Jan

16

 

Categories: Honduras

Tags: , , , , ,

January 16, 2011 – Juticalpa, Honduras

Well, been adjusting back to Honduran life the last couple of weeks.  We were welcomed back to a massacre of 8 people in a minibus on the way from Juticalpa to Catacamas.  The deaths included 4 women and a nine-month-old infant.  People were trying to get to a drug-dealer and the drug-dealer refused to let the bus pull over.  Unfortunately, the drug-dealer lived, but she’ll get hers (yep, she), now that she has killers and Olanchano parents and husbands after her.  The police from Tegucigalpa came down here to quash any retaliation, but word is that as soon as they leave, an all-out drug war is supposed to happen.  Needless to say, the teachers are all lying-low for a bit, and so are the Hondurans.  So, we’ll see, everyone says sprees like this happen every now and again before everything calms down…

(Also, we’re not targets, so no worries to parents out there, alright?)

The rest of my winter vacation was interesting.  I have to say, nothing beats a Christmas at home, a real Christmas with a tree and decorations and hot chocolate and looking a lit-up houses.  Nothing beats a Hanukkah at home either.  Not even Belize.  Belize was beautiful, and snorkeling was amazing, but nothing beats the holidays the way they are supposed to be.

After Belize we went to Guatemala, to El Remate.  We stayed at this very cool hostel called Sak Luk that had little beds tucked under leafy roofs, overlooking the lake.  I went to Tikal by myself, Emily was preoccupied.  Tikal are the most beautiful ruins.  Chichen Itza is amazing in the pristine quality of its ruins, I think, and all of the mathematical, scientifically relevant statues and calenders and observatory towers that are still there were mind-blowing.  But the whole thing is treated like a theme-park, tons of vendors, no peace, a million people with a million clapping guides to show off the “acoustics” or whatever, and I mean, Elton John played there a month after I was there.  I think that’s why I so thoroughly enjoyed Copan.  Not as many people, more low-key.  Copan seemed so isolated, and the ruins weren’t as barred as they now are in Chichen Itza.  We could walk on the temples and imagine ourselves there a thousand years before without screaming children or confused European tourists.  I know some people don’t like that old ruins are walked all over, but I like the fact that history is fleeting, for our eyes only.  Something like that.  Anyway, that’s another argument entirely.

And then Tikal.  Tikal has the majesty of Chichen Itza’s ruins and is more isolated than Copan’s.  I was walking down a pathway forever, surrounded by very thick jungle, walking through a still, early-morning fog, wondering if I was going the wrong way, or am I really at the ruins, or where the hell are all of the temples?  And then, from beyond the trees, you can see your first one, a pillar coming up from the fog.  And you can really picture how it must have felt to the people who actually traversed the dense jungle on either side of me and actually did see that pillar coming out of the fog, only for the first time in centuries.  It was really wonderful and breathtaking.  I went really early in the morning to avoid any rush of tourists.  There are two temples that face each other, those are amazing.  But I eventually just tried to find the most isolated temples, ones that were literally well-off the beaten path.  I found one and stayed there for a long, long time without anybody coming by.  It had a view of that first pillar I saw way, way off in the distance.  And then, to the side of me there was this whole monkey family playing around in the trees, not yet scared off by the tourists and their guides.  Ha, to be honest, the quietness of the whole thing was a little scary.  At one point,  I was sitting at the top of the temple, looking at the monkeys, taking pictures of the pillar, admiring the jungle and the fog, very lost in my own thoughts.  I decided I would walk into the temple because each one has a little “room” that you can walk into.  So I get off the steps and walk into the room and in the sort-of hallway beforehand a dark figure startles me, and it gets bigger and bigger, and I realize it’s this giant black bird.  It honestly, at the moment, when everything was so quiet, and I’m at the top of this temple, and everything, looked like this omen of death, its wings outstretched, it coming closer and getting bigger.  The whole thing was really creepy, actually.  Anyway, it ended up flying up and taking off and I screamed and ran around the corner to the edge of the temple and hid for a little while convinced it was going to try and scare me to fall off the steps.  Haha, that doesn’t make any sense, but by this point I had been by myself for a while, and I can get quite detached from reality (read:  delusional) when I’m fantasizing by myself.

Also, later on (and this story is mostly to serve as a warning to others who think they’re so imaginative as to walk up and down the mossy green steps of an ancient temple) I found this one temple.  It was beautiful, covered in green, blackened by time, trees and flowers growing out of the cracks, just beautiful.  I walked up one side, took some pictures, sat around for a bit.  Then I found steps on the other side that were cracked and broken, but looked whole enough to walk down.  They were green with moss and I took each step very carefully.  Unfortunately, it was very foggy, as I said earlier, and damp, and my shoes, well, they weren’t exactly hiking boots, and, well, I slipped.  I literally rolled down these steps, did a sort of 360 twist with my body, my shoulder, my hip, and my knee hitting alternating steps with each turn, each hit producing this loud THUD-THUD-THUD.  The whole thing seemed really cartoonish, the twist, the thuds, the dumbass walking down slippery, thousand-year-old steps.  I was pretty embarassed at the bottom, and I was a total mess and had to walk around like a total mess for the remaining 5 hours or whatever it was.

So, besides the death omen and the fall, Tikal was mostly peaceful.  I highly recommend going there to anyone who has a fascination for what it must have felt like to come across the ruins for the first time since they became ruins.  That sort of thing.

