December flew by in a whirl of Christmas celebrations and preparations and before we knew it, we were bidding farewell to 2015 and welcoming in the New Year! In addition to nativity rehearsals (some more challenging than others) we did plenty of Christmas crafts (I've never seen so many home-made decorations before!) and we even fitted in a Christmas scavenger hunt! Aside from Christmas Eve and day, one of my fondest memories from the Christmas period was helping to hang the lights from the big mango tree in the garden one night after homework. Many of the children were out and about to help and in classic Honduran style the mosquitos had come out for the event too! Most Hondurans celebrate Christmas on the 24th so our celebrations were spread over two days. The founders of the Miqueas 6:8 children's home, Abuelo John and Abuela Susan visited for a few days over Christmas bringing balloons, chocolate and a huge amount of excitement! On Christmas Eve Innes and I made by far the longest paper chain I've ever seen with the children to hang between the house and mango tree, we helped the girls make Honduran cake at one of the Tia's houses, Abuelo John cracked open the garden coconuts for everyone to share (a very messy process for the littles) and we ate tamales - a traditional Honduran dish of chicken, vegetables, rice, potatoes cooked in a sauce in a dough cooked in a banana leaves. My feelings about these remained mixed! Later in the day we helped Tia Rubi make chicken sandwiches - yes, bizarrely this is also a Honduran tradition - and the evening consisted of wrapping the children's presents and sorting 39 stockings!
Christmas Day highlights were: watching the children perform the Nativity play, which they did excellently, if a little quieter than normal due to nerves; visiting some of the houses in the village with Abuelo John and Abuela Susan to wish them a good day and hand out chocolate to the children; watching the Miqueas children open their present (each child recieves 1 present donated by a church in the US) and playing with the large amount of Lego, K'nex, hotwheels and dolls in the aftermath of this! They were all so happy to receive even 1 gift and it made me feel a little guilty for the expense we go to over presents in the West. Everyone sat down to eat Christmas dinner together ('the pig') and the evening was closed with fireworks and watching Frozen in Spanish. It was a brilliant couple of days, surrounded by brilliant people and filled with so many new experiences and traditions! I only wish I could do it all over again. 
The Christmas tree with 39 presents under it!
Making Honduran Christmas cake for 40+ people!
Tias making 200+ tamales for Christmas Eve!
Surely there's not a better dresses mango tree around?
Oh and we found Honduran Santa!
A couple of days after Christmas Innes and I headed to Utila to meet the rest of the Project Trust group for a week of Scuba diving and New Year's celebrations. As the projects are widely spread over the country this was the first time we'd seen some of the volunteers since the airport on the night we arrived. Scuba diving turned out to be somewhat harder than I'd expected and far more complicated, but also a lot of fun! By the last couple of dives I was feeling very relaxed and some of the highlights were seeing a turtle and an Eagle Ray aswell as a whole host of other colourful fish and coral. Most of us did the dive course and I write this blog as an officially qualified scuba diver! It was great to catch up with everyone else, enjoy the beach and the sea, let down our hair a little and celebrate New Year together (of course with Old Lang Syne at the bells)! Utila is completely different to the rest of Honduras, being a complete tourist haven compared to the rest of the country and it was interesting to see yet more of the stark contrasts which this country has to offer.
Scubaaaaa! Cheers to El for the GoPro!
Happy new year!
Back to work in January has been busy, busy, busy! A couple of particular highlights have been - 1. teaching Pedro to feed himself. Being both deaf and blind and with possible delayed development in other areas this has been remarkably successful as he previously wouldn't eat unless hand or spoon-fed by a Tia. He'll now pick up his food from a bowl on his own, we're so proud of him! The next challenge is teaching him to use a water bottle...
2. - Teaching the other children to ceilidh dance. We've covered all the well-known dances which have been a lot of fun and needless to say they love it! Although I got a couple of confused faces when I showed them a video on YouTube - "Los hombres llevan faldas?" Yes the men wear skirts!
The holiday classes are keeping us busy with a range of activities as well as English classes and homework groups. Our English club at the school once a week has been running smoothly and has been great to get to know a different group of children and teach some new topics! When the schools return in a couple of weeks our hope is to be working more mornings a week at the local village school and to also start working in the kindergarten additional to our English classes and homework in the afternoons at Miqueas. The schedule change will keep us on our feet and I'm looking forward to teaching my school classes once again.
I celebrated my 18th birthday this month and I couldn't have asked for a better day! Innes and I had organised to do a trek with a local guide Sernovia and her goddaughter Rosy. It was great to practise our Spanish with them and we're hoping to have Rosy who is our age around for a meal sometime and get to know her a little better. We spent the day walking to a village in the mountains, making different types of tortillas and beans with a local couple, trying some new types of food and visiting a waterfall. When we returned Melody and Jen had made a cake and birthday dinner for me and I have to say a big thanks to them and to everyone at home for their birthday wishes too. It was an unforgettable day! 
B-day snaps
Since my last blog post Innes and I have also been able to form greater relationships with some of the Honduran people we know. This has given us a far greater insight into Honduran living and culture which has been very enjoyable and interesting! In particular, we have become close with one of the Tias we work with and her family who live 15 minutes down the road from us. We have been extremely welcomed into Martha's family and have enjoyed several meals with them which have been good for getting to know her children and husband. As traditionally families in Honduras are large and sprawling there are always other people around too, with a seemingly endless number of cousins, nieces and nephews! Yesterday Innes and I celebrated our birthdays with Tia Martha as the 3 of us have January birthdays. The morning began with attending church with the family (Christianity is an inexplicably huge part of people's lives here - some people attending 3 times a day every day of the week) and was followed by a big meal of Chinese rice and homemade tajadas (chips made from green bananas), tres leches cake and party games! It was a lot of fun and there was a great atmosphere, I'm so grateful for being treated just like another member of Martha's family.
Yep two gringas walking along the road on a Sunday morning with a huge cake didn't attract any stares at all...
More party snaps
It seems however that the good times were not to last as we woke up this morning to find our house had flooded... Our toilet had leaked (majorly) in the night (it was all clean water don't worry) and the whole house was nearly ankle deep in water. Luckily nothing much was damaged, we don't have carpets and it can't begin to compete with the flooding at home over the past few weeks! None of our electricals albeit a couple of chargers were on the floor and after a couple of hours of sweeping the water out the doors and with everything out drying in the sun the house is pretty much back to normal. Our Robbie Burns day classes/celebrations have been delayed until tomorrow but at least our floor is cleaner than it has been in months!
Other events of January and December include: a big Miqueas talent show where all the children but the very youngest performed something - i even played a piano piece (badly); teaching the children to play Rounders; our goat Wazousky getting turned into an excellent Indian curry (the founders, directors and one of the volunteers all have Indian roots), attending a large Christmas fair in San Pedro Sula and going to another Scout meeting!
It's been another couple of eventful months and we're now only days away from the 6 month mark! We received our return flight confirmations a few weeks ago which feels crazy, Innes and I are both struggling to get our heads around this - July 30th! Argh I don't want to leave! We've achieved a great amount in the past 6 months and believe we've made the most of our time here to the best of our ability. We're looking forward to another 6 and continuing to soak in as much of this country as possible and taking all the opportunities that come our way!
P.S if anyone is wondering why there aren't pictures of the children I'm working with on my blogs, the Miqueas children's home has strict rules about not posting pictures of the kids for their safety.
