Water!

Well our adventure this week has to do with water, rather the lack of it. Occasionally we wake up in the morning and no water comes out of the faucets but when we get home from school it is usually back on. Well Thursday we woke up and had no water and as of today, Monday, we still have no water. Water is one of those things you don't really appreciate fully until you don't have it. We usually have a bucket filled for such occasions but it hardly last us this long. Luckily we arrived home on Saturday after a day touring a local coffee farm and found that the water was on. Our excitement was short lived however since it was only on long enough for us both to take a shower and fill our bucket. So we are getting creative with trying to fill buckets with rain water to flush the toilet, and try to assure ourselves that baby wipes really do clean.

School is going well. I (cody) started afterschool tutoring with some of my students. It is nice because the primary gets out at 1:45 and so the busses come to take students home at that time. Then they return to pick up the secondary students who get out at 2:30. The primary teachers are asked to select a few students to tutor afterschool during that time. It is great to get to work one on one. Today I had an especially rewarding session with a boy in my class who afterward was glowing because he finally understood how to round numbers. He tells me that he's going to stay every Monday, perhaps more because then he can finally get his homework done right.

Independence day and Guatemala

This weekend we had quite the adventure in Guatemala. We had Monday through Wednesday off of school due to Independence day (Sept. 15^th) and Teacher’s day (Sept 17^th) and thought we should take advantage of the time off. Sunday morning we marched with our students in a parade around town. There were parades Sat.-Mon. by the different schools in the area. Our turn was on Sunday and it was fun to see all the students and parents. At noon we (Zach, David and Cody) took a shuttle to Antigua, Guatemala which was supposed to be a 6 hour bus ride. We ended up getting into Antigua around 8:30 due to delays from boulders in the road, a flat tire and multiple high school groups running torches on the highways. Guatemala also has their Independence day on Sept. 15^th and one way they celebrate is for mostly high school age kids to run torches over all of Guatemala.

We arrived finally in Antigua and found a nice room for about $10 a person a night for the three of us and immediately went to the central park for some food. It was fun to be there and see all the celebrations for Independence. There was music, food vendors and tons of people out. Antigua is a very old city, hence the name, and has many old ruins, enormous Catholic churches and a lot of history. Monday morning we woke up early and had breakfast at a small café and then watched some of the parades. The parades lasted all day and as in Honduras all of the schools participate in their school uniforms. We checked into many different tours from Antigua and decided to take a bus to an active volcano called Volcán Pacaya. It was about an hour bus ride up to the volcano and then a 2-3 mile hike up to the top. It was very steep and we were surprised how difficult it was. We got to the beginning of the volcanic rocks which looked like dunes of coarse sand. Our tour guide turns around and asks if we’re ready to ski. We looked at him puzzled and then he took off into the thick fog, jumping down the dune. We all followed and it was strange to leap off into a place hidden by fog. We eventually climbed up more and made it to a place where the lava was flowing. It was so interesting to see it ooze and then dry up as it burned underneath. The pictures don’t do it justice. We stood around on the top for awhile but couldn’t see much because the fog was so thick around us. Occasionally it cleared a little and we could see that we were surrounded by tall mountains and deep valleys. It was just great.

On Tuesday we took another trip to one of the largest lakes in Guatemala, Lake Atitlan. The lake is surrounded by several villages, with a very large indigenous population. Just about all of the women that we saw were dressed in very traditional dresses. This was actually a theme for the whole country of Guatemala. All of the women had very colorful, traditional clothes. They also carried babies and other heavy loads around on their backs. We took a small boat to one of the villages, and found that Spanish was definitely the second language of nearly everyone there. We could hear bits of their conversations in their native tongue, which was of Mayan origin. Well, the lake was pretty but there were a lot of people that made their living selling overpriced things to the tourists. We all felt like we spent the entire day being hounded, chased, bothered, and lied to.

