Back to Routines

After all the travel we had done within a few weeks, we have spent the last two weekends here in La Union and have been back to full weeks at school.  Last weekend I spent a lot of time laying around and watched a few movies.  At first I was extremely bored and then I was reminded that I haven’t had a chance to relax at home in several weeks so I decided to seize the opportunity while it was there.  We had our typical Saturday game night and 4 of us girls decided to paly euchre.  The others were playing Settlers, which of course took longer so we snuck away and had some girl time (including a bottle of wine).  Over the weekend I also had the opportunity to Skype with one of my dear friends who told me the news of her engagement and plans for a January wedding.  I am very excited for her!

This week at school was much of the normal.  It was the end of the partial though so the kids were a bit on edge about what their grade was like.  I even had a girl ask me on Friday in the 2^nd to last class of the day if there was something she could do to raise her grade.  I just said it’s a little too late since today is the end of the partial.  Since this is Honduras and we have basically no technology we have to compute all of our grades by hand so that is what I have spent the weekend doing.  I am pretty happy with the way they turned out especially in my biology in chemistry classes because the grades were quite high.  I gave my biology students the task of creating a play about meiosis that they had to show me on Friday.  They had Wednesday and Thursday of class to plan and what they came up with was great.  We videotaped it and I did some editing this weekend with it.  The final product turned out pretty cool and I am excited to show it to them. 

On Monday we got to see the presidential debate.  We started out listening to it through internet radio and once we realized we had enough download allowance status to stream the video we did that.  We are very anxiously awaiting the election.  It is also election season here in Honduras except that November will be voting just for primaries and then next year they will elect their new leadership, so they actually have a whole year between primaries and actual elections. 

We have also been playing in a fundraiser volleyball tournament put on by the colegio (local high school).  We are currently 3-3.  Yesterday we played twice and won 1 and lost 1.  The loss was a tough one, it went into the 3 games and we lost the third 16-14.  We recovered and won the afternoon game though.  Last night we all got together and had someone make us dinner.  She made what she calls gringas, which are delicious but hard to describe.  It’s a tortilla with chicken, pico de gallo, cheese and a white sauce in it.  We also had a delicious cake complete with nutella frosting for dessert to celebrate Cassidy’s birthday, which is on Wednesday. We were all exhausted from the day and had more work to do, so we decided to forego the games for the night and we all went home to relax. 

Today will be a day filled with lesson planning and preparing for the week, as well as doing the double checking on the grades I calculated yesterday.  Next weekend we are planning a trip to Gracias to venture out and to make a trip to the post office.  I am hoping that the packages I have been sent will have arrived by then :)

Mitosis Cookies

 The highlight of my week occurred with my 10th grade biology.  I made sugar cookies and got frosting and sprinkles for them to decorate with.  Their instructions were to use the materials to show the steps of mitosis.  I have to thank my cooperating teacher from last year for this idea!  I was surprised at how detailed they were with their decorating and they turned out awesome.  Here are some pictures...including the fun frosting fight that followed the academic learning :)

  The 4 stages of mitosis (backwards because the picture is upside down)

They even all used different methods with how they did it!

Cookies that are ready to eat!

Hard at work! Followed by the fun...which created a little extra clean-up.

Pictures from the last 2 weeks

The resort in Tela, it got a little cloudy in the late afternoon, but the rain held off :)

A burial from the one of the residential sites complete with replicas of the offerings made.

The base of one of the residential buildings, they are still working on rebuilding these, but the house would sit up on the platform.  Each house was used only for storage and sleeping everything else was done in the center of the residential area.

Just arriving into the ceremonial center.

Sculpture side of the ceremonial center.  It was lined with stairs for seating all around to that the rulers could address the public.

Our guide and one of the sculptures built by King 18 Rabbit, it is also in the sculpture area.

This is the sacrificial rock.  The heart of the sacrificed person would be put on the top and the blood allowed to drip down the grooves to the ground. The shape of the carving resembles that of the ball they used in their game, which is how they decided who to sacrifice.

The ball court: here teams of 5 would line each side and try to get the ball to hit a target on the other side (sculpture of a macaw head).  The MVP was most likely sacrificed at the end.

