3 months

Well, it has been 3 months since my last post so I guess it is time for another update. oops.

I don't really know if anyone reads this (except for you Linda, and Grandma and Grandpa!) but that is okay :)

I have been making cards all morning. I LOVE doing that. I made some really cute ones with cardstock that I bought from Joann's fabrics. I used blank cards and went to town. Also, today I bought some shoes for a 2 kids in a family that our small group is adopting for Christmas...

I still love teaching although it is really hard. The parents are so challenging at times and the kids will sometimes suck the patience right out of me. Yet, through prayer I am able to rely on God and HIS love for me- which I can give to others.

Hooray for HIM changing me!!

And I will be an aunt.

Yessssssssss. I love babies. :)

I am a teacher!!

Yes, you read that title correctly!

I am a 1st grade teacher at Milpitas Christian School in San Jose, California. I am so excited and I LOVE my job.

Spending time with 19 6 year-olds is so much fun... and a challenge too! My colleagues are wonderful and I am so supported. I have so much to learn about teaching and they are really helpful. I am also pumped that I am able to use what I learned in student teaching and at Whitworth to help me!

Yessss. It is great.

-Miss Auer (although some say Mrs. Auer or simply Teacher) :)

Home in San Jose!

I have been home for a few weeks now! It is great to be back with family and in lovely weather. I do miss friends from school, though! I have been avidly applying for teaching jobs for next year and for part-time nannying/tutoring positions for the summer. In addition to all of my applying, I have been reading, laying on my hammock, checking out books from the library, baking, hanging with friends, and playing frisbee! It has been wonderful and not too boring yet. I still have a ton of work to do organizing my room.... uggg!

Well, I am off to run some errands (like registering for a ceramics class and going to the store maybe).

Hooray for summer!!!

Sun!

Today I saw the sun. It was the first time in months, I think.

Today it also hailed.

Yesterday it snowed.

Oh, I love Spokane.

More school

So... I have been full-time student teaching for a little over a week now! I usually get to the school at 8am and will stay until 4pm, although it has been earlier or later on some days. I am starting to teach math this week and will be the Star of the Week! (For that, my pictures and information are up in a certain area on the wall. I will talk about myself and my pictures on Thursday and then the students do a small writing prompt on me!!) :)

The kids are so funny and I have loved some of the things they have said or written down. Gotta love that 1st grade spelling! I have also been invited to a sleepover ("My mom will think it's okay!")... so good.

Well, that's all! 

-Gabriella

Back at school :)

Hello!

I am back at Whitworth and loving it! I was welcomed back from Honduras into the country by a group of my wonderful friends... it was a great welcome! :) It has been so fun to hang out with friends these past few weeks. We have had LOTS of fun eating and playing and watching Wall-E! I have kept busy with school at Whitworth and school at Shiloh. I have been at class at Whitworth for the past 3 weeks (3 days a week) and at Shiloh (2 days a week) and tomorrow (!) I begin my full-time student teaching with my 1st graders. They are so cute and I am excited to spend time with them. It will be a challenge, but I am up for it. 

There is still lots of snow around, but fortunately most of the roads and sidewalks are dry and fine to walk/drive on! It was sunny today so that was nice!

Love,

Gabriella

Weird tranlations...

So... I think that my normal posts are boring... (I went to Tela last weekend and went to the 2nd largest botanical garden in the world and swam in el Mar Caribe)... so here is something a little fun!

Here are some crazy translations:

Kindergarten- jardin de ninos. (garden of children??)
Honeymoon- luna de miel (moon of honey?? it does not really make sense because it is talking about honey like a nickname not the food!)

puchika... I thought I would have more. oh well.

okay! here are some pictures!
(they are invisible... the internet loves me!)

first time

So... during this trip, it has been my first time...

experiencing 2 flat tires in one day (one on a mototaxi and one on a bus)
being a translator for a friend in a foreign hospital
hearing gunshots from our house
petting a guacamaya (macaw!)
seeing a joint
and teaching a university level English class

oh yeah. this trip has been great!

Yeah!!

Hi All!

I hope each of you is doing well! I am in the computer lab at school and the internet is being really slow/ not working… so I am writing this in a word document and then I will transfer it over to my blog when the internet starts to work for me!

So, we went to the Copan Ruins this past weekend! Deb and Brian (awesome teachers here who are from the states) took us and we had an incredible time!! We left Friday right after school and took a bus to San Pedro. The bus was suuuper crowded at first, but it got less crowded as we kept going on. The bus stopped a lot along the highway at small villages to drop people off and pick new people up. There are no formal bus stops here, just places where people will stand! (There are a few big bus terminals in the country, though.) We got into San Pedro and got a ticket to Copan. This bus was a lot nicer and we were thankful to have a bit of breathing room and comfier seats.

