Too Funny

I saw this online today, and I had to share

Bad Day Update

In order to work on my habit of spending more time looking at the positive, I am providing a bad day update:

My computer has survived!

Positive Side: I live with awesome people who are always willing to help me out (THANKS JOHN)!
Positive Side: I now know how to disassemble a computer, and dry it out in case of future water spillage. Never a bad skill to have.

I feel better!

Positive Side: I was not sick very long.
Positive Side: Being sick really does make you appreciate being healthy

The Brigade is wrapping up!

Positive Side: I am exhausted, but I can say that I helped doctors provided over 800 consults, and 94 operations, at almost no cost, to patients who probably never would have gotten this care.
Positive Side: I got to translate a ton over the course of the last week.

My head is just fine!

Positive Side: Looking back, this story is really funny.

Positive Side of it All: My bad day was just that - One. Day. Nothing more.

Now, I am going to drop off the rest of the brigade at the airport and join the volunteers in the city to watch the Real Madrid vs. Barcelona (bigger than Yankees vs. Red Sox) game!

Life in Honduras is good, good, good!!

Bad days are the WORST

One of my theories on living/traveling abroad is that good days are magnified by 10, but the flip side is bad days are magnified by 10 as well.

Hypothetically speaking, a bad day living in Honduras might look something like this...

• You spend five hours in Tegucigalpa running errands for a medical brigade
• One of your favorite drivers (and an incredibly kind man) gets fired, because the Ranch has no money.
• Feeling crappy and exhausted from Tegucigalpa, you unload 18 massive water jugs, several cases of beer, and a random assortment of items from the truck. During the hottest part of the day.
• In attempt to be left alone for a few minutes, you close your office door but immediately realize that since there is no window to open it becomes an instant sauna
• Putting together a fan to help with said heat, you smack your head HARD on the windowsill
• Angry from your newly acquired head wound, you swing your arm around and bump an entire glass of water onto your newly fixed computer, that was returned to you the evening before.
• The next day, you wake up sick 

Hypothetically speaking, of course.

Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

The surgical brigade is in full swing. FULL SWING!

55 doctors, nurses, anesthesiologist, and everything in between. They have completely absorbed my life.

I will be back blogging soon...

Mark and Angel Love

I absolutely adore the blog Mark and Angel Hack Life. I know sometimes it might be a bit overly feel good-ie (yes, that is a real thing), but I love it.

I was reading an older post "30 Challenges for 30 Days of Growth," which is based on the idea that it takes 30 days to form a new habit. The challenge is to pick a few of them, and for the next 30 days try and focus on developing those habits.

Yesterday, I decided to give it a go.

Here are the three I have selected:

8. Concentrate on being positive at all times. – The real winners in life cultivate optimism.  They have the ability to manufacture their own happiness and drive.  No matter what the situation, the successful diva is the chick who will always find a way to put an optimistic spin on it.  She knows failure only as an opportunity to grow and learn a new lesson from life.  People who think optimistically see the world as a place packed with endless opportunities, especially in trying times.  Try to spend the next 30 days looking at the bright side of things.

18. Read one chapter of a good book every day. – With the Web’s endless stream of informative, easy-to-skim textual snippets and collaborative written works, people are spending more and more time reading online.  Nevertheless, the Web cannot replace the authoritative wisdom from certain classic books that have delivered (or will deliver) profound ideas around the globe for generations.  Books open doors, in your mind and in your life.  Read an online book list and find a good book to grab at the library today.  Then spend the next 30 days reading at least one chapter a day until you reach the end.  Here’s another book list.  And another.  And another.

25. Spend 10 minutes every evening reflecting on what went well. – For the next 30 days spend 10 minutes every evening pondering the small successes that occurred during the course of the day.  This process of positive reflection will remind you of all the tiny blessings in your life, and help you to celebrate your personal growth.

And away we go! 

OH, SNAP!

I can't believe I didn't even mention it. 

This is big.

Kind of huge in fact. 

This Sunday marked...

3 MONTH IN HONDURAS

and it feels simply amazing!

Update: 100 Days of Rancho Santa Fe

I keep meaning to do a real update on 100 Days of Rancho Santa Fe. Honestly, I was planning on doing daily updates. Maybe after the brigade..

Still, here are a few things I have noticed:

• Milk and Bread for breakfast leave you starving by the time lunch comes around. Milk and bread are very common right now. 
• Rice does not make a filling lunch
• Going to bed hungry is not fun for anyone
• Not having much food makes you so much more aware of when your next meal is coming
• I have no clue how some of these kids function in school and chores when food levels are low

Overall, this has been fairly interesting so far. I have cheated a bunch recently, due to job, life etc. but hopefully once things calm down a bit here I can do a better job tracking how things are going.

It is always the little things...

If I had to pick the biggest lesson I have learned so far in Honduras it is, hands down, that it is all about the little joys in life!

This morning I was in a FOUL mood. My job was frustrating me big time (more on that later), and I was having more than few thoughts of heading home to curl up in a ball and pretend that I don't have a million things to get done.

