Turkey dinner

If you know me at all, you know that Thanksgiving is my absolute favorite holiday and that I hate not being home for it. This Thanksgiving, however, was quite fantastic. The gringos and Brits all banded together to cook a fabulous Thanksgiving dinner for all of the teachers at our school. The Honduran teachers were all a bit skeptical at first, and were really preoccupied about whether we would have enough food or not. It took some planning to get everything, as food choice in La Unión is lacking, to say the least. Our food came from 3 different cities, but it was well worth the effort.

We ended up making a 16 pound turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes, creamed corn, stuffing, vegetables, bread and pumpkin pie. The dinner actually turned out fantastic, and the Honduran teachers actually asked for seconds and leftovers to take home. Despite their skepticism everything was quite delicious. We even had enough food left over to invite the gringos down the road up for some turkey. It was nice to have an evening of American food. Nothing screams gringo culture like copious amounts of delicious turkey!

Teaching

Yes, I know I struggle with updating this, but I've been surprisingly busy. I'm still working on grad school applications, looking into other countries to live in, and just generally trying to figure out what my next step is going to be. On top of that, I have also started teaching Sunday School to 4-6 year olds, which is an absolute blast. It's fun to hang out with the little ones every once and awhile, because I only teach 12-19 year olds during the week. On Saturdays I am starting to teach classes for Compassion International, which is an group that sponsors children and helps them get financial support and an education. While I was living in Texas I sponsored a girl from Guatemala, so I was pleasantly surprised to find out that they had an office here in La Unión. So, on Saturdays from 8-12 I am helping out with the 12-14 year olds. Basically, my life involves a whole lot of teaching here, and I couldn't be happier.

You can count on me...

I'm coming home for Christmas! My parents love me far too much and bought me a plane ticket home. I will be in Michigan from December 19th to January 2nd. See you then!

Halloween

So, here in rural Honduras, Halloween is quite a taboo subject. I figured it wouldn’t be celebrated at school since it is a Christian organization, but I didn’t realize how strongly people actually felt about it. The Thursday before Halloween, at our weekly staff meeting, one of the teachers went on about how Halloween is satanic and that it is for those who worship the devil and are witches, and how the culture here did not accept such things. It was quite awkward, so I mentioned that we don’t actually believe in the those things in the United States and it’s just a fun holiday to most people, but she didn’t really acknowledge what I said and continued bashing the holiday. I guess I kind of understand where she was coming from, but last I check I didn’t believe in witches or devil worship. Our school even put out a newsletter with 7 reasons why you shouldn’t celebrate Halloween. It was quite intense and awkward, so what did we do? The gringos had a little Halloween shindig.

Bret made a fantastic vegan cake, and said the other gringos were coming over for a small Halloween celebration. We all scrambled to pull together costumes. Holly was Bret, Bret was a birthday cake, Bryony was a pirate and I was a Honduran coffee farmer. Yes, I realize these costumes were lame, but it was thrown together in just a few minutes. The 2 kids we live with got a pretty big kick out of. The boys definitely didn’t have costumes on, but it was still good fun. Andrew, Amelia’s boyfriend who is currently visiting from Michigan, even brought some real chocolate (not the awful Honduras stuff) and had us trick or treat on his door.

So, if you ever wondered what Halloween was like in Honduras, there you have it. If you enjoy celebrating Halloween, I would recommend staying in the states.

And on a completely unrelated note, if you or someone you know is interested in teaching for 6 months in Gracias, Honduras (which is actually a beautiful, legitimate city), let me know. We need someone to teach ESL to students who have not been enrolled in a bilingual school before so they can start at Vida Abundante the following fall and not be behind. They would start in January. It’s a pretty sweet gig. Think about it.

Flying solo

Written October 23, 2010

One of the hardest things for me to get used to here is how painfully aware of my gender I am. In the United States there are few things that point out gender differences, aside from sports teams. Here, even walking down the street makes you aware of being female. Something as simple as going to the store can elicit stares and comments from random men, and make you feel ridiculously small and helpless. Everything I do throughout the day is a painful reminder of the fact that I am the “weaker sex”.

Although I do not consider myself a feminist, this reality has been very difficult to deal with. Last weekend I decided that I needed to do something about feeling so helpless. I decided that it was a great idea to travel solo for our three day holiday weekend.

Pretty much all of the males I shared my plan with had the same concerned look on their face as they said, “Well, chances are you would be fine, but what if something happened?” I wasn’t planning on going very far, but it still required taking a 3 hour bus ride alone and staying by myself in the city of Comayagua. After a lot of deliberation I realized that the risk was worth it. I know the risks of something happen go up significantly if I am on my own, but I was really feeling the need to be independent and prove to myself that I was capable of traveling alone. It’s hard being 24 years old and go from being independent and accustomed to living on my own, to living with a family and not having any choice in what I eat, when I eat, when my clothes are washed, where I travel to, etc.

