Running of the gringa

I find myself running with honduran children more often than I find myself correcting my students' English. Well, possibly. Yesterday, I had running club with only one of my girls from school. She was the only one to show up, so we went running together and when she wouldn´t go on her own anymore, I held her hand and we ran together. In addition, last night I went to the cancha to play with my cancha boys and they said they wanted to go running. So two of the littlest ones grabbed my hands and off we went six honduran children circling me as we run down the street together.
Running club is twice a week with 5th, 6th, and 7th graders and I´m sort of in charge of it. We were meeting up wtih another school, but I think we will just have it on our own since having parents arrive on time to pick the kids up seems to be an issue. I´ve started teaching English classes to a group of five of my neighborhood kids between 3rd and 7th grade. Thanks for those oreo cookies Anna, they certainly enjoyed eating them with me!
This weekend I might be off to the beach again. It´s Ethan´s birthday, one of the other teachers. He turns half a century old. Hopefully this time, we wont return with any sicknesses...

School is, well, interesting. I'm learning possibly way more than my students are. I enjoy watching them learn and explore, but I think I've realized....I am happy to have this experience in a lot of ways, but I much more enjoy the relationships I can have with other children when they randomly run with me in the streets or play with me in the cancha.Maybe it's just a part of growing up, but I don't really like all the organization that goes along with a teacher-student relationship. But to be a good teacher, one must do so. It's very different because the majority of my previous relationships with children have been in settings that don't last very long, i.e. missions trips, camp counselor for a week, etc. So the effect they have on you and the effect you have on them, essentially is still part of an extendified (it should be a word) first-impression. Much much different than a long-term relationship. The fun can't last forever. I suppose that is the struggle of any parent, though.

God is good and faithful. I see him in so many aspects here. Mostly through the sweetness that comes from the children. Even if I yell at my kids or work them very hard, they still smile at me, hug me and love me. I just wonder if they can see any of Him through me.

Cartwheels in the Cancha

There is a cancha right near my apartment. It has a soccer field, a basketball court, and a swingset. Monday night I went to play basketball with three of the other women teachers at my school. Rebecca is the only one who can actually say she plays. The rest of us, well, we had fun. There were about 10 kids who ended up playing with us. After half an hour of playing bball, we moved to the soccer field and they were asking us if we could do cartwheels and handstands. We all could, so we attempted to show them up. After a round of gymnastics, we sang a few songs including the Hokey Pokey—each of us with a child on our shoulders. We lay down in the grass and lifted them up into the airplane position. We swung them around in circles. They dog piled me.
I am going to be teaching an English class to some of the neighborhood kids and on Tuesdays and Thursdays our school is going to join up with another bilingual school to have a running club. I think the reason some of my boys want to join is so they can say they beat Miss Gena in a race. I went running with some of them on Tuesday, and they were like, “Miss Gena, you are crazy! How can you run that much.” The reality of it is, that we didn’t even run one mile. I imagine they’ll soon be faster than me.
Please pray for me in the midst of my classroom. I don’t always know how to handle the children—how to maintain control of the classroom and keep them focused. Some days I love it here. Some days I don’t. The frustrations of translating, the petty rules a teacher has to follow, the diarrhea, the many forms of creepy creatures, the annoying rooster that crows like he is about to die every morning. But there are too many surreal moments, like the cartwheels in the cancha that drown out the bad and remind me how sweet life can be.

Retiro

Sweet nature. The R and R that I longed for when I went to Trujillo which didn't seem to really happened, certainly came around this weekend in the form of a trip with my youth group to a placed called Panacam. It is actually a tourist site with cabins equipped with real toilets and toilet paper, snickers bars for sale, and Economist magazines to read. Only about an hour away from Sigua, this is my new favorite place. On Saturday we went on a four hour hike up a mountain (see the foto below)and then back down the mountain. On the way was a few lookout sites as well as beautiful waterfall. However my camera decided not to work well when I attempted to take pictures of the cascada. GRRR. Regardless, the hike was beautiful and I saw a lot of plants only found in rain forest-like areas. They kept asking me if I was tired, everyone was tired except me and one of the leaders who often goes on long hikes. I was ready to go again at the end, and they all said I was crazy. I dont know if I really would have gone for another 4 hour hike, but I definitely wanted to hang out with the flora and fauna some more. We passed through a section where there was supposed to be a lot of cobras, but we saw none. I really wanted to see one, but it was better that God protected us from venimous snakes. However, on Sunday we took a short hike to another waterfall, and on the way we saw a little baby cobra. I was happy to have seen one.

The retreat was great in a lot of ways. It was a good little get away from Sigua and all that can stress me out here. I didn't have to translate for anyone, in fact, there were two boys on the retreat who attend bilingual schools and I had them translate a word each for me. The rest I dealt with by explaining what I was trying to say with other words. It was sooo sweet to see the beauty of nature and feel a part of it, and surprisingly enough I returned home with less mosquito bites than I have fingers, which is a first.

There are certain moments in my life where I feel the peace of God so strong. I had the chance to sit and contemplate life and God, and write about it while looking at a beautiful view of the lake. That is what I call rest. I felt at peace.

I made a lot of new friends as well, quite a few really awesome ones that I plan to hang out with more here in Sigua.

During the retreat, they have this mail box that you can write little notes to someone else and the leaders will read them during the breaks or inbetween speakers and such. One little boy wrote two to me, saying that I was guapa (beautiful). On the way home we sang songs on the school bus. One of the songs goes like this... The person sings the first part, the audience repeats it all.

Beeyay yay (beeyay yay)
Beeyay yay yaya (beeyay yay yay)
Yo tengo un amigo (I have a friend)
Quien se llama _____________ (Whose name is __________place name in there)
A esa si (or no) lo quiero (And I love him/her or I dont love him/her)
Porque __________________ (give a reason here)

Then the person who was called out has to do the same to someone else.

So I said, I have a friend named JeanCarlos who I love because he tells me I'm guapa. The whole bus started laughing and then poor JeanCarlos had everyone going "ooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh" to him, as they often did during the mail box time when someone told someone else of the opposite sex that they thought they were pretty. Now I have a 9 year old boyfriend in Nicaragua, a 12 year old one here, and a creepy old man named Stefano somewhere in Italy. Hey life is good.

Today we had off from school because tomorrow is Fransisco Morazán (1792-1842)day. He was President of Central America, who enacted idealistic liberal reforms, then unsuccessfully fought to maintain the unity of that nation as it fell apart into separate states in civil war. (thanks Wikipedia, for that)

Last night I hung out with some other gringa girls and made chocolate chip cookies. We attempted to watch a movie but ended up discussing the sociologic aspect of hondurans, which I'm sure I will write soon about all that I am discovering in this culture.

Hasta Luego.

youth group

Turns out honduran retreats are a lot like american ones, just all in spanish.

more fotos

a view from the top of our hike