The Weekend in Pictures

Decided it was time for a few new pics...here's a summary of last weekend in Tegus:

Amigos at a fair in Valle de Angeles...and you thought the ferris wheels at fairs in the US were scary...it's a miracle we didn't die on that thing. No way ferris wheels were meant to go that fast. 

This is coffee starting to grow on me...when in Honduras, do as the Hondurans do (which means learning to like coffee). 

Justin at the supermarket. I can't seem to understand why Hondurans think the only cereal is Corn Flakes, but there are literally entire aisles of "cereal" (all Corn Flakes) at the store...

Making homemade pizza! Finding the ingredients turned into a whole thing...but some freshly cut pepperonis, blocks of mozzarella cheese, a cheese grater, some homemade dough from an Italian eatery, and a pizza pan later...here we are with our homemade pizza! Not quite as good as what we make in the US (couldn't find any spices and we got impatient with the slow oven so probably took it out too early), but still good...and Justin's abuelos think we should open up a pizza place. (As a side note about pizza, one time Mario Daniel -- my host brother -- was telling me about a lady he knows that makes really good homemade pizza, and he said, "Her pizza is better than they pizza they sell at the Texaco gas station!" You know it's a red flag when the best pizza -- well, I think the only pizza actually -- you can buy in this city is from the gas station.)

And, finally, us sitting in the hot tub all day Saturday being served pina coladas....that's how you know you're living the dream. 

Stay tuned for more pictures soon -- we just had a "fiesta tipica" at school last night where everyone (including me) dressed up in traditional Honduran garb...

Nothin' like a Little Swim to Reeeaaally Turn Your Weekend Around

So after a rough start to the weekend last weekend (being sick and whatnot Friday and Saturday), I felt better by Sunday to go with my family to a big church celebration at a retreat center on Sunday. (My students really seemed to miss me on Friday...I saw some of my tenth graders at the church thing and they said they had a party during my class since I wasn't there. Apparently they didn't even bother to get the other teachers to cover/baby-sit for my classes...what kind of a school is this anyway?!) Anyway, the church celebration was awesome—there was a pool! Nothin' like a nice swim to turn your weekend right around. I was a little nervous at first that my host mom wouldn't let me swim since I had been sick -- especially after that whole boiling shower water fiasco -- but luckily she didn't say anything. There were lots of people there, and a bunch of people were selling food to benefit an orphanage the church is building. Anyway, I helped Marialouisa (my host mom) sell her “tutti-frutti” (basically fruit salad with orange juice). It was hilarious—reminded me of selling t-shirts at Rockford—I even had to pretend I knew people who seemed to know me (just like at Rockford!)..my host mom had probably introduced me to them at church who knows when (she knows everyone). Anyway, Marialouisa was going nuts trying to sell this tutti-frutti—telling some of my students that were there that I was going to fail them if they didn’t buy some…one of my student’s moms was like, “Wait what do you teach?” And when I said English she told her son, “You better buy some then!!” (Pretty sure he’s struggling quite badly in my class.) Ha.

Anyway, speaking of church, I saw our pastor and his wife in the supermarket the other day and they offered to give me a ride home. (Can’t get over how small of a city this is still. I mean, keep in mind I basically just know people from school. And yet I step outside and walk to the supermarket and I saw three teachers on the way there, another one drove past me, saw another one in the supermarket, and then the pastor and his wife...) Anyway, on the way home, the pastor asked me to sing in church. Bahahahahahaha. I told him that sorry, I don’t sing, and he was like, “Really? That’s odd…all Northamericans can sing.” Yeaaah, if you want to hear me sing I can discredit that stereotype for you reeeeaaal quick. Anyway, I thought that was kind of a funny stereotype to have, but I guess it makes sense because most people who come here are on some kind of a mission trip, and it’s true that there always are people on mission trips who can sing. 