Emily was preoccupied because we had found puppies a few days beforehand.  That’s right.  We found puppies on the side of the road in Guatemala, and our entire “vacation” turned around at that point and became focused on the puppies and their well-being, and most importantly, getting them back to Honduras — crossing the border.  We took them to one vet for their vaccinations, he had no idea about the border-crossing thing.  We took them on the 8-hour bus ride to Guatemala City and found a vet there.  She got us an exportation license lickety-split, which means we spent 8 hours in her office, mostly waiting.  That is really fast for an exportation license, but it cost us a pretty penny, and it lost us a day to get back home.  Okay, though, we thought we were set.  So finally we’re on our way from Guatemala City to Tegucigalpa.  We reach the border, well, the Guatemalan immigration office.  The bus driver approaches us and says to hide the dogs.  We explain, no, it’s okay, we have papers.  Yeah, he says, but both immigration offices will charge you to bring them out and into the country.  We were skeptical and annoyed, but then a Guatemalan immigration official came over and urged us to hide the dogs to save money.  Uh, okay.  So we took their kennel out and put them in the kennel and under Emily’s seat.  They kept whining and whining and we were getting nervous because the Honduran immigration officials actually come onto the bus to check your passport.  So I had told Emily earlier that for birds, you throw a blanket over their cage to make them be quiet.  And she said that only works for birds and Furbies (remember those?).  At the last minute, when the official was going to come on, she throws on her jacket over the cage, they shut up, and Operation Hide Puppies became a success.  No extra charges or fees, except for the wasted time and money on the exportation license, but whatever.  They were in!  Trust me, though, spending over a day in a bus with puppies on your lap or under the hot bus is not fun, it’s nerve-wracking, and difficult, and just…don’t do it, haha.  But don’t tell my pup Johnny that I said that…

So now I’m back in Honduras.  And ever since that trip, just the whole contrast of the countries, and I’m at this awkward halfway point, I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want to do next.  What’s the next leg of my adventure before real life going to look like?  Now, I would much rather start law school sooner rather than later, but I can’t, so I can’t even think about that.  I just have to think, how can I make the most of my time before law school?  What experiences can I try out next?  Do I stay here?  I would love to, for the kids, and for the comfort.  But there is a lot that I feel like I am missing out on still.  And the city, Juticalpa…as with any city like it, I’m sure, it has a lot of problems that part of me can’t truly reconcile with, not right now, not with what I’m trying to do, whatever that is.  It’s hard to live in a place like this.  I was less of an idealist than some, more of an idealist than most, but now I feel like I’m just a plain-old realist, and exiling yourself in a third-world country can have that effect.  Well, it can if you think about everything too much, which sometimes I do.  Not that this experience hasn’t done something wonderful for me, it has.  I believe it will lead to lifetime of devotion to trying to, well, fix the problems that are so ubiquitous here.  But, it’s frustrating thinking about a future in which I believe I will have the capabilities, the skills, the experience, the know-how to contribute, and right now, all I have, is a blog and a classroom, and I’m a terribly under-qualified teacher (although, I think I do pretty well anyway)…

Which, has led me to decide to move to Japan.  Why?  Well, at first, it wasn’t an option because I want to learn Spanish, which has been difficult here since I live with people who speak English, I work with people who speak English, my students aren’t even allowed to speak Spanish, and even my Honduran friends speak English.  But then I came to realize, I can do another study abroad something while in law school, or I can study Spanish more at law school, or in Japan, hell, who knows, but learning Spanish has become less of a priority (I’m pretty good with it anyway, just not nearly fluent yet).  So then I decided, okay, I want to live in a big city, a big thriving city, with loads of people, and not so much AK-47s, and maybe a little more hot water.  And I want to do something that I have never done before.  My first thought was honestly New York.  But then I was suggested Japan, and bingo, that hit the spot.  I found a company that’s hiring, I’ll live in some clean, furnished Japanese studio in Tokyo with a balcony, and I have an interview next month.  So hopefully, a year from now, this blog will read “January 16, 2012 – Tokyo, Japan” and I’ll bewriting about my most recent hike of Mount Fuji or my visit to Chingodo-Ji or about the gardens at some Buddhist Temple…ah who knows, I’m fantasizing…

If you happen to be a future D.S.ian reading about what I have to say about Juticalpa, please don’t be swayed away by my whines and rants.  D.S. is a really great school, and the kids are great (although, you initially have to be very patient and very strict before they become so great), and the town is not so bad.  There are other teachers here who love this city, and are even staying another year, they’d probably live here forever if not for pesky things like Grad School and careers and whatnot.  I just happen to be cynical, and stubborn, and I give everything too much meaning sometimes, and I realize that, but I don’t care (that’s the stubborn part).  I just want to go to Japan.

Anyway, tomorrow we are doing a really exciting Egg Osmosis experiment!  I can’t wait, I really feel like the kids’ minds are going to be blown!  The egg is acting as a cell and when you put it into water, it fills up because of osmosis.  When you put the egg into corn syrup it shrinks because of osmosis!  And, if you do all of this with a boiled egg, it becomes a bouncy ball!  I can’t wait!

Actually, this week is a big week for me.  I am starting Junior SAT Prep classes two days out of the week.  I begin rehearsing for a comedy sketch that my 8th graders are doing for the end-of-the-month assembly.  I am tutoring Emily’s 6th grader everyday, something I just started doing yesterday.  It’s going to be a busy week, but at least that means it’ll go by fast!

Well, that was a weird post, huh?

Dec

23

 

Categories: Belize, Travelling

Tags: , , , , , ,

December 23, 2010 – Caye Caulker, Belize

Well, we made it to our destination!  It actually was not in our original, loosely devised plans, Caye Caulker I mean.  We meant to stay in Placencia, but heard it was more of an ex-pat paradise, quiet and sleepy, and hardly a place with a night life, according to some backpackers we met in San Pedro Sula.  They all urged us, begged us even, to come to Caye Caulker, a backpacker’s town, quite literally.  We outnumber locals for sure, it’s a very small stretch of an island, and everything is very cheap.

The night life was also very, very fun!  We went to a sports bar and watch football for a very long time, which was strange for us, as we don’t really like football, but it was fun all the same.  Then we went to this bar called the I and I, a reggae bar, very, uh, laidback.  There was a sweet dance floor too, but all the snooty Europeans and hippies were all upstairs, smoking their cigarettes and talking about books that they haven’t even read, too busy to dance, too cool also, so Emily and I took it upon ourselves to occupy the dance floor.  We were acting like everyone was dancing, we were having so much fun, and a couple of English wild girls joined us, and soon enough a bunch of people were on the dance floor.  The bar closed and we all moved to the Oceanside Nightclub, where EVERYONE was dancing after enough intoxication.  The playlist was a hip-hop blast to the past, so all of the gringos were going crazy, and Em and I and the English girls were in the center of it all.  Very fun, very very fun.

