Potted Plants and Peppers Oh My!

Another week in Hondo and the more and more Luke and I are falling in love with it. This week was spent getting our classrooms ready and for me, hosting an open house for some of my families. It was so interesting to meet some of the parents and for me to be the focal point... I think that it went very well and all of the parents seemed pleased with everything I said and explained that we would be doing in class. On Friday, the school had a 'teacher appreciation' lunch where they served sandwiches and wine (another reason why I love this country, 1 in the afternoon at school, sure let's crack open a bottle). The wine and cheese here is fabulous compared to China so Luke and I have been very happy that way. We are both anxious to start school and meet all of the kiddos. We've also been eating at the cafeteria where I am now a frequent purchaser of juice boxes and chocolate milk. Man I am so grown up.

We got some more amazing news which made us really happy. So, when we signed the contracts for the school, they said as a married couple we would only get one housing allowance (lame right?) and one moving/relocation allowance. The only frustrating part of that is that if we came down as two single teachers, we would each get that relocation bonus of 2000USD. We were annoyed but figured it was fine. So at the fair our bosses said they would add the housing allowance to my salary to sort of 'hide' it from the company. On our date of hire, we slyly checked to make sure that we did in fact get that (you all understand after China our nervousness). Well, the woman we talked to had no idea and said that she would talk to Martha about it. We felt so gross thinking that we were maybe only going to get one housing allowance and one relocation bonus. Martha found Luke later that day and explained they had already added the housing allowance in our salary for us and she was going to make sure that we each got our moving bonus! So, in short, we love our boss! Not only did she make sure we got the two housing allowances, but the two bonuses!

Thursday we decided to host a party at our house for people who work at the school. Luke made a pasta bar which was a huge hit. We had about 12 people over and it was so great to get to know some of the other teachers! We are pretty excited to work with everyone here. I think we are going to try to do an every Thursday thing but rotating houses. We will see how it works out.

Friday was a busy day also because not only did we get the house fumigated (all organic, water and green potato), but I went to the local nursery and bought two hanging plants! One reason we also liked this house was how close it was to a nursery (3 houses down). The gardener only spoke Spanish, but we were able to figure out what I wanted and he planted them for me. Luke and I went back to pick up the plants together and started looking at everything they had. We are in talks of reduing the back yard for the dogs (adding grass and some plants). While we were there we saw a pepper plant which Luke got really excited about. The gardener laughed and picked some peppers and gave them to Luke. He was so giddy!

My Spanish is still getting better but I already feel a lot more confident communicating with people. We will see what happens as we continue living down here.

We are heading out to the river today with a bunch of teachers to go swimming and hiking. Cheers!