Christmas Festivities

The day after Thanksgiving I woke up in a strange hotel in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. It was 6 AM and I was awake for the day. The first thought that came into my head that morning was ‘I can listen to Christmas MUSIC!!!’ I immediately unlocked my iTouch and put on my Christmas playlist. As Michael Buble, She & Him, and Jim Brickman flooded the room my Christmas spirit was switched on…and it’s been on ever since.

If you don’t know me that well..I’m obsessed with Christmas. Last year my roommates wanted to kill me when I turned on the Christmas music during the first snow fall (which happened to be in October). And just because I live in a different country this year during the Christmas season does not mean I will celebrate it any less!! Thankfully I live with Gayle, who is also equally obsessed with Christmas and all that goes with it. We have had some fun and eventful times celebrating this special holiday.

The celebrations of Christmas have been going strong at our school. The Monday we got back from Thanksgiving break I started teaching my students Christmas Carols..they didn’t know ANY! I was quite horrified to find this out. We have been spending ½ a period or even a whole period on practicing their carols. Surprisingly, my students caught on quite quickly. Sometimes new songs can overwhelm them since A-they don’t know the language, B- they don’t know the tune, and C- we don’t have a piano or CD for them to sing along with..all a cappella! But I drilled the songs into them… I wondered if I was being a little too intense. I had students come up to me after class saying, “Miss Van Dyke, this hurts a lot,” while they were pointed to their throat. Nonetheless we have so far learned about 12 songs! In chapel last Wednesday we performed 7 of them; one of them being the 12 Days of Christmas…my personal favorite song. I think afterwards they were proud they knew so many good Christmas songs! It is also fun to hear them singing the songs outside at lunch and recess, or even when they are working at their desks.

Also at school, we have been spending the last month practicing for the Christmas program. My students joined 4^th grade in doing a dance for the program….which I of course had to teach. Every single day for a month I worked for an entire class period teaching 40 children the dance. For the dance, there were two separate groups: the blue group and the red group. When I first made the two groups, I separated the students not realizing who the good dancers were and who the bad dancers were. Well, I had managed to put all of my talented dancers in the blue group, and all the students who can’t dance for the life of them in the red group. And of course the red dance routine was 3x more complicated than the blue dance. At times I felt like the whole school could hear me yelling “1-2-3 DOWN! 1-2-3- DOWN! BIG ARMS!! BIG ARMS!!” We rehearsed for the program on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. I don’t think I have ever experienced a more disorganized mess in my entire life. I felt very tense, and my poor students received the affects of it! Friday night we preformed our program. All the hard work was worth it!! My students did such a good job, I couldn’t be more proud of them! My red group wasn’t perfectly together, but they still looked pretty darn cute. :)

Gayle and I have also wanted to bring the Christmas spirit into our humble abode! We don’t have enough money to decorate our house for Christmas…even though every time we walk past a house with lights or Christmas trees we stare while ooo-ing and awwww-ing. Instead we have filled our house with Christmas music 24/7…and I mean 24/7. From the moment we wake up until the moment we go to bed. The same 70 some songs we have on repeat.

This past Saturday, Gayle and I invited everyone over to our house for a fun Christmas party. We spent all day Saturday in the kitchen; we made Christmas cookies, gingerbread cookies, pumpkin muffins, green been and potato dish, and TWO whole chickens. Oooh how the fun began with the chickens.

Gayle and I have not bought a chicken so far all year for one reason and one reason only: WE ARE TERRIFIED. I’m not especially great handling meat; it pretty much grosses me out. I sometimes would struggling touching chicken breasts in the U.S. Buying meat in Honduras is a little bit different in the United States. There is no meat market where you walk up to and tell the person what meat you want, while they package it nicely for you. Instead there are freezers inside the pulparias, filled with parts of animals. Before we went to buy our chicken, we asked Jake what we were in for. He told us where we were going to buy our chicken we most likely wouldn’t have to take out the chickens intestines. The minute he said that, I knew we were in for quite the adventure.

