My First Near-Death Encounter

Usually my near-death-encounters come near the end of my trips, but I decided to go ahead and get it outta the way now.

FYI, The lack of internet access and the exorbitant amount of sweat has discouraged me from using the computer much. For now the only time I have is while I’m in the faculty lounge, but I really should be working on lesson plans. Therefore, I will try to keep this post more about the pictures and less about the words. Nothing too profound today folks.

  

One of my many roomates.  The mothman prophet of my near demise that you'll read of below.

I really want to focus on one thing in this post- WATER. How much of it I drink? No, but it is a whole freaking lot. About how the only water to drink (even for the locals) is bottled water? No, but it’s true. About how awesome the ocean water is? YESS! I have seen some clear water in my day, but this certainly grabbed the number one spot. And the abundance of fish, good golly! I now thoroughly understand why this is a scuba diving mecca. Fish, in fact, are object of my “near death…”

My first snorkeling adventure went down on Thursday. Kelly and I walked down the street to this dock that has a gazebo at the end. We weren’t truly sure if it was a private dock, but it seemed pretty open, so we continued. After admiring the ocean view, we decided to submerge ourselves into the ocean cove. The promise of washing off the stale sweat alone was enough to entice me to swim. Sorry if that was a little TMI, but everyone is seriously in a state of perpetual perspiration. Back home I’ll take a shower in the evening and morning out of routine, whereas I now do them out of unreserved necessity. As Jessica put it, we are like that dirty kid in Charlie Brown. Anyways, I digress…back to the water. This was my first step into Roatan waters and it was incredibly refreshing. It could have been a little cooler honestly, but as soon as water gets deeper, a slight dive down carries with it some cooler water. Right from the get go I was surrounded by fishies and started with the picture taking. I have a waterproof digital camera and it is amazing. The best part is that it costs just as much as your digital camera, if not less.

We found this fellar right off the docks that are a three to five minute walk from the apartment.

Put starfish on their backs and they'll flip back over.  I didn't even mean to focus on the tube feet, just got lucky.

This fish (Banded Butterfly) kept nibbling away at the starfish.

Haven't quite built up the courage to snorkel through the mangroves yet.

I began to chase around this one fish that looked like a cross between a fly, a red snapper, a perch, and a stegosaurus. Turns out that it’s called a Squirrelfish which I can see how they get that too. After chasing it, it nestles under this big rock. Down by where it’s at I notice these bright blue fin-looking things. Turns out that they belong to a beautiful fish. I couldn’t stop taking pictures of it, especially because it stayed very still for the most part. I was a little uneasy because I thought it might be protecting something like its eggs and because it looked intimidating overall. It was crazy difficult to get a clear shot because the water is soooo salty that it makes you super buoyant. This fish was about seven feet down. Even when I blew out all my air, I couldn’t sink. Thankfully I was able to stay still enough. I left the water that day with great satisfaction. When we returned, our neighbor, Santos Cruz (aka Santacruz), a divemaster, was hanging with the other teachers. I showed him the pictures and asked him for the name of the fish…

…

(suspense)

He said that it was a Lionfish. And after my own research, it undoubtedly is a Lionfish. 100%. Santos proceeded to explain to me that this is the most poisonous fish around Honduras. He says that they are usually territorial and aggressive and that I was lucky. If untreated, they can kill a human, but if you don’t die from it, supposedly people ask to have limbs amputated because of the sheer pain it causes. After all the pain hits, the poison attacks your respiratory system and can shut down your breathing. No thanks…. I was lucky; definitely a praise in the prayer request department.

Enjoy the pics below. You can click on them to get the biggie sized version. I already have my next post in the works that have some more water pics….

I was following the red, big-eyed squirrelfish when I noticed this blue thing all fanned out.  I thought it was a crazy looking sea urchin at first...

At closer inspection....a Lionfish!!!

He always kept his back to me for some reason.  Luring me in for his attack??

I swam away for a while and snuck back to catch a glimpse of his face.  I can't decide if he is more ugly or more beautiful.

Empezamos!

Do I dare start off my first blog in the same fashion in which everyone else breaks the ice? –yes… “Well, here goes my first attempt at blogging. I know I said I would never do something like this, but it seems appropriate now, so we’ll see how it all works out…” This is mostly to update those family and friends that wanted updates, but I’ll try to toss in some bouncy syntax, spice up the diction here and there, and milk the suspense whenever possible. Ok, now that that is outta the way…


I’m in Roatan! Life as an island teacher is so-far-so-great and my fellow gringo teachers would more than agree. A buddy of mine, Jonathan, turned me on to the idea of teaching in Honduras and I decided to redirect that focus away from the mainland to a small school out here. It all just kind of HAPPENED. I definitely feel as though God has thrown this in my lap, as per His usual with anything momentous in my life. It all felt right; it felt needed. I accepted the offer and 1.5 months later, here I am.

