The moon and the mountains

I absolutely love Honduras. I love living here. My life is so peaceful. I rarely face unpleasant conflict. I never watch TV or hear the sound of traffic. Every morning I wake up early enough to see the sun rise, and every morning (unless it's really dense up in our cloud forest) I can see it peek up over the magnificent mountains. I am surrounded by mountains; they are on every side of me.

I have never felt so appreciative of nature before this experience. When I eat my breakfast, I often see incredibly brightly-colored birds in my trees. The trees in my yard grow fruit that I can eat. I have no idea what the fruit is, but it's delicious. The sound of the river is my only background noise. I have never seen a night sky as magnificent as it is here. I can literally see galaxies. Last week the moon was so bright, I couldn't look directly at it without squinting.

Sometimes seeing things every day can make them seem commonplace, but somehow the mountains and the night sky remain as staggering as they appeared the first day I saw them.

I love the girls I live with. I love my students. I love teaching. And I absolutely love my life in Honduras. I have never felt so lucky.

In two weeks, I will be home. I am so excited to go back to something familiar in order to see how and if I've changed during my time here... by that I mean, if my priorities have changed, my habits, what I think is important, how I choose to spend my time, etc etc. Sometimes it's really hard to tell if things are changing, but the past four months have been so dramatic for me that I feel like I must be different now than I was when I came! Hopefully in good ways. We'll see.