We walked over to the pulparia and told them we were looking to buy two whole chickens. The girl led us over to the meat freezer. She started opening the freezer, and I could feel myself starting to feel sick. I did NOT want to see what animal parts were stored in there! I tried backing away and my backpack bumped into a shelf, knocking over bottles of pills. Thankfully that got me further away from the freezer. She pulled out two whole chickens for us and gave us instructions on how to cook it..she knew Gayle and I had no clue. Those crazy American girls… We purchased the chickens and vegetables to garnish it with. As we got back into our house we started the un-thawing process which only took a few hours (it takes a lot longer when you don’t have warm water). Once it was unthawed I started taking out the chicken out of the bag, forgetting how grossed out I am about raw meat. I suddenly remembered when I was holding the chicken in the sink by its two legs. I started screaming to Gayle, “I’M HOLDING A WHOLE CHICKEN..GAYLE..I’M HOLDING A WHOLE CHICKEN!!! GET ME A PLATE!! GET ME A PLATE!!” The chicken flopped down into the pan. I took a few seconds to recompose myself.

Now what?? Now what do we do with this whole chicken? We had obviously never done this before so we were a little lost. The girl at the pulparia told us we needed to cut something off of the chicken..but we weren’t quite sure WHAT to cut off. Gayle started cutting at one end of the chicken…and it started bleeding. This caused both of us to start gagging. Gayle looked at it and said.. “I think this is the butt….it’s butt is BLEEDING Erin!!” I called my dad to make sure we weren’t ruining our chicken. When it doubt, call your parents, right?? My dad informed Gayle and I that we needed to break off the chickens neck……ummmmm what?? I told him he better be joking…because there was going to be no breaking of bones in our house!! He continued to tell me that I needed to try and rough it for a week with him.. “back when I was young, I always had to kill chickens on the farm and gut them myself.” I apologized he had such a wimp of a daughter! Thankfully he said we could leave the chicken as is…so we did.

At this point I was crying I was laughing so hard. We were both so out of our element and trying so hard!! Next we were told to cut the chicken down the middle. Gayle bravely took the knife and started cutting. As she pressed down on the chicken (which was near its lungs) the chicken moved. Gayle jumped back and screamed, “IT’S BREATHING!! I THINK IT JUST BREATHED!!!!” We swore the chicken came back to life. After a few more freak-outs and meltdowns, we had cut the chicken down the middle. We stuffed it with tomatoes, onions, and green peppers…yum!

The second chicken was a little bit easier to do….we had a few less freak outs than the first chicken. Even though the entire time we kept telling each other, “I can’t believe we are doing this right now.” Finally the chickens were ready to be cooked! Too bad our oven wasn’t ready for them to be cooked. For some reason, our chicken was not cooking in our oven. Our guests arrived at 7…our chicken wasn’t ready to eat until 9:30. Apparently we had put too many juices with the chicken so it would not cook for us. But I have to admit, it was pretty delicious; even if we had to wait 3 ½ hours for it to cook! Thankfully our guests thought so too. Our Christmas party was still a great time—we played some games, we ate delicious food, and talked about all the fun things we are going to do on our upcoming vacations.

Our party made me that much more excited for the United States!! I can’t wait for two weeks where I don’t have to wash all my dishes by hand, where I don’t have to spend 3 hours cooking every evening, where the electricity and water continually works, where I don’t need to worry about cockroaches crawling in my bed while I sleep, where I can drive my car places, and where I can SEE all the people that I love!!! This past Friday, I had another new niece born; Brynn Alivia Van Dyke!!! I am SO EAGER to get home to see both of my new baby nieces!!

This coming week I plan on doing a lot of fun Christmas activities with my students. We are also planning a Christmas dinner with all of the teachers, which the American teachers are cooking for. Gayle and I volunteered the boys to cook the chicken; we had our fill for awhile. Friday I will begin my journey back the United States. 5 more days and COUNTING until home sweet home..CANNOT wait!! 

