My Fascinating Class!!

First of all, I want to apologize for my sporadic blogging spurts. I've noticed a slight theme in the way I blog- nothing for forever, and then 18 things all at once :) I just have to get into the mood and ... I've been in the writing mood slash have some material to write about :)

This time, I want to write about my latest class assignment. In my science class, Unit 3 was called "Our Fascinating Earth!" (If you have a sixth grade Abeca book sitting around, you can check it out :)) The different sections dealt with the plates of the Earth, volcanoes, earthquakes, fiery rocks, hidden treasures (like gems and petroleum), magnets, and caves.They were all topics that I thought my sixth graders would really enjoy learning about; unfortunately I didn't have the time to do them all in detail. So, instead I did the first section of plates by creating a booklet and presenting important material, and then I divided the class up into six groups and had them do the same with the rest of the unit.

The requirements:
~ Complete a booklet that is
-informative
-gives all the vocabulary words I gave the group
-written in a way that is easy to understand (words your classmates will know)
~ Be the expert on your section- YOU WILL BE THE TEACHERS!
~ Discuss how you will present as a group- Will you have written everything into the
booklet or will the students need to copy from the board? Will they look up
anything on their own, or will have all the answers available?
~ Do you need copies of the book pictures or diagrams you've created?
~ You must have some sort of visual aid- an experiment, examples, pictures
~ Everyone in the group must participate and be able to answer questions

So, that was the assignment. We had a week and a half to work on it, and the kids actually did a really awesome job and enjoyed it. My favorite part of this 'experiment' though was actually watching the kids teach. I kind of gave them complete reign of the classroom. I became a student and sat in the desks, and they were in charge of making sure everyone had all the information, understood the concepts, paid attention, and that we finished on time. It was quite the experience. :) I think it not only gave my students a taste of how difficult it can be to try and keep everyone's attention and still teach something, but it also gave me a taste of being a student- that I as the teacher need to have lessons that will hold their interest and I need to have control of my classroom so everyone is able to learn and benefit from the classroom time. I found myself definitely drifting during the presentations, sitting and waiting a lot, being bored... and yes, I must admit, I felt like causing problems just for the attention of it. I got annoyed with the kids talking, but then I got in trouble for talking several times! - and it wasn't even always to 'help' another student (which could be a legitimate excuse for talking, I've realized). I was a little bit embarassed about the getting in trouble thing though. :) It reminded me of a class I had in college when the professor sent an email to my friend (a guy friend, a very cute, charming guy friend...) saying that him and I needed to stop talking in class and paying attention! GAH so embarassing. but anyway :) It was funny to see my kids in the 'discipline' role- I told them they could do what they needed to to keep order (within reason of course) It was funny to see them taking my discipline tools and using them- and those tools working! The group in charge was 'completely' in charge. For example, one member wanted a drink; he was shocked at the power I allowed him by saying he was in charge if he wanted to get a drink. :) But it's true- I never give bathroom breaks, but there have been two times this year that I had to go so bad that I "gave" a bathroom break as a "reward" :) Power of the teacher. :)

Another thing I noticed a lot more being in the student's seat was how much my sixth graders enjoy answering questions. As far as I can tell, there is no reward for answering questions, and still they're fighting to particpate. I saw several kids get upset when they didn't get called on, and one boy even teared up a little and hid his face! What is that? ;) I'm sure some of it is just a desire to show everyone how smart you are that you know the answer, but at some point, knowing the answers and being smart isn't cool anymore. I hope it takes my kids a little longer to realize that part of school. :)

I have some pictures of the various projects, but I took them with my phone since I'm without a working camera and I'm not quite sure how to move them from my phone to my computer yet so.... you'll have to take a raincheck. :) I'll let you know if more delightful learning experiences come up!

Adventures in Christmas Programing.... continued

I don't know how many of you read my blog of last year's Christmas extravaganza, but basically, I got lost and was super frantic and pretty nervous going into it. So, this year, I wanted to be prepared!

The Christmas show is a big, big deal. Each class performs a dance number and there are mini-acts in between. This year, the actors were actually from our school so that was pretty cool. They did different acts of Jesus's miracles in between the songs. My group was made up of all the fifth and sixth grade girls, a ninth grader with a flag solo (brought me back to my color guard days... :D), and in the last week we added four fifth grade boys to lift pieces of fabric up and down. Mrs. Lopez (the fifth grade teacher) and I have been practicing with the girls for a month, so to have the boys thrown in at the last minute was a little bit of a challenge, but it turned out ok :) All this week we've had extra practice time, and gone down to the Vida Abundante church in Gracias because that's where we actually performed. Friday morning we had a full dress rehearsal and then sent the kids home at noon and had lunch. After lunch, we came back to decorate and set up chairs. Last year the decorating probably took us four or more hours and was super stressful, but this year almost everything was already done! So, we were able to go the homes of one of the teachers and relax and shower. Later, I joined Ana and Maggie to help Ana's girls with their make-up. (I was in charge of eyeliner and eye glitter :)) I made sure to stay with other teachers the whole night so I wouldn't get lost trying to get back to the church and we made it right on time- showered and everything!:) My girls all looked great and were pretty excited/nervous. There were a lot of important people at this event - I know the mayor was invited, I don't know if he was actually there :) The school asked the church to videotape the performance so maybe I'll have a DVD to show anyone interested :) The only problem with the recording was that the solo flag girl walked down the middle of the aisle, twirling her flags right where teh camera was set up. So, we had them move the camera. Problem one averted. Next problem, my girls were supposed to leave their row, walk around the back of the chairs and go up the side aisle to the stage. There were so many people there though, that not everyone had a seat and there was a crowd of people just standing in the back. I went through and asked them if, during the first song, they could make a path so my girls could get through, but two minutes later, the crowd in the back had doubled with people that hadn't heard my message and it was so crowded, I didn't think the girls would be able to get through anyway. So I had everyone switch spots and we just decided to inch past the fourth graders sitting in our same row. Problem two averted :) When my girls finally lined up, they all got a wine goblet with a little battery candle in it that they turned on. Everyone looked so pretty and the girls got ready to go on stage. I walked with them to the stage and then headed over to the reserved teacher's chair- except there was someone sitting in it and I had no place to go. By this time, the lights were off and the students were getting in their places. I somehow got wrapped up in the big piece of fabric the boys had and I was SO SCARED I was going to be standing there in this piece of fabric when the lights and music came back on that I panicked and just scrambled around until I was on the floor out of the way :) I wasn't really in a place where the girls could see me, but they did really well on their own, plus I think Mrs. Lopez was at least in sight. I tried to take video, but, again, my camera angle was not the best :) SO! Hopefully those DVDs are sweet! :)

Since ours was the second dance, we got it over pretty quickly, and the girls were able to sit and relax the rest of the time. It was a pretty great show, and although it had its stressful moments, it all worked out and everyone was pretty happy about the whole night :)


I'm soooooo excited to be coming home in less than a week ... although I'm not sure I'm ready to trade the sunshine for the blizzards... :/ I'm currently sitting outside sweating my face off, slightly burning my fingers while typing on my black keyboard :)

it's not really looking a lot like .....

CHRISTMASSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I found this article while wandering facebook. I know it's a bad habit to spend lots of time on facebook stalking people, but in this case, I was pretty pleased with my findings! :)

http://www.relevantmagazine.com/god/deeper-walk/features/23640-why-advent

I think this article is really interesting because I LOVE LOVE LOVE Advent. I know I have to blame this on my parents because it was always a big deal at my house, but honestly, sometimes I miss doing the Secret Angels more than I miss Candlelight services. :) That's ok right? Anyway, so read the article if you want, but it's mostly just because I've been doing Advent in my class the last couple weeks. They all love it, and that makes me pretty excited. :) Also, our Christmas decorations were due on December 5th, which was EXACTLY 12 days until our last day of school- December 17th! So, guess what I did for my door decoration? I definitely have "Sixth Grade's Twelve Days of Christmas" with a big posterboard shaped like a house with twelve perforated windows. Monday (the first day) I had kids outside my room for about 30 seconds before I came out of the classroom and FOUR of the windows were popped open. I was so mad... but I guess I should have known that would happen? I made a big sign that said not to touch the windows and gave my kids a big lecture, but there are an awful lot of people in the school that really, really want to see what's behind the windows because everyday I see 2-3 that have been opened or reopened. SIGHHH. :) But, for the most part, getting into the spirit of Christmas has been great. For movie night this Saturday, we made chili, snickerdoodle cookies, and hot chocolate and watched Elf. This Saturday we're planning on Home Alone :)

turkey day

For Thanksgiving, we got Thursday and Friday off , so we got a four-day weekend! The school runs on a United States schedule, so that's why we celebrated Thanksgiving at all. The school actually puts together an entire weekend of activities, so we were pretty excited about spending some time getting to know Tegus.

Wednesday night, we were going to finish (or in my case, start) packing for our trip, but the power went out. I think we sat around for quite awhile when Shelly suggested we should play Sardines in our house and take advantage of the pitch blackness. For those of you who have not played Sardines, it's basically a reverse Hide-and-Seek game. ONE person hides and then the entire group searches for the person. If you find the hider, you hide with them, and the next person to find the both of you hides also, and so on until the last person finds the entire group. Most of us were not that excited about the game, and I personally didn't think it would possible with a space as small as a one-story house, but we went for it anyway- and it was pretty hilarious. Us four girls played, and Maggie and Tyler joined us so it was quite the night. We were all surprised at how difficult it was to find people, and how giggly we were when we found them! :) The last hiding place was Tyler hiding on the wall surrounding the shower- pretty good one to end on. :)

The power finally came back on around 10 and we finished getting ready and went to bed. The next day, we were in town by 6 to leave on the bus for Tegus. The school let us use their bus and driver all weekend, so it was like having our own personal tour guide service! :) We got to the hotel at about 3 (the roads were pretty awful with construction, it really shouldn't have taken us 9 hours!) and settled in. The four of us girls decided to stick together and ended up in a rooftop room. It was really beautiful. We had our actual room, a little balcony overlooking the street, a walk out big porch room, and THEN stairs that went up to the roof with a gazebo and seats and a beautiful view of the city. It was pretty amazing. We relaxed for a little while before getting dressed up for our fancy Thanksgiving dinner. This is the only day of the whole year that I get/have any reason to wear cute high heels, so I was pretty happy about that! We went and ate at the house of one of the administrators of our school. Everyone that has an important position in our school district, so that was pretty cool to see all of them again. They had made us a traditional Thanksgiving meal- turkey, gravy, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, and relish trays. We also has some delicious apple cider and cheesecake.

Before I continue, I feel like I should specify who 'we' is since it's different than when I usually write. This weekend was planned for all the extranjeros - or all the people that live here, but aren't actually Honduran :). So that included from Gracias, Shelly, Catelin, Jennifer, Maggie, Tyler, Justin, Tabitha and I; from La Union, Amelia, Andrea, Jake, and two girls from Great Britain, Bryanny and Holly, and Vicente- who is Honduran, but was our 'tour guide' for the whole time. Thursday night, we chilled for awhile, but went to bed pretty quickly because we'd been up all day traveling.

On Friday morning, I was up at 6 and probably went to the bathroom 8-9 times by the time we left at 9.... Thanksgiving dinner was sooooo good but my body is not used to so much richness all at once! :/ So that was a fun way to start the day.... and it continued. :) We went to Valle de Angeles, which is a really nice pottery town about an hour away from Tegus. Before we left for our 'trip', I had to ask the bus driver to stop at a pharmacy so I could grab some Immodium before our trek :) (Is it called immodium in English too? Sometimes I just don't even know haha). We had lunch in Valle de Angeles and then walked around and shopped. I think the only thing I bought there was a hairpiece made out of coconut, but it was still nice to walk around and look at all the pottery and homemade jewelry. We went back to the city and visited Vida Abundante's clinic and I actually got some new glasses! So that was exciting. Later, we went to the mall, which was a little overwhelming, but I managed to still buy a Dunkin' Donut. :) Friday night, we went to a restaurant with a mini-golf course so some of us played golf and ate some good food. (I did not play mini-golf; I just ate :))

Saturday we got up early-ish again and went to another town called Ojojona. Ojojona is another pottery town, but it's pretty cool because you can almost always find people working in the shops on the pieces that they're going to put out on the shelves later. We bought some things there, and I found some delicious carrot bread that I ate, regardless of my previous stomach problems... bad choice. :) Those stomach problems just stayed with me all weekend ;) We got back to Tegus and went to some other little shops because some of the girls needed materials to decorate their rooms for Christmas. After that we all returned to the mall to shop some more and then saw Harry Potter in the theaters. I think I mentioned in another blog that I'd never seen any of the movies, so my roommates and I rented them on itunes and watched them all (except 6, which isn't on itunes for some reason)over the course of a couple weeks. I was basically caught up for number 7 and it was fun to go see a movie. We also ate a really good Italian restaurant. Saturday night, we ordered pizza and invited everyone up to our rooftop room and hung out and talked. Sunday, we left for home!

When we got home, we were all SUPER tired. I don't know if you remember from last year, but my idea of vacation is sometimes only sitting in the air conditioned room with the tv on.... I think we got one show of Friends in and that was all the tv we saw this weekend :) So the constant running around was a bit much for me, but we still had a good time, and it was nice to see the different areas around Tegucigalpa.

Monday, we got back into the swing of things with school. This Friday is our big Christmas program so everything is a little crazy, but I think it will go well!

Blog Numero Dos

So, since I don't really have anything else to do, I'm going to quick write a blog about the funny things that happened to us yesterday. Because it's funny and pretty classic for us. :)

So, in my previous blog, I mentioned that we have been exercising and that we ran to town together yesterday. We finished with school at 3 and the plan was for all of us to put our exercise clothes on, leave our things at school, run down, get a ride back, and pick up our school things before getting home.

