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Our Family - click the pic below for more pictures

Our Family - click the pic below for more pictures
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Tuesday, July 19, 2011

1 week down 51 to go!

We’ve now been in Honduras for a week and have had ups and downs.  We’ve met some good people, been surprised at the girl’s English skills, enjoyed the weather, but have also missed home, had difficulty with getting Olivia to eat and Sicily still likes to wake us (especially Sarah) up a lot at night.  We are also pretty isolated here with not a whole lot of places to go see, at least that are near the campus, so that’s been a little difficult, especially for the girls.  They are used to going to friends’ houses, parks, the grocery store and wherever else.  Here at the campus, we don’t own any vehicles (though we have access to a motorcycle and truck if we need them).  The nice thing about being here is that we have tons of space for the girls to explore.  We have yet gone to the waterfall, but would like to soon!  I’ve seen it before and its quite cool. 

It seems like Olivia is having a ball if you don’t count the eating part of Honduras.  She doesn’t like that every meal is rice, beans and tortilla.  Neither do I, but she’s a little young to understand that we could have almost whatever we wanted and now we can pretty much have what’s on our plate.  Thankfully there is oatmeal and peanut butter.  She’s also benefited from the snacks that we sent ahead.  And yes, so have Sarah and I.  Anyway, back to Olivia having a ball…she enjoys spending time with the students (all girls, if I haven’t explained that yet), and one in particular, Alex.  I’m guessing because she is younger, than the rest, plays with her and speaks decent English.  She always asks where she is. We are hoping that the girls will learn a fair amount of English from Olivia since she doesn’t quite understand that the girls don’t know English.  She has also learned a couple Spanish words that she was telling me this morning, like agua and hola.  We also had a new group of volunteers arrive last night for this week and Olviia has already attached herself to one of them. 

Teaching is going pretty well so far.  I don’t think I’ve epically failed yet, so that is a plus in my book.  I am still trying to gauge all that the girls understand and figure out the best ways for them to learn (so any ideas are welcome).  For the most part, they know more English than I expected and are generally pretty intelligent.  There are a few girls, I’m convinced, that will actually make a large impact on their community, if not their country.  So far we are sticking with teaching English.  I think we will do this for at least the first 6-12months of their education and at some point introduce leadership, math, science, business and other subjects.  We’ve only touched on business and leadership within discussions.  I’m also really glad to have Joseph and Hailey down here already and broken in.  Hailey has been a huge help with the girls and Sarah and Joseph has helped guide me in preparing lessons and discussions. 

We look forward to having some of you visit sometime in the next year! 

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