End of Quarter II, Beginning of Roommate VI

This past week was the last week of Quarter II for my 7th graders. That means all week they had final exams and I only taught the 5th graders, whom do not have exam week.

These are the students lining up before school.

This past Sunday I got a new roommate and I hope I don't scare this one off like the last 5 :-)

Her name is Liz and having lived with her for a week, I can say she is a great person to be around. She is in her early 30's and has spent the last two years working in US embassy in Mexico City. Before working for the government however she got a masters in education. So she has taken a couple months off from work to get back to the classroom for a bit. Not only is she full of great advice and information, but she also had a desire to teach math to 3rd-5th graders, so....I happily let her take over the 5th grade math classes.

Like I said she is full of great ideas, and so when were chatting about how one of our common goals is to become better at Spanish, she suggested that we invite a Honduran over once a week for dinner. Here she is after we are about to have our Honduran guests arrive on Tuesday night.

Henry is who Liz and I invited. He is a gardener at school. He actually lived in Florida for five years and so speaks some English, but at this table we asked him not to use it. On the left is Peggy, my roommate for the first three weeks after Christmas break. It was her last night in Honduras before she needed go back to Connecticut and finish college. She was great to live and I started seeing her as a "The Olancho Aid mom" because she was always wanting to make meals and pack lunches. It was sad to see her go.

For our Tuesday night dinner, however, she invited one of her Honduran friends over, who also cleans our house, Benita.

This is Benita's son, Fernando, who is a 2nd grader at Santa Clara. He didn't feel like eating so he decided to hang out in the living room and play monster truck games on the computer.

Her is Peggy and I the next morning when she was about to get on her bus to the airport.

The week continued and the 7th graders took their tests. Here is one of my "challenging" students, wearing my sunglasses on the busride to school. The 7th graders like to hangout on the back of the bus.

The just couldn't get enough of my sunglasses.

Eventually, after much test correcting and finalizing quarterly grades, the weekend came. On Friday we had our little guitar session and Saturday was full activities. Saturday night though, Honduras played an exhibition soccer game with the US, which actually took place down in Carson, California. So, I gave my first roommate, Mario, a call to see if he was free. 2 hours later, Mario, Mario's current roommate, Jay, and myself were grabbing dinner at Chester's Chicken and heading back to Mario's to watch the game.

Here is the three of us each with a barriga llena, corazon contento (full stomach, happy heart). Jay is a bit older than Mario and I. He is a grandfather from New England, who, after retiring, wanted to do service work. This is his second time to Honduras and he spent a year in Haiti doing public health work. He has been sharing his personal reactions to the devastating earthquake which happened their recently. On a lighter note though, we watched the game and even though US lost 3 to 1, it was a good night.

Today, Sunday, I went to mass with Sarah, Beth and Nicole (other volunteer teachers at Santa Clara), and then met up with two high school seniors from Missouri who we had met earlier in the week. They have been down here in Juticalpa for a month, even though we didn't know about them until this week. They told us that their Jesuit high school mandates that seniors take the month of January off to "serve." Since one of their Dad's is a doctor and does medical work in next town north of here, they decided to come to Juticalpa. Apparently, they have been doing a lot of physical labor and medical work, but this past week, their last in Honduras, they came to Santa Clara to help in the classroom, help the gardeners and play with the kids, which is where we met them. One thing they haven't done though is get out into town much, so we took them to Central Park and got tacos and gringas with them. We assured them they wouldn't get sick off the local food...I hope we were right.

That's all for now, hasta luego, (until later).