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Morris Family Webpage The update: Andy, Laura, and Luke ---------  ----------  ---------  ----------  ---------  ----------  ---------  ----------  ---------  ----------  ---------   March 24 The end of our nice week off.  It really was great to have a break from the heat.  You don't realize what a toll the heat takes on you until you are somewhere with a normal temperature, until you are in an area where you want to be outside, until you are somewhere with cool evenings.  We spent a lot of time outside this week!  First, we headed from Teguc to Santa Barbara where we met Saydi, the child we sponsor through Compassion International, and her mom, Reina.  We headed with them and Pastor Delmer to San Rafael, where they live.  We went to the Compassion office there and to Saydi's house.  We met all of Saydi's family, including her 90-year old great-grandfather and 87-year old great-grandmother.  Andy walked down to where her uncle was building adobe bricks in order to build an addition to the family house.  He had already made 300 of the 600 bricks needed.  We spent most of the day with Saydi and then headed back to Santa Barbara to spend the night there. In the morning, we drove to Copan Ruinas, a fun and funky town with lots of good restaurants and walking distance from the Mayan ruins.  We had fun walking around the town and the ruins.  It was nice to be outside and to even walk in the rain!     After Copan, we headed to Lago Yojoa where we took Luke on his first boat ride, which he loved.  We headed back to Teguc today to run errands and to pick up two volunteer lab workers who will drive back with us to Santa Lucia. Oh, we were able to get tires on the truck on our way to Santa Barbara, in Siguatepeque, which made us both feel a lot safer. March  19 We are on a break!  For a week, we will be traveling around the country, seeing the child we support through Compassion International, visiting either Copan or Lago Yojoa, and staying in Teguc for a bit.  Very nice!  The best part of a vacation, at least for me (Laura), is being able to take a long, hot shower.  For those who are unaware of our water situation in Santa Lucia, we take military showers.  Turn the water on.  Get wet.  Turn the water off.  Soap up.  Rinse off.  All of this while standing in a bucket in order to collect the water to flush the toilets with.  Yes, you too can flush your toilet using just a bucket of water!  Needless to say, it is quite a luxury to be able to stand under running water for more than a minute.   The hard part of vacation is Luke's sleep schedule.  It gets completely out of whack.  It is really hard to keep him on a normal schedule when we are all in one room, when we have to eat out, and especially when there are loving family members who want to be able to spend as much time with him as possible.  So, some days we just let it go.  And other days we try to enforce some semblance of a sleep schedule.  Our normally happy baby who rarely cries turns into a very tearful baby when he is not rested.  (See note below on the sleep needs of this family).  So we just have to try and find some kind of balance.   The other good part of vacation is internet access that allows one to upload.  So there are new pictures on the pictures link, mostly of Luke.   The adventure today was 1) Laura getting a hair cut, and 2) Andy trying to buy and have tires put on the truck.  The first adventure was a success, mostly.  The second was not.  The first day we arrived at our hotel in Teguc, Laura made an appointment at the hotel salon for a haircut.  The next morning, she showed up, tried to explain what she wanted, and was met with blank stares from all the ladies in the salon de belleza.  They had no clue what a bob was.  They explained that they could do layers and straight cuts but did not know how to shape short hair.  Well, Laura decided to hold out a little longer before letting them whack off five inches of hair.  At church on Sunday, a friend of ours had a nice haircut and recommended her hairdresser, Yolanda.  So today, the three of us headed off to Ivonne's to meet Yolanda.  Laura got her cut, which looks fine (it's not the best I've had, but it feels much better and lighter and healthier).  Andy likes it.  And to her amazement, her hair, since pregnancy, has become wavy, which her new haircut manages to show off well. This morning, Andy dropped off the truck at the Teguc Ford dealership for routine maintenance and some repairs.  The tires on the truck are/were in need of replacements.  So he also asked about this at the dealership but they didn't have any.  So, while the truck was in the shop, Andy called around to different tire stores to compare prices.  The tire is apparently a weird size, so only a few stores carried them.  The shop, meanwhile said that they would have the truck until closing time, which would not leave Andy any time to get new tires on.  The shop agreed to step up the pace and have the truck ready by 3.  Andy found a store that would deliver the tires to the shop to put on.  