Settling In

I am glad it is the weekend! We pretty much got thrown right into the ring when we set foot into Comayagua. We had to report to school on Thursday to meet with administration and the other teachers, to prepare our classrooms, write lesson plans, and practice our schedule. Once again, we were given our limited school supplies - one pencil, one notebook, one red pen, one black pen, white out, tape, a stapler, a ruler, scissors, and an eraser - however, instead of the typical one dry erase marker, we were given two (one red, one black) this year! I guess they had to replace so many so often last year that they went ahead and handed out two. The way it goes for replacing broken, empty, or disfuncional supplies is that you take the old one to our librarian, Michi, she inspects it, then exchanges the faulty product for another one. This can be a bit tricky at times because it is habit just to through a pen with no ink in the trash as soon as it stops working. In that case, you just have to do your best to sweet talk Michi, in hopes for a replacement. (This has happened to both Greg and I in the past!)

We had a half day of school yesterday (although it doesn't officially start until September 1). Yeah, we don't really understand that either....only about half of the kids showed up so the school day (only from 7:10am - 11:00am) was relatively calm. Teachers were free to leave around 12:30pm, however, there was a surprise party for our principal planned to begin at 1:30pm. A few of us walked down to Wendy's then promptly returned to catch the beginning of the fiesta. Well, once again we were fooled by 'Honduran time' and showed up a whole hour before the thing kicked off! The principal was pleasantly surprised and all the teachers serenaded him with Honduran classics (accompanied by our new music teacher's keyboarding skills). They passed around cake, ice cream, of course soda for all to partake in the celebration. We finally headed home exhausted around 3:30pm. We hung out around the apartment for a while (unsuccessfully attempted a nap) then headed over to our friends' house for dinner. Earlier in the day we were able to get our hands on the remote control for the A/C unit in our bedroom! (We live in a two story town home now....there are two bedrooms upstairs and each one has an air conditioner.) It feels awesome, and I am actually wearing long pants and a hoody right now because I am so chilled!

We have many things to do this weekend, and hopefully we will get them all done (or at least most of them!) We´ll give you an update next week....