One for the [Rotten] Books

I’ve heard horror stories about teachers’ first years in the business. I’ve been clearly cautioned and warned to expect some challenging moments. I’ve essentially been promised to have a rough first year of teaching.

I never doubted these wiser words and seasoned veterans, but you never really realize HOW challenging it is, how exhausted you feel, or how rough some of the weeks get until you take that leap of faith and dive right into that first year of teaching. After these past two weeks, I would give the same advice, word for word, to people who are training and preparing for their first year as a teacher. Those were a ROUGH two weeks of school.

Week 1: There had to be something in the water that was now running through our students veins. My third graders were barbarians. It was supposed to be a fresh start to a new partial, but it was more rotten than the swarm of fruit flies we find after leaving fruit peels in the trash overnight.

I had made a few changes to my classroom based off of some new ideas I wanted to try out. I put my students’ desks in groups instead of rows because I wanted them to interact with each other more. I wanted them to create these small learning communities where they could feed off of each other and help one another. Well, that idea backfired on me. Like the little chatterboxes that they are, I spent more time asking everyone to be quiet than actually teaching. Also, the lower students that I put in groups with some of my smarter ones, in hope that they would be challenged and ask help from their peers, ended up just copying all the work I gave them. And the two biggest rascals that I kept away from any group and had sit by themselves? bonded together to scheme against me. I swear, they all wanted to see me actually pull my hair out. Each day more and more students were ending up in yellow and my punishment system was beginning to lose its power; some of the boys actually started laughing whenever they got checks and they made the extra homework I would give them every night seem like a prize to be won. My classroom had turned into a zoo. I was changing from a teacher to a wild animal breeder.

Geovanny has been on a particularly frustrating rampage ever since school started back up after Christmas break. He managed to get himself into his third fight in three weeks, all with different students. The first week, he kicked Keidy and yanked her fingers backwards so hard until she started crying. I gave him demerits then and sent a letter home to his parents about his need to be (physically) careful with the other students. The second week, he and Elman ganged up on Rolando and bullied him until too started crying. They pulled one of those shenanigans where they pushed Rolando over and kept pushing him over every time we tried to stand up. Both of them lost their lunch recess for a week and had to sit with the principal during that time. Then, the third week, the day Geovanny was released from his week-long office punishment, he got in a fight with Wendy. However, this time he was the victim. He decided to bother Wendy, Yeri, and Hegna to the point that Wendy took action. (Basically, he was asking for it and quite frankly, I am proud of her for standing up for herself.) She decided to punch him in the back and poke him in the eyeballs. When I asked her what happened she was on the verge of crying because she knew she was in trouble, and all I really wanted to do was give her a high five for finally doing what every person had wanted to do to the boy for a long time. I sent them both of the office to sort it out, and I never actually followed up with the principal, but I do not think any consequence of punishment was given out.

Unfortunately they were academic devils as well. Here’s just one story: I had a Reading test planned on Wednesday over a story that we had been reading and working with for a week and a half. I learned quickly on that only spending a week with one story was too quick, but now I was starting to feel that spending two weeks on it was too much. Even looking back, with this particular story, I don’t know how I would have stretched it out for two more days anyways. We had read the story (multiple times), acted it out, drawn it, learned vocabulary words, answered a variety of questions about it, written sentences, and baked brownies together! (Because the story was about a girl who decided to bake brownies for a school bake sale.) I was certainly feeling confident that they would pass the test, but apparently not a single one of them felt that same confidence. The first time they took the test, every last student failed. Not a single soul got a passing grade on the test. The lowest score was a shocking 6% and the highest was a 60%. I sat in shock after grading them. I decided to review the test and the story with the students for one more day on Thursday before asking them to retake it on Friday. We walked through the test as a class for two separate periods on Thursday. We reviewed every vocabulary word I asked them to learn, every question on the test along with the correct answer, and I pointed out that almost none of them read the directions for the last part so they all got that section entirely wrong. I begged with them to keep reviewing that night and come prepared to take the test again the next day. I did very little to change the test: instead of asking them to translate the vocabulary words from English to Spanish I asked them to translate from Spanish to English, and I rearranged the order of the answers in the multiple choice section. The second time they took the test? This time five passed it, but still half of them did not read the directions on that particular section and bombed it. Oh well, I guess there’s just some things that they are not going to get.

