This is the scene from my back yard during one of our incredible tropical sunsets.

My family's visit went well last week; we went to San Pedro and did some shopping in Guatemala.  This is my sister Amanda at a bbq.

These last few weeks have been a little crazy. We've passed midterm already for this term, and I decided to have parent- teacher conferences for 12 of my students. Needless to say, the idea got a lot of resistance from my boys. I've found that I can deduct points and give demerits till my face turns blue, and nothing will happen. But bring in the mamas, and then I see results. We are also in retreat season-- each class goes on retreat (it's mandatory) and because there are so few women teachers this year (but mostly because the retreat coordinator is my roommate) I have been on 2 girls retreats in the last 2 and a half weeks. The retreats are from 8 to 4, on a school day. This year's theme is "Healing through the Eucharist." So far, the retreats have gone well. We do skits, games, small groups, talks, mass; the usual. The kids usually get in to it, even though probably half aren't Catholic. I'll put up some pictures soon. This is also Pro-life month here, so I've been setting up activities and participating in panel discussions. This next week we'll have two panel discussions here at school, one for boys and one for girls. Basically, we just have the kids write questions about anything- sex, dating, chastity, abortion, birth control, you name it- and the panel answers. I usually cover the biology end, but last week our marriage/chastity person didn't show, so I had to field all those questions. Thank goodness for Christian Marriage with Dr. Asci. Finally, my parents will be here in a week (!!) so I've been running around (literally- you can't always do things over the phone here) making hotel reservations and arranging tours and car rentals. I feel like I should charge for my services (just kidding, mom :) But the weather here is drop-dead gorgeous, sunny with a nice cool breeze, so I can't really get too stressed. Life in a tropical country kinda negates stressfulness- mostly you are pretty much forced to take things slow. No one ever expects anything on time, so you are never expected to hurry. Not that you could, anyways. It will probably be a hard habit to break when I get back to the states, and people expect you to be early for things!!