Daily Happenings

Hey everyone! Happy March! :)

The last two weeks have been pretty full of just day to day stuff. We've been working, sleeping, eating, playing, and grading lots of papers!

Last weekend my top student (she's definitely a genius!) went to the Spelling Bee against about 30 other bi-lingual schools in the Tegucigalpa area. She did a fantastic job - got 4th place out of everyone! So, she was bummed that she didn't place, but I think 4th is outstanding! So, I have two Spelling Bee winners in my classrooms (another of my students won the Bee in 2nd grade) and I sometimes ask them how to spell something when I blank out. :) It was fun to be competing against other schools - I've met enough people in the 'bilingual school world' that I knew some people there - that was cool. oh - and all us teachers bought matching Spelling Bee shirts :).

We been doing some running at the track that we've discovered - it's a great community track that's free and very much taken advantage of - every time we've gone it's been full of soccer teams, old people walking, groups working out, and we think that there were even Honduran Olympic teams there once.... I wanted to go and get their autograph in case, but Tristan wouldn't go do it for me :). party pooper - just kidding.

One of the other NA teacher's (Johnny) has his brother and a group of friends here for the week to do a missions trip - so we've had 9 extra gringo's around. It's been fun. One night one of Tristan's students mom who makes amazing Pupusa's for the church and school, came over and taught everyone how to make Pupusas. It was so fun and something I"ve been wanting to learn! So, by the end of the night she said I was good enough to work for her :). But she did the hard stuff like making the dough - i just formed it how she said. Then I asked her to show me how to make tortillas and she taught me how to make tortillas - wow were they good. Now I just need to practice.

Because these NA's are here, Johnny has been missing school to go and build a church with them. So, Tristan's week has been crazy - teaching 8 out of 9 classes straight - both his classes and filling in lots for missing teachers. So his week has been super busy. He is so happy though because his classes for tomorrow are taking a field trip so he only has one class. Pretty redeeming for his crazy week. Tristan might be going to a village to help out with some training at a church this Saturday.

School is going through a lot of crazy changes. The church is adding on - but the problem is that it's taking away the entire courtyard of the school where the children play, line up, and do P.E. It also takes away all of the covered area because there is no shade anywhere else. This is not good because we are beginning to feel the heat coming... so the parents are really upset. They also took away the main entrance and are asking the parents not to come into the school with their kids which the younger kids parents are upset about. Also, I'm dreading the noise and the dust - I have a wall of windows and they are building just outside of all of our classrooms. So, it'll be interesting when they actually start construction on Monday how we'll be able to hear anything in our rooms. Hopefully it'll work itself out because the parents are upset and the administration's hands are tied. complicated.

Hope you have a great weekend!