I left at 5 am on Saturday for the city of Santa Barbara with Amelia, Bret, Holly and Bryony. There we parted ways as they continued on to Tela, a beach town. After finding out that the bus left at 9 for Comayagua I went to grab breakfast. Upon returning to the bus station I was told that I was misinformed, and the direct bus for Comayagua had already left at 8:30, five minutes earlier. I ended up having to take a large passenger van, a rapidito, from Santa Barbara to the desvío, or intersection, at Pinto Solo. I got off and waited at a bus stop that was basically in the middle of nowhere, having no idea which bus I should take from there. I asked two women who were selling homemade food on the buses going by which one I needed to take. They said they would let me know when it passed. After about 20 minutes, one of them grabbed me by the hand, ran up to the side of the road with me and flagged down my bus.

Once I was on the extremely crowded bus I met a wonderful Honduras woman and her daughter who had moved to New Zealand seven years earlier. We had a lovely conversation about the differences between schools in Honduras, New Zealand and the United States. The rest of the bus ride was quite pleasant, and I arrived in Comayagua without any other setbacks.

I stayed in a really nice hotel near the center of town to make up for the fact that I would be staying alone. I spent 600 lempiras a night (about $30), which was way more than I’ve ever spent on a room here in Honduras, but breakfast was included, there was wireless internet, hot water, air conditioning and a comfortable bed, so it was well worth it.

Comayagua was a pretty city with a really nice parque central that had a very old Catholic Church on one side. I spent a lot of time just walking around and having coffee in a café near the church. They also had a huge grocery store, which was very overwhelming to walk into! I’m not used to having so much fresh produce, cereal choice, or really any choice whatsoever. The only cereal in La Unión is Corn Flakes. We have little fresh produce and no yogurt, wheat bread or peanut butter. I definitely spent way too much money, but it was well worth it.

Also, due to the internet access, I was able to research graduate schools and work on applications. I’ve decided to apply to Spanish Linguistics programs. I still have no idea what I will end up doing next year, but at least I will have the option of possibly going to grad school, if I get accepted. It’s just nice to have some options. Spanish Linguistics will be really difficult for me, because my Spanish abilities are still nowhere near where I need them to be, but I think getting an MA in Spanish would really help with that.

So after a lovely, relaxing weekend spent relaxing and recharging on my own, I headed back on Monday morning to La Unión. I had no trouble catching the correct bus, which would take me directly to Santa Barbara, where I would then take a bus to La Unión without having to wait alone by the side of the road. On the way to Santa Barbara the bus picked up a woman who was having an asthma attack. After a few minutes of her arrival we all realized that she was in desperate need of medical assistance. She could barely breath, and was starting to lose consciousness. Everyone on the bus was really concerned, and I started to realize that there was a very real chance that this woman could die on the bus. I quickly called Lauren, my roommate in Texas who is a nurse, for a quick refresher course on CPR after the woman lost consciousness again. Thankfully, I didn’t have to perform CPR because there was another passenger who took charge of the situation and cared for the woman, and after 15 very tense minutes an ambulance met the bus outside of Santa Barbara. The woman was quickly carried off the bus and into the ambulance. I’m not sure what ended up happening to her, but hopefully she is alright. It was a really scary situation that reminds me how readily available medical care is in the United States. Asthma attacks happen, but people have inhalers and can more easily get to the hospital. Things like that remind me that I am actually living in a third world country.

After such an eventful bus ride, I was happy to get onto the bus to La Unión and get home. Long story short, despite missing my bus on the way there and almost having to perform CPR on the return trip, I had a very relaxing and successful solo trip. It’s not something I want to make a habit of, but it was a nice thing to prove to myself. And Dad, if you’re reading this, please don’t kill me.

Some Pictures

So for those of you who don't believe that electric showers exist, this is my shower. And yes, those are wires sticking out behind it. And yes, we do get shocked on a regular basis. However, I'm just happy to have indoor showers and hot water.

This is the view of our town from the school. We live in paradise. La Unión has about 4,000 people, so it's a pretty small town.

This is the view from my classroom. Pretty fantastic.

We went to the Mayan ruins in Copan. They were not nearly as large as the ruins in Palenque, Mexico, but they were still pretty spectacular.

This is a picture of the main plaza in Copan.


Here are some pictures of my students when we went to a small town outside of La Unión in October for Children's Day. They organized games and brought candy for about 40 elementary students at the school. This is how Honduran field trips are done. Imagine taking students in the bed of your truck in the United States. The lawyers would love it.

This is how we hang piñatas in Honduras. That's a cement floor. And a student at the top.

These are a few of the students who went with me. We did face painting and all sorts of other fun stuff.

Hopefully I will be able to update with more pictures soon! I miss you all!

The President

Written October 8th, 2010

Today marks my two-month anniversary of being in Honduras. In order to mark such a momentous occasion, the President of Honduras came to La Unión. He actually came to hand out money, but a girl can dream, right?

