This week has been a good week full of interesting adventures! A few highlights include, swimming with the Mujeres Jovenes who came for swim lessons, chasing and catching fireflies at night, seeing amazing cloud-ground lightning very near the house, a possum, making crepes for Mother’s Day celebrations, Mother’s Day beginning on Friday at the school and ending Sunday, Stuart drove the 5 hours to Gualaco, Olancho and back, and rain nearly every day.
Stuart: The exciting thing for me was going to Olancho on Thursday and seeing many interesting things along the road going/coming.
Work progresses and I have been teaching 2 online classes from here. They are ending this week and I have to finish up grading and finalize the grades. I will be teaching one more in the Summer term which begins around the 2nd week of June until mid-July.
The fireflies were so abundant and active, the whole yard was filled with little greenish-yellow lights.
I was asked to teach English to the third-year students. These are students that have passed the TOEFL and need help with conversation and refining their English to the level they really need to speak to people. I have never taught English so I have to come up with something for 1 hour/day for 3-days a week every even week from June to August. If you have any good ideas of cool English things to share with the students, let me know!
Happy Mother’s Day!
Aspen: On Thursday we heard a dog barking in the front yard. And it was shaking something around in its mouth. So we went to go see what it was and it was a possum mother and then the dog ran away. So we went outside and the mother possum was laying down and had big blood patches on her back and by its ear. By it we saw something moving around by it that looked like a snake. When we got closer, we saw it was a baby possum that had its eyes still shut. We picked up the baby possums with a palm leaf and put them with their mom. The mommy possum kind of stood up and pretended she was limping. Then she walked up to her hole in the rock wall. Then we got some old food scraps, because they eat whatever a pig eats. In the morning I went out to see if the food was still there. It was still there. That means that the possum wasn’t there, because if it were there, it would have eaten the food. I think the food is still out there right now.
Henry: On Wednesday night, our family went out in the yard, and the whole yard was sparkling with little lights; sparkling with fireflies. We went out and caught some fireflies.
On Thursday, we heard a dog barking in our front yard. When we went out to see what it was, the dog was gone. Once the dog left, we saw that it had been shaking a mom possum in its mouth. It has blood spots all over it. Since the dog was shaking it so much, the little babies got shaken out of its pouch. Some were so young, their eyes weren’t even open. We collected the babies and put them on the mom. The babies held on to the mom. She got up and limped off into the rock wall [that surrounds our house].
On Friday, we celebrated Mother’s day. Jack and I got up at 4:45 am to make breakfast for our mom. We made an omelet, crackers, Crystal Light® and star fruit (albaricoque). We took it to our mom at 5:25 because she usually wakes up at 5:30. For lunch at school, most of the moms came. We played Bingo with them and I won all the 3-6th graders, I won one of the rounds. I won a snickers candy bar.
On Saturday, we went to Teguc. When we came home the young women (YW) came over so we could teach them how to swim. But when they came, a storm was starting with lightning and so we taught them how to make crepes. Then when the storm stopped, we went swimming and taught them how to swim.
One time at the pool, my dad was throwing up Abe out of the water. All the YW were watching to see how high Abe would go, and when Abe came up out of the water, his swim trunks fell all the way down to his ankles.
On Sunday I made crepes before for breakfast. After Church, I made a triple batch of crepes with Jack and Dad. Crepes are very yummy [though it does depend on what the filling is]. Moist rodent.
Abe: I can’t remember anything. We had two parties this week. I got candy and soda. Seeing the possum was a little scary. One time it blinked its eyes and it did its teeth like this [it bared its teeth]. I am done.
Jack:,
Mother’s Day here is the same [date] as in the US. Me and Henry got up at 4:45am to make breakfast in bed for my mom. We made an omelet, crackers, Crystal Light® and star fruit. I shredded my fingernail in the cheese shredder.
There was a lightning storm and the power went out about 6 and came back on the next day about noon. That night we caught fireflies in the backyard.
Yesterday the mujeres Jovenes came over so we could teach them how to swim. We had about 10-15 minutes to play around at the end. Dad was throwing Abe up into the air and Abe’s swim trunks fell all the way off as he shot into the air from the water. I was just diving in when he did it and I came up out of the water and I was laughing so hard, I had to go over to side so I could breathe.
There are some kids in my class who went to Tegucigalpa Friday for some athletic thingy, and they won a lot [of events] and 4 qualified from my class. One from 5th grade and one from 4th grade. On June 3rd they are going to El Salvador for the Jr. Olympics for little guys.
We have been making crepes. We made a lot today. They are very yummy and some are purple (but we ate all of those). We are filling them with green pineapple sauce that looks like snot, kind of. But it tastes way better. We put in 1 drop of blue food coloring [into the pineapple puree].
We heard a dog barking and after dinner we went to see what was happening. We came out and looked and a dog was shaking something around. It was a possum and then after the dog left, we saw something that looked like a snake, but it was a baby possum. We scooped up a total of 4 babies and put them on their mom. Then their mom got up and walked away, even though she was totally hammered [by the dog shaking her].
Mom: This week (in a role reversal) I showed Miriam how to make pupusas, based on my experience of watching them being made at the school’s carnival last week and at a street-side stand in Valle de Angeles. (Pupusas are like stuffed corn tortillas, filled with cheese or beans or meat mixes. They are a Central American food, especially typical in El Salvador. Nowadays, they are available for North American consumers at Costco!) (But authentic, freshly made pupusas are even better than the Costco type.) Our pupusas were delicious. We’ll have to try again to perfect them.
The main highway to Teguc has a few sections that have been badly damaged by landslides—more precisely, have been ripped off by landslides. Apparently the damage occurred years ago, but the sections have yet to be repaired. In some sections, the paved road gives way to dirt road for a few dozen meters. In one place, the pavement on the edge threatens to give way to the cliff below; if you drove too close to the edge (with no guard rails or good lighting) you would careen off into the abyss. Sometimes there are men who stand in the road, shoveling dirt into the holes to fill them in, signaling for drivers to pay them tips. This is one example of resourceful people trying to make work for themselves to earn a lempira or twenty.
As we drive, I like to look at the adobe houses, plastered white with brightly colored wooden doors and square windows cut into the walls without glass or screens. The red tile roofs and banana trees, the laundry on the line outside and a sampling of family members somewhere outside in the yard and maybe a horse or cow or donkey tied up outside—all these things are the typical things we see as we drive to Teguc.
The children were thoughtful and generous in their Mothers’ Day tributes. I love being their mother. I enjoyed very much the program at school on Friday—I got to go eat lunch or morning snack with each child and then play a few rounds of Bingo. We were serenaded by Mr. Carlos, the music teacher at the school, whose singing was highly acclaimed and did not disappoint. The teachers handed out cake and tres leches (a kind of pound cake with milk poured over and a caramel sauce on top). The time with the children this weekend has been sweet and happy and satisfying. They are fine people.
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