Fingerprint Stories

We just finished up our Daily Activities unit in Basic English and I had my students do a fun project that I wanted to share with you all! The unit focused on vocabulary words that describe their daily routine such as “take a shower” or “eat lunch.” My students also practiced using sequence words such as “first, second, third,” or “first, next, then,” in order to put those daily routine words in an order to describe their mornings, afternoons, or evenings. So I gave them the assignment to write their own short story using their new vocabulary words and grammar skills, and then they had to illustrate it using fingerprint characters! Some of them turned out super cute and I was very proud of their creativity. Here are some of their finished products (I picked the cream of the crop):

                                                                                    

Keidy

Tinker Bell wakes up at 10:11. She brushes her teeth after she wakes up. She eats breakfast before she brushes her hair. She takes a shower before she gets dressed. She eats lunch before she watches tv. She plays after she studies.

Kensy

Panda wakes up at 5:30 in the morning. She takes a shower before she gets dressed. She gets dressed before she eats breakfast. She brushes her teeth before she goes to school. she goes to school after she plays. She eats dinner before she sleeps.

Yeri

Kensy wakes up at 5:50. She takes a shower at 6:00. She brushes her teeth after she takes a shower. She brushes her hair before she eats breakfast. She watches tv before she goes to school. She plays after school. 

Gabriel

Batman wakes up at 6:00. He wakes up before he brushes his teeth. He gets dressed before he eats breakfast. He talks every day. He eats lunch before dinner. He watches tv.

Rolando

One day one dog is in the woods the trees are giant and there is one big house. The dog goes walking slowly and goes in the house. First there are 100 people dancing. Second the people walk outside. Third he sees another tall dog. Finally the dog and the boy run to the city.

Cute and creative? I think so! This week be praying for my health. I am feeling a little under the weather but am fighting it with all that I have. I really REALLY don't want to have a cold out here, especially because I don't have my delightful mother to take care of me. Hopefully my immune system backs me up on my efforts to fight it off!

Nice to Meet You!

This past weekend I sat, for the first time, on the other side of parent-teacher conferences – the teacher’s side. Unfortunately being the teacher didn’t have any perks for conferences here. We didn’t get any half days to prepare and no body made us food of any kind. Instead they asked us to be awake, ready and at the school by 7:30 on a Saturday for said conferences. Where is the love for us teachers?!

Conferences went quite swell. I handled my own solo – I didn’t need anyone’s help translating between the parents and myself. It was really fun to play the guessing game of which child belongs to which parent when they walked in the door. Some were entirely obvious because they had the same crazy eyes or slightly crooked smile or round face. Others I couldn’t pinpoint who their kid was until they said their name or signed the attendance sheet. The signing of the attendance sheet was a humbling moment for me: some of the parents were completely illiterate and couldn’t find their child’s name on the sheet to sign next to, or write their name down for a ‘signature.’ I offered to help one mother but she was determined to copy her name down legibly. Other than that offer, I did hand out little chocolates to all my visitors. I figured if we all had to be at school that early on a very cold Saturday, then we all deserved a little morsel of chocolatey love.

12 out of 13 of my students had someone show up for a conference. We didn’t have a schedule or anything, just a time frame. Conferences were from 7:30-10:30 and parents could show up whenever to meet the teacher. I think the biggest appeal of coming to the conference was to get their student’s grades. We cannot send home the final grades for the partial with the student, but rather the parent or guardian has to come to the meeting and sign for the actual grades. We were told not to let anyone who looks like a sister or brother sign for the grades, just a parent, other older relative, or guardian. I had a couple moms who looked like they couldn’t be any older than me and could very well pass as a sister. I also had a few students who don’t live with their parents so it was a relative that came; this was especially saddening to see because I wish their parents were still a part of their lives in order to see how well their student is doing and what a great kid their son or daughter is turning out to be.

I don’t have any crazy anecdotes to report. I did have a few interesting conversations… One parent, after telling him that I had a major problem with his daughter never turning in her homework, seemed rather shocked that her grade was being dragged down because of it. I politely told him that I had written on her weekly report multiple times that she needed to do her homework and turn it in if she wanted to improve her grade. I bet he’ll actually start reading those reports now. Another mom told me that she thinks I need to start using easier stories or should use just one story in my Reading class. Her reason? My Reading class is too hard and if they just had one story then they could memorize it and do better. I (also) politely told her that I am already using 1^st Grade comprehension level stories and the point in my class is not to memorize a story but to be able to read it and use different skills to retell or answer questions about the story; plus, the majority of my students are surviving Reading just fine. My favorite conferences were the ones that I got to brag about the student to their parent/guardian and tell them how proud they should be of their student. I so loved the smiles that crept across their faces when I rattled on about what a joy their student was in class, how well-behaved they were, how hard they studied, the great grades they were receiving, and how they were such a help to me and the other students. There is no greater pride.

