On The Road Again

It's time again to take the road that leads home.

Stepping away from Copan (and the blog) until after the holidays. Merry Christmas!

I'll Take Part Of It With Me

Realized something encouraging today.

Although I sadly suspect I'll eventually leave Central America for good, there's also good news:
Central America will always be with me in various ways wherever I go from here.

Hopping on a plane and waving goodbye to the life I've come to love is something I already dread.
Even the beauty of all that is home for me in the U.S. seems to be missing something this place has.

Luckily, my journey through life has bestowed on me the best of the both worlds.

Dawg In Honduras

Seeing as how I am such a PROUD Georgia Bulldog, you probably won't find it hard to believe that I flip all the way out at the sight of the occasional second-hand UGA shirt or hat in Copan.

Walking into the lunch line at school today, this kid instantly became my new best friend.

Can You Keep A Secret?

I'll admit it, but you're not allowed to tell anyone that my 9th graders (who were my 8th graders last year) are my favorite students out of the three grade levels I teach.

Wait A Minute - A Real Princess?

If you weren't in Copan this week, not only did you miss the opening of the new museum, but also you missed the chance to see the Princess of Japan when she visited and served as ribbon cutter at the opening.

Love

So the well-known 1 Corinthians 13 "Love passage" seems to be following me around. It popped up recently in teachings on marriage delivered by two (unrelated) pastors who've earned a lot of respect from me over the years.

Reading and memorizing the passage has been a first step for me toward cultivating a heart of love.
Also, I recite the passage aloud most days and use it to build up my faith.

Questions about my future remain unanswered in terms of the romantic type of love.
Uncertainty hasn't caused me to fret, though; I am confident God has me covered.

Even when I was a teenager, He reassured me and spoke of a relationship He envisioned for me.
Let me just tell you that He promised the kinds of things that are worth waiting years for!

The Most Wonderful Time

It has turned cold here.
(Cold for us is probably a chilly autumn day for you.)

The effect of cooler temperatures on my skin triggers the internal Christmastime sensation, and I've always loved the way Christmas feels.

Percussionist in the town's Christmas parade.

I think I'm as pleased as ever with my life in Honduras. I also think the moment has come to step away from all this and spend some time with my arms wrapped around everything I hold dear about home.

Like the song says, "Everybody needs a little time away..."

Paparazi

My teenagers have invented a new game.

It's called something like "Spot Mister Joshua at random locations around town, photograph him, and put the pic on the internet."

Holy cow.

Kids Draw The Darndest Things

Allowing students to draw pictures on the back of their test paper has produced at least one piece of artwork that made me grin..

Ode to the story I told the kiddos about my date for the Homecoming Dance in ninth grade
(with a bonus feature in the middle, inspired by my love for mango fruit).

God's Dream

We all know I'm a dreamer, but God also dreams. 

And for some reason this year, it pleased Him to show me something He is dreaming of. 

I can tell you that by our human standards, God's dream seems a bit ambitious. It's only a small thing to Him, though. Nevertheless, I will enjoy seeing how the Lord works out the details to make His dream come true.

Reasons to be in favor of what God dreams up:

All His ways are loving and faithful.

Quite a list of amazing blessings in my life are the result of His plans.

Understanding and wisdom serve as foundations for things He establishes. 

Every time I say yes to Him, I end up glad I did.

Love (aka God) always benefits more than just me, for more than just life on earth, for freedom.

Pain and Gain

Thankful today for suffering -- or more specifically, I'm thankful for progress that discipline brings.

There is a kind of suffering that leads to happiness, though I think this fact receives little press.

Years back, I heard a successful football coach tell his players:

“No matter what, you’re gonna suffer in life. You’ll either suffer the hard work that greatness requires, or you’ll suffer the pain of knowing you didn’t do all you could to achieve greatness."

Vacay

2 and 1/2 days of school vacation begin right now!

Life is good today.

