Pictures, cultural notes, and quotables

This past weekend, I went with a group from Bible study to hike up a mountain to a waterfall and through a cloud forest. It's the same place I took my mom to in the spring and my dad to last month, but I got much farther this time. It was breathtaking. Pictures here.

Cultural notes:
Hondurans like things that make lots of noise. Especially firecrackers. My adolescent neighbors love it so much that they even set them off sometimes inside our mailbox, just to keep us on our feet.
For those of you who thought roosters only crowed at sunrise, just come spend a night here, and you will be shown your error sometime between 2 and 5 in the morning. But your attention may be divided between them and the dogs barking all night.

Quotes:
6th grade spelling sentence: "My best friend is a person that I say a secret and he don't told anyone and is God."
5th grade spelling sentences: "When my mom is pregnant is very biggest."
"Miss Emily is the happiest teacher in the school for me."
note from the parents of a 6th grader:‎"We appreciate very much your work and your creative methods." Thank you, God, for appreciative parents.
projected plot for a drama being written by a group of 6th-grade boys: "aliens attack zombies, then become friends and invade the earth together." characters: leinad-alien, oravla-alien, tovasalre-zombie, tikriansi-zombie
Many of my students couldn't care less about the consequences I've given them for misbehavior thus far, so I've resorted to an old-school method. Now they copy a sentence I invent based on the occasion 20 times for each time I have to speak to them. One 6th grader had to write, "I will be positive, respectful, and obedient," 200 times after testing my limits over and over. When he was done, he said,‎"Miss, I'm never going to do another bad thing in your class." He most certainly has done bad things in my class since then, but he hasn't had to write as much as 200 lines again.
6th graders practicing words with affixes:
"The miss Emily is so lovable with 6th grade."
"To me, Miss Emily is very beautiful."
"All of us love Miss Emily, she is lovable."
practicing paragraphs and idiomatic expressions: "...I love English classes because Miss Emily makes it fun, and she lets us work in groups, but I think she has a full plate..."

Dad's visit

My dad finally came to visit me in Honduras. It's supposed to be cold and rainy by the end of October, but that was the time that worked out best for his visit. So I had been doing a lot of praying that God would give us decent weather for the trip so we could do everything we had planned. It had gotten cold, but a few days before my dad got here, the weather started to get warmer. It was nice the whole time he was here, and the day he left was miserably cold and rainy - God held off the bad weather just long enough.

When he first got here, he helped me grade exams, go grocery shopping, went to church with me, etc. Then on my vacation days, we went to a park a little more than an hour from where I live, where we went zip lining over a waterfall. Then we explored the area under the waterfall, including a small cave, with a guide who held our hands and guided our feet when we couldn't open our eyes due to the water pounding down on top of us.


We spent the night at a rustic hotel on the lake - not the nicest place, but the view was pretty. The next day, we drove up to another park. The roads were terrible, and the only reason I knew we'd be able to make it was because I had made the same trip in the same rented car with my mom six months earlier. There we went hiking, saw some more beautiful views, including a smaller waterfall, and had lunch at the restaurant there.


On our way home, we stopped to tour some caves. The next day, my dad watched/helped me teach, and he went home the following day. It's wonderful to be able to share what has been my life for the past two and a half years with family.

To see more pictures of my dad's trip, click here.

As far as updates on my school, the missing teacher was found. All that the embassy will tell us is that he is fine and that he left the country voluntarily.

"For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse." ~Romans 1:20