Please be praying for Kara and Lenny this week. They leave Thursday morning to go back to the States for a wedding this weekend. Pray for their safety during their travels, and that they still think of us and miss us in the midst of their luxurious weekend plans! We will go 5 whole days without seeing them, and we have never gone more than 24 hours without seeing each other (and that was a rare occasion). 

Thank you Gracias!

For those of you who don’t know, the city of Gracias is our closest getaway. It is our small slice of paradise outside of La Unión and within a bus trip’s reach. There is a bank, grocery store, and post office there among other fantastic places such as general merchandise stores, restaurants, hotels, and cafés. This past weekend it was time to pay Gracias a little visit. Unfortunately the only time the bus leaves is at 5 in the morning, but Lori, Kara, Harriet, Beth, and I thought that it was still entirely worth it to go.

Our primary reason for going was to pick up some packages that had been mailed to us. If anyone is ever interested in sending me something you have to send it to the following address:

Brooke Osekavage
Hotel Guancascos
Barrio San Sebastian
Gracias, Lempira
Honduras C.A.

(Yes, that is my not-so-subtle hint that I would love you to send anything and everything to me.) The packages and/or letters get to Gracias just fine, but then it gets a little tricky. In order to actually get a package, you have to go check the post office and then personally pick it up. It’s not like college where they let you know when you have a package waiting in the mailroom, and it’s not like home where the package is delivered right to your front door. Sometimes, if the package sits long enough in the post office, they will actually take it to the hotel where it sits again and waits for one of us to come claim it. Now the letters are a different story: the post office workers create a pile of mail that is specifically for the people of La Unión and whenever someone from our little town makes a trip to Gracias and its post office, they pick up the stack for La Unióners. Then they bring it back and deliver it; for us gringos, if they see a name on the envelope that they do not recognize or cannot pronounce, they assume it belongs to one of us so they find any one of us and give us the letter. Anyways, we knew there would be packages waiting for us in the post office so we went… but the post office was closed. Without a doubt this was the biggest disappointment of my weekend. We even went to check the hotel if by chance they had gotten any of our packages, and they hadn’t. We are still trying to figure out how to get our packages, but we were extremely saddened by our unfortunate luck this weekend.

In order to cheer ourselves up we knew we had to do some retail therapy, but first we needed money. The money situation in Honduras is rather peculiar. All the teachers have bank accounts set up with Banco Atlantida for our paychecks to get directly deposited into, but getting that money out to use is slightly tricky. Although we have ATM/debit cards, we have only been able to use them at grocery stores, hotels, and restaurants in bigger and more tourist-friendly cities. Other than that we just go to an ATM and take loads of money out. However, unlike at home where you might find 5 different ATMs within walking distance of each other, ATMs are scarce in this country and are never guaranteed to work. La Unión does not have an ATM and the only way we can get money out here is at the clinic where they have the capability of swiping our cards for a certain amount and then giving us that amount in cash. But you have to hope that a) the clinic is open when you go, and b) that they have enough cash to actual perform this withdrawal. So we heavily rely on big cities to get money. Unfortunately, sometimes the ATMs in said cities are out of money or broken so they are out of service. Apparently the only one in Gracias has not worked in months so we had to go to the actual bank. Now you may think I’m over-exaggerating or whining a bit much here, but you need to realize that the banks in Honduras are beyond frustrating and in-efficient so people avoid them at all costs.

Normally when you go you need to have your passport to withdraw money, but we currently do not have our passports. (This is where the complicated systems in our lives continue.) To make a long story short our passports are in Tegucigalpa because our temporary visas ran out but the immigration office does not have our paperwork ready to get us our residency cards. So we had to send our passports to Tegucigalpa to get our visas extended. Can you see how this might pose a problem at the bank? We all brought copies of our passports to see if the bank would accept those. I talked to a woman who initially said that the copies would not be sufficient, but once I explained our problem and she recognized the kind of sticky situation we were in, she quickly agreed to let us continue with our transactions. Bless her because we would have been in an even bigger pickle!