Anyway, then on  Monday we had the day off of school for some holiday (Hondurans love their holidays), so I went to work with Marialouisa. She teaches fifth grade at one of the public schools. I just can’t even get over the differences between schools here and schools in the U.S. I mean, teaching at Vida Abundante is definitely a lot different, but teaching at a public school here would be even more of a difference. I mean, obviously the resources aren’t the same, although don’t think the school is in like horrible condition (sometimes I feel like people imagine schools in third world countries to be on like wooden benches in a mud hut or something). That being said, there were 38 kids in the class (and clearly not enough room for them all), wooden chairs that looked like they were for kindergarteners, crumbling books, and cement floors. It could’ve been worse though – they did have a small rather warped white board at least! Anyway, even more so than the difference in appearance is just differences in teaching style/routines:
1. Students either go to school from 7am to 12pm, or from 12pm to 5pm, depending on their grade.
2. For the frst half hour or so, there were like 3 students who swept the floor, and then two more students in the room who mopped it right after. And then they did the same thing after recess, and the same thing before they left for the day. A little overkill if you ask me.
3. The first hour and a half was spent with the students reading out loud from their books (all individually), the second hour and a half I taught them English, then recess for a half hour, and then the last hour and a half doing math exercises.
4. The teacher never wrote anything on the board or even stood in front of the class—she sat in the back of the room and the students did some math problems on the board at the end.
5. When students got up to the board and didn’t know how to do a problem, the teacher publicly berated them and yelled at them in a way a teacher in the states would neeeever do.
6. At recess time, instead of play on the playground (there isn’t one), students go to the pulperia to buy snacks.

Anyway, it was an interesting day. I really liked it. The kids loved learning English too. By the end of the day a student bought me a pop and some chips at recess, another gave me a marker, and another gave me some earrings. Why is it that poor people never have a hard time giving away their stuff like rich people do? 

Anyway, ended up having a great weekend and week, and here we are at another weekend already! And once again we have Monday off! (This is the last of our many holidays though...until Thanksgiving anyway.) So I'm off to Tegus tomorrow to visit Justin -- unfortunately I couldn't leave today after school because the teachers had to stay for a conference that all the parents were invited to tonight. (Which ended up lasting like 3 hours!...but that's another story.) Luckily I found a ride (the teachers I usually go with aren't going) with the principal, so I managed to avoid riding the public bus once more. But he's leaving at 5am tomorrow morning. That being said, I'm going to bed!

Disclaimer: Don't read if you're already worried about my health...

Haha. Ok so that title is sort of a joke mocking my dramatic title from my post a few days ago, but also kind of not a joke because I'm sick. Don't worry, I'm not dying.
So Wednesday night I started getting chills (being cold here is definitely a red flag) and a sore throat -- I went to bed at like 8:30 and felt ok in the morning but pretty much had to go to school Thursday because Jake (the guy that hired me) was coming to visit. Plus Thursdays are my best days because I have three free periods (usually I have one). By the afternoon I felt awful -- I was super hot (I didn't take my temp but must have had a super high fever), had a headache, my throat hurt, my eyes and face were bright red, my legs ached, and I had zero energy. Of course this is the day the kids all decided to be super clingy and just hang on me...they were like, "Oh my gosh you're super hot!" And I was like, "No kidding...now get off of me please." I wasn't sure I was going to be able to make it through the day at school (ok that's a bit extreme and overly dramatic)....last hour I had seventh grade, and thank goodness they actually weren't too bad (until the last five minutes of class when they decided to start running around like chickens with their heads cut off slapping each other's behinds with their rulers). I literally just gave the kids a worksheet and sat with my head down at my desk. Anyway, we were supposed to have bball practice but of course I just skipped it and decided to ride the bus home...and then you won't believe this -- the bus BREAKS DOWN a quarter of the way through the route. No j. I was like, "Are you seeerious?" I mean, what are the chances?! (Well, actually probably pretty high because the buses are not exactly new and it hasn't happened yet to our bus -- it already happened once to the other bus.) So my head is pounding and I'm super hot and it's so hot in the bus and the kids are running amok and going crazy because the bus broke down and they're screaming in my ear. So at the time it was not ideal but I have to admit it's actually kind of hilarious to think about now. Anyway we had to wait in the bus like a half hour for another bus to come and pick us up.

Anyway, I came home and basically just slept on and off till the next morning -- missed school on Friday (which, if you know me, must mean I was pretty sick because I NEVER miss school). By like 9:00 I was wishing I would have just gone to school I was so bored (you can only watch so many online episodes of Real World Challenges), but it's probably a good thing I didn't go because I still felt pretty bad. My family was super worried about me -- I was a little leery of telling them I was sick (although obviously didn't really have a choice) because I remember a few weeks ago when my host mom was sick and she had this witch doctor come like every day and give her some sort of an injection. Literally, he looked like Rafiki from the Lion King and even laughed like him. Not kidding. But luckily they didn't suggest that -- just served me oatmeal and smoothies and homemade tea (the best I've had) and warm tortillas to me in my room. It's actually a bit ridiculous -- I just tried to take a shower and my mom was like "Oh no you can't take a shower in that cold water!" And then she boiled water on the stove for me for my shower. So it could've been worse. And at least my stomach is fine...I think a stomach issue would have been worse. 