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect (duh), but any guesses or expectations I conjured up have been greatly surmounted. I stayed awake packing until 5am the night before my 8am flight. All of you aware of my nocturnal tendencies are all saying “go figure” in your heads right about now. After the hour nap at home and two hours of accumulated nap time on the plane I was safely delivered to Roatan. The airport runway runs parallel to the coast line a short 40 yards off the strip. It was beauty from the get-go. Even in our descent we flew directly over an atoll that was incredible- I had never seen one before in person. After gathering my 150lbs of luggage I walked out of the terminal to a myriad of paper signs with people’s names for limo services and whatnot. I see this younger boy looking at me like he would look at a tricky math problem, and then all of the sudden, as if he had found the solution, he shoots up a sign- “Zach Stanke!” Once I pointed towards him, his whole family began to laugh. They were all taking bets as to which one getting off the plane was me. The kid, Diego (soon to be one of my students) said, “I thought it could be you at first, but I then I thought that you were wayyy to big to be a teacher.” Como se dice “lol” en espanol? Oh yeah, “jajajaja.”

View of mainland Honduras from the plane.

Landing in Roatan.

The gathered all my luggage and we went to eat. They were gracious to pick me up and pay for my first meal. My first choice wouldn’t have been Bojangles Chicken (the only chain restaurant aside from the brand new Wendy’s), but hey, I’ll take it. They mostly speak English, but the father/husband only speaks Spanish so I got to practice my Spanish right off the bat. He was impressed but I have a lotta work to do! I thought I would know the most Spanish of all the gringos, but one, Kelly, is much more comfortable than me with conversation. I’m glad that I can learn from her though.

After getting Bojangle’d, we went to my apartment where all the gringo teachers live. Goodness freaking gracious. I imagined something a little more…humble. But no, this brand new building has 3 stories of condos. I walk into my well-tiled, 2br, 1bth second story apt. and automatically feel at home. I walk out the back door and there is a sizeable back patio. BONUS! It has a view of the ocean? DOUBLE BONUS! There’s no AC, internet, hot water, or big&tall furniture, but we are crazy blessed to receive such comforts considering the average accommodations people undertake on Roatan.

Baller kitchen / dining room / living room / opening to back patio.

Can't you just feel the wind blowing through my room?

View of the ocean and the bay to the right from the back patio.

Our island bunk beds.  That's Kelly sportin the top bunk.  More on her and others later.

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Taken from same patio.  That explains the moo'ing when I awake in the morn.

After settling in a bit, we all went to grab some groceries and then took a 10 minute walk down to West End to walk along the beach and shops. West End is the main hop-off point for scuba excursions- I will revisit this topic many times later. The trek over there includes big crabs with bodies the size of baseballs and softballs crossing the street…almost crossing…pobrecitos. One of the fellow teachers (also a fellow ginger), Jessica, somehow had a big crab in her living room this morning. Don’t ask me how. I’ll try and retrieve that pic.

Where I plan to dock my boat (aka kayak).

View from a groovy restaurant on stilts in the middle of the bay.

This pretty much sums up my perceptions of Roatan to date.

Walking along West End.  This was taken from the street.  Come visit and we'll picnic here.

That first night I went to sleep at 11:30pm and woke up at 7:15am. Not my usual schedule. I got ready for the bus but it was an hour late. I started to evaluate this as a Latin American tardiness issue, but no, my clock was wrong- turns out I went to bed at 10:30pm and awoke at 6:15am. That was a pretty quick adjustment. That’s gonna be my new “usual” schedule while teaching. I have hopes to bring the schedule back to my life in the states so I can feel like a part of our society. Nocturnal-ness is a lonely place ;)


We got to see our school today. It is a humble school by our standards by far. A lot of open-air class rooms and only the pre-K kiddos have AC. A good bit of it is worn down. It’s an interesting dichotomy of low budget materials and buildings coupled with new technology and sports equipment that gets donated by friends of teachers and the like… I may address y’all later about this opportunity. We ha devotional time, which I am excited about having daily, began approaching life as a teacher at a Christian school. It was a surface level intro to precede tomorrow when we really hit it.

I hope that this first bloggy blog right here is my longest ever, FYI. Until next time….