This is the largest continuation of heiroglyphics anywhere.  They extend for 64 steps, each carved very intricately.  Step 10 is actually at Harvard, given as a gift to them for the work they have done at the excavation site.

One side of temple 11 which is built in honor of the heavens

The backside of temple 11, and our group!

This has all of the rulers of the Copan Mayans on it (18) all the way around.  How the last ruler who built it knew he would be the last is still a mystery to me.

One of the tunnels we went inside.  I believe this wall is part of Rosalita which was covered by the temple to the underworld built by a later king.

One of the sculptures in the museum that has been excavated from the site.

This is a replica of Rosalita from what they uncovered by building tunnels through the temples.

This little guy has found a home near our door...luckily he likes the outside and hasn't ventured inside.  He did give me quite a scare though when I first saw him in the dark.

Oh the Places We Go

October 15, 2012

Two travel weekends in a row leaves little time for updating the blog, which means you have no idea what I have been doing.  Well here it is a long-winded update of my most recent adventures.  We have been lucky enough to have today and last Monday off so the teachers decided we better take advantage of both the long weekends.  We also realized that this is our last long weekend like the ones we have been spoiled with so far.  From here we don’t have any breaks until Thanksgiving, when we will be going to Tegucigalpa, and then Christmas.  Even after Christmas our only breaks are a 4-day weekend in February and Holy Week (spring break) at the end of March, which I am very excited for because my mom, sister and best friend will be visiting :)

Last weekend we had reached that point where we were burned out and a bit stressed from the beginning of the school year so we decided we needed a relaxing weekend.  We traveled to Tela, which is a Caribbean coastal city.  Since it is the low season the nicest resort there was offering a deal, buy 1 night get the 2^nd free.  We thought it sounded perfect!  So for $35 a person we stayed for the whole weekend at Telamar resort.  We even met up with many of the teachers from Gracias and got to here about their experiences so far.  We left La Union at 5:30 am, although we had been awake since 4:07 when the fireworks went off to remind people that there was a political rally going on since one of the presidential candidates was coming into La Union.  We spent 6 hours on 3 different buses but we finally made it to Tela in the afternoon and all of us ran to our rooms, ripped our swimsuits out of our bags and ran to jump in the pool.  It felt amazing and what was even better was the swim-up bar.  We spent the late afternoon and early evening basking in this glory.  We met some new friends who offered to buy us drinks…they were intrigued by our teaching in a rural mountain city.  For dinner we visited the poolside snack bar, which was okay but nothing fantastic.  The next morning I woke up early (6 am) as always and decided to go for a walk on the beach, when I got back the others in my room were beginning to wake and we decided we needed some breakfast.  We checked out the buffet restaurant (we had heard it was a bit pricey) but the breakfast was priced reasonably and looked amazing so we decided we could stretch it out into a brunch and justify paying the American price.  Let me tell you, we spent 2 HOURS continually eating.  I’m pretty sure we each had about 5 heaping plates!  They had everything from typical Honduran food to waffles, pancakes, eggs, sausage, ham, muffins and lots of tropical fruit.  We left the restaurant quite full and went to get ourselves into our bikinis and headed for the ocean.  Of course, on the beach they were some people offering rides on a banana boat tube so the girls decided to try it…we had a blast!  The driver was hilarious and he spun us around and took us out pretty far to swim and float in the ocean for a while.  There was one near death incident though where another boat was coming full speed at our tube and missed us by only about 5 inches! After our ride we spent some time swimming in the waves and then headed to the pool.  I read in the shade and when I couldn’t stand the heat I would dip into the pool for a bit.  Since it was Sunday I also retreated into the room for a bit to catch some football.  In the evening we went to the Oceanside restaurant and had some great seafood all together.  It was delicious and time well spent.  On our way back to our rooms we caught a bit of the night show (mostly Honduran dancers) and then headed off to bed.  That weekend was just what the doctor had ordered.  We all returned to school with recharged batteries and a renewed view. 