Usually my 9^th grade math class offers some kind of relief for me when I am frustrated with my little ones, but they are the ones who actually broke me that week. Monday was a review day where they worked in groups while passing around note cards with practice problems on them. As soon as they started working, it was like they had never seen this math a day in their lives. May I just say that the problems came from Chapter 8 section 8 which means that we had spent a solid seven previous lessons working up to this point AND the chapter is on fractions which they have been learning about since at least 5^th grade. I could not believe their questions and blank stares! Is it bad to admit that it took every ounce of my self control to not swear in front of them? I could not believe it! They made me feel like such an awful teacher and that they were not actually learning a darn thing from me! Then after their quiz on Thursday I was completely defeated. The highest grade, coming from my best student, was a 75%. They could not even do the simplest math and were making the most basic mistakes on their quiz. I went into Jake’s office to ask him for advice because I was completely lost. In fact, I cried because I genuinely had no idea how to teach them anymore. I was 100% defeated by those students and had been sucker-punched in the gut.  

Week 2: This one was hard on one’s soul. Monday was no better with my little monsters than the previous week. I had decided to move their desks because the groups were clearly not working out, but the fengsuay of the room did nothing to change their individual auras. Gabriel had a terrible attitude all day and flat out refused to do his work. He even challenged Harriet while she was teaching them by telling her to just keep giving him more and more checks because he was not going to do his work. Darwing, Geovanny, and Juan were being their usual obnoxious selves which won them a spot in red for the day. All four of those students received demerits, which is a new record for me. I knew I had to change something because the current system was failing miserably. I now have a new rule in my classroom: for every check you have next to your name, you owe me five minutes whether that time comes from your recess, lunch, or after school. I don’t generally like taking away time from students’ recess because I think they desperately need that time to let all their energy out, but I had to hit them where it hurts. Since then, I have had two straight days of no one in yellow (yay!), and only one student in yellow on the other days.

The school as a whole suffered twice this week from the deaths of cherished loved ones. On Monday the mayor’s wife passed away. It was clear early on in the day that she was very sick and needed immediate attention, so they called for a helicopter to come get her out of La Unión and take her to a real hospital. Unfortunately by the time the helicopter arrived, it was too late. Not only was she a prominent figure’s wife, but in a small town where everyone is related somehow, she was the grandmother and aunt of many of our students and staff. Monday night we went to the wake to pay our respects to the woman and her family. It was the first time I had personally ever seen a dead corpse. Tuesday, half of the secondary students were absent for the funeral service because they were either personally affected or supporting people they dearly loved who were. It was a weird day at school with a very solemn atmosphere in every classroom.

Then Wednesday, after school, we caught wind of the sister of one of the 11^th graders dying. She was brutally raped and murdered, which made the news of the death even harder to bear. (She was living in a different city a couple hours away from here, so please do not worry about my own safety.) Thursday night we attended that wake to show our support for the student and remind him that he is surrounded by people who love him. That was particularly hard to stomach when we realized that they too had an open casket for viewing. On Friday the 11^th grade students were told that only five of them would be allowed to miss part of school to go to the funeral service. After spending about an hour fighting and crying over who would get to go and support their friend, they all decided to just leave. After Jake took the chosen five, they all walked off of campus and decided it was more important to show their friend support than to follow the rules. All of us teachers were cheering for them the entire time and will continue to back up their decision without hesitation.

