Training Day

-
Sunday after church we loaded up about 35 of our finest soccer players into a cattle truck loaned to me by a church member and we headed off to the beach...not to swim mind you but to take advantage of the regulation-size field that sits just on the other side of the dunes. The field that we have available to us in Los Laureles is pitifully small and just doesn't get the job done especially when all 37 of our kids show up. Thus when the opportunity becomes available to us, or when my local rancher friend isn't hauling cattle off to slaughter we take the kids to local municipal fields to give them a feel for what it's like to play on a large field.

our putting-green that we have to play on in the community


getting warmed up at the beach

stretching, you have no idea how beautiful it is to see these kids this organized

pimpona, not his real name or a member of the team, looks on patiently

receiving last-minute instructions

konrad entertainign himself on the truck

the beach...that we never got to enjoy

jimmy

5 of our youngest, kind of doing their own thing

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Another Migrant Crisis

-
I've lived and worked in Honduras for 10 years both as a missionary, serving the very poorest of society and now as teacher, where I give philosophy and history classes to the children of the very wealthiest. I don't pretend to be an expert on Honduran society and I certainly cannot claim to have many answers with respect to issues of immigration. The whole topic strikes me as far more complex and nuanced than what many voices on either the Right or the Left make it out to be. Nevertheless, I know the milieu in which I live, I know why many poor Hondurans choose to emigrate illegally, I know why many wealthy Hondurans fly to Miami or Atlanta to give birth to their children and I know that all else remaining constant, this current caravan is only the beginning. A poor Honduran lives his life with little to no hope of ever achieving anything approaching financial stability. The people I know make their livings off of garbage collecting, selling unripened bananas and day-laborin
Read more

Coming to Honduras

-
Image
The other day in philosophy class I was teaching about existentialism, a philosophy with which I have myriad problems. The universe is absurd, life is meaningless, authenticate yourself with irrational leaps of faith! Hopeless and disconnected from reality if you ask me. Get out of the café Camus, mix with some common folk! Nevertheless, as I was introducing the material I mentioned that the existentialists really probed the questions of Life's meaning and purpose: "How do I create myself to be unique and significant?" "How do I live an authentic existence?" "How do I give my life meaning and purpose in an otherwise meaningless universe?" These seem to be questions that are attendant to societies that possess extreme wealth and privilege and an over-abundance of leisure time. I have serious doubts that 15th Century English peasants or even nobles for that matter, spent much time contemplating how they might make their lives unique or leave a
Read more

10 Years In Honduras

-
Image
My good friend Jessiel Rivera reminded me the other day that it was 10 years ago this month that I arrived here in La Ceiba. I remember my arrival here from Costa Rica fairly vividly. I had been getting teary-eyed on the plane from a combination of sleep deprivation, my longing to remain with my friends in beautiful San Jose and some sad indie music on my iPod. It was a hot and terribly humid Sunday afternoon when I landed in the La Ceiba airport and when I stepped off the 10-seater hotbox of an airplane onto the tarmac I was sweaty, bleary-eyed and disheveled. I looked like a typical gringo backpacker except for my mountain of luggage that I had in tow. Two members of the Central Mennonite Church picked me up in their car; how they knew I was the Gringo they were supposed to collect was beyond me but they got it right. I remember them remarking on the number of suitcases I had brought (3) and their heaviness (maximum weight allowance); and the resulting weight of embarrassment I felt
Read more