I had a pretty good week at school, although it didn’t start or end on the best note.    Before we had left for the weekend my students and I set up an experiment where we put an egg in vinegar.  The vinegar is supposed to dissolve the shell of the egg and water should diffuse into the egg through the membrane.  Of course when I arrived on Tuesday the shell was still intact although it was rubber like and had a crack in it…my experiment failed.  Luckily I was able to discuss with my students what could have happened and we deduced that the eggs or the vinegar here are different then the states.  We did some more exciting activities during the week and are getting into more interesting topics, at least for me, so the students are getting more intrigued by science.  On Friday though one of my homeroom students was absent.  This isn’t exactly abnormal as she has had several absences, but she is also the one who I was told has one of the toughest homes of any of the students.  After school Jake came and talked to me to tell me that her family called and said she had disappeared the night before.  When her mom arrived home from Thursday night church service the young girl was gone, but had packed all of her stuff and taken it with her.  I haven’t heard anything yet and I am keeping her in my thoughts and prayers, as I hope you will also do.  I was told the most likely thing is that she ran off with a boy, which means she may not be back or she might, only time will tell.  This experience was a reminder of why I am here and how much these kids really do struggle with.  We discussed as teachers the differences of what the students here deal with compared to the states and I was amazed at how many things I hadn’t thought about and to imagine that they go through it all without a counselor or anything to talk to.  If ever there were a school that needed a counselor it would be here.

After the week we woke up on Saturday and caught the 5 am bus out of town.  We made our way on four different buses to Copan Ruinas.  It is a very touristy town near the border of Guatemala that has one of the largest sites of Mayan Ruins.  We had been looking forward to this all week because a “touristy town” means really good food and it was not a letdown that’s for sure.  We arrived in the mid-afternoon and left our stuff at the hostel in order to find some lunch.  We ate a place called Via Via and I had a fantastic sandwich with real ham and cheese and loads of veggies.  After this we wandered around and did a bit of shopping, the other good part of a “touristy town.”  I did some bartering and managed to get quite a few Christmas gifts for my family.  We then headed to Café San Rafael for a late afternoon snack.  This café is actually a cheese and wine bar so we enjoyed some great cheese and even better red wine.  After a lot of conversation we headed back for showers and got ready for a late, and light, dinner.  We visited a place called Twisted Tanya’s and had appetizers and desserts.  I had a 3-layer carrot cake that was moist and really well flavored with great frosting.  After dinner we all crashed after such a long day!  Sunday we had breakfast at a place called Café Welchez, which is famous for its coffee, which is grown locally in Copan.  I had a ham and cheese croissant that was awesome and very filling with fruit on the side.  After we were all satisfied we took moto taxis out to the Ruins.  We spent most of the day here and had a great guide, Neti; he was young and had excellent English and tons of information on all the sites.  You don’t have to get a guide, but I am glad we did because I learned so much more.  Walking into the site, we saw a bunch of macaws both in flight and perched in the trees, these bright colored birds are well known here.  The first site we went to have just been opened in the past few months and it was 1 of 2 residential areas they have uncovered recently.  Other areas (about 4500 of them) are waiting to be uncovered by archaeologists.  The Mayans had some amazing rituals and typical of their culture was for a man to live in an area with his 2 or 3 wives.  Each wife has a hut for her and her kids and the male has one of his own.  Most of these people were buried with their offerings right by their homes and have been carefully uncovered. 

We then moved onto the city center or center for rituals.  On one end was a number of statues that had all been erected by king 18 rabbit.  What is interesting is that they were more than aesthetic and a telling of his egocentricity tendencies; they actually are a form of astronomical calendar because they align in different ways at different times of the year.  Of course one of my favorite parts was the ball court.  The traditional Mayan game, which I remember learning about and playing in middle school social studies (with Mr. Herbert), was played as a ritual in order to sacrifice someone.  It is believed (but not sure) that it was the best player from the game, MVP that was ultimately sacrificed.  His hear was taken from his body and place on the sacrificial ball (the blood could then run down the grooves).  The game though was played with an 8lb rubber ball covered in leather, a little smaller than a volleyball.  Teams would face off and try to hit the macaw statues on the opposite side.  This sounds easy except you weren’t allowed to use your hands or feet; instead you bounced it off of your hips, knees or elbows. 

