Rainy season?

Last night I couldn't sleep...(I probably shouldn't have taken an afternoon nap...so I blame it on myself.)  So Midnight rolled in...along with a HUGE storm!  There was rain, thunder, lightening and wind...at one point I honestly thought the roof was going to flying off.  I was just laying in bed at first covering my ears because the rain on my metal roof was SO loud...and then it got louder and louder and louder and then I started feeling the rain.  Yes.  In my bed.  I was getting misted on!  That's how rainy and windy it was.  At that point there was no way I could sleep so I got up and went to the living room where I was greeted by a huge puddle, well two puddles.  One from a little hole in the roof and the other from the water running in from under the door, so I went and got my mop and started mopping and ended up mopping my entire house...yes, there was that much water.  The rain and the mopping ended about 12:45 and I was off to bed...

Smoke...

Just thought of another reason why sometimes I feel like I'm camping...the smell of fire.  Sometimes it's the smell of burning leaves, sometimes the smell of burning trash and sometimes the smell of the mountainside burning.  In April and May there is a lot of smoke in the air here, first of all it's the dry season so sometimes things just like to catch on fire and it's also when they burn the sugar cane fields.  So not only is there smoke in the air but also ashes floating around...it doesn't snow here, it ashes.

Last night the mountainside was it flames...I tried to take a picture but it did no justice.  It's quite the sight to look out your front door and see the mountain aflame.

24 days!

In just 24 days I head back to the States for the summer!!!  :) It's going to be a busy summer of weddings, graduations, my sisters baby being born!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!, and of course I'll be extremely busy sitting by the pool!  :)

However, before I go into summer mode I have lots of stuff to do here!  Like...get things ready for the kindergarten graduation, it's on May 27th...only 2 weeks away!!!  My students are SO excited!  We have a star marking the day on our calendar and a paper chain...who doesn't love a paper chain?!?!  They have learned so much this year and I am super proud of all of them.

This weekend I'll be cutting out millions of stars (ok, it's really only about 100) for our center pieces for the tables and I also need to cut out the silhouettes I have for the center pieces.  There are going to be about 25 tables so we've got our work cut out for us.  And we're going to make a balloon arch for the kids to walk through!  Don't worry, I'll take lots of pictures!

I feel like I'm camping...

I suppose it's a good thing that I like camping, why you might ask...am I going on a camping trip in the Honduran wilderness?  Heck no!  I don't even need to leave the comfort of my little house to feel like I'm camping.  And why do I feel like this...let me count the ways.

Let me begin by talking about the bugs and creatures that I live with...there are the basic mosquitoes, the geckos, the crazy ants (yes, not just any ants, but crazy ants!), the occasional frog and cockroach...and lets not forget about the cat that tries to sneak in just about every afternoon.  I've become slightly obsessed with mosquito coils...you know the little green coils that you light on fire, it produces smoke and keeps the bugs away...I LOVE THEM!  Probably terrible to inhale that chemical filled smoke, but hey it keeps the bugs away!  I could probably go on about the critters all day long and have funny stories like when a gecko fell off my ceiling onto a visitor or the not so funny story of a gecko pooping on my laptop!

I also feel  like I'm camping when I'm washing my dishes...I fill up a little wash basin with water from the pila (the big cement sink) and use that water to wash my dishes...sometimes there flowers floating in it and sometimes a little sand at the bottom...and if it's a good day I pour a little bleach in to kill whatever little microbes I can't see...no I don't use bleach all the time and probably have a nice little friend growing in my intestines!  haha  That's what Albendazole is for right?  ;)  Anyway, there isn't hot water here, unless I heat it up on the stove, so I wash my dishes with just normal cold tap water...that's what makes it feel like camping.

Another feeling of camping is whenever I go outside I take my flip flops off before I come in the house...ok maybe some of you do that anyway, but it reminds me of camping.  You know when you take your shoes off before you go in the tent?

I feel like there were more similarities between my lifestyle and camping...and I'm sure there are but I'm a little tired and my brain isn't working so well.  You see, today is mother's day (HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY MOM!  and all you other moms that might be reading this...) so what does me being tired and Mother's Day have in common?  Well...apparently a custom of Honduras is that people light firecrackers off at all hours of the night and go around serenading the mother's around town.  The firecrackers started before my head even hit the pillow...the loud serenading heard all throughout the town started about 3 AM...yes...AM!  And I think they finished up about 5?  I don't really know...but it was a long night of interrupted sleep.

UPDATE:  I was just walking from my bedroom to the livingroom and I stepped on a gecko.  :(  I noticed him around earlier...I think he was sick because he wasn't moving quickly like his friends.  Well I forgot about him and them squish.  How gross is that!?!?

I also remembered another..."I feel like camping" moment..it involves the shower.  I think it feels like camping because it's not a real shower...ok, lets not kid ourselves...it's not a shower.  It's a big bucket of water.  So I never actually really feel 100% clean...you know like when you're camping you just never feel squeaky clean...oh how I can't wait to take a shower when I get to the States!  :)