Spanish and more Spanish

April 22 2012

Happy Earth Day from Honduras

For earth day we burned a lot of gas and bought a lot of tourist stuff. To offset it all, we cooked banana bread in a sun oven--the report back was it was "muy rico!" which means very good. And why not...Ranae made it and it had Ghirardelli chocolate chips in it.


This week everyone went back to school, much to their chagrin. Jack and Henry began taking an additional Spanish class (helping in the Kindergarten class) this week. So now they have two Spanish classes, their grade and kinder. They love being back in kindergarten! Aspen goes to First grade Spanish. Speaking of Spanish, it seems as if people have passed some mark. Their Spanish is really going well. Remember the activation energy of enzymes in intro biology? Well, they reached that point and Spanish is really taking off. They can understand native conversation a lot better and are able to respond. It is really great!

Jack and Henry received cameras for Christmas...we needed a youth view of Honduras,...Here is one of their good shots made during some creative time earlier this year when the cicadas were emerging en masse.

We had dinner with the missionaries last Sunday. It was good to talk with them and have them here. They are super fellows. We took them to their house about 8:30. When we dropped them off a guy ran up to the car to talk with us. He was not in total control of his mind—drunk or something. Anyway, he shook our hands through the windows and was trying (though not succeeding) in talking in English to us. I decided after about 10 seconds that was enough, so I pushed in the clutch. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the break on and the car immediately and rapidly slipped backwards and the car (a Toyota 4-runner) mirror slammed him in the back and threw him forward and knocked his hat down over his face. I was really concerned that I had hurt his feet—I might have run them over—but I didn’t and he was OK. If it weren’t for the mirror throwing him forward, I might have run his feet over. In any case, he didn’t seem the worse off for that experience and I started to drive forward to turn around. He jumped on the running board and hung onto the handle inside the window as I turned around. I told him we were leaving and kind of jerked him off with the car, rolled up the windows and we waved a lot a drove off. It wasn’t a positive experience, since I had Aspen, Jack, Henry and Abraham in the car and I was a little worried about the situation plus, I came very near to hurting the guy, on accident, with the car. In the end, all was well and it was funny to the missionaries (“one of the funniest things ever!”) as they watched the whole incident occur in front of their house.

Cicadas have been out for a while and at times are deafening. Here is a new one on the tree. It is about adult hand-length size-bigger than
the US midwestern ones!

One thing I have enjoyed a lot about being here is being able to come home for lunch every day. Abraham gets out of school at 12—the other children at 2:40. Since Ranae isn’t covered by the University insurance on the vehicle they are loaning us, I do as much driving as possible, so she doesn’t have too. But it does make getting much done in the afternoon difficult. So often, I get Abraham and she drives me back and does all of the afternoon taxi-ing of the children (school, soccer, band, etc.) and I stay at work. Therefore, I take Abraham home from school and eat lunch with him, Mom, Calla and Miriam. It is usually a great, hot lunch, better than a sandwich and yogurt in my office! Wednesdays, everyone gets off early (12:20 ) and so we all have lunch on Wed, which has been great to do.


We traveled to a place called Valle de Angeles to look for some typical Honduran things to buy as gifts for friends and family. One thing they have there are large (3' x 2' x 2'), hand-carved, wooden trunks. They are quite beautiful and I would like to get some good wood-products to bring home with us. However, they are quite large and boxes as baggage is restricted on flights from Central America. In short, that means that we have to have it in a bag or something. Plus they’re pretty heavy. So we haven’t figured it out yet, but I hope too!


The rainy season supposedly doesn’t start until May, but seems to have started about 3 weeks early. We have had many storms (lots of lightning) and the power has gone out a few times a week. We need to buy more candles. In fact, yesterday, I woke up early because of the cold--it had to have been in the 50s.


Calla continues to develop more and more. One thing she started this week was saying, in surprise, “My eyes are open!” and then looking at you with big, open eyes. She marvels (it seems by her tone) that her eyes are open at the moment. She looks in the mirror, “MOM! My eyes are open!” The simplicity of her surprise at her cool body is so great. I love it! She has also begun, since we’ve been here to ask “Why?” about a lot of things. She has many follow-up “why’s” too. She is really developing a verbal personality and her Spanish is coming along well too, quite surprisingly.


We had the Tercero's over for dinner on Sunday, so the post is a little short. They are great peopel and we really enjoy being with them. Just good, humble, people trying to do good things for themselves and for many others. They would be the type of people to become in our old age--though we'll speak a lot more English in our 70s I imagine.

Last time we went to their house Henry helped make tortillas. Here is one his creations!