I left my room to go change, but first I had to bring my copies to the office, so I dumped my clothes and tennis shoes outside the office and filled out my copy sheets. I was probably in the office for two minutes, but when I came back out, my tennis shoes were gone. I started looking around, couldn't find them, asked the cleaners, my principal, and the other teachers. The kids had just left on the bus, so I was kind of afraid that someone had taken them... on accident? on purpose? Anyway, the point was everyone was ready to go and I was still standing around in my uniform and only high heels to walk in. :) The other girls decided to continue looking for my shoes while I changed into everything else. When I was finished, the girls had just returned from their quest- with my shoes! Apparently, our other principal, Mr. Calderon, had thought they belonged to one of the kids and had taken them and gone around to all the buses seeing if someone forgot them. :) So, I quick threw my shoes on- by now it was 3:15 and we really wanted to make it down to town before the bank closed at 4. We all threw our things into Catelin's room and started down the road. It was a really great run! It's a nice, easy decline so you can still run and not feel like you're going to fall down the whole mountain, but it's not completely flat so the running is a little easier. All four of us (Jennifer, Catelin, Shelly, me)ran for basically the whole time. We got down to town at 3:40 and Catelin said, "It'd be really nice if a moto came by on this road to bring us to the bank so we make sure we don't miss it" and probably two minutes later.... a moto taxi came and we hopped in! We found all the things we needed, our moto taxi driver friend, Mauricio, picked us up at 4:58 - two minutes early!! (usually they're anywhere from 30-60 minutes late haha), and we were on our way up. All of us were talking about what a great afternoon it was and how there'd been no problems like we usually have. Shelly and Catelin had made some great, random purchases and Jennifer and I had bought popcorn and knock-off M&Ms for our Harry Potter marathon. As we were nearing the school, Catelin pulled out her key to her room and..... it was not the key to her room. It was the key to our house. We quickly remembered all the things that were in the room- all of our school clothes, our school work, our keys, computers, cell phones.... We stopped at the school anyway to see if anyone was there with a key to the classrooms... Shelly broke the fence (although if you ask her about it, she will say it was me. It wasn't), and Don Juan, the 'guard' asked me who all the girls were with me- I told him they were teachers and he asked if they taught at a different school! haha so he kind of thought the girls were just breaking into the school and besides that, had no keys to anything. SO, we got back in our moto taxi, without any of our things, and headed up to our house. Luckily, Catelin had left her computer with all the Harry Potter movies downloaded at home; unluckily my speakers were still at the school... but we still managed to watch some of the first movie as long as we sat very quietly. We still ate our popcorn and M&Ms, and had a good night together. This morning, we walked back down to the school, and someone was there with keys so we were able to get our things. Which is why I have my computer and am able to write to all of you! :) Pretty eventful afternoon and evening :)

You Make the World Taste Better.

Dr. Pepper. I am currently sipping on a Dr. Pepper. It is so delicious. We went to Santa Rosa last week and did some major shopping and I found DR. PEPPER!!! (It's not something they sell here in Gracias, so it was a pretty big find. :))

Some other things that I have bought/experienced/found that have made my world taste better.....


Four CDs for Four Bucks off the streets
* Selena (classic!)
* Michael Jackson's BAD (everyone here knows all of MJ's songs...)
* Vicente Fernandez (he's super famous here and every week when we drive down to
town in Mr. Rodrigo's truck, we listen to him)
* Shakira (she sang for the World Cup; I had to get it!)

Christmas
In my family, we always decorate and start getting into the Christmas spirit during Thanksgiving break. So, I'm a little early BUT last year I was not prepared for Christmas at all. There are no commercials for holiday shopping, no Christmas lights, no snow (!!!), no special church services, no trying to take a perfect Christmas picture, no putting together Christmas cards... you get the point. Last year, I got home and, besides the wedding craziness, I was shocked to find out that Christmas was coming... and the goose was fat! ha. Anyway, this year, I have started with the Christmas music playing, I've bought decorations, I found Rudolph on YouTube and watched it, and I try to wear hats and scarves as often as possible even though they're not that necessary. :) I also bought some EGG NOG!

Exerciseeeeee
We've actually been doing a lot of exercise as a group which has been pretty great. Last year, I started taking advantage of having a beautiful mountain trail to climb/run/walk plus I was dating the PE teacher so I felt a little pressure to be a tiny bit athletic. :) I'd usually go running on my own and enjoy it, but this year Catelin and I have been going pretty regularly and the other teachers will join us when they feel like it. We walk or jog or lift weights (the weights we use at the school are actually bottles filled with sand and some metal poles that the guys attached cement-filled containers to... pretty nifty even though I'm not great at explaining :)) and do some ab stuff. Yesterday, all of girls ran down from school to town, walked around down there and caught a taxi back up. It was pretty great. :)

Cooking
I've discovered that I enjoy cooking, and I can usually do a pretty decent job. We're thinking of making a Honduran cookbook of all the recipes we've used down here :) All of our meals are homemade so we do lots of internet exploring for good recipes. So far, I think our greatest hits have been our chicken strips with onion rings, Chicken alfredo pasta, delicious homemade pizzas (we're making that tonight!), and mashed potatoes (the mashed potatoes are just delicious; it's Catelin's recipe- we could probably eat them as a meal themselves :))

Well it is 10:25 on Saturday morning and I am out of things to do! :) Maybe I'll write another blog... :D

I got some money cuz I just got paid... now how I wish I had someone to talk to!

My Saturdays here in Honduras are a little different than my ones in the US. First difference: In the US, I try to sleep to at least noon, but usually shoot for 2. Here, I get up at 7:30 (on my own, without an alarm clock :/) and do something productive. I now understand why my parents always suggested that we do our Saturday lists as quickly as possible, without putzing, so we could enjoy the rest of our day responsibility free! The last few Saturdays, however, have been busy with our Fiesta Tipica, trips to Santa Rosa, and end of the quarter grading. I was feeling pretty stifled in my messy room, not to mention the fact that I again let laundry get out of hand. So, I woke up with the intention to do some pretty intense cleaning.... and that is exactly what happened! I took pictures so you could be a part of my productive Saturday!!


First things first, I decided to sweep out our kitchen. There was a box in our corner that has been there since we moved in and since I was doing the intense cleaning session, I moved it! Behind the box was this... a black, gross-looking thing attached to our wall by a webbish looking thing, surrounded by this weird yellow tint....




After dousing the unidentified object in Raid to make sure it wasn't a spider, (although, looking back, I'm not sure why a spider would be trapped in its own web) I pulled the thing off the wall and brought it out to investigate with my Exact-o knife. It was a cocoon! There was a butterfly/moth waiting to be metamorphosized inside!! It was pretty cool; kind of a bummer that I accidentally killed it, but I brought it to show my kids at school so it ended up as a learning tool :) I've also decided that if I could choose my life path over again, an entomologist (vocab word this week... a scientist who studies insects :)) or some other outdoorsy scientist might be a close second to teaching. :)





Catelin and I always get up early on Saturdays and make yummy milk-sugar-cinnamon rice. mmmmmmmmmmm so I ate some of that :)


Our neighbors offered to let us use their washer, so I collected all my school uniform clothes and combined them with Catelin's, Jennifer's and Shelly's. Catelin went next door to supervise. The family doesn't have a dryer, but after the clothes are washed, they keep them in the washer on spin cycle without water before hanging them on the line. sweet!