What A Coincidence

Random thought about this blog:

I like the way the name (Daydreaming Mr.) and look (including the birds at the top of the page) for this blog were chosen before I ever knew the name my teenagers would use to address me every day ("Mister") and before I knew about the phenomenon of gorgeous flocks of white birds that always soar through the mountain sky here.

Doesn't Take Much To Please Me

I had a good time with the three-cheese grilled cheese sandwich someone
recommended at a local cafe.

Dinner for one was a success when I finally tried a lunch plate I heard about from one of the other foreign teachers.

I realize my introverted little experience in life is funny. To me, relationships are at the center of everything meaningful that happens for us humanoids. Even so, I tend to spend a substantial amount of time by myself. I guess there's never any guarantee that a person's location and luck will give him the kind of friends that making hanging out together a bunch seem desirable.

For me, there's a lot of solitude but also the tremendous blessing of being okay with it. I can see how feelings like sadness and depression would weigh heavy if I didn't have the benefit of this contentment.

My mom loves telling the story of how I was always the kind of kid that could play outside all by myself. Guess some things never change.

They Say It's A Lost Art

Think back:

remember the last time you got a two-page handwritten letter of gratitude from your boss?

Me neither.

But that's what I received this week. It felt pretty cool.

I think I was in high school the last time someone gave me personal correspondence of that length written by hand just for me.

Here Comes The Bride

My landlord's family is, like, 7 different kinds of awesome. And when the youngest brother got married over the weekend, guess who the family invited to the wedding...

What an honor for me!

The event was actually a religious ceremony held the day after Gerson and Melissa's marriage was made official in the town's municipal building.

I thought there was something really cool about doing it that way, as far as the bride and groom are concerned. It's as though the part of it all that's really only between the man and woman had its own space to take place privately for the two of them, with a following-day after party with friends and family all dressed up, smiling, celebrating, and eating good food.

Three of the Gonzalez sisters:
some of my most beautiful friends in Copan.

It's hard to overestimate how much the Gonzalez family has enriched my amazing experience here. Thinking about them yesterday, I asked the Lord to let his blessing fall on them for the blessing they've been to me.

You could probably guess that Xiomara, pictured here in green, is the crazy one!  Such a fun personality.

Torn

For some reason, thoughts of home have increased for me. This is unexpected since there was a long period when I wasn't sure I would ever care to live in the states again.

Today, also unexpected was the question that entered my mind at school as I walked past a group of teenagers:

Am I really ready to let the people of this gentle, humble culture out of my life forever?

Why Did I Come Here?

Maybe I had to leave home

to learn how to be home...
how to receive home
and have eyes to see home.

The time abroad has taught me what I couldn't know before --
the way to love and live a life that is simple, rich,

family-focused, free, and wealthy...
in a world that is needlessly busy and complicated,

hollow, shallow,

self-focused, stuff-focused, debt-filled and tied up and poor.

National Track Meet: The Results Are In

When I watched one of your discus throwers at practice during last year's season, I noticed some things that made me feel she showed a lot of promise.

Later, I remarked to the other coaches (and to the athlete herself) that I thought she could be really special as a thrower someday, though she would of course need to do the hard work required of a champion.

Her performance at the national track meet last year was not a source of pride for her, unfortunately. Even great track athletes don't necessarily win every time.

But now that the results are in for this year's national meet, I'd just like to point out that the young lady is the #2 thrower in the country...and it's only her junior year.

This is me bragging, with no shame and no apology.

Blindsided

Gotta love those experiences of being blindsided by little paws and arms attached to kids from the elementary school side of campus.

Frequent givers of hugs.

Pushers

Grateful today for beautiful humans who crashed into my youth, childhood, and young adult years, pushing me beyond what was previously comfortable for or required of me.

The challenges they set in front of me ended up revealing things I didn't know I was made of.

And these days, my high expectations for the teenagers at school remind me of all that.

Taking Honduras Home

This photo taken in a southeastern U.S. city sparked hope for my future.
It opened my thinking to possibilities I'm rather interested in for somehow bringing the simple peacefulness of
small town Honduras to my native land when I return there someday.

