My first ever pinata!

Some ladies in the women's group I work with make pinatas to help supplement their income. One day they let me help, and even taught me to make my own. They didn't know, but it just so happened that I finished the day before my birthday :)

PS. Don't make fun of the Barbie adornment, haha

A Good Honduran Day

There are some other “gringos” (North Americans) who live in town, and I guess I had mentioned that I had gone to some caves up in the mountains, so they had asked me to take them there. Well, I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to find the caves again on my own, so I called up my friend M and asked him if he would take us.

In Honduras, everything takes longer than it ought to. Hondurans know that in the scheme of things, another 15-30 minutes more really doesn’t matter. M said, sure let’s go, but then when we went by to pick him up, he said, well, actually I don’t really remember where they are…let me call a friend… Long story short, 1 ½ hours of wild goose chase later, we head off with M’s dad (to give you an idea of the extent of this chase: at one point, the mayor was called). We decide, since we have a car, to go to some caves that are farther away, maybe ½ hr drive? (there are more than 20 caves in my municipality) Being lucky enough to have a car, we are asked to run a small errand on the way (½ hr drive turns into almost an hour). We were told it would then be a 1 km walk (translate: 3 km). And then afterwords, there would be a good, deep swimming hole nearby (translate: fairly shallow river). Right before we leave (by now, around 11 AM), the gringos inform me that they have to be back in town by 2:00. Ha! We got back at 6:30.

BUT, the walk was gorgeous!!! The caves were amazing!!! And the swimming was so fun!!!

This river had a medium current, I would say, and was just deep enough that if you were careful, you could float… so we went “rafting” down the river. Maybe not the safest activity – the current flipped me head over heels twice, I got a little banged up on the rocks, and I was somehow nominated guardian of M’s sister, who was not a very confident swimmer. But it was so much fun – like a natural water park ride. And then farther down the river we found some delightfully chilly waterfalls feeding into the river, and a swimming hole that might have been deep enough to jump into (I decided I had tested my luck enough already and didn’t try).

This is why I love Honduras, despite the tendency to bend the truth and not keep track of time. It's gorgeous and natural and untouched...and having fun doesn't have to involve paying to be entertained...

survived tropical strom Agatha and other random updates

Agatha made it quite rainy here for a week or so, and my house flooded, but no serious damage was done in my town.

I went to go visit a friend this weekend who only has one bus a day in and out of her site... I almost missed the bus up there. I'm really spoiled to live where I have regular transportation.

I found turtle food for my turtle - (s)he seems to like it a lot better than the other stuff I was giving him/her. Sometimes (s)he'll eat while I'm still standing there watching... I think it's really cute... (S)he kinda snaps at the food, as if (s)he's afraid the food pellets will try to get away.

I saw the craziest lizards (iguanas?) chasing each other around in my yard today. I wish I could've gotten a picture - they were maybe a foot and a half long. I was afraid for a minute they were going to run right in my door... not sure what I would've done with two iguanas running around my house.

I seriously think Honduras ruins technology. I'm always asked to read instruction manuals and fix various machines. I know I'm not a tech genius, but wow, trying to fix Honduran technology makes me feel stupid. Also, computer viruses travel through air here, I think. I wish these Honduran computers would stop sneezing on each other.

I no longer teach English - just couldn't do it any longer. I spend my time about half and half between the municipality and the cultural center. Got approached about a possible water project...that would be super cool - fingers crossed!

Isn't it cute?!?!

it needs a name! Thoughts?

convo w/ my landlord's mother:

Me: Hey, so my roof was leaking last night

H: Yeah, it’s because it was raining so hard last night

Me: Yeah, but it was leaking pretty bad…. It was like it raining inside my house

H: Yeah, everyone is having the same problem, it rained really hard last night

Me: Well, I think the roof might be bad. My whole house is flooded

H: No, everybody’s having that problem, look at those puddles (outside)

Me: No really, my whole house is flooded. The roof is bad. It hasn’t leaked like this before.

H: No, that’s because it rained really hard last night. But OK fine, I’ll talk to Y (my landlord) and see what he says

Me: Thanks, that’d be great

I'm positive my landlord won't think it's necessary to do anything. Luckily I was at home when the rain started so I was able to get (almost) everything of the floor and out of danger. We'll see what happens next time...

more English

Went to a little rural community, Las Delicias, on Thursday… I went with a guy who told me that this community had just gotten a handful of computers in their new community center, and they were hoping for someone to teach them basic computer skills. I was relatively excited to start, and I figured it’d be fairly easy, especially since I have a complete set of lesson plans and powerpoints from some previous volunteers. The community is gorgeous, too. Well, we get there, and he takes me to an elementary school. They don’t actually have any computers, but what luck, they need an English teacher. Perfect…

To make a long story short, the grand total is now 18 English classes a week.

Eighteen.

Five days a week.

18.

What have I gotten myself into?!?


I’m also completely sick of Honduran men. Just because I’m white, I’m somehow considered one of the most beautiful women in my community. And being beautiful is a perfectly legitimate excuse for a Honduran to fall in love with someone. Oh yeah, and age doesn’t matter, either. Nor does being married.