I decided to organize/rearrange my room. This is the before picture...


While cleaning, I had CSI on... I'd never seen the show, but this summer, I found seasons 1 and 2 at Half Price books for 10 bucks each! Now I'm addicted!!


Mopped and swept (I almost said broomed-darn lack of English! hahaha) the living room...



We decided to have a massive kitchen clean. All the roommates joined in! We dusted; we swept; we organized our food pantry....



We even cleaned out the fridge! While cleaning, Catelin knocked the olive oil lid behind the refrigerator, so she moved it and found a very, very mushy pineapple. Don't know how long it had been there haha




Our pila faucet decided to break this morning. Gushing water everywhere...



Here's the guilty party. The PVC pipe just randomly broke apart. And the key of the faucet fell off.



Burning garbage!!




I did some laundry of my own, and then Catelin brought over the laundry from the neighbors to hang up!




We solved the gusher by turning off the water (I did learn something about problem faucets last year...), stuffing a plastic bag down the pipe, and covering it with another plastic bag, and covering with tons of duct tape. The result looked a lot like a bird, specifically an eagle. We put some eyes, a beak, and named him George Washington. :D He lasted for a few hours...





Shelly and I wrung out a sopping wet, very heavy comforter. In the middle of it, I was quickly reminded of a scene from Swiss Family Robinson when Fritz wrestles an anaconda in the river. LUCKILY, Shelly was also raised on this movie and kindly re-enacted the scene!!!!




We have some metal chair and couch frames that are strung with this elastic string to make the seats. GREAT invention but... the metal legs do not sound that great scraping across our tile floor. So, Jennifer and I used the handy duct tape and cardboard to make some protectors. Perfect!



We add blankets to make it look more homey and comfortable :)



Saturday nights we have 'Favorite Movie Night'. We began with Tyler's favorite, "Tombstone", then Shelly's favorite, "Rookie of the Year", Jennifer and Catelin's fav "Wizard of Oz" and Maggie's favorite "The Notebook". This weekend it was my turn and all my favorite movies are epic three-four hour, so we constructed a massive bed to sit on. (Despite appearances, those couch things are NOT that comfortable :))



MY FAVORITE MOVIE OF ALL TIME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! TEN COMMANDMENTS!!!! Unfortunately, we got about 20 minutes into it, and the DVD decided to stop working, so we switched to The Godfather. Still good, and Marlon Brando is great but.... you just can't beat Charlton Heston! :/



All in all, it was a pretty eventful day. After I loaded all these pictures onto my computer, I fell asleep, kicked my camera onto the ground, and it promptly stopped working. Unfortunately, that means I can't show you my 'after cleaning' room picture, but I promise it looks much better. Little disappointed about the camera :/ I'm not sure it's going to come back to life, but if not, I suppose I can add it to the Christmas list along with a new Ten Commandments DVD :)

Miss VP and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

Thursday I had a terrible day. I'm pretty sure it started on Tuesday. We didn't have school on Monday so 1) my kids were thrown off and 2) I was thrown off. I usually use Fridays to plan everything, which I did, but I also use Mondays to put everything in order- copies, homeworks*,review my plans, blah blah blah. Suffice to say, without Monday, I just could not get it together! By Thursday I was back on track, but my kids still weren't. The day started off with me passing back tests and a girl telling me it was my fault that she didn't get a good grade. This is the third time (with three different students) this has happened, and it made me so mad! She also made a dirty face, AND it was in front of the other students. So... I marched her out into the hallway and talked her about being disrespectful. Good start. Another thing about Thursdays is that I don't have any breaks. Usually because of the Spanish classes or PE, I have time to work, but on Thursdays I teach all day with my sixth grade and the music classes. My kids were really obnoxious and talkative, so I knew it was going to be a long day with them if I didn't gain control soon, so I was pretty mean after asking them 3 times to stop talking. There's a saying in education that you should be a witch until Holloween- but I just don't enjoy that very much! However, I was too nice last year, so I decided to do the whole witch thing. Thursday.... it was easy :)

I had a bunch of kids with allergies that were sneezing- which is fine, I can't be mad about that. However, all the other kids in class decided the sneezing and coughing was a good way to get attention so I had a whole class of sneezers and coughers. One student decided to take it to the next level and started gagging over his desk... complete with spit dribbling out of his mouth onto the floor. He went out to the hall! (after bringing in paper towel to clean up his drool)

In reading, I had 6 students that hadn't done their homework. Common occurence (my kids do NOT do their homework!) so they got recess taken away. I also tried to read a story and have a discussion, and I had to stop every two minutes to write names on the board of people talking during the story... I got to 8 students on the board in 20 minutes(an average day is 2-5 in an entire morning).


In language class, we are learning about quotation marks so I had copies of a story with a lot of dialogue and I called 5 people up to the front to act out the drama The other students had to highlight the talking parts and add quotation marks.... didn't happen. The people in front tried to read and no one paid attention. I think I had 15 out of my 24 students talking. I had the drama kids sit down and everyone put their heads down. I'm pretty sure they had their heads down for a good five minutes and then I lectured. I told them how disappointed I was with their behavior throughout the week, and that I was very frustrated that I couldn't do fun things for a class. I told them I was going to be a mean teacher for the rest of the day so to look out!!

We had recess next, and then it was back to a three-hour block of class. I had scheduled to play a game for spelling, but instead just had them study silently at their desk and turn in a sheet with the words copied. In science, we are learning about insects and the different orders of insects. I had a poster board and had asked students to bring insects to put in the chart. IT WAS CHAOS. The kids were throwing bugs at each other, not getting their notebooks out to copy descriptions, and not paying attention to me yelling at the front of the board. So.... I took the chart down, put the insects away, and told them they had to do the chart on their own.

ANYWAY, it was just a bad day. I think I was most frustrated by the fact that I really wanted to do some great activities- not so my kids would like me, but because I really think it is better to learn through activities instead of just reading out of the book. So, I'm not sure what I'm going to do to fix that problem. I've done a lot of positive reinforcement, both individually and collectively; I've punished individually and as a group; I've had serious talks about respect.... nothing has really worked. It just looks like it's going to be a problem, and I don't think it's fair to the 6-7 students that are attentive and ready for class every day.

