Health day and Holidays

Maybe it comes as a surprise to  PT volunteers who find keeping a blog updated a chore but I really enjoy writing mine! One of the craziest things I find is looking back over the past month or two and reflecting on just how much I've done. Whilst I'm not losing-my-head busy all of the time, by the time blog-time rolls around and I come to write it out, it certainly feels like it! So let's try and keep this short...

Last Saturday Innes and I returned from a 2 week holiday in Guatemala and El Salvador and we both agreed that it was perfectly timed. By the last week of term both the children in Miqueas and school were getting antsy and our patience and motivation levels were running low. 

First of all we headed up to Guatemala where our holiday got off to the worst possible start when I left my passport, money and credit card on the 4th bus of the day (or someone took them, details unsure). What then followed was probably some of the worst hours of my life (Project Trust tell you that losing your passport is one of the absolute worst things that can happen to you on your year away) as we hunted down the bus company, tried to return to Honduras, weren't allowed to cross the border and had to file a police report with the Guatemalan police. I cannot stress just how lucky I was to get my passport back after it was found and handed into the immigration officers who we'd been with earlier in the day who'd then driven half an hour to return it to me and caught us just minutes before we left the police station. It was an experience I would not repeat for the life of me but at least I got to ride in a Guatemalan police pick-up truck and on the back of a moped. 

After this the rest of the holiday went far more smoothly and although the passport trauma delayed us by several hours we still made it to where we needed to be that night. We spent our first 2 nights in a Garifuna town called Livingston. Garifuna is the name given to the people who live on the carribean coasts of Honduras, Belize and Guatemala and who have a very different life and culture to those who live inland. Then we took a boat trip up a river to stay in a town called Rio Dulce. The highlight of our time here was visiting a hot-water waterfall, which certainly made up for the hot-water showers of the past 8 months that I can just about count on two hands. It was a beautiful place and for me it certainly was an 'I'm-so-blown-away-by-nature-right-now' moments. Following this we took an unforgettable journey on a dirt-track road in the back of a pick-up truck through the mountains under the stars and full moon to a place called Semuc Champey, a tourist destination renowned for its turquoise limestone rock pools. We did a caving activity which had us swimming along whilst holding a candle in one hand at points, did a rope swing jump, climbed up to a viewpoint and spent time relaxing in the pools (along with what felt like the rest of Guatemala who were out to enjoy the Semana Santa/Holy week holidays). From there we headed to Antigua, a city where we spent some time in November, but for us this time it was just an overnight stop-off (and culture fix). We were lucky enough to be there (with enough time to party) and to witness some of the Catholic Holy Week parades and some amazing street art of all shapes and colours. As it was Good Friday everyone in the parades were dressed in black, the men wearing floor-length robes and shouldering what looked like painfully heavy wooden floats with life-size models of the saints and Jesus mounted on them. People wafting incense and marching bands playing ominous music made for quite an intense atmosphere and the whole thing appeared almost medieval to me. 

We spent the next couple of days in Ruta de Las Flores checking out the El Salvadorian mountain villages which have become well-renowned for coffee growing (yep Starbucks is grown here) and their amazingly colourful murals. We walked up to a crater lake and spent far too much time here eating pupusas, an El Salvadorian staple! Next it was down to the coast at El Tunco, a tourist hot-spot and surfers paradise! We got a couple of surfing lessons which we thoroughly enjoyed despite us not being much good! It also turns out that it's far harder than it looks but I did manage to crack the standing up after a while and I'd definitely do it again! Wishing we were able to spend more time here we headed to San Salvador where we enjoyed a cultural day visiting the palace and anthropology museum and didn't enjoy getting ourselves thoroughly lost on multiple occasions. I won't deny that a part of me was dreading returning to Honduras as it signalled that the end of the holiday was near, however as soon as I crossed the border I was glad to be back - everything just feels that bit more familiar. Innes and I stayed in Gracias, a town in the south, met the new 8 month volunteers Linde and Joanne and did one of the longest and highest zip-lines in Central America (an amazing but extremely scary experience) before returning home a couple of days later. It was a brilliant holiday and we managed to cover a lot of ground in 2 weeks. We're definitely lucky that Honduras is easily and geographically accessible to all the neighbouring countries so travel is pretty straightforward and we don't have to spend days on a bus to get somewhere. Above all, we returned to our project with a new-found energy and ready to get stuck in again! 

