Back to Work...

Almost a month has passed since our last blog entry. My, how time flies. We will be living back in the States before you know it. School has started back up and we are both working on several things now. Shannon has started working on the drug and alcohol prevention program with her counterpart, has started her English class to teachers again, and started teaching young kids about dental care through the Colgate program once again. She is also going to be helping a volunteer nearby do English classes for teachers near his community. Kevin has taken it upon himself to coach a new swim team at the university that really needs some help. It started with six guys and after two days of helping them out has grown to eleven. Only one of them knows all four competitive strokes. If they could swim with their heads down, they were doing well. After two days, they look a lot better but still have a long ways to go and the one and only meet is April 23, a little over a month away, but who’s counting, right? Supposedly they are going to get some swim equipment this weekend, like goggles, kickboards, stopwatches and other necessities. The English lab and program are now in full effect at the university as well where every professor and student will have to take English. We both go to the new English club every Friday night at the university to do fun English learning activities like sing songs, play games or watch movies. We recently recorded a cd with three other volunteers pronouncing English words to go along with the third level of the English course that Shannon teaches with the school teachers. That was a lot of fun but we are glad it is over. We were hoping to be able to watch the Olympics but unfortunately, no channel that we have carried it so missed out on all the winter action in Vancouver . This week, Shannon went to Tegucigalpa to meet the new group of volunteers that just arrived in country to talk to them about safety and security, Kevin already go to do that once after we were robbed and now Shannon gets to go after witnessing a murder and being robbed. Then, we both go this weekend to talk to the new group about the married couples support group. The end of this month, Easter Week, we will be going to La Moskitia for a nine day trip into a UNESCO world heritage site and the Rio Platano Biosphere, the largest intact tract of forest in Central America where we will try to avoid being eaten by crocodiles (and mosquitoes, although it is not named after an abundance of mosquitoes) and see some of the most pristine forest in the world and the animals and plants that live in them.