A week of Firsts

This has been a week of various firsts for me. Some of the ‘firsts’ were obvious while others were unexpected. Some of them were welcomed into my life with wide open arms, while others I could have certainly done without. It’s weird to think that I’ve been in the country for 3 weeks, and I’m still having ‘firsts.’ And yet, I don’t think these will be the last ones that I experience.

I started my very first teaching job, in my first classroom, with my first bunch of students! You had the lovely pleasure of reading about my first day already, but the whole week was an out-of-this-world experience. Unfortunately, Osman was taken out of my class and put back into 4^th grade, so I am back down to just 13 students. I have fallen in love with each one of them already. I spent the week pretty much just playing basic games (they were all academic, I promise) with them to gauge where each student is and where the whole class is so I better know where to start off the whole year. Math is their best subject – probably because everything is numbers and symbols instead of words and letters in a foreign language. Science and history are going to be quite interesting. I am going to tweak each unit and teach the simplest form of the content to them; each lesson will most likely be taught like an ESL class where I give them important vocab to learn and then try to teach the concepts around that vocab. I am starting the year in Reading with a book from the 1^st grade class set. Their comprehension is terrifying low but I am going to push them each week to quickly grow their reading skills. I anticipate the Basic English and Language classes to move at a slow pace too, but those are easier for me to just teach vocab or use big gestures and pictures to help the students learn better. Essentially, I had to redesign my entire year with these students and bring everything down to simpler terms and ideas. Wish me luck this week as I try out my new lessons and ideas with the students, hopefully they understand a little better!

Some humorous and odd firsts in my classroom this week: I had my first kid call me ‘mom.’ I had my first student cry. I had my first student ask me a question in a British accent (undoubtedly he randomly learned that from the British volunteers at the school). I had my first moment of feeling like I just wanted to start banging my head against the cement wall because none of them could understand me. I had my first realization that not only are my students a challenge, but my Honduran coworkers as well since they steal my whiteboard markers and erasers, leave my class unattended whenever they feel like it, and don’t enforce the ‘English only’ rule quite as much. I had my first experience of drinking juice from a plastic baggie – which is the norm for all my lunches.

Remember when I said that I would also be teaching a secondary math class? Update: I am teaching Algebra 1 to 9^th graders! Thus, I taught my first high school class! I must say, they are a huge relief to see each day. They actually understand the words that come out of my mouth when I am teaching them! Besides that miracle, they are also ahead of where they were expected to be! We spent the whole week reviewing Chapters 1, 2, and 3, which means we will start the year off already on Chapter 4. It feels so good to not have to slow things down! They are a fun group of kids too. There are only 11 in the class and I appreciate being able to have normal conversations with them. I haven’t had much practice teaching to this age group so I am learning a few things, but I am really looking forward to this year with them.

Now on to my ‘normal’ life. I had my first hot shower this week, and it was absolutely glorious. In fact, every time I take a shower I soak up the joy of having a hot one. I can’t let the water pressure get too high otherwise I’ll lose the warmth, but I do not care. I will take a weak shower if that means it’s warm.

I had my first experience of watching legitimate mud come out of my faucet. It rained incredibly hard a few days this week which means lots of mud in the community. Unfortunately that also means our water source gets tainted with mud and well, it shows up in our sinks, showers, and toilets. I have never seen water so thick and brown come out of a faucet. It grosses me out and makes me sad.

This is the first time I can call/consider myself a volleyball player. The students love volleyball (right after soccer of course) and challenged the teachers to a game. So, Friday after school, then Saturday afternoon, and then Sunday again, we played the kids in volleyball! (Actually, Sunday it was raining too hard, but we had plans to play.) There are six of us US teachers and we make up the ‘maestros’ or ‘gringos’ team. I am clearly the worse player on the team, and they play around me, but I am learning! It was a lot of fun and the students loved it. We actually lost, but we put a darn good fight.