Getting steamy...

Boat trip

Semuc Champey

SS street art 

SS parades

Pretty church ft. Miss Inez

Crater lake

One of the many incredible murals we saw

Surfing

Inez and her surf instructor

Basically heaven on earth

Zip-lining in Gracias. This was the tamest of 6 cables.

Our first week back was pretty different to normal as a Mission group of people our age led by Gaby's parents came from Michigan in the US to paint the walls and make closets for the new house. The new children's home building will house bedrooms for the girls, youngest children and Melody and Jacob (parents/directors). Since this comes to 24 kids in total, picture Cheaper by the Dozen but double the trouble! Instead of many of our normal tasks in Miqueas we found ourselves swapping pencil for paintbrush and getting well stuck into the painting too. A huge amount was covered in 5 days and by the time I upload my next blog it's likely that the new house will be ready for living. 

Classes in general have been calmer since we've gotten back and these continue much the same as normal. The children at Miqueas are eagerly awaiting to hear back from their pen pals in Aboyne Primary and this week we're going to introduce our English library to the school. If anyone would still like to send out (basic, basic) books (and thanks to those who already did!) they'd be very much appreciated, especially anything with English/Spanish translations...

1st grade having fun with chalk and shapes

Teamwork makes the dream work, or so they say...

Getting our 'paint' on

The English library 

Last Thursday and Friday Innes and I ran some activities for World Health Day as PT requires us to celebrate one international day to gain our 'One Award in Global Volunteering and Citizenship'. Innes and I both agreed that World Health Day was appropriate to celebrate as 1. Health is just generally so important and impacts pretty much everything we do in everyday and 2. Because Hondurans are not renowned for their healthy lifestyles - eating a monotonous low fruit/veg, high oil/fat diet, not exercising enough, poor dental hygiene etc. 

For me, one of the best things about our project is the variety we have in our teaching which for the health day activities was perfect. I could carry out classroom activities suited to many people and also more hands-on activities for which small groups were essential. With 1st and 2nd grade we started off with some mimes of things that were healthy and why. The main focus of the lesson was specifically on teeth and good dental hygiene. When I first came to Honduras 2 things in particular that I learnt about this that really shocked me. 1. Some people give Pepsi to their babies and children instead of milk because Pepsi is cheaper to buy. 2. It's quite a cultural belief that children don't need to look after their first set off teeth (in any way, shape or form!) as these will get replaced by their adult teeth. So this lesson was pretty important! I did most of the lesson in Spanish and they drew 'happy teeth' and 'sad teeth' along with things that are good and bad for your teeth. Apart from those who ploughed ahead and coloured in both sets of teeth blue, pink and green (despite my pictures to copy I think the point of the contrasting white and brown teeth may have been missed!) this went down really well. With 3rd grade we compared flashcards of things that are better and worse for your health and why, before carrying out a more general health lesson and making a big wall display which I'm looking forward to putting up! 

That afternoon with the 3 youngest that I work with we coloured in paper fruit and vegetables and threaded them onto ribbon to make healthy, colourful necklaces and also made decorated some banana people! With the help of Melody and Jen the next afternoon we got the 8 youngest together for a bit of food art fun where we made healthy 'snails' from celery, peanut butter, apple and chocolate chips. This was a suitably messy and yummy activity and lots of fun for everyone involved! 

The last health day activity was inspired by a competition we did in my primary school every Easter to decorate a boiled egg...except this time it was with bananas! It gave everyone the chance to be creative and certainly gave me a laugh seeing what they all came up with! I hope the change from normal classes for all the children I work with showed them that as well as being an important and serious topic, staying healthy can be fun too! 

2nd grade 

Happy teeth/sad teeth 

Wilma - "Que rico es el caracol" (the snail is delicious!)

Going bananas! 