Anyway, I feel much, much better today (Saturday), so no need to be concerned. I'm not sure what I had, but I looked up the symptoms for dengue fever and I had all those, so I'm just going to say I had dengue because it sounds kind of cool to say I had some sort of an exotic disease like that rather than something stupid like the flu. 

And hmm...I'm looking at my last few posts and why are all my posts lately about bad things happening? Good thing Justin's on this blog too and my posts can be interspersed with his....well, I promise my next post will be only good things. And anyway some good news for today is I made some new friends! They're my neighbors and they like to come over and do crafts and draw and stuff. Here they are: 

This is Lohanny and Cinthia...Cinthia repeats everything Lohanny says...it's hilarious. They'll ask me something like, "Te gusta la leche?" And I'll be like, "Si," and Lohanny will say: "A mi tambien." And then Cinthia: "A mi tambien." It's really funny. They came over last night and kept asking me how I was feeling. Haha. 

And this is Josue clutching his Picapiedra (Mr. Flinstone). So, granted, it might be nice to have some friends who were within ten years of my age, but it could be worse. 

Disclaimer: Don't read if you're already worried about my safety...

Ok, maybe that title is misleading. Nothing happened (to me).
So I attended my first funeral this morning. I'm not a huge fan. (I mean I guess it was a matter of time...to be 22 and to not have attended a funeral before?) I guess there were like nine people killed in Catacamas this weekend...and when you think that it's a relatively small city, I guess I should have figured one of them would have been related to one of my students. So a lawyer was one of the people murdered, and turns out (I found out this morning) that she was the mom of one of my students. She's in eighth grade and has a 3 year-old sister. So all the high schoolers and middle schoolers and teachers took a school bus to the funeral this morning. Really, really sad. I mean, being killed in an accident is one thing (which would obviously still be horrible), but to be murdered? I mean, what do you say to your student whose mom was just shot? Yikes. Her dad is working in the United States too, so I'm not sure who she'll live with now. So that was really hard. Another of my students said she was across the street and saw one of the other people shot. Craziness. Maybe this is why my students could care less about helping verbs...I'm beginning to think they don't matter myself.
A huge difference I'm beginning to realize between the States and Honduras is this: In the States after something like this, the police would find the murderer. The family would not rest until the murderer was found. Here, no one seems to be concerned with that. The people know justice will never be served. It's awful. Another teacher one time was showing me the big drug lord's house of Catacamas...I was like, if this is common knowledge, why don't the police just get him? Apparently one time a police officer arrested one of the drug lords and the next day they found his head in a park nearby. I guess I wouldn't try to find murderers if I was the police either.
Don't worry though, I'm being careful (although I'm still not sure what that means exactly...my host mom tells me to "take precautions" every time I leave the house...what does she think I'm going to do? Wave my ten dollar cell phone around?).

Fotos!

 Figured it was time to post a few more photos....

My house!

My room!

My school!

A picture of me and some of the other teachers at a one-day conference thing we had to go to. 

The seventh grade classroom...but I took this at the beginning of the year before classes started -- if I were to take a picture now (especially when I'm done teaching last hour on Friday) it would look like a hurricane went through it. Really. I wish I would have taken a picture last Friday to compare them. 

And this is the story of my seventh grade class...

Justin and Raquel, one of the grandkids who basically lives at his house.

This week there's been a feria (fair) in Catacamas...random creepy guys dress up in dresses and masks and go through the streets dancing....super random. They went right by my house and my fam was like, "Come quick and bring your camera!" So basically I figured I'd better take this photo to appease them (usually I'm not one of those people who takes pictures of parade-type deals)....

Food and Frustrations

It's really crazy how quickly your sense of what is "normal" changes. I've been trying to think of more things to write about that have been curtural changes for me, but now that I've been here almost two months it's hard to remember what's "normal" and what's not. Case in point: A few days ago for dinner I had bean and banana soup (well, I guess it was beans, bananas, mystery meat, and yuka). Anyway, when my host mom served it to me I didn't even give it a second glance or think twice about it. It wasn't until I was skyping with Jordan later and he asked me about food (and I said out loud that I had eaten bean banana soup for dinner) that I realized it sounded crazy.

