Sad News

I´m going to discontinue writing in my blog. The thing is, I started a Livejournal first, and I have the blogs I read come up on the friends page there. So I will continue to read the blogs here, and I hope that you all will keep reading my Livejournal. I always posted exactly the same thing anyway, and the people from the States read the LJ and not the blog. I just don´t have the time to post to both even though I post the same things, and my goal is to post significantly more often.

If I am on your sidebar as a blog, please switch the link to the following.

http://katrina038.livejournal.com


Hope to see you all at my LJ!

Copan Ruinas

So, I did eventually make it back to Honduras after my week in the States. Kate and I ended up going to the beach in Ocean City for a few days which was very nice.

I then was in Honduras for about a week before I left for Belize. I ended up going to Copan Ruinas for the first time with my neighbor, Melanie, who was updating the Honduras chapter of the Fodor´s Central America travel guide. It was definitely an experience just getting there.

We left Ceiba a little late, not until like 11:30, and thus missed the last direct bus from San Pedro Sula to the town of Copan Ruinas. We were convinced by the ayudante of one of the buses, that all we have to do is get on the bus to La Entrada, and then we can catch a bus to Copan. So we get on the bus and off we go, arriving in La Entrada during an aguacero, aka torential downpour. As we get off the bus, the ayudante tells us, ¨oh, looks like you missed the bus to Copan.¨ How nice. We hide under a gas station roof for awhile and make our way over to the little bus stop (it´s still raining), and get a taxista (the taxi was little more than a tin box on wheels), to take us to Copan for L.200 each, about $10. It took a good hour a half or so in the dark, pouring rain, and more than once, I thought that we were just going to topple off of the mountain side and never be heard from again. About half way up, we hit a bit of a traffic jam. There was a little landslide blocking most of the road. Our taxista said that it´s been there for 10 or 15 years. Since it had been raining, it was pure mud. I thought that we were going to have to turn around since other cars were getting stuck, but the taxista said, Este carro anda! (This car goes!) and off we went.

When we finally got there, it wasn´t raining, but soon started. It was about 7:00 or so, and we wandered around town for a bit until finding a hostel that had beds available, called En la manzana verde. Very clean, quite nice, and only $4 a bed. We changed out of our soppy wet clothes, and went to treat ourselves to dinner at Twisted Tanya´s, a restaurant that does 3 course meals. The food was amazing, but pricey. The drinks were huge, strong, and quite cheap. It is a cute place, and I would highly recommend it if you are not penny pinching.

The next morning Melanie found us a free room in a hotel called Don Udo´s (since she is doing the tour guide thing.) It is immensely cute, moderately priced, and very comfortable. I went to the see the ruins in the afternoon. I didn´t get a tour guide, just took a nice 2 hours or so to wander around them by myself and went into the sculpture museum too. The ruins aren´t impressive because of their height; they are impressive for the sculpture and hieroglyphics. The stellae are so detailed and intricate, but the most impressive part of the whole site is the hieroglyphics wall/staircase. I overheard some other guides who were by the staircase, and they said that the bottom 15 steps are thought to be in the original positions, while the rest of the 70 some stairs are still being placed in the correct spots. It tells the history of the site and of the kings, and one guide even went as far as to compare it to the Bible.

We ate dinner at Cafe Via Via, which I would highly recommend. It´s a friendly place, with good music, and a nice atmosphere. The owners are awesome. There are inexpensive rooms there in addition to the bar and restaurant. The next day, we went home, and luckily the trip back was much less eventful than the trip there.

That is enough for today, but I promise to talk about my Belize trip soon. It was Unbelizeable! haha.

Michelle and Bobby's Wedding

So I'm here in the good ole USA. I got here on Friday and got to see my sister, Liz, Lindsey, Brooke, Jackie, and of course, Katie all in the same night! We had dinner at Applebees. Saturday, Katie, Jess, and I went to Bob Evans for breakfast and then went shopping and got ready for the wedding. The wedding was wonderful, and Michelle looked beautiful! If I do say myself, the four of us hot, sexy ladies looked pretty damn good ourselves.

Right? I'm in Carlisle tomorrow, Monday, and then going back to Westminster tomorrow night to spend Tuesday and Wednesday there. Then I head back balls early on Thursday to Honduras.

Random Market Photos

I was just going to apologize for the lack of Honduras related content or of, well, anything of importance on my blog lately. However, being that this is MINE, I can write about whatever I damn well please, whether that is my boy troubles or school troubles or what I ate for breakfast. (I do have a good boy story to tell though.) That said, to keep my faithful readers entertained, I am going to post a few random pictures that I have taken over the past 8 months I have lived here (can you believe it´s been 8 months??).

In el centro, they sell just about everything on these little carts. This is a very large, very clean and neat fruit cart. Bananas, apples, oranges, and grapes are pretty easy to find. Melon too. I have not, however, seen strawberries or any other kind of berry. But I haven´t exactly gone out searching for it either. This one below is a smaller cart near my apartment that also sells candies and churros (chips).

Would you like some rice and beans?

How about some shoes?

And of course no market tour would be completely without the tortilla-donut ladies.

