Seasons, chapters, paths, the children

For everything there is a season. Today I ended one of the most important chapters of my life when I said goodbye to my students for the last time. I am not going to write details about what happened today. It is too close to my heart, and writing the details will only turn the raw emotions into inadequate words that could never truly convey how I felt, or feel now. I will simply say that it was one of the hardest days of my life and it left me absolutely drained.

I want to write more about the end of this experience, but the truth is, I don't know what to write right now. I'm too deeply in it to be able to properly reflect. I am too emotional, too exhausted. I don't know how I've changed or what my future holds for me. I don't remember the person I was before I came to Honduras, and I don't know how to explain this experience to anyone who wasn't here, doing it with me. It feels impossible to explain because it was a world of paradox that, on the surface, probably makes no sense. It felt both impossibly difficult and overwhelmingly rewarding. It was beautiful and ugly. It was a learning experience and a teaching experience. It was joyful and painful. It was confusing and painfully simple.

Six years ago, on the morning I was supposed to leave to go to college for the first time, my alarm went off and I hid under the covers of my bed because I dreaded leaving home so much. My dad came into my room and sat on my bed and told me it would be okay. He talked to me about the many lives we lead within the scope of our lifetimes. Doors open and close, experiences begin and end, and we forge our paths to take us somewhere meaningful. Nothing is forever, and goodbyes and salutations are integral parts of life. Change is hard, but extremely necessary.

It has been a beautiful year. In the end, for me, it was all about the children. As trite and cliche as this will sound, they did far more for me than I did for them. I don't know exactly where I'm headed next, but I do know that I will forever carry those children with me in my heart.

I have three more nights here on my mountain, and then I'm headed home on Monday to start the next chapter of my life. A year in Honduras... I did it.

The strangest year of my life

This has been, without any shadow of a doubt, the strangest year of my life. In fact, I can't believe that it has been a whole year. I remember when I first arrived in Honduras, everything was strange and new. I would constantly, for example, try to guess what time it was...I was usually about an hour or two late in my guesses. Honduras moves so slowly! The pace of life here is just incredibly slow. But, I adjusted to it. I quickly learned that there are very few forms of entertainment on the top of a mountain, and, with my friends, figured out ways to entertain myself. We talked endlessly, sang a lot, danced, had fires, chopped down Christmas trees, made our own Thanksgiving dinner (onion rings and corn dogs!), listened to lots of music. We struggled with the food, we struggled with the language, we struggled with the school administration, but we got through all of it and now here we are, with less than a week left to go.

It has been one of the strangest years of my life because all of my days blend together. Other than slight changes in weather and seasonal bugs (and now mice), it's very difficult for me to differentiate the days in my mind. It's like a big blur. Everything is so slow here! Things slowly happened, one thing after another. The days turned into weeks and the weeks into months. Honduras was a time warp. It was also very me-centric. My life here consisted of me, my friends/co-workers, and my students, and everything else fell way outside of that. I have kept in touch with my family and closest friends, but pretty much lost touch with everyone else. It's like I have Honduras-blinders on or something. I kind of forgot that there's a big world out there, that hasn't stopped moving while I've been here in the mountains. In all honesty, I'm nervous to rejoin the world.

I can say that I'm fully satisfied with the way I have lived my life here. I truly appreciated every day that I spent in the mountains. I basked in the sunlight, I spent ample time staring at the night sky, I noticed the clouds and the flowers and of course, the magnificent mountains. I spent many, many days at the river. I sunbathed, swam, played in the waterfalls. I have made wonderful, life-changing friends here. I spent time with my neighbors. I learned how to make baleadas. I learned how to teach second grade. I learned Spanish. I learned exactly how much I don't know. I learned how to ask the questions that might help me seek some sort of greater truth. I spent so much time with my students. Teaching them, playing with them, observing them, hugging them. I love them.

I have never known love quite like this before, either. It's not like family love or friend love, it's really unique. I love these children so much, but they aren't mine! I am just their second grade teacher...I don't know how much they will even remember me. I wish I could stay with them forever. I want the very best for them. When they misbehave, I love them even more. I want to help them in every way that I possibly can. I'm probably going to end up dedicating my professional career to them by studying immigration law. I just adore them.

This is hard. I'm teaching for the last time. I want to enjoy it and maximize my time while also remaining reflective and soaking in every moment here. I want to psych myself up, but not so much that I'm devastated on Friday. I also recognize that I have been pretty down on Honduras for a while now. I feel that it's time to go, I just don't know how to leave. I don't know how to say goodbye to my life here. My life here is so comfortable that the idea of leaving feels...overwhelming. But in my heart, I know that the only thing worse than leaving would be staying. I know I can't stay....I guess I just also wish I didn't have to say goodbye.

Running on empty

The last time I remember feeling this exhausted was at the beginning of this school year. I remember that I would come home from school and just collapse on my bed. Every day wore me out. The type of exhaustion I feel now is just as overwhelming, but in a different way. Now, I feel absolutely empty. I feel like I have given everything I have to give this year.

Physically, I can feel that my body is angry at me. The diet here is so oil-heavy, so starch-heavy. I don't feel healthy. I'm also very tired all the time, always ready to go to sleep. I just don't feel good.

Mentally, I'm frustrated. There is no intellectual stimulation here for me. None. I read as much as I can, and I look at the news websites, but in the US I was always surrounded by news and articles and discussions of politics and current events. I have always craved intellectual stimulation, and there is just none of it here. The national newspaper in Honduras, "La Prensa," is an absolute disaster of a newspaper. No one seems to know anything about current events or politics. I miss spending time with an informed public, and my mind is bored.

Emotionally... I'm already spent, and I know I have an emotional goodbye to prepare myself for. The emotional element of this year has been...tumultuous. It's hard to live in an impoverished country and fall in love with a group of great children who have grown up there. Their lives include so many hardships that no children should have to face, and helping them navigate through those problems for a year has been a very challenging (albeit very rewarding) experience. I know that saying goodbye to the children and leaving the place I have called home for the past year is going to be extremely difficult. I don't feel like I have the energy for it.

Today we went to town (like we do every Wednesday), and I just felt like I couldn't do it. I couldn't go to the bank, I couldn't walk through the dark aisles of the store to buy groceries (it didn't help that the electricity across town had gone out), I couldn't go to the market, I couldn't even walk to my student's house to make dinner with his family. Of course I did do all of those things, but I just felt like I was dragging my body to do them.

I want to stay positive for the last week and a half, but it's so hard. I'm aware of my dual and competing emotions of both being sad to leave and anxious to leave, and I'm not entirely sure of how to deal with that. It's just a really weird time.