While sitting in front of the largest string of hieroglyphics (64 stairs worth) we had a discussion with our guide about the Mayan calendar and the end of the world.  He had a lot of good information about this event that is alleged to take place on December 21^st of this year.  The Mayans have been criticized for saying that the end of the world would be coming on this day, but in actuality that is not what they believed.  December 21^st marks the end of their calendar cycle, not the world.  Since it is a cycle the calendar will start over again.  You could compare this to the panic that people had in 1999 about Y2K coming…it was blown way out of proportion.  They do predict however that the cycle of everything will begin again and this includes natural disasters.  Their belief is that these will occur in the same way and time as they had in the past cycle except that they will be more treacherous and dangerous than before.  I was happy to know that they didn’t actually predict the end of the world on that day because it is the day I fly home for Christmas break…phew!  Our guide did say that they are planning a huge celebration at the park that will include a reenactment by Mayans of the ball game. 

We spent more time wandering the numerous different temples built by all the different kings, some of which were on top of others and we had to go down into tunnels in order to see the older layers.  One of which, Rosalita, has a life size replica in the sculpture museum which Cassidy and I visited at the end.  My favorite temple was the one to the underworld.  So many cultures focus on the heavens and what is up there I found it interesting that the Mayans thought that the underworld was of much importance, plus the skulls on it are pretty cool.  I was fascinated by a culture that did so much with so little and who had so much detail and artistic value in their lives. 

After our tour we spent some time in the gift shop and then headed back to town for lunch.  We ate a place that was known for their pupusas.  These are corn tortillas that have been stuffed or filled with your choice of toppings.  I had combinations of cheese and chicken and beans and chicken.  They were very good, but I still like the baleadas I get here in La Union better, but they were something new from Honduran culture that we hadn’t gotten yet.  After refueling we spent the rest of the afternoon shopping, and I have to say I was able to get all of my Christmas shopping done, which is a good thing because we have been told there is basically nowhere else to get gifts, especially Honduran ones.  I also had an afternoon ice cream and spent some time relaxing in a café because a few of us finished shopping before the others.  After shopping we went back and changed for dinner.  We went back to Twisted Tanya’s because their menu had looked so good the night before but we weren’t hungry for main dishes.  I had prime rib and Brooke ordered tequila shrimp with spicy pasta and we switched plates half way through.  It was delicious, the prime rib had an amazing sauce on it and the shrimp were fresh and very large.  For dessert we decided to try the brownie and ice cream which was a great choice as we scraped the plate clean.  We had a rough night of sleep because for some reason there was a lot going on apparently.  One of which was a birthday party that started with a band at 4:30 this morning right next to our hostel.  It wasn’t too bad though since we got up early to get on a bus and begin our journey home. 

I am content that I had a weekend full of cultural learning, amazing food, and great company.  I am prepared to see what the week ahead holds for me.  I have definitely enjoyed all of my travels and am always a bit disappointed to come back to reality and the workweek, but I know that it is grounding and is the reason that I am here.  While everyday has its struggles, I have been enjoying my students and have found many great things happening with them. 

Also, tomorrow Honduras plays Canada in an attempt to keep their hopes of a world cup trip alive which means that town will be deserted.  As a matter of fact the holiday that was today (why we had school off) was changed to Tuesday so that people would have it off to watch the game…apparently our school didn’t get the memo though :(

I will add pictures tomorrow from the weekend...mostly of the Mayan ruins, but they're pretty cool!

A Positive Day

 October 3, 2012

First of all happy October! I am very excited that we have entered a new month, back home this would be one of my favorite months mostly because of Applefest.  This is my favorite festival in Charlevoix and this is the first year I will be missing it L. 

