Christmas Program and saying goodbye

Hello all, there is so much excitement and surreal-ness as I type this post because in less than 24 hours I will be in the U.S. of A!! It is Christmas time and we are all going home for Christmas break. It is a crazy, surreal, bittersweet feeling. I am so pumped to finally be on Christmas break and to be able to take some much needed time off and to go home and visit friends and family. All of us teachers are on the same flight to Houston, which we're all really excited about. We are all feeling the Christmas spirit and are extremely excited to go home, although we will all miss each other a whole lot. We have spent the last 5 months spending almost every waking minute with one another, so it's going to feel quite strange being apart, but we're looking forward to time with our families and friends and taking a break from island life.

Our last week here has been a bit of a joke, but in a glorious sort of way. Last Friday, our school put on their big Christmas program, so the whole week was a bit thrown off, but it was all so worth it. It was a pretty big production with the whole school participating. It was a play mixed in with some dances and songs by different people/grades. My second grade kiddies teamed up with the third grade and we did a sweet little dance to Joy to the World. They did an awesome job. I felt like a proud mom watching them perform, they were so stinking CUTE. Here's a really small little clip of them performing, so stinking adorable with their uncoordinated-ness and all.

Here are some pictures from the night.

CPBS teachers

Me and one of my crazy students

Second and Third Grade!

Overall, I would say it was a successful night! Our last day of school was yesterday, which was basically a free day of games and fun. I am going to miss all my kiddies so much during the break. They were all so precious saying goodbye. Love them so much. Here are some pics of them from Tuesday:

some of the boys.

so precious.

I gave each student a little gift bag and a card. Here's one of the twins showing it off. 

just hanging out. 

We've also been super blessed the past two days with incredible weather. It's like rainy season left and we're back to our summer days. We've been at the beach soaking in the West Bay glory. It's hard to believe that some of us are going back to snow! Luckily, for me CA weather won't be too much of a change, although anything colder than 70 degrees here is basically freezing, so I'm sure it'll be a bit strange. Regardless I am SO EXCITED!!!!! I probably won't be posting while I'm home, so until the New Year my friends! MERRY CHRISTMAS all!! 

Monkey Business and Quinceanera Fun

Oh man, this past week has been adventuresome. We just never know what will happen next here in our sweet little home and last Thursday we had one of our biggest surprises yet, a special friend snuck into our apartments and caused quite the frenzy. Somehow, a MONKEY ended up in not 1 but 2 of our rooms int the same night. Now, you would think, oh so you guys have a friend who has a monkey and they brought it over, still kind of weird but kind of makes sense, but no, not the case.  This random monkey just showed up on our porch and then found its way into our rooms. I first spotted the monkey when I came home from school. It was on our balcony and was climbing its way down when we got home. I didn't think much of it at the time, I mean I thought the monkey was cool, but just thought no big deal. Well, later that night, Sarah got home and was chatting with me in my room. I wasn't feeling so great that night so I asked her to bring me some medicine. Well, on her way over to me, she left her apartment door cracked open, which is totally normal. Upon returning, though, she got quite the surprise to see a new little friend:

We had a fiasco of an adventure trying to get him out of the room. We called in reinforcements and our landlady sent someone to help us. It was madness, but the monkey finally left the room/apartment. Well, later that night somehow we managed a monkey fiasco number 2 in my roomie's room. As she was getting read to go to bed she spotted the little monkey in her room. He snuck under her bed and we had to look real hard to find him after she first spotted him.

Round 2 was hilarious because we had all somehow formed a bond with the little guy. This time instead of chasing him around like round 1 we kind of just sat around as the monkey sat on her bed frame. We tried to figure out where he came from and tried to come up with a story of what his life was like. It was pretty hilarious. Eventually, Anny, on of the other teachers with her monkey whispering skills grabbed the little guy and took him outside.

It was quite the little adventure, definitely one of our best yet. Just another day in the life haha.