Yesterday we spent the day walking around, eating, lounging.  It was a very beautiful day.  Caye Caulker, or at least the part we occupy, is mainly a small spit of land, so small, you can see the shore on both sides of you.  There are cool shops, cheap stays, good and cheap food.  I ate grilled lobster last night, I really can’t complain.  I’m about to go ride bikes around this tiny beach town, maybe check into a nicer hotel for Christmas morning, and book a snorkeling trip.  The snorkeling trips include ceviche, rum, stingrays, sharks, coral, and turtles, so I can’t wait!

Until next time, I hope your Christmas is merry!

Dec

20

 

Categories: Belize, Travelling

December 20, 2010 – Dangriga, Belize

Well!  I am currently in-between countries right now, starting some leg of a much needed vacation.  It’s our Winter Break and Emily and I are heading to Caye Calker in Belize, and then from there to Ramate and Tikal in Guatemala, and then from there, who knows? Home, most likely, given our budget, but we may squeeze in a Brewery or Copan (again) yet.

Before I left, the kids were starting to act all crazy, getting excited for the upcoming break. It made for a hell of a classroom, and boy was I glad when Friday 2:50 p.m. rolled around. Before all of that, I was stressed out by the Science Fair and my LSAT test anyway, so these weeks have been a blur.

The Science Fair was a great success by the way! The kids got really into it and their projects were really marvelous, especially considering that the materials they have at hand aren’t as easy to come by as they may be in the states. The first place winner for Elementary School fiddled with electromagnetism by making an “Electric Bell” — closing a copper circuit hooked up to batteries and demonstrating electromagnetism as it became attracted to the bell and “dinged!” The first place winner for Middle School showed us how certain proteins in human hair absorbed oil from water effectively, so effectively that they actually used the method to clean up the Gulf recently. The second place winner made “BioCombustible Fuel” from corn. The third place winner made a Ruben’s Tube, which essentially is a very cool way to make fire dance. I was really proud of my middle schoolers. The High Schoolers were judged by the High School Science teacher, so I’m not really sure how their projects fared (but I’m pretty sure my kids did better : ), naturally).

So now I am in Dangriga, on my way to Caye Calker, Science Fairs, LSATs, and crazy kids behind me. I actually forgot my Honduran residency card, like a dope, but fortunately there are some corrupt immigration officials working at the airport, so I lucked out, and that’s about as far into that as I’ll go, ha. Dangriga is just a sleepy Belizian town, one main road, very mellow people as far as I can tell. We’re leaving for Belize city tomorrow morning and then taking a water-taxi to Caye Calker, making it in time for their Tuesday night party scene, haha. I cannot wait to be in that moment, there has been so much travelling up until this point. Juticalpa to Tegucigalpa was 4-5 hours, Tegucigalpa to San Pedro Sula was 4.5 hours, San Pedro Sula to Laguna was 1.5 hours, Laguna to Dangriga was a 3 hour boat trip. Now just a 2 hour bus ride and a 1 hour boat ride and FINALLY…we can relax and enjoy and not think about lesson planning or kids stealing my candy or finding Science Fair prizes or LSATs or any of that…

We can just…

Kick it.

Nov

30

 

Categories: Honduras

Tags: , , ,

November 30, 2010 – Juticalpa, Honduras

Well!  A lot has been going on lately!

In the States it was recently Thanksgiving.  In Honduras, we did what most Hondurans do on Thanksgiving…worked.  It was a sad day for some of us.  Ms. K actually forgot her lunch that day — I mean, come on, that day! – and went home to discover that she had no water in her house!  Bad news for Thanksgiving day.  Although, that was our pay day so it wasn’t all bad…

A couple of weeks before that, the Calle Chicle house — my house, because yes, we live on “Bubblegum Street” — decided that we were going to have a Day-Star Thanksgiving.  We celebrated it this last Saturday, and it really blew my expectations out of the water.

So, we’ve had this new grocery store open up in the last couple of months or so, La Colonia…come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve discussed La Colonia very much.  It’s a little slice of the states in this city of bodegas and pulperias.  It’s got aisles, it’s got signs and organization, it’s got a fruit section and a bakery, and it’s even got DELI MEAT besides ham!  That’s really an amazing one, because before La Colonia opened I actually went on a search of all the big grocery stores for some deli meat (I’m a sandwich-taker kinda gal) and let me tell you…they got a lot of it.  Oh sure, they have Ham…Bologna…Ham Chicken…Ham Turkey…Bologna of Chicken…Bologna of Turkey…they like their pig here.  Me, not so much.  So when I saw in La Colonia that they had some actual, real turkey, my heart skipped a little beat…

Anyway, this fits into the Thanksgiving equation because they actually had frozen turkeys, which saved us a 3 hour bus ride to and from Teguc, which is what teachers in the past have had to do.  That was a stroke of good luck.  However, as it was the first time any occupant of Calle Chicle had attempted the turkey-cooking feat, we did not realize that a turkey has to be thawed for 3 or 4 days.  No worries, we just had to quick-thaw it the night before…under cold running water…that we had to change every 30 minutes…for 7 hours.  But, we did it!

The next day, the unofficial Day-Star Thanksgiving, we arrived at the school about 5 hours before dinner so that we could cook both turkeys (oh yes, there were 2) in the industrial ovens.  The oven is great, but it cooks at very high temperatures and there is not really a temperature dial so much…so that added a sort of bump in our plans.  The ladies told us it would only take 3 hours to cook our turkeys but we really needed to space that out until dinner.  So we kind of winged it from there, turning the oven on and off, glazing it a little here, there, pouring the glaze on, pouring some white wine on for good measure…

When it was done, we had to catch a cab, and put the two turkeys in the trunk.  Pour guy got turkey juices all over his trunk, whoops.  People started arriving shortly thereafter, bringing just mounds of food, we had 3 types of mashed potatoes, rice, macaroni, soup, deviled eggs, garlic bread, banana bread, jell-o, gravy, green beans, stuffing, punch, roman bread…it was great.  The best part, though, was when Mr. V carved the turkey and ta-dah!  It wasn’t raw!  The only other thing we had to worry about was a possible bacterial invasion in our stomachs, thanks to the whole defrosting method, but hey, 3 days later and I’m still standing.  That night was great, the boys and Ms. C got really into fireworks, filling our house with smoke and scaring the Calle Chicle children into their houses.  We chatted, we laughed, we screamed (not a fan of loud noises), some of us stumbled after a little too much wine…

It was a good time.