Scorpion

The Pre-K teacher had some unplanned excitement of an unusual nature. Her finger looks a little purple now after an initial misstep, but in the end she found a way to..."contain" the situation.

This container may have once held Pringles,
but whoever reaches inside now will get something
far different.

Thug Life: It's Hard Out Here For A Teacher

I noticed a thought in my mind that went like this:

Some moments of a teacher's life are like trying to force-feed a room full of people so they take what you know they'd suffer without.

"Claps or pounds on two - 1, 2..."
We have a rhythmic little system for checking answers in class. The teens have learned to clap twice or pound on
the desk twice on my command to indicate whether they agree or disagree with the answer just given
by a classmate. Lets me know instantly whether a question needs to be discussed further.

Feeling Outside My Mind For What's Impossibly Inside It

Realizing today that I'm having a bizarre experience internally that feels a little insane.

A bit of backstory:
For some reason the other month, God decided to say something to me about the future.

Now the thing he said is completely unsupported by present circumstances. There's no basis for it in the reality of today. I guess that's not so strange, in light of ways the Lord has interacted with man since ancient times.

In the history of my faith journey, there have been times God gave me instructions for something I needed to do. But the message he sent this time was about what he plans to use his own hands to establish.

Getting back to the point of all this -
I guess this is just the first time I've experienced how much it freaks the mind to simultaneously know something very significant regarding the future...something the brain has no way of knowing outside of the Holy Spirit...something observable facts do not yet support...and to have limited control or responsibility in the matter other than trusting God, continuing to listen and walk, and waiting for the moment he presents his work so the rest of the world understands what you knew all along...while at the same time being inevitably affected and influenced by the unseen truth that's now part of your reality because of the confidence you have regarding the things God says.

Very strange mentally. Also cool all the way around.

Quiet

More and more conversations are pointing out the way modern life often lacks two things that were more commonly experienced in days gone by:
quiet and stillness.

By now, we're all aware that these things give way to our busyness and to our attachment to the technology that is with us constantly due to increased functionality and portability.

A public speaker once pointed out that at any given time, a person today may have at least three or four ongoing conversations in process between face-to-face, wireless internet, and text messaging interactions. Without a doubt, there is quite a bit of information and "noise" steadily washing over us nowadays. And those advocating that we all need a break from it regularly - probably daily - seem to make a good point.

I thought of all this today, realizing that the dreaded detention sessions in my classroom during recess may be the only moment of quiet and stillness some kiddos experience.

I Remember

[Conversation with mom on the eve of my move to Honduras a year ago.]

Me (checking my luggage): You ever made plans to do something, and then just before the time comes, you're hit with a feeling that you can't believe it's actually going to happen?

Mom (working in the kitchen): Yes, but nothing like what you're about to do...

I knew all along that moving to a foreign country was a little crazy.
But if I hadn't gone for it, I would've missed out on this french fry-esque Caribbean delight made from plantains!

The Day No Kid Is Absent From School

Preparation and hard work by our school staff helped create a wonderful celebratory moment for the campus.

The annual Children's Day celebration combines fair-style food and fun activities, including inflatable bounce houses, face painting, and an obstacle course created by teachers for team competition.

Children's Day is a morning of delight for students who are glad to have a break from the hard work required of our talented bilingual scholars.

9 Months To Live...

A calendar alert that beeped in today read:

"What's Next/Update Resume"

I set this little appointment somewhere back in the spring. What it means is the time has come to start the soul searching, job post-reading, resume-updating process whereby I will find a place to move on to in the event that my final academic year at the bilingual school is at hand.

It's funny - in the past week, I've had more than one unexpected moment of looking up and saying to myself, "I know I'm gonna miss these scenes (or these students) when I'm gone."

My goal for now is simply to make the most of the priceless teaching, learning, and growing up taking place for me here, with the awareness that it's possible I have only 9 months left to live in Copan.

"Kids, guess who this is..."

Now and then, some relative or friend or sweetheart visits Copan from the home country of whichever foreign teacher he or she belongs to.