Also, another big thing we did was go to our very first Honduran quinceanera! One of our students, the daughter of the mom who teaches our fitness class, turned 15 and they had an all out quince fiesta for her. It was at the mall in Roa one of the nightclubs on the island. It was an all out fiesta. Everything was real fancy and elaborate. Here's a little picture journey to give you a taste of the night.

Starting with our fancy red carpet entrance. 

Really cool trees, perfect picture opt. 

The inside of the club all done up. 

Another part of the club

She had a group of about 20ish people in her "party" and they performed an awesome dance. 

The theme was masquerade, hence all the masks. We had a ton of fun. I especially loved seeing all our students all decked out looking all fly. We also got to see their super sweet dance moves, which made me jealous, because they've got some serious moves! Overall, super fun night. Here's one last shot of us teachers with our cool masks.

love! 

Happy birthday DECEMBER!

Hello everyone, hope all is well. It's been a while since I've posted so I thought I would throw out a random post. It is officially DECEMBER and us teachers have been so excited about CHRISTMAS for so many reasons. We are all so excited to go back to the states and recharge with friends and family. We celebrated December this past weekend by having a cookie/baking party and watching Elf. Our cookie/baking party was HILARIOUS because well we are just really lacking in appliances. Only one of our ovens is currently working and it's about the size of a shoe box (okay maybe a slight exaggeration, but seriously it's tiny) and we had some grand plans to bake up the wazoo. So we decided to improvise and make do with what we have by trying to cook some cookies on the stove. It was hilarious and almost worked but basically turned into warmed up cookie dough, delicious nonetheless. HAPPY BIRTHdAY DECEMBER!

In other news we have found a new taxi driver. His name is Jaxel and he is hilarious. We always feel super blessed because God seems to always provide us with new taxi drivers right when we need them.  Our original taxi driver Nino, up and left to go work on a fishing boat near mainland a month or so ago and it's been rough without him. Taxi drivers can be sketch and hit or miss here so Nino was a blessing and we were sad to see him go. Luckily one of the teachers picked Jaxel out at the mall one day and we've been using him the last few days and so far he's been great. Today, Ingrid and I had him pick us up from the coffee shop to take us home. He's been telling us that we need to go eat carne with him in the street in Las Fuertes and today as we were on our way home, he asked us when we were going to go eat and living out our YOLOness we said AHORITA! and so he busted a quick U-y and off we were to Las Fueretes for some carne en la calle. It was awesome. We were laughing at how with Nino we went to his house to make baleadas and now here we were going to go eat carne with Jaxel, seems to be a trend for our taxi drivers to want to make us gorda (fat)! Regardless we had a blast feeling like locals in Fuertes and eating delicious grub in the street.

Also, we just found out that next week we basically only have classes for half the week because the school puts on a huge Christmas program and the preparations for it cuts into class time (it's crazy). So we have no school next Friday (the day of the program) and Thursday is basically going to be spent shuttling kids back and forth from the school and the mall (where the Christmas program is going to take place this year) to practice for the Christmas program. That means that I really only have 1 more week of teaching for this quarter, which is just WILD! I don't know where it all went. We are almost half-way done with the school year, so crazy when I put it like that.

It has been an up and down adventure here and I've been learning a whole lot everyday. Lately, I've been dealing with a lot of insecurities and feeling super weak here. It's felt like every weakness of mine has been magnified here and it's hard not to just dwell on those weaknesses and feel like a sucky human being. Thankfully, God is good and has been walking me through this whole process of refinement and seeing His perfection through my weakness. It's a bittersweet process, but I truly am thankful, and I feel like each day I'm stepping more and more into who God has created me to be. It's hard but oh so good. Thankful, thankful, THANKFUL!

Anyways that's enough of my ramblings, here are some pictures of my precious, little babies. (click "read more" to see more pictures!)
Thanks y'all for reading, means a lot. And hey maybe think about leaving a comment :)

My kids the day before Thanksgiving Break

crazy gemelo.