Pretty ironically, on health day we attended our first (and hopefully last) Honduran funeral (or they closest they get to that anyway) for a couple of relatives of one of the teachers we work with. In Honduran funerals there is no service, just an open house or church for 24 hours where people come by and pay their respects. We were invited by one of the other teachers and when we arrived we felt completely out of our depth. We had no idea of the cultural norms: where to look; who to speak to; if we should look like we were praying; whether to accept the food offered to us; if we had to sit down, and how long to stay. The worst part for me was definitely the fact that it was an open casket. We were told that by the evenings of such events lots of people tend to hang out outside and it becomes a bit of a social event but whilst we were there it was pretty somber. 

Another event of the past 5 weeks was a weekend trip to the Cuero y Salado nature reserve with fellow PT volunteers Aled and Hugh. There's no road to get here so we had to take a miniature train (which in the past was used to transport bananas from the banana plantations) and where we did a beautiful boat tour through the mangrove swamps. The highlights were seeing lots of monkeys and a crocodile and alligator! 

I'm In March I was also invited to attend a 1 night Scout camp which was a great experience. The location was changed from somewhere outside of the city to school grounds within San Pedro Sula - I didn't think I'd be camping here when I flew into this city 8 months ago! The main evening activity was a group work problem-solving cooking over a fire and all that shabang activity and there was also a campfire for everyone together. The next day after 3 hours of sleep, the group of 15 of us plus leaders climbed up a hill (the route was actually a downhill mtb track which made me nostalgic) from where we could see the city through the trees. Just another fab weekend!

Choo choo banana train 

Mangrove swamp tour

Campfire's burning

This weekend has been suitably relaxed which was exactly what was needed after the travels of the past few weeks. We took the kids to play Rounders at the field, I went with one of our Tias and her family to church and to eat lunch with them after and even found time to kick back in my hammock with a new book - a very rare occurrence indeed! Whilst I've gotten pretty excited for uni recently from sorting out my course and accommodation, I know that I can't imagine saying goodbye here yet. In fact I can't even imagine my life without all the people who are in it now. 3.5 months to go sounds like a long time and yet is feeling more and more like a home-straight every day with the time just whizzing faster and faster beneath our feet. 

School days, Spelunking and chicken slaughters

After March 4th I will officially be able to say that I am "going into my 8th month in Honduras". Yes, I can't believe it either! I feel like I have matured and grown up in so many ways here and I've learnt about so many things that I never could have imagined. I remain very grateful for all my sponsors and contributors to my fundraising back at home, I couldn't have done this without you!

Our main project in the Miqueas children's home remains yet the same in main ways, however there also been new developments alongside normal classes. The children celebrated 'Robbie Burns day' in our holiday classes by learning about Scottish culture and traditions (they particularly loved watching videos of the Pipebands), designing tartan sashes, trying their hand at poetry and even having a mini-ceilidh with the dancing we'd taught. We even got the directors dancing and all in all it was a good morning! 

Last week 4 of the bilingual school children who'd written to children in my old primary school in Aboyne in Scotland last year received back replies and I don't know who was more excited, them or me! The highlight for me was watching them read them for the first time and pointing out the similarities and differences between their lives. One of my girls Heidi, was delighted to hear that her penpal Cristina wanted to be a doctor just like her. Since this has been a success now all our kids aged 7 - 13 have also written letters to exchange letters with the full P5 class. Not only will the Scottish pupils get to practise their written Spanish and the Honduran children their English but it's also eye opening from a global citizenship point of view and hopefully all involved will learn that children even on the other side of the world are similar in many ways to themselves!  

Due to a re-shuffle in school and after-school English class times, I have had time in my day to start an art and motor skills class for the youngest who don't yet attend school and those who finish earlier. This is proving stressful, not to mention messy when paint is involved, but some good work has also been produced and it's keeping me on my feet for sure! Ladybird headbands, monster faces, finger-painting, playdough, bead necklaces, puppets, you name it, we've made it! Miqueas art gallery coming soon...

Since all the children at Miqueas, exempt the 4 youngest, now attend school during in the mornings this has led to a shake-up in our routines! This change has allowed us to start a new project, working one morning a week at the village kindergarten and to expand on our English teaching at the school from 1 day a week to 3. Our work at the kindergarten is to teach English for 45 minutes and assist with the work they're doing - learning basic writing skills, playdough or other Spanish songs and games. We're definitely still finding our feet and we've discovered that working with a class of 25 (very cute) 4 year olds can be very challenging and hard work. As they have such short attention spans we've split our English into half an hour at the start of the morning and a 15 minute recap at the end. The kindergarten building consists of 1 smallish main room which is painted and with lots of posters and a few games, a bathroom and some tyres to play on outside. As with the primary school, the children have to bring all their own resources - writing books, pencils, glue, scissors, playdough etc. And like the school again, although we know that in our village there is a full range of children attending from very poor to quite well-off families, everyone is always immaculately dressed. 

