Pictures part 2

Here are some more pictures of our group a.ka. our family for two weeks :). We'll try to post a couple more, but this is all for now.

Pictures part 1

Here are a couple pictures from our trip :) and I'll post a couple more on another blog!

Charlie´s Angels

So we are currently in a hotel in Tegucigalpa, it´s amazing having beds and running water, haha. We are starting to get excited about our flight home tomorrow, yay!! Last night we had a small fiesta with the local volunteers and the families that we built the houses for. We played card games, ate cake, and tried to socialize (it was difficult because of the language barrier). It was emotional saying good-bye to our new friends and hearing their kind words towards us. Today we visited a university in Tegucigalpa, it was quite pretty and enjoyed delicious smoothies. Well we will write again when we are back in the states.

Courtney and Ashley

...and then I found 20 lipedas!

As we prepare ourselves to head home, I get feelings of excitment and sadness. This really has been the most challenging, yet most amazing experience of my life. I can´t wait to share how much this trip has impacted me. I will never forget all the wonderful, kind people that have opened their hearts to me and how much I´ve learned about solidarity and living a completely different life than my own. This will probably be the last post from me on this trip, so I thought I should say thank you for all the thoughts and prayers. Also, instead of having a work day tomorrow our leader arranged for us to go see the local university and the capital square so I´m very excited to experience something different in the Honduran culture. Oh, and Valley of Angels was beautiful. Got to go.
Love and miss you all!
Courtney

Spanenglacion gurl

Holacion de Honduracion!!!
So since we last wrote, the local volunteers and us have created a new language called Spanenglacion, it´s very similar to Spanglish. Monday and Tuesday we had full work days at the two different sites (one in Danli and the other in La Juaga). We have continued to move the sand and bricks up hill and have started laying the bricks, it´s finally starting to look like a house!! We are very excited about our progress and hard work, it´s finally paying off!! On Wednesday we had contextual visits in Tegucigalpa (the capital), where we learned about their government and how involved our government actually is in Central America. Sadly, two of our visits were cancelled, but we still had a great day (which included Baskin Robbins :) ). Both today and yesterday were full work days but we are looking forward to tomorrow being a half day and we are especially looking forward to Sunday when we go to the Valley of Angels to do some shopping. That´s it for now, hope to write one more post before we leave.
Adionacion,
Ashley and Courtney

Today in Spain.... ;)

Hey Everyone,
This is both Ashley and Courtney posting. So after our last post we went around town and ate some ice cream and had some smoothies...they were delicious! After that we went to this AMAZING pizza place (who would of thought pizza in Honduras). We got to try Honduran pizza which had eggs and avacodo and some sort of mystery meat...yum! On the way home we all had died laughing...no one knows why ;). So then Sunday came along and we experienced church with a translator-thankfully. Everyone gave us hugs and kisses. It made us feel like celebrities! Then we had another mystery plate (we have lots of those), which was the best one so far! After that we decided to venture to Nicaragua where I (Courtney) was a creep and secretevely took a picture with the military police with very large guns. Then we took a very long nap and after we got to play soccer with some local Hunduran teenagers. It was so much fun!
Today and tomorrow are both full work days and our group is split up. Thankfully there is a lot of volunteers. We all have awesome tan lines and amazing bug bites/bruises. I (Courtney) have a bruise that´s taking over my leg haha.
Adios!!
Courtney & Ashley

Courtney¨s post

Hi All,
We are here and safe! This has been very interesting so far. It took almost a full day to actually arrive in Danli where we are working. We are working on two different houses. These people need it more than anyone I´ve ever seen. One of the women is a single mom and lives off of less than $4 a day! We´ve been spending our days making cement and doing the first steps of building a house. These past couple days have really hummbled me. Wish I had more time, but I got to go!
Miss and love you all!

Courtney

P.S. I appreciate all your prayers. I can feel them :).

Estoy en Honduras

Hello from honduras!!! Even after a day and a half of hauling buckets of sand, I am still enjoying being in Honduras. The food is great, the view is AMAZING, and everyone is so friendly. Tomorrow (Sunday) we are going to a church service (the same church that we are staying at) and then we have the rest of the day off. Monday and Tuesday are full work days so i hope that everyone will be well rested, blisters will have disappeared and our muscles will stop aching. Today a lot of us experienced our first bucket shower, it wasn´t so bad but the water was so cold!! But it feels nice to be clean. We are staying at the church, as I said, there is no running water but there is electricity. Food is made by some of the volunteers at the church, I think, either way it is delicious, different but delicious. Today for lunch we had french fries with ketchup!!! Fue muy sabrosa. Well I think that is it for now, the next post will probably be when I get back to the states. Adios!
Ashley

Here we go!!!

Yay!! Today is the day!! The flight is in a little over three hours, bags are finally packed (just finished a few minutes ago) and about ready to head to the airport. I am so excited for these next two weeks, all of the new experiences that will be learned and great people that we will meet. Well here we go, talk to you all when we are in Honduras.

XOXO

Ashley.

Preparing...

Hey All,
This is Courtney posting and as Ashley mentioned we are both peer instructors for the class NAU 100. The Fall of 2009 was my first year doing it and part of my teaching involved the book Enrique's Journey. This is a true story of a boy who travels to America to find his mom. After reading this book, my perspectives on a lot of things changed. I soon learned of an opportunity to travel there and be able to learn their culture and take part in building a couple houses.
I'm so thankful to all the people that are supporting us in this so Ashley and I decided to start a blog. We may not get to post very often, but we will try our best to keep you updated as much as we can! Well it's time for me to go pack and finish last minute stuff. The nerves are finally hitting and I can't believe we actually leave tomorrow!!! As Ashley mentioned, our flight takes off tomorrow night at around 11:30PM and we will arrive in Honduras around 11:30AM the next day.

Adios,
Courtney*

The Start of a Great Adventure

Courtney and I (Ashley) are both Peer Instructors at NAU. We will be teaching a college transition to incoming Freshmen students this fall. We are about to go to Honduras thru NAU Study Abroad and Sierra Service Project. Our group will be in Honduras for two weeks, we will stay at one of the local churches and build a house for one of the families. I have to go finish packing, I will write again before we leave (our flight is very late on Wednesday night).

TTFN

(Ta Ta For Now)