This is our house in Tela.  It has 3 bedrooms all with flyscreens, which don't keep out the mosquitoes, and a bathroom with a concrete shower and cold water.   In the large garden, there's a hibiscus hedge along the front fence, a mango tree, coconut palms with real coconuts, banana plants and a green lawn.  Outside the back door there's a concrete water trough, called a pila, which will be needed to be filled with water when the main water supply is cut off, and a clothes line.  When we arrived the house was neat and clean inside and the beds were all made and when we discovered that there would be no power until the next day, it didn't seem to matter. At least we didn't have to share with anyone we didn't know and it was actually quite romantic with the candles!

There beautiful views through all our windows.   This is from our kitchen window looking onto a soccer ground.   I don't know the name of the tree, but it is very common in Honduras and had vivid orange and yellow pea-like flowers with jacaranda shaped leaves.   There are green hills in the distance filled with tropical vegetation.

Vanessa has been extremely helpful.   She spent 2 and a half days getting us set up with everything we needed in the house, the internet put on, helped us buy a cheap television and fixed up my mobile phone.   The electricity company wanted to reinstall our power  after the weekend, but Vanessa was very persuasive.  First,she had to borrow a ladder from a friend, which was then put on to the back of a ute ( locally known as a pick up truck) and placed against the electricity pole.  They couldn't do the job if the ladder wasn't high enough and we all heaved a sigh of relief when it passed the test. The man then climbed the ladder and cut the connecting wire with a large pair of scissors.   You can see the photo of this on the side of the blog page on the right.   At last we had power!

(  If you want to see more details in the photos, double click on the picture and it will come out full size.)

This was our first view of Honduras from the plane coming in to land at San Pedro Sula. It was incredibly emotional for me, like coming home again. My husband, Glenn was still open-minded at this early stage and wouldn't say whether he was happy to be back or not. I think he didn't want to influence my thoughts.  The airport looked so peaceful, not like the newspaper reports of political chaos that we'd been reading about in the newspapers for months.

Vanessa, the volunteer coordinator from our new school, Jeannette Blanca Kawas Bilingual School picked us up from the airport. There was a minor hiccup, she'd been held up by traffic and we were waiting half an hour before she arrived, but we were so relieved to see her and she was so friendly we didn't mind.

Holidaying with our son, Andrew's family Aug 5 - Aug 11

This is a family photo of our family we've left behind in Viera, Florida. Andrew and Nancy with their three boys, Connor, Bryson and baby Carson and Nancy's parents, Cindy and Ron. I'm left at the front and Glenn is 2nd row right. It was a really special time with them. We met Carson ( aged 5 months) for the first time. Connor and Bryson were a year older than we'd last seen them and were still waiting up for us when we finally arrived at their house 8 pm. Connor had an early 5th birthday party on Sunday when we met his little friends. It was so lovely to be real grandparents with them even though it was for such a short time. We'll really looking forward to seeing them again during the Christmas break.

Early morning frost in our garden in Hobart

It was so cold in Hobart before we left and I took this photo of the frost in our front garden. It will be good to look back at the frosty pictures when it gets too hot in Honduras.

Leaving Australia

It took us 40 hours to reach Ohio where we're staying with our friend Brad. Glenn is painting his house and I'm painting one of his many fences to help pay for some of the expensive plane flights. It's amazingly quiet here after the hectic farewells and changing house in our last weeks in Hobart.

Our friend Earl, is house sitting for us and the last week before we left, he moved in with his houseful of furniture while we packed to leave. All our friends and family gave us a wonderful send off and we're going to miss them so much when reality sets in. The parcels were finally sent by airmail thanks to Australia Post and Graham Sturgess and we hope they reach San Pedro Sula safely.

In the last few weeks there have been daily news reports about the political coup in Honduras, with possible civil war in Honduras. The ex-president Mel Zelaya was dragged from his bed by the military police at dawn and deported to Costa Rica still wearing his pyjamas. According to friends living in Honduras, CNN news from USA have grosely exaggerated the situation reporting huge demonstrations against the deportation. We've been advised that Tela is still a peaceful town and that we will be in no danger. Normally, Honduras never reaches the newspapers.

Today we visited Albuera St School a school I used to teach at many years ago, in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia. The grade 4/5 class had packed up 5 parcels of books for us to send to Honduras. We gave a talk and a slide show at the school assembly. It was fantastic to meet the delightful students and staff who were really interested in our talk. The photo of a large tarantula convinced everyone that Honduras was not on their favourite places to go! We were so impressed with the excellent behaviour of the children who sat still and listened throughout the whole assembly, even after 2 days of rain.

Next stop was the post office to collect the boxes for all the gear we wanted to send to Honduras.   A local politician, Graham Sturgess had promised us that Australia Post would pay for the postage of the boxes. The man in charge at the post office was not at all helpful and told us he knew nothing about it and we had to go back to our local politician's office to find out how to get the parcels sent to Honduras.  Hopefully, we'll get the go-ahead to send the parcels in the next few days.

Glenn and I are making arrangements to return to Honduras in August 2009 for 10 months. This time we'll be teaching in Tela, our favourite Caribbean town. I'm teaching Grade 4 and Glenn's on Grade 5. Our friends think we're mad or adventurous, depending on their attitudes to travel. We think that at our time of life this will probably be the last time we will be volunteering overseas. I hope we achieve our aims.