"If it's not challenging you then you're doing it all wrong"

Teaching.
It is challenging. It is hard. It is tiring. It is overwhelming. I would be completely lying if I said I haven't thought about why in the world I decided to come down to Honduras to teach for a year. Many people thought I was crazy for wanting to do this and to a certain extent I was..and some days I sometimes believe they were right. Your first year of teaching is already hard enough..now add 42 ESL students to teach (both the 6th grade and the 9th grade geography class), a language barrier, weekly power outages, a curriculum that sometimes doesn't provide you with resources, so you end up making a lot of them yourself, and bi-weekly grade reports to send home to parents to let them know how their student is doing. It takes a lot of time and hard work. You wake up and go to school. Then after school you plan get everything prepared for the next day (and if your lucky the day after that). Then you come home and grade and plan ahead. Then you go to sleep only to repeat that cycle 7-8 hours later. Teaching is really a 24/7 job. You are constantly thinking about ways to introduce new material, how to help out your struggling and excelling students, and what you are going to plan for the next week. There have been so many times the past two weeks where I have wanted to just give up and go home. Every teacher has those moments where you feel like no matter what you do, nothing is getting better. Everything you do is for your students. During student teaching, my senior year of college, a friend and I would exchange quotes and jokes to tell our students almost every morning. I have continued this tradition down here and write a weekly quote on the whiteboard. I sometimes feel as if I benefit from this more than they do and wonder if they even read the quote.

I have had hard days and awesome days. I have been overwhelmed and I have been overjoyed. I have been tired and I have been recharged. Just another day in the life of a teacher. As I am writing this, after a very hard week, I have realized there is still nothing else I see myself doing. Yes, sometimes I would want nothing more to scream in frustration or sit in a corner and cry from being overwhelmed, but then I have one good moment, just a small one, and I realize my bad days are not the end of the world. Those good moments, even those good days, are what I need to count.

I have always loved being a student. I loved learning and I loved going to school. Maybe that is why I decided to go into teaching. Now I am a teacher...but I am still learning something new everyday. I am still a student. That right there? That is the best part about being a teacher...regardless of where you are in the world.

My sixth graders after finishing their short stories. 

They have been working on them since September

and were so excited to see all their hard work

pay off. These are the moments I love.

The wanderlust I never want to lose

I live for adventure. I sometimes may be scared out of my mind, but I love it. I get my wanderlust from my Grandma...something I think I may never lose. After one adventure I am already thinking about what I want to do next, where I want to go, who I am going to met, and what I will gain when it is over.

I had the opportunity this weekend to go to Lake Yojoa, located about an hour from San Pedro Sula (northwest part of the country). We had Friday off from school and had a three day weekend. We traveled form 5 am to about noon. We stayed at the D&D Brewery.... think of it like a B&B and a hostel combined. So we spend the rest of the day walking around the town and relaxing by a bonfire at night. The next day we go tubing down a river surrounded by a tropical jungle and ended up in a warm natural lake, Lake Yojoa. The river current was extremely fast so we flew down that river, bumping into trees, rocks, going down rapids...it was so much fun. When we get to the Lake, our guide suggested we climb a rocky cliff about 30 feet and jump off, so why not? We climbed the rocks with our bare hands and feet (wearing shoes of course)...now this part was probably the scariest part for me. If you fell or slipped...you would painfully hit the rocks and eventually fall down into the water..not something I wanted to do. When I finally made it to the top... I jumped. It felt as if you were falling and falling and you were never going to land, until you finally do...with a loud crash into the water..talk about adrenaline rush...I did it twice! That morning can't even be compared to the rush of adventuring behind a waterfall holding onto nothing but a rope. When will I ever experience going literally through a waterfall, holding onto a cable cord, with 40 pounds of water pounding down on and all around me?...definitely wouldn't find that in America. It was both terrifying and exhilarating at the same time. There were times I couldn't even breathe there was so much water coming down...but you just have to look down and breathe through your mouth, something our guide told us repeatedly. I mean you would not be even allowed to do something like this in the States. The experience was beyond words. And all this was topped off by bird-watching by boat Sunday morning. Ever seen a toucan besides the one on the Fruit Loops box? I have, and I kinda can't believe it. I'm so thankful for these amazing opportunities and the wonderful people I get to share them with. Honduras, you're one incredible country. 


Wow. I cannot wait for more of the adventures I am going to have this upcoming year. A five day weekend is coming up next week...off to El Salvador I go! 


                                                        "Not all who wander are lost".