It's Beginning to Look a lot like Christmas

Christmas tree at the Cruise Ship Port

Christmas is starting to hit full force....in all forms (fortunately and unfortunately).  Christmas lights are starting to pop up here and there; while there aren't (and probably won't be) many, there are some and they are exciting to see.  Saturday afternoon, I went with Bob and Debi into Coxen Hole where there was supposed to be a parade followed by time with Santa and a Christmas tree lighting.  Well, as like most things here, it started fashionably late, the parade which was supposed to start the festivities, ended up being halfway through the festivities, and there were bits of chaos.  The tree lighting of course wouldn't take place until dark, but since I had another function to get to (yes, believe it or not I had something on my schedule!), we did not get to see the lighting.  The part that we did get to see though, was quite exciting.  There is a lady, Debra, living here on the island that used to be a music teacher in California.  She now works with children on the island and runs a steel drum band.  That was pretty cool.  If I figure out how to add videos on here, I will put up a video of it!  Following this, I went with Miss Peggy and the staff of the clinic to a Rotarian Christmas Gala.  It was a nice social evening, filled with delicious food and good company.  There were some raffles and auctions that also took place.  One of the items being raffled off was a tour of the RECO, the electric company.  I tried to get Alison, our administrator, to bid on it for a field trip for the clinic staff, but she wouldn't.....darnit!  It ended up going for $250- aka, probably not in our budget :p ; guess we will just have to go for a free tour sometime haha.  Christmas festivities continued on Sunday with a Caroling Christmas Party at Debra's house.  There were probably a dozen of us that gathered together and sang Christmas carols for an hour, ate appetizers, chili, bread, and desserts, while drinking some hot cider (all homemade!)-- what a wonderful evening we had!

The Steel Drum Band

While we had a great weekend filled with Christmas festivities, there were also some downfalls to the weekend.  During the 2 hrs that we left to take some people to the airport on Saturday in the early afternoon, our home was broken into and robbed.  Out of the 3 of us, Jess was hit the hardest as she lost all of her electronics, where as I only lost some jewelry and a phone, and we all lost some food.  Someone's eating good right now!  I guess things could have been worse and we remain hopeful that maybe some of the stuff will get returned, but it was only material things that walked away and life will go on.  After all, material things are simply that and they are purely here for comfort.  The day will come when we are at our judgment and we will not have these things with us; what we will have are all those things that we have learned, all the actions that we have performed, and the journey that we took.  What does your slate look like if judgment day came tomorrow?  Would it be full of material things that are no longer there?  Or would there be experiences, actions, and lessons learned that you are proud of?  In this time of advent, this time of preparation for the birth of Jesus, are we prepared to readily greet Him at any moment?  What is standing between you and Him?  Is it something that you can change?  Think about it- it's worth some thought.

Clinic life hasn't brought about anything too exciting this past week.  More of the typical diabetes, hypertension patients with various other things throughout the week.  Saw another machete cut today...this one was a few days old and unfortunately infected :(  The girl was 14 yrs old and this was her first time ever coming to the doctor- wouldn't you know, first time in and she had to get a shot.  Bummer!  Luckily she had my good steady hand and I think it was pretty much pain free.  Hopefully her infection will heal up quickly as the cut was on her foot and it is preventing her from being able to walk :(  English tutoring is continuing at the school, bringing with it it's continued challenges.  The part that we find most frustrating is that these kids do not have the basics of the english language down, yet they are trying to learn information that would be taught at a 3rd grade level.  While I feel like we should/need to be working on the basics, she has all this homework that is not getting done so I also feel like we should be working on that.  Some days I feel like we make progress, and then other days I feel like we get nowhere.  Since I work with her for only 2 hrs a week, there is only so much that I can do.  The other frustrating thing is that the teacher is Honduran and has very poor written (and therefore probably spoken) english-- meaning, that they kids are probably hearing a bit more spanish in class then they are supposed to be.  When we get to school in the afternoons we will see the kids and they are of course speaking to one another in spanish.  No matter how many times we remind them to speak in english, they always revert back to spanish.  Sometimes I question how much effort they put into practicing their english.  Are they benefiting from the education that they are paying for and receiving?  I can only hope and pray that some day this will all pay off and benefit them.  For now, I guess we will just keep doing what we're doing and see what happens.

News tells me that the Viking dome has collapsed in, the giant Christmas tree in Sioux Falls was blown over from the blizzard, and snow is everywhere!  I wish I could say the same about here (at least the snow bit) but the only thing we have collapsing here are the waves upon themselves!  This weekend we were blessed with very nice weather.....up into the 80s!  Can't really complain about that (except when you love the winter and are ready for a change in seasons....I'm not sure how someone could live in the same season year round...I sure can't!).

Today I got my visa renewed for another 3 months, so looks like I'll be staying here for a while!  Hope you are all staying warm!  I'll work on my tan a little extra hard, just for all of you ;)