Am I just beating the teacher-horse dead? :)

copan ruinas

Sorry I haven't written for awhile. I always get to the stage where I've opened up my computer, gotten myself situated to write a blog (in bed, itunes, something to drink), and opened my blog page and then... I just sit here. I feel like I have nothing to write- or too much to write :) I think the second year around thing is difficult because most of my experiences are basically the same (well at least the exciting ones), so they don't seem blog-worthy :) This last weekend for example- I visited Copan Ruinas for the fourth time (the town that has the Mayan Ruins). It was a really wonderful trip- we had Monday off from school, so Shelly, Catelin, Jennifer, Tyler, Maggie and I were able to take a trip. It was actually kind of fun because I was able to be the little tour guide as far as setting up a place to stay and giving options for what we could do while we were there. We ended up staying at my favorite hostel, Iguana Azul, going to the ruins (with a tour guide... I memorized everything he said so when all my friends and family come to visit me, we don't have to pay more :)), and going on a horse tour with a silent, walking guide. (little disappointing :)) It was a nice way to relax and hang out with all the teachers without talking about school all the time. :) I've held off on sharing my innermost secrets with this group of teachers for awhile (which, I know, is a huge surprise to anyone that knows me!) but this weekend was a nice time for all of us to open up a little bit more and just enjoy the company!

Copan Ruinas is a big tourist pull for Honduras, so there's actually a lot of people (shopkeepers, hotel and restaurant owners, moto taxi drivers) that speak English. That part of the touristyness (yes, I know that's not a real word) of the town was pleasant, but one thing I did not enjoy was the tourist side of things. There were big groups of English speakers (Americans or Europeans) everywhere and it made me so uncomfortable! I think the reason is that I want to fit into the culture and prove that I'm kind of a part of Honduran culture :) So, I tried to do things that would prove I had been in the country longer than a week :) The funniest part was that I didn't realize I was being so 'defensive' until the end of the trip. In Honduras, when you passed someone on the street you always say, "Adios" instead of "Hola" and anytime you see someone eat (doesn't matter if you know them, if you're walking to your table at a restaurant, or if they're eating on the side of the street) you always say "Buen Provecho" (Have a good meal). So, I tried to excessively greet people while walking around town. Also, they have all their prices in dollars, but I insisted on only being told the Lempira price (well that one was reasonable; I don't have any dollars here :)). I even asked if they had pataste at one of the restaurants, which is a kind of vegetable that I'd never heard of until coming here. :) SO, it was an experience. I wasn't expecting to feel such a loyalty toward the Honduran side of things :)

Speaking of, I bought some typical (I don't know what this translates into in English, the kind of things they had in the olden-days haha. So in the US, maybe hoop skirts or bonnets or something :)) sandals to wear for our Fiesta Tipica next weekend. We sell typical food, the kids do typical dances, and we wear typical costumes! Should be fun :)

girls just wanna have fun

I learned two new words/phrases this week that will forever remind me of fall.

leche de burra (donkey's milk) or if you prefer...
leche de ornitorrinco (platypus milk!)

Why do these remind me of fall? Well, my parents sent me a birthday package (that got here right on my birthday!) that included, among other things of delight, caramel apple suckers. YUMMM. I was eating one at the neighbor's the other day and apparently a slang way to say caramel is donkey or platypus milk. I did not know the word ornitorrinco (the way they were saying it, I thought they were talking about ornito Ringo so I was trying to figure out how the conversation had gotten on the Beetles!) but eventually they were able to describe it to me ... the animal that lives in the sea that has a face of a duck but its a mammal... and then I finally made the connection that they were talking about my sucker. :)

I've really been enjoying my time with the neighbors. Now that I can actually understand most of the conversation and participate a little bit, I like to just go next door or down the road and sit in the kitchen at night with the other women and socialize. It's actually a new experience for me because I don't really talk that much... I just listen. I've noticed in my English conversations that I have a very 'I can top that story!' attitude and I ALWAYS have something to say. I don't think I would have noticed that flaw about myself if I hadn't been forced to sit and realize that I can enjoy the conversation even if I'm not joining in. I've actually done quite a few things in the last couple weeks. I made baleadas in Sonja's kitchen (not very well, they made fun of my slowness but hey... it's a start :)), and then we just sat around and talked after supper while eating oranges with a yummy sauce (pepper, salt, hot chile sauce, a little garlic). This weekend we had a birthday party for one of my friends/another teacher Ana and a girl in K5 named Ana Sugey (sue-hey). The women prepared plates of food for everyone at the party.... we had yucca (which is a root that tastes kind of like potato), cabbage, fried pork, a lemon slice and a tomato slice. I helped out at the house instead of really doing much at the party and it was so fun. The women just joked around and completely include me in their life. Last night, Sonja, her sister Sandra, and her cousin Ellie came over to 'play' beauty salon- they painted all our nails and straightened our hair- just for fun, and just to enjoy one another's company.

I'm happy I'm able to have better relationships with my neighbors this year. :)

regrets.

This blog is about the things I regret doing/not doing with my life right now.

I regret that until this weekend, I'd only done my laundry once since being here. I know, I know. That's college behavior! But, I've been going to my students' games every weekend and the weeks are just too tiring and I really don't like doing laundry.... so I just kept putting it off. Well, enough was enough, I'd put it off so long that I was completely out of all the essentials. Sunday morning I got up nice and early (9!!) and dragged my over-flowing laundry bag outside (which I have since lost. awesome). I threw all the clothes into the pila (a big cement sink. It takes like 20 minutes to fill...) and let them soak in my detergent water for about a half an hour. Then.... I started in. I do my white shirts first (My school uniform is white button-up shirts and navy blue pants or skirts) because I have to scrub out the yellow armpits (this might get graphic kids ... sorry) and if I wait to do that hardcore scrubbing till later, I have zero arm strength. :) So I did my white shirts and then just started pulling stuff out. Most of my clothes are fine if they've soaked. The dirt and odors just come right off and I can just put them right out on the line. The exceptions are my tank tops. Since I haven't done laundry for some time, I've just been re-cycling through my tank tops to wear underneath my school shirt, as a weekend lounge shirt, or to sleep in. All that to say... my tanks were pretty stinky. For those, I employed the magic of Suavitel. This is basically like Downy I think, but it just makes the clothes smell so nice! I have a five-gallon bucket that I fill up with water, pour in a packet of Suavitel and soak the smelly items in for 15 minutes or so.

So Sunday, I did all this. Even with only scrubbing the white shirts and a few pairs of jeans, it still took me like 3 hours. I watched "Breakfast at Tiffany's" for the first half but that finished and I didn't really feel like getting out of rhythm to pop in another DVD. (I had pulled a chair out to our porch and set my computer on that :)) That's another thing I noticed this weekend. Our neighbors have been doing laundry their whole life and they're so good at it. They have this rhythm that they do everything by. I wish I could incorporate sounds into blogging because I can't really describe it. All I know is that I definitely don't have that rhythm so I end up being really jerky and awkward looking. It takes me like ten years to pull soaking wet towels out and wring them. Don Luis (our 'grandpa' neighbor) came over and helped me out which was a little embarrassing because when he saw how many clothes I had, he laughed a little and then went over to his house, got some more twine and hung up another clothesline for me. Awesome :)

I finally got most of my clothes washed and out on the line and was able to go inside in time to make lunch AND see the Broncos game!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It was on TV here so I was pretty pumped. And yes, I know they lost but I wasn't too upset about their general playing. (PLUS did you guys see John Elway??!) ok sorry. sorry. done with the ranting, be happy I'm not giving you the play-by-play.