On a more positive note though, I wanted to tell you about my day.  I’m not sure exactly what it was today, but I loved teaching today.  My first class of the day was the 8^th graders and I know that I have said before they can be a bit squirrely and disrespectful so I usually go into class with my game face on.  I did just that today and told them I had a few things I wanted to show them, but it would require them to be on their best behavior.  For the majority of them this excited them and they fell right into line.  I did with them 2 demonstrations.  The first being a glass with an index card and quarter on top of it, when the card is flicked it goes flying and the quarter drops into the glass.  We have been talking about force and inertia so they quickly figured out that the quarter at rest wanted to stay at rest.  They also enjoyed getting to all try it.  This was a good start so I took them outside and showed them that when you spin a bucket with water in a circle over your head, the water will not fall out (centripetal and centrifugal force).  They thought this was amazing and all tried it.  They were laughing and testing its limits while other students and teachers looked on in amazement.  Once we made it back to the class and began discussing what we had witnessed I had several students come to me and tell me that class today was fun and REALLY interesting.  I was feeling really good.  It was great to see such a troublesome class come together and be truly engaged in learning and discovery together.  I now know that I need to continue to challenge myself to come up with demonstrations and materials that require very few or basic materials that I can find here because the smiles, laughter and intrigue were totally worth it. 

The next class was biology and they had a test.  While the test was boring (I didn’t get to catch any cheaters), I did thoroughly enjoy grading them.  All of my typical students that do well did, but what was truly amazing was that none of them failed and I had a few students who normally struggle a bit get As!  I was so happy for them!  Particularly one student who is new to the school and only went through 6 months of English training last year (imagine only have six months of a foreign language and then trying to learn things like biology, geography, and algebra 2 in that language), you can say this kid inspires me. He has struggled a bit on his tests so far because he didn’t understand the questions or the directions, while on the test today he got a 95% and when I excitedly told him he was overjoyed.  I also have his sister in another class who has also only had 6 months of English training and she has said that he studies for hours everynight and makes her talk in only English with him for an hour each night so that he can continue to learn and improve.  He is one impressive kid!

My last class of the day was chemistry and they have been struggling a bit.  I was about to begin class when one of the students said that he wanted to say something on behalf of the class.  He described to me that many of the students were feeling lost and confused in the subject matter we had been covering this week (moles and Avogadro’s number), and that they were having trouble understanding the way I explained things.  I will admit I was a bit defensive about this at first and we discussed things and figured out that I would look into reworking a few things, but for now they needed to work on their practice problems I had made.  I was feeling defeated and negative again until I realized that them standing up and having such an adult conversation with me is very admirable.  Instead of going through the motions and eventually giving up they took control of the situation and their education in a plea for help from me.  So I have spent tonight looking at the subject from different angles and coming up with new ways to present the information and new problems that might help them understand. 

Overall, it was one of my best teaching days here, I didn’t feel exhausted or like the bad teacher from Matilda at the end of the day.  I was content in what I had done and grateful for the way all of my students had behaved and engaged in the learning.  It was these things that made me want to share it with you all.   

An American Sunday

September 30, 2012
Today started out very well, I was able to skype talk (no video) with my sister and then facetime with my mom. We had a lengthy conversation, as I awaited the arrival of a parade that was supposed to be heading into town. In true Honduran style the parade started an hour later than it was supposed to so I got to spend more time talking. The parade finally did make it though and it was in celebration of National Bible Day so there were people carrying bibles and signs with bible quotes on them and the band from the public school was leading. It was pretty cool and as it passed people joined in. It walked all the way to the large community center where there was a service that was a combination of all the churches in town. Unfortunately today was extremely hot and the community center got very hot and the service, also in true Honduran fashion, seemed to go on forever. A group of us left after about an hour and they still hadn’t finished the music portion which means they still had a message and prayer to go (which aren’t short here).
 I spent the early afternoon working on school work and preparing for the week ahead. At 2 o’clock though Brooke and I met and walked over to the house where the Brits live. John (an American who has been here for several years) had told us we were welcome to come over and watch football. We stopped on the way and got chips and pop and sat down to watch the Broncos play the Raiders. Brooke is from Colorado so the Broncos are her favorite team. Not only was football, chips and pop amazing, but he also has wireless and I was able to communicate with more people and spend some time perusing the internet and downloading some new books. This was a great way to spend Sunday and very typical of my Sundays at home so I was very grateful of this opportunity. The only thing missing was the cool fall weather and a blanket to snuggle under….80 degrees just doesn’t make it seem the same.
 I am now home and plan on spending the rest of my evening lounging in bed reading and maybe watch a movie before it is off to bed to rest for the week ahead. Lucky for us at the end of the week there is a nice 3-day weekend awaiting us.