Expanding My Horizons

Sorry.. I have wanted to write a blog for quite a few days now, but I haven’t been able to due to the power outage. We have had power mostly during the day, but every single night the power has been going off. The other day it was off for almost 24 hours. It just so happens that the power goes off every single night while Gayle and I have been cooking dinner or when I start writing my blog. It has been an interesting week to say the least.

But the “interesting-ness” of my week doesn’t even compare to my weekend. It is almost unbelievable that I can still have an adventurous weekend even though I am here in little La Union. This past weekend was definitely no exception.

The story begins with last Wednesday (the 30^th). A student from Gayle’s 5^th grade comes up to me and hands me a ticket. I asked her what it was for. She told me it was for a retreat called “3 Dias de Gloria”. She began to explain that Miss Gayle had told her the day before that both her and I would be attending this retreat. The purpose of the retreat is to honor God, and to give him glory for everything that he does for us. As Kirian (the student) hands me the ticket she tells me, “Don’t forget to bring a blanket and pillow!” I looked at her completely bug-eyed, wanting a further explanation. She said “Yes it is three days long. We stay overnight there and give glory to God for 3 whole days.” You can bet that I marched right into Gayle’s room and asked her what she signed us up for!! Apparently, Kirian forgot to mention the sleep-over part when Gayle agreed to go.

Friday came quicker than I wanted it to. Gayle and I sat down and came up with a game plan for the retreat. We decided that we would go to the retreat but only for the dinner; we would leave later on Friday night. Gayle wasn’t feeling well all day Friday, so if anything we could use that as an excuse to go home.

On the walk home that day from school we mentioned our evening plans to all the teachers. Jake (who has lived her for 4 years) told us that he had been to “3 Dias de Gloria” before. He said Gayle and I were in for a real treat. The church that puts on this retreat was a Pentecostal church. Jake said when he went a few years ago people were shaking/convulsing on the floor with the Holy Spirit inside of them, others were speaking in tongues, and there was oil miraculously falling from the ceiling onto the people.

I don’t know about your church retreats or services..but that is not how mine usually go. Hearing this made Gayle and I even more nervous to go! Gayle and I rehearsed our getaway plans on the hike up to the retreat. As we walked up to the building, I could feel every pair of eyes on us. It is not like we blend in very well…2 white girls in the midst of 150 Hondurans. We found Gayle’s student Kirian and stood in line with her. At the front of the line we were told to hand over our purses and our cell phones. They were collecting everyone’s belongings. Well I was not about to let them take my purse, thankfully they were ok with me keeping it. To our dismay Gayle was forced to hand over her cell phone. They wrapped it up and put it in a big black bag with everyone else’s phones. We quickly started scheming ways we could get the cell phone back without making a huge scene…. but bright ideas weren’t coming to mind.

Next we were herded into a bigger room with a stage and chairs set up. Gayle and I sat down, desperately trying to blend in. Everyone was staring at us, most likely thinking “those crazy gringas are here.” [sidenote: everyone already thinks we are crazy because we are always running for excersize..NO ONE does that here..we also sit in the park to soak up the sun while everyone else sits in the shade, the sun is BAD..we always see Hondurans laughing at us]  

We continued to sit in the white plastic chairs being stared at for 2 hours. While sitting there music blasted, people chatted, and dinner was served. Dinner was watery scrambled eggs, rock hard red beans, queso (cheese that tastes like dirty socks), and 3 tortillas. Buen Provecho!