And now, Calle Chicle has got all the leftovers, tha’s right.

Besides that, I’ve been planning a schoolwide Science Fair.  A lot of the kids have gotten really excited about it!  Of course, I’m offering a huge extra credit incentive, but hey!  Extra credit’s exciting!  I have probably around 40-50 entrants, and I’d say about 25% of those projects are going to be volcanoes, but it should be a fun time no less.  There’ll be prizes and hopefully trophies, I don’t know, but I’m getting pretty pumped about it.  Some of the projects are actually a lot more intense than volcanoes, like electromagnetism and making a hydroponics garden, which is especially going to be a feat considering we are in a town of limited resources.  I can’t wait to see them, anyway.

Tomorrow all of the North American teachers are going to Tegucigalpa!  Exciting stuff.  We’ll be eating some McDonalds, going to some PriceMarts, becoming residents, maybe watching Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 for the second time (yes, I did ride on a bus for a total of six hours on the opening weekend of the movie, in case you were wondering).  All exciting stuff for sure : ).

Christmas Break is in two weeks!  That is really exciting!  Emily and I are kind of going with the flow…Are we going to Copan?  To Trujillo?  Tikal?  Ramate?  BELIZE?  Who knows?!  We’re trying to make it to Belize though, for sure, I can tell you that right now.  The rest, they’ve kind of become our backup plans.  I mean come on…Belize for Christmas/Hanukkah?  Heck yes.  The only thing holding us back is the price…let’s just put it this way — 1 Belize dollar is 10 lempiras.  Yikes.

Other than that, everything’s been going fairly well.  I’ve been having a sleeping problem, but I think that’s normal when things are a little out of whack, when things start feeling strange, you know?  I’ve been really missing the States lately, it’s amazing how well we actually have it there.  I mean, I’m not complaining about my standard of living here, it’s absolutely fantastic, especially in comparison to a lot of other people here.  But it’s amazing what I took for granted in the states — being able to walk around at night, wearing shorts, wearing low-cut shirts that aren’t even considered “low-cut” by our standards, going to a good coffee shop, buying a whole gallon of milk, potato mashers, buying sticks of butter — stuff like that.

My classes are going well.  As I said in  the last post, I’ve really eased off the strictness and a lot of the students are starting maybe even to like me?  They are starting to like me and they listen to me, so it’s all good.  A few of them I can even get really excited about science — the law of conservation of energy and mass blew my 8th graders’ minds!  Second partial is winding down, I don’t have too many kids failing, which is really good.  I’ve told them that the fact that they’re learning all of this stuff in a new language is impressive and hard enough on its own, so I’m not out to trick them or confuse them.  If they listen, do their study guides, and study, the tests are very, very easy, especially by our own standards.  If they don’t, they’re hard.  A lot of them have started to get what I mean when I say that though.  For instance, I had about four 7th graders who were really falling behind, not doing their homework, not studying for tests and then failing the tests miserably.  I met with their parents and set up a whole system to check their homework and their study habits — I’d sign off on what they needed to do for their night and their parents would sign off on that nightly to make sure they were doing it.  They went from solid F students, I’m talking 25% first partial, to getting 42 out of 40 on tests.  That girl was shocked after the first test she took after this whole homework system was set up — “Miss, your tests are so easy!”  ”I know Norma, that’s the whole point!”  It’s a good thing.

Today, I won the Service Award.  Every month the teachers vote for the students and teachers who exemplify the “virtue of the month” — September was Patience, which Mr. G won (you’ll remember him from being a superhero in Tela), October was Unity which Ms. O won, and this month was Service, which went to yours truly.  It was actually really exciting and unexpected, the kids all cheered, my face was beet red — “Miss, your face was SO red up there, I mean SO red, like a tomato!” — , I got some candy and a necklace and 50 lemps worth of lunch tickets…it was really cool : ).

I’m about halfway done with the year and I’m feeling good about it.  I was going to apply to law school and start going next year, but I’m holding off to up my chances of admission and scholarships, which puts me in this predicament of having another year to figure out.  On one hand, yes, I can see the attraction of putting off my “real” life for another year.  On the other hand, I really want to just get it started already.  But, the choice has been made, the best thing to do is to apply in September, so I’ve got 365 more days to exile myself in the Americas somewhere.  Maybe I’ll stay in Juti, maybe I’ll start some new adventure in a Chilean winery, but no matter what I end up doing, it’s gonna be good.

Nov

9

 

Categories: Honduras

Tags: , ,

November 9, 2010 – Juticalpa, Honduras

Well, well, well…I promise not to let that much time fly by again.  A lot has happened between then and now.

The first partial is over.  They call quarters “partials” here for some reason.  Anyway, it’s come and gone and a new one has started.  It’s hard to believe I’ve been at this for such a regular amount of time, if you know what I mean.  I have to say I have learned a lot so far.  A lot of it I can’t quite articulate.  I’ll leave that for another, distant day.

A few weeks ago all the teachers went to Copán.  Copán is a beautiful, peaceful place.  The people there were all happy and welcoming, the streets were cleaned and cobblestoned.  The dogs were healthy and friendly.  It was strange to be able to walk around the streets at night without worrying about being mugged or caught in a gunfight or whatever else goes on in Juti.  In Juticalpa, I always feel like I’m running away from some kind of monster, vampires or werewolves, whenever night approaches and I’m rushing to get inside, or I’m walking around and my heart’s pumping, adrenaline rushing, mind racing, etc.   It was nice to be in Copán where the Night Monster can’t come.

The ruins were something else entirely.  I’ve been to Chichen Itza, and in comparison, there is none.  Chichen Itza is like Disneyland — overrated, and meant for the simpler-minded, the ones who need easy entertainment.  It’s impossible to enjoy any kind of beauty or wonderment or whatever because of all the vendors and the 50 million people and their accompanying tour guides all clapping at different intervals to show their respective groups of white seniors the acoustics of the ruins.  What?  Why?  Chichen Itza — beautiful, sure, but awful place to visit.

