Back on the Blog

Welll...I know it's been a while since I last posted -- 2 weeks? -- and now I don't even know where to start!

I guess I'll start from the top with SAG, the Student Annual Gathering in Tegus. It was a ton of fun! I really loved it and all of the students had a ton of fun too (they said it was better than other years...I'm not sure why.) It is something I definitely would have loved in high school. It's true that I didn't get any sleep -- I slept in a huge cabin with triple bunks with 85 other girls. We had two bathrooms for the 20 girls from our school, so I had to get up at 3:30am every morning and shuffle the girls through the showers...at least most of the time the girls were exhausted so they actually went to bed at like midnight like they were supposed to. So I got a few hours of sleep at least. Anyway, Justin ended up coming too, so that was fun -- at first he didn't know if he was going to go or not. Of course all the girls at my school fell in love with him, which Justin of course ate up....so now I have about 50 pictures on my camera of Justin and all my students...but that's a different story...

(picture 1 of 50 of Justin and my students...)

So our school ended up coming in 4th place out of 6th...and the Tegus school won. Shock. (Not.) They win every year. (My students said Catacamas won 3 years ago, and halfway through the competition the Tegus school decided it wasn't good to have a winner...) To give you some background here on the schools, it would be like a Class A school like Rockford (Tegus) competing against a class C or D school like Whittemore-Prescott (Catacamas). Not that we couldn't compete, but let's be real, some of the other schools don't even go up to 12th grade yet! Well, oh well. And our boys' soccer team did beat Tegus in the championship! It was ridiculous...they were freaking out because soccer is the last competition and the biggest deal. So they were chanting and cheering all the way back to the cafeteria from the field. I was really disappointed in our girls' basketball team though...we won the first game but lost the second. If we would've won that second game (against a team that was not very good that we had beat already like a month ago!) we would've been in the championship, which was pretty sweet because it was at night under the lights and everyone went to watch! I never understood before when I was a player why the coach would get so frustrated at the team when they lost or played bad...

(Watching another basketball game)

Anyway, the sudoku competition was pretty funny because Justin and I had both been the trainers for our schools, so we were talking smack the whole week with our students until the competition...and then it turned out that some guy from Cholu won in like 5 minutes! Haha. Well, one of Justin's girls came in third...either way, it was pretty funny that after trash talking all week neither of us won. My students were strrruggling -- one of my tenth graders made a bad face in the middle of the competition and whispers, "Next year Miss!" I was like, "No! Go! There's still this year!" Oh well...he ended up giving up halfway through. Haha. One of my ninth graders did win the spelling bee though! So I was super excited. And well, I could go on for days about all the competitions -- band, singing, speech, Bible trivia, lego, three-point shots, cross-country, mini-soccer, rubik's cube, dictionary search (most of the time there were several competitions going on at once so we were all running around like chickens with our heads cut off)...but that could take all day. So let's suffice it to say that a great time was had by all and I just had fun hanging out with my students and speaking more Spanish with them in a non-school setting where I didn't have to tell them to sit down, shut up, and pay attention all the time.

(First place in the spelling bee!)

Then I managed to get out of the big fancy dinner the last night of SAG (basically the students' prom -- because everyone gets that dressed up) so I could go see Rose the first day she got in! It was great. We got to go see one of Justin's football games and hang out with the other football players (who are all crazy, by the way) and take a day trip to a town up the mountain to get some souvenirs. Mostly, though, we spent Saturday - Wednesday hanging out at the pool at the hotel in Tegus.  It was a great relaxing break after SAG!

(Justin and I after his football game)

(Free bracelets from some lady we bought earrings from)

Wednesday night Rose headed back to Catacamas with me to go to school Thursday and Friday (too bad I couldn't take the whole week off, but I can't complain). It was fun though, and I'm really glad she got to see my school and where I live, meet my students, live my routine with me...etc. On Friday we once again got back on the bus to Tegus for her to leave Saturday morning (I spent the rest of the day taking advantage of the pool), and then I came back to Cata once again on Sunday (I'm getting good at riding these buses back and forth...).

(Rose and I with all my eighth grade girls)

So it was a crazy last two weeks, but probably the best two weeks so far that I've been in Honduras! And it was back to the grind on Monday, for what is a somewhat normal week (as normal as a school week in Honduras can be) -- although we do have a big Mother's Day celebration on Friday (so we leave school at noon and then have a big dinner thing at 5 with all the moms where we have to get super dressed up). Anyway, I've got the rest of this week and next week of school, and then it's back to Tegus to pick up my other friend Sam from the airport because she's coming to visit me for a week! It's going to be great! It's funny because the students and teachers are like, "Wait you have another friend coming to visit? They're coming here just to visit you? Not for any other reason?!" They can't believe it. (As if I'm not worthy to be visited?!) I guess I have some pretty great friends.