Rain and Ruins

Today was our first day back to school after a nice relaxing three day weekend. Actually it was the third (and last) three day weekend we have had this month! It has been raining a lot lately due to a tropical storm hitting somewhere on the east coast. We have noticed that we aren't as sticky in the afternoons since it is cooler and the rain seems to keep coming all day. It reminds us of what fall is like in Washington. However, with the rain comes a few consequences here. First, the water often goes out. The more rain, the higher the river, and the greater chance that the pipe that brings the water to town will fall down. This is not a surprise because we can see that pipe as we walk to school and it is exposed, and held up but what look like twigs stuck in the river. So as a consequence, we were again without water this week for three days. We made due with buckets collecting rainwater and even boiled some water on the stove for a nice warm bucket shower.

The second consequence of so much rain is the mud and erosion. Our street is full of mud and we can't manage to go anywhere without getting our shoes all dirty. The roads all over Honduras are apparently horrible and the rain causes the cliffs to erode and bring boulders and dirt onto the highways. As a result the cars and buses and trucks are having a hard time going anywhere. The other day we were going home and were walking along the main highway and there were trucks lined up for a long ways. This morning we went to school and many of our students were not there. About a third of the students live in town called Santa Rita which is about 15 minutes from Copan. Since the highway is so bad the buses couldn't get here. So at 8am we get a note in our classes that school is getting out at 9:00. I don't know who was more excited, the teachers or the kids. So we had a nice surprise and get to extend our break. There is talk that if they don't fix the road that we will have tomorrow off too. We'll see

Yesterday David, Bekky and I went to the Mayan ruins. It is a short walk from our house and we invited a family to come with us. They are a family that we met from church and they have two kids who go to Mayatan. Jaquelin is the mom and her sons Isaac and Frank. Jaquelin's mom came too and two nieces. They packed quite the picnic so once we got there we ate cake and Coca Cola before entering the part of the park with the ruins. We spent the afternoon walking around the ruins and even got to go into some of the tunnels they have excavated. It is so amazing to walk around and see what is left of an ancient civilization. It is almost hard to believe that they are real. Here we are looking down on the main plaza. We are standing on more ruins.

This is the first set of ruins that you see when you enter. We climbed around on them and played with the frisbee until the guards told us to get down.

We've come into October with not much to report. The weather is shifting now and we are beginning to see more what the term "rainy" season means. Last weekend we spent most of our time relaxing at home, keeping dry as it rained hard all day. Classes are going very well and except for the occasional power outage or lack of water, we are doing great. This weekend we traveled to San Pedro Sula to pick up Bekky (David's sister) from the airport and to go to the Honduras vs. Canada soccer game. Our day started out with some dissapointing news that the bus we had planned to take did not leave at the time we expected and the next bus left too late. We had to give in and pay for the luxury busline to take us to San Pedro. We arrived at the station and took a taxi to the airport. We waited anxiously for Bekky to come off the plane, but then when the last passengers came off and she wasn't among them we were confused. There were a couple other families who too did not get to see their loved ones. We waited for the next plane to come in 4 hours later and she was there! We went directly from the airport to the soccer stadium and arrived at half time. It was pretty exciting to see all the fans, players and craziness of a soccer game here in Honduras. Since soccer is the most popular sport here, people get really into it. We were happy it was not two rival Honduran teams but rather all of Honduras united against another team. That made for a much safer game. Despite David's honduran jersey, people kept asking if we were Canadian or rooting for the Canadians. We won 3-1 and after the game Zach commented that he could have gone without the last goal. His reason for saying this was that with every goal most fans throw whatever they have in their hands or in their neighbor's hand. This means that beer, soda, popcorn etc. explodes over the fans below. We unfortunately were part of those fans and left the game covered in various liquids.

The local Copan adult soccer team organized a bus to take people to the game, the tickets and the ride back for a certain price. That is how we got our tickets and luckily is how we got home. If we hadn't decided to do this excursion, we would have had to stay the night somewhere in San Pedro Sula since the regular busses stop traveling to Copan at 6pm. So we got to ride the bus back that night, arriving back in Copan at 2am. Some of the passengers decided that it would be fun to blast music during the entire trips so our plans for sleeping were sadly not an option.

We have been having fun with Bekky showing her our favorite local sites. Yesterday after church we walked to the ruins and took a nice nature hike which ended up in a jungle adventure since we lost the path. Last night we spent time over at her host family's house which is just across the street from us. We played board games with her host brother who is in sixth grade at Mayatan. Today she started classes and we have plans to meet up and go to the bird park here in Copan.

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.

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.