I am writing to you from a room decorated in
tacky artwork (such as a porcelain swan), the sound of church bells ringing
obnoxiously outside, and men rubbing their bellies while trying to peek into
the gringa house. All of this can only mean one thing… I’m baaaaaaack! Hello,
again, Honduras!
All
the new teachers arrived to this lovely country on August 5 for their week of
training. I volunteered to skip out on that training and instead chose to spend
another week in the States. (I have no doubt that it was the best decision I
could have made in that situation.) Since Kara and Lenny are also returning
teachers, we all traveled back together on August 13. We had agreed that we
certainly did not need to ‘train’ again, and we even had felt more prepared
about decorating our classrooms and lesson planning so we were confident in
coming back a little later.
Honduras
had planned such a warm welcome back for us! (Not. Please hear the sarcasm in
my voice.) Jake picked us up from the airport and we stopped at a grocery store
to stock up on food. We really had to pack tightly into the car with all our
luggage and food, which resulted in us not fully closing the trunk door. Jake
pulled over so we could get out to fix the problem: well, Lenny had in mind to
go for the quick open-and-shut while Kara was thinking about the grocery bags that
could potentially fall out. (Let the pain-induced wincing begin…) Kara stuck
her arm underneath the door to catch any falling bags but Lenny did not see her
do that so he slammed the door right down on her wrist. The pain was
excruciating. She was trying to be a superhero and brave but she could barely
hold her arm up without crying and she could not move anything. We decided to
take her to a hospital because we feared that some bones broke. Thankfully we
were in and out of the emergency room in about two hours with only a miniscule
fracture, a wrist brace, and plenty of pain meds. Onward to La Unión!
For
the most part La Unión has not changed one bit. Within the first few days of
being back we had lost power, the water was turned off, I got sick from the
food, fireworks woke me up early in the morning, and everything I brought with
me was covered in a thin layer of dirt. I’m still trying to decide if it’s a
relief to see that everything stayed the same… so far I am not convinced. They
are planning (and even preparing) to pave the streets! It’s unclear if they are
going to do cobblestone streets or have smooth cement covering the streets, but
they are going to only do the main drag. The local kids are loving all the
piles of dirt, cement powder, and rocks that are lining the park right now; it
is a mountain bike and toy dirt truck heaven out there. I’m sure the roads are
finally being taken care of because election season is on the horizon (which is
evident by the political songs and rally horns filling the air) and someone is
trying to get reelected. It felt good to come ‘home’ to the same house with
Heather still here and my pink room ready for me. There was a problem with a
different teacher house so Senovia and Grandma (our neighbors) offered up their
half of the house for the new teachers to live in. I’m sad to not hear them
every day through the door anymore and frequently get trapped into a confusing
hour-long conversation with Grandma, but it is convenient to have us all in one
building!
We
do have a fresh, new round of teachers here! Jake hired an additional two
teachers onto our staff which now makes 10 foreign teachers, 6 of them are new.
Let me introduce you to them:
Rachel and Kate are our
new Project Trust volunteers. Rachel is from Wales and Kate is from Northern
Ireland, and both girls are in their gap year between high school and college. (I’m
working on my European accents!) They are both very outgoing and are big helps
with all the elementary classes. I already trust them fully with my students.
(I’m always incredibly impressed with how mature these girls seem and how brave
they are for willingly moving away from home for an entire year at just 18.)
Sharon is the Secondary Language teacher. She is a fellow Hope alum
and is quite possibly the sweetest girl I have ever met. Her Spanish is also
excellent and she loves kids with an incredible heart. She has a lot of energy
and always seems to be making friends with some little munchkin running around.
She is an avid runner and so far has had
trouble convincing any of us to go running with her through the rough streets
of La Unión. She has been working really hard to be a great teacher for those
older kids and I know they are going to learn a great deal from her.
Molly is the Secondary Science teacher. She is incredibly
encouraging – she used to be a cheerleader in college, so it’s suiting! She
does not have a teaching background but she has a passion for science. I am
sure the students will soon fall in love with her great energy and kind spirit.