At our school, that visitor receives a possibly warmer, and definitely more hands-on welcome if his or her foreign teacher works on the elementary school side of campus.

Miss Chelsea's class meets
boyfriend from the midwest.

Bueno/Menos

My day was good.

Bueno: one of the new teachers, a young lady from Peru, has had some difficulty with work stress and with insect bites. She said insect repellent seemed to be making her skin even more attractive to the biting bugs!

I was able to share a couple things to try to help - a stress ball for her to squeeze when necessary as well as a bottle of the lotion I use to keep bugs away.

Members of the non-Honduran staff hanging out after school.
I arrived late, so the waiter was still bringing an extra chair for me when
this picture was taken.

Menos: Both my adult ESL evening classes were canceled, making me miss out on about $7.50 that I definitely needed to collect!

Where The Heart Is

As much as Copan makes me feel I could be happy here for a long time, that's not the whole story. Truthfully, my mind wanders to thoughts of making a simple, rich life for myself back in my home state.

Lake Guntersville, north Alabama.
I am looking forward to the day when scenes like this are within reach again.

Even though the gorgeous mountain setting and tropical climate I live in now are exquisite, I still find myself longing for the sweet southern beauty of the part of the world where I was born and raised.

Until It Happens To You

Some time ago at the wedding reception for someone I grew up with, I was introduced to a family friend.

The gentleman's name was Ross, he was somewhere around college age like the rest of us, and I knew nothing of him before that moment.

He seemed like a nice man, and for a while, he stood talking with us before getting lost in the crowd of wedding guests.

Something I said to my friend afterwards must have been what caused her to explain to me, "Ross lives in France."

Now my life experience at the time had given me no exposure to real-life American-born young adults who willingly chose to reside in another country. So, for whatever reason, I was taken aback by the whole idea.

It's funny to remember that now in light of my current circumstances.

The town's welcome sign doubles as a soccer goal for these two kiddos.

We All Have Gifts

If you had been in 10th grade English at the bilingual school today, you would have heard the "lead-in" discussion I used to engage my kids at the beginning of the lesson; I used a bit of dramatic storytelling and acting to relate the true story of the way my older brother would enlist my services for proofreading his love notes for girls when we were kids.

Guess I always had a knack for language, grammar, and writing.

Vroom

Waiting in the eternal line at the bank, I didn't expect to see my 15-year-old student there doing the same thing.

When we talked for a minute, I found out he had come to pay the fine for a ticket from the police. The ticket was for operating a motorcycle without a license. Apparently, he had jumped on his brother's motorcycle to run an errand. Police officers pulled him over just as he was arriving back home.

My favorite part of the story came when he told me, "My mom was so mad, she told the officer that she didn't even know I took the bike. But I was running the errand on the motorcycle at her request."

Loved this photo that was captured by a fellow teacher at the bilingual school.
I guess my young friend in the bank line would've been better off borrowing transportation
like this to run errands.

Sniper

When one of my 8th grade groups filed in today, I was finishing up some reminders I needed to jot down.

The bell wouldn't be ringing for another couple of minutes, so I kept my attention on what I was writing. When I put down the pen and looked up, this is what I saw all across the room:

I sniped a picture of my kiddos.

Made me smile to see how well they're responding to my expectation that they always bring a novel to class and read it quietly as soon as they arrive.

Last year, the same group of students was famous for being...difficult to corral - that's one way to put it.

I remember thinking those teenagers would be in for a rude awakening if I returned to the staff for a second year and became their teacher for Literature and English.

For the first month of school, they've been learning how my classroom runs and getting a taste of ways in which they will be pushed beyond the expectations of adults in their past. This is true when it comes to behavioral expectations and also academic rigor.

Those things are very necessary, but I also have a goal of creating a learning experience where students regularly smile and laugh more than in other classrooms.

Already, they've heard some of my life's most embarrassing stories...including the time in elementary school during relay races when I was hit with a case of diarrhea and could not manage to hold back the flow. That one's always a crowd pleaser.

