Los Actualizaciones

Hola! Some quick updates for you all (yall, vosotros, ustedes) because I hear I have some worrying family members!

--We went to the ruins yesterday. How Cool! I had no idea how much cooler it would be than I thought it was (does that sentence make sense? I feel like my English is slacking with all this Spanish) The ruins were really interesting and old (obviously) but there were also a little sad...just very pagan. But an awesome learning opportunity. Pictures to come!

--We have gotten to spend a little time with the other group of three students that are currently here. They are lots of fun! They leave on Friday though, and we are a little sad.

--School has been...frustrating. I am having a hard time relating to my teacher and I was expecting more conversation and less skill and drill. The other student who has her in the mornings has the same frustrations though, so that makes me feel like it's not me. The other student is pretty much fluent too, so....it's just a bummer for us both. And I DO benefit from the skill and drill, and I have plenty of other opportunities for conversation. It is what it is. On the bright side...I have started to roll my "rr"s a little bit if I don't think about it! Five years later, woohoo!

--This morning we started working at a kindergarten (Jardín de niños--ha!) It was a ton of fun! I really enjoyed seeing the differences and similarities between kindergarten here and kindergarten in the states. The kids were fun but a little out of control--there are 4 kindergarten classrooms in this same building, with 1 teacher each, and 27 kids in each classroom. Woah. That's like every early childhood person's nightmare. But the teacher was doing a great job!

--On Saturday the three of us went to a hotel outside of town to use their pool. It was SO nice to take some time to cool off, and we had to whole pool to ourselves! It was a real treat :)

--Food! The food has been really awesome :) The house mother that Sam and I are staying with is so wonderful about cooking things that we like (unfortunately, Sarah is has more of a challenge with this). Today for lunch we had fried chicken and mashed potatoes, and broccoli and carrots. She loves to serve vegetables. Supper is always some form of egg, beans, and tortilla, prepared in various ways. That is the traditional meal in Honduras...and like most of Latin America. She also likes to fix us plantains. Those I don't like so much. I am used to like baked or fried plantains--like potato chips, but these are more mushy. I usually try to get them out of the way first, but she then she kindly reminds me that the "platano es un postre"--a dessert. Yuck. But the other day she set a bag of croutons on the table and fed them to us like chips! That just happens to be one of my weird habits :)
On a different note, the food culture is very different that I imagined it would be. People are more..free with their food. For example, in the school this morning they served a meal, and the kids ate some of it, and then really enjoyed throwing the rest of it around the playground. I expected them to have to culture of "eat everything, throw nothing away" It's just a little different.

--Last night (well, at like 4) we lost electricity. My house madre tells Sam and I never to leave at night without a flashlight because when the electricity is out it is unbelievably dark here. So needless to say, I never leave without my flashlight. Last night at like 8, my flashlight broke :(. The three of us were downtown when it broke, and had to feel our way back to Sarah's house...which was quite the task with the sidewalks here. Not fun. We made it though. I was SO glad that I had brought some extra batteries for that thing...but quickly found out that it is the light bulb that is broken, not the batteries. Time to buy a new one! And with absolutely no light, we had a wonderful opportunity to do some stargazing.

--there's probably a lot that I am forgetting. Sorry about that. Sounds like Sam wants to go to an internet café tonight to upload pictures onto her Blog. (She is very insistent about having pictures) so I will probably do the same.
Hasta Pronto! Less than two weeks left :)