Being able to teach at the school 2 more days a week than before Christmas has been a great improvement, both for the pupil's progress in English which we're already noticing and also for our classroom relationships with them. We're both missing the English holiday club a little (our final week ironically had the highest turnout) but it's also been good to get back into our school routine. My classes have changed since I am now teaching the new 1st grade (34 5 year olds!) and I no longer teach my old 3rd grade as they've moved up to 4th and Innes teaches them. Since I feel like a bigger part of the school and that the school is a bigger part of me I thought it might be an interesting time to mention some of the biggest differences to Scottish primary schools. For Honduran standards I am told that our school is pretty well-off as it has enough desks, chairs and textbooks for the pupils, which apparently was not the case a few years ago. So, what are the main differences? 

1. The school is made up of 3 buildings which house 6 classrooms, there's a tiny school office (that I've never seen anyone use), some toilets in wooden huts outside and a decent sized playground with football goals. There's no staff room or inside hall (in fact when a pastor came to do a bible class a couple of weeks ago all 150 children squeezed into the biggest classroom - I was super impressed), facilities for children with learning disabilities or even glass in the windows. The water fountain is a tap in the ground outside and although the school has the basic resources like textbooks the teachers or children have to pay for anything extra. 

2. There is not a single computer or laptop, and Smartboard, you've got to be kidding! The electricity is only used for the classroom lights on dark days and to run the fans when it's hot. Saying this, a few of these are broken and when there's a power cut its all irrelevant anyway! 

3. The school doubles up as a Secondary school on Saturdays. In many ways this is a great concept as it was set up so that young people who have to work to earn a living during the week can continue their education. Likewise if they can't afford a bus everyday to one of the neighbouring villages where there is a high school. However I am just a tiny bit dubious that for a minority of parents whose children have just left primary school it is a cop-out from looking into all the possibilities of the other local high schools where if their child went 5 days a week instead of 1 they would inevitably receive a better education. 

4. The teacher/child relationship is a bit different from home which surprised me a little at first. All the children hug their teachers, the teachers will refer to them as 'mi amor' (my love) in classes (although that's quite common in Honduras anyway) and a child might even sit on his teachers knee. This is quite simply just a cultural difference, but at home in Scotland it would not be acceptable. 

5. Despite there being 6 grades (P2-7ish) in the school (and apparently there always has been) the government only pays 4 out of 6 teachers to work here. They believe that 4 teachers is sufficient to teach 6 big classes and so in 2 of the classes the parents have grouped together to pay the salary of the teachers who otherwise would be unpaid. Needless to say i was shocked to find this out, it makes little sense to me but at least the parents in the village have a decent enough income to make this possible! 

A better teacher than me! 

Both at Miqueas and at the school I feel like I'M still learning every day as well, I suppose that can only be a good thing, there's just so much to soak up and take on board in the role of a teacher! In the school we're hoping to set up a small library corner of basic English books over the next month, and if anyone from home would like to send out second-hand books to contribute, these would be very gratefully received! (Address : Miqueas 6:8, Aldea La Colorada, El Progreso, Yoro, Honduras, Central America). 

We spend Friday mornings in Miqueas doing organisation or tidy up work that needs to be done. A new house is being built next door to the current building in which 25 of the children will live (as they are currently outgrowing their shared rooms) so there's lots of things to move over from the current house and everyone is very excited. 

Outside of work has seen some other interesting adventures including a long weekend trip to a lake a few hours south called Lago de Yajoa. Here myself, Innes, Gaby and Jen went kayaking, walked up to a ridge to watch the sun rise over the mountains and the lake, visited and swam above a stunning waterfall, relaxed, met with Maia and Alice (2 other PT volunteers) and tried 'Spelunking'. As it turns out this is effectively caving and in the caves we saw some amazing stalactites, stalagmites and other rock formations (I sound like such a geography nerd but it was cool ok). We had to crawl along, climb up and scramble over a lot of slippy, slippy rocks and although it was actually quite difficult it was a really enjoyable experience and so different to anything else I've ever done! Once we were in the cave as far as we could go, our guide instructed us to turn of our torches and it was the darkest, most silent place I've been in my life - which was really quite weird, it's such a different world in there. 