There was a bit more of drama poisoning the school this past week, but we are starting a new week and I don’t want to take it with me. It primarily is concerned with everyone’s decision to come back for a second year of teaching here or not. Tomorrow Jake will be sitting down with each one of us individually to hear our answers. If you are reading this before Tuesday, please pray for me that I make the right decision. I was pretty sure I knew what I wanted a few weeks ago, but now I am having my doubts. Pray that God makes it clear which choice I need to make.  If you are reading this after Tuesday, please pray that I am feeling confident in my decision. Of course I do not want to regret my decision and let that worry or pain rot in my heart. Please also be praying for every student who was affected by the deaths last week. Both were heart wrenching to witness and to see our students bear. Pray that every single student finds comfort with the death of their loved one and remembers that greater things wait for us after our lives here on Earth. Pray that they never feel alone or without support from the community of our school. Thank you for your support! 

Brooke Osekavage: a Honduran RESIDENT!

Alright, confession time: I have been deceiving my readers ever since I moved here. Although the title of my blog is “Brooke Osekavage: a Honduran Resident,” I have not actually been a legal resident until recently. (Don’t worry, I haven’t been illegally living here, I’ve just been surviving off a temporary visa.) If you read my last blog (all the way through) about my journey to and from Ecuador, you read a tad bit about the visa rules of Honduras. Whenever you enter the country of Honduras you are granted a traveler’s visa that lasts 90 days. To renew said visa you either have to leave the country for a minimum of 3 days before returning, or you have to make the trip to Tegucigalpa to renew it through the migration office. When you are going to live in Honduras, you want that residency.

When we all signed our contracts to work for Vida Abundante we were given the signing bonus of getting residency. We qualify for residency as missionaries while we are here (fun fact: it is a lot easier to get approved for residency for religious reasons than for general work reasons). Trust me, having someone organize and take the lead in the process of getting residency in Honduras is considered extremely lucky. Otherwise, the procedure is a nightmare. We did not get our residency right away; in fact, we had to send our passports to Tegucigalpa when our initial 90 days were running out to get our visas renewed. The lawyer told us that the office had not gotten to our papers yet and we could do nothing else but wait. However, once the migration office does finally get to your papers, they call and you have to be at their office within the week otherwise they stick you back at the bottom of the pile. Well they finally called us in December. Unfortunately, they called too close to the date that we were all leaving to go home for the holidays. Someone on that end of things pulled a few strings and got permission for us to wait until we all returned to Honduras to make the residency journey to Teguc.

The school made plans for us to all go straight to Tegucigalpa as soon as we got back in the country. All of the Gracias and La Unión teachers met in San Pedro Sula (because that is where we all had our flights scheduled to fly into anyways) and we were shipped off to the capital. The trip, like all, came with its bumps, difficulties, and frustrating moments, but I’m going to skip over those parts because I am extremely grateful that the school paid for us to get our residencies and we had a lawyer who took care of every little detail for us. My roommate Heather recently had to go through the headache of trying to renew her residency (since she taught with Vida Abundante last year, who paid for the visa, but now works with the Micro Finance group, who cannot afford to get residency for its workers) and I cannot imagine having to do that on my own – she handled everything as gracefully as possible but she almost pulled all her hair out during the process.

We spent an entire day sitting in the migration office waiting to pass through. We got there plenty early but when they first called us up, the lawyer realized she did not have any of our bank statements from the school so we had to wait an additional two hours for her to run that quick, but vital, errand. During this time we were not allowed to leave to get food, and we were forced to use a terrifying public bathroom. Once she got back and they called us the second time, we were starting to get nervous that we might not make it through. In fact, the woman behind the desk said she would only be able to get through 10 more people that day, and there were 19 of us. Wouldn’t that put you in a sweat? We went through a series of back-ups plans to decide who to send through the line first, who was going to have school the next day, or how we would all get back to our towns if we couldn’t all get through on the same day. Thankfully that woman underestimated her skills and she did in fact get through us all. She had us you sign a few papers, scan our fingerprints, and take a picture to be plastered on the card. (Remember how I lost my suitcase traveling back from Ecuador? I was thrilled to be taking my picture with absolutely no trace of make up on my face and wearing the same clothes that I had been for the previous three days.) I was one of the last people to sit in that cubicle with that woman, and she was quite sick of our group at that point. She called us “an invasion” to her friend and was in no mood to hear jokes about the size of our group. I really just wanted to congratulate her for successfully completing the paperwork for all of us! But she was not having it.