With crisp bills in our hands and saddened spirits that needed cheering up, we hit the stores. We first filled our empty bellies with fresh pastries from a bakery and ice cream. Then we found a school supplies store and drooled. There were so many different materials that we could never dream of finding in La Unión! I bought new mega-crayons for my students, fun-colored gel pens for me to use for grading instead of the dreaded red pen, and a Disney princess pencil bag. My most favorite purchase, from that store and of the whole day, was the sparkle foam pieces I got for each student. Think of those colored foam squares you can buy at the craft store, now imagine them smothered in glitter! Think of the possibilities and the art projects I can do with my kiddos! My classroom will be getting a majestic facelift with my new purchases.

We finished our morning of shopping at the grocery stores before we had to scoot back to the bus station to catch the last bus back to La Unión by 12:30. Everyone had their own personal list of items they wanted plus wish lists of foods from the others who didn’t come with us. I treated myself to yogurt, cheese (which successfully made it back with the yogurt, both without bursting or getting warm), granola, homemade jam, peanut butter, chocolate toffees, and alfredo sauce. After all our shopping we stuffed our backpacks and tied up our grocery bags, and got back on the bus. We knew our luck had turned around by the pleased smiles everyone had on their face AND the bus ride home was magnificent – we each got our own seat for the entire ride back and I never felt like I was going to be launched from my seat. Thank you Gracias for making our lives a little brighter this weekend!

Please pray for my family this week. I have been missing them a lot over the last couple of weeks and I can only imagine (and hope) that they are feeling the same. I do not like not being able to call them whenever I want or realizing that I still won’t see them for months. Bless their hearts for willingly sending me here to Honduras to complete God’s work and to fulfill my dreams. Their support has been the greatest gift throughout my decision to come here. Just pray that they are all doing well and that the time passes quickly until we see each other again. I know it’s not easy to go this long without seeing or spending time with their favorite daughter! 

My week in a blink

I was sitting on the bus coming back from Gracias this weekend and realized that I had not posted a blog in a while! (Sorry to anyone who may have been checking for a new one only to be disappointed at my laziness.) Then I tried to think of what on earth could I actually write about since my life has been rather uneventful since we have not traveled anywhere, and my mind instantly drifted to my students and school. I realized that I could conjure about a pretty decent blog that highlighted the events of last week.

Grades: Our first partial officially ended and I have turned in my very first ‘final’ grades as a teacher. At Abundant Life, a grade of 65 or above is considered passing, and if you have a 64 or below that you are considered to be failing. I am proud to say that none of the ninth graders are failing my math class! The two students that I was worried about slid past with a 67 and a 69. Phew! Hopefully they do better this next partial because those grades were too close for comfort. In third grade I only have one student who is genuinely failing third grade – Elman. He may be a sweet and curious little boy, but he is truly not the best student and I am worried about him. I already keep him after school twice a week to give him extra help, but his mom asked if he could stay every day. Unfortunately I have my own work to do so I told her that I could not manage that, plus I would really like to see him learn how to study on his own. Other than him I have a few other students who are failing a subject or two. Overall everyone is doing much better than I thought! (In my classes anyways. I did get the chance to look at their grades for the subjects that are taught by other teachers and they are not doing so well. I am realizing that my group of kiddos is not the brightest bunch in the school, but I still have hope for them.) Parent-teacher conferences are on Saturday so I will have the joy of explaining all their grades to their parents, wish me luck!

Third Grade: We had an excellent week in science! Our new unit is on plants so this week every student got to plant a seed in their very own cup. To be honest I was a little nervous about the soil that we put in there so I have been praying like a fool that God helps those seeds sprout. They also all passed their science quiz with flying colors (all A’s and B’s)! I think that is one of the best tests/quizzes that they have taken as a whole. Unfortunately they performed at the exact opposite level for Reading. We are focusing on ‘sequencing’ for two weeks and they all bombed their quiz. While they know the vocabulary that I taught them, when they had to apply the skill to a 1^st Grade comprehension level reading passage, they panicked and dropped the ball. Good thing it was only the quiz so I have another week to work on that particular skill with their little minds.

