Spring Concert, Sprains and Conference

Jack sprained his wrist, but could still help me count leaves on my mahogany seedlings for an experiment.

We had to go to the hospital in Tegucigalpa for X rays. Just as an illustration how much English and American culture is here, the place name is “Honduras Medical Center”. That is not a translation, but the actual name. It is a very nice, regular-looking hospital. You even have to wait hours to see a doctor. We spent several hours there waiting due to a lack of effort on the part of the 7 secretaries just sitting chatting and never calling us to go see the Dr. One thing I have noticed is that in stores and other places, service personnel can often outnumber customers, but that doesn’t mean that you will be helped by someone who knows anything, necessarily. In some stores, they are eager and come up to talk to you, since they will receive a commission based on a sale. They guide to the checkout, wait with you, and then after the sale, their ID is scanned and they flee and you never see them again. Indonesia in the mid-90s was similar—tons of helpers in the stores.

About two days after Jack sprained his wrist playing futbol, Henry injured his wrist playing futbol. Henry’s injury didn’t seem as bad and so we are just wrapping it up in a homemade splint and a 3” ace bandage.

We had a storm and lost power on Wednesday, so we have had the power out two Wednesdays in a row. We have three candles and a few headlamps…we need more! We are SO glad we got a gas stove instead of an electric stove, since we are without power on an irregular, though frequent, basis. The electricity goes out even without storms, usually coming back on within four hours.

Thursday Abraham’s class had an Easter party and pool party at school.

All the children were supposed to contribute 10 empty, blown eggs for their egg decorating project. The preschoolers painted these with watercolors and then searched for them after their teachers hid them around the school. Calla and Ranae joined the fun when it was time for the pool party.

The teachers had set up three kiddie pools on a couple huge tarps, and the children splashed and played for an hour in the Honduran sun. Yes, Abe did get sunburned, despite being sunscreened. They enjoyed some cupcakes and marshmallow lollipops. It was a fun party.

Immediately after Abe’s party, Ranae, Abe, and Calla joined Aspen for her party at the campus lake. Under the shade of some huge, sprawling trees, the children enjoyed snacks and water games and seeing and petting and holding some fish from the aquaculture tanks. The Zamorano students were cleaning and refilling some of the large cement tanks, and they caught some of the fish to show us. They gave Calla two tiny fish to take home in a cup. Ranae put the cup on the hood of the car while they finished the picnic. When she returned, the cup was empty! The fish had jumped out of their cup and flopped down the hood of the car, landing in the dirt below. One of the fish must have been there longer than the other; it was covered in ants. The other had one wasp, which was easily swished away. Ranae picked up the fish and returned them to their cup, but the one was dead. The other recovered fully and made it to our home. However, it did not make it through the next morning, dying in his jar on our counter. We are hoping it will add some nourishment to our flower bed.

The school had a spring concert on Friday, the first day of our spring break. A few students performed solos, the 5th and 6th grade classes performed, the school band played, and several invited guests sang or played instruments. It was an impressive evening of talent and great live music. One woman even sang the Adele song “Someone Like You” (which Jack detests so much he tried to slip out of the cafeteria, but could find nowhere to escape the great sound system).

Henry: My class played a Spanish song. I played the key board along with some others. One boy played the drums, a bunch played guitar, someone played the electric bass and one person sang the song. It was like a giant band. The song was called “La Piragua.” Just before the concert we were playing soccer, someone pushed me down and I sprained my wrist. My class went out on a field trip to Espresso Americano [a coffee shop on campus, if the name didn’t give it away] for slushies [“granitas” is what they are called here] I got a blackberry [mora] kind.

Jack: I played the bass in the Pink Panther. In the song called, “I’m Yours,” I played the keyboard. It was very awesome. I played good even though I had a cast on my left hand. On the bass, you play the chords with the left hand, so my timing was a little off, but still did it (with no pain). The concert was three days after I sprained my wrist.

Aspen: I wasn’t in the Spring Concert. We had a party in my class. We went to a lake at the end of campus. [the lake is the aqua culture pond, where they teach students how to raise Tilapia]. We had some chips, ice cream, and soda. We also sprayed each other with the hose. I was soaking wet at the end. It was really hot that day, so I wasn’t that cold. We have two weeks of school break.

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Conference weekend was good for us to relax and consider on the messages of the restored Gospel that we heard. We broke down and got internet in the house. The reason we didn’t before is that the cost $22/mo, was pretty high for not very much and it is supposedly really slow. But it turns out to be pretty good. We listened and watched the LDS General Conference which is broadcast each April and October from Salt Lake City. It was pretty cool to watch it here in Honduras. Stuart was at the local Church trying to establish the internet connection so the congregation there could watch it instead of having to travel to Teguc to watch it. Only about 2 or 3 other people in the congregation have vehicles, so going to Teguc very often is an expensive option since they have to rent a bus. Being able to watch at the Church would be good. So Stuart spent from 9-6 on Saturday at the Church mostly talking on the phone with the HughesNet internet folks trying to re-establish the connection that went out about 11:15 am. So at the Church we missed most of Conference. What I found out later, Sunday morning when it was out again about mid-way through, was that a lot of people had cable and could watch it at their houses. In the end, I only heard about 2.5 talks of about 25 or so. I am trying to catch-up on it now, by listening at night while I wash dishes. I am about 45 minutes into the 10 hours of Conference, so I have a LOT of dishes to go!

Since we now have cellular internet (little USB cellular modem), we feel a little less isolated and the children are pretty happy about it. We even listened to the news from the Sacramento public radio station online. It was cool to hear what was happening in our homeland. The connection, however, is very spotty and occasionally we can’t even get a connection.