We left all the necessary paperwork with our lawyer so that she can return in 30 days (which was yesterday!) to pick up our cards. The cards are supposed to be sent to us once they are ready, but who knows how long they will take to actually get here. Until then, I do have a little piece of paper that proves that I am a real resident of Honduras! 

El Año Nuevo in a Familiar Place

After basking in the sun for a week on the beach in La Ceiba, my holiday travels continued further south. I hopped on a plane and jetted down to Ecuador for a quick visit with my old host family! I hadn’t seen them since my semester abroad ended a year and a half ago. The anticipation was building up inside of me all over again with the thought of seeing more of my family.

My multiple plane rides to get there could not have gone quick enough. I flew from San Pedro Sula to San Jose, Costa Rica (comfortably alongside 10 other people on a normal-sized plane, aka we had 3 rows each to ourselves) to Panama City (where we were delayed almost 2 hours because an obscenely drunk man tried to get on the plane and another woman apparently did not have the right documentation to be allowed into Ecuador) then finally to Quito. Thankfully I was sitting in the front of the plane so I practically ran off it once it landed because I was not about to wait any longer behind a giant line of people. I forgot where I was and how much I stand out in any Central/South American country as I started to worry that maybe my family would not recognize me after a few years; but I was quickly reminded of my physical appearance when they easily spotted me after my first step out of the doors. There they were: my dad, Balito (the middle brother), and Mateo (the youngest brother). Their smiling faces overwhelmed me and I felt instantly happy, just plain happy, that I got to be with them once again.

Balito has changed the most. He is taller than me now and going through puberty so his voice is changing too. Basically he’s turning into a man. He has plenty of girls interested in him and any number of girlfriends at a given time. I no longer beat him in our simple games like a thumb war and light sabers. But other than that, he is still my little brother. We still had tickle fights and snuggled together while watching movies. I still don’t stand a chance when we play video games and our love for coconut juice is as strong as ever.

Mateo is thankfully still littler than me. He is quite big for his age (in height and weight) but not too big for holding his sister’s hand. It took him about 12 hours to get used to me again, and then he was back to loving me with every ounce of his being and being glued to my side. He had an endless list of things he wanted to do together but we didn’t get a chance to cross off too many. Instead we just enjoyed every minute together playing all sorts of games, eating treats, and also snuggling during movies.

Both of them are attending a bilingual school where they are learning English so that was a new dynamic to our relationship! Balito liked it when I talked to him in English so we could have ‘secret’ conversations in front of the family. Mateo liked asking me how to say every other word in English. I had to remind them that I was there to be their sister, not their teacher, but it was kind of fun to use English with them! Especially since they have no problem making fun of me when I make a mistake in Spanish, so now the tables were turned.

Dany was the same as I left him, except with longer hair. He is still studying to be an environmental engineer through his university. He still towers over any given Ecuadorian in the country which makes it easy to follow or find him in a crowd. One day our little brothers were at school and the parents were off running errands so Dany took me to the artisan market so I could do my shopping. While he wasn’t very helpful when I asked for ideas of what to buy my boy students, he was more than helpful with carrying my bags and making sure we got everywhere safely. He has always been a fabulous older brother and I loved my time with him.

