Buena Vista

My arrival at Buena Vista on Monday, my home for the next five months, was a celebration of more than merely seeing the place I have waited so long to see... it was a breath of tranquility after a long and curvy, jouncy and wild ride from Tegucigalpa past bony animals and over pot-holed roads, along with two clutch starts due to battery failure, an empty stomach, and a parched throat from a mere cup-and-a-half of water in some twelve hours.

My journal entry last night said dia quatro at the top of it--so yes, now that I am on my third full day here at the school, I feel as if I can tell a little.

Buena Vista is beautiful indeed and as was told me from the beginning, is set in a little valley surrounded by grand green hills. Yes, of course showers are cold. No, we do not have electricity. Yes, we are on winter vacation until February and I therefore have a little more of a chance at working out the Spanish chatter of the few staff around me before my English classes begin.

It is quiet here, oh so quiet, fifteen minutes away from the bustling little village of El Suyutal, and therefore protected from all but the braying of donkeys and the crowing of roosters from various places around campus. The slower-paced Honduran lifestyle has my eyebrow quizzically angled at one moment and my heart leaping in delight at another... everything is all so new.

This evening five of us trooped out to the village for an evening prayer meeting where I was once again reminded of how American I am. I have taken so much for granted. Here our church is a roof with three walls, a cement-pad floot. But truly, the hearts and hands are so warm, even to a tall white girl who stumbles so badly when asked where she is from that she says, "I am Vermont." And then I have so often taken for granted the kinship of a conversation where every detail is understood, at least in word. This evening I stood in the center of a jolly group of church folks, smiling and nodding at all the appropriate places and catching the general drift...but I must remember that it has only been five days...

Oh, there is so much to say... about new friends, about our dogs and cats and parrots, about lonliness, about mealtimes and cooking, about the rats in the storeroom, about hikes, about lesson plans... But oh, the time is short. Someday too, pictures will be coming, friends.

I continue to be amazed at how God is blessing and how I have the assurance of His strength. Each day I am reminded that I am not here of my own accord, but that He has placed me here, and that it with His power that I will do the task before me. It is enough--or rather, the crowning cap on my joy.