The Importance of Water

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I have discovered that living in Roatan is all about the trade-offs, weighing the good against the laughably bad. Today is a perfect example of that. Yesterday in school, we ran out of water and consequently today had absolutely no running water. No running water usually means no washing hands, and no flushing toilets. Both of which are very important things, especially in elementary school. Trust me, you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone (yes, I am aware that I live in a third world country where running water is a luxury. But it’s been a tough day. Please endure while I indulge in some melodrama). Today, instead of the normal glorious running water, teachers were given hand sanitizer and a bucket. The hand sanitizer took the place of hand washing, and the buckets were for us to go get seawater to flush the toilets with. This meant that every time the toilet had to be flushed in my classroom (which was a lot, even following the “if it’s yellow, let it mellow…..” rule- kids go to the bathroom an astonishing amount), I had to go out to the dock, fill a bucket with water, and then bring it back to the room. It also seems important to mention that it was on this waterless day that one of my students got a nosebleed in class. I’ll save the gory details, but I was really missing running water and the associated ability to wash others and myself. Needless to say, I was not amused with this whole lack-of-water thing by the end of the day. By the way, in case you couldn’t tell, this is my example of “laughably bad”.

Today’s counteracting “good” was one of those simple pleasures in life. As I sit here writing this, I’m sipping on freshly picked and squeezed homemade limeade. Simple, yet oh so refreshing and delicious, and quite fulfilling to have made it myself from limes I picked from the lime trees at school.

On a side note, I spent almost all of last weekend at the beach, which was glorious. I actually spent so much time outside at the beach this weekend that I changed colors- enough so that a student felt the need to inform me that I was “darker than you were last week”. What, exactly, I was expected to respond to that, I don’t know. I went with the thrillingly ingenious “…yup”. Anyway, a highlight of the weekend was an eventful snorkeling trip where I saw a turtle, a baby lionfish, and 6 squid! I don’t think I had ever seen squid in the wild before, and actually didn’t even know what they were (or, in my exact muffled words through my snorkel, “wtf is that??”) until my friend told me. Squid are actually really cool to see in the ocean, since they swim forwards and backwards and look really unique. I’m pretty sure that as I was watching and following them, they were also watching and following me, but I guess I deserve it- I’m sure I look as funny to them as they do to me. (Please take a moment here to make some sort of joke at my expense about me just being funny looking in general….. done? Great.)

Oh! I also forgot to mention that I went parasailing a few weeks ago! It was really fun, and I wasn’t as worried as I thought I would be, especially for someone who’s afraid of heights. Granted, while in the air I did spend a decent amount of time hypothesizing about what would happen if the rope snapped, how far and fast we would fall, what we would fall on, and so forth, much to the chagrin of my parasailing-mates, but in the end we landed back in the boat, safe and sound. The whole experience was actually very peaceful (or would have been if I hadn’t ruined it with my pessimistic hypotheses) and it was really neat to be able to get a birds-eye view of so much of the island.

Ok, it’s a school night and I’m up pretty late by my standards, so it’s time to stop rambling and go to bed. I still promise a post about my winter break trip soon! Here’s hoping the water is back on tomorrow.

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Comments

[Robin]

laugh and the world laughs with you
Glad you are able to smile about this so soon!!