Christmas Time is Here!

Christmas has reached Comayagua (actually, it was here before Thanksgiving, but I chose to ignore its existence. No Christmas until after Thanksgiving is my rule!)! The stores are stocked with Christmas decorations, the parents have decorated the classrooms, and we are feverishly practicing for the Christmas program on Thursday evening. I love the atmosphere! It´s energizing to know that we only have three more days until break! Last Saturday night we had the priveledge of attending a cookie Christmas party where each person (or house in our case) brings 4 dozen cookies and then swaps. So now we have 4 dozen cookies sitting in our freezer begging to be consumed (I´m trying to be good)!

Yesterday was an eventful day as well. One of the missionaries´moms arrived and Pastor Rich from Union came to visit our lone Union missionary. Pastor Rich travels around the world visiting different missionaries, sometimes not for very long. He arrived yesterday afternoon and left early this morning. But it was nice to talk with him last night and see his pictures from his other visits. He came from Nicaragua, so he showed us pictures of where Bridget and Ruth are this year, which was neat! He´s going to the islands next, so we all wrote notes to our friends there.

These next three days are going to be busy, busy, busy. The kids are already complaining about all their quizzes they have (I remember those days......). I wish all those studying for finals luck!

The Day of the Belts

This morning we went to school as usual, not to teach classes but to hand out grades. Tables were set up, and two teachers from each grade sat from 8:00-2:00 to meet with parents and hand them "the notes." As one sixth grade student explained to me during recess yesterday, today was "the day of the belts," because when the parents learn about the bad grades, they pull out the belts. At first, I was petrified of what some parents might say to me when they learned how poorly their child did in my class. However, most of the parents were understanding, and the time passed more quickly than I had thought it would. I almost feel as if this was the last day before Christmas break, because it held a sense of finality. Next week will certainly speed by as we prepare for the Christmas program held on Thursday evening! My first graders will be "Decking the Halls" all week in preparation!