Rangels in Honduras

It looks like we've had a sudden change in plans for our road trip. Between Del, Alex and I, we are a constantly shifting, never quite here or there, group of travelers. Will we go to Denver, New Mexico, a Colorado ski resort, or.... Honduras? Will we ever make it back to Oregon?

Honduras??? This all started about a week before we left Yellowstone with an email from Christina, whom I worked with at Food Roots in Tillamook. The school she's working at in Honduras, Escuela Mayatan http://school.mayatanfoundation.org/, was losing 2 teachers. Knowing we were about to leave Yellowstone, would we like to come? "But, of course," we said. Why would we miss up an invitation to go work in another country, especially one where we can work on our rudimentary Spanish? Off went our resumes. The initial word was that there were teachers available who had applied at the beginning of the school year, so we put Honduras out of our mind and drove out of Yellowstone on our big US road trip, heading for South Dakota. Five days later, we thought it would be a good idea to check email, excitedly finding an email asking if we were still interested. We set up a phone interview for while we were in Denver and in cell phone range. The interview went well enough, but we were still left wondering. It sounded like there were other more promising candidates. But, good fortune was shining and we were offered positions at the school on Friday!

Our new jobs: I will be teaching science classes to middle school aged students (in English) - hooray Civil Engineering degree. Alex, in a job being created for him, will be supervising construction projects at the school and acting as a substitute teacher.

Our road trip has completely changed. We're now in Phoenix for a very short visit with Alex's family, having abandoned the plan for the big birthday party. We cut short the visit with Mame in Denver and had a much too short visit with Leslie in Santa Fe, NM. After 2 nights here, we're taking the fastest route to Oregon to pack up the house and get it ready to rent, abandoning the plan for the big birthday party. Fortunately, Del and I have been really good about celebrating Alex's 50th birthday along the way, so he may be celebrated out (ha, ha). The goal is to leave the first week in November. Phew! Our plan for now is to have a giant moving sale this coming weekend and to beg our friends to help us pack and get our remaining possessions into storage. (Please help!) If you've had an eye on any of our furniture, now's the time to take advantage of us! (Keeping in mind that we're essentially working for room and board at a non-profit school.)

Adios, for now, and I will soon be blogging from Central America.