Copán, on the other hand, is a huge ancient city of Mayans, tucked away from the street and the people, led to by a quiet pathway with trees on both sides.  I know you shouldn’t be able to because of erosion, but we could climb onto the top of the temples and walk into the little hovels of the residence ruins.  History should be preserved, I guess, but there’s something very poetic about it being fleeting too.  Meant for our eyes only.

Emily and I wandered around the ruins for a while.  We sat at this one courtyard for a really long time.  It was so bright green, almost unreal, like a hyper-colored version of green.  Everything was covered in moss, grass and flowers.  There were butterflies everywhere.  At one point, this British woman came up to stand and take it all in, too, I guess.  All of a sudden she said, “Look, a moth!”  It was this huge, bright blue butterfly, certainly no moth.  Later on she was telling us how the king of the Mayans would get high off of chocolate or something, and asked us if we had ever done that.  What are you talking about, lady?  She was definitely leftover from the 60s, in case you were wondering.

Some time in Copán, whether it was before or after the ruins, I don’t know, the girls all went on a horseback ride through the mountains.  That was pretty unreal, I thoroughly enjoyed myself.  My horse was kind of like me — headstrong, power-hungry (had to be first…she was literally biting the other girls’ horses that tried to catch up to her), fast, etc.  Haha, and her name was “Satina” — which sounded an awful lot like “Satan.”  So, not exactly like me, but it was still fun to joke about.  This one crazy girl Ms. K literally had a horse named “Chica Loca.”  It’s just amazing how well they matched you up.

Anyway, we wandered up the mountains to this Women’s Co-Op.  That would have been really cool — they sold these beautiful cornhusk dolls that were colorful and plump and fun — if not for the several dozen, well-trained children vendors who surrounded our horses eerily chanting “Onnneee dolllarrrrr, onnne dollarrrr”, trying to sell us these dolls.  I felt bad, and nervous, and curious, all at the same time.  As we went back down the mountain it was nighttime, and all of the fields we had passed by on the way up were now glittering with fireflies who flew really low to the ground, so it really did seem like we were passing starry night after starry night…

Copán really did make me think twice about applying to law school.  Really — you mean I could open up an amazing restaurant in some tiny Honduran town with Mayan ruins and cobble-stoned streets?  I could just eat my good food, drink my good wine, and enjoy the scenery?  We met a British woman doing exactly that — her restaurant is Twisted Tanyas.  The food — excellent.  Drinks — excellent.  View — beautiful.  Her life — enviable.

Since then I’ve been just doing the normal things.  We got a new, electric oven.  Our gas oven exploded a bit.  Kind of knocked Em over.  A tad scary, yes.  The thing was probably 30 years old or even older, so it was no wonder.  Now we have this shiny new electric oven, which coincided with my piqued interest in baking.  I’ve never really been a cooker outside of ramen noodles and cereal, but there is just something about doing this kind of thing, I don’t know, being in this whole different place, that kind of inspires me to reinvent myself, at least a little.  Reinvent myself as a baker, anyway.  I’ve been baking banana breads, Roman onion bread, chocolate chip cookies (Ms. K said that they tasted just like her moms, so yeah, I’m that good, haha), cakes…I’ll be a regular ol’ baker and candlestick maker by the time I’m done here.

As for school, well, I’ve been trying to tone down a bit.  You see, strictness is key, especially in the beginning, with these kids.  They know I mean business, and they know that there’s consequences in my class for rotten behavior.  But, naturally, that has caused a lot of the children to not like me, and I don’t like that.  I think I’m a likable person.  So I’ve been toning down the whole strict shtick, laying off on the recess detentions, laughing a little more — I think they’re slowly coming around.  I even got invited to a quinceañera this weekend!  I’ll be going to it the day after I go to Tegucigalpa to get pierced……..what?

Anyway, not too many negative things have been going on, or at least none that I care to go into now without changing the entire tone of this entry (sleepy? dreamy? tranquila? I dunno…).  I think I may stay here for another year, but it’s too early to tell.  Promise I’ll write again soon, and I can already tell it’ll be a bit more opinionated.

For another day.

Sep

26

 

Categories: Honduras

Tags: , , ,

September 26, 2010 – Juticalpa, Honduras

I forgot to mention something about my trip to Tela.  On our last night there, one of the teachers got robbed.  Emily, Ms. K, Mr. G, and I were walking back to our hotel.  In a split second, much faster than I could process what happened, some guy pushed over Ms. K, grabbed her shoe (why?), her purse, bolted, and then Mr. G ran after him.  It was frightening.  Ms. K was shoeless and bleeding, from her chin, her knees, and her elbows.  I was sobbing, worrying about Mr. G running after the mugger.  We ended up back at our hotel, standing out front, talking quickly, unintelligibly, when all of a sudden, who comes from around the corner but Mr. G, purse AND shoe in hand, unscathed and glowing, surrounded by some aura of manliness.  It was pretty cool.  Numerous people have since then told us that running after a mugger is about the last thing you want to do, but Mr. G gets a big kudos anyway. Now, let’s talk about what happened last night. Two teachers, a couple, Ms. C and Mr. M, left after a night out at a local hotel.  On their way home, a man came up from behind them and punched Mr. M in the face and started grabbing him by the hair.  Ms. C started hitting the guy until he said, in English, “Stop hitting me” and reached for something in the back of his pants, indicating that he was armed.  She was crying and trying to tell him that they didn’t have anything, but it took a while for the guy to finally let go of Mr. M and take off.  Right after this, a truck pulls up and two men who could speak English tell them to get in, that they saw the whole thing.  So Ms. C and Mr. M get in the truck, thinking they were just getting a ride home, but the two men were intent upon finding the mugger.  Ms. C and Mr. M pleaded with them to just let it go, that they wanted to go home, and just as they rounded the corner, the guys saw the mugger and the passenger in the truck pulled out his gun and started shooting at the guy.  Ms. C is hysterical at this point, and they’re telling her to calm down, at which point Mr. M reminds them that in the U.S. we don’t really carry around guns, let alone use them, so the situation was especially frightening.  The guy apparently says, well they needed to teach the mugger a lesson and that was how they did things in Honduras. This isn’t all that surprising, considering a couple of things.  Currently, Juticalpa is the setting for a lot of “violencia familiar”–family rivalry violence.  There are two families, one is a family of hitmen, one is a family of drug lords, some minor altercation happened between them a long time ago, now they are at war, and each owns a different part of Juti.  The druglord, for example, owns the police force.  So, when your city is run by a bunch of thugs, and your police force is run by a bunch of thugs, and people are shooting each other in the streets for some meaningless, abstract ideal, I guess that is just how you’re supposed to “get things done.”

