Reading Month

As the month of November closes, I reflect back on all the fun stuff I was able to do with the boys at the Alison Bilingual School. Ever since I arrived (for full time) back in August, the boys want to read more and more each day. At first, it was like pulling teeth. This was understandable when some of them couldn't even read their own language and are in 2nd grade. 3 (of the 6) of the boys are much more advanced than the others.

The oldest, Nelson (pictured above), is in 5th grade and basically fluent in English. He has enough potential to be the next president of Honduras in my opinion, but maybe that's the mom in me speaking. Either way - I believe it wholeheartedly. He can have a bit of a temper, but we're working on that. This picture was taken back at the International Fair in October - where Nelson and I proudly made an Israeli cocktail (minus alcohol, clearly). He was so proud we sold every last drop.

There are 4 in second grade - Daniel, Cristian, Norman and Luis. The best way to describe them is that they are all freaks. I love them for this. I'm a bit of a freak myself. They exhaust me. But "valen la pena" - which translate to mean "they are worth it". This picture is missing Luis, but includes Jose Alexander - who is in 1st grade. This was taken the night I took the boys to the "pajama party" at school. We got to wear pj's to school, read books to the kids, and drink hot chocolate and eat Christmas cookies. SO FUN!

This picture was taken this morning at "Dress as your favorite Character in a book" day. That's a mouthful, but as you can see - it was precious. All the boys dressed up as superheroes. These costumes are the greatest - shout out to whoever donated them a while back. This is Luis and Daniel and one of their classmates. Needless to say, it was a great month at JEC and at Alison Bixby.

On a different note, I head home in 13 days. I can't wait to be with all you beautiful people.

My Week in Pictures

Too busy to post a blog - hope you enjoy the pictures :)

Nelson, Juan David, and Luis after they decorated their first Christmas tree

Sweet Shelly let me paint her fingernails at the soccer game.

LOTS of Christmas decorating going on. All thanks to Harpeth Hills Youth Group!!!

Took these boys to a Pajama Party at their school on Thursday.

My own personal Christmas cheer :)

Yummy food.

Things I Miss

While I do absolutely love being here in Honduras (mainly because of these boys and how easily they have stolen my heart day-by-day), there are a few things I dearly miss. This is my top 20.

1. My family

2. My friends

3. TJ Maxx & Target

4. Real cheeseburgers (not fast food)

5. WALGREENS

6. Eating foods that 1 of the main ingredients isn’t OIL

7. the YMCA

8. Driving a car

9. HOT SHOWERS

10. Chick-fil-A

11. Tank, Maddux, Wig & the cats

12. Speaking english (every now and then)

13. JULIA PARTIES.

14. My grandmothers

15. Church worship... songs here don't actually have a tune

16. Watching the leaves change colors as it gets colder

17. High school and college football

18. Mrs. Wanda's home cooking

19. LAS PALMAS

20. Cooking my own food

Halloween Recap

For those of you who know me, you're well aware Halloween is my favorite holiday (second best only to the birth of Jesus Christ - which I fully celebrate). This picture should come to no surprise to any of you. I had little resources here, and I had honestly planned on not celebrating the holiday entirely until some friends informed me they would be throwing ME (hehe) a halloween party. I decided to buy simple black and white paint and go for it.

I was inspired by the Jay Z music video, "On to the Next One", that I saw "back in college" (that sounds weird). The guys face was painted all white with only teeth and black eyes. As weird as it is to say, I fell in love with the idea for Halloween. Here was my perfect opportunity, and I sprinted full speed ahead with it. I simply added a skeleton nose and was done with it. Hope you like :)

My Crazy, Movie-esque Life Lately

First off I have been very blessed to have help from one of my very best friends, Sarah Catherine Thetford, and her boyfriend, Richy, here at Jovenes the past month and a half. I know this picture is far away, but we were more concerned about getting as much of the scenery in the picture than us being close to the camera.