In math we reviewed all of our multiplication facts from 0-7 and they are rocking it! I have started them on timed multiplication tests to practice their facts. They have 2 minutes to get 35 problems entirely correct. If they pass, then they get to color that facts’ number and put it by their name on the wall. We have begun counting (U.S.) coins and that has proven to be a challenge. Another challenge is making sentences in Basic English. This unit focuses on daily activities and once again they know the vocabulary fairly well, but they cannot use them in context. I am trying to teach them how to conjugate verbs for different subjects in order to make more coherent sentences, but everyone is struggling. (For example: “I get dressed” instead of “I am get dressed,” or “he takes a shower” instead of “he take a shower.”) I know with more practice they will start to remember the rules, but I will know that they have really mastered the material when they can speak correctly formulated sentences.

Speaking of knowing how well my students are doing… I have noticed a minor detail but a rather big one in their English skills! A few of my students are now answering the question “How are you?” like a normal human being instead of sounding like a robot. If you ask any of the younger students (and probably quite a few of the older ones) “How are you?” they will automatically answer “Fine thank you, and you?” It’s just what they have been taught to answer with, like you or I would answer “Cómo estás?” with an instant “Muy bien, y tú?” But I have had a breakthrough with a few of my little ones who actually answer the question with how they are really feeling instead of their automated, pre-recorded response! The first time I heard it, it actually caught me off guard, but then I immediately felt proud that they are learning.

Outside of class Rolando made my week by gifting me a pair of earrings :) He wrapped them up in a plastic bag with a note that said “You are my favorite teacher in old the school” (yes, he put ‘old’ instead of ‘all,’ but I overlooked it because his gift was so precious). They are beautiful purple beaded earrings and I instantly put them on to show him my gratitude and that I loved them, but more importantly that I love him more.

Ninth Grade: On Tuesday I gave a homework assignment to my students that consisted of 16 problems to complete, all that would help them prepare for their quiz on Wednesday, and I gave them about twenty minutes to get started on these problems in class. Unfortunately only 1 student received a passing grade on the assignment because 4 of them decided to not turn it in, 4 chose to only do about a fourth to half of the assignment, and 2 made the worse decision to copy the homework. I had more zeros on the assignment than I knew what to do with so I decided they all had to be punished. I scolded them on Thursday about what it means to be a good student and doing their homework WITHOUT copying it from someone else (all topics that I have previously discussed with them in the same scolding manner). I proceeded to tell them that everyone, except the one girl who actually did the assignment and put effort into completing it, would receive the following punishment: they would all lose their participation point for that day, have to keep their failing grade on the assignment, and then have to stay after school on Friday to re-do it since they neglected it the first time. They all thought I was kidding about the last part, until I showed up to their classroom after the last bell rang on Friday afternoon.

Work?: Apparently Hondurans and foreigners have two very different ideas about showing up to work. This has happened in the past but it was really bad this week and extremely frustrating for the rest of us: some of our teachers decided to not show up for work and didn’t give anyone advanced notice. The 1^st grade teacher showed up late every single morning because her maid apparently quit so she had to take care of her daughter (thus continuing the cycle of ‘not showing up’). While this is a totally legitimate reason to be late in the morning, she did not let anyone know that she wouldn’t be on time and the 1^st graders ran free and wild until someone noticed that they were without a teacher. The 4^th grade teacher was in Tegucigalpa all week for a doctor visit. Again, a completely fair reason to be gone, but she didn’t tell anyone that she wouldn’t be at school for the entire week until Monday at dinner time (after already not being present all day or answering her phone). And one of the Spanish teachers didn’t show up to school on Friday because, as her sister put it, “she had better things to do.” Seriously? You would be fired instantly in the States for doing something like that. The rest of us teachers were running around like chickens with our heads cut off all week trying to cover their classes.

Volleyball: We have been participating in a community-wide volleyball tournament over the past few weeks. The kids at the public school organized the event as a fundraiser for their school, so the teachers at Abundant Life put together a team to participate in the tournament. We played our final games this week because we weren’t the BEST team. We had a lot of fun playing and did our best to compete, but we fell a little short. Even though we didn’t make it to the playoffs of the tournament, we were valiant players and had battle scars to prove it – Cassidy twisted her ankle pretty badly, Kara and I both had bruises on our arms that looked like someone was abusing us, and there were a few scraped knees as a result of playing on a concrete court. We are going to keep practicing so that we perform better in the next tournament, and we are also going to request that they change the times of the games because they had us playing after dark and usually at 8pm (to their advantage because as teachers, that was too close to our bedtime to function at our best).