Sep

25

 

Categories: Honduras

September 25, 2010 – Juticalpa, Honduras

Well, I found a lightbulb, so I figured it was a good time to update.  It only took me nearly two months, but it happened.  There I was, wandering into a hole-in-the-wall ferreteria and this seemingly worthless little lightbulb is sitting in the glass case, piled amongst other knickknacks.  I told Emily I was going to buy it and hope for the best, and she, well she doubted me to be honest.

But I bought it.

And now there is light!

Really quick, I should let you know that the boy who was kidnapped was found.  His babysitter was in on the gig…her and her cop brother plotted this whole thing.  When they were paid the ransom money, the cops just followed the money and found them in this other city, which is just amazing because the cops weren’t supposed to be contacted, but furthermore they actually contributed to the solving of the case.  So, he’s back home, they’re both in Honduran jail, which I’m sure particularly sucks for the 15-year-old babysitter, and that whole episode is over.

I am now the Middle School Science Teacher.  There was this older man teaching Science, but he was really overwhelmed, I think, by the rules and the kids (he had hearing aids in and they would really take advantage of that), so he just up and quit one day.  I offered to take over because Science is a superfun subject, unlike boring ol’ Math, and the High School Math teacher took over my job because it was more fun than her job.  While superfun, it is also a lot more involved in the lesson-planning portion.  Each section has a different book, and is learning different things so Section 7A is learning about Animals and 7B is learning about Bacteria to Plants.  Section 8A is learning about Chemical Building Blocks and 8B is learning about Chemical Reactions.  Section 9A is learning about Changing Earth’s Surface (the most boring subject in the world…anyone care to know how soil forms?) and 9B is learning about Inside Earth.  So far I’ve done a couple of experiments, and I’m doing a presentation on Mount Vesuvius next week, so all in all it’s been pretty fun.

We had another teacher abandon his post.  The guy is a tool.  He was some “Catholic” guy, which I put in quotations because he was really intent on making that his “thing.”  It’s not like he was particularly moral or anything like that, he just wanted to appear spiritual and philosophical.  Ugh, and the guy was just plain ignorant, which annoyed me considering he was the Literature and History teacher.  He was also “young”, our age, but very immature, he would say it himself all of the time.  So he basically couldn’t handle being so far away from home and having so much work to do.  One day, he said he was sick and went to Tegucigalpa, which was unnecessary considering there are doctors in Juticalpa.  Turns out he just left all of his stuff, and took off back home, but not before e-mailing our bosses to tell them that he left because of the other teachers and how immoral we all are, he even accused us of being drug-dealers (which I can assure you, we are not).  Funny thing is, our boss Mrs. S, thought it was more annoying that he just left the school high and dry right after the Science teacher left, and didn’t really heed his unsubstantiated insults.

So, if anyone is looking to teach Literature or History or High School Math, apply here!

Anyway, a hurricane is supposed to hit us.  Well, it’s supposed to hit the north coast, turn into a tropical depression, and increase our rainfall here, but people like to panic so I’ve been joining in on the fun.  A hurricane!  His name is Matthew.  A hurricane!  Considering it’s not even raining right now, I doubt that there’s anything to Big Ol’ Matthew…

I went to Tela on the North Coast recently, and that was just beautiful.  Our first night there we went out on the town and that was a blast.  The second day we took a boat out to this island Punta Sal, which is a nature reserve and snorkeled and talked to monkeys.  I TALKED TO MONKEYS!  I was going “OOH OOH” and they were responding and there was like 4 of them and we were talking and it was great.  The island was beautiful, white sands, blue ocean, thick forest everywhere…on our way over, we saw WILD DOLPHINS…damn, Tela…everything about Tela was just a dream.  One day, after a particularly crazy night of dancing, half of us went to a Botanical Garden, and Emily, this other teacher Ms. K and I stayed on the beach all day long.  We walked up and down, read on the sand, and ended up going horseback riding with these locals on the beach…ahh, such is the life.  When we went dancing, the whole night just seemed to go on forever, which was awesome.  Dancing is such a fun way to let it all out.  There’s a lot of reggaeton here, look it up and you’ll see the stuff we’re dancing to all the time.  Shakira’s Waka Waka song is really big here, and we all personally go nuts for it everytime it comes on.  I miss Tela.

Well, I’ll hopefully update on a more regular basis.  Hasta luego.

Aug

30

 

Categories: Honduras

Tags: , , , ,

August 30, 2010 – Juticalpa, Honduras

It seems as if ages have passed since I last updated.  I feel as if I have been teaching for years and am just now considering how difficult it has been, emotionally and physically, while at the same time balancing its big-picture value to me.  And it’s only been two weeks.

My first day as Ms. Johnson was an incredible shock.  The classes seemed so long and the kids such an overwhelmingly captive audience.  I was nauseous, although I think I made myself ill.  By the end of the day my whole body ached — my knees, lower back, shoulders, neck, brain, soul.  I thought, What have I gotten myself into if this is how I feel on the first day as a teacher, barely scratching at the surface? The other teachers, Emily and I went to a restaurant, El Rancho, after school to celebrate our first day with hamburgers, and I could not even take a bite of the burger because of how sick I felt, let alone sit there long enough without groaning from the aches.

But, surprisingly, the second day, and every day since, has been so much easier than the first, albeit still tough.  Once I started teaching material, and also grading, tutoring, engaging with the students, the job has become a routine, and I am finding it more and more comforting.  Plus, no aches and no illnesses since that first awful day.

Most of my classes, save one, have warmed up to me nicely.  Math is their least favorite subject, by far, but I have so far found that more kids are becoming inquisitive and interested, which has been uplifting.  It also helps that I bribe them with candy and the promise of monthly Cake and Coca-Cola parties for their participation and good behavior : ).

I have also offered a challenge to my students.  But first, I’d like to explain the Honduran educational system as I so far understand it, along with my commentary and qualms.

