Good good day

I had a great day today, just what I needed after feeling kinda blah yesterday.

Before I left for Honduras my cousin Emma and her Girl Scout troupe, led by my Aunt Claire, gathered school supplies, art supplies, flip flops, socks and underwear for me to bring here to give to the kids. I've been anxiously waiting to share them because I wanted to wait for a day when we would have time to talk about it and spend time reading the (adorable) letters that Emma and her friends' wrote to the kids. I also wanted to make sure the kids here were able to fully appreciate the very generous donation.

So today I finally shared everything with them! (except for the underwear and socks, which will probably go to another group of kids who are more in need than the ones I teach.) I explained the situation in Spanglish, before opening the bag full of stuff and they were very intrigued by the letters and photos of the girls. They read a few of the letters and translated what we could. When I opened the bag they were amazed and soo excited about all the supplies. They dug right in and I told them it was fine if they played with it today and we took time to write letters back to the girls on Monday.

To my surprise they all immediately took paper and pencils and started writing thank you letters. When they struggled to write in English, I told them it was okay to write in Spanish, but they insisted on English and I helped them translate. Then when I told them that the girls were hoping to practice some Spanish, they also wrote letters in Spanish. I couldn't have been happier to see them so interested in English and so thankful for the gifts! It's the first time since I've been here that they really wanted to practice English! It was the perfect mix of learning and playing that I've been wanting them to experience.

They wrote the letters and make pictures of the Honduran flag and the beach and hearts and flowers for about an hour and half and then when it was time to clean up they piled up their projects and told me I would need a big envelope to send them :) (unfortunately if there is an option to mail things here I have no idea how to do it and have heard that it can take over a month so I plan on bringing the letters back with me.)

After we were finished we played with water balloons outside and had a really good time. It was a very good morning with the kids!

In the afternoon I met with the 14 year old and we practiced his English with more conversation, this time mostly about church, since that's where he spends most of his time on the weekend. Again, I found it interesting and he seems like a pretty cool kid.

After that I took a trip into La Ceiba with Courtney and Stephanie, the 2 girls from Ohio who live in my house. We went to a really nice coffee shop (definitely the nicest place I've seen yet in Honduras) and sat a talked for almost three hours. We had a great conversation and I learned a lot about them that I didn't know. I think I was too quick to assume that I was too different from them to really get along with them and I was proven wrong today. We went the big grocery store afterwards and then picked up some mangoes and avocados from the vendors outside.

Tomorrow I"m doing some kind of volunteer thing at the airport base. I say it that way because I literally have no idea what I'm doing. The woman in charge of our program arranged for a few of us to do this event from 8-3 tomorrow and finally gave us 'details' tonight at 8:00 which consisted of what time we will be picked up and that we probably won't understand much because it's all in Spanish but we should go to scope it out because she wants us to start a new program there. She also let us know that she can't go because she has an early dentist appointment. This is typically how things go here..not much detail or thought put into things. Also, no regard for time or convenience. (Our cashier at the grocery store today stopped in the middle of ringing me up, with a long line behind me, to go to the bathroom. I couldn't believe it!) So anyway, this could be interesting.

No pictures today, I have some of the kids with their new supplies but they are on my camera at home. So tomorrow!

If anyone has good bug bite remedies please share. I'm dying over here. I woke up at about 3am convinced that I had malaria because of the huge bites on my feet. As of right now I'm not showing any signs, but if there's no blog entry for the next couple days you'll know what happened...