We had booked a shuttle to take us back to Copan at 1:00 on Wednesday, so that we could be back around 7 and get ready for teaching the next day. After a morning of visiting ancient churches and shopping in the market we showed up at the travel agency to find out that our shuttle had been cancelled. We ran to several other agencies to see if they had any shuttles leaving that afternoon, but none did. The next shuttle wouldn’t get us to copan until around 10:30 the next morning. We decided to go to the bus terminal and try to make it back to Copan by public bus. We took a bus to Guatemala City, then a taxi to another bus station in the city. We took another bus to a city called Chiquimula, and arrived around 8pm due to more delays on the road. There were no more busses to the border or into Honduras that night, but we really didn’t want to stay there, so we found a taxi that took us across the border and into Copan. We arrived to find that the power was out in the entire city, but the dark streets never looked so good. We were so happy to be home. We got home around 10pm, and were up in time to make it to school on time this morning.

All in all it was a good weekend with everything that comes with travel. We are glad to be home now.

Dia de los ninos

Yesterday was Dia de los Ninos which translates as Children's day. It is a very fun celebration here for all the children where they have a big party and get gifts. We didn't have classes but students came from 8-11:30 and we had different game stations (like a carnival) and then separate parties in each classroom. In my (Cody) class we had a pinata, food, cake and gifts for all the students. Last week we had open house where the parents came and decided how much money they were all going to contribute and who was getting what. Some parents came to help out and it was pretty much chaos. But at the end each student was very happy and walked away with a nice gift and tons of candy.For Dia Del Nino I (David) went with the middle schoolers to an orphanage in town. My students were told that they are no longer children, but that they could help other kids have a great day. We took candy, pinatas, toys, and a cake. There were about 20 kids at the orphanage, and most of them were pretty little. All of the school aged kids there were at school. It was fun to sit with the little kids and watch them do the pinata and celebrate. After we left the orphanage we walked back to school through a real rural area distributing bags of candy to the kids that we came across. I got back to the school just in time to slip into Cody's room and have some food! After seeing how they celebrate for kids day I cant wait until Teachers Day (Next Wednesday).

The school has been practicing marching everyday this week and last in preparation for the Independence parades this weekend. Independence day is on September 15th and there are three days of parades starting Saturday. Every morning the students line up on the dirt road outside the school and march down the road about a 1/2 mile. We then turn around and come back. The students walk in 4 lines, 2 girl lines and 2 boy lines and follow the middle schoolers who are playing drums and xylophones. Every morning my (Cody) students look at our schedule and get excited when they see marching practice on the board and I can't figure out why they look forward to it so much. We teachers are so tired of it! Next week we have Monday through Wed off for various holidays and we are planning a trip to Antigua, Guatemala with Zach. We'll let you know how that goes.

Teaching

Cody: Our classes have begun! We started school on Monday and it was wonderful to finally get to meet our students. I have a wonderful group of kids in 5th grade. There are 14 students and they are all really excited to be at school. We'll see how long that lasts... They are all really smart kids and I was impressed at how much they already know. They understand everything I say to them and speak in English without me asking them to. However, I found that the recipe for disaster is when I put them in groups because they automatically start chatting with each other in Spanish. Overall they have been so fun and we have been starting all sorts of subjects. The school day is broken into nine 40 min periods. They have Spanish, Social studies, Music, PE, Library, and Values all taught in Spanish by Honduran teachers and the remaining subjects, Reading, Writing, English, Spelling, Math, and Science are taught by me.

I have found that they read and speak well in English but their reading comprehension is pretty low. We'll be working on that. I think Math wins the prize for favorite subject for the majority of the kids. They respond really well to copying things down from the board. It is amazing, I just write something down and the room goes silent as everyone focuses and writes. Group work is a challenge. An interesting thing they do here is that when walking to another classroom or to lunch all of the kids line up in two lines, a girls line and a boys line. We then walk in a semi-straight line together. The kids have two breaks, recess and lunch. The Caseta (or cafeteria) is open for both times and serves mostly fried food in the morning and a rice, meat or noodle dish for lunch. My kids eat during recess time in the morning and then play soccer during lunch. Apparently the fifth graders have beat the sixth graders two days in a row now. They are pretty excited about that. I wondered how they knew who was on what team because they all wear the exact same uniform for school, a white button up, short sleeve shirt and red/blue plaid pants or skirt. I then found out they play by having grades compete.

All of the teachers are exhausted by the end of the day and what makes it worse is that it is the hottest time of the day. So we are tired, sticky and we have to make the long walk home.