Summer and what not

Well, classes have been out for a week and I only have 2 more busy days of work ahead of me until my 2 months of summer vacation. Thank goodness. It has been a stressful year, professionally and personally, and I am so thankful to get some time off to travel, sleep, and just generally be lazy. This past week was full of doing absolutely nothing Monday to Thursday, only to be told on Friday that the papers we have to fill out finally arrived and now I have a lot of crap to fill out. Irritating, since I could have been doing it all Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Oh well. Monday someone from the Dept of Education Distric office (or something) is coming to look at all of these papers, and Tuesday is clausura (we give out the grades to the parents and present achievement certificates and what not), followed by a little party and then we are done! I will be free until September 10th.

I think it's only fair to let everyone know that the though has crossed my mind to come home for good in September, after my sister leaves from her visit. That would work well, actually, since she could help me haul my stuff home. I change my mind every 20 minutes, but right now, I think I'm going to stay. I haven't said anything to the school, because I want to wait until I'm only changing my mind every hour or so.

Thanks to a wonderful friend, I am going to going back to the States, to Maryland, for about a week from Friday the 13th to Thursday the 19th, to attend Michelle Runaldue's wedding on the 14th. I bought a really cute dress and damn do I look good in it! I am looking forward to seeing lots of college friends, plus my sister, and of course my BFF who is missing me extremely and seems to be having her own personal issues. *iloveyou*

My trip to Belize with Liz is getting planned and even though I will have to sell my body on the streets of Ceiba to pay for it, I am very excited. When we are on Ambergris Caye, we are going to stay where I stayed for free when I went on my border run trip. We will not be staying in the expensive condos, but another small room they have with fan, TV, bathroom, small kitchen. It's a good price, and we get the beautiful hammocks, dock, beach chairs, bikes, and kayaks too! She arrives in Belize on the 28th of July, but I will be going on the 27th, because of the crappy airline schedules that only fly Mon-Wed-Fri. That also means I have to stay an extra day too in Belize City, and leave on the 6th. Oh well.

Things have been going pretty well down here otherwise. Nothing terribly exciting to report, I guess. I am very much looking forward to my trips, and if anyone is feeling particularly philanthropic, you just let me know.

Last night, I was tired and was not going to go out, but went out dancing with some friends anyway. I ended up having a wonderful time, and while all of them drank a ridiculous amount of alcohol, I was very happy with my bottles of agua. It really was one of the best nights I've had out dancing at the disco I think.T

o be continued ...

TGIF

All I can say is that I am so freakin glad that it is Friday. I am so sick of Miss F and not getting any respect from her. I swear, I do not see any love in that woman´s heart. Okay, that´s a little harsh, but if you knew her - you would know what I mean.

I am going to have an awesome weekend. No plans yet, but I will have a good weekend.

I met this guy last week ... he´s nice, he´s cute, he´s smart ... But he´s really striking out. I don´t really think he´s going to get it together. It´s a shame too, seems like a really good guy. But he doesn´t call when he says he will, and he´s playing games with me. Acting like he wants to see me, and then not calling. But then getting upset because he wanted to see me and I didn´t call him. Or acting like he doesn´t really care if he sees me when I call. Honestly, how old are we and how long do these games go on? Because I am really over them already. Guess it´s time to go out this weekend and conseguirme otro novio. :)

Speaking of which, I have not talked to him for a week and a half. I called once but he didn´t answer. He said he needed some space. Okay, if Tegus isn´t far enough away for you, I just will stop calling. It breaks my heart when I think about it, so I try not to. I am pretty good at distracting myself from all the bad stuff in life. Right now, if I didn´t push it away and pretend everything is great (I don´t know if I´ve mentioned it before, but I´m really really really good at that), well I´d probably be a bit of a wreck. So, I keep myself busy and distracted and well, maybe it´s not all in entirely appropriate ways, but I´m not doing anything too inappropriate either. Just going out a lot. Oh well.

That´s all.

Vacation

The rectora said to me the other day, ¨By law, I am required to give you 2 months of vacation.¨

I love being a teacher.

Now, before you get on your soap box and start telling me that teachers have it sooo good, that they get paid for working 12 months and only work 10, blah blah blah ... I am going to get on MY soap box and tell you all the ways that I have earned my vacation. Just today. And I bet that you don´t have to put up with any of them at your job.

1. Whining 6 year olds.
2. Getting little Alejandra to eat her breakfast and lunch. She doesn´t want to eat, because she thinks she´s fat. (She´s 6!)
3. Making my kids have timeout with their heads down, and then write me apology notes when they BROKE the bottom out of the wardrode-closet thing in our classroom. (Literally, there is now no bottom.)
4. Getting stabbed with a pencil while attempting to keep two of my second graders from stabbing each other with pencils. However, it was effective. They stopped.
5. Giving two girls zeros for cheating on their spelling quizzes AGAIN.
6. Being used as a human punching bag while trying to keep 175 screaming children inside the school gate at the end of the day since it was raining and we didn´t want them to get soaked.
7. Eating my lunch standing up, because if I sit down, they might break something again like they did at recess.
8. Comforting a crying Angel because she got pushed over.9. Convincing Angel that she didn´t want to go to another school just because Alexandra was bothering her.


I think you get the picture. However, this makes it look like I don´t like my job. On the contrary, this is just all part of my normal day as a first and second grade teacher. Nothing out of the ordinary. At least I don´t get bored.

But I earn my vacation!

Speaking of: I will be in Maryland from July 13-19. Belize from July 28-Aug 4 or 5. And with my sister in El Salvador/Honduras the last week in August. I will be in Ceiba the rest of the time. School starts on Sept 10th.