El Porche

Saturday we headed up to the ‘jungle’ along the Congrejal river. Several operators in the area offer hiking tours, white-water rafting and other outdoor activites along the beautiful river. There are Class III – V rapids in the area but that was a little much to attempt with Kinsley :).

A view of the Congrejal river as it heads down into La Ceiba.

Instead we took a zip line tour through the canopy that included a short hike and interesting information from the guide on the plants and insects we passed — e.g. termites are good protien and crushing a handful of them then spreading them around makes a great mosquito repellant.

Laura Christel clipped in and ready to head out on one of the 9 cables that made up the tour.

K was not the least bit interested in getting into his webbing at the lodge and still needed some persuading after seeing the guides and us go on a practice cable. Once he went on the first cable, though, he was sold and loved it!

Cal and Kinsley in flight through the foliage.

The final cable was 600ft and took you across the river.

The rest of our time in the mountains consisted of interesting conversation with other tourists and enjoying the surroundings – including swimming in the ‘natural’ pools close to the lodge and the river.

The natural world offers fewer more enjoyable delights for K than throwing rocks into water. He was very keen to be taken across the river and he made the most of such ample supply of both rocks and water.

We enjoyed the rest of the fauna and flora  as well.

We did end up with some sunburn inspite of 50spf sunscreen. Thankfully our host family has aloe plants growing abundantly in their back yard 🙂

A Choctaw friend recently said, “Kids growing up in Mississippi  should have 3 languages – Choctaw, Spanish and English.” I couldn’t agree more.

In Spanish class yesterday and today I’ve been studying ‘para’ and ‘por’ – both ‘for’ in English.  Para is the word I use when describing reasoning for actions.  So the title is “For vacation, for Spanish, for life.” 🙂

I still reach for all 3 languages.  For work, I study Choctaw. Cal and Kinsley get a bit of Choctaw when they come with me to Mississippi Choctaw lands.  We hope one day to do a homestay in a Choctaw community.

Of course English….

And here and there in our free time we’ve been studying Spanish.  We have Spanish speaking friends and contacts at home with whom we’d love to communicate more freely. For vacation this year we decided to come to Honduras.

I take class in the morning, and Cal takes class in the afternoon.  Cal and Kinsley go on outings in the morning, and Kinsley and I take naps in the afternoon.  Oh, yes, there’s more news to share with you – we are expecting our 2nd child in November!

Here’s my classroom, and my teacher Yessenia:

Yesterday I got a confidence boost.  My teacher, Danny (or Spanish spelling: Dani) came and said, “We’re moving teachers around for today and tomorrrow.  Brittany needs to study in the morning, and she needs a bilingual teacher.”  Meaning I didn’t…

Gracias, Ian, Monika, and all my Spanish-speaking friends who have taught me Spanish!

…We played Scrabble for our last hour – en español, of course.  I had a really hard time thinking of anything in Spanish.  I kept finding excellent Choctaw words I could spell, though! Issis, iti (lots of ‘i’!)  Thankfully our teachers helped us.  I was happy though, by the end I found 2 good words Yessenia hadn’t seen.

I hadn’t been paying attention to the score, but when Yessenia and I left in the  same taxi she said, “You won!  Expectant mother’s luck.”  She is also expecting, in July.

But I don’t I know where we will learn more:  in school or from our incredibly gracious hosts, Gloria and Hugo.  They speak to us often in Spanish.  They are some of those gifted people who can slow down and speak clearly and still speak naturally.  They do know some English.  But we’ve only found that out slowly.  They know we want to learn, so they just use Spanish. And speak simply and use gestures, and truly enjoy showing us things.

Para mi, language grows best when it primarily grows out of enjoying, living, life.  Our hosts welcome us into their lives.  And our Spanish grows.  We are so thankful.