Scat, Richy, and myself have been working ourselves like dogs the past few weeks, but it may be better to just say “working a normal day” that the employees here work day-to-day. It’s consisted of 2 weeks of waking up everyday at 4:30AM and doing the following:

4:30- wake up, get ourselves ready

5:00- wake up the boys, get them showered, teeth brushed, dressed, beds made, and hair gelled

6:00-taking all 18 boys to breakfast

6:15- getting the juice boxes filled, snacks in lunchbox deal

6:30- all boys (except 6) on the bus and ready to leave for school with backpacks/lunchboxes

7:00- one of the 3 of us take the 6 boys who attend bilingual school to their campus to drop them off

7:30/8:00- start cleaning (sigh)

8-10:30- CLEAN: sweeping everything, mopping everything, washing pee-stained bed sheets & PJs, & cleaning pee smelling bathrooms (the worst job I’ve ever had)

11:30- eat lunch with the high schoolers & prepare bilingual school lunches to take to campus

12:00- take lunches & deliver to Alison Bilingual school

12:20-12:40- their lunch... we wait until they finish, pick up dishes, and head home

12:30- boys from public school arrive, change clothes, wash hands, and eat lunch

1:00- play time

2:00- public school homework sessions

2:30- head to Alison to pick up 6 boys at bilingual school

3:00- return home, change their clothes, continue washing clothes

4:30-5:30- Alison boys' homework session

5:30- heat up/prepare dinner

6:00- serve dinner to yellow house boys

6:30-8 - the boys play and finish HW if they hadn't already finished earlier in the day

8:00- bed time

8:30- I die.

All of this day-to-day routine doesn’t include soccer games, after-school activities, or anything else that usually pops up last minute. We had Lindy here for the first week of this, and the second week it was just us 3. While at the end of everyday I laid my head down on my pillow counting the hours until I had to wake up to repeat the day again, I remembered the fact that these employees are here day in and day out and probably not getting paid nearly enough. This also goes without mentioning the families these employees have waiting on them to return each night. I seriously don’t know how they do it. These workers here are truly SERVANTS. They’re saints. I don’t know how they do it. All I can say is thank God for their presence here in JEC- it does not go unnoticed.

On a lighter note - I went to cross the border yesterday to renew my permission to be in the country. Of course we waited for the last day possible (it expired yesterday, the 23rd) which made me super nervous. Luckily - everyone here is usually super lax about all this stuff, so I just paid a heavy $3 and didn’t even have to pass the border. Elvin, the house parent in the yellow house, drove me in his tiny truck, and two of my best buds from my green house, Julio and Ochoa, went with us. Since we saved so much time by not crossing into Nicaragua, we treated ourselves to a delicious, sit-down meal in Danli, a city which is close to the border.

This is a picture of Kevin, who just turned 18 this past week. He has decided to go back to living with his father, who lives in a poor area about 8 hours from Teguc. While some of these kids have parents, the parents have chosen to give them up or simply cannot afford taking care of them. Kevin is a case of the later. Since he is now 18, he is not bound to be here, and he has chosen to go look for work and live with his father to help support his family. I wish him all the luck in the world. Kevin gave me a spiral notebook of love poems a few weeks ago and told me he would miss me. The poems were all hand written by his truly. Quite the gesture. Hope you are all well in TN or wherever you are - I can officially announce my arrival date is December 13th. Can’t wait to see you all over the holidays. You have been missed.

I love my job

This week was by far the hardest I've worked at a job in a long time. When people come to JEC, they see the happy faces, smiles, and picturesque moments. Unfortunately this is not real life. These boys are in fact, growing boys, and are mischievous, rough, and sometimes just plain mean. This doesn't make me love them any less, but this week I had the chance to see what life is truly like here 100%.

We were filling in for the house parents from the yellow house, Elvin and Mary. Elvin's sister had a baby, so they headed to the southern part of the country to spend a few days with family. The picture above is of Elvin, Mary, Scat, Richy, Lindy, and myself. This substitution included waking up every day at 4:30 in the morning to wake the boys up, make sure they were showered, dressed, brushing teeth, gel-ing their hair (when in Honduras), and ready to go eat breakfast by 6AM. This also included packing a snack for each of the 19 boys, washing all their dishes, clothes, and cleaning the entire house from top to bottom every day. I can now mop and clean bathrooms like a pro. It's pretty disgusting since they're a bunch of little boys. Naturally several of them pee the beds at night, so we have to deal with washing those sheets as well. After we took the boys to school each day, that's when we cleaned. After cleaning we usually had about an hour to rest before I had to take lunch to the boys at Alison. I have to pack their lunches in the kitchen and then carry it to the school. After they finish I take their dirty dishes home, wash them, and get them ready for the next day.

