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..."