September 8, 2012
I really wanted to update the blog this week, but boy was it
quite the week. I gave my first
round of tests to the 7th, 10th and 11th
graders, and I realized during this time that they were not kidding in
orientation when they said cheating is natural and a common part of the culture
here in Honduras. Luckily, I made
different tests for my 11th graders because there are so many of
them, my 10th graders are so few in number that they can be spread
all over the room, but then there is the 7th graders. I caught 5 of them cheating, they were
talking, looking at others papers and even trying to use hand signals to tell
others the multiple-choice answers.
Since it was their first attempt I cut them a break; here a failing
grade is 65 so I gave them their percentage out of a max of 65. They were not very happy, but grateful
that I didn’t give them a 0 and demerits.
The week was also full of many rough class periods where the
students didn’t seem to show any interest or even worse were very disrespectful. The teachers spent a lot of time
complaining and venting this week, along with the occasional exchanging of
strategies to try and get the students motivated and under control. Every night I came home very frustrated
and spent the evenings trying to get my mind away from the difficulties at
school. I spent time reading,
watching movies and then went to sleep at a fairly early time. All of this frustration came to a
forefront at our staff meeting on Thursday when we were told that in celebration
of dia de los ninos (Kids Day) we would not have school on Monday and that
instead the primary goods would play games and have candy and the secondary
grades would be heading out to the aldeas to hand out candy to the kids. While this is fun, my plans were all
ready for next week! So it was
back to the drawing board, especially since the next week is also only a 4-day
week. Its entertaining that I have
always wished for such a thing as kids day and now that I finally I have it, I
am not longer considered a kid :(
After school on Friday Kara and I went to the store and
picked up ingredients to cook dinner.
We had invited the 5 10th grade girls over for dinner after
seeing one of them having a difficult day. They seem like a tight group of girls who are there to help
each other out, but since Kara also teaches them we thought it would be good to
get to know them a bit more. We
made them chicken rolled in Doritos crumbs, diced potatoes, tomato and cucumber
salad and vanilla cake for dessert.
During the week we found out from one of the Honduran teachers that 2 of
the girls have probably the roughest lives in all of the school. They both have younger siblings that
they care for because one of their dads is an alcoholic and the other one has a
mother that left them to go to Spain and seems to have difficulties with her
father. It was an overall good
night, and they seemed to enjoy the dinner and game we played after. We got to hear more about each
student. We decided it was a good
start in getting to know them and can be expanded on from now.
This morning I got up and spent some time cleaning our place
after having 10 girls over yesterday.
We also got a spray for bugs and used that all around our
place…hopefully the ants will soon be leaving. I also decided that now I have everything in place and know
that I am here for the long haul I would hang up some hooks and make my room my
own. I then went to the church to
use the internet and found that my mom had found the perfect spring break
option on Roatan. It was great
news after such a long week. I am
excited that my 6 months from Christmas to the end of school will be
interrupted with the comforts of home by having my mom and hopefully my best
friend come to visit me in a tropical paradise. I think they will like the resort a lot more than having to
experience my living conditions haha.
At 10 all of the American teachers and the Brits met at the church where
some of the 11th grade students picked us up. I jumped on the motorcycle with one of them,
as did Kara and the rest piled into the back of a pick-up truck. The students had planned this adventure
as part of a fundraiser. We payed
them to be guides and to take us to the waterfall and they brought us a picnic
lunch to have. The students are
trying to raise money for SAG (student annual gathering), where all of the
schools come together and compete with one another in all sorts of competitions
including sports, chess, singing, academics and bible. It got off to an exciting start when
just out of town we were stopped by the police. (Of course they were carrying giant guns, and he even got
his handgun out while talking to us!).
Apparently the students driving the motorcycles should have been wearing
helmets and were not and most of them either didn’t have their paperwork for
the motorcycle or didn’t have a license.
Even worse, the truck carrying the other teachers turned around when
they saw the police, but unfortunately for them the police had already seen
them. We were instructed to call
them back and once the got back the police told us we could just keep going
after the students explained it was a school activity. After that we were on our way and we
made it out to the waterfall after a short stop for pictures where Jake and his
friend had taken Brooke and I last week.
After the 20 min car/bike ride we hiked 15 min down to the waterfall and
boy was it worth it. It was
beautiful! We spent a couple hours
swimming and then climbing up to the top of the waterfall (yes we made it up to
the first drop!). It was quite the
adventure and I had a few moments where I thought I might die, but I survived
and am here to tell you about how awesome it was. After exploring the students served us up some sandwiches,
chips, coke, and cookies. On the way back in the pick-up truck someone going by stopped and in Spanish said that "Thats a mountain of gringos," which really means like thats a lot of white people hahaha. We were
very impressed with how well the students had put it all together. It was definitely a day for the memory
books. 
Days like today are reminders why I am here doing this. Even though the 11th grade
class drove me nuts all week, they are some awesome kids who spend their
Saturdays with their teachers raising money for an event that they love. For those of you who know me or my bucket
list you know that jumping off a waterfall has always been a dream of
mine. While I didn’t get to jump
off I did get to swim under it and climb through it to get to the top, I’m
considering it a winning situation.
I can’t describe how happy I was all afternoon enjoying my time
exploring nature and all that our world has to offer. The weeks are hard and will probably continue to be that
way, but I learn so much on the weekends not only about my students, but also
about myself, my surroundings and the people I am sharing this amazing
experience with. Tonight we have
paid a woman (actually our landlords wife) to make pizza for all of us. I’m sure there will be games because of
course it is Saturday night!
*As a side note if anyone is ever interested in making material or monetary
donations to the school, you can contact me by email and I can let you know
what they need and we could figure something out. The school also uses sponsors to help pay for some of the
students schooling and they could always use more sponsors and would be continually informed about your student and their progress. My email is lorizimmerman12@gmail.com
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