ALMOST CHRISTMAS BREAK!

I only have a few hours left of school. I can honestly say that I am reading for christmas break. I thought I was always ready for CHristmas break as a student, I thought that I DESERVED Christmas break. ANd I´m sure I did. BUt what I never knew was that the teacher´s deserved the same, if not more than I did. So here I am, experiencing my first ¨last day of school before break¨feeling, and I can´t wait. You get toa point, even if you love your kids, that you really just want to hvae some time a way from them to rememeber how lucky you are. My mom arrived here in Sunday. I think her eyes have been opened. I left out some stories when I would talk to her, beause I didnt want her to worry. Well now she sees what I haven´t told her. hehe. WHOOPS. =) Naw, my kids love her, they always ask ¨miss, and your mom?¨ We gave them all little prizes today. Last night we had our christmas gift exchange and white elephant. It was so fun. I got a cute photo album from Greg and then in the White elephant I got OREOS, AND PEANUT BUTTER. MY ALL TIME FAVORITE! Everyone brought random things like a dust pan, candy, a walla walla calender (thank you SM office...) huge random magnets. It was hilarious. The bets part of all was that Greg brought a picture of himself. lol. HE WOULD. My mom made us spaghetti and salad, and the girls at the other house made this AMMAAZZZINNGG popcorn cake thing with m&ms in it. YUM.
Yesterday was a rough day, but as you can tell, it ended good. I hd to redo a lot of my grades because the computer messed them up. So that was pretty depressing. I was doing that for 3 hours. And then when my mom and I were making the alfredo sauce i was going to pick it up and move it, but our ONLY pan is broken, so it spun around and spilled everywhere. ANyway, just a small setback. And last but not least, we tried to highlight my hair. Hence the word ¨tried¨ I look like one of those playboy bunnies who actually has black hair but attempts to die her whole head blonde so it turns out randomly orangish. So today the mission is to fix the disaster... Don´t worry I got to wear a santa hat today. Little does the rest of the world know that I am actually hiding a disaster! lol. It´s kind of funny actually... Anyway, At the end of the day, I stopped and reminded myself that I am so lucky. So lucky to be here, so lucky to have the girls I have, so lucky that we have created such an awesome family here. So lucky that I actually have hair, even it is orange. SO LUCKY that my mom is here. So lucky that Jared is coming... TOMORROW. =)
Have a wonderful day....

HAPPY SABBATH!

I survived today. It was parent teacher conferences, the mother of all parent teacher conferences, they came to pick up their kids grades. It was scary at first because expecting parents to be angry when they saw that their kids didn't do as well as they assumed they would. That's the bad thing about assuming... if you never come to check on your child, then how can you possibly expect everything to be ok? I dunno. Anyway, everything went very well actually, I had to change a few grades because of errors made in the computer, but other than that, things were fine. I used more spanish than I normally do so i was pretty proud of myself. haha. MI MADRE VIENE! I can't wait! She's leaving tomorrow so all of you should pray for her safe travels. We have one more week of school, in which I will be cramming as much information into them as I can! We have the Christmas concert/program on Thursday night so basically all of thursday is going to be spent practicing. This week was super fun because the seven of us missionaries drew each other's names and did secret santa. I had Heidi. let me tell you how difficult it is to surprise someone who you spend every waking hour with (minus school hours). We live within 5 feet of each other. But it was super fun, we all surprised each other everyday this week with random gifts, or food, or notes. It once again is so nice to have them. What would I do without them? Bethani had me and I got zambos (chips made from fried plantains), ketchup (YUM), granola bars, fruit roll up, popcorn, and a wonderful frosty with oreos. It was like America had come to me! Basically that's all I have to say right now... Happy Sabbath everyone! Keep us in your prayers as we finish out this next week. Christmas is coming!

DECEMBER!

WOW! Where has the time gone? It's already December. I only have 1 more school day left this week and then Friday we have parent teacher conferences, they will be the most intense for sure because we're giving the parents the kids grades. I'm scared. I have like 8 kids who didn't pass. So I guess I'll have to explain myself... basically my response is going to be "your child didn't do his homework." that's the story. MY MOM IS COMING on Sunday. Can you believe it? I can't. What is it like to see someone after you haven't seen them for 4 months. I certainly wouldn't know. This ist he perfect week for her to come because we're doing all the Christmas things like the Christmas performance that I've been teaching my kids to sing "Angels we have heard on high." Keep us in your prayers, especially those we are going to be going home. I imagine it would be tough to go back home and then come back here. Anyway, I must get some sleep. But as far as life in Honduras, It's going well. I'm healthy and happy. This is home.
GOD BLESS!

