February 12, 2010

Well it’s Friday and I am sitting at school waiting for the school day to end. We are done at 1:40 today because we have parent teacher conferences starting at 3. However, the conferences are to discuss the grades from the last marking period, which I was not here for, therefore I will be doing some meet and greet with the parents.

It’s been a long week. Wednesday was a super long day. We had school and then had to go into town to get ready for the arrival of Pastor Evelio, the head pastor of the church that my school is centered around. He came from Tegus (the capital) to talk to the parents of our kids about building a strong family and home. We had to be at the church at 4, so right after school. We then did meet and greet with the parents from 4:30 to 5:15, and then Pastor Evelio spoke until 7. We then grabbed some dinner and headed back home. We stopped by a street vendor in Gracias and got some pretty good tacos. Five of us ate for 100 lemps, or about 5 dollars. That is a dollar value meal right there. We ended up not getting home until almost 9. We were all exhausted to say the least, and add that to todays long day with conferences from 3-6—we (the teachers) are all glad it is Friday.

So one of the things that I told myself I was going to do when I came to Honduras was to try and workout, or mostly run, to get back into shape. Now, you have heard me mention the National Park I live next to, Celaque, and how tough of a run it is up this mountain, and pretty steep at parts. Well, there is a visitor center that is located 1.8 km, or about 1.12 miles, up the mountain from where I live. Up to this week I had been running up Celaque for about 2.5 weeks and had yet to make it to the visitor center. This week that changed. On Tuesday I ran with Mr. Bran and another one of our neighbors. We did not only make it to the visitor center, but I did it in about 13 minutes. We then made it down in about 7 minutes, so it was about a 20 minute run up and down, totaling about 2.2 miles. Which I think is pretty darn good if you look at the terrain we have to run up. Well, yesterday we did it again and this time I made it up in 12 minutes and 20 seconds. When we got to the top we stopped for a few minutes to catch our breath and then headed down. I was feeling super good on the way down and was keeping a pretty good pace. I was hoping to make it down in 6 minutes. Well, about half way down the inevitable happened—I stepped on a rock, rolled my ankle, and heard it pop. Ouch. I walked it off for about 100 feet and then jogged the rest of the way, but it hurt. I iced it when I got back down to the house but by the time I went to bed last night it was the size of an apple. It was better this morning but still pretty painful and swollen. Rather frustrating because I don’t know how long I’ll have to be off it (in regards to running) and I hope it’s not too long. My goal is to make that run up to the visitor center in 10 minutes before I leave Honduras.

Along with running while I am down here I wanted to get into some sort of upper body workout routine as well. Enoch, one of the family members that lives in my house, has made a bunch of weights out of cement and metal bars. I really don’t know how much each of them weighs but they provide a pretty good workout. Add the fact that Mr. Bran is a physical education teacher and knows many different lifts, I am hoping to leave in both running shape and muscle shape. Wish me luck.

This weekend is looking pretty busy for me, in relation to schoolwork at least. I have a lot of grading to do. My hope is that I will be able to go down to the river tomorrow and get some sun while grading tests for every single one of my classes. Should be fun.

Anyway, the bell just rang so I am off.