WE ARE HERE!!

I´m Jaclyn from VA and I go to Harding University. I´ll be a senior next year and hope to be a physician´s assistant one day. I am so glad to be here!! I was nervous sitting in the airport all day, but as soon as my feet hit the ground outside of the airport I knew that this is where I want/need to be. It´s like I forgot that I missed it. I guess the unknown part of it kind of worried me...but it´s awesome. I´m so ready to be used for God´s glory I can hardly contain myself.
The other interns are awesome...riding around in el jefe is a beautiful way of getting to know each other. Last night at dinner was awesome for us. We sat after we finished eating and laughed a lot and we are getting closer. I´m glad we are starting work tomorrow. I get to go to the clinic. I ask for your prayers continuosly...that we don´t get sick and can learn spanish and always have good attitudes and show people the love God has showed us!!
-Jaclyn

My First Day of School

Today was my first day at the school... ever! I have been spending most of my time at the clinic, with a little bit of time dispersed between the ranch and the office. Therefore, it was quite a different day. We began by hitchhiking to San Marcos from Las Palmas. It was a lucky day. We got 2 rides and only had to walk for about 45 minutes instead of the normal hour and a half. It was great. We then stopped for breakfast since we were so early. That was a big mistake for me. I had a little too much too eat, a little too quickly, and then I didn´t feel so hot. You shouldn´t do that. After that, we went to the school and hung out with Roxana (the director) for a while, and some of the girls helped with classes (I still wasn´t feeling so great, and my Spanish is terrible). It was then lunch time (I had a Fresca) and then back to school. I felt a lot better, so we played with the kids for a while at recess and now here I am (it´s raining now), typing my final blog of the summer. It´s been a pretty interesting and different day. It was nice to see yet another aspect of Mission Lazarus in action though. The school provides such a wonderful service for the children in the community that might never get the education they need. Plus, it´s a lot of fun to play with those niños. I liked it.

Love,
Tristan

Hitchhiker's Guide To. . . Honduras?

Hola! This little ditty is to describe my first hitchhiking adventure of my life. I know, especially as a college kid, a lot of my peers who have travelled around the U.S. as hitchhikers, and I've read On The Road, by Jack Kerouac, so it's always seemed one of those alluring, dangerous activities that both draw you and scare you at the same time. But it's those activities that often thrill us the most (like climbing a mountain, riding a roller coaster, or watching Javier cut a parasitic worm out of a little girl's head). But in the States, hitchhiking is not exactly condoned, unless you're my Grandma, who seemed content to scare the begeebers out of my brother and I when we were young by picking up the sketchiest-looking hitchers she could apparently find on the highway.

Nevertheless, I've always wanted to hitchhike, longing for that weightless feeling that a gypsy must feel, drifting from place to place like a leaf in a stream. So in Honduras, it's, like, status quo to hitch rides all over the place. Thus, on one occasion when I spent the day at the school in San Marcos, I got my first opportunity. We never get rides from the ranch to San Marcos for some unknown reason, but the school workers are dropped off every day at the highway by Las Palmas at the bus stop. Unfortunately, the buses don't start running for about two hours after we are dropped off at the stop, and I have yet to have a busito stop to pick me up. So, it is usually up to us to get ourselves to San Marcos, sans Holman and our faithful Land Cruiser.

Shanna, Seth, and I set out one morning on foot along the road, hoping that a pickup truck (the ideal hitchhiking vehicle) would cruise along and pick us up. However, despite our despondent looks as we held out our arms to signal a ride, no one stopped. After more walking, more "courtesy honks" by passers-by, and plenty of smiles from Hondurans in the backs of trucks, a lone fruit truck slowed to a stop ahead of us and we ran to it. We ran to it, yes, only to find out that it had stopped to back into a little dirt road off the highway, we just happened to be there at the right spot at the right moment. Grrr. So we continued on.

About five minutes later, this same fruit truck pulls alongside us and the driver shouts something to which Seth replies in Spanish. Apparently, they're going to San Marcos, so we hop in the back. And by "hop in the back", I mean climbing 12 feet or so up the wooden rear of the truck and into the bed with about seven other Honduran teenagers. They are all perched high atop the rickety sides of the truck, and I join them, many feet above the bed of the truck. Everyone is eating mangoes as the truck speeds off, and it is curious to listen to all of the wild cries that the teens shout to pedestrians as we rocket down the road. At one point we stop and all the teens shout as fast and as loud as they possibly can to some young gal who apparently was going to come work with them, but changed her mind as she reached the highway, turning and walking hastily back the way she came. We started driving again, and I watched the girl ahead of me carefully for cues when to duck my head as we drove under precariously low-hangin, butt-huge tree branches. She apparently had them all memorized, and I was glad that she was sitting in front of me!