THANKSGIVING!

Hello all, I realized that it has been forever since I last posted anything on here. These last two weeks have been so crazy! Getting our grades done, making sure all the kids have taken their "recuperation" tests... which is pretty lame I might say. THe kids don't have to pass and they know that they don't have to do their homework because they have a test at the end of the partial that can make up for all of their test scores from the whole partial. It's pretty dumb. But anyway, so I have been very busy getting all my grades done, and then, on top of that, I lost my flash drive. Which contained all my grades and such. Not to worry, I already did them again! =)
So now, here I am, stuffed full of food, and writing a blog. We just got back from the Military base. We got to eat thanksgiving there! it was SOOO GOOD! There were mountains of food! I was feeling a little low about not being home for thanksgiving, but this is my home for right now. I can't believe I have been here for so long! It's feels like It has FLOWN by! I don't know where the time has gone. I am so happy to be here. My kids are way better than when I first began and I feel like I have things under control. Except for random kid outbursts. Today I had to send 3 kids to Ms. Norma (the Vice principal) I couldn't even teach they were going so crazy! But not to worry, as soon as they returned they were perfect angels! Isn't that the way it always works once you get in trouble? They don't celebrate thanksgiving here but at our school they kind of do because there are so many of us Americans that they let us out early today so we could go to the base and eat. The kids had a party today before we left too. My parents brought Chinese rice and cake and pop! They do parties here like you won't believe! That's one thing I've definitely gotten used too! =)
These pictures are randomly placed because these last two weeks have been crazy, one is from Sunday when we went to a small town called Valley of the Angels, there is an Adventist Hospital there and we got to visit it. Another one is of my 7th graders and I and the one of Sasha and I is from today at the base. This one is of me playing a violin that we found at some store. It was pretty cool so I took a picture of it!
Another interesting story is we went over to one of our friends houses and we watched Honduras play Mexico. As you can tell, we are very decked out and ready to cheer on the "home" team. We are hoping that in February the US will play Honduras... although our loyalties will be divided when that comes around, we will thoroughly enjoy ourselves!
I hope you all have a VERY HAPPY Thanksgiving! To all my fam- I miss you, I wish I were there, but I'm not, SO EAT UP! =)

Divine Appointments

I have recently been awakened to the realness of divine appointments. Let me tell you a story. We were eating out a few weeks ago and a lady came up to us and was almost crying. She was so excited to see Americans. She is living in an orphanage and she's here by herself. I can't imagine. We gave her our number and she called us and was planning to come for dinner. She ended up not being able to make it but we didnt' have her number to call her. So we meet this guy from the military base who has her number so it gives it to us. IT"S A SMALL WORLD AFTER ALL... so anyway, we haven't been able to get in touch with her since but we've really been thinking about her. She was only here a month and she was about ready to go home. We told her that it gets easier and that she just needs to hang on. Trust that God wants her here. After all, that's what we did. So today Sasha and Jenny and i took a little mini vacation to this hotel that had a pool. We paid a small fee to use it and Jeanne ended up being there. Weird? No. Divine Appointment. We ended up talking for hours... when I say hours.. i mean HOURS. About God and what's he has done in her life, why she's here, why we're here, and it was a common mutual love in Christ, right there next to a pool. God is so good. Sometimes in works in mysterious ways. She thinks she'll be able to make it through the next 5 months if she has people she can talk to. We plan to be those people for her.
Hope you have a wonderful Sabbath!

La Cancha!

On Thursday Night we headed off to the school for an incredibly fun night! The kids have been practicing dances for this "cultural night." All the different grades have been learning dances and Thursday was the night that they would perform, there were judges and tons of food stands that the kids parents were in charge of. It was so much fun!
Each class had a different part of Honduras to show what food they had, what dresses they wore and so on. They had samples of all the different kinds of foods and tents decorated! It was so cool! The picture below is of one of the tents.
The Kids got all dressed up in their costumes and they looked SO ADORABLE... see for yourself! My kids are the cutest kids EVER! They braided yarn into their hair so it looked like they had super long hair, and the boys had cute little hats and matching white outfits... so cute.. so cute.
We ate so many different things! We had corn on the cob covered in cheese, we had cupcakes, hot chocolate, hot lemonade (YUUUMMM), Baleadas, and many other delicious things that I don't know how to spell.... I was so much fun and the kids were so excited that we came to watch them! They have some super sweet traditions here! It's been fun.... It's November! I can't believe it! Gotta keep trudging on! We're doing it! Keep praying for us!

I love My Children!

This is Carlos! One of my favorites! I know I probably shouldn't have favorites... but watch this and he will be your favorite too! =)