Wednesday, January 13

Normal school day; it was chilly and we had chapel. We are learning about the sea in science and we were talking about different intertidal zones. I was talking about sea anemones and how that’s what Nemo, the fish, lived in. Marquito comes up to me and is like, “Miss, Nemo is in the word anemone!” And it took a fifth grader to point that out to me after all these years of watching Nemo. I was jus tlike yeah it is, until I realized how smart that was to realize that! The school started this new thing wehre Rodrigo, one of the new staff in the office, will take us down the town on Wednesdays after school to do our shopping and then bring us back up. The thing is we have to do all of this in ONE hour! So we have to ride down, get to the bank, go to Dinora’s, go to the market and drive up the mountain, trying to do this in less than an hour! This was our first time doing it, so hopefully we can get better at speed shopping and splitting up. When we rode back up the mountain, I was in the back of the truck and there was this turpentine stuff (some liquid that smelled really nasty) and it started leaking! I grabbed it, it got all over my hand, and I tried to keep it right side up the rest of the way flying up the mountain. Eventually it stopped leaking, but my hand smelt like gasoline for the rest of the night…yuck.

Tuesday, January 12

Since we arrived back in Honduras, it’s been relatively cold. Again by cold, I mean 50s or low 60s during the day with clouds and 40s at night. And for those in Michigan that sounds like a great spring day. Well it is, but again, when your house has no indoor heating, your school is very open, and your living area is a glorified tent with walls. I never thought I’d wear a scarf or mittens to school or in my house…yes, yes I did. I’m ready for the warmer, more pleasant weather to come back. And for Hilary I feel bad that she doesn’t get to enjoy the nicer weather being here! The school day went pretty well; I got a little impatient with my kids before lunch. They seem to be talking more often when I’m talking, like it will take a few times of asking for their attention, counting down and waiting for quiet. But they still make me laugh sometimes. For example, I have Uno cards they can play sometimes and they ask me when they want to play: “Miss, can we play One? (instead of Uno)” It’s hilarious! Also, Claudia didn’t know what my mittens were called so she said, “Miss can I borrow…how do you say this? (pointing to my mittens and I reply with mittens)… “Mittens….like a cat’s name!” So cute.

Monday, January 11

Today was probably the best Monday I’ve had here for a few reasons. First the school day went pretty well overall, which is always great. Second we had been hearing another American teacher, a guy, was coming this week and we were all excited to meet him. Third, we had been trying to get internet up at our house for about a week and the internet guy finally came today! So right after school we had a meeting to go over our end of the parcial stuff and as we were finishing the new teacher came. So we all went out to meet him; his name’s Tad and small world we figured out we have mutual friends, but he’s from West Michigan so not a big surprise either! Anyways, the internet guy came at the same time and was ready to go up to our house to install the internet! We still had to get the router for our house, so we all headed down the mountain with the Lara’s, whom had been showing Tad the comedor (Sonia’s house) where he was going to live. We wanted to welcome Tad to Gracias so we took him to Bella Celaque and suggested baleadas. We had a good dinner, then ran to get our router and headed back up the mountain with the internet guy. He installed the internet, which is via satellite, hooked up the router and viola! We had internet in our house!!!! It was crazy we probably all spent the rest of the night being amazed by the power of technology that you can get internet in the mountains of Honduras. It was kinda expensive to install but split between 7 people, it wasn’t too bad, and then it’s only $10USD/month/person. So now I can keep in better communication with people (hopefully). It was a great Monday.

Weekend January 8-10

Friday went by pretty well at school and the kids and teachers were both ready for the weekend to rest some more after vacation. It’s funny because vacation is supposed to be a time to rest, but it always seems that when you come back from vacation you are tired! Candido and Jofet (two neighbor boys, ages 4 and 6) came over and we were playing Jenga and they wanted to play. So they stayed for quite a long time playing Jenga. They were a little young to play, but actually did quite well and loved it when it fell and made a huge noise. Then they decided to use the Jenga blocks as building blocks for a while, building houses and fences. So cute. Friday night was pretty chill at our house. We made one of our classic dishes, stir fry, which was amazing as always. Jacki and Sarah decided to do some interpretive dancing/exercise to MIA and other music so that was some our entertainment for the evening. Hil and I watched the Kite Runner, then headed to bed.