Anyway, so I'm reformed. I'm never going to wait like a month and a half to do laundry again. Although my friend Geri reminded me of the time when I was in college and I didn't do dishes all semester. whoops. And there's the fact that all those clothes are still out on the line.....

AHH someday I will be completely put together and organized. haha. for now... I'll just work on being more reasonable on the laundry front ;)

just ain't my cup of meat

20 points to anyone who knows where the title comes from :) I put it because I did something this last week that isn't usually on my top ten list of things to do... I went to the beach. (I know, I know, hear me out!) Here's why I don't particularly love the beach- it's really hot and I hate sweating all day, it's really sunny and my skin can handle maybe 15 minutes before it shrivels up and dies, I'm not really the best swimmer so being in water where I can't touch freaks me out a little bit, and the saltiness just isn't my favorite either.

However, we had a five day vacation and wanted to go somewhere that we might not be able to go on one of our three-day weekends later in the year so we chose TRUJILLO! Trujillo is a beach town right on the Pacific Ocean. You can see the Bay Islands from the shore if you're up high enough.

We left after school on Tuesday and spent the night in San Pedro in a hostel. Wednesday we got up super early and took the 6 am bus to Trujillo. We got there about noon and got comfortable in the Casa Kiwi. Casa Kiwi is a hotel that's actually just outside the town of Trujillo so we basically had the place to ourselves- including the beach :) The place had a hammock hut (which we frequented daily with our books) and a pretty lax atmosphere. I actually had a pretty nice time sitting on the beach (lathered in sunscreen), reading and sipping sodas, talking with the other teachers (Shelly, Catelin, Jennifer, Maggie, and Tyler all came along), and hanging out with the hotel staff.

We visited the town of Trujillo and ate at a few seafood restaurants (one day it took two hours to get our food so we didn't have time to do much else. super annoying.) We also visited a Garifuna village and bought some jewelry and pottery. The Garifuna community is the community here in Honduras that are descendants of the African slaves. They have their own separate communities, language and customs. It's pretty cool to experience.

Another MAJOR highlight was snorkeling. We took about a 30 minute boat ride out to the middle of the ocean and we got out and swam all around the coral. I've never done anything like that before so it was pretty cool. I'll try to find some pictures of the fish I saw since I don't have an underwater camera :)

Anyway, it was a great way to relax and enjoy time with my friends. We saw some amazing sunsets and had some amazing conversations. I think I can handle the beach :)

la iglesia

went to church tonight. I sometimes have a hard time getting excited to go to church here. It's at 7 o'clock on Sunday nights so it's my last chance to have a weekend. It's also all in Spanish and it takes lots of energy for me to concentrate enough on the words, let alone what the meaning is behind them. All the songs are in Spanish with no words printed anywhere so I can't even really enjoy the singing, and the sermons, when I do understand them, seem so simple that I wonder why I even need to be there.

All this to say, I went into church feeling slightly obligated to go (never a good start in my opinion), but feeling like maybe I could write a blog (yes, I actually thought about my blog as a reason to go to church!) to describe the simplicity of the church service and how maybe I could see it as a good thing that we're reminded that our faith is supposed to be a childlike one. I even thought of starting my blog off with something like- "God is love. No matter how many times we hear this statement, it still needs to be said."

So, I'm sitting there thinking about all these things to make into a fantastic blog when our pastor tells us to turn to 1 John 4:7-8 ... which also happened to be the verses chapel was on this Wednesday so I taught my kids the song that I know with that verse all this week. 1 John 4:7-8......

Queridos hermanos, amémonos los unos a los otros, porque el amor viene de Dios, y todo el que ama ha nacido de Él y lo conoce. Él que no ama no conoce a Dios, porque Dios es amor.

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone that loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.

I kind of felt like I had a little smack on the wrist from God... I think I try really hard not to feel superior and above the people that I live with in a social or intellectual level, because I think people from the United States tend to have that attitude when going to other countries. I've noticed it in myself on occasions and really try to squelch it because I know there is so much I can learn from the people I live and work with. But what about church? I have this snobby snobby attitude about how I worship- and how worship should be done. I scoff at the simplicity of the messages and act like I am more spiritual and know everything the pastor is going to share already. I think it's cute that the men and women dance alongside the kids, but I even have a kind of attitude problem on that- like, we would never do that in our church because it's not appropriate, and really... the parents should get their children under control so no one is disrupted while 'worshiping' sighhhh... I remember one day at Westchester a little girl was dancing in the aisle and I wanted so badly to join her- sometimes I think dancing and throwing your arms around and kicking your heels up in the air is the only way to express how joyful I feel about God but since I know it wouldn't be allowed, I instead got it into my head that other people that act that way are in the wrong. What a terrible way to think! I really think God tried to teach me something today in my churchy attitude. Shelly and I decided we're going to start a dance club at Westchester so... prepare yourselves :) Maybe not... but I think in all areas of life I definitely make lines and boundaries of what's acceptable behavior and what's not... obviously those lines and boundaries can be very very good things but... sometimes I think living outside of your comfort zone allows you to see when you need to break those boundaries and realize why you put them up in the first place.

BUGZZZZZ

The bug season has begun in Villa Verde (I don't think it ever really stops, but it's begun for us. :)) We had our first major encounter with a bug the other night when it flew into the house. I'm pretty sure I posted a picture last year of what I fondly refer to as the 'pincer bug' - it's about five inches long with wings and nasty fang/pincers that move all over on its face. Well, one flew in and scarred everyone for life- seriously, it can be pretty traumatizing! Luckily, I dealt with having these kind of bugs in our house all the time so I was able to quite calmly capture the bug and release it back into the wild.... it was a pretty special moment for me; I feel I've grown so much :)

Back in the house, everyone had calmed down pretty well and I went to the bathroom... and found a spider just chillin on the inside of the bowl- not in the water, just crawling around on the porcelain... Luckily I had my handy-dandy bucket of water next to the toilet to flush him down. Still, I've been very careful in that area of life for the last couple days :)

I've also continued to have quite the problem with some kind of bug in my bed. I'm pretty sure it's not mosquito bites that I'm getting by the hundreds - although I'm getting quite a few of those too. I've decided there are either spiders, fleas, or bedbugs in my sheets that like to visit in the middle of the night. I've decided there's not much I can do about getting rid of the bugs (I've sprayed Raid, cleaned the sheets, aired things out... not much helps for long) so I've resigned myself to another year of unsightly legs but ... I just wish I could make them slightly more sightly :) The bites are SO ITCHY I just can't think about anything else and that is annoying. I have several kinds of lotion and itch sticks to help me out, as well as Benedryl and NOTHING helps. SO, I decided to look online for homemade remedies. Some suggestions?:

~toothpaste (tried this, it doesn't really help the itching, but it does make me not want to scratch cuz then I get blue minty paste all over my hands)

~deodorant (haven't tried yet, deodorant is on my 'ration' list so I'm not sold on wasting it just yet...)