Eventually, we reached San Marcos safely and Shanna, who had ridden in the cab of the truck to Seth's and my dismay, emerged unscathed and all right, and we continued walking to the school. We shouted "Adios" and "muchas gracias" to the driver and they sped off again. My arms were pretty tired from holding myself on to the knife's-edge thin wall of the truck, but I was all jacked-up to know that I'd successfully hitched a ride in the back of a fruit truck in Honduras. It was thrilling all right!! Yet another anecdote for the annals of "TIH."

-- Dylan Wann

Mode of Transportation……

…my feet. Seriously though, I have learned this summer just how much of a privilege it is to have a car or at least be given a ride by a car. I know people have already written blogs about hitchhiking and how crazy it can be sometimes, but when we don’t catch a ride with someone, sometimes our only chance to get somewhere is to walk. One morning, Shanna and I walked a little more than halfway to the school, which was a good hour and a half walk, I don’t know how far we walked exactly, but I know that it was a fairly long way. Another story that I have about walking is one afternoon when school was over, Seth and I caught a bus to the house after already walking through town in the pouring rain. Once we reached our stop at the end of our fairly long driveway, we had two choices. We could either sit at the bus stop to wait for the rest of the interns to get back and pick us up, or we could…walk; we walked. It was a good walk, but difficult in the fact that my clothes weighed more because they were completely soaked and because much of our driveway is a good uphill climb. Those are just a few of my experiences from walking a lot, but I think my favorite part about walking besides the amazing exercise that I get, is the time to actually enjoy the views. Because when you are driving by things, it can be a lot easier to miss some of the awesome things that you get to see when you take a little walk.

--Kenz

Raul and Oscar

Two men in charge or guarding one school, day and night. One of the many awesome things about the school is getting to talk to the two guards, Raul and Oscar. The two alternate 24 hour shifts of watching the school. Their jobs include filling the milk jugs for the people in the nutrition program, unlocking the gates for cars and kids, clipping the hedges, and to keep watch over the school at night. I enjoying spending time talking with the guards, asking them about their families and how they feel about different aspects of life. They are great around the kids and always bring joy to those they come in contact with. One night when we went down to Mario's hamburger stand to get supper, I saw Oscar sitting under the overhang. I went and asked him how long he'd been working and he answered since 6 that morning..and his shift ended at 6 the following morning. Woa! He described some of his methods of staying awake: walking constantly, drinking Coca-Cola, talking to passersby, listening to music on the radio, talking to God, and sleeping all day the next day. Sounds like a college student trying to make it through the week.

Seth

Second Star to the Right and Straight on till Morning...

This is one of my favorite kids at the school. He's always got this mischevious grin on his face, like he has some hidden plan full of trouble.

Doesn't he look like a Lost Boy?! That's what I think. His hair is kinda pointy and messy and his shoes are always untied. he usually wears these cut off pants and a mesh ragged top and he looks just like he could have walked off the set of Peter Pan.

I guess it's more the idea of the Lost Boys and Neverland that makes him fit there in my mind. The idea that they would never have to grow up and that he could play all day and run around with wooden swords, capturing pirates, and saving indian princesses. Sounds a lot better than the reality that these kids live everyday, with little to eat and not much parental attention.

But that's why i love the school. The C.I.D.T. is a place where they can come and be kids. They run around and play on the swing set. They have their friends and little clicks just like any other school. They eat snacks and color and paint and pretend and just play. And better yet they learn. So maybe there's no pixie dust to carry them away or a tinkerbell to grant them all their wildest dreams and fairytales, but i think that the school here and the things it is doing to enrich their lives is pretty close.

- reb.

Insect Bites and Swollen Ankles

So, I wrote earlier about having scabies, and thought surely, since I had to suffer through skin lice, nothing else crazy would happen to me....WRONG. I was sitting outside the school talking to some of the girls during recess when I felt a sharp sting on my ankle. I´ve been bitten quite a bit since I´ve been here so of course I didn´t think anything of it. Later in the day, I happened to look down at my ankle and noticed there was a very large red spot forming. Upon further investigation I noticed that the spot was hot to the touch and very hard, it felt like scar tissue. I showed the nurse at school and she said it looked like a spider bite and it would go away. Ha! For the next few days, my bite continued to swell and be hot, but it also caused my ankle to swell. I couldn´t even see the bone in my ankle. What kind of spider makes your skin change colors, increase in temperature, and causes your ankle to swell??? A spider apparently, or at least, that´s what everybody told me. This morning I came to Choluteca for my office day and decided to show the doctor, Javier. He looked at my ankle and poked it a little and told me, in very clear English what had bitten my ankle. When I heard him, my response was, ¨A WHAT???¨ Javier had told me, that I was bitten by a cockroach like insect. Yeah, a cockroach. He said he had a bite similar to that on his face and this kind of cockroach hurts when it touches you, much less when it bites you. The bite happened 4 days ago and is still there and still swollen, although the heat has subsided. Recovery is looking bright. So, living in Honduras has been an adventure, things happened to me that have never happened before and possibly will never happen again, and this is just an example of one of the crazy things that can happen living in Honduras. Who knew there were insects like cockroaches that could bite you??

Shanna Crossland