Dreams Come True

I call myself a dreamer.

I was in undergrad when I first saw myself this way and recognized my tendency to engage in waking dreams. To me, plain old daydreaming is one part of who I am as a dreamer. The other part is that I'm always getting ideas in my head for ways to help myself or help other folks on the road of life.

It's almost like I have an internal mechanism designed to detect and seize upon anything that will further the goals, potential, or happiness of my fellow man or myself.

It's a good life.

And the icing on the cake is that sometimes - whether for another person or for myself - sometimes I get to play a role in actually making dreams come true.

In fact, living out my own dreams and watching them come true has been so normal that when I think about it, it seems like kind of a strange reality. I have the sense that already I've been blessed to live a life more rich than that of someone twice my age.

And what is interesting to me lately is a growing awareness that living my dream in Central America is opening up a new world of dreams for me to dare for.

It might not be easy, but anything is possible.

Today, I made this extemporaneous and sincere promise to a room of Honduran teenagers:

"You are going to work harder this year than you have ever worked in your life. The hard work will take place in this classroom.
And you are going to be more successful this year than you have ever been in your life."

I'm Honored

In the middle of today's Independence Day parade, something hit me. Not literally: I mean to say something occurred to me.

The realization was that it is a privilege to be made part of the town's parade - a parade celebrating the independence of a country of which I am not a native son.

Cool stuff.

Tip Of My Tongue

I still have a hard time finding the grammar structure and words I need during spontaneous conversations in Spanish.

That stuff doesn't come to me when I need it...it comes ten seconds after the person I spoke with has walked away! Right then, I know the way to express perfectly what I had wanted to say but couldn't manage on the spot. But late is, of course, better than never. It took work to progress to my current state, and I'm glad to be here and not still where I used to be.

"Thank you for letting me be myself."

One gift I'm thankful for today:

having a job that lets me be who I am.

I've not yet reached the end of my first ten years as a professional, and already I've spent more than enough time working jobs that involved putting on a face that wasn't natural for me...performing roles that didn't come naturally at all.

There is great value in environments (and also relationships) that allow you to be yourself.

Do You Like Parades?

Marching practice for a parade is not one of my favorite things. But plenty of practice is necessary in order to prepare our students to represent the school in the town's annual parade later this month.

Students and staff make their way through the streets of Copan in the parade every year as part of the country's Independence Day celebration.

A moment captured during last year's parade.

There are definitely worse things, so I try to keep a good attitude no matter what.

It's kinda funny to think about the fact that for an introvert who doesn't care to be the center of attention, a parade is probably the last place he'd like to find himself obligated to appear each September!

Striking Gold!

As a Language Arts teacher, there are times when I stumble across a nice grammar game somewhere - one that gives students an opportunity for play while also compelling them to correct or fill in the errors or gaps in their understanding.

"Whose Line Is It Anyway" and other games can boost the enjoyment AND the effectiveness of grammar practice in classrooms. For this reason, they are like gold to me.

Here's To You, Diana

Getting a new school year underway makes my thoughts to turn to educators I received instruction from during my days as a student.

It seems appropriate to say a word about one living legend in the world of education - a teacher called Diana Mayhall. She was the one back in high school who taught me to hold both the beauty of the past and the awareness that the future will bring beauty of its own.

Here's to you, Ms. Mayhall!

The Real Thing

I have spent several years working in education - an environment that involves emergency situations and hazards sometimes.

For most of my career, I have served on teams where I was to be the first responder in the event of an emergency. People working alongside me during mental health crises or potential campus violence situations have remarked about my ability to remain cool in the face of perilous incidents.

What happened in the school's outdoor cafeteria today could have blemished my record.

Not a toy.

That's When You Know You've Got It Good

Thankful today for a life so satisfying that though penniless, it makes Americans here say things like, "The money that could be made by returning to working in the U.S. is irrelevant to me.”

Creative Space

A favorite spot in town for me is this poolside bar area where I'm known to sip Coke with cherry flavoring while spending quality time with my writing notebook and iPod.