Needless to say, I’ve had a great week. …. I wish sarcasm was typeable….

Oh, my friends came back, though, haha. They were planning on staying at least a year up there, and ran out of money in a week. Good planning, guys. Cracks me up.

boo.

The news here is that my two best friends in site decided last week that they were going to move to the Bay Islands permanently on Sunday (tomorrow). The idea apparently started as a joke, and neither of them really want to go, but now that they've agreed to it, they think that they can't back out, because they're men of their word, or something like that. Not sure I understand, but it stinks.

random thoughts on teaching English

So I've started teaching 12 English classes a week. Now as far as I can remember, being a teacher has never been one of my aspirations. But that’s beside the point. Only one of the two elementary schools in town has an English teacher, although English is a required subject from 4th through 6th grades. So, the director of the other school asked me when I first came to town if I’d help teach English and I said sure because I had nothing else to do at the time. Actually, as I remember, he told me that I was going to teach English (he’s an awesome person, btw, don’t want to sound bitter). It’s been a rather mixed experience so far in my first 2 weeks. There are probably about 400 students in the school, and I teach each of them once a week. My largest class is 42 students (26 of whom are boys). My smallest class is at least 25, probably 30. The students are extremely affectionate, especially the girls. They don’t have English books that I’ve seen, so common practice in general is for the teacher to either write down or dictate everything for the students to copy down by hand. In my 5th grade classes the other day, I realized they didn’t know the pronouns – and these students have supposedly had a year of English. Even the 6th graders were struggling with the verb “to be.” While most of the classes are fairly well behaved, in my largest class (5th grade), the poor teacher (a young woman) has absolutely no control over her students. I’ve never heard anything resembling silence in that classroom. I struggle with planning lessons without any materials, especially since I don’t want to be just another teacher that teaches by copying and memorization. This doesn’t always work so well. I tried to do a simple little activity in a 2nd grade class the other day – find a partner and greet them in English, then switch up and do it again. They didn’t want to do it, so I offered them the option, “Look, we can either do this activity, or you can copy down what I have on the board.” They told me they’d rather copy. What?! Other students have outright refused to do anything when I ask them to. I usually just ignore them and hope they get bored of not doing anything. I also wonder how in the world I’m supposed to teach anything in only 45 minutes a week. There’s no way they’re going to remember anything from one week to the next. And of course I’m sort of uncomfortable with the whole imperialism of teaching English in general – the director introduced me to my first class by saying, “Now you need to pay attention to Teresa, because who knows how many of you will go off to the States to work.” Now, I don’t have any problem with immigrants to the States, and I understand why they go, but I’m not teaching English to encourage it. I can just imagine how much more might get accomplished in Honduras if everyone put their efforts into working here in their own country rather than into going to the States. So then the question remains, why is it exactly that I’m teaching English? And I’m left without a good answer.
But at least I'm not bored....

3 month update

I'm realizing once again why I don't usually keep a blog: I can't keep it updated.

I can try to blame it on the lack of internet connection in my site, but it really has more to do with me being lazy.

But I'm in the USofA this week and have no excuse not to write, so I'll try to give a brief update:

End of Nov: went to San Marcos de Colon in the south to celebrate Thanksgiving. It was the first time I was allowed to leave site, so it was super exciting to see everyone and to eat US food :)

Dec: moved into my own house! its really nice, and in an awesome location. I have a full size stove/oven, but no fridge. although I loved my host family, I appreciate not having to eat huge quantities of food anymore
English classes officially peter out. I usually only had 2 kids come, and although they actually really were sweet kids, I couldn't bring myself to continue.

My casa de la cultura hosts a week-long music/drama/painting/reading/writing camp with teachers from San Pedro Sula. I helped out with the music classes (OK, I really just wanted to learn guitar) and made a couple friends, both here in town and with some of the guys from SPS. We had a really nice program at the end of the week, but I haven't been able to practice much since. Doesn't help that I don't have a guitar.

Parents and brother come to visit Hondu! Consensus is Honduras is beautiful (I told you so). Dale has pics up on facebook if you want to check them out. We spent a week in/around my site, went up to Tela for a day (it was raining the whole time, boo). Then Dale had to leave, but the parents and I continued on to Copan Ruinas and Gracias, Lempira

Jan: recovered from vacation, visited Kathy for her town's feria
In the process of trying to free the catastro (sort of like the city assessor?) guy's computer from its 400+ viruses, I end up making the computer work even worse... with the help of another volunteer, I'm hoping I can rebuild his computer soon - I'm also currently trying to re-learn AutoCAD (this time in Spanish) so that he can use a mapping program that he actually understands, instead of MicroStation in English

Feb: went to reconnect (week-long meeting of everyone in the municipal development project) and spent the weekend in Teguz
learned that my grandmother had passed, and came home for a week to be with family

and now you're up-to-date!

This upcoming week, I'll be doing a lot of translating for a group from Wisconsin that gives scholarships for school supplies to students in my town - hope I haven't forgotten all my Spanish in these last two weeks - I've already discovered that I can't speak English anymore

Being in the USA makes me miss my little 7,000 person town in good ol' Hondu. I can't handle Walmarts and multiple lane roads and not being able to walk anywhere...also its freezing!