Well, then he comes to find out their tire mounting machine is broken.  So Andy had to find a shop that had the tires and could also put them on the truck.  The Ford dealership ended up not having the truck ready until 4:50.  So Andy got the truck and started off to the store he had managed to locate which sold the unique tires.  However, he got stuck in traffic, horrible 5 o'clock, worse than Houston, Tegucigalpa traffic.  So he didn't make it.  And the truck continues to be in need of new tires. Also of note is the wonderful time we had with the Morris family this last week!  It was so fun to have Andy's parents, brother, and two nephews to Santa Lucia and to meet up with Melissa, Andy's sister-in-law, and Mark, the youngest of the three nephews, in Teguc later in the week.  We had a great time introducing them to the heat.  Malcolm and Matt built bookshelves for our soon-to-be library and Becky helped out with Luke and anywhere she was needed.  Micah and Mason experienced school in Santa Lucia and described their highlight as being able to run home from school.  The boys also spent time with the O'Dea girls and introduced them to Webkinz.  We drove together to Teguc, met up with Melissa and Mark, spent Friday sightseeing, and took everyone to the airport on Saturday.  It was wonderful to have them here! March 4 So, things have been going well this week.  Luke has been sleeping through the night more consistently, which means everyone is better rested.  It is still hard to get out of bed in the morning at 6am.  It always seems to come back to sleep.  This trio likes/needs its sleep.  We get too grumpy when we aren't rested. My life skills class, Como planear mi vida, aka How to plan my life, went well on Tuesday.  The students seemed to have received it well and were excited to begin learning.  We had introductions, activities, established group rules, went over class expectations, etc.  All my years of working with youth through church and social work definitely helped.  I am looking forward to getting to know these scholarship students better.   All of the students come from poor families.  This is why they have scholarships to continue their education into high school.  Many come from outlying communities where their families are subsistence farmers.  When you ask them what they do with their free time, they are not sure how to answer because all they know is work.  They work with their father in the milpa (the small plot of land the family owns on which they harvest corn and beans), cook, wash, clean, take care of siblings, and attend school.  They may be the first in the family to make it to "high school."  I put high school in quotations because colegio begins at age 12.  They have three years of Ciclo Comun, and then some of those students go on for their bachillerato in a more specialized field.  Santa Lucia has a health promotion bachillerato in the colegio.   So the students are deserving of scholarships, both from a financial standpoint and academically.  Hence, there are some good kids in my class.  They want to learn, they want to help their families, and they want to have good jobs in the future.  This class is a good opportunity for them to learn new skills.   This next Tuesday, we begin with communication, which will be interesting in and of itself because direct communication is not employed here.  If you have a problem with a person, you go tell someone else who tells someone else and eventually it gets around to that person, who then responds by talking to someone else.  Somehow the situation will get resolved; but it is never by directly talking to the person.  So, given that direct communication is culturally inappropriate, it will be interesting to try to have a discussion around this.  However, as the class is based on discussion, it will be important to establish a safe space in which these students can "break" cultural norms to process and learn more about their selves and their communities.  I shall see if this is possible.  My hunch is that it will take time. Before I forget, I just want to put in that tonight we had thai curry made by James and apple crisp by Christy.  Both were delicioso and a nice reprieve from beans and comida hondureña.   Lucas is sitting up on his own.  He does not like tummy time.  He blows bubbles all the time.  He continues to have a nice mohawk of strawberry blonde hair.  We have started to take his hand out of his mouth everytime it sneaks its way into la boca, in anticipation of a crawling baby.   Andy has started his weekly journeys to Pinares.  This week they were, generally, unprepared to see him.  It is good for him to get out of the compound and breathe some fresh air, so to speak.  The climate in Pinares is about twenty degrees cooler than Santa Lucia.  The clinic is just getting off its feet, and they are relying on Andy to make a lot of decisions there; however, he is trying to stay out of that process as much as possible.  The local board is still learning how to function as a board, so  they almost prefer to defer to the gringos.

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