All Grown Up

I can't believe I just finished my first week of school, my first week of "my grown-up job", and my first week of this great adventure. It feels like just yesterday that my parents were dropping me off at Liberty at Dorm 33. Thankfully, this new experience, as opposed to my first week of college has been much more enjoyable, although the change of culture and location is much more drastic than going from Surry to Lynchburg. It's so cool to see how the Lord has grown me in so many ways since then, and how prayer from others and trust in His Power makes such a difference. I am not one who likes change (just ask my mom and dad), I even cried for the first few weeks when I changed high-schools. It's amazing that the Lord can take someone like me, a mama's girl, homebody and use me all the way in Honduras.

I always used to say that I couldn't wait to be a teacher because it was so much easier than being a student. FALSE! I am here to tell you today that I could not have been more wrong. I thought,"You don't have to do homework and take tests and deal with the peer pressure of friends, teaching must be so easy." Now that I am "all grown up" I realize that even though I might not have to take the tests, I do have to make them, grade them and make sure that my students take them successfully. However, even though I may have been wrong in my thinking, I still really do love teaching. As I stand up in front of a class of high-school students, I love the feeling that I am actually transforming the way that they think and am taking part in molding each one into who he or she will become one day. I have already begun to love most (I don't want to say "all" yet) of my students, and they (for the most part) are eager to learn. Teaching math is FUN!

While teaching is fun, planning and grading and preparing for everyday is not the best. I actually have been really overwhelmed with this part of the job (which is about 80%). It has been a challenge to work under a Department Head who only speaks Spanish. As you may or may not know, teacher meetings seem to always go way longer than is necessary. Just imagine a teacher meeting where everything has to be translated (poorly) and we talk about the same topic for about 20 minutes, instead of the 2 that it should take. The Lord is teaching me patience, hope I learn my lesson quickly!

So you may remember when I told you all about Chepe, the aerobics dance class that I went to. Well I went again, but this time the story gets exciting after we left the class. The place where we go to have the class is about a 20 minute walk, mostly downhill. Which makes the walk back about 20 minutes, mostly uphill. So here is what happened: Thursday was a really long day at school, and we have to stay a little bit later because we have principal meetings after the students all leave. So a few of the other teachers (Josie, Laura B. and Jen V.) and I decided that Chepe would be the perfect release after a long day of teaching. We headed down after school together and had a great time dancing our stress away. Once we got done, we were all exhausted and ready to be back home so we left immediately. It wasn't one minute after we walked out of the building that the sky let loose! At first we were all screaming and trying to cover our heads as we briskly walked (uphill don't forget). However, after seconds of getting drenched we quickly realized that trying to stay dry was completely pointless! So we decided to embrace our God-given shower and enjoy cooling off after being in that hot room with 20 other sweaty ladies :-/ But because we have such a steep hill to climb, and the rain was so hard the whole walk back was like wading through a rushing stream. The water was a couple inches deep on either side of the street (which is where we had to walk so we wouldn't get hit by the crazy Honduran drivers). Everything was soaked once I got home. But that is beginning to become a pretty common thing to me now. I pretty much know now that whenever I am out, there's about a 100% chance that it just rained, is raining, or soon will start to rain!

Today we went to a park up in the mountain that looks over the city called Picacho. We road a couple of rapiditos to get there (which took a while because traffic here can get pretty bad). Once we arrived, though, it was definitely worth it because the view was beautiful. You could see the entire city, the futbol stadium, the airport, and every colorful house and building for miles and miles. The main thing that the park is famous for is a huge statue of Jesus that you can see from practically anywhere in the city. We got some good pics at the statue (it was way bigger than I thought)! Then we walked around for a while and enjoyed the swings and playing on the monkey bars. The only hang-up we had was when myself and the two other Jen's all decided we needed to go to the bathroom. Fortunately there was one in the park. Unfortunately, you had to pay to use it. Fortunately it was only 2 lempira. Unfortunately after we paid, the lady told us there was no toilet paper. We decided we should have just found a tree and saved our 2 lempira. Other than that, successful day it was a great day at the park. As busy as the city gets, it was so nice to escape from the hustle and bustle and enjoy nature a bit.