~small vacuum pump to remove the venom (not available in Gracias haha)

~wet tobacco kept in place with a bandaid (not a huge tobacco hoarder, plus i would completely exhaust our bandaid supply in about two days)

~baking soda/water paste (this is the one I've been using for the last couple nights and seems to work pretty well, although Tyler and Maggie told me I looked like I had leprosy tonight :))

So, we'll see. If anyone has other ideas... send them my way :)

Tonight, we also found what we think is a chinche... an icky bug that makes a very annoying, loud noise when you capture it in a jar.... which I did :) We're going to bring it to the neighbors tomorrow to find out for sure if it's the bug they talk about. Catelin read up on it, so we're slowly becoming bug experts here in the mountains. :)

Although the bug situation is MUCH better than last year, it's still quite the boredom killer :) As soon as a bug comes in the house, everyone's adrenaline is up for the rest of the night :) Take that coffee! :)




PS. I just ran to the kitchen to cook up another baking soda concoction and when I poured the baking soda into the water, a dead spider fell out of the box. OH the irony!

ration-alizations.

I got paid today. I've had 190 lempiras in my account for about a week and a half now (thats a little less than ten bucks) so I've been rationing things like crazy. I haven't called anyone from my phone because I figured I'd better save my few minutes for an unforeseen emergency and ... that got me thinking. I do quite a bit of rationing here :) I'm pretty sure most people ration money so I don't feel like I need to go into too much detail on that one but here's a list of somethings that I might ration out a little more here than I do in the States. :)

Water: This isn't always an issue, but at least once a week our water gets funky and stops working or trickles. We keep our pila filled up in the back and, as a new and fun development, Shelly's and my toilet has stopped working so we have to keep a bucket in there to self-flush. So sometimes I (I don't know about Shelly, I suppose I should inform her of this before posting it on the world wide web) but I go with the 'if it's yellow, let it mellow; if it's brown, flush it down.' philosophy.... I don't want to have to be filling up that bucket every time! So I ration! Also along the lines of water, I'm sure faithful followers, and anyone else that has been to a Latin American country knows... we CANNOT drink the tap water. So, we have to ration our filter water. I usually bring a water bottle to school and make sure to fill it up before I leave for home :) I think between the four of us, we finish 2-3 five-gallon waters a week. That's not so bad right?

Books: I just love to read. But I have to ration out my books because I only brought so many. I've been reading "Snow" (sorry fellow grammar teachers, I can't underline things in my blog :( ) by Orhan Pamuk but I have to read it SO SLOWLY because I don't have a library to go to after I finish all the books my roommates and I brought :/ I also have some audio books so maybe that will keep me going for awhile but really... who likes to cuddle up with a hot chocolate, a blanket, and your itunes book library playing? :)

Movies/TV shows: along the same lines... only have a certain number of movies to choose from and no redboxes nearby :) The girls and I have been watching Smallville almost every night for fun, and we've also started Glee but... we have three seasons of Smallville here and only half a season of Glee so we REALLY have to ration those out. I think our first night we watched three episodes and Catelin (our Glee Nazi) told us we had to limit Glee to like one episode every three weeks. HA. thank you Smallville for your distraction :)

Sweet things: Ahhhhh. This is the hardest for me. I'm trying to keep a tight budget so I haven't done a lot of 'frivolous' spending- like on chocolate, pop, cookies... all the things I crave all the time :) So I've conditioned myself to get a Snickers on Wednesday when we go down into town, take a bite and then keep it in the fridge and ration it out for the next week. Pretty impressive huh :) Another thing that keeps rationing alive and well in our lives here is the fact that we really can't buy things very often. So if we want two grilled-cheese sandwiches for supper, that's fine but then that means we probably only have enough bread for one more meal, or maybe for a slice of toast one morning. OH the decisions....

Computer power: Along with our water, our power goes out all the time, so I am often left with a computer with, at the most, three hours of power left so I have to decide what I'm going to do with it and when I will spend it all up - for a two hour movie? three hours of music? journaling?


I think that's all I can come up with on the top of my head. (OK. rewind. OFF the top of my head.... I'm just going to keep that in there to show you how terrible my English is getting haha) We didn't have school Monday or Tuesday this week because it's rained everyday and the road up to our school was way too muddy for the buses to bring the kids up so today was like a Monday which is great because Friday is still in two days! Things are going well at school; still like it :) Enjoy your not-so-rationed lives this week!

Eventful weekend!

All last week we worked on our rooms- getting them in order for school. My room was a disaster right up until the last day when it magically came together! I love when that happens ;) Friday night we had our Parent Orientation night and I had to speak to the 6th grade parents and then the parents of preschool-3rd grade about music classes. I had an interpreter with me, but I decided to try and just do everything in Spanish on my own- which I did :) I think it went pretty well; I was able to remember everything and the parents seemed to understand me. There was a little bit of 'indulgent smile syndrome' going around- as in, "Oh isn't she cute, trying to speak Spanish to us, let's indulge her' but... I just chalk it up to experience ;) Quite a few of the parents came up to me later and told me congrats on my improved language skills, and it was also really nice because I felt like by opening up the fact that I will try and speak their language, the parents felt like they could come to me with concerns/specific things I'd like to know about their child. I don't think the parents always like to speak through an interpreter so they just end up not telling me anything, but on Friday, a lot of the parents stayed and talked afterward which was great! I also had at least 6 parents tell me that their student really needs to be in the front row when I already had the 6 kids I really thought needed to be in the front lined up :) But we'll work out those kinks later. :)

Saturday morning Ana and I got up early and walked to town to the bus station where the other girls met us later with the mototaxis and we took our first group trip! We went to Santa Rosa (only about an hour away... we thought we'd take it easy the first time :)) and explored the town. There was a fair in Santa Rosa so in the afternoon we went and checked that out. They had a lot of stands with typical Honduran food and jewelry and stuff. I grabbed some elote (grilled/roasted corn with salt and lime. yummmmmm) and looked at some bracelets before it started downpouring. It's the rainy season here in Honduras so it rains like every day- and it rains hard. We stayed under the eating tent for awhile before the rain let up a little, and then decided to head home. There were basically rivers running down the street but we found some boards to cross so our pants wouldn't get so wet..... As I was walking across a board, I stepped right on a nail that went straight through my shoe into the arch of my foot. cute. I had a flashback to Fred Gering (my old busdriver) telling a story about how one time he stepped on a nail and when he took his boot off it was full of blood so I just braced myself for that.... then I remembered he was diabetic and had no feeling in his feet and that's why it bled so much. ANYWAY. so random thoughts, trying not to faint, acting like I was fine, but I let the other girls know I had to 'pull over' and take a look. It actually wasn't too bad, but I wanted to check out my tetanus shot update so I called home. Because of the rain, I had a really hard time hearing Olivia read me the numbers to our doctor's after-hours office, so sorry Olivia for my impatience! :) I called the number, explained my problem, asked if they could check my records and the lady on the other end was like, "uhh this is a dairy farm" hahaha. so. I just decided to wait til we got home ;) It actually didn't look infected and seems to be healing pretty well, but I did go get a tetanus shot just in case :)

