Graduation

Last night I had the pleasure of graduating at el Centro Marie Poussepin.

As most of you know (for those who don´t), I graduated a semester early and finished my undergrad in December. This past Sunday was Stonehill´s Class of 2011 commencement ceremony. Since I´m here in Honduras, I was unable to attend with the rest of my classmates and good friends. It was difficult to be so far away and disconnected from it all.

The weekend passed as normal, and I wasn´t expecting any sort of celebration. I was able to have a family party before I left, so I felt that my graduation was behind me. Last week we were told that we would be celebrating Sister Teresa´s birthday but that it was a surprise.

So at 6:30 the bell rang and everyone gathered under the mango tree. I went prepared with my card for Sister Teresa, signed by all of the tutors. Matt called everyone´s attention and then turned to me and told me to go change. Andrea guided me into the back room to put on a graduation cap and gown. After trying to collect myself from such a surprise and stop laughing/crying, I came out to find the girls lined up, creating a pathway leading to the gazebo. Some students were decked out with confetti and bubbles for when I passed by. When I finally reached the gazebo, it was lit up in glow sticks that said Bienvenida. The lights turned on and it was decorated with Felicidades and in Stonehill´s purple and white.

Everyone gathered in and Sister Teresa said a few words and said a blessing. Then Andrea and Matt both spoke. I was really moved by what Matt shared with everyone present. It was an excellent opportunity to reach out to the students, to show them the connection between education and personal development, that schooling is more than just memorizing from books. He talked about the values that each of us had learned from Stonehill and are now sharing our gifts with the students. I hope that they were able to take something away from what he said, to value an accomplishment such as a graduation, and to be motivated to complete their studies. Chris then made it official by handing me my diploma, which was artfully crafted by Matt and Andrea. It seems pretty legitimate, even signed by Sister Teresa and Father Craig.

As if that wasn´t enough of a surprise, Sister Teresa had thought the whole time that the celebration was just for my graduation! So then the board was turned around, changing it from a graduation hat to party balloons. Everyone sang and laughed as Sister reacted, quite surprised. II Bachillerato sang a song for each of us, about endings and new beginnings, I Ciclo danced, and the rest of the grades had made quite beautiful cards.

I was asked to share my words with them before we ate the ice cream that was to come. I was still so overwhelmed that I didn´t have many words. But I mainly shared that although I was far away from my family
and friends, I was glad to be celebrating with my family here.

Then the dancing started. The girls normally have an hour of silent
study time, but instead the Sister let them dance until bedtime! They
seemed to have a nice time, and it was good to see them have fun and
relax.

Matt and Andrea had been working over the weekend and all day Monday on decorating and organizing everything. It was a really nice thing to do for Sister and I. (I even found my tassle from my cap tied onto my bike this morning.) It was such a nice night. As Andrea was guiding me in back to put on the cap and gown, she said- this will be a graduation you´ll never forget. And boy, was she right.

Felicidades!

Congratulations to Stonehill´s Class of 2011!

I hope that you all have enjoyed Cape Week and the other senior celebrations. : )  I miss you dear friends and will be thinking of you today as you take the next step in your journeys!

Guaimaca

Our small town of Guaimaca is just under two hours outside of the capital, Tegucigalpa. The city itself is only about 12,900 or so. With its13 aldeas, the population comes to about 20,000. (stats thanks to Wikipedia)

The center of town is built around the Catholic church and the park. Sometimes on weekends I´ll bring a book or my journel and find an empty park bench under a shady tree. There´s always a lot of action in the park during the day- people from the aldeas with their pickup trucks selling produce, people waiting for buses, or just sitting and chatting with friends. Surrounding the park you´ll also find a bank, ice cream shop, and some corner stores. About a block away is the main market, where we buy the fruits and veggies  that the farm doesn´t produce. The supermarket that we frequent is just a couple blocks from there, and it´s one of the few where you can walk up and down the isles. With the others, you have to order at the counter. There are a lot of things that we´re used to having easy access to (olive oil, chocolate chips, brown sugar, just to name a few) that we aren´t able to find here in town and can only be bought on trips to the capital.

From the house to the Center is about a five minute bike ride (we each bought our own bikes to get around town. mine is even decked out with a handydandy basket!). By now I´ve memorized the potholes, manholes, and speedbumps (believe me, there are a lot of these obstacles) on our route. I´ve also grown accustomed to saying goodbye to our neighbors when they´re out, seeing the man outside sweeping in front of his shop, and greeting the banana lady outside her pulperia.

On almost any street you´ll find lots of people walking or riding bikes, stray dogs, garbage (and the all-to-common pile of burning garbage), and trees loaded with mangos, plantains, or coconuts.

The house on a quiet dirt road right off of the main road. (Every now and then a pair of horses or an entire herd of cows pass by our house. Matt and I have tried to feed them some carrots, but they wouldn´t come near us.) It´s a place that I´ve certainly come to call home over the past four months. Since we´ve arrived, we´ve been able to add homey touches here and there. We´ve added a comfy hammock on the side porch that we and the neighborhood kids enjoy, added to the varied book collection, collected different games (including Risk!), hung our house covenant on the wall, and plastered our rooms with cards and notes from home. We even have our own collection of recipes (that our temperamental oven sometimes destroys) from our families and neighbors.

In our side yard we have our own mango tree and lime tree. I´ve really enjoyed watching the fruit grow and ripen. The mango tree was in bloom when we arrived and the mangos are just ripening now. We´ve made some delish mango salsa, mango marmalade, and mango smoothies. It´s glorious being able to snack on fresh mangos off the tree. The neighbors frequently ring our doorbell just to ask for mangos-they´re that good.

In back we have a pila which serves as our washing machine. It´s hard to describe, but it´s basically a cement contraption that holds our water, with an area to scrub our clothes on a ribbed surface. It´s a lot more work that throwing clothes into the washing machine, but I enjoy the therapeutic qualities of its labor.

Luckily we are able to compost our food scraps, thanks to our connection with the farm. They have a large-scale compost system that we add to, ending up as organic fertilizer.

The water in the house isn´t potable, so we take water from the wells at the Center (which have been tested to be clean). Most families in town are forced to buy their drinking and cooking water.. for those that can afford it.

The rainy season has certainly arrived. We´ve had several storms in the past two weeks, accompanied by strong winds, thunder and lightning. Yesterday I sat on our front porch to journal and watch the storm and also saw our neighbor´s roof of their shed get ripped off. I can´t imagine how many homes are flooded or damaged. And at the farm a good number of crops were killed by the acid rain. We´re pretty lucky with only a few leaks around the house.

I hope that gives some insight to my lovely house and hometown. And I´ll try to be better about updating in the future! :)