As far as other Honduran food goes, I've found that usually I don't love it or hate it. I just eat it. Although I do hate mantequilla (their thick butter/sour cream mixture that they put on eeeeverything) and quesillo (this super strong crumbly cheese stuff). Sick. Luckily, since I was here before I already knew I didn't like that stuff so I told my host mom I didn't like it the first day and so I haven't had to eat it! And a couple things I do love here are a chicken/rice mixture my mom made me once or twice for lunch, fried plantains, and especially homemade tortillas! A typical breakfast for me is beans, eggs, and avocado -- today I had toast with beans and avocado on top. Or sometimes I have pancakes (which would be delish except they only eat them with honey instead of syrup),a licuado (smoothie/milkshake thing with milk and cornflakes and banana), oatmeal, or corn flakes. I've told my host mom cereal is fine every day -- that I actually prefer cereal -- but I think she thinks I'm just saying that because I feel bad that she feels like she has to make me breakfast (which is also true, but mostly I just want cereal). Oh well. My host mom also packs my lunch every day. (I know, I'm spoiled right? I've told her I can do it but she insists.) I've had some normal stuff like pasta salad, ham and cheese sandwiches, a ground beef/carrot/potato mixture etc, but probably the weirdest lunch I had was today. It was cooked up meat (which I didn't eat) and potato (I think?) with cooked slices of warm bananas -- but the bananas had been like boiled or something and still had the peel on them. Interesting.  Dinner is usually what I had tonight -- eggs and beans in a tortilla (that's a baleada -- the typical Honduran dish). I practically eat an avocado a day too, or, in cases like today, two -- one for breakfast and one for dinner. My host brother likes to cook too though, and he loves pasta/italian, so he's made spaghetti and lasagna a few times. He even made homemade pizza the other night! So don't think all the food is crazy different (even though their version of pasta sauce is a little different).

As far as teaching lately goes...
So I assigned a paper to my 11th graders a week or so ago and was like, "Your rough draft is due Tuesday." I give them the entire class period on Friday to work and spend the hour yelling at them to start writing and that I'm going to grade the essays ridiculously hard because they aren't working. Tuesday rolls around. No one has a rough draft. Not. one. person. So I have this whole thing where I was going to have them fill out this peer conference sheet, edit each other's papers etc. and then there are no papers to edit. What the heck? What am I supposed to do for the whole class period? And what do I do with their grades? Fail them all? All of my teacher training tells me that if everyone in the class gets something wrong or if no one in the class does a homework assignment, it's probably a reflection on the teacher -- that he or she didn't explain it correctly or forgot to assign the homework. So I'm still trying to figure out where I went wrong, but I just can't because I reminded them about this paper every day, wrote it on the board, and gave them time in class to work.

Ok so then 12th grade vocabulary class rolls around. Last Friday I gave them their words and of course one kid is screwing around and not copying down the vocabulary words. So I say to him: "Alright fine don't copy the words but don't come crying to me on the day of the quiz because I will show you zero sympathy." He promised not to do that. Day of the quiz rolls around. I hand out the quizzes. He comes crying to me (shock, wow, did I not call that?). He takes one look at it: "Miiiiss but I don't know any of these words! Ahh but miiiisss just let me have five minutes to study. I'll take it tomorrow." (I had just given them like ten minutes to study and, shock, he did absolutely nothing.) I look at him and am like, "Are you serious? Because that sounds crazy." He gets a zero and walks out of the class.

So needless to say I'm starting (starting?) to get frustrated with my students, and I feel like I'm turning into an evil teacher. Let's just say three kids have cried in my classes in the last two days. (And I don't even feel bad.)
Exhibit A: 8th grade spelling class. I'm getting fed up with the cheating and talking that goes on during quizzes and tests so my new policy is if I hear you talk you have an automatic minus 5. I don't care who you're talking to or what you're talking about. (Which I think is probably too lenient, because I should just give them a zero.) Honestly, you should see these kids during tests and quizzes. I've never seen anything like it. I literally have to stand in front of the class the entire period and stare kids down. If I look down once the next time I look up kids are trying to cheat. (It's almost like a game for them and I'm starting to think that I should just instill in them some morals somehow but that's a whole seperate issue...one girl told me how she had cheated during a quiz the other day in another class: "I help my classmates during a quiz when they didn't study...so it was my turn to get the help.") Anyway, not the point. So like 5 of my seventh graders get minus 5; a few minus 10. Then, eighth grade. A girl blurts out in the middle of the quiz, "Miiiiss repeat number 6!" I tell her she has minus 5 and she flips out and starts bawling and hands me her quiz and says she won't even finish it then. I say fine. She fails.