After the games Friday night, I had my first student drive me home from school. One of the boys drove his truck and friends to the school for volleyball so he offered everyone a ride home. It’s completely normal for people just to pile into the bed of a truck and take off. Those students loved driving their teachers around! They gave us a whole tour of the town and drove like they were training for The Fast and the Furious; which meant that we were bouncing like rag-dolls and screaming, which only egged the guy on to drive even more like a lunatic. Then they took us up to this tower that was ironically built as a tourist attraction. It sits on top of a hill in La Union and I am not quite sure how many tourists they thought it would attract, but it gives a breath-taking view of the whole area. We went at night and want to go back during the day some time, but it was great of them to drive us and show us how to get there. At least it was less walking and hiking for us! We just kept thinking to ourselves that we wouldn’t be able to do this at any other Abundant Life school and would probably be scolded or fired if we were in a different town.

Earlier that day I took my first Honduran motorcycle ride. I guess it was fully a Honduran ride because it was with Jake on his bike, but we were cruising through Honduran streets! You definitely have to drive a lot more slowly and carefully. There were a few times that I thought that surely if I wasn’t holding on, I would be launched right off the back of his bike.

We attended the first ever Karaoke night in La Union on Saturday! We had joked around before about how there is nothing to do in this town, especially at night on the weekends. We thought all this place needs is a Karaoke bar to liven things up. Then low and behold, Karaoke posters started popping up around town, we couldn’t believe it! Someone organized the very first Karaoke competition and it was held in the community center. We couldn’t resist and we had to go. It was hilarious, we all sang a Beatle’s song, and by ‘sang’ I mean that Cassidy and Kara sang while the rest of us girls were their back-up dancers. We have video proof, or black-mail, of the performance.

I ran into my students for the first time outside of school. I went to the church earlier in the day to use the internet which, surprise surprise, was not working. A few of my little kiddos were there so I played with them instead. They pretended to be amazing volleyball and soccer players, and raced each other to see who could run faster. They begged me to plan games like those into this next week of school :). Then I got out my computer and we played a few games on that. I am such a teacher. The whole time I was making them practice their English, math and logic skills, memory and problem solving tactics, and always asking why. They had no idea they were having so much fun learning! It was complete satisfying for me. I have them hooked, I am already dubbed the best teacher they have ever had.

I had my first Honduran ask me for money. I met this woman a week ago while we were out grocery shopping. I thought she was rather creepy then because she spoke very softly and with a serious tone, like we were carrying out a secret deal or something. She was trying to sell something to me then and I just ignored her because I could barely make out what she was saying. But then, lucky me, I ran into her again this weekend. She called me over to sit and just chat with her, which I thought was harmless, but then she asked if she could borrow money. I’m not really sure how she managed to manipulate the conversation to get it to that point, but I was caught completely off-guard. I told her I didn’t have money, which is entirely true, but she didn’t believe me! After convincing her that I was in fact cash-less, she asked if I would ask my other gringo friends if they would lend her money! You should have seen my jaw drop. She even suggested that I ask them to lend me money but really give it to her, which would still leave me helpless. She claimed that she really trusted me. I must scream trust-worthy since we had only met that one time before?

Sunday I was caught in my first torrential downpour. Lori, Cassidy, and I went to the school to use the internet and the skies just opened up and unleashed a waterfall of rain. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it rain that hard! Because of the tin roofs we could not hear each other talk whatsoever so we just watched it come down. With that kind of rain, every single classroom has a leak. I can’t even fully describe it to you. You could not see past the ledge of the school because there was a wall of water and the patio area was quickly flooding. For someone like me who loves storms, it was really cool to be caught in it! However, the walk home wasn’t as thrilling because of all the mud.

Pray for me this week that I will I keep my head here in Honduras. I have been struggling with feeling overly frustrated in almost every circumstance. I keep thinking about how things would be different back in the States and daydreaming about what I would do if I were home. I willingly took this on knowing that I would lose almost all the comforts of my home and conveniences of my town. I am physically here and should be spending all of my time and attention on my job and life here. Be praying that I don’t make myself too homesick.