I knew a few days ahead of time that he was coming, but this morning our principal told us that we would be taking the entire school to town sometime between 11 and 12 to hear Pepe speak. Of course, this being Honduras, there was no plan to speak of. Around 11:30 we were told that the kids should get their lunches to put in the classroom and then we were walking into town. The 7^th, 8^th and 9^th graders were to hold the hands of 2 elementary schoolers as we walked the 25 minutes to where the president would be speaking. No lists of which students were at school, who was paired with who, alerting the parents of what was going on, no plan, nothing. If you are a teacher you can only imagine how hard it was to just let this happen. But it did.

So we all walked into town, all of the high schoolers and teachers with two younger children in tow. We waited for about 30 minutes, and, finally, Pepe showed up in his helicopter. He landed in a field and then had a few Suburbans to drive him and his posse to where he would be speaking. The Honduras “Secret Service” and military were everywhere. When he finally arrived, he walked into the crowd of, supposedly, 2,000 people. I shook his hand, he asked why I was in La Unión, I told him I was teaching and that Vida Abundante is a fantastic school. Yeah, I’m kind of a big deal. Be jealous. It was pretty cool though, and it’s funny that I met the President of Honduras and I can’t foresee meeting our President anytime soon. It was pretty neat.

After he greeted people and the pastor of Vida Abundante Church and the Catholic Church in town both opened the ceremony some of our students led the crowd in singing the national hymn of Honduras. After that we decided it was time to take off, because the 1^st and 2^nd graders were getting really restless and hungry. So we started the long walk back, and I somehow picked up an extra child along the way. We decided it would be fun to let the kids go to the field where the helicopters had landed, which was also really cool. One of our students got to go into the President’s helicopter and sit in his chair. One of the pilots was really great with the kids and was asking them about their grades, what they wanted to do when they grew up, and even talked to some of our high schoolers about how most of the officers in the army have bachelors and masters degrees. He told them about the importance of studying, and even gave his email address to the older kids who were interested in becoming pilots. I couldn’t have asked for a better teachable moment.

Upon returning to school with three tired and hungry 2^nd graders hanging off of me, we ate lunch, and it was just utter chaos for the rest of the day. We only had time for one more class period, and luckily I don’t have classes the last two periods on Fridays. So, the day was pretty short and chaotic, but really great. I think that it’s funny, because none of this would have happened in the United States, but everything worked out fine. I can’t even imagine a student being allowed to hop into Air Force One just to sit in the President’s seat. I must say, it was a pretty awesome Friday.

Dislikes

Written September 27, 2010

I know I just posted, but I had two written so I figure I'll post them while I have power.

Don’t get me wrong, I still love living here, but there are some things that are really different and just get on my nerves. Here are some things that I have been struggling with lately:

1) We burn our garbage. It hurts my soul. We take our garbage out into the street, dump it into the road and set it on fire. Plastic and all. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to that.

2) When it’s hot out the guys here love to just stand around with their shirt pulled up over their stomachs. I don’t think it’s really meant to be anything sexual but it’s just strange. What’s the point of wearing a shirt if you’re just going to pull it up to your chest all the time? And what makes you think I want to see your fat stomach hanging over your pants? Maybe if you were ten years younger and had six pack abs I’d be more likely to stop and look.

3) People don’t use the “tú” form here (informal “you”), even with family. They mainly use the “usted” or formal “you”. It’s really hard to get used to, especially when I’m talking to one of the kids I live with. Sometimes it causes confusion if you don’t specify whether you are talking about someone else in the 3^rd person singular or using the formal “you” form because they are both conjugated the same way. For example, “me dio” could mean he/she gave me or you gave me. Usually it’s not a problem, it’s just obnoxiously formal and different than how I’m used to speaking.

4) The guys will make comments at girls when they walk by. Generally they’ll also call at you like a dog. It’s maddening. I dealt with it a lot in Mexico so I knew it was coming, but it’s worse here. Young boys will follow behind you saying things and grown men will be standing half inside the Catholic church by our house during mass and say things as we walk by. Do they think women will suddenly jump into bed with them because they were called like a dog? I feel more helpless here because I work at a Christian school and it’s such a small town, so if I were to turn around and give them a piece of my mind it would be wildly inappropriate. So I just have to ignore it. It’s the most demeaning feeling ever.

5) The roads here are basically impassable when we get any rain. Sometimes here in La Unión they will just put boulders in the road to block it off because there is just no possible way that your truck will make it through. When you’re driving you really have to be careful that your head doesn’t smack against the window because the roads are so bumpy. And the closest paved roads are about 2 ½ hours away.

Those are just a few of the things that have been bothering me lately. It’s definitely a random list!

