Emergency Room and Epiphany's

Tristan and I are sitting here listening to the rain poor outside. It’s been raining really hard all afternoon and it sounds so great.

Tristan has started playing soccer with the church group every Friday night. The church group is at least 150 people that play on 4 different fields and rotate each time one of the teams makes a goal. Tristan’s not doing too bad considering he’s playing with people who have been handling a ball longer than they’ve been walking. This last Friday Jenny, and Nathan (North American teachers) and I went to watch Tristan and Jonny (another NA teacher) play. Around 11pm they were on the last goal of the night until Jonny (you were thinking it was Tristan weren’t you  ) went to head a ball and instead of the ball, he hit heads with another player. Jonny sliced his head open pretty bad and so we experienced the emergency room. The hospital was professional and efficient (not too modern) however it was clean and fast! We were only there about an hour and after six stitches later we were out of there.

While sitting in the stands watching the soccer game Naptali came and introduced himself to Jenny and I. He sat very close to us and kept touching my shoulder. Both Jenny and I were creeped out! He spoke pretty good English so we were able to have a good conversation. During the conversation he stated that North American’s were too ‘cold’ – especially to strangers. This was a pretty good slap in the face to me, especially because of how uncomfortable I was because he was in my bubble. Since being here I too have seen how we are very cold. In the U.S. people become offended and take it personally if someone bumps into them into the grocery store. Here, it is not strange at all to bump into someone. When leaving, Hondurans say good-bye with a kiss and a hug. This has gotten me thinking: why are NA’s so ‘cold’ or standoffish? Is this because we are afraid to have real relationships with people, afraid to get close to people, afraid of germs, think we’re better than others? Why is it wrong for us to show physical affection to friends - why is it ‘out of trend’ or odd to hug someone outside of your family? This has been a good epiphany – that it is important to allow people into our world. Why do have to have such private lives – going from our house to our garage to our car to the parking lot to the office and back again. We always have space around us. I have been challenged to make my bubble smaller and allow others in. How else are we supposed to touch the lives of others? (Naptali wasn’t so creepy by the end of the night  ).

This Sunday we went hiking up to La Tigra. It is a national park that is about an hour away from Tegucigalpa. We got there around 9am and hiked in a couple hours into a water fall. The trail was either straight up or straight down – that combined with the elevation took the air out of all of us! (well, that’s the excuse we’re all using). We enjoyed our PB and J sandwiches and then Tristan led an exploration up the mountain on the side of the waterfall. It was extremely steep and very very muddy – so we all slid back down after nothing was found at the top. We then hiked back to our car. It was great! La Tigra is very big and there seems to be lots to see and lots of trails so we’re hoping to go back very soon.