Three times a year the Holy Family Surgery Center here on the Ranch hosts a massive medical brigade. In a week or so they do some absolutely amazing and life changing surgeries. On Wednesday, the first Brigade I have been here for will begins. I'm super excited to be involved, but I have a ton of little things I need to get done on the "visitor coordinator" side of things.

By far my biggest priority/concern this morning was figuring out how we could get a HUGE quantity of potable (drinkable) water to the Ranch, since we didn't get our usually weekly delivery last week. First of all, just the fact that finding potable water for visitors was my biggest concern right now was fairly frustrating. But besides that, for some reason organizing this seemed to be beyond the limits of my Spanish.

SO. IRRITATING. Nothing puts me in a worse mood than feeling like my Spanish sucks.

Finally, I managed to get (and understand!) the phone number for the manager of our district. Honestly, I didn't think it was going to matter much, but shockingly we got it all set up for them to not only come by tomorrow afternoon, but also for us to buy additional bottles for the surgery center.

My morning was instantly better.

Lesson: Enjoy the little things!

Where I am living..

Since my computer died, getting photos from my camera to my blog has become a bit of a challenge. Plus, I can be a bit lazy about getting my camera out.

Jenn, of the other newbies here at the Ranch has an excellent blog, and she does a FAR better job of including lots of photos.

Following His Call to Honduras

Her most recent post includes lots of photos of where we are currently living in case you wanted to get a better idea. Plus, in her April 1st post,  I make an appearance in my second scorpion battle here at the Ranch.

Happy Reading!

Just another day at the Ranch

Hunter, who I work with here in Honduras made this amazing video of the kids putting out a nearby forest fire. 

Apagar Fuego

I highly recommend it.

Who does that?

My mom once told me that one of the hardest things about being a parent is seeing your child in pain. Last week, I think I caught the briefest glimpse of how true that really is.

Twice a year, for Semana Santa and Christmas, NPH Honduras allows the kids to go visit their families. Now, not all of the kids have families to go to, and some of the family situations are not considered safe, so about half the kids stay here on the Ranch during that time.

(Side Note: The kids who don’t get to go home are the ones that get to go play at the beach. Most would still rather be able to go home, but it at least provides a pretty amazing alternative)

The girls in my hogar who were going home were EXCITED!! I have never seen some of those kids as happy as they were on Wednesday night, knowing that aunts, uncles, grandparents, and even parents would be coming to get them the next day. This level of excitement could easily compete with the night before Christmas.

So, I was a bit stunned to walk into hogar on Thursday and see one of my girls who was suppose to go home still there. Her mom pulled a no show. Again.

She was a mess. This normally tough, and overly loud little seven year old (I shall call her F), wouldn’t speak to anyone. Her eyes were all puffy and red, and she spent the entire evening in the bathroom, by herself.

I have seen and heard some sad things in Honduras. However, this blew them ALL out of the water. Maybe it is silly to say that, but I was not prepared for this. I waited nearly a week to write about it, and yet I still can’t do it without crying.

Who does that? Who can treat any child like that, much less your own?

I know I am over simplifying. I don’t know F’s mother, or her background. I don’t know how her own parents treated her. But, for that moment right then, I really hated her mother.

The beautiful side of all of this is that kids are resilient, and the kids here are extra tough. When F came up to say good morning to me the next day she was already a million times happier, and she was so much fun to have with us at the beach.

Still, even with all of that, I would have done anything in the world to be able to make it so she didn’t have to go through that.

My mom was really very right on this one.

Shirts I have seen

Honduras gets a lot of clothing donations. I mean, A LOT.

One of the interesting side effects of this is that people are always walking around in shirts with writing in English. Most of the time with zero clue what the shirt says.

Here are a few of my favorite:

•  A man rocking a pink “Curves” shirt
•  “Not everything is flat in Tennessee”
• “What happens at Spring Break stays at Spring Break”
•  “I can’t help it if I’m awesome”

But my favorite by far is this little gem:

One of my girls sports this t-shirt, in pink, on a weekly basis. Please keep in mind that she is about as far from blonde as humanly possible.

When I see her in this I laugh so hard.

Every. Single. Time.

Semana Santa at the Beach!

Well, I did it! I survived my first NPH beach trip!

Every year for Holy Week (Semana Santa), the ranch takes all the kids on a trip. They boys and girls go separately for lots of reasons, including transportation. This year the girls went to the beach for two days. It was a blast!

Our schedule pretty much included playing in the water, sitting in the shade, and eating. I managed to not get too sunburned, and it was a blast to just play around in the water with my girls!

One of the highlights of the trip was Pepsi in a glass bottle. You see, Pepsi here is made with real sugar and still comes in glass bottles with a straw. It is incredibly rico (tasty). I think I had three.  Random, but it really is the little things.

Rough life right?

Bad Blogger

This week was insane.

It included:

- 7:30am - 8:45pm work days

- Thirty-two middle schoolers and parents

- A broken down bus, and being stranded with said middle schoolers and parents.

- Continuing 100 days of Rancho Santa Fe (with some cheating)

- Witnessing the first vacation that kids can go home for

- Yet another round with a scorpion

- It did not include enough sleep!

Tomorrow, I head to the beach for two days with every single girl on this Ranch. It is going to be amazing!!

Next week I will be a better blogger. Scouts honor.