Central America - Day 2 (Antigua, Guatemala to Copán, Honduras)

Day 2 started off with a cute breakfast place with an incredible coffee. We hit the road to cross the border to Honduras, which was expected to take most of the day. We are in a cute, small bus that will be with us until we hit El Salvador and our driver’s name is Juan. 

Cafe Muyalé - Antigua, Guatemala

On the way, we stopped at some reset areas and a mall for lunch. I had fried chicken, fries and a bun at one of the places that was recommended to me by the jockey on the plane, Pollo Campero. The chicken was good and tasty. 

After the lunch stop, it was another hour to border with Honduras. The border was simple with both exit and entrance in the same building. 

More ink in my passport!

We arrived at Hotel Brisas de Copán to settle in for the next two days. The hotel is nice, quant and I had my own room for the two nights because one of the members on the trip did not get his visa in time, so we had some extra rooms. 

Hotel Brisas de Copán - Copán, Honduras

Around town, they have these cute taxis in the form of tuk tuks so we took one up to a lookout point for a drink and to watch the sunset. 

After our drinks, we headed to dinner, again in the tuk, tuks. I had a traditional dinner of different protein and then crashed for the evening. 

Central America - Day 1 (St. Louis, USA to Antigua, Guatemala)

I have promised myself that I was going to revive this blog for the past few years, so damn it, this summer I am going to post during my vacation in Central America. I am on a 17-day adventure through Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Costa Rica with G Adventures. 

Dad and I woke up at 3 a.m. for me to catch my 6 a.m. flight to Guatemala. I packed a few doughnuts for my breakfast because I love a sweet breakfast and well, it’s vacation! I rarely take US carriers, but for this trip, I took Delta. The flight was painless and on time, which I attribute to the early morning departure. I transited through Atlanta and I was impressed with how easy and efficient it was to navigate the airport. While on the second leg, I sat next to a guy who was a jockey and raced horses in Dubai. After he had an accident, he retired and lives on the East Coast with his wife and kid. He was going to Guatemala to visit his wife’s family and then over to Panama to visit his family. 

Atlanta International Airport

Immigration was easy and the luggage are quickly. Once I exited the airport, I found the driver and it was off to Antigua, the starting point for the tour. I found it interesting that just outside the airport, there were places to buy balloons, flowers and gifts for family and friends flying into Guatemala. 

The transportation guy told me it would take about 90 minutes to drive about 30 miles because of the traffic. We arrived at the hotel and I checked in. The front desk told me my roomie was already here, so I walked upstairs to meet my roommate. She was an Australian girl, super sweet and is also a guide, but is on vacation for this trip. I dropped my stuff and headed out to find lunch. Antigua was a really cute town with lots of colonial-style houses and friendly people. I found a cute bar and caught the rest of the World Cup. I also ordered a shrimp tostada and a dark beer. It was divine and a fun atmosphere with the game on.

La Quinta Santa Lucia - Antigua, Guatemala

I came back to the hotel and took a nap for about an hour and then met the group around 6 p.m. There were 12 people in the group and most everyone was from North America. As we got to know each other, we quickly realized that most of the women on the trip are teachers, so we had a lot in common. I love these trips because I meet so many interesting people, mostly single, independent women like myself. After our meeting, we headed out to dinner where I had black bean soup and horchata. The food was delicious. I feel asleep relatively early after a long day of travel.

From Teacher to Administrator

I have been an administrator now for about two years. Before that I taught for 18 years. It has been a difficult switch, to say the least because I desperately miss being in the classroom. But I am thankful that I get to work with leaders and teachers who love children and want to improve each and every day.

Being an administrator is hard. Very hard. You have to make hard decisions that affect people's lives. You have to make hard decisions that affect students' lives. It is hard. One of the hardest parts of my job is finding resolutions to conflicts between colleagues. Sometimes teachers will have different opinions about an issue or maybe they are having a bad day. In some cases, my colleagues may disagree with teach other philosophically and because we are all so invested in education, sometimes we get offended or take things too personally. Add on top of that, add the fatigue of this time of year and a growing virus threat and you have a recipe for disaster.