We returned from our trip to the lake to find a rat had moved into our house. It had chewed through the mesh on one of the windows and found our stash of chicken food in the kitchen. Innes and I were both absolutely terrified and the rat's games of hide and seek in the following days felt somewhat traumatic. We were certainly very glad to discover where the hole was and to get it blocked up. Big shout-out for Jacob for helping us to search for us it in the dark when we were at our most scared! 

January also saw the slaughter of our chickens. For the past 3 or 4 months we'd been keeping 4 chickens and a rooster (yes I was extremely glad to see him go!) in our garden but when they stopped laying enough eggs to pay their keep (and not wanting to attract more rats) we decided it was time for them to go. Whilst Gaby sold hers Innes and I got the help of one of the Tias to help (and by help I mean do everything) to kill them. First Rubi and her son Manuel (one of Innes' 5th graders) ran around the garden catching them (because we were so intimidated by them that we couldn't even touch them) and then  began the process of the actual slaughter, the plucking of the feathers and the cutting up of the meat. It was a surprisingly complicated process which aside from helping pluck the feathers the most I contributed was a lot of 'ooh'ing and 'ahh'ing! Since meat is more expensive to buy here the chicken has been a treat and so far it has been in fajitas, soup and rice and stir fry! 

Since I've been to meetings with a scout group in the nearest city to where I live in the North of the country I was invited to attend an event for 'Founders day'. This is is a big event in the Scouting calendar as it commemorates Baden Powell (who founded the movement)'s birthday. This was an event with an attendance of I'd guess 200+ scouts aged 7-20 + leaders and made for a really interesting and sociable afternoon and I met a lot of really nice people! What's also relevant to note is that the scout community of Honduras is only made up from the middle and upper middle classes and I don't think I met a single person my age that day that didn't speak fluent English. If you have money here the done thing is to send your child to private (mostly English bilingual) school. The wealth disparities here will never cease to blow my mind, whilst some people have so much others have so little. I've been wondering if the higher social classes perceive the profound poverty in their country as irrelevant or as something they want to help address. And then it occurred to me that although our poverty isn't on the same scale, is it fair to say that our middle and upper classes in Britain pay a fair amount of attention, respect and willingness to help our lower classes? The politics of the situation are definitely different but it made me think, a lot. 

I'm in there somewhere...

Over the weekend we had our Project Trust desk officer visit which was fun for many reasons and I think we both enjoyed getting to 'show off' our project. One of the  final thing I thought I to mention was the 'Zika' virus. Whilst it blew up on the news at home, we've heard only a small amount about it here despite being in an at risk country. The truth is that people here just get on with it, they have no other option. We've known one person who's had it but I've interestingly come across numerous articles that claim that the link between the virus and microsephely is a media cover up for something else as plenty of healthy babies have been born in Latin America to mothers who experienced Zika symptoms. Government officials came to our school and went around the village with the 5th and 6th grade pupils giving out bags of solution to every house to put in their pila (outside water source) to kill mosquito larvae, I have received 2  texts from Zika@HN and we've seen a couple of signs and newspaper headlines about it but aside from this it's generally not a hot topic. 

5th and 6th grade pupils out and about with then pila solutions. 

So that's February been and gone! It brought with it some very cold weather (there was even rumoured to have been snow in one part of the country) which was not appreciated and one evening I was even wishing I had my thermals whilst hiding under an extremely thick blanket! The sun is back for now and we hear that it's only going to get hotter until our leaving date at the end of July. Roll on orange and mango season and let's pray for some bananas and avocados on the trees before before this day.

Feliz Navidad, feliz año nuevo y feliz cumpleaños x3

 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. 

Tias making 200+ tamales for Christmas Eve! 

The Christmas tree with 39 presents under it!

Making Honduran Christmas cake for 40+ people! 

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...

The skittle and chopstick game is a classic! 

More party snaps

Happy birthday to us! 

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.