Wanderlust

I haven't gotten too travel around Honduras very much but I've had a few adventures. About a month ago two other American teachers from Destino, Amanda Bruin and Mallori, and I spent a 3 day weekend in La Ceiba. Traveling by bus is very inexpensive so we took a bus from Siguatepeque to La Ceiba. Once we were in La Ceiba we headed to the beach, and then up to Jungle River Lodge. Enjoy the pics!

Although this beach is polluted it's still pretty. Just don't go swimming!

The drive up to the lodge.

Ready to go white-water rafting!

Class III Rapids. The water was low so this was about as crazy as it got.

Hiking in Pico Bonita National Forest with Darwin, our guide. One of the neatest parts of the hike was learning about all the different plants. We ate wild bananas, a leave that is used to treat malaria, and termites! They weren't bad at all and tasted like carrots!

Zipline!

I hope to return to Jungle River PRONTO! They offer other white water rafting tours as well as some other hiking tours.

Happenings at Destino

A few of my best students in Prepa(Kindergarten) getting ready to go home.

Destino del Reino has been ging through some changes/challenges/experiences lately. I won't go into great detail but the highlights are...

1. Two new children are going to call Destino home. A 3 year old girl arrived this past weekend and her brother who is only a few months old, will be arriving any day now. They are the half-siblings of two sisters who already live at Destino.

2.Finances are shaky. To improve this situation, a sale is being held this weekend. Basically, the ministry is selling anything they can do without.

3. Rhonda, the founder and co-director of Destino, Carlos pastor and co-director of Destino, and Wendy principal of the Destino school, have been invited to speak at a missions conference in Texas. This will be a great opportuntiy to raise more financial and prayer support for the ministry.

So....what I would like you to do is to stop and pray for these things.

1. That the new kids quickly adjust to their lives at Destino .

2. That the sale goes well and the Lord provides financial security for Destino.

3. Safe travels for Rhonda, Carlos and Wendy when they attend the missions conference.

Thanks so much.

Kinder kids at lunch.

Kids say the funniest things.

When you are learning a new language you will say ridiculous things. This is a fact. The combination of a desire to share my thoughts and a limited understanding of Spanish has caused me to say things to my coworkers that probably sound more like jibberish than English or Spanish. For example, last week I got off the bus in town so I could go to the grocery store. Another teacher was headed to the same place and politely asked me what I was doing and where my roommates were going. I meant to tell her that I needed some food so I was going shopping and my roommates were headed to our house. Just a basic, normal response to a basic normal question. I just don't know how she kept a straight face when I told her that my roommates were headed to her house.




Downtown Siguatepeque- This picture was taken during a festival for all the preschools and kindergartens in the city. My roommates Zoe and Amanda Bruin are in the middle of this pic. The guy with the wheelbarrel on the left was selling oranges with salt! Que rico(Delicious)!

It's probably a good thing that I make these mistakes because it helps me understand how easy it is to mix up simple words and when my students say things like "My name is bathroom," or respond with "fine thank you," when I ask them how old they are it's easy to laugh.

Dominique. The class clown of first grade and an air guitar enthusiast.

Our first graders know quite a bit a English vocabulary so we decided it's time to actually teach them to put these words together into sentences. For their first phrase we started with What is your name? They mastered that within a couple days so we added "How old are you?," and "May I go to the bathroom?" Then things started to get interesting. Class would be progressing normally, the kids would seem to be learning when suddenly, someone would inform us that they have (insert name) years or that their name was 6 years old. As we've continued to work on the phrases these incidents have decreased but sometimes, they still pop up.

The First Graders Introduce Themselves

Jonathan, First Grade(Primero)




Rosa First Grade



Oscar, Josue and Karina First Grade