My mom and dad were also perfectly the same. My mom was still a little on the crazy side and my dad was very loving. They took such good care of me the whole time I was there! They made sure that I never spent a minute hungry; I had more meals in a single day that I have in 3 days when living on my own and each one somehow managed to be bigger than the other one. In fact, for one meal, they refused to leave the restaurant until I ate every last bite off my plate that was not in the least bit empty with the pile of rice, two fried eggs, French fries, salad, a slab of beef, and an extra chicken breast for good measure. They cleaned my desperately-needed-to-be-washed clothes – although my mom was a little worried at first at how to tackle the mound of despicably dirty clothes. Although, I still had to wash my own underwear in the shower because my mom said I could get an infection if I threw those in the mix with the rest of the laundry (should I have taken that as an insult for being so dirty, or a comment of concern from a mother who was just trying to protect me?). Unfortunately while I was visiting I came down with a cold but they took exceptional care of my sick little self and gave me plenty of cough syrup and decongestion pills. I could not have been in better care while traveling.

In general my family is doing very well :) They have more money than when I first lived with them so they have a few new luxuries like nicer cell phones, a car, and they are moving to a new house. It’s interesting to me that people show off how much money they have, not necessarily by the things that they can buy or the nice gadgets, but by how big their bellies are. The more money you have, the more food you can eat and the better diet you have, so the bigger belly you have. We didn’t eat as many home-cooked meals this time around, but rather ate out at restaurants for most meals. My mom was sure to point out that my dad looks much better now than when I last saw him because he has a bigger gut. She also had no problem telling me that I was way too skinny and needed to eat more, so I could be chubby like her. She made it her personal goal to make sure I always had food in my mouth or my hand.

In hind sight I would have planned to go to Ecuador for the first part of my Christmas break and have my sister come visit me in Honduras for the second part because while I was there, all my brothers had to go back to school. We still had a lot of fun together! But I wish we could have had more time. I did get to spend New Years with them and that was a whole new experience. Fireworks, masks, and crazy wigs are the accepted norm and dress code for New Year’s Eve. The tradition in Ecuador is very… odd. They celebrate the passing of the old year by making giant mannequins of the most random characters ever, and then burning them at midnight. Since the old year is then dead, all the men take it upon themselves to dress up as the ‘widows.’ So as you are driving through the street, at night, on December 31, you will encounter men dressed up as women. It’s not intended to be a giant transvestite show, but it ends up being one. These ‘widows’ stop you in the middle of the street and dance for money. Fire and cross-dressed men in the streets… what could be a better way to bring in the New Year?

Besides welcoming 2013 in such a unique way, I spent the majority of my trip there just having quality family time with everyone. The few days that my brothers were not in school were spent traveling around the city. Anywhere we went turned into a photo shoot of me, with maybe the addition of a brother or two. I started to feel uncomfortable, but I just giggled it off and grabbed Mateo whenever he was within reach so I wouldn’t be alone. We visited the Christmas lights down a main stretch of Quito. There was a Nativity scene, giant toads, a snake, Santa and his helpers, and some traditional art pieces. It was quite the eclectic Christmas set-up, but I liked to walk around and take thousands of pictures of it all.

They took me out to their new house to see where they will be living. It was still under construction so I did not get to see the finished product, but it had the potential of being a beautiful home! (Unfortunately the days that my brothers were in school and I was feeling deathly ill, I had to accompany my mom and dad to the construction site where we just had to sit and wait all day, supervising the workers. I was miserable.) They are moving to a valley just outside of Quito which is much closer to all of the boys’ schools. The new house is part of a gated community (so much safer than where they are currently living) and has its own pool and gym. Mateo is especially thrilled about the pool!

I revisited the artisan market to shop for my friends and students back here in La Unión. For all the teachers I got some combination of a mug, scarf, or Ecuador pants. With coffee season in full swing everyone uses their mugs almost on a daily basis. Thankfully we have had a few cold days since being back so the girls have been able to get good use out of their scarves. And who can honestly resist wearing Ecuador pants? Once you put them on, you will never want to take them off. For my munchkins I bought all of the boys and shirt and a souvenir pen. They wore their shirts for the whole day when I handed them out. For the girls I bought them little Ecuador purses and satin headbands. Wendy has not taken off her purse since then!

