December

When we came here we knew that Sean would be focusing on building the camp in Santa Elena but my future was a bit murky. Soon after we arrived I realized that a common suggestion from numerous sources was that it would be a great help for me to teach English. To the employees, to the women in our church, to the kids in our neighborhood. English, English, English. There are few things that I am truly skilled in, but thankfully speaking English is one of those things. Unfortunately, teaching is not! But regardless, I started teaching English to a group of 6-13 year old kids a month ago. The first thing I've learned is that English is a difficult language! We have so many weird rules and then we go and break most them! And I feel like I'm a Speech Coach as much as I'm a teacher ("Put your tongue under your teeth and push air out to make the 'th' sound"). I had a hiccup the second week in which I could tell the kids just weren't getting it, but thankfully my friend Jackie is an ELL teacher and she gave me great tips, so we're back on track again! The kids are so excited to learn which makes it so much easier to teach. Here is a video of us playing bato, bato, ganso (duck, duck, goose). Click on the link and it should bring you to a youtube video. I know that you can't really hear them, but they're so darn cute!!

And I wanted to get some pictures of the actual class, but kept forgetting so here's a picture of Sean playing UNO with some of the kids after class last week. AND it's educational because Sean had them say the color they wanted in English after playing a Wild. =)

We will also start having a TON of North American teams. Starting the first week of January we'll have at least one team, but up to three, every week til June! Sean and I will most likely be participating in some of those teams. I'm hoping to help build a bunch of Widow Houses. I mentioned these in one of our earlier posts, but I'd like to post some pictures of them now.

This is an example of a rather nice house in Honduras. It has dirt floors and termites. Over the years and many, many rainstorms a small ravine had been carved through the middle of the house. So when it rained, as it often does here, their house would get flooded. Also, if you look to the right of the door there is a large hole behind that blue ball. Not only were they battling against water they were also battling against unwanted visitor like dogs, rats, etc. That being said, this is seriously one of the nicer homes that HTH has rebuilt!

This is a photo of their 'kitchen' which was little more than a table and a few pots and pans.

And here we have 2 of their 3 beds. So, in one 10x10 'house' they have 3 beds for 4 people and a table in the corner that serves as their kitchen.

These are 3 of the 4 guys that built the new house. They were truly amazing. If you add the ages of these 3 together they have over 220 years between them. And yet they were able to come to Honduras and build a house! I really want to still be doing this when I'm their age.

And this picture is of the house dedication with the family and the volunteers. The Widow Houses aren't much larger than this family's original home, but it has concrete floors as well as 3 feet of concrete blocks that should deter the termites a bit. And it is normal for one entire family to live in a one room house. (Remember the first time our neighbor walked into our house and kept saying '2 people? Only 2 people??')

So hopefully more of these houses will be in our future. It's such an amazing and simple way to completely change the life of a family!