1st Soccer National Championship of the Year

Only a couple of months left in Honduras. MCC is beginning to encourage us to start to think about how we plan to wrap up and say goodbyes. It’s probably healthy, but it’s strange to think about planning goodbyes and leaving. Throughout my time here I continually keep achieving new levels of comfort. For example when I learned my first bus route, it was a small accomplishment but brought a lot of freedom. I feel like something similar has happened in my ability to make connections with youth. I don’t know if it is a language improvement but I’m feeling less like “the foreigner who lives down the street.” Everyone said that a year is about enough time to get comfortable, and then it’s to go back home.

The weather is helping me not get too comfortable. The rainy season has kicked in again and we have been getting regular rain about twice a day.  I generally like rain but living with mud roads is the price. The rain tries to help cool the temperature down, but I think it really just makes it mad. It cools off when it rains, but about 5 minutes after it stops the heat comes back stronger but with high humidity.

This last weekend was the Super Bowl of Honduras, meaning the national soccer championship. Marathon from San Pedro Sula played Olimpia from Tegucigalpa. I adopted Marathon as my team since Christmas when I was given a jersey as a present. My host sister, Bessy, is a big Olimpia fan. I gave her a hard time, about how sad she would be when Marathon won, in the days prior to the big game. Now, Olimpia is like the New York Yankees of Honduras soccer, they’re the team with money advantage. I tried to reason with Bessy to get her to switch and root for the “good guys.” At half time she decided to become a Marathon fan, if they became champs. But then Olimpia slipped in a lucky goal in the second half and ruined all my hard work…

Work is interesting because I’m having fun with the more difficult classes and having more difficulty with the easy ones. I have a class of beginning kids and I have to keep reminding that they are starting from scratch and that I need to explain everything down to how to use the mouse. I have also been performing surgery on computers. Sometimes if you add three dead computers together, you get a descent working one.




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Learning Tour

So I've been busy having fun again. Two weeks ago we had an MCC Learning tour visit Honduras. They were in the country for about 10 days, and had people representing Kansas and Texas. I got to catch up with a good friend from college, Caley Ortman who was the group leader. I was able to travel with the group to Ceiba which is a north coast city. We spent a couple days in Ceiba which included a presentation on the history of Mennonites in Honduras, stubed our toes playing frisbee (ok, maybe just me), and getting to hear from some local organizations that are working in Ceiba. One of the days was spent visiting a community that is located right up against the city's dump. It's amazing to be comfortable living in a poorer community for the last 8 months, and then to still be shocked by poverty living situations. We were shown around this community by a guy who had lived and worked in this community. He was able to point out challenges and signs of hope he saw in the community.

The last day in Ceiba was spent at a wild life reserve named Cuero Y Salado. We took a guided boat tour up a river to see birds, monkeys, Mangrove trees, bats, crocodiles, and a possible manatee sighting. After, we took a quick swim in the Caribbean and brought out the frisbee once more before heading back to San Pedro. The following day the group came out to 6 de Mayo and I got to show them where I work and explain what I do. We had a piñata for almost 100 hyper kids, It was out of control.  Picutres

I've got my final round of classes going, which will keep me busy up until I leave Honduras. The classes are going well and having lots of repeat students is helpful. Speaking of, I should probably get some lesson planning done before my classes tomorrow... Also, looking forward to a team retreat coming up later this week in the Tegucigalpa area.



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