Tropical Storm

Written September 25, 2010 (the power's been out a lot here)

Yes, I know there was a tropical storm that came through Honduras. I’m not sure if it ever ended up becoming a hurricane or not, but that’s just because I didn’t care enough to find out. We do have some modern conveniences, like television, so we are able to hear news of the outside world, unless the power is out. We really didn’t get any more rain than usual. We had a lot of threatening clouds but nothing too exciting. In fact, this is probably one of few places I would actually want to be in Honduras during a hurricane. I would be more worried about flooding in the big cities, as well as mass chaos should something ever happen. Also, we’re so far inland and so high up in the mountains that the only thing I would legitimately worry about is a landslide, but even that is pretty unlikely.

The girls and I have traveled for the last two weekends in a row. The weekend of the 18^th we went to Gracias, which is about 3 ½ hours away and one of the closest towns to us. It was nice to see the other teachers at the Vida Abundante School there, including my friend Justin whom I studied with in Mexico and is now teaching in Gracias. The next week was a short week due to Independence Day and Teacher’s Day (yes, I think we actually are appreciated here) so we traveled to the Mayan ruins in Copan from Wednesday until Saturday and then headed to Santa Rosa de Copan for Saturday night. The ruins were fantastic and really made me want to go to Guatemala to see the ruins in Tikal. If I go there I will have hit all the major Mayan ruin sites, which would be pretty sweet. The town of Copan is also really nice, and it was amazing to have clean water for a few days. Also, while I was there I treated myself to a 4 hour private Spanish lesson to refresh my memory on the usage of the subjunctive. I’m not even going to lie, I loved every minute of it. Maybe that’s why I’m considering getting my master’s in Spanish…

Other than that life has settled into a nice routine. Besides getting a lovely amoeba this week everything has been fantastic. I’m feeling much better after visiting the clinic here in town. My principal even drove me there, paid for my visit because I didn’t have enough cash with me and drove me home because he’s pretty fantastic like that. Thankfully, I was not nearly as sick as I was in Mexico. Today (Saturday) I bummed around the house and watched Star Trek with Holly, then we went our student’s soccer games at 12:30, headed to visit our friend Saira who is back home for a visit from college in San Pedro Sula, went to a Christian women’s fraternity meeting and then ate baleadas over at Saira’s parent’s house. After dinner we came back home and watched How to Train Your Dragon, which, by the way, is a fantastic movie. Life here is pretty chill, but I still feel like there’s always something to do. Hopefully I still feel that way in six months!

Vida Abundante

Written August 31st

So the power has been going out a lot here so I haven’t had the ability to update in a while, plus I’ve been super busy. However, I’ll try to give you some more details about my life here.

Vida Abundante is the bilingual school I teach at. I think there are 5 locations; one here in La Unión, Gracias, somewhere in the north of Honduras I think, and two in Tegucigalpa. All are bilingual except one of the schools in Tegucigalpa. In English they are called Abundant Life Christian Schools (ALCS). Our school is the poorest one out of the 5 schools and seems to be considered the “project”, at least from what I can gather. I teach 7^th, 8^th and 9^th grade history and language, which gives me 54 total students. 9^th grade has 29 students, 8^th has 9 and 7^th has 16. All of my classes are taught in English. The 8^th graders have fantastic English, and so do most of the 9^th graders. The 7^th graders struggle a bit, but they’re trying. School starts at 7:20 and ends at 2:40. Each class is 40 minutes long. One thing that is much different here is that the teachers change classes, not the students.

I already explained in an earlier post that classes aren’t held everyday and that the 9^th grade class is the oldest class at the school. They are going to go up to 11^th or 12^th grade but aren’t sure yet. In Honduras students graduate after 11^th grade, but we’re on an American curriculum, so I think they’re still deciding what they’re going to do. My classroom was finally painted and finished the Friday AFTER classes started. I was able to teach in there all week, but it wasn’t finished until Friday morning. Go figure. I spend every morning with the 9^th graders for 20 minutes doing devotionals and then they go off to their other classes. Aside from the core classes they also take home economics, PE, Bible, Spanish language, Spanish civics and art. Also, every Monday the high schoolers (7^th-9^th grade) have an hour long devotional as a group.

Our principal here is really great! Mr. Perdomo doesn’t really speak any English but he really seems to genuinely care about the students and the teachers as well. It’s nice to have a really supportive administration. He believes in firm, strict rules that can occasionally be broken for individual students if it is in their best interest to do so. The other teachers are all really great too. They are really helpful and have answered my billion questions with a smile every time. They really are their own little family and seem to all get along really well. We have 11 teachers for the whole school, which goes from 1^st though 9^th grade.