We got into Copan at around 630pm and dropped our stuff off at the Blue Iguana, which is a really neat hostel. It was 100L a night so that was incredible! 5 bucks for a safe place to stay! We left to find Comedor Mary, where we ate for the evening. I had a pupusa (which I won in a bet between the 4 of us!) and the one I got was filled with pollo. It was really good- a small kinda fried tortilla filled with a veggie or meat. I also ordered catrachas, which were huge tortilla chips with frijoles y queso on top. We all split anafre, which is a bowl of frijoles y quesillo with tortilla chips sticking out the top. That bowl is heated by a candle underneath! My meal was about 3 dollars (including my cappuchino!)… food is really good and pretty inexpensive here!

On Saturday we definitely rode horses to this small aldea (little village with a few houses)! The ride was so fun- our horses walked, trotted, and galloped! Wow! They made corn husk dolls there and the girls were so pushy and surrounded us almost the whole time! They were cute when you talked to them… but they kept asking and asking and asking! It actually got to be kind of funny! We hiked up to a few rocks that they Mayans carved into and Berto was a great guide as he explained lots of things to us. We then had coffee and cookies in a small house/hut and talked with the cute kids there. Then we went to a small restaurant that overlooked the valley and we could see the city of Copan as well as some ruins! It was gorgeous.

We rode back (galloping a lot of the way!) and then we took a mototaxi to GUATEMALA!!!!!!!!! We took pictures and it was lots of fun. Then we went shopping at some of the stores they had there. There were about 824 hippies lining the streets with their cool jewelry they made! It was neat to see all of the creative things they made themselves!!! I wish I was that talented. We had baleadas for dinner (which is what we had our first night in Sigua) and mine had chicken and egg inside. Brian described it well… eating two generations at one time. Later that night we went to a circus, and I don’t think that I would be able to even start to describe that experience.

For Sunday morning breakfast we had licuados or coffee with some trail mix, dried fruit, and nuts Caitlin and I brought! (Thanks Mom!) We started walking to the ruins and this family in a pick-up truck stopped and asked us if we wanted a ride! Okay!!! We got in the back of their truck and had a free ride to the ruins, which was not too far away. We walked around and saw all of the neat structures the Mayans had built. We went exploring, climbed up a wall, went behind the “No Pasar” sign, uncovered ancient Mayan ruins, and stuff like that.

Shoot. Kids have class in here next. I gotta go. Enjoy the pics.

Escuela Bilingüe Siguatepeque!

Hello!!!

Sorry I have not updated in a while. We have been at the school for 3 days now and it is so much fun. I am helping out in the class of Miss Laura, who is a bilingual Hondureña. She teaches 3rd and 4th graders in English... although she has a lot of subjects to teach. The school is a bilingual school, and there are about half English speaking teachers and half Spanish speaking teachers. There are a few more Spanish speaking teachers because of computers, art... and most of the administration will only speak Spanish. Miss Laura teaches science, reading, phonics, and maybe more. The students have had tests in the morning... and this week we have half days. That is so nice!!

We have gotten to meet some other teachers, and the English speaking teachers are awesome! They have totally welcomed us in and that is so wonderful. Our host family is the best. We have had so much fun playing cards, eating amazing food, washing dishes, plunging toilets, playing with their 3 cute dogs, taking walks, and more! There is so much to say and it is hard to write about it to a computer. ¿¿Know what I mean??

Debbie (a really neat teacher from San Diego) took Caitlin and I to downtown Sigua to see everything. It was really neat and was way different from this side of town which has more houses and little stores. It is a 10 minute walk from our house to the school, and a 15 minute walk from her to downtown. We had liquados at Punto del Encuentro (Point of Encounter), which is a super cute ice cream/sandwich shop... Liquados are kinda like smoothies but way cheaper. We paid L15 for each liquado, and since it is 19 Lempiras to a dollar... it was super cheap!! ALSO, guess what? Guess how much it is for a cup of coffee down here. Just think in your head how much you think it is. It is 6 Lempiras!!!!! That is like 25 cents for a cup of coffee. Wow. We also went to La Princesita, which is a really cute bakery. I love this place. Cait and I are going to explore so much. I am so thankful God has provided in incredible ways for us. It is so neat to be adventuring around in this beautiful country!!

Oh- another thing! We have had a ton of cool opportunities thrown in our laps. For example, Siliva asked us if we could teach 2 classes of English, which start tomorrow. Also, we were asked by another teacher (she is from Canada) if we could cover her adult English classes next week because she will be traveling. We were also asked to run an English station at this reading/library fair on the 30th, and we were also asked if we could tutor a 2nd grader who needs help. I love these random ways we are able to help!

I tried 305 times to get pictures to load, and there is no way it is happening. Bummer. Sorry. I will upload some when I can. The internet is kinda sketchy, even in the school computer lab where I am right now.

Have a fantastic day!!

In Siguatepeque!!!!!!

So....

We are here in Siguatepeque, where we will spend 3 weeks!

We ate some fruit loops this morning, along with fruit cake/cinnamon roll. It was pretty good! We packed up and Silvia came to the bed and breakfast to take us to the bus station. I am glad she was there to help with getting the ticket, putting the bags under... she is wonderful and is the director of the school. We had a beautiful 2 hour bus ride and it was so fun to look out the window and listen to music.