So, with how unimpressive the Honduran government is, the bizarre standards they impose upon education are incredibly impressive, in an obnoxious sort of way.  This is easily demonstrated in the amount of paperwork the government requires.  Every day, I have to sign a book explaining the “themes” I have taught in each class, which seems normal enough, except that it’s in English, which the educational “overseers” certainly (most of the time, apparently) can’t speak or read, and it’s merely a formality–they just want to check that it’s there.  Eventually, next motnh, I have to also fill out my whole year’s plan, twice, including the general themes I plan to teach on one plan, and the specific topics I plan to cover in another plan, including the materials I will use to get my points across, how I plan to test their knowledge, how many hours I plan to devote to each, and any “observations” I make, whatever that means.  Again, this is in English, and again, the content is less of a priority than the mere existence of such a document.  It’s as if health inspectors were coming to a restaurant and as long as the cloth and the bucket exist in the restaurant, the fact that the cloth is a rag torn to shreds and the bucket has holes in it, or the fact that both are sanitized and are being used, does not matter.  I guess my main problem with this type of bureaucracy is its location.  The problems with the system go far beyond this bureaucratic nonsense, it just seems like a waste of energy that could be re-routed to other problem areas.  Like dealing with the teachers.

The public school teachers of Honduras are currently on strike.  The teachers of Honduras are considered professionals, and as such they are one of the few professionals to be unionized, which seems great until you consider recent events.  The public schools are for the moment cancelled, so over 2 million students have not been going to school in Honduras.  The teachers want more money, or vacation days, or something like that.  Who doesn’t?  The problem is that they strike every single year–last year the public schools were shut down for 3 months!  Of course, I have heard the other side of the story, and that is that teachers were being unfairly discriminated against (i.e. not being paid) for their political beliefs.  But, from what I can tell from the main grapevine here, and El Heraldo newspaper here, the atmosphere and attitude surrounding this strike are nothing new, these complaints are tried and true, and the teachers are persistent in ever-increasing demands.  Besides, the teachers apparently make plenty of money, get something like 30 vacation days, and only work from 7 a.m. until noon.  Oh, and Honduran law requires that any teacher who gets fired must be paid a bonus proportional to their time of employment, so the government and schools cannot even fire these striking teachers without a lot of them getting L1-2 million pay-outs, or roughly $50,000-100,000.  Apparently the strikes are more of a problem now because the old president would give in to their various demands, but the new president refuses, and his only alternative is to cancel the school year for the public schools.  With the already lacking education, it’s just a shame that the students have to further suffer the consequences of what appears to be a broken system.

One of my last observations regarding what I so-far know about the educational system is that of the “Recuperation Test.”  From elementary school to the university level, if a student fails a subject, class, or grade for that matter, the student will have roughly 3 to 5 big chances to make his failing grade up during Recuperation Tests.  So, to explain, if you are my student and you get 10% in my class (you did 10% of the homework, got %10 on average on my quizzes and tests), well, you actually get a 55% because that is the minimum grade I can give you (So that you have a fighting chance, I guess?)  And, you can study for the cumulative Recuperation Test at the end of the semester.  But, let’s say you don’t pass the Recuperation Test.  Well, try to bounce back the next semester.  Okay, but you get 10-turned-55% again, and now it’s the end of the year.  You can take yet another Recuperation Test to replace your failing grade.  But you fail again!  It’s okay–you have one more shot in August before the next school year begins to take another one of my Recuperation Tests to replace the score you earned in my class.  Luckily, D.S. has special permission to count 70% or less as failing, which gives more motivation to do a bit better, but the entire idea just seems to encourage massive procrastination and cop-outs, not to mention apathy for grades.

So, back to my challenge.  Last year, 70 of about 150 middle school students (as I’ve been told) had to take the Math Recuperation Tests.  (In fact, when I asked my students on the first day to talk about a fun thing they over the summer, a lot of them said, “Studied for the Recuperation Tests in Math!”)  So, I told my students that if 10 or less students from all of my 7th, 8th and 9th grade classes end up in Recuperation, that I will personally through a huge party at the school or some other public venue in their honor, as a reward.  The students seemed to be skeptical, but excited.  I think they can do it, and I think that I can too.

Anyway, Emily’s classes seem to be getting on well.  We both get really excited about her Science and Art Projects.  Guess what her first Art Project was?  Each kid had to draw his or her own SQUID!  That’s right, they’re the 6th Grade Squids of 6A, embroiled in an age-old battle against the 6th Grade Spermwhales of 6B!  That’s right, we’re globalizing squid-art one impressionable mind at time, and let me tell you, they love it.  They even have a “Squid Constitution” that begins, “We the Squids…”

Squids.

Besides that, school and teaching has been both enjoyable, yet hard.  Every night I’m grading 150 homeworks or quizzes and it always seems daunting (hence my lack of updates, forgive me already!).  Every week I have to think of interesting, but fundamental ways to teach middle-school Math, in English, to students who know English as a second language.  Can you imagine how difficult it would be to learn Math concepts and solve equations while being instructed in Spanish?  I do admire these kids, that’s for sure.

Juticalpa is growing on me, very, very slowly.  Went out of town a couple weekends ago and it was beautiful, although uneventful were I to describe it.  Went to a teacher’s birthday  barbecue, which was fun.  Her husband’s mom owns a farm atop a mountain and we are visiting it this weekend!  They have cows, and horses, and a pig, and CHICKENS!

We are going to make the animals treats.  And we will play with them.  And I will hold a chicken, and I will love the chicken. Also, we may go zip-lining afterwards.

The other teachers went to Tegucigalpa (henceforth, Teguc) this weekend, which we unfortunately had to miss out on.  In 2 weeks though, “Children’s Day” is on a Friday (A day to celebrate the children!  Yay!) and we may be getting a half-day, and then we may all leave to go to the beach!

I hate to end on a bad note, but I feel it must be mentioned.  A week ago, on of our secretary’s son was kidnapped in broad daylight, and the captors are asking for L2 million, or $100,000.  Apparently this happens a lot here, mostly to wealthy families.  Sometimes, though, the kidnappers grab the wrong child or relative, one belonging to a poor family.  Most of the time, upon realizing their mistake, the kidnappers let their captive go.  Sometimes, though, the heartless monsters go forth with their unreasonable demands and cruel, evil threats.  Such is the case with the secretary’s son.  He’s only four years old.  They’ve been holding televised telethons and raising money at the school to try and secure his release.  If you’re interested in donating to the cause, contact me and we can talk about it.