The students are all really good kids so far. I haven’t really had any major issues with students. I have a few who like to talk a little too much, but I otherwise haven’t had any issues. It’s strange being here where I see my students EVERYWHERE. La Unión is a really tiny town, so I see my students at the store, church, the streets, everywhere. It’s kind of nice to get to know my students on a more personal level and build actual relationships with them. Despite how poor a lot of students are (many of them are sponsored by someone in Honduras or the US for $50 a month) and how many issues they might have at home with abusive or absent parents they really work hard and have done well so far. The curriculum here is incredibly difficult, even by American standards, so they have to study a ton. It’s good though, because it keeps them out of trouble. Before school started I met a few students out on the street or at people’s houses. When I asked them if they were ready for school to start they all answered with an emphatic “yes”. There’s not a whole lot to do here, so most of them actually enjoy being at school.

I really love it at Vida Abundante. Despite some problems such as not having books for the 9^th graders yet, I’ve been really happy with the school. I enjoy working with my students and have been really impressed by their knowledge and determination. The school is definitely the place you want to be if you want to actually make a difference, because given their situations most of these students statistically should not succeed. Also, very few students here graduate from high school in the public schools, and even fewer go to college. I’ve heard number such as out of a graduating class of 15 at the public high school maybe 2 go to college. Hopefully our first graduating class does much better than that.

Last week one of my 8^th grade students asked me if I was coming back next year. I said if everything worked out I would definitely consider it (I hope my parents aren’t reading this, and if they are, Dad, please don’t fly down and kill me). Every day I wake up in awe of the fact that this is my life. I make enough money to live just fine, and I love where I work. I enjoy working with my students and hope to get to know them much better throughout the year. My goal is to become more integrated into the community and really get to know more people. So yes, I honestly would come back for a second year. It’s not all roses and sunshine, but I can look past the lack of power and water a lot of the days because I love what I’m doing. Who knows what this year will bring and how I will feel at the end of it, but maybe I’ll become a more permanent member of La Unión.

San Agustín

Written August 28, 2010

Today was an amazing day. It’s hard to sleep in here because it gets light so early, so I laid in bed until about 7:30. I went downstairs and Osiris told me we were going to move a shelving unit into my room today from the storage room, one of the rooms that flooded on Thursday night. You have no idea how ecstatic I was. I have been living out of my suitcase since I packed up and left Texas over a month ago. There hasn’t been anywhere to put my clothes so I’ve been keeping everything in my suitcases. The unfortunate side affect to living out of a suitcase in rural Honduras is that everything inside gets covered in ants. The problem with this is those little buggers bite, and they have been living in my clothes. I look like I have some kind of strange skin disease because I am just covered in itchy ant bites. Now that I have finally been able to move my clothes into a shelving unit I’m hoping I won’t have any more problems with ants.

After this bit of great news I started organizing my room and apparently missed Osiris calling me downstairs to their apartment. She saw me on tv. Yes, I’m a Honduran television star. When we were in Gracias the first week we were here a news crew from Maya TV came to our hotel to do a story and filmed one of the other teachers and I sitting on a bench and asked us a couple of questions. Then, that same night the school took us to the hot springs in Gracias to relax. The news crew was there as well, so they interviewed Jake and I. I’m really glad I didn’t see the interview, because I’m sure it was terrible and hilarious, as it was entirely in Spanish.

Then at 9 we walked over to Mike and Jake’s house and went for a hike to one of the aldeas (teeny tiny towns) outside of La Unión. We decided to take a shorter and more scenic route there, which meant walking on footpaths instead of along the road. We had to cross a few river and hike through a ton of mud due to the massive amounts of rain we’ve been getting lately. I didn’t have hiking boots because mine are still wet from our flooded house on Thursday. Thankfully my tennis shoes didn’t come off in the mud and despite Mike almost getting kicked down the mountain by a mule someone had tied up near the path we made it to San Agustín.

The views along the way were absolutely breathtaking. As we hiked higher and higher into the mountains we could see nothing but green peaks. I really wish pictures could do it justice, but it’s just impossible. It was hot and sunny for the majority of the hike, but we could see storm clouds rolling up over the mountains across from us. It’s funny because here you can see the rain hours before it gets to you, as weather here moves really slowly.

San Agustín itself is tiny. We had walked through all of town in about 3 minutes. Mike said he guessed maybe 100-200 people lived there. It’s incredibly poor, but the people there were really nice. A few people from the micro financing group that Mike is a part of did a service trip to San Agustín a few months ago to build new stoves in the homes there that have a chimney so that all of the smoke from the fire that heats the stove doesn’t stay in the house. Apparently respiratory illnesses are a huge problem here. One of the women who had a stove built let us in to her house to see the stove and how well it worked. She was extremely appreciative, but incredibly poor. That level of poverty is not something you see often in the US.

It took us somewhere between and hour and an hour and a half to walk to San Agustín and about 3 minutes to walk through it. After our tour we headed up to the road to try and hitch a ride back to town to beat the rain. Luckily, one of the guys who is employed at our school was out working in the pastures near us and was just heading back to La Unión when we walked up. We hopped in the bed of the truck and headed back to town. Riding around in the bed of a truck is the preferred method of transportation here, so 7 of us driving around town in the back of a truck was nothing unusual.

