Escucha Me, ALTO

I will use the names of the people I volunteer with a lot in these blog posts. Hopefully I will have some pictures soon so you can connect a name with a face. For now here is a list of people:

Dan - return volunteer, California
Mary - return volunteer, California
Carrie - new volunteer, Texas
Michelle - new volunteer, Kansas City, MO side...My roommate (went to Notre Dame for college, so she knows Indiana)
Meagan - return volunteer, New York
Mary - return volunteer, California
Jackie - return volunteer, Chicago...My roommate
Angela - new volunteer, California
Andrew - new volunteer, New Jersey
Lacey - new volunteer, Wisconsin
Maki - return volunteer, Massachusetts (Principal of the middle school)
Anne - new volunteer, California
Peggy - return volunteer, Rhode Island (Principal of the elementary school and the volunteer coordinator. She has a very full plate, but she's AWESOME at what she does!)
Jeff - new volunteer, Idaho
Ginny - returning volunteer, North Carolina

The last two nights Andrew has made us dinner and it was fabulous! The boy can cook! Last night we had some pasta with a vegetable and meat sauce. Tonight we have toasted bread with melted cheese on top...then Andrew made this side salad of green pepper, tomatoes, onion, and cucumber with a little EVOO drizzled on top. He hiked through town to find some stores that carried all of this stuff. I'm pumped he'll be my neighbor for ten months, at least I know I'll be well fed :)! Andrew lived in England for seven years, because both of his parents are from there, so he has this great british accent...I love it! He pronounces things in a very funny way most of the time and we all laugh. He loves to laugh and kid around so it's always a good time when we get a group together!

Three of the volunteers: Lacey, Jackie, and Andrew had to change a few things when they got to honduras. Apparently Hondurans think men with long hair and women or men with tattoos/piercings are in gangs. Well Andrew "had" long hair (he just got a buzz cut today). Lacey has multiple earings and her nose pierced and Jackie has a visible tattoo on her arm. Lacey took out most of her earings and got a bar for her nose. Jackie has to put a band-aid over her tattoo. Well the other day Andrew was walking through town and he was trying to say excuse me, but instead of saying permiso he said escucha me, which means listen to me! He later said alto to a man in the market, which means stop. Since people would already think he was in a gang, we've been laughing hysterically about it. It's just so funny to think of this gringo with his long hair passing by people saying "Listen to me! Stop!"

In other news, I have two machetes sitting on my little coffee table right now. I asked another volunteer why they were there and I was told I would have to use them to cut the grass to keep the tarantulas away, YIKES! Oh, and we saw our first mouse in our kitchen today :/. Now we have to go and buy some rat poising so we can kill it. I wish we could just trap it and set it free, but it would just keep coming back.

I got to spend my first full day with Wendy, my classroom aid. She is so sweet and I am over-joyed to have her helping me in my classroom. I don't know how I would handle 54 kids otherwise!

Oh, I had my first solo Spanish conversation in the street today. I had to use my Spanish to English dictionary to look up every word I was saying. I told a little girl that I had pequeno Lempira's "small money", but I was trying to tell her that I didn't have very much money. I'll learn :)

"Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square hole. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do." – Apple (Thanks Heath :) )