The Shorts In Honduras

Written on Sunday (Feb 15th)

Let us (and by “us” I mean me) first explain how awesome the weather has been since the day we arrived in Guaimaca, Honduras! Almost every day has been cool and breezy. We have even, on occasion, had some rain during various parts of the day. The sky is always beautiful as clouds pass and birds fly overhead. Lauren made a comment about how the sky looks different here and in Africa when compared to the sky in southern California. I don’t know why it looks better here—it just does (Lauren assumes it’s the lack of pollution…she’s probably right). The temperature has been in the 70’s during the day and even in the 60’s at night! We have been so blessed to have such great weather during our stay. We have noticed it start to heat up a little bit and fortunately the Tennessee team has electricians so they came by the house and fixed our ceiling fan so that we have air circulation during the night. It is a lot cooler at night when we sleep now!

This week we spent preparing our classrooms for the students to arrive on Monday. We can’t believe that school is about to start, but the time will pass so much faster once school is in session. Our days will be very structured and I’ll have to figure out a schedule to sit down every week and write a blog to update all of you back in the States as to what we’re up to. It is a lot more difficult to get a classroom ready for school in Honduras than it is in the States. There are a lot of supplies that we don’t have access to here in Guaimaca that have to be created from scratch (i.e. the alphabet that goes above the board). There aren’t many supplies for the English classroom, but it all works out because we don’t know how much English the kids know anyways and the first couple of weeks will be spent gauging where we should start each class of students.

The bugs are everywhere here in Honduras. Everywhere we turn, we find another bug in our house that needs to be taken care of. We have smashed a large number of giant red ants in our bathroom over the past week. The funny thing is, they are always seen in groups of two at a time. You will never find only one wandering around the bathroom. If you see and smash one, another is somewhere near by. Stinky is still doing his best to keep Lauren and myself awake during the night. He has decided to become adventurous and hang out above our California king bed during the night and squawk his heart out at random times. I have tried to capture and dispose of him on many occasions. Lauren makes fun of me for not being able to catch him and has told me to just leave him alone. We also discovered that there are at least three (count ‘em—three) stinkys in our home as we speak. I’m always looking up at the ceiling to see if I can find them venturing out of their home. Spiders still roam the interior of our home as well and we take care of them the only way we know how—by smashing them. We had what looked to be a centipede walking on our tile floor a few nights ago, but we didn’t smash him. We simply allowed him to walk onto a piece of paper and then put him outside in his natural habitat. While we were feeding the horses at the stables one day last week, we came across a caterpillar that was walking along the brick walls that separate the horse stalls. He was a fury looking fellow that was about 3 inches long. We don’t know how or why he was crawling around in the stables, but he seemed happy.




We finally found out what a scary noise was that we have been hearing early in the morning—they are woodpeckers outside our window. We thought they were raccoons engaging in cage fights for money, but they are just tiny little red-headed woodpeckers searching for food. What an annoying little creature. I wish I could upload what they sound like, but I’m sure you can find a sound byte by doing a google search—good luck with that.

The horses are doing better than they had when we talked about them in previous blogs. They are cooperating more when we try to clean their hooves. One of the horses (either Faith or Joshua) decided that while they were in their stall eating, they would poop on the top of the wall for fun. In case you have never seen horse poop on a wall, we included a picture for your visual pleasure. As we have been grooming them, we have been checking for ticks in their “armpits”, ears, and butts. Grumpy (the scapegoat of all the other horses) had one on top of his head in his hair. It was about a 1/3 the size of a dime and was growing. Using a Kleenex, I pulled it out and took a picture of it for you all to see. I also included a picture of it after we smashed it on the ground. I had never seen so much blood after smashing such a relatively small object! That thing was part vampire or something. Yesterday, Lauren found a tick in the colt’s butt and kindly allowed me to pull it out while she kept him calm (you would have had a fit too if someone was pulling a tick out of your butt). I pulled it off and cut him in half since he wasn’t as easy to smash and was much smaller.











We’ve been continuing on in doing “groundwork” lessons for groups of about 10 children at a time. They have been going pretty well for the most part although we had to do one of the lessons with no translator…I think the kids got the basic message, but it was frustrating trying to talk to people that mostly speak only Spanish.