We went up to the Panecillo, which is a giant statue of the Virgin Mary overlooking all of Quito. I never visited this when I studied abroad because I had always been told that it was much too dangerous to go as a tourist. Luckily, this time, I was in the protection of my family and their car so I would not be in any kind of danger. You have to pay to climb to the top of the statue, so we did not do that. However, the view is spectacular from any point so we didn’t miss a single photo op. Since it was during the Christmas season, a giant Nativity scene (made of lights) was set up next to the Panecillo too. It was truly beautiful!

I also had the chance to see an old friend while I was there! Eric, one of the people I studied and was neighbors with, has since returned to Ecuador to work. We got to reunite back on our old stomping grounds and reminisce on our crazy adventures together. We met for dinner and drinks one night and just spent the whole time telling old stories. Unfortunately we could not coordinate our schedules to meet until the night before I left so we didn’t stay out for long, but it was great to see him again.

I felt like my trip was too short but I loved every minute of it. I did not realize how much I truly missed them until I got to be with them again. And now, everyone is assured that I will always come back to them; they are my family and I will always find a way to come visit them. They may be a little quirky, but they are still my family and I am deeply in love with those crazy Ecuadorians.

The journey back to Honduras was less than desirable. I got to the airport and waited forever in the check-in line (which I found out later that I was seated in First Class so I could have skipped that line all together). Once I got to the counter the woman not-so-politely told me that I was not going to be allowed to travel to Honduras that day. See, when you enter the country of Honduras you get a 90day traveler’s visa. To renew the visa you must leave the country within those 90 days and stay outside of it for 3 days until you are allowed back in. Working with Vida Abundante qualifies me for residency under missionary status. Our group of teachers was scheduled to travel to Tegucigalpa the day after we all returned to Honduras to get our residency cards. But since we could not exactly prove our residency, we all had to rely on our visas to get back in the country. Sometimes the airline companies get fussy with travelers who do not have a return flight within those 90days, so naturally they decided to pick on me that day.

I was traveling on January 5^th which was the precise date that my visa was good until. After waiting for the airline staff to decide to let me fly and return to Honduras since I was still legally allowed to be in Honduras, they threw another bomb in my direction. Apparently, when traveling from Ecuador to Honduras, you need to show proof of your yellow fever vaccination. While I have my yellow fever vaccination, I could not tell you where the card is that proves it. This is the point where I lost my composure and started crying. The woman behind the desk offered me this solution: my plane was leaving in an hour which would be “enough” time for me to find a taxi, go to a nearby clinic, get the vaccination, beg the nurse to set the vaccination date for 10 days before the 5^th to make it legal, and make it back to the airport. She would hold the plane for me up until the very last minute but I was going to have to run! By the grace of God, her plan worked! The woman even ran through the airport with me to catch the plane – it was like having my own personal cheerleader.

The other legs of my journey were refreshingly smoother. I flew from Quito to Bogota, Colombia back to Panama City and then finally landing in San Pedro. I will have you know that not a single person ever asked to see my yellow fever vaccination. Once I landed and made my way through security and customs, I discovered that my bag did not make the journey with me. I should have known that just barely making the plane all the way back in Quito would mean that my bag would probably not be so lucky. I went through quite the chaotic mess to track down my bag and have it returned to me. The bag took a couple of days to make it to San Pedro where it took a few more days to be shipped to Tegucigalpa. There, (unfortunately we had already left Teguc after getting our residency cards) Jake was able to pick it up and bring it back to La Unión. It wasn’t until an entire week later that I confidently knew where my bag was because it was finally in my hands!

I know this blog post is quite overdue, but I have been very busy with getting back into the routine of school. My prayer request is for wisdom and patience. My students, both 3^rd and 9^th graders, have been quite the handful since being back. They have challenged me in many ways and have sadly left me feeling very defeated. Their grades are slipping and their behavior has become unbearable. They finally broke me last week and I could not take it anymore. I spent the weekend trying to relax and seek God’s help, but I still need a lot of help. I have to try new ideas to help them learn and keep progressing academically, and mold them into respectful little kiddos. Pray that I do not give up and find some new ways to overcome these obstacles.