Honduras: Revisited

Welcome to Honduras.

I can’t believe all that has happened in one week and how different my life is from a week ago. The unknown is now becoming the ‘known’. Here are the highlights of the good, the bad, and the ugly of the past week.

I think it was last Sunday night when we came home to quite a scare. As we entered the house I thought something felt strange. As I got closer to my room I noticed that still in the living room that there were a few pieces of glass on the floor. My heart quickly started to race. As we were trying to figure out what happened, I went into my room a few minutes later to find my room COVERED in glass. What had happened is the mirror in my bathroom that was leaning up against the wall fell and shattered sending glass straight through my bedroom straight into the living room. It was a mess to clean up, and I can’t imagine what the neighbor’s thought.

On another unfortunate note, and can’t believe I’m sharing this with the world, but I had quite a memorable first day of orientation of my first year of teaching. Well, at lunch, we as a staff were going to get our food and sit outside in what we call the ‘polideportivo’ on the picnic tables. Well my housemate Heather and I went to sit down together on the same side of the picnic table so that others could later join. Well, as we sat down the picnic table (which none of them are screwed the ground) began to flip on us. Heather was able to grab herself; however, I was weighed down with a backpack, purse, glass plate of food, and a drink in a glass. I’m sure you can guess how the rest of this story went. I continued to go down with the picnic table with my things flying everywhere, my plate of lasagna completely covering my pants and my purple drink covering the back side of my pants. It was a horrifying mess. Luckily all I did was slightly cut my hand and get a nice bruise on the back of my leg and ruin some pants. But I had a great friend who actually let me sit in his car to drive me home to change since I live close to the school. Interesting to say the least, huh?

What followed was a long week of orientation starting each day of with amazing chapel sessions followed by meetings; however, we arrived to a point in the week where we as new teachers felt like we were drowning in expectations, information, and lacking in time to prepare. Thus, we convinced our administration to give us a few days free to just prepare our rooms. Therefore, more was able to get done for Open House on Saturday. By the way my room is on the “1^st floor” which is 2 floors down from the main floor (lots of stairs) and has a nice view.

We had Open House for the parents where I got to talk with all but 5 of my parents and spoke with all but a few in Spanish. What a great opportunity that was and the parents are so supportive already. Well, most anyway. I have had a challenge or two, but most said how glad they were to meet me and that I could come and how they are here to serve me and support me in any need I have. They are great. I’ve already been invited to dinner, and one mother even expressed how supportive she wanted to be of me and how important I was as I am the only other person that she shares her “prized possession” with meaning how long I get to spend with her daughter and how much of an influence I have on her. This was truly moving. J

On a happy note, my boxes of school supplies arrived today (Saturday)!!! I’ve been praying for these to arrive and in one piece! I wasn’t able to unpack them, but got to pull out already what I was waiting for. Just like God, never early or late but right on time.

This week I’ve enjoyed getting to get out and enjoy getting to know the others I work with and live with. We’ve enjoyed chatting and playing silly games together while laughing hilariously. Tonight I enjoyed returning to the house and lying under the stars with my housemates in an uncovered part of our garage to gaze up and be reminded of truly how small we are and how we are not in control. I’m thankful for my housemates and these memories.

Oh, and my English is already getting worse. J I say stupid stuff in English after I’ve spoken Spanish for a couple of hours.

So, let me give you a run down of my “normalcy” down here. School starts Tuesday (well supposedly…school is already probably not going to start on Monday for the lower grades because the president of Venezuela is coming in…like I say “Only in Honduras”) and even though I live close to the school we will be picked up by the teacher bus. The short stretch up to the school is a bit risky. School starts at 7:10 and goes to 2:20. It’s an early start, but we are getting used to it. I had a revelation tonight that I will be my student’s 4^th grade teacher. It’s taken me some time to even realize that I’m truly a teacher and that I am actually going to have these same kids for a year, but that in the future when they talk about their teachers that Ms. Kerekes will have been their teacher. So crazy and what an honor and opportunity I have.

Watching the Honduras vs. Mexico game at Jonny's house.

Matt, Joan, and Debbie









My roomies, Beth and Heather, and el hombre de pan de jenibre (gingerbread man) :)