turning over a new leaf

So as my previous post stated this first week back was a difficult one.  The second week back also proved to be very difficult as one of my student's fathers was shot and killed on Tuesday morning.  He was also the husband of the woman that owns and runs our cafeteria at school.  Needless to say two funerals in two weeks was a very overwhelming way to ring in 2011.
Things have continued to start to look up and get better as this week has begun.  The student whose father died has returned to school and we started a new semester this week.  Getting excited about teaching some new units has been harder than normal to do, but I think I have finally gotten over the hump and am feeling more positive about things.  This week we are going to Zanmorano (a bit outside of Tegucigalpa) for a teacher conference.  That should help to pump me up and motivate me.  Plus, I never pass up a chance to go to Tegucigalpa.  I'm hoping to get to hang out with my host family from my semester abroad again : ) We leave Fri or Sat and come back Tuesday.

The Lord giveth and taketh away...blessed be the name of the Lord

    Today I did the thing that I never thought I would do while here in Honduras; I attended a Honduran funeral.  Miss Sandra, the pre-school/kindergarten teacher from school, passed away yesterday from a life long battle with Lupus.  She has had large complications on and off throughout her life and was recently struggling greatly with her disease.  She has not been able to teach since mid September or October and has had many treatments and surgeries.  She was well enough that she was able to join us for our Thanksgiving Dinner celebration at our house, but she quickly got worse again shortly after.
    She was a kind woman with heart of gold.  The children loved her and she will be greatly missed.  Today was a difficult one.  We hopped on a bus to go to her funeral which took place outside at the gravesite.  It was a beautiful ceremony which celebrated her life.  It was obvious she had touched so many lives with the crowd that gathered to return her to the earth.  It is always hard to say goodbye to someone but it was especially hard to watch her husband as he literally buried his own wife.  She leaves behind a husband and two boys (Andres-8th grade and Gabriel-7th grade).  Please keep their family in your prayers.  They have a long road ahead of them.

Birthday in Honduras = success!

My birthday was on Wednesday or this week and I was a little nervous about having my birthday in a new place and even more nervous about turning 25, or a quarter century old as my friends like to put it.  My students were very nice to me and threw me a "surprise" party during the last period of the day.  They have social studies in another room.  I was working in our classroom and a couple of my students came in insisting that I come to the room because there was a huge problem and the boys were in trouble.  So I went and when I walked through the doors they sang happy birthday to me.  We had cake and doritos and chips and salsa.  I felt loved.  A student even gave me two pairs of earrings : )
Later that night my fellow housemates also sang to me and had decorated two cemitas (delicious sugary cake roll things that I love) with frosting and put a candle in each one.  On Friday night the celebration kept going as one of my students invited me and my housemates over for dinner and cake and ice cream.
Like I said I have felt very loved!  Maybe 25 won't be that bad.  After all I can finally rent a car!

should have been a quick trip but...

So what should have been a quick 7ish hour trip total back to Honduras ended up taking almost 24 hours.  I left my parents' house at 2:30am on Monday morning to catch my 5:35am flight from Chicago to Miami.  Everything seemed to be going so smoothly until I got on the plane.  Why they even let us on the plane I'm not sure.  Take off time goes by and an announcement is made; the captain is not here yet.  Then the stewardess proceeds to say he is not even at the airport yet.  Two hours later a captain shows up.  Apparently the original captain that was supposed to fly us got ill and it took that long to find a replacement and get him there.  We finally take off after sitting on the plane for 2 hours.
We land in Miami.  I know I'm cutting it SUPER close.  We land at 11:20 and my connecting flight to Miami leaves at 11:40am.  I get off the plane at 11:30 hoping I can run for it.  Nope, no such luck.  I missed it.  So I go to a desk and get on the next flight.  Except the next flight was at 7:20pm.  Awesome, a 7 hour layover.  Not so awesome.  At least they gave me a food voucher for lunch and dinner and bumped me up to first class for my flight.  Great time to have my first First Class experience.  I had ice cream on my flight.  It was great!  Then I arrived in San Pedro and they didn't have my bag.  But there were some people we knew from town waiting to take a church group into town from our flight so we hitched a ride with them.   I finally made it to my house at midnight.  LONGEST DAY EVER!!!!  I went and got my bag yesterday.  All is well.