After getting home, showering and dinking around a bit we met up with Jake and two of the other teachers for a game of volleyball. We were hopelessly terrible, which I think frustrated Jake. He coaches volleyball, among other things, at Vida Abundante (our school). After a really fun but muddy game and a quick walk home in the rain Bryony, Holle and I made grilled cheeses while Amelia went to the birthday party of a girl she knows here from when she was here last summer. Osiris and family were in El Naranjo for her mom’s birthday for the night, so it was kind of nice to cook and have the place to ourselves. We ended up watching Star Trek on my laptop and enjoying the quiet time without the kids.

All in all, today was a pretty awesome day.

Excitement

Written August 27, 2010

Life in La Unión is pretty quiet and some would probably even say boring. Although there’s not a whole lot going on here I would say life really isn’t boring. Maybe I’ve just come to appreciate the little excitement in life. These are things such as when my classroom is finally finished after the first 4 days of school are already done, when my British roommates find out they have gotten into university so we bake them a cake, even when the water isn’t thick and full of mud when I shower. I guess I’m just learning to slow down and appreciate the small things in life.

Other times truly dramatic things happen. On Thursday night Bryony and I were making tortillas outside of the house with the woman who cooks our food (yes, I know I’m spoiled) when a huge storm blew in. Now, this was a Texas sized storm, except in Texas you’re at sea level. Here, you are so high that you’re actually in the storm clouds. So, when there is thunder and lightning it is literally right there. The lightening is incredibly bright and the thunder deafening. So, as I tried to roll out and cook tortillas in this craziness a huge bolt of lightning struck really close to us. Bryony called it quits and went inside. It turns out the lightning struck the cell phone tower across the street.

You might think ok, bad storm, pretty exciting, story over. Right? Wrong. As we were finishing up the tortillas Osiris, the woman I live with, ran by yelling that their apartment was flooded. They live downstairs in an apartment they built next to the house and the four of us girls live in the house. However, they have two rooms for storage at the ground level of the house. So, after hearing this news, we quickly finished up the tortillas and ran downstairs to see at least a foot and a half of water in the downstairs storage rooms and a few inches leaking up into their apartment. While I was making tortillas thinking wow, it sucks making tortillas in the rain, the other girls, Albin and Osiris were out in the street trying to build a barrier to keep the water from pouring into their property and flooding everything more. When I came down we started frantically moving stuff out of the storage rooms and bailing water out the doors and windows with buckets and bowls as quickly as possible. It must have been quite a sight watching us frantically tossing water out of the rooms and running around moving all of the family’s belongings out.

After bailing out a ton of truly nasty, dirty flood water that we were all completely covered in as lighting flashed all around us and the skies opened up we called it quits for the night and sat down for a lovely dinner of tortillas, beans, rice and fried plantains. You know, the usual.

Despite how little goes on in La Unión there really never is a dull moment.

Initiation

Written August 22, 2010

Yesterday we got a call from the three gringos (Americans) that live here and they said they were throwing a birthday party for someone in the church and we were all invited. So we headed over there around 8, just in time to pray, sing happy birthday and get some dulce de leche cake (Lauren, don’t worry, yours is better ☺). There were about 15 or so people there who were all around 19 or 20 ish. One of the girls who will be in my 9th grade class was there so it was nice to sit and chat with her. I was pleasantly surprised by how good her English is. It’s weird though, because in the US it is entirely unacceptable to do basically anything with your students outside of a school sponsored function, so this was a new experience for me. It’s nice to be in a small town where I don’t have to worry about crazy parents out on a witch-hunt for teachers. Obviously I still have to keep a little distance, but I much prefer getting to know my students while keeping a boundary than never really being allowed to get that close to them.

Once everyone had eaten cake they said we were going to play a Honduran game to initiate us. We had no idea what to expect but the boys assured us it wasn’t anything bad. So, the four of us girls (me, Amelia, Bryony and Holle) were all put in a room with three other Honduran girls. None of us had any idea what was going on. They called out one of the Honduran girls first, and all we could here was a lot of clapping and some screaming. Obviously that was disconcerting but I figured it was a group of people from church, so how bad could it be? I got called out 3rd and was the first of the Americans to go. I was told to sit across from one of the Honduran guys and repeat what he said and mimic his motions. Ok, no big deal. He kept saying “pidipipow” and touching his head, crossing his arms, touching his legs or standing up and I just imitated him. Everyone was clapping like I was doing well and kept telling him to go faster. After some time I went to sit down and they had slipped a cold, wet rag onto the seat. I definitely was not expecting it, but after I got over the initial shock I was able to laugh about it. It was pretty funny to watch the same thing happen to the other girls too. There’s no better way to feel comfortable in front of a new group of people than to make a complete fool of yourself. We all got a good laugh out of it and even lined up to take a picture of our wet behinds.