Exhibit B: 8th grade language class. Another girl is trying to cheat -- I can hear her talking and see her talking too -- so I take 5 points away. She doesn't seem to care too much at this point, but when I grade her quiz and tell her she failed by 3 points, she starts bawling and trying to argue that she wasn't talking. My response: "I guess you won't be talking on the next quiz, then, will you?"

Exhibit C: 7th grade language class. I'm actually trying to play a game in 7th grade...can you believe it? Too ambitious it turns out. Two kids get in a fist fight in my class. Yep. So I leave the rest of the class to run amok and go wild while I escort these two monkeys down to the principal's office, with one kid crying and the other trying to look tough, etc. It was a whole thing.

So it wasn't one of my better weeks. I guess my point is that teaching here is really hard and different from the States. Honestly, I know I haven't actually taught in the States (besides student teaching), but the kids where I student taught actually seemed to care about school -- at least somewhat. The kids I was worried about were the ones who were sleeping during class and didn't turn in a homework or two. Here I would be overjoyed if people would just turn in even one homework and sleep and be quiet during my class.

Hitchiking in Tegus

So I was back in Tegus for the weekend! We have the day off today (Monday) -- it's the "Day of the Soldier" or something like that. Anyway, so I left right after school on Friday (got a ride with some other teachers) and am leaving to go back to Catacamas later today. When I got here on Friday I went to a play at Justin's school with him and got to meet some of his students and some of the other teachers -- the play was really good and I concluded that the Tegus school has a bit more money than the school in Catacamas. For instance, the auditorium was huge and there were probably hundreds of people there. (We don't even have an auditorium.)

Had a great weekend in Tegus...best call of the weekend was hitchiking a ride to Tegus from a city called Santa Lucia that Justin and I visited yesterday. So to get to this little town we took a bus -- a bus that was actually headed to another city called Valle de Angeles. The bus driver claimed that a bus to Santa Lucia wasn't going to come for like three more hours, so we had better hop on his bus to Valle de Angeles and we could get off early at Santa Lucia. Well that was more or less a mistake. Okay so it costed us like 25 cents instead of 10, but I guess I can handle that part...The issue is that Santa Lucia is only more or less on the way to Valle de Angeles. He dropped us off and then we had to walk up a steep and windy hill for like a half hour. The worst part of this story, though, is that while we were walking TWO buses passed us that were going to Santa Lucia from Tegucigalpa. Dangit.

But we made up for our bad decision in the morning by deciding to hitchike our way back -- the bus for Tegus was going to leave at 4, and we got to where the bus was at 3:30. So instead of waiting we decided to just start walking and try to get a ride (if we couldn't get a ride we figured the bus would catch up to us eventually and then we could just hop on). So a younger couple picked us up (well, kind of a couple -- when we asked them if they were dating he said that they were just getting to know each other still and she responded, "Ya we've been getting to know each other for three years..." Ha). Anyway so they ended up taking us out to eat and then we went with them to Valle de Angeles (another small town up in the mountains) before they dropped us right off at Justin's house in Tegus! And get this...the girl is from Catacamas! What are the chances?! She's studying in Tegus right now at the University but she said she will probably be back in Catacamas this week because they have some time off from school...and she said she'd take me to go see the caves in Catacamas! So I'm feeling great about that.

The two cities were both really nice -- Santa Lucia had some really nice views of all of Tegucigalpa and some nice parks. We just walked around the city for the whole morning, on a hunt for licuados (smoothies). The guidebook had said that "the park is a great place to sit down and nurse a licuado," so we were determined to do exactly what the guidebook said for some reason. Then we asked some kids where the best licuados were, and they said there weren't any! Of course that made us even more determined to find the licuados...at this point we didn't really even want any; it was just the principle of the thing. So we actually finally found two random girls with a roadside stand and a blender who were selling some...turns out they had forgotten they needed an outlet so we had to wait a while while she found a power outlet. It's a miracle I didn't get sick from that milk or the strawberries...

Valle de Angeles was also really nice but a little more commercialized/touristy. We didn't have much time there because it started to rain, so we just stopped to eat some pupusas at a little restaurant and talk to our new friends. Other than our trip to Santa Lucia/Valle de Angeles yesterday, Justin and I mainly just chilled around his house and played with the grandkids all day Saturday. We got some ice cream from the ice cream truck, ate these little popsicles called paletas, played the Spanish Bananagrams I brought (they loved it!), played hide-and-seek, and played a weird version of American football with an old 2 liter pop bottle we found. Overall, I'd say the weekend was a success (besides the fact that I didn't get any of my grading or lesson planning done...but, let's be real, I wasn't really expecting to).