Mototaxis, Employment, and a Tarantula

2/5/2012

Abraham: When we were cleaning the Church, I was cleaning out the outside baptismal font, I saw a tarantula. It was in where you got baptized. It runned into my dustpan, because I was cleaning out lots of leaves that were in there. It kind of startled me. I didn’t get to ride in the mototaxi this Sunday. Almost every single day, I eat chocolate chip cookies when we are having snack at school. There are only four swings on the playground. Every day I always get candy at preschool. [Abe always requests one to bring home to Calla, who is at home and doesn’t go to school.]

Henry: Yesterday we saw a teeny, teeny scorpion scurrying across our dining room floor. We picked it up in a jar and it is sitting on our counter. We cleaned the church and I got to mop the chapel. Aspen and I were sick this week. I missed 2 days of school and watched a lot of movies. I rode in a mototaxi. Mototaxis rule!! One mototaxi is yellow and has a spoiler. It looks kind of funny.

Aspen: I was sick this week. I missed 2 days of school, but now am better. We went to the Martinez’s house for dinner. We played red rover [it was “red rover” since no one knew the name in Spanish]. We had pan de pan for dessert [she didn’t get sick from the pan de pan]. The night that we had it, I threw it up. That is how I got sick.

Ranae: I gave my first employee interview--in Spanish! Tomorrow our empleada, Miriam, will start working for us. She’ll come for about 5 hours in the morning and do housework and some cooking, with the intent that then I can be more immersed in Spanish. I will volunteer at the children’s school for a few hours each week, helping Mr. Carlos with his art and music classes, which are taught in Spanish. I will also have to communicate with Miriam. Part of my interview was to make clear to her that I need her to talk to me in Spanish and correct my mistakes. I hope she will take seriously that portion of her job description. She comes highly recommended as the past empleada of the Pack family. How strange it is to contemplate having a maid! But as Stuart said, I’m not going to learn Spanish by washing dishes all day.

Today I taught our Nursery lesson in Spanish. I think the little Honduran girl understood me. Calla did not. I was worried that I could not understand what the little girl is saying, taking it as a comment on my Spanish skills. But the woman that comes to help with music in Nursery told me that none of the Hondurans can understand her, either. Such is the way with some 3-year-olds. Calla continues to love Nursery and learn the gospel each Sunday.

Wednesday evening we enjoyed a real Honduran dinner at the Martinez’s home. The menu was platanos, corn tortillas, tomato salsa, chorizo and carne asada from the BBQ, creamy beans, and queso fresco. To drink, we had pineapple juice and for dessert, an awesome flan/custard dish called pan de pan. The food was delicious and worthy of importing to America.

It seems I am always reporting something about food, but truly, navigating a new cuisine, cooking for a family of seven, and providing and cleaning up after four homemade meals each day (that’s including the immense after-school snack) occupies much of my time and energy. I do think that having Miriam come will be a great help.

Jack: I rode in a mototaxi. I wasn’t sick and went to school all week. I get to go to the Tercero’s house on Friday. [we wrote about them in a blog post back. They live in a remote area, that is a 30 min hike from the road that is very, very steep.] I had a dream that I was the goalie for a professional soccer team. The game was on Valentine’s Day. All the kids of the soccer players got to come out and play instead of their dads. Instead of a soccer ball, it was a cheap plastic golf ball. I kept blocking the goals. There were a bunch of chubby little kids running around.

I have to write 1.5 (small) pages each day for school homework. I wrote a story for school. The story was about giant evil turnips that lived on Titan, a moon of Saturn (or Jupiter). There were big floating, tan balls.

We cleaned the church. Part of the Church we have to clean is outside. A eucalyptus tree drops leaves. We swept them up and didn’t really have a place to put them, so I dumped them over the edge. I accidentally dumped them into some lady’s pila who lives below the Church. A pila is a small open reservoir people use as a source of water, for washing clothes, or other things. She came and knocked on the door and asked who was dumping stuff off the back of the Church. We came down to help clean the leaves out of her pila.

Stuart: Jack and Henry rode in mototaxi from Church. Mototaxis are small, red, three-wheeled vehicles that have small engines (Henry says they have lawnmower engines). They have been wanting to ride in one for a long time and I finally brought the 12 Lempiras to pay for it. They rode with Hermana Penalva from Church, since she rides one from Church to the bus stop each Sunday. She agreed to go with them. We took her daughter with us, then gave them a ride so they didn’t have to ride the bus. The mototaxi doesn’t have doors closed usually, and even if they were, they’re cloth. Jack kept sticking his head out to watch us from behind. Hna. Penalva took a picture of them in the mototaxi.

I finally met with the Branch President. The president of the branch is the leader of the congregation in the local area. We call it a branch since it is small (<100 active members), which makes it different than a “ward” which would have >100s of members. I am his counselor, meaning I help him do whatever needs to be done in the branch to minister to the folks. We met this morning with the other counselor. He (the President) asked if I would conduct the meeting in February. This means that I run the main worship meeting. Welcome, song, prayer, announcements, etc. and basically direct the meeting. It was a total surprise about 40 minutes before the meeting started. I had done it a lot of times when we lived in Madison since I was in (essentially) the same position there and it turned out I wasn’t even nervous and the whole thing went smoothly .

I finally signed a contract here as an empleado. That finally gives me the privilege of driving the car being insured. We had been driving (locally) for the time that we had been here. But now we can go wherever in the country. That is pretty liberating, so we went to the grocery store! We have plans to go to cooler places eventually, but we did get some yummy food at the store. All the store workers (ladies) were commenting and staring admiringly at the children, esp. at totally blond Aspen and Abraham. They are amazed at the blue eyes of the rest of the children. One lady kept giving them free doughnut (“donas”) samples, which was VERY well received by the children!

Another happy week in Honduras!