Despite having a wet butt most of the night I had a lot of fun and enjoyed meeting people in town that are more my age that aren’t married with 3 kids. I saw a lot of them at church today and felt much more welcomed into the community. I’m looking forward to getting to know everyone a lot better over the next year.

La Finca

Written 8/19/10

All week we have been working on our classrooms and, since mine’s not finished yet so I can’t decorate it, I’ve been working on curriculum and planning for the 7 classes I will be teaching (the students go to 9 classes every day that are 40 minutes long each). It’s been very relaxing and I have been able to get to know some of the other teachers better because of it. The other teachers are absolutely fantastic and more than willing to help you with anything. They are clearly really passionate about the students and genuinely good people, so I’m very excited to work with them all year!

Today after school Amelia and I went with Jake and our principal up to their coffee farm (called a “finca” here). A married couple that teach at our school, Mr. Perdomo’s (our principal) family and Jake’s family all bought this farm a few months ago. It is up in the mountains above La Unión and is really beautiful. It’s over 20 acres of coffee plants. It has a system set up to take the coffee seed out and clean the beans and a house on the front part of the property. As you hike up the mountain there’s also a small stream, some plantain trees and tons of beautiful scenery. They need to clear some of the land a bit more and cut some of the coffee plants that have grown to high, but there is a good amount of coffee on the plants. The harvest is in November and December, so I’m planning on heading up there with them to learn how to harvest coffee, and if I’m feeling especially motivated maybe I will help them clear off some land too. I figure if I want to get the true Honduras experience I need to learn how to pick coffee while I’m here!

While we were up there a storm was coming in, so you could just see the sheets of rain slowly making their way towards us, and it was so quiet and the surrounding mountains were so beautiful. It was like something out of a movie. Despite the slippery conditions due to the amount of rain we’ve been getting it was nothing short of breathtaking. They have plans to build a solar powered coffee dryer, small pond to raise tilapia in, re-vamp the house to have a guard or family live in during harvest time, raise some cows there and have a horse or two to get around the farm. There’s tons of land so all of that is definitely possible.

The finca is only about 15 minutes outside of town, so once we drove back Mr. Perdomo invited us over for coffee. He owns another farm further outside of town where he grows coffee, various vegetables and bananas and raises chickens, cows, etc, so the coffee we drank was from his farm and it was honestly one of the best cups of coffee I’ve ever had. I’m still trying to get used to drinking black coffee, but this was so smooth that I wouldn’t have wanted milk or sugar in it. He gave us a bag of coffee to take home, so we’re looking forward to having that. He also invited us up to his finca one weekend to get out of the city, although I don’t necessarily need to escape to a place smaller and more remote than La Unión).

We also learned a lot about coffee today. Apparently the workers who pick the coffee usually make about 25 lempiras per basket, which is about the size of a gallon container. That is somewhere around $1.30 per basket, which means that the pickers actually make really good money by La Unión standards, but they only make that money for a short period of time. Market value for coffee is about $1.50 a pound right now, so your profit margin isn’t that big unless you’re selling a lot of coffee or selling it to the US or other countries. There’s also a countrywide coffee tasting competition here and any farm can join. The winners usually get great accounts with the US, Europe, Japan or other big coffee buying countries. Apparently they want to be a part of the competition in a few years once they get the hang of things. Also, in Honduras a lot of times people roast their coffee over a fire, so sometimes the fire is perfect and the coffee comes out fantastic and other times the fire is too hot, or not hot enough, or doesn’t roast the coffee evenly and it doesn’t come out right. This causes a lot of people to ship the coffee before it’s roasted. I guess the longer you store coffee before you roast it the better it actually is. Lastly, Hondurans grind up their coffee really fine, like flour, which is much different than the coarsely ground coffee in the US.

Long story short, I learned a lot about coffee today and got to see some breathtaking scenery. Life is good here in sleepy La Unión.

Getting situated

Written Tuesday, August 17, 2010

My life for the next year has finally begun! I am in La Unión in the department of Lempira. It is absolutely beautiful here! La Unión is a very small town up in the mountains. The town is so small that we don’t have paved roads, mail delivery or a post office. Despite the how small the town is I really haven’t found myself bored yet, hence the lack of blog posts.

I am living with a couple and their 3 children. Josselyn is in 3rd grade, Josue is 5 and Diane is about 6 months old. Needless to say it is generally pretty chaotic around here, but I’ve enjoyed it so far. Living with them has given me tons of opportunities to practice my Spanish and learn how to speak more like a “catracha” (Honduran). Their family is quite wealthy by Honduran standards and has actually moved out of their house and into an apartment they built beside the house. It’s small, but I guess it’s working alright for them. I am living in their 4 bedroom house with 3 other teachers from the bilingual school I’m working at, Vida Abundante. Life is good here! Our rent includes having people cook 3 meals a day for us and do our laundry. It’s better than home! As for my roommates, Amelia is from Michigan and Bryony and Holle are from England. Amelia and I each have our own rooms and Breony and Holle share a room. The 4^th room will be Bret’s room when he moves down here in October.