This picture was taken at 5AM one morning... each day at least we get a beautiful sunrise/sunset. After lunch we work on homework and more laundry for the boys who attend the public school - because they get back every day around 12:30. This is play/rest time. I usually try to clean my room/shower until I have to go back to Alison (private, bilingual school) to pick the boys up at 2:30. At 3 we come home, change their clothes, and start homework. One of my jobs here is to work every day with the Alison boys. I'm in charge of their homework and making sure they complete it/study. There's 6 in all - 4 in 2nd grade, 1 in first grade, and 1 in 5th grade. They're also all on completely different skill levels. After homework is done, we helped prepare dinner to serve at 6PM. The boys sing a song, pray, and then we serve their food. While they're eating it is a good time to prepare our dinner, since after dinner the boys just watch TV for about an hour/hour & half before bed at 8PM. At 8PM we turn off the TV, and the boys get ready for bed. Sometimes this is an easy task, sometimes its extremely difficult. As much as I love the little boogers, we had to play the "bad guys" this week a few times in order to make them actually do what we wanted. This is a picture of all the little guys and us yesterday

Thank God the house parents came back yesterday, so today I got to sleep in until 6:45 instead of 4:30. Today Lindy is heading back home, and I'm so sad. She's one of my very best friends, and she will be very missed. Got to get ready to head to the airport now. Hope everyone has a great weekend.

Happy Sunday.

We're spending the afternoon fishing, swimming, and playing with our guest - Lindy! Lindy, better known here as "Wendy", is here for the week, and I'm SO EXCITED.

This is Wendy and myself a few years back in Nashville. Hope you all had a great weekend!

jimmy fallon's weekend update

Here's my weekend update. So much happened in only a few days.

Friday- it was time to go shopping for all the food again. Twice a month - usually in the middle of the month and the last friday of the month - we head to Teguc bright and early to buy food and cleaning supplies for JEC. Now usually we have two separate Fridays to buy the food and cleaning things, but this Friday we had to buy it all on the same day. This includes food to make 3 meals a day for around 80 people every meal. Needless to say, we end up buying like 65 lbs of onions, 25 huge heads of lettuce, etc. This week we had to buy soooo much stuff, including all toiletries for boys (shampoo, soap, deodorant, etc) and cleaning supplies for all three houses and the kitchen (laundry detergent, soap to wash dishes, chlorox, etc). Since Tegucigalpa is around an hour away (maybe less if Israel is driving... yikes) we also had several other errands which had to be accomplished on Friday as well. We had to visit the lawyer twice, another clinic we partner with 3 times, and since it was the end of the month, like three different banks. Unfortunately we did not finish until around 4:30, which means we were "shopping" for a good 10 hours. I was dropped off at Mirador on the way back to JEC, which is the little colony/"subdivision" where I stay every weekend with Junior and Mariana's family.

Saturday morning I had made a deal with Junior, the son of the Ochoa family, to both get our hair cut. His was leaning towards a rat tale (too long mohawk=rat tale), and mine hadn’t been cut in over 4 months... maybe more. I am really particular about who I let cut my hair, even in the states I’ve only let one of my best friends, Chelsea, cut my hair for the past 2 or 3 years. I don’t remember the last time I went to a salon and paid for a haircut. Alicia, the mom, went to beauty school here in Honduras. Not sure how much that qualifies her, but she said she had friends who now had their own salons. We went to her best friends’ salon, and I sat in the black chair ready to face my fate.

I got lucky and Carmen, the hairdresser, had just finished cutting her daughter’s hair, which looked a lot like what I wanted - long layers, but emphasis on the LONG. I love my long hair, and it’s been my trademark for awhile now, so I didn’t want that to end. Unfortunately she cut off more than I would like, but I am trying not to take it too seriously. After all it’s just hair, and the haircut cost me a whopping five dollars total. I can’t even buy shampoo for $5 anymore? After my haircut we went to eat lunch at a local family-operated restaurant, and I had a delicious meal.

Sunday- Around lunchtime Sunday, I had the great pleasure of picking up my very best friend and her boyfriend, Richy, at the bus station here in Honduras! They headed around the bend from Costa Rica, spent a night in Nicaragua, and showed up Sunday around 1:30. I was tickled fancy to spend the afternoon with them and help them get settled here at JEC.

Today and yesterday have been extremely hectic here. One of our administrators has chicken pox (no, she’s not a child), and the other is about to take a 2 week vacation to the states! Therefore I won’t be blessed with much free time for the next few weeks.

