Yikes... I went almost three weeks without posting. I'm sorry to everyone who mentioned it to me and asked me to post waaaaayyyyy before this. I guess it's because last time I posted twice in one day! There is so much more to write about! I really don't know where to start. In my past posts I talked about how much it has rained and the "torrential downpourage". Up until last week, it had rained literally every day since we moved here. But, we have now been over a week rain-free! It's moved into October, which is apparently windy season. It's so windy, you can hear the buildings practically shaking. Sometimes I wake up in the morning to the wind so loud it sounds similar to the crazy loud rain we were finally getting used to. The locals think that it is just freezing when the wind blows like that. We think it feels pretty great. Since there's been no rain, there have hardly been any clouds. Last night when we were walking home from Reina's, we looked up and just stopped in awe. There are no words to describe how breathtakingly beautiful the stars were. We had seen a few from here before, but it's almost always cloudy. Last night was perfectly clear. We saw the Milky Way, a planet, and a kajillion stars. As cliche as it sounds, it's pretty amazing to think that I can see the same stars here that you all are seeing back home. :)


When we first arrived here, the Sunday morning church services were set up so that there was one big class combined for adults and kids, then a break, and then worship services for everyone as well. This meant that the kids weren't receiving any children's Bible class or anything that we're used to having in America. So Mom and I have been doing a children's class every Sunday morning during the first class. And of course, where do we start but with Genesis? So, we started with the days of creation.


Mom drew a picture for each of the seven days on a paper plate, and told them the story. Then we picked these 7 volunteers to line up in the right order with them. We put them in order the first time. The second time, we mixed them up in crazy orders, and let the kids figure out where they went. When all that was over, we had an art project. We had little coloring pages with birds on them and a verse about it from Genesis. They could color them, and when they were done I would come around and put glue dots on them and give them the bird's "feathers". They were just some cut up pieces of streamers, but the projects ended up looking great, and the kid's were so excited. They aren't used to doing things like that. In the schools, kid's don't get their own text books to work from; the schools can't afford that. The teacher has one, and they copy it onto the board and the kids copy it into their notebooks. That's almost all they do! They don't learn how to color, or cut, or make art projects.


The next week's class was a lot of fun for me. We were going over Adam and Eve and eating the forbidden fruit and whatnot. At the beginning of the class, Mom brought in a bowl of little cookies. She made sure to make it clear that no one was allowed to eat them, or even touch them. The kids were very serious about it. They said the understood, nodded, and looked super serious. At that point, Mom faked like she had forgotten something at home and had to go back over to the house. So she left, and I was in charge of the class. I walked over and picked up the cookie bowl. I looked around, and (in Spanish) asked, "Want a cookie?" The kids looked shocked at first. I said we had tons. Come on, just take one.. And every kid in the class gave in and took a cookie except two; Nathan, and a little girl named Gabby. When Mom came back into the class, most of them were still eating theirs. Some gasped when they saw her, some tried to hide the cookies or shove them into their mouths quickly. She acted like she was so sad that they'd taken her cookies, and what else did they do but blame me? "But Erin said!" "She gave them to us!" Stuff like that. We just moved on to the story. When it got to the part about blaming the serpent and everything, you could literally see a light come on in some of those kids' eyes. One of them looked at me, smiled, and shook her finger at me. Watching them really get the lesson was great. We did another craft and made little serpents with a verse on them.

A few hours ago (hey, that's an improvement from my usual "many days ago!) I posted about the independence day celebrations. The day afterwards was Nathan's birthday. We celebrated with Grandma and Teresa and had some cookie cake. He got to open presents that were brought down with the group that was here (in Honduras at the time), from people at home. And because Dad was feeling sick, he and Nathan spent the whole day putting his presents to use together. Nathan later claimed it was "the best day of his life" :)



Something else happened that morning, though, that I would really appreciate your prayers for. There was an accident involving a semi and a motorcycle. I'd rather not go into details or anything, but it left our friend Janixa a single mother of their adorable four year old son, Vladi. Please, please pray for this family during this difficult time. This is a picture of Vladi and his mother less than 24 hours before the accident:

Grandma, Mom, and I left after Nathan's celebration with Angelino and drove to Honduras. We started at Jorge and Gloria's house. They are always so hospitable and welcoming of people in their home. She fed the team a lunch of some sort of sea food soup. It was actually pretty good! Amy was sitting at our table and she got "the prize" as we joked with her ;)It's difficult to see here, but it was part of a fish.

Pretty soon, all the suitcases from the team were loaded into the van and we headed off for an afternoon in Guatemala! Just a little road trip. I'm still not over the fact that going to GUATEMALA is just a little road trip. Not that I mind ;) We took them to the big Catholic church and Black Christ statue that I posted about about a month ago. But this time, we got to go shopping afterwards! The vendors' booths went on forever and then some. We literally could not see where they stopped. Some were under a huge tarp kind of covering, and divided almost like cubicles. I bought a pretty neat (even if it's tourist-y) bag! I think I have a picture with it on facebook. It was funny to realize that even though the man selling me the bag acted like he spoke English, he really only spoke enough to try to get me to buy his purses. When he first told me the original price, I started to walk away. "How much to pay?!" I turned around at his way of asking how much I was willing to give him. Still unsure, he assured me that "Is nice! Is very nice!" I also got a chance to check out these neat little hats :D

I didn't get one, but they were fun. I absoluetly loved having the American team here. We were really upset when they left. After a teary goodbye, we are all already looking forward to the next visit! Thank you to every single one of you on the team for the gifts you brought, helping us out, and just making this week great. We will miss all of you! When the bus left, we all went home to enjoy some cake and a happy, "feel good" movie. Though none of us can remember right now exactly what. Thanks again to this wonderful team, love you all!

More to be posted soon!
su amiga,
Erin

I know, I know. It's been over a week this time. Sorry. This blog is going to be all about last Wednesday, September 15th. Here, this is like the equivalent of July 4th. Except, they make a much bigger deal out of it. For the past few weeks, it has been kind of annoying to hear the school band practicing their drums right outside our windows all afternoon. But Wednesday, they got to play for everyone in the parade! There is a big parade, and every school walks in it. Most schools let every student march in it, too, whether they're playing instruments:

Or maybe dancing in the traditional style dresses:

Or maybe just walking along with your school, whether in "traditional" clothing, or uniforms:


Our school was one of the very first that we saw come by. Here are several pics of them coming by:


After the parade was over, nearly the whole town and then some gathers at the park. There is a big basketball court in the middle (which we often see being used not for basketball but for soccer...) which they kept cleared out as a stage. Otherwise, the whole place was packed. Here's an idea of how many people there were:

There was a speech and prayer and stuff at the beginning. After that, though, the music started back up and dancing began! There were dances in the long, flowy, traditional dresses where the girls twirl their skirts out so far, and it's really cool to watch. I got a picture with one of the girls in her amazing dress :)

I also got a picture of me having food from a street vendor! There are almost always some kind of vendors in the park. But often, we can't trust the food from them, not knowing how it's cooked and washed and stuff. This time, though, we watched the woman pull these fries out of the hot oil and pour the normal stuff on them. The normal stuff here? Ketchup, mayonnaise, and parmesan. I was adventurous and had all three toppings. Nathan passed on the mayonnaise, and I'm pretty sure Teresa just had ketchup. But they turned out to be pretty good! Even if I couldn't finish all of mine and ended up passing the rest to a little boy from the school ;)

We had a great time at the park with all the festivities. It's one independence day I won't forget, anyway!
More to be posted later!
su amiga,
Erin