caliente, a natural hot spring, to celebrate another teacher's birthday. The highlight of the trip was getting to ride for an hour in the back of a pick up. We enjoyed standing up as we went bumping down the dirt road enjoying no seat belt laws. It was awesome.

David has been taking a few field trips with his middle school students. For an art class they hiked up to Llanatillos, an aldea (a small village) oustide of town. We visited this place back in the fall. They make pottery up there so the students learned the process and even got to buy clay to make their own pieces. As usual the educational part lasted only a few minutes and then the students spent the rest of the time playing soccer with the little children at the school up there.
This sign is a welcome sign except it should say Bienvenido. We often see signs where people mix up their "v" and "b".
Maria, the woman making the pottery, constructed this beautiful pot in a mere 5 minutes.

A week later, David went again with the secondary students on another field trip. This time it was for PE class and they hiked up to La Pintada. This is the village where they make corn husk dolls and weave cloth.
David may have found a new profession.
They also spent time visiting the small school in La Pintada.
On the way home they stopped at "Los Sapos" which means the frogs and is a small ruin site. After seeing the main ruins in Copan these just look like a bunch of rocks. Supposedly it is a Mayan fertility site.

Well that is a glimse as to what we have been up to lately. Each day the weather changes so we never know what to expect. We hear that this is the coldest Feb/March they have had in a long time and we should have had hot summer weather for a long time by now. The sun is shining today and we hope we've had the last of the cold.

Guatemala Weekend

At the last minute we decided we would pack up and go on a weekend getaway to Guatemala. We live about 20 minutes from the border so it is easier to go into Guatemala than to go to other Honduran cities. We went to a city called Esquipulas which is about 2 1/2 hours away by public bus. We had to take 3 different buses to get there but the timing worked out perfectly and we arrived around 5pm on Friday. Esquipulas is famous for the Basilica. This giant church turned 250 this year and is quite a stunning piece of architecture. As you can see from the picture it has a dominating presence in the valley. The thing we really liked about this town is that it has a lot of visitors but hardly any foreign tourists. This made things cheaper for us. We were surprised how it came alive with thousands of Guatemalans making a pilgrimage to see the famous black Christ statue. We spent the weekend touring the church, attending mass several times and going to a park/zoo. It was a perfect place to tour for the weekend, for Valentine's day, and it felt so good to get out of Copan.
Here is a view of the Basilica from a hill looking into Esquipulas. It looks enormous even from far away.
Here is David in front of the Basilica. This park was full during the weekend of people standing in line to see the black Christ statue. The line on Sunday zig zagged back and forth through the park walkways. It took us 45 minutes to get through the line when it was already at the church. We can only imagine how long people waited in the line when it started at the back of the park.
Here it is. This is the statue that brings people from all over to see it.
This is in another section of the church where people lit candles.
One of our favorite pictures from the zoo. We think they try to save money by doubling up on cages. Some of our favorite animals included alligators, lions, ocelots, deer, ostriches, crazy monkeys, anteaters and a variety of birds.
The zoo is in a park that has many picnic areas, hammocks everywhere and sports areas. It also advertises a cave which really is just a mine shaft. We really enjoyed our morning here and spent some time relaxing in the sunshine.

Cold weather

We've had some interesting weather lately. Everyone here is shocked that it is cold in February. Apparently this is the coldest winter they have had in a long time. But the funny thing about cold here is that it is only about 50 degrees. Everyone gets their gloves, scarves and hats out and walks around as if it were below freezing. With the cold this week came the rain. We woke up Monday morning to really hard rain at 4am. Rain is good but it makes everything muddy. The dust has collected over the the last month or so and now the streets have about a 1/2 inch of dust covering them. Then the rain came and turned that dust to slippery mud that we carefully walk through to get anywhere.

We found out yesterday morning that we were going to go home from school at 11am. There had been no water at the school for 2 days. You can imagine the problem this presents when you have about 300 students who use the bathrooms. It made me laugh to think of what parents would think in the states if their students were sent home because the school had no water. This is a common occurrence here in Honduras.

Weekends here are pretty relaxing. David's new Saturday routine is to wake up at 6am and go hiking in the hills surrounding Copan. Each week he has goals to find a way to get over certain peaks. I on the otherhand enjoy my extra few hours of sleep and David comes home from his hikes a few hours later to find that I haven't moved a muscle. Last week he saw an amazing rainbow. However he says that this picture does not do it justice.
Over our Christmas break we were lucky enough to have our house painted. Before it was a beige color that was very dirty and looked as if it hadn't been painted in years. We came home from Costa Rica to find our house painted green. We love it and were glad that we didn't have to be there to watch them paint our high ceilings. We'll get a better picture up soon.
Well that is a random update on us.

January

We've now finished two full weeks of school since being back from break. It feels long but both david and I have had some exciting teaching moments this week. Nothing big but just lessons that were fun and that went well. Next week is finals week and then we are done with the second quarter. We are halfway through this adventure now. It seems crazy that it has already been that long but we are excited.

The weather here has been interesting. In the morning it is really cold. By really cold I mean it is in the 50s with a thick fog. It lasts all morning and we are freezing at school. In the states when it is that temperature you wear a jacket and then walk inside and the heat is nice and warm. Well here we wear jackets but the windows don't close, they are just screened. So we teach in our classrooms with our girls wearing skirts and everyone's fingers freezing. Then around 12 it burns off and the sun comes out and it is really warm. In the afternoon it is perfect...sunny with a nice breeze.

The internet is pretty fast right now so I'll take advantage of it and post some past pictures and maybe a video too..This is a video from our room in Montezuma, Costa Rica. We were pretty excited to enjoy monkey friends ouside our room.
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These are most of my 5th grade girls. We're only missing one in this picture.
These are some of my boys. This is the best picture I have of them so it looks like I need to take some more pictures.These are some of our fellow teachers. Megan (left) is our director and Michelle (middle) teaches 1st and Kathy teaches 2nd grade.
Here is a picture from the Christmas program. The set was pretty amazing and this picture does not do it justice. This is the combined 5th grade classes when they sang "Oh Come all Ye Faithful."