Of course our Tennessee team is still here and they have been feeding us like kings and queens. This morning Lauren and I decided that we would get up earlier in order to make it to the team house to have breakfast while they’re still here. During the week we have been making our own breakfast after feeding the horses so we could make it to school by 8:00am. We might as well get up 20 minutes earlier in order to make it to some delicious breakfast while it lasts. The team should be here about another week and a half, so we’ll make an appearance at all three meals each day. Our neighbor “Mamoo” (whose real name is Kathy by the way) breeds and trains mules back at home and has been helping here on the farm most of the day. She is a bit of a “country gal” and it’s usually her way or the highway if you get my drift. Anyways, while we were walking home from dinner with one of the staff and her two daughters, Mamoo came up in conversation. The younger of the two daughters said, “Man, my dad said she has been driving him up the wall!” The mom couldn’t help but utter what sounded like an embarrassed and nervous laugh. We hadn’t yet had any run-ins with her, so we couldn’t really relate to what she was saying…until the next day. Lauren and I found a few minutes to take a short nap before dinner one weeknight until it was interrupted by rapping on the door. I, being the gentleman that I am, got up and answered the door while Lauren lay as a witness to what was about to transpire. Mamoo noticed that she had woken me up and apologized for the intrusion. She then asked which horse would be the best one for her to ride. I informed her that we were instructed by Tammy that no one was to ride the horses for now. Mamoo responded, “Well I’ve been walking around all day and I don’t have 25 year old feet so I’m gonna ride one. I just thought I’d come over to find out which ones were broke.” I again said, “Well Wade also told us that no one was to ride any of the horses. Some have saddle sores and one has a cut across his back and should not be ridden.” To make a long story short, she went ahead and picked out the only horse that would come to her which incidentally was also the horse that had the cut across his back! Some people just don’t care what they’re told; they’ll just do what they want, when they want.

On a happier note, that very same lady sat across from us at dinner the next night and told us that she had been watching us while Don was talking to everyone and she really thought we had great facial features. Since she is an expert in mule breeding, she has determined that we will breed very good looking children one day. That’s very comforting to know.

One of the pigs here had a litter of 10 pigs, but two of them were very sickly and had to be taken special care of. Mamoo, being the animal lover that she is, kept the two pigs at her house for the night. On our way home from dinner, we stopped in to see the babies and check on how their health was progressing. Mamoo asked Lauren if she wanted to hold them and Lauren being the pig lover that she is couldn’t resist. It was cute to see Lauren holding the tiny pig, and was even cuter to see him poo on her. Unfortunately, neither of the pigs made it through the night.




We have a fairly new male volunteer here at Emmanuel. He is from San Francisco, California and his name is Jack. He is in his early 20’s and has been traveling all over Central America for a few months now. He has very long, blonde dread-locks and looks like what most Americans would consider a “hippy”—some of you reading this may have even living during the 70’s and have lived the hippy lifestyle; we don’t judge you. He is a very happy-go-lucky guy and very pleasant to be around. He brought a little guitar that he bought from a man on a beach in Costa Rica and he lets me play it when I see it laying around (and by “letting me play it” I mean that he hasn’t stopped me yet). He said that he will stay here until he feels called to move on—what a way to travel!

Lauren and I bought a cell phone in town last week and it has already come in handy! We primarily use it to communicate with the staff here at Emmanuel who are very hard to get a hold of otherwise. We live at a very detached part of the orphanage and it is difficult to find people without walking a mile. We also have it on hand in case something “shady” goes down at the property’s edge by the horses while we’re out there. It’s nice to be able to call someone here rather than spend 30 minutes trying to find them.

Lauren and I spent our first Valentine’s Day together! Last year we didn’t have the chance to see each other so it was awesome spending it hanging out. The first part of the day wasn’t the most romantic of times. We went to the stables to teach “groundwork” lessons at 9, 10, and 11 o’clock to three different groups of kids. The last group didn’t show up and since it was grooming day and the horses were in, we decided to groom them early rather than late. We shoveled some poop, pulled a tick, swept some hay and got all sweaty—none of which sound very romantic. I spent the afternoon in town looking for two white polo shirts to wear as a “profesor” in the school while Lauren cleaned the house and worked on e-mails. We ate dinner at the team house where they strung pretty red lights and had balloons hanging from the trees in the courtyard. They put chocolate candy on the tables and had other decorations strewn about. It was a good night—together at last.

I have so much more to tell since school started this week, but it will be in a later blog. I have been swamped and have not had much time to sit down and write, although I’m trying to make the time. Stay tuned for more stories about our life here in Honduras.