I am sick, and it sucks. No idea how it happened—how do you get a stupid head cold at 4,000 feet in such a beautiful place as this? Two awful nights of sleep, eyes watering every 10 minutes, and blowing my nose every 20. Just awful. Hopefully I’ll start feeling better soon.

Other then the whole being sick part things have been going well. I don’t think I’ve mentioned it before, but it has taken me some time to get used to the food down here. I am fortunate enough where I don’t have to cook—the woman whose house I am at makes my meals for me. However, this does mean I am getting beans and tortillas and some other things basically every day—even for breakfast. It is getting better though. I’ve been able to communicate to her things I like, and things I don’t, and it’s much better. We’ll just have to see how I feel about beans and tortillas after 6 months…

So I have sequenced all my classes and have begun to start lesson planning. I have all of next week prepared and I am ready to go Monday (hopefully I am feeling better by then). Since the students don’t have their own history books I have to be creative in how I am able to get the content to the students. With English being their second language lecturing is not going to work, so I have been busy making reading guides and terms and concepts sheets and anything I can think of that will not only help the students understand the content, but allow me to get through it quicker (since I have to do a chapter a week in both of my history classes—again, role eyes for having to strictly follow the book’s curriculum. What sucks about all of this is that I have to make these handouts. But there is only ONE printer for the entire school, and it is hooked up to Mrs. Lara’s computer in the office. So, every time I create one of my handouts I need to put in on my flash drive, walk over to the office, have Mrs. Lara load it on her computer, print it, and then fill out a copy form (teachers aren’t allowed to make their own copies, we must fill out a request form for each item we want copied). It it quite the task, and one I will be doing a lot. I am really tempted to look into getting a printer down here to cut out the whole going to Mrs. Lara process and going straight to the copy form. Probably going to be expensive though… I guess I should be fortunate to have the access to print documents that I create. I am in rural Honduras…

Along with writing up handouts I’ve been busy decorating my room. And by decorating my room I mean cutting out letters and putting a Bible verse on the back wall and hanging up different things I am required to hang up (weekly schedules, cursive charts (yes, all students must write in cursive, and teachers are supposed to as well. When was the last time I wrote in cursive? Your guess is as good as mine…), etc.). along with this we need to decorate our classroom door for the appropriate month. That means Valentine’s Day is on the docket and I have a nice red and white poster with hearts on it. I’ll get pictures up once it is all finished.

An interesting situation arose today which unfortunately allowed me to teach third grade. I say unfortunately because it was an unfortunate circumstance. One of the third grade boys father was murdered last night. Now, before you go “that Honduras country is dangerous” it is a rather popular belief that this boy’s father had a higher up position in the local and even national illegal drug trade. So, as sad as this is to hear, it wasn’t a “random” murder. Because of this situation the third grade teacher and two of the principals went to the father’s funeral and I was in charge of the 3rd graders for an hour and a half. I now know why I did secondary and not primary education. Yes, little kids that age are so adorable, but they are so needy as well. I feel like I am better off dealing with the middle school and high school neediness/whininess then the elementary age neediness/whininess. It was nice to be in the classroom though, and makes me even more so look forward to Monday when I get my own.

I have made the decisions where I am really going to limit the amount of internet usage I have each day. My reason behind this is that I have the rest of my life to use the internet, and I am only in Honduras for 6 months. This allowed me to only check my email yesterday on the itouch I have down here and that was it. Because of this I was able to play some crazy euchre with 3 of the girls last night, something that I am hoping will happen more often. For the record (Dad, Brooke, and Joel), I lost. That hadn’t happened in a long time.

Anyway, the school day is done and its Wednesday which means we are getting a ride into town to buy groceries and anything else we may need. Because of my limiting my internet access I haven’t gotten a chance to look into the comment problem yet. Although Steve, my brother-in-law sent me a document of how to check and see if the settings are right. I just haven’t gotten a chance to do it yet. Maybe tonight.

Adios!