There aren’t any worries about the gringos’ safety down here.  No one will really mess with the Americans, and they especially wouldn’t kidnap them.  Unlike the Honduran government, and the Honduran “police force”, the U.S. Government and the U.S. Military and the U.S. Police Force are not entities these Juticalpan kidnappers would want to deal with.

Anyway, it’s true that I am merely a novice teacher and Juticalpan, so take my words as such.  I’m sure my opinions will transform, or at least be more substantiated by experience.  I have so much more to learn and do here.  These are merely thoughts.

Aug

18

 

Categories: Honduras

August 17 – Juticalpa, Honduras

“The time has come,” the walrus said, “To talk of many things.  Of shoes, and ships, and sealing wax.  Of cabbages and kinds.  And why the sea is boiling hot.  And whether pigs have wings.”
And teachings.  Oh my, I’m going to be a teacher tomorrow.  This harrowing voice keeps booming in my head, “The time has come!” but then it turns into the one verse in the powem that I know, and I think, yes, this is a good time to talk about cabbage…
Maybe another day.
Today I’ll talk about today.  Today was the open house at the school.  I met a few parents who all wanted their children to sit up front and who were already planning our first parent-teacher conferences.  I met a lot of students who seemed very nice, although I’m told they can be deceitful, and who were sure that math was NOT their favorite subject.
And then the open house ended and almost immediately it began to pour.  As I prepared myself to make seating charts for my classes, Emily called to say that her room was flooding and I ran upstairs and it was indeed flooding.  Given that we were fashionable and wore heels to school, we were stuck until the storm passed, which has never taken very long here according to most, although today it took a couple hours.
Apparently the streets were rivers during this time, although we missed that, and then our neighbor-grandma drove us home and made us tamatillos elotes, corn tamales.  They were very good.  Their mantequilla, butter, here is very good–they treat it as a sour cream as it’s a very heavy, thick liquid.  Eating at grandma’s house is so peaceful, except for the continuous hyperactivity from Juan, because it’s set in an open sort of courtyard, the ceiling raised and open to give you a view of the forty-year-old mango trees that are towering in her backyard.
Since dinner we haven’t done much of anything.
Emily went to bed at 8 and I’m getting ready to do the same.  We have a big “first” tomorrow.  It’s hard to believe that by the time I go to bed tomorrow night, I’ll be a teacher.  It’s daunting and comforting at the same time.  I really underestimated a lot of teachers, their work, nervousness, and especially their fears.

Aug

9

 

Categories: Honduras

Tags: , , ,

August 9, 2010 – Juticalpa, Honduras

So today was the first day of work.  It was orientation for all the new teachers.  The new teachers all seem nice overall.  Emily gets to work with another 6th grade teacher, which is incredibly lucky I think.  Math is the least favorite subject of all the students, and apparently the least comprehensible to students who know English as a second language, so…great.

Orientation made me feel less comfortable about teaching.  Apparently you do have to a Machiavellian fascist in order to get anything done with these kids.  The worst part is that the students’ laziness or their rudeness in general is passed off as “cultural differences” which I feel like is misleading.  To me, culture implies a sort of self-actualization of sorts, in that it is something specific to one’s locale that makes a person or a community unique, and grants them a sort of claim to independence, or the realization of potential or something like that.  So, to say that people are rude or lazy because of cultural differences implies that they embrace these qualities as inherent in their culture, but does anybody really do that?  Or do people just grant these kind of qualities as a group-mindset and refuse to go against the group?  And yes, I think it’s different to have the sort of group mentality that talking during class is fine and normal than to have that kind of rude behavior be a cultural norm.  I understand that this kind of concept may just be lost on me as a Westerner, but I think that’s missing the point.  As my boyfriend Will put it when I was trying to explain my frustration with this way of thinking, Westerners may have their own neuroses such as superficiality and wastefulness, but at least our illnesses are illnesses of civilization.  I think the problem begins with passing off behavioral deficiencies and inefficient structural modes of thought with “cultural differences.”  I believe Honduras has a very rich, interesting culture–I don’t think it’s fair to grant talking during funerals or trying to make teachers cry on a regular basis as part of that.

Along with these “cultural differences” is the apparent “culture of machismo” (their words, not mine).  When we were walking with one of the teachers back to D.S. after lunch, this creep was trying to keep an even pace with us, so I suggested we slowed down, but she wanted so speed up.  Right as she passed him, he grabbed her and we all punched his arm away, to which he just walked away, turned around, looked us in the eye and said, in English, “What are you going to do?  What are you going to do?”  What were we going to do?  I had my mace on me in my purse, but in the heat of the whole thing all I could do was threaten police interference, which was a joke because the police force here is a kind of joke.  And even if I did mace the guy, could I honestly expect no repercussions?  This is a small town and I’m 1 of about 6 gringas…it’s just so aggravating that he was able to confidently look a bunch of professional women (teachers are considered very professional here) in the eye and know that we couldn’t do anything because, hey, it’s just Honduran culture.

Anyway, I’m ranting, and I’ll probably do that a lot, but it’s worth ranting about, and it’s only because I care.  We met a 5th grader that goes to D.S. at lunch today and she was so small and so cute, and so smart, it just is so disheartening to think we only have the chance to teach her for 1 year the subjects of Western culture, but not the Western ideal of self-importance and the demand for respect, even from her own culture.

So,  after the lecture we received on how strictness and establishing rules is all-important, we worked in our classrooms, going through our books and things.  Going through my Math books was interesting–I only have 45 minutes to teach each class so I honestly think my classes will go by very quickly.  I just hope that I can convey mathematics to these students, especially considering I have no idea what level they’re actually at.

Well, I don’t know what the rest of the week holds besides lesson-planning and setting up our classrooms, but hopefully it’ll be a little more uplifting or get me a little more excited.

And I’ll be taking a cab to and from school from here on out to avoid the kind of “cultural differences” that made themselves apparent today.