Mother's Day

In Honduras, among other such celebration days as ‘Day of the Teachers’, and ‘Day of the Tree’ of course there is also Mother’s Day, and for some strange reason, out here it is celebrated in May, on the 2nd sunday in May to be exact. So the time came at school where preparations for a big celebration where under way. Ally and I woke up one morning, on the friday before Mother’s Sunday and went downstairs to see if we could help set up any decorations or things in order get the stage ready for later in day. We spent a good part of the day cutting out flowers and blowing up red and white baloons to hang from the stage and by the time 3 o’clock came around, everything was ready. Mothers of the pupils in school started to arrive and soon enough the celebrations began. Each class had elected a ‘Mother of our Class’ and had presented a hamper to each of them, including things like flour, beans, juice and other such food stuffs that would be useful to them, as well as this, each class had prepared a little presentation of some kind. Some had prepared songs, other plays and we had also got asked to prepare a poem or something in english, which our students would then read out in front of the school. Both Ally and I had prepared a poem and both of us had volunteers to go up and read it, however, being school children the volunteers that I had from my 8th grade class decided that they didn’t want to do it in the end, and so I was left looking like a wally as I had nothing else prepared, not to matter though as some of the teachers were quite pleased as the ceremony had gone on for quite a while already. Ally had also prepared a lovely poem that his 6th Grade students were going to read out. However, like I said, the program was quite packed, and one of the teachers didn’t want to put Ally’s poem in, which of course annoyed him a little and so he rounded up the help of the 6th Grade teacher, Profa Adelia and together they had words and got the poem squeezed into the ceremony. Overall it was a great day and very colourful and was made even better by the fact that when the celebrations for the mothers had finished, the teachers had a meeting of their own, for which Profa Salma had prepared some chop-suey and garlic bread, which was delicious, especially when followed by a great piece of ‘tres leches’ cake, a really nice gooey cake flavoured with condensed milk, very sweet, but OMG so good!

Also in aid of Mother’s Day, me and Ally decided to give our Honduran Mother a present and card to say thank you for everything that she had done for us in the past 9/10 months. So we bought Mary Lou a nice clock (as we noticed she didn’t have one in her house that was working) and a nice card from the supermarket. There was also a great big party on the beach (much like what happened for fathers day) where we chilled out for a bit before being hit by a wave of tiredness and a sudden great desire to get to bed ... party rockers we are (n’t)!

till next time,

Ciao!

HAPPY MOTHERS DAY EVERYONE!! xxx ... (well the mother’s who are reading this ...)

The Hondies come to Roatan (sadly not all of them though!)

During the last week of april Ally and I were sitting at home minding our own business when all of a sudden we received a text from one of the Volunteers in Tela called Sarah saying the following ‘Omg so excited to come and see you guys, you better be ready to come to west end this weekend!’

...

Umm ... WHAT?? Apparently they had told us they both the Tela Girls, and 3 other (Kate, Ruby and Annie) where all coming to Roatan to celebrate Sarah’s birthday on the 29th, but somehow Ally and I had forgotten or just not been told in the first place. So we therefore quickly made some plans to head down the island to meet the girls in a few days time. Well we made plans for them to come up to Punta Gorda first, because they all wanted to see our project as we had seen all of their projects (bar Kate and Ruby’s in Santa Barbara) so when they arrived on the saturday they managed to catch a bus up to Punta Gorda and we spent a few hours walking around, showing them our house, our school and other such places like our local watering hole, Flamingoes, where we all had a bit of lunch before catching another bus all the way back down the island to Coxen Hole where we needed to change busses and we also wanted to do a bit of shopping. When we finally reached West End (arms full of bags of snacks and booze) we walked along the road and decided to see if we could get a cabin for all of us to share. So I saw a sign for Georphie’s Cabins and decided to go and have a look with Cat. Luckily the mother was sick that night so we got served by her daughter who let 7 people use a cabin that was meant for only 4 (we heard the next morning that her mother was not best pleased, but she decided to let it fly ... everyone is so nice over here) so we dumped out bags and got dressed and headed out for something to eat at Splash Inn restaurant where we indulged in some lovely Pizza’s and even managed to get Sarah a bit of cake to celebrate. After dinner and ‘lining our stomachs’ as some of you would say, we headed back to the cabin to play a few rounds of Cat’s amazing drinking game called ‘Circle of Death’ (bit of an odd name) which envolves you taking a card and every card has it’s own special meaning (for example, any number 4 means everyone has to touch the floor (Four = Floor ... duh!) and the last one to do so has to take a drink an so on and so forth). This game can get very fun with cards like chin master and question master and we were all soon pretty slozzled. Soon after that we headed out to Nova bar for a bit of a boogie and to pass the midnight mark (as Sarah’s birthday was actually on the Sunday) so we celebrated the early hours of the Sarah’s Bday in style, getting on down to some Honduran beats and then going for a late night swim in the sea ... I really have no idea how I remember all of this ... well actually I don’t cos that is where my memory fails me, but I think we went back to the cabin to chill out for a while as all of the bars were closing up.

The next day was spent recovering on the gorgeous beach and just chilling around with each other really. Sadly Ally and I had to head back to PG because we had classes in the morning on Monday so we stayed with the girls until about 3 ish before we hopped on a bus back to the quiet old town of PG, however not before we discovered a great little bakery in West End that sells some great, and very cheap bagels. Will defo be going there again if we ever head to West End another time. Every time the Hondies get together, even if it is just a few of them, it is always such a laugh and we have so much fun. Having such a close bond by all coming away together definitely forms some true friendships and I really cannot wait until we all have some Hondie Reunions back in England/scotland in the years to come.

Till next time,

Ciao!

P.s Sorry I have been a bit bad in keeping up with these ... will try harder.

P.P.s I know I have said the before but this time I really mean it ... I do!