Roatan at Thanksgiving

We treated ourselves to our last little excursion for a while to the jewel of Honduras: Roatan. I remember right before we moved her three summers ago, one of my 8th graders said, "Mrs. Roberts, I went to Honduras over spring break." I was like, "What?!" And she responded with, "Yeah, our cruise ship stopped at a place called Rowaton." Little did I know that I would get to meet these types of travelers in the nearby future.

There are two spots for most vacationers on Roatan: West End (the cheaper, but more social side) and West Bay (the resort side with the amazing beach with the corral reef within your reach). We decided to spend our second Thanksgiving at this island paradise, hoping to reel in some of our family, but alas, only our adopted "family" (aka: teachers at the school) could come. So, we returned to the vacationers bliss: West Bay, staying at a new place, Bananarama (upon recommendation of our dearly missed friends, Mike and Mavis). We were greeted by four cruise ships of travelers enjoying a drink or four at the Bananarama. Four cruise ships is a bit of a heavy load (no pun intended) for this little part of the island (the average is 2-3), but they managed to find space on the beach. We, on the other hand, were exhausted from a short day of travel with our 8-month old son (yeah, we're wimps). And it was only noon. The inn hooked us up with a great cabin in the garden away from the noise, and we found some time for a nap. Things started looking up from that point on!

The four days passed quickly, and by the end, we found ourselves once again wanting to stay....This place is magical. The water is so clear. The baby loved to play in the ocean, take naps on the beach...Dunn's so wonderful! And we got to spend some QT alone while our friends (thanks Jessica, Mollie, Paule, and Ashley!) took care of Dunn for a few hours here and there. Here's a few shots from our Thanksgiving trip (sorry if it's a bit redundant FB friends). Next year, home sweet home for Thanksgiving! Yey!

The babysitters had a little fun with Diego

The Honduran police 

Our favorite little man with our favorite salsa picante

Dunn made friends with everyone--the servers were big fans of his

His beach photo shoot--round 2 with the sitters

Raspberries...

So, I'm trying my hand at video footage of our little guy. (And thanks to Lindsey Schubert, I'm going with Vimeo...)He's just found his lips.  Next, I think he'll say "Mama." Ok, maybe not. But he does a lot of screeching and laughing, and all kinds of funny little sounds. Somewhere in there there's got to be a word of some kind.

Raspberries begin from Elisa Roberts on Vimeo.


And a shot from his bathtime this week...

A little light

We joined one of our school extracurricular groups, Jovenes en Accion, on their visit to Hospital Escuela (a public hospital that is also a teaching hospital). They have a cancer ward there for children. So, the kids brought coloring books and crayons, books, and other little things to play with the children that have this often terminable disease to cheer them up for the day.

The drive there was your typical Tegus "first time" experience (or maybe it's just us!). It took us an hour to locate and park (near, not at because there's no parking allowed inside of the hospital) at the hospital that is only 10 minutes away from us. Upon entering the hospital, we saw the line at the emergency room filled with all kinds of people. As we turned the corner, we came upon the entrance to the pediatric cancer ward. There were two sections. The first we entered was for the new arrivals. It was a big room filled with about 20 beds of kids from the ages of 4-16. The families are required to be with them in the room, so several kids had their parents alongside of them. We walked to each bed, at first tentatively--working through our Spanish and trying to love on the kids.

Colin brought Dunn around to several of the kids--and the girls were so excited! One girl, Leesa, was only 13, but she looked like she was much older from this experience. She held Dunn, hugged and kissed him, and for a moment looked like she was well. We prayed for her (mostly in English), but she was desperate for any hope. The next section was filled with private rooms. There, we met Sasha, who was probably about 5. She was a big fan of both Dunn and the camera (as you can see from the photos below).

The final level in the cancer unit was filled with kids who came in for treatment either daily or weekly, so they didn't stay in the hospital for long. There room was like a waiting room filled with old, used bus seats to sit on. There, I watched the kids from our school interact with such ease that I was completely overwhelmed by their affection for the kids--and these were middle school boys! They played, they talked, they treated the kids as they would normal children and they were enjoying themselves.

When we left the hospital, Colin and I were saying that this is what we wanted to do when we first came here. We've got lots of ground to make up, but we're game! It was a beautiful experience, and just showed us again how little things like that go a long way.

Sasha's "shy" look

Some of the students from Jovenes en Accion

Kids are so wonderful and resilient.

Dunn was more than entertained with this little girl's blanket--she later moved it to the other side..

Sasha's "here I am world!" look

Even though I look a bit crazed, I couldn't leave this one out--Dunn's little crooked smile melts all the ladies!

Oktoberfest

We spent our last long weekend of October on top of the beautiful mountains of La Tigra. A German couple built a beautiful pair of cabins on some breathtaking property in the "buffer zone" of La Tigra National Forest. It was actually October weather up on top of the mountain (we piled on all the clothing we had), and we had a good fire in an adobe fireplace and a fresh, homemade vegetarian meal. Our friends (aka...Dunn's surrogate aunties), Jessica and Mollie joined us for the sweet get-away...and they also got a hold of our camera before we knew what was up. Que refresco!

This is ball is our traveling rocking chair.  

On our short hike, we got a view of the cabin from the outside--it took them 3 years to build their home. And they've been entertaining guests for over 10 years now...

El Picacho

There's a little park that sits about 30 minutes outside of the city called El Picacho. We went there a few weeks ago on a picnic with friends, and it was so delightful. It was just the breath of fresh air we city-folks needed.

Dunn is just as fascinated as I am with the paint job.

This is the statue of Jesus that can be seen all around the city--but I bet the vulture on his head has an even better view.

The monster troll (Mollie) awaiting her prize (our friends take lots of turns holding Dunn)

The mama and the daddy

I guess the damage was already done...This is the sign above the museum at the park

They also have a Buddhist garden in the park--there is a lot of Chinese and Taiwanese influence here in Tegucigalpa.

Dunn need some head covering, but this was a little too distracting to do the job for long.

The world of 6 month old parents

We're pretty enamored with our baby Dunn, but we did manage to capture some pictures from this month that demonstrate we have a tiny (very tiny) life outside of him:

This month's book club read Colin and Steve's book, A Road More or Less Traveled (readaroad.com). Our book club is made up of members from the US Embassy and AST teachers. The ladies really enjoyed having a real live author come and speak about not only the adventure those two guys went on, but the process of writing about it. It was pretty cool. I was one proud wife of Applejack and sister of Futureman.

We celebrated Jessica's 30th birthday with some pinata fun at Sarah Willett's place.

We hung out with our favorite employada, Yuliza. And Elsa (my Spanish tutor) came for a visit, too!

We found our way to the Hotel Maya for a dip in the pool before the afternoon downpour...

Pre-Ultimate Frisbee power nap (one of our big highlights of the week--rain or shine!) and then we were off! 

Dunn's newest tricks at 6 1/2 months:

1) Gumming pretty much anything

2) Playing in his saucer--he's getting the hang of it! He's a jumper! Just like his cousin, Noah.

3) Rolling over, though we don't have any footage of that yet...

4) Meeting a cat for the first time.

5) Laughing out loud when he's being tickled--he only lets it go on for so long before he turns from laughing to angry grunts...(just like his daddy!)

We're loving this little guy! More pictures to come of our picnic at El Picacco this past weekend.