There are parts of my job that are extremely rewarding. Like judging a STEAM fair and seeing the excitement of engineering at work. Choosing winners and listening to kids who are so excited to tell you about their creation is just thrilling. It is rewarding. Their hard work (and their teacher's hard work) materialized in just two or three minutes. This renews my passion and reminds me why I went into teaching. It often makes  feeds my underlying hunger to go back into the classroom.

This one was a neat idea to use as a review game in the classroom.

This one won third place.

Balance is really hard as an administrator because of all of the people that demand your time. During lunchtime, I try to read and catch up on a few blogs. While I was reading, I came across this infographic that discusses how to focus in the age of distraction. Obviously I have to answer emails and messages, but could I focus more in order to get more things done?

Credit: https://historytech.wordpress.com/2020/02/21/7-tools-that-can-help-your-kids-work-and-think-distraction-free-feel-free-to-jump-on-these-yourself/

 One of my sweet coworkers recently asked me, "How do you have time for a life?"

I replied, "I don't know."

But I really do try to compartmentalize my life. I try to enjoy my weekends. I cherish time with my partner. I take time to exercise, sleep, and try to eat right. I travel as often as possible. Those are supposed to be the keys to balance. Right?

Sri Lanka - Days 1 and 2

Once we realized that we had a five-day holiday for National Day in the UAE, we started looking for a place to spend the extra time. We looked at many countries, but we decided on Sri Lanka. But of course the last week before a vacation is the longest ever. This last week has been an extremely long and exhausting week as we prepare exams for our students and wrap up our semester. On top of it, we had a PD day that required a lot of planning. Needless to say, I was so excited to get to the end of the day Thursday. After work, I had to get a long run in, so I ran 8K in preparation for my 10K race coming up next Friday. Then, Moh arrived in Dubai (he lives in Abu Dhabi) and we headed to Thanksgiving dinner. We chose a smokehouse for dinner because they offered a set menu that included many good options and of course, all you can eat. The menu included:

Dessert: we had apple crumble with ice cream and butter toffee drizzle. It was delicious.

Starters: festive chicken wings, smoked beef stuffing, smoked stuffed mushrooms, and pulled lamb sliders.

They had a real smoker on the roof and a guy from New York in charge of the meat!

Dinner: apricot duck breast, smoked beef brisket, smoked turkey breast, smoked BBQ rabbit, mac and cheese, braised cabbage, mashed potatoes with gravy and cranberry sauce.

After Thanksgiving dinner, we headed to my apartment to grab our suitcases and ordered the taxi for the airport. We arrived to a very busy airport, but we got checked in, took money from the ATMs, exchanged money, and even had time to stop by the overcrowded lounge. We knew it would be crowded because everyone has the same days off, but we expected it to be a little quieter after midnight. Our flight took off at 2:30, but actually ran about 20 minutes late. Emirates is a nice airline, but I was so tired that I didn’t really enjoy the flight. I can’t sleep on a plane unless I am lying down, so I really struggled, but we arrived in Sri Lanka and breezed through immigration. After immigration, we met our driver, Namal and we started our journey. The first place we stopped was for breakfast, which was disappointing because they only offered about one-fourth of the menu. However, we did get coffee, so we were good to go. We traveled from Colombo to Dambulla to see the Cave Temple. The Cave Temple is impressive with many statues of Buddha and decorated ceilings in the side of a mountain (rock). The ceiling is amazing because it actually is part of the rock structure that was engraved and painted. The worst part of the Cave Temple is the hundreds of steps, but it was worth it in the end. You have to remove your shoes in the temple and it had been raining, so of course, that was enjoyable walking around with muddy, wet feet. We took a different route back to the entrance, so we took a tuk tuk back to the car park.

Flower people used to offer to Buddha

Entrance to Cave Temple 

Greeters to Cave Temple 

The Cave Temple 

Then, we headed to our accommodation deep in the jungle to stay in a tree house. The tree house was just amazing. It was charming with hot water and such a sweet, sweet family.