La Vida Abundante in Honduras: Fiesta Tipica

February 26, 2013


2 of my favorite students...they learned English just 1 year ago!

This past Saturday was one of our school’s big fundraisers. It is a festival that revolves around typical Honduran culture from music and dance to food. Each grade had a booth that the parents were in charge of running. The men built the booths and the women were in charge of cooking and selling the food. I was quite impressed with the booths. They are called Champas and were built like small huts, made from bamboo, wood and had roofs made from leaves. The fathers even built small clay/mud woodstoves for the women to cook on. Since Brooke and I both have small classes our parents worked together to create our booth named La Calabaza (the pumpkin). Each grade was assigned to cook different types of typical Honduran food and our group had baleadas which flour tortillas with beans and cheese, similar to a quesadilla (they also can have eggs and avocado in them, which is how we generally get them). We also had oranges and the typical juice called orchata. The good thing was since Brooke and I had no idea what to do our parents handled almost everything. The event went great. Our students had worked tirelessly for the past couple of weeks to prepare a program with classic singing and dancing. Each grade performed a dance and then a handful of students also sang solos. The kids did great and they all looked awesome in their Honduran costumes. The boys wore jeans, plaid or flannel shirts and cowboy hats, while the girls wore the typical dresses that you see in old school Latin American culture. I spent a lot of time wandering around and talking to students while eating as much food as I could. It was great to see our students sharing their talents and to spend time with them outside of school. I am continually impressed with their abilities, work ethic and maturity. I tried to take lots of pictures so that you could all see what I had the opportunity to experience. The day was very hot and of course some of us gringas ended up with sunburns because there was no shade. It was one day that I was very grateful for my usually underwhelming shower, I guess everything has to be thought of in context.