Bret is involved in the micro-financing group that started at the University of Michigan and is helping give loans to coffee farmers down here. There are 2 other guys living here that are involved in the group, Mike and Patrick, and Amelia knows them because she worked with them last summer here in La Unión and her boyfriend is working with them but he’s working back in the states right now. Mike and Patrick live with Jake, the guy who hired me to work at the school. He’s also from Michigan, but didn’t attend UofM for school. Basically it’s one giant Michigan party down here!

Monday we began working at Vida Abundante getting our classrooms together and figuring out our schedules. School actually starts on Monday the 23^rd with a parent meeting on Friday the 20^th, but, go figure, my classroom isn’t done being built yet. I am the homeroom teacher for 9^th grade, which is the oldest class they have right now. Therefore, they needed to build another classroom to accommodate another grade of students. You would think that this would have been taken care of during the ample summer vacation, but that’s just not the Honduran way. So, I’m unable to decorate my classroom this week, and probably won’t be able to do so until Sunday or quite possibly Monday after they finish painting the room. However, I’m just going with the flow and trying to figure out what I’m going to teach for the first week.

I am teaching English language classes and history to the 7^th, 8^th and 9^th graders and I will do devotionals every morning with my 9^th grade homeroom. I love the way classes are done here because you don’t have every class every day. The only class I have every day should be devotionals in homeroom. On Mondays I have homeroom from 7:20-7:40 and don’t have another class until after recess, at 10:40. Then on Fridays I am done with classes at 1:20 and school ends at 2:40. I have a pretty sweet schedule. It will probably change because that’s how things work here, but I really hope it stays as it is.

All of my classes will be taught in English. I have around twenty or so 7^th graders, nine 8^th graders and twenty-nine 9^th graders. The curriculum is pretty much laid out for us, so even though I’m teaching 7 classes I have plans I can follow that are already laid out. I plan on adding in some more fun activities, but at least I don’t have to kill myself planning for 7 different classes. It’s fun because I get to teach world history in 7^th grade, US history in 8^th and world geography in 9^th. I have a lot of variety in what I teach, which I think will end up being a good thing.

The power just went out, which is apparently a pretty common occurrence here, so I’ll wrap this up to conserve my battery. I will do my best to update more regularly. I miss everyone back home and hope all is well. Please update me on everything back home via email. The internet here is impossibly terrible, so even if I don’t respond to you right away I will definitely be reading emails. Thanks for all of your support!

I made it!

I'm finally in Honduras! After months of anticipation I'm here! We flew in on Sunday evening and got to our hotel in San Pedro around 2am. The next morning we got breakfast and went for a swim. We had to pick up some other teachers who were coming in later that day, so we headed to the airport, got them and then continued on to Gracias. We've been staying at an amazing hotel and just hanging out and eating great food. Basically, life has been pretty rough so far. I'm enjoying it while I can, because I know once I get to La Unión the party will be over.

All of the other teachers are great here! There are 6 of them who are currently moving into their homes here in Gracias. They are going to live at the base of the National Park, so I’m definitely going to come back here to visit them and hike the highest point in Honduras. 2 other teachers will be living here in the city.

Gracias is a pretty decent sized town, especially compared to La Unión. Everyone here is really friendly, and the hotel we’re staying at is absolutely beautiful. The views of the mountains are breathtaking. It’s amazing to just watch sheets of rain come over the mountains and slowly make their way towards you. I’m currently laying in a hammock looking out at some bamboo trees and the mountains. Once again, life has been pretty rough here.

We are starting our orientation at the school here in Gracias tomorrow morning, so I’m looking forward to that. So far the school has paid for everything. Since Sunday night all I’ve paid for is a phone. The school is near the national park and has an amazing layout. The classrooms are open but they have whiteboards, which is really nice. In Gracias they have a cafeteria, but I guess we don’t have one in La Unión. The school has a nice basketball court and soccer field, but supposedly the sports teams in La Unión are much better. I’m assuming its because there’s not a whole lot else to do there.

Tonight the school is taking us to the private hot springs in town for dinner and a swim before we start our actual training tomorrow. Obviously I have no complaints about anything so far. I have woken up these past few mornings with a smile on my face thinking “Yup, this is my life for the next year!” Honestly, I couldn’t be happier!

Getting started...

I plan on using this blog to update everyone back home about my life as I teach in the rural town of La Union in Honduras. Although my intentions are to update regularly I can't promise that I will be able to do so.

As of right now my date to leave for Honduras is August 8th. Until then I plan on being in Houston and then heading back up to Michigan for the first week of August before I leave. I know that seems like a long way off, but I wanted to start a blog before life got too crazy. Once I land in Honduras I will post again.