Saturday all of us but Jacki and Sarah walked down to town; they stayed behind because they were repainting their room. It was a perfect day to walk down to town, not too hot. We got to town, went to the bank, Guancascos, then to Bella Celaque for lunch. I wanted Hilary to be able to have some more tipico Honduran food; she’s already had baleadas. It was delicious as always. Afterwards we went to the market for some fresh food and to look around at the things being sold to see if Hil wanted anything. Gracias doesn’t really have many typical Honduran souvenirs, but it was fun to walk around, too. We saw Candido in the market because his mom works there and he came running up to us and gave us all hugs. He kept asking his mom if he could go with us and she told him no he’s sick and he can play with us later at our house. Well he wasn’t too happy about that and kept asking her and we told him he could come up later that night and play. Finally his mom said no, stop asking and he started bawling! It broke my heart to leave him. Poor kid, he has to stay in the market all day instead of playing with us or other kids. We headed back up soon after, and then Jacki and Sarah headed down. Their room looked great; so white and clean. Hilary helped me grade some stuff and we just chilled and made dinner. We’ve been trying to figure out this whole internet thing up at our house deal and it turns out it’ll be more expensive than we originally thought, but we’re still going to go ahead with it and hopefully have internet by sometime next week up at our house! It’s cheaper than going to Guancascos and paying for a meal and mototaxi two times a week, if you can believe it. Saturday night Hilary and I watched another movie and then went to bed.

Sunday we slept in, had pancakes for breakfast and relaxed all afternoon. Hilary and I walked down to school to bring some of my supplies to my classroom I didn’t bring this week and then afterwards I showed her the river near the school. We had church with the neighborhood at night and there was a dogfight during the service which was crazy and kinda scary actually! These dogs would slam up against the door, barking and running around. After church we had soup for dinner and got ready for our full week of school.

Thursday, January 7

I have quite a few free periods on Thursdays which was nice to plan for next week and get organized in my classroom. Hilary helped me out in the morning because Mrs. Lopez didn’t have any social studies classes; it was great having her there to give me help. In science we learned about water so I did a demonstration with kids with pairs of hydrogen atoms together with one atom of oxygen. I think visuals are a good thing and I want to do them more often in my class instead of just always copying down notes, but my kids were so talkative when I was trying to explain the demonstration to them. So we’ll keep trying a few more times with demonstrations if it helps them remember better. I’m really behind in Language and I don’t know what to do to catch up or go any faster. The English Language and grammar is hard to learn if you’re a native speaker sometimes, much more when it’s your second language. So it takes me that much longer to explain things because I want to make sure they understand the material; many times one lesson has to be split into two. We had tutorias after school today and Hilary was there to help; she took my reading kids and I did stuff with the language kids. We came back home, relaxed, talked and joked around. Julia recently moved up to Villa Verde as well, so it’s awesome to have all of us girls in the same place; we can talk and hang out together more frequently.

Wednesday, January 6

First day back at school….tough. I felt like it was a dream and I was going through the motions of teaching. I think it was hard for the kids too; they kept saying they were sleepy, they wanted more vacation and I agreed with them! But we got through the day together, talked to them about their breaks a little bit. Hilary’s first day there so she met Mrs. Lopez and the principals and is starting to get things set up for her time her helping Mrs. Lopez. She was with me for the first part of the day and the kids decided to call her Ms. Sneden 2 haha. So I showed her around school, explained the basics to her and she seemed to enjoy her first day at ALCS. Mr. Sebens, the kids’ teacher from last year, had sent some things for the classroom and the kids and they really enjoyed hearing from him in his card and receiving his gifts. My kids’ art teacher wasn’t here today so I decided to have them make some things ahead for Valentines’ Day; they all added their unique touch of creativity to the valentines. For example, I said they could make hearts, chocolate, flowers or candy. Alvaro asked me if he could make a chocolate ninja to which I said sure why not! Hilary and I stayed after for a while organizing my classroom and then headed home. One thing we didn’t expect coming back was how cool the weather was going to be. Again we had no central heating so temperature outside seeps in very easily. It’s been in the low 60s with wind and clouds, which feels chilly after being in it all day. Currently I am wearing 2 pairs of socks, a scarf, tank top, T-shirt, jacket, and sweatpants. Never thought Honduras would be chilly, but I can handle it better than the cold back home! Sonia made us baleadas for dinner (no charge!) so that was amazing.

Sunday and Monday, January 3 & 4, 2010

Coming Back: We left really early to get to O’Hare and we had a fine flight to Houston with a short connection to SPS. Our flight to SPS had a little turbulence so I was a little scared, but we landed fine. We went to the hotel, took naps, had dinner at Applebee’s with Julia and Hil, came back, talked, watched TV, and went to bed. We were picked up by Espinals in the late morning, went to shop for house stuff and groceries, which took longer than I thought it would take the Espinals, so we left SPS at about 5 and got to Gracias at 9 pm. Then Rodrigo and Humberto brought us and all of our luggage up the mountain in their trucks. We had so much stuff it was almost embarrassing; a lot of it was for our classrooms though. Tuesday we went to town late morning after pancakes to get groceries and internet. Then we headed back up, cleaned the house, organized my room, and got stuff ready for school tomorrow.