Classrooms

Right now we are sitting in our favorite cafe and it is raining so hard outside. For the past couple of hours it has been grumbling outside. The thunder was loud and often and everyone kept saying that it was going to be a hard rain. It just started and we are thankful to be under cover. Our only concern is that the power will go out. This is such a common occurrence here in Copan. It seems that either the power is out or the water is off most of the time.

We are feeling pretty prepared for the school year to start. We've both started planning the first week of school and our classrooms are looking much better. Tomorrow all of the students and their parents come to meet us and to see their classrooms. I (Cody) only have 14 students so it should allow me to work closely with each of them. David teaches 5 classes of math and a computer class. We are happy to note that as of yesterday we now have a computer lab of 7 computers. The middle school science teacher has been working hard for the last few months to order and send parts to the school. Now we just have to get a printer. That is one thing that is very hard here. The internet is accessible because we have our laptop but in order to print we have to save to a flash drive and take it to a local shop. We have to do the same with copies so it will be interesting to see how that works this year.

Here are some pictures of our classrooms.
David's classroom before he put up some posters.
My 5th grade classroom at the beginning of the year.


I added some pictures to our flickr site of some interesting insect type things we've seen in our house and classroom and also a view from one of the many hills in town that looks down on the square. You can also see the little red "mototaxis" which are very common here and can power up and down the cobblestone hills like it is no effort.

Our first week

After almost a week here in Copan we are finally feeling like we know our way around. Well at least we know how to get to key places like the Pulperia “Victoria” which is the biggest grocery store here in Copan (about as big as a convenience store in the US) and the Mercado where local farmers sell produce. At first we were surprised to find there is no actual grocery store here. Instead everything is sold at little tiny shops that locals own. Every block has a couple of pulperias where you can find cooking materials and other key necessities. There are no chains and no American stores which we think is unique. We like the fact that everything we buy goes toward supporting the locals.

We finally have enough ingredients at home to cook some meals. We made our first meals this week of beans and rice and vegetables. It is fun to try new things. The fruits and vegetables here are very different and every time we go to the market we ask the lady how to use certain foods. Eating out here is very inexpensive so we’ve also been trying out a variety of “comedores” or eateries. A very common food here is called a “baleada” which is a homemade flour tortilla with black bean paste and crumbled cheese inside and it is pan fried. It is similar to a quesadilla but with not as much cheese.

On Saturday we did laundry by hand for the first time here. It sure takes a long time and you have to plan to have your clothes hanging during the sunny mornings and take them down before it rains. Later that night we went to the circus that was in town. Just before it started the power went out (a very common occurrence here). We were trying to imagine what they were going to do and luckily the generator turned on and the show went on. Yesterday we went to church in the morning and it was really fun to meet people and see how things go here. It is very small yet there are many similarities to church in the US. Later in the evening we went on a walk to enjoy the cool evening (away from our house) and we walked by many churches in the town and heard them singing. Everyone was out and about and we sat in the central park watching everyone for a long time before heading back to our hot house.

Our arrival in Honduras!

Well we made it to Honduras! We arrived on Tuesday morning after about 9 hours of traveling. All of our flights went as planned and we became even more excited to be coming to Honduras as we looked out the window and saw fields of fruit trees and beautiful, lush mountainsides. Our friend Zach met us at the airport in San Pedro Sula and we took a taxi to the bus station. We then got on a bus to go to Copan Ruinas, a small city in western Honduras. The bus ride was very comfortable and we tried so hard to stay awake to take in the sights. After traveling through the night we had a hard time keeping our eyes open. The parts we managed to stay awake through were however beautiful. It is so green here and the fields are full of different crops. We were surprised to see an abundance of corn fields. Apparently it is one of the main crops in Honduras.

We arrived in Copan Ruinas at about 4pm just after an afternoon rainstorm. We were met at the bus stop by the director of the school and a few other staff. They helped us get our stuff to our new house and the left us to get settled in. We have a nice little house in a part of Copan called Las Brisas. We felt so welcomed when we saw they had provided us with new dishes, a fruit bowl full of great fruit and a blender. We are very comfortable and feel very lucky to be where we are.

We met up with the director for dinner later that night at a restaurant in town. Apparently it is tradition that the school treats the new teachers to dinner on their first night in town. During our dinner the power went out and a huge rainstorm started which encouraged us to take our time eating. We fortunately finished just after the rain ended and had a dry but muddy walk home.

Today we met up with Zach in the central park in town and walked with him up to the school. It is quite a ways from our house and is uphill basically the entire way. We hope that walk will help get us in shape. The school itself is beautiful and has a great atmosphere. We toured the grounds, met many of the other Honduran teachers and found our classrooms. Right now they are pretty bare and contain various mismatched pieces of furniture. We are going to spend the next week or so putting them together and will be ready for the students when classes start September 1^st.

As we complete a full day and half here there are a few things that we have found that are exactly as we expected, and several things that have really surprised us. We were surprised that they grow corn here. There really is a lot of it. We were also surprised at how big our house is. Our new bathroom is quite a bit larger than the bathroom of our Bellingham house, although that isn’t saying much. It has also been surprising how many pickup trucks there are here. We were told that they are used to get to the surrounding aldeas (villages), where the roads are pretty rough. Today as we walked to the school we saw many trucks full of about 20 or 30 people standing in the back. We found out that when it rains hard, like it did around 3 o’clock today, that water comes in under our door and covers almost the entire first floor of our house. It also blows in through the windows even when they are shut.