Finally after waiting for 2 hours, the retreat was started. There was a lot of standing and praying, a lot of sitting and listening to screaming sermons, and a lot of music being played. I think this is the one time I was thankful I don’t understand much Spanish; it gave me a good excuse not to be super “involved”. Gayle, on the other hand, was translating a pretty intense sermon. During the middle of the sermon, a girl came up to us and started speaking to us in English (she goes to the bilingual school in Gracias). She asked us to please come outside with her. So Gayle and I had to stand up in front of ALL of the people and were escorted outside. No matter how hard we try not to, we always always ALWAYS make a scene. When we get outside the girl explains that all of the pastors want to pray over us since we don’t understand Spanish. Gayle and I stepped towards the pastors and they said “No, no, no only one at a time.” Gayle and I quickly held hands and explained we were staying together!! I was not about to be separated from her!! They said that was ok and that they would pray for us later. The girl lead us back into the building.

We made sure to pick seats close to the back AND close to the door this time; that way hopefully not so many people would notice when we left for the night! We waited for 45 more minutes before we decided it was time to leave..only one problem: Gayle needed her cell phone, which was deep inside the big black cell phone bag. We flagged down the English-speaking girl and asked her where we could get it. She went searching for it and came back 10 minutes later, cell phone in hand. Good, now we could make our get-away!! We were about to walk out, when the English-speaking girl shoved a survey into our face and told us to fill it out. The survey asked about your 7 worst sins you commit constantly, about your relationship with Christ, what you want to change about your faith, etc. We quickly filled it out and then decided we HAD to leave, or we would be stuck staying overnight there!

 I decided to go for it and I leaped out the door. I made it out safely…Gayle didn’t. A man had stopped Gayle and said, “You cannot leave now!! You need to stay! You need to see the miracle that is going to happen. The Holy Spirit will come and it will burn and tear up your paper (survey)!!” The man saw me walking down the hill and literally yelled (in Spanish of course) “You need to STOP HER!” I looked back up the hill to see Gayle surrounded by 5 people telling her that she cannot leave yet. Gayle calmly smiles at all of them and tells them thank-you, and she runs to meet me. We need to get out of here FAST.

On our way down the hill we met two boys. They looked at us curiously, wondering why we weren’t in the auditorium listening to the sermons. One of them said to us “Are you looking for the bathrooms?” Gayle quickly said, “Yes we are!” She was hoping that would make them leave us alone…alone and able to make a getaway. They pointed us to the direction of the bathroom. We watched them walk up the hill towards the auditorium, making sure they couldn’t see us anymore.

We decided we were safe, so we literally started sprinting down the mountain towards the big silver gates. As we reached the gates we noticed big, heavy chains linked around them held together with one massive padlock. We were LOCKED in. We were so close to escaping..if only there was a way OVER the gates! There was no way we could stay overnight, we didn’t even bring a pillow or blanket. I looked over to the right and noticed another gate. This gate looked a little bit easier to climb. “Gayle I’m going to climb the gate.” I headed towards the gate more than ready to attempt the climb.

She stopped me, “Wait! There are a bunch of people at the top of the hill watching us!” I looked up, and sure enough at least 15 people were gathered at the top of the hill watching our escape. I decided it might look bad if I climbed over the gate. A few people started running down the hill. Gayle and I were worried they would make us go back to the retreat. As they came closer we noticed it was the two boys who we had told we were going to the bathroom…oops! They looked at us and said, “So you weren’t going to the bathroom, you were actually going home.” Even in the black of night, I swear I could see Gayle’s face burning red. “Umm…yes I need to go home, I am sick,” Gayle responds. Thankfully they were laughing and not upset. They started to help us look for the keys to the padlock. I was tired of waiting, so I started climbing the gate. The boys seriously thought I was a crazy person, but I didn’t care—I was desperate to leave! Climbing over a gate never felt so good. As my feet hit the ground on the other side I felt free! I helped Gayle climb over and we RAN back to our house, laughing at ourselves the entire way.

We were almost to our house when we heard screaming, yelling, and chanting coming from the place we had just escaped from. We were so thankful we had climbed the gate. We were safe and sound back in our casa.

Once again, I had an adventure. And once again, Gayle and I gave the people in the town reason to think we are absolutely crazy Americans. As long as I’m not the only crazy one, I guess I’m ok with that. :)