I've become quite accustomed to taking my own picture these days since 6 year olds would end up taking a picture of my foot instead of my new haircut. Thanks to Steve Jobs for creating Mac computers to do such marvelous things. RIP.

just a humble room

Since I moved into my home at JEC, I've had request after request to upload pictures of my room here. I've honestly been too lazy to try and clean my room enough to take pictures of it. Since it is small, it tends to get messy fast. So here it is. My humble abode. HUMBLE being the key word here. While quaint, it is coming along quite nicely.

Now don't be fooled by first glance. This is not my bed. This is the extra bed in my room where this, that, and my luggage rest. My newest addition to my room is the mini refrigerator. It's perfect for the small amount of things I need cold - such as water, milk, some veggies, and CHEESE. Honduras has all sorts of good cheeses, but that's a different post.

This is my real bed. It's a good size, and while it's not the most comfortable bed I've ever slept in, it's much better than the one in my prior post from last week. As you can see on my bed - I also have my mini fan - big shout out of thanks to Clare Lundy for sending me that. Always looking out for Julia.

One of my favorite and most grateful items I brought from home were my college-favorite, over-the-door hooks. They are great to hang wet things like towels and bath items.

Ah, my nightstand. Just the essentials that usually stay put here. Consists of earplugs - so the frogs/little screaming boys don't wake me up in the morning. Lysol spray - because I live with teenage boys who smell funky about 95% of the time. My Jesus Calling book, love my mom. And last buy not least - my flashlight - since the power goes out 4 out of 7 days a week here.

My organization center is what this is. Yes, I'm aware I have a lot of crap - I'm a woman - so therefore I occupy many a product.

Hope you all enjoyed taking a little tour de mi nuevo hogar aca (my new home here)!

tuesdays are silly

Happy Tuesday to all of you!

I'm a little Dutch Girl!

Considering my circumstances that 1. all showers here are freezing cold and 2. i prefer not to shower out of a bucket when not required, I unfortunately haven't had the pleasure to wash my hair (although I have bathed) since Friday morning. Today is Tuesday, and yes, I'm aware, MOM, that is 5 days. This really ended up being a blessing in disguise since it is forcing me to try new styles with my hair. With the help of bobby pins, lots of baby powder, and my incredible finds on pinterest, I was able to create this little German/Dutch girl hair style. I paired it with my favorite headband, which the boys here refer to as Julius Caesar's crown, and I believe it turned out quite nicely.

A Humorous Post

I'm feeling quite humorous today. The problem here lies that I am in a spanish-speaking country, and I have to actually try to be funny here. It's not the most difficult task at home, where everyone speaks the same language. The funniest thing I can do here is tell people about my experiences I have on a day-to-day basis.

Exhibit A: The bed I slept in this past weekend. Incase you are not able to see the large holes in the side and foot of the mattress here, don't you doubt for a second they aren't there. The part that is not visual by photo is the fact that I could feel every spring in the mattress when I attempted to "lay" my body in this bed. The best part is that once I mounted this gem, my body rolled towards the center and remained there until the morning light.

Exhibit B: This past weekend I was served "chicken feet soup". To avoid being rude, I did not whip out my camera and snap a picture of the chicken's foot that was floating in my soup. I really wish someone had snapped a shot of my face when this bowl of "soup" was placed in front of me, because in that instant I wanted to die. This instead is a photo I found on the internet, but is very similar to what I experienced. The family I was visiting kept talking about how incredible delicious this soup was, and the 7 year old girl next to me literally bit into the chicken's ankle like it was filet mignon. To avoid crying at the table, I sipped the broth and ate the potatoes and vegetables continually commenting on how hot the soup was (to avoid picking up the foot and facing my death). As soon as the grandmother (who cooked this brew) stepped out of the kitchen, I whipped the two small chicken's feet out of my soup and plopped them into the bowl of the 7 year old, chicken-feet-lover. She thanked me thrice, and that was that. A small disclaimer: this picture is an exaggeration of how large the feet were. They were honestly small, perhaps from a young fellow whose life ended too soon. The ankle and toes were really the only part served in my soup - the upper thighs were left out of this dinner (thank you, sweet Jesus).

My time here is really full of hilarious moments filled with humility and occasional utter disgust. I will try to write about more of these moments soon. Some possible topics would be how I sometimes shower with a bucket of freezing, cold water, how I seem to have no equilibrium here at all and constantly fall down, or perhaps about how I've been peed on and thrown up on twice. -- Anyone have any requests?

Animal Freak

So I'm a huge animal freak. I like them all. I also really love it when they are silly. Here are a few of my favorites that make me laugh out loud to myself.

Hope these bring you giggles as they brought me.