T.I.H.: I have had the unexpected joy of witnessing a few of the students driving this week. A fifth grade student was seen driving through town in a truck, all by himself. A sixth grade student was cruising around on a motorcycle, also all by himself. And a ninth grade student was putting through town behind the wheel of a big bulldozer. They have taken seeing your students outside of class to a whole new level!

The Weather: The seasons are changing in La Unión. Some people call this the rainy season and others call it winter, but whatever it is, I’m not sure I like it. We had a lot of rain due to Hurricane Sandy (all my prayers go out to those who were more deeply and directly affected by the storm) but that is just the start of a long and very moist winter for us. The temperatures are dropping and rain is more frequent. We no longer have rain storms, just rain. The town is supposed to be in this constant state of ‘damp’ once winter is in full swing – always misting, cold, and with plenty of mud to share. Since we do not have heating of any kind down here, I’m preparing myself to start looking 10 pounds heavier with all the layers I will start wearing to school.

Health: Please be praying for our teachers this week; last week we had multiple teachers out at one point or another. Kara has a parasite of some kind in her system and it doesn’t seem to be leaving her alone. She’s already been to the clinic once to seek care but she’ll have to go back this week because the meds aren’t working. She has been sick after every meal and has sharp stomach pains. Mrs. Turcios was in Tegucigalpa all week to seek medical attention on a bad knee. She is quite overweight and desperately needs to shed a lot of it if she wants any hope for relief on her knee. Mr. Bustillos (the secondary Spanish teacher) has an unknown disease or condition that has rendered him helpless. In his past something happened that left him paralyzed; however, since then he has regained motion in his legs but still cannot use his hands. Sadly he relapsed this week and was sent to Tegucigalpa because he could not walk and needed emergency medical treatments. Beth was feeling very under the weather in the middle of the week.

Halloween

What did you dress up as for Halloween this year? Something scary? Something silly? Something clever? Perhaps something a little on the scandalous side? If you live in Colorado, did you have to design your costume around your winter coat? Whatever you dressed up as I hope you had a spooky holiday filled with an absurd amount of candy, pumpkins, cob webs, and face paint!

Here, we do not celebrate Halloween. In fact, the holiday Halloween, as best as I can describe it, is similar to Lord Voldemort’s name in Harry Potter – it is forbidden to even mention it. Halloween is so frowned upon, that we would be asking for serious trouble if anyone heard us talking about it or if we tried to do anything for it. I cannot offer you any reasonable explanation for this extreme thinking so I will only describe it to you.

Heather and I discovered just how extreme Hondurans’ ideas are on Halloween in various and surprising ways. She had a discussion with the Honduran men that she works with and she commented heavily on how defensive and opinionated they were. She said that she had never seen them stand so firmly on a subject or seen them get so worked up over any topic; they simply would not budge on their opinions. We later discovered that our next door neighbor had been waking up at 4am every morning for the week preceding Halloween with an army of women who were all praying for countries and people who celebrated the holiday. They spent several hours each morning praying fervently that whoever celebrated this holiday would change their ways of thinking and lifestyle to follow God instead. Then on the actual day of Halloween we went to women’s group at the church. Although the topic was far from any idea connected to Halloween, the speaker somehow found a way to incorporate it. Her opinion on the day was equally as strong and she had no hesitation in sharing the horrors of Halloween so that everyone would agree with her. Then, as a group, everyone prayed passionately for the souls that celebrate this holiday. Needless to say, I felt a little uncomfortable whenever any Honduran mentioned Halloween because I did not want to be condemned to hell by them.

The only logical thing that Heather and I came up with is that they must have heard horror stories about what some people do to celebrate Halloween. They see it as purely a satanic holiday, which translates to any person who celebrates it, is worshipping Satan himself. I’m not sure if they think we all sit in circles and chant to Satan or perform sacrifices or become possessed by his spirit, but I imagine their ideas aren’t far off from that. They are convinced that followers of Satan have chosen to target children because they are so young and innocent, and their minds are easily manipulated – which explains why you mostly see children dressing up and celebrating the holiday. I so desperately wanted to cry out that Halloween has turned into this commercialized holiday where you get to dress up as your hero or some goofy character and then stuff your face with a ridiculous amount of candy until you get a belly ache! However, I knew that I could convince no one that our intentions with the holiday were harmless, so I never confessed to celebrating Halloween. If I am going to live in this town for another 7 months, I don’t want anyone thinking that I worship Satan.