Carla picked us up at the cafeteria where we were dropped off, and she took us to Luis and Abby's home. They are WONDERFUL and Luis knows some English. We talked with him for a while over Honduran coffee (so good... not as strong as coffee in the US) and we asked him a lot of questions after dinner. We ate at about 8pm here (I was so hungry) and it was baleadas... I think! They made the tortillas and put beans, mantequilla (their sour cream kinda), and queso that looks like feta kinda. It was so good. We both had 3. Some friends of theirs came over and Cait and I played games with Jenny and Kelly (Swap, landa (tag)...) It was super fun. They are so cute. We have been speaking English and Spanish and learning lots of new words and learning about the culture here.

The climate is much better here. It is pretty much perfect. San Pedro was kinda humid... and it is really nice here. You can wear a tank top and pants (or a skirt) and be comfortable throughout the day. I am on a laptop right now in their family room and I think we will be able to use this! Yeah!! Okay... I am going to get my pajamas on and let Caitlin use the computer. Love love love.

PS We have church tomorrow (Iglesia Betel)... I am looking forward to it!

FUN day!!

Hello!

I found a way to smile... this keyboard is different but here you go... :). Yessss.
The last time I wrote, I was about to ask Caitlin about paying for a taxi ride to the lake...

Here is a paragraph she wrote:

We also went to Lake Yojoa, the biggest fresh water reserve in Honduras. It was very big. We stopped by this incredibly nice hotel and walked all around. We saw lots of pretty flowers and funny statues. We then went to a restaurant and we were going to share some tilapia? (fish) but they did not understand that so they gave us each our own plate! It was so much food and an interesting experience to pick the deep fried fish off the bones and have the little eyes looking at you. We also tried baked Platanos and some different salad stuff that we did not find very appetizing. We did have an enjoyable time with the limes though.

Here are some photos:

Here are some more photos...

This is Pulhanpanzak (I think that is how it is spelled). We walked down lower where it was super misty!!! It was so beautiful... It would have been fun to have friends and family there.... we have mist you all!

We were at Hotel Finca de Las Glorias on the lake and we saw this guy! I asked if we could take his picture. He said no. I did anyway. He was pissed.

Okay bye.
Love,

Caitlin and Gabriella

PS Here is an awkward pic of us and our nicey nice taxi driver. His name is Jose and we had fun talking with him all day.

31

Hi friends,

So when I joked that I had gotten 35 bites sitting at the computer desk, I thought I was being random with my HUGE number. Unfortunately, I was not. This morning I counted 31 bites on my legs. I have since found more. Greeeaaaaat. Well, I forget where I left off, but yesterday Cait and I went to two malls that are super close to each other. There were some stores and restaurants we recognized... such as Subway, Pizza Hut, and Tommy Hilfiger. There was a movie theather on the top floor, and it was only L60 to watch a movie! L stands for Lempira, the currency here, and it is about 20 Lempiras to the US dollar!! There were guards standing outside of some of the stores, as well as lots of guards on bikes circling the mall. Coolp. We bought Quiznos for dinner and walked back to our bed and breakfast. We put the food in the fridge for dinner. Showers and internet time followed... and we watched some random things on the TV. There are some channels that are totally in Spanish, some that are in English with Spanish subtitles, some that are American shows or movies that have Spanish dubbed over, and some are just in English. I saw part of Get Smart and ALIAS that had Spanish dubbed over... and we watched House and Friends in English. Then we ate dinner in the cutie courtyard outside.

This morning, we got up and ate breakfast. It was an omelet, beans, toast, and two piles of something white. Hmmmm. We had some coffee that was grown here in Honduras and that was delicious. Now I am on the computer and the man who works at the desk is trying to find us a way to get to Lake Yojoa... He told me it would be $150 to have a tour of the lake and the city... and then he told me $120 for just the lake plus a waterfall and hotel thing. I told him that was too much............. so now he tells me $100 is the cheapest. I am going to go ask Caitlin now. I hope each of you is doing well. Comment on here or email me or facebook or whatever. I would LOVE to hear from you.
In His grace,
Gabriella

¡¡Estoy Aqui en Honduras!!

Hola todos!!!

I am here ¨? Let´s just say that it´s a smiley face... this keyboard is weird and that is the face it makes when I try. Oh well. I got to Houston, spent the night at my wonderful Grandparents´home (after a delicious meal) and then off to the airport at 6am! Caitlin and I met up and flew over together. We were both pretty tired and slept some. We arrived and went through customs, got all our luggage, and were picked up my nice Juan Carlos! He totally had our names on a sign!! ¡Yes! How cool that this keyboard has upside down exclamation marks. Oh yeah.


okay. There has been a mosquito biting my legs. There was another one and he copied the first. What a biter. I bave approximately 35 bites. Gotta go. Love love love.

I am leaving soon!

Hi! I am leaving so so soon for Honduras! I am excited to immerse myself in the culture, get to know people, become better at Spanish... Please keep me and the people with whom I will interact in your prayers. Jesus will do mighty things! Hopefully I will have internet and will be able to update/upload pics...! Hooray! -Gabriella