She has such a good attitude about all the surprises this place throws her way
and learning how to handle the students and this town. She is a fellow ginger
so I am glad to have more redhead power around here!
Rachel is the 5th Grade teacher. She is a fellow
Coloradan! She actually taught 3rd grade at our Choluteca school
last year and knew she wanted to do another year but did not want to stay in
that city. We are very happy that she chose to move here. She kind of already
knows the ropes about our school system, but she does have to start over with a
new grade because I was not going to give up my 3rd grade class
(selfish moment). She is very laid back and hysterical, and a great roommate.
Miranda is the 6th Grade teacher. She was a last minute
hire so she is the newest addition to our team. Her story is very different
than ours: she used to work in the military but is now retired from that and
was looking for somewhere new to live. She had heard about our school a few
years ago and held onto the idea of it. She bravely decided to leave her
husband back in the States and bring her 8 year old boy down to Honduras to
teach with us. They are a fascinating duo and I’m sure this will be quite the
experience for both of them.
It
is kind of cool for me to watch them all experience the mysteries, randomness,
and quirky aspects that the school and La Unión have to offer. I’m sure I was
as wide-eyed last year when I first arrived too. I’m glad to share my
Honduran-wisdom with them but I’m also trying to be very hands-off and let them
figure a lot of it out on their own because that’s most of the fun! We had a
rather rough start with illnesses wreaking havoc on the majority of the group
but almost everyone has bounced back. I’m still waiting for them to fall in
love with the local cuisine (mainly baleadas) so someone will eat out with me,
but most of the food is an acquired taste so I have to be patient. I’m most
excited about all the crazy memories we will have together because I can always
count on Honduras to deliver some wild times!
I
got back to work at the school on Wednesday. I essentially had all my
sequencing and lesson/unit planning done for the year since I worked through
that all last year. I made a few tweaks with my plans for the first week of
school because I now have an entirely better understanding of who my students
are, what their level of English is, and what they are capable of in the
classroom. I will continue to make changes as the year progresses as I remember
what worked and what didn’t, and what the students learned really well and what
was superfluous for me to teach. So really I spent Wednesday, Thursday, and
Friday organizing, cleaning, decorating, and setting up my classroom. I also
felt like I had a little step up on that because I knew what my classroom
looked like and the space that was available to me. I used a lot of the same
decorations from last year (here’s a shout-out to my fantastic mother who
flawlessly removed all those decorations from the wall back in June, keeping
everything in almost pristine condition so that I could use it again) and
brought along a few new things. Some of my favorite additions are the reading
rugs I purchased so that my kiddos don’t have to sit on the gross cement floor
all the time, and a hanging pocket organizer for me to put all of my students’
papers in during the week.
Friday
evening was our Back-to-School Night when all the parents come squeeze
themselves into the smaller-than-life-sized desks and listen to a speech about
the upcoming year. I was applauded for the quickest meeting because I only
talked for half an hour, but hey! I think that’s pretty impressive for a non-native
Spanish speaker. We make sure to touch on all the boring,
everyone-already-knows-this topics like what students’ uniforms consist of and
how the kids should look wearing those, homework and test expectations, and
required materials. I do really value the topics of asking for parental support
on the morals that we try to teach in the classroom and with their student’s
homework; I like to at least make my intentions known to the parents, and let
them know what is most important to me so that we can agree to work together in
molding their kids. An interesting change to the year is that now, a failing
grade is considered to be anything less than 70% – these kids are going to have
to step it up! The best part of my evening was seeing all the parents of my
students from last year – most of them were very surprised and pleased to see
me! They welcomed me back (much better than Honduras initially did with Kara’s
wrist) with giant hugs and it was fun talking about how everyone spent their
vacations.
By
the end of the night and the end of week, I felt more than ready for school to
start! Seeing my students from last year with their cute smiles on their faces
and feeling their arms tightly wrapped around me in bear hugs brought an
overwhelming amount of joy to my heart. I was instantly reminded of why I
decided to come back and I felt much more at ease with my decision. I could not
wait to meet my new group of students and get myself ready for what this year
has to hold!
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