Also today while getting my injection at the doctors' (where I also spoke Spanish completely by myself!) I got medicine for conjunctivitis (pink eye!!!) which I somehow got this morning -- YAY first day of school present! :) So I spent my whole first day with my kids thinking I was crying/trying not to touch anything. But other than that the day was pretty great. I really do get really excited to see everyone and I love that I already know the kids in my class. My students from last year were all excited to see me too, and kept creeping in my window during recess (I told them they could come back to my class and do some work if they really missed me that much and that got them to go away :)) Today we only went til noon so that was kind of nice for a good first day, but I'm pretty ready to get into real teaching tomorrow- I already did a Spelling lesson today so my kids better get their heads in the game! (hsm anyone? :))

Anyway, this is kind of a whirlwind blog but I wanted to get a semblance of an update out here. Thanks for reading! :) Pray for all my ailments ;)

whats in a name

I love the beginning of the school year. I love the smell of new crayons in my art box, sharpening tons of pencils in preparation, testing all the new markers, seeing all the notebooks (this year I chose yellow, blue, gray green)waiting to be written in. Every year I'd get an anxious, butterfly feeling in my stomach the night before school- every year! Elementary, middle, high school, college... it wasn't ever a nervous feeling, it was always an "I'm-so-excited-I-can't-sleep-cuz-tomorrow's-Christmas!" feeling. And I get to have that feeling for the rest of my life!

What actually prompted me to write this though (cuddled up in my bed with my school books next to me, writing in my yellow notebook ... which will then be transferred to typed blog...) was writing my name on everything. As a student, it's important to label all your things; as a teacher it's like 10 times as important- and even then, I usually find a student that's been using my crayons or a pencil of mine for a month- if they didn't lose them the first day :) But I digress! :)

Writing my name. I love it. I love my name. I love that I can write it out really fancy- Miss Vander Ploeg- and I love that I can write it quickly- Miss VP- and still find identity in those two letters. I love that the things in the classroom are mine and that I can take on a whole different personalitly as TEACHER and have this other secret, very effective name. :)

I think I've mentioned that I've always wanted to be a teacher, so when I was little I'd always daydream abotu when I was older and a real teacher with my own classroom. I'd decided at some point that in college I'd have to "change" my name to just Laura because it sounded more mature... sorry younger version, I couldn't do it! But I also assumed that when I was a teacher, I'd of course also have to be married and so I'd have a different last name. It's kind of an interesting thing to not know who you're going to be in the future. Of course I'd try on the occasional Mrs. McKinley and even less occasionally I might throw in a Mrs. Corlew but... I didn't really know. So I'd just settle with Mrs. Something. It cut out a lot of pretend school in my head. Your name is a VERY important part of your classroom. It gives authority- strikes fear into your students when needed (I'm going to have to tell Miss VP about your behavior at recess), but also gives a sense of belonging, comfort, and love (Who's your teacher? Miss Vander Ploeg!) -- Did you notice I used Miss VP in those examples? I'm not a Mrs. Something. :) And I'm happy for that. There are plenty of reasons for wanting to be married, but changing my name is not one of them. I love it. I have many great memories as LBVP or Miss VP. I don' tthink I'm ready to get rid of it yet (not that I really have any other options at the moment :)) But anyway, I'm excited for a new year and new students, new challenges and surprises, new friendships and experiences ... but I'm gonna do all the new things with an old, well-used, loved, comfortable name. :)

Have a great school year!

~ Miss Vander Ploeg :)

highs n lows

Coming back from the summer one school year, my friend asked if there were highlights and lowlights... one of my friends immediately said, "Oh yeah! I got both!" as she waved her head around showing us the highlights and lowlights .... in her hair. So, highlights and lowlights of ... Honduras :)

Highlights:

Definitely the staff so far. I am living with three other girls (Shelly, Catelin, and Jennifer); there is a married couple that are living in a house right by the school (Maggie and Tyler); two girls living in town (Raquel and Tabitha) and two girls that we met that are planning to go to La Union and teach (Andrea and Amelia). Everyone seems really nice and eager to jump into things. We've had two days of orientation and some moving around, but everyone seems to have really great attitudes.

My house- I'm in a new house this year and all four of us girls are able to have our OWN ROOM! There's also two bathrooms and a big open area for hanging out. And a kitchen sink inside. !!!! I'll put up pictures soon-ish but right now it's just full of things that we're trying to organize.

The welcome I received- when we were driving up the mountain to start moving into our house, I heard the kids in my neighborhood yell, "MISS VP!!" and they came running up and played in our house :) I love those kids :) It's also been really nice at school with the staff and around town with parents/shopkeepers to see everyone and catch up which leads me to my next highlight....

My Spanish!- Oh man, my Spanish is great! haha. but seriously, I've been doing a lot of arranging and translating and I've been able to do pretty much everything I want. I can have conversations with the people I see and actually understand most of what's being said. Granted, I still stumble over most of my words/tenses or have to ask for repeats but I feel so much more confidence than I did last year so that's been really nice

Lowlights:
The house- so despite this being a new house, it doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be without problems. The outside doors let in water so when it rains, that water seeps into our house :/ Today we got home from school and the toilet wouldn't flush. We have a sink in our kitchen but no real stove (just camping burners). There aren't really any shelves.... but hopefully these things can get worked out or we'll learn to deal with them :)

The Laureles Family- This is actually a pretty low lowlight. The Laureles family is a couple that work at our school and have a 5 year old boy named Nao. Right before I left the States, I found out that Nao had died from the Dengue Fever. He was sick for five days and since his parents don't believe in medicine of any kind, he died pretty quickly. Obviously it was really sad and hard to hear, but then we went to visit and the parents were acting so happy that I didn't know how to react. They have his ashes in a bag that they carry around with them and kept telling me that it was ok because it wouldn't be long before Nao got up again and started running around and playing with the other kids... :( I definitely didn't know how to react to that. Anyway, it was really hard for our little community and the parents are leaving which means we also need to fill two teacher spots pretty quickly before school begins on the 23rd. So pray for all of that- peace for the family, calmness for the students and friends of the family, and good teachers for our school.

I'll be working on my classroom, plans for the year, and organizing my house this next week. Should be busy, but fun!!

also, happy birthday zach :)

Second year starting! ..... almost.

Original schedule for flying from Des Moines to Honduras:
Des Moines to Chicago- 10:40-11:50
Chicago to Cinncinati- 12:25-2:35
Cinncinati to Miami- 3-5:35
Miami to Honduras- 7:15-8:30

What ACTUALLY happened:
Des Moines flight was late.... left about 11:05
which meant I got to Chicago at 12:30. Which meant I missed my flight to Cinncinati.
A guy at the ticket counter found me a ticket that went straight from Chicago to Miami and I would still get there in time to take my original flight to Honduras.
until.... that plane had some problems and didn't leave until 5. Which meant I got to Miami at 7:20.... 5 minutes too late. :)

One thing that really irritates me about airports is the 18 billion signs that tell you where your gate is. When I got off the plane both times and thought, "Maybe I have a chance at making it to the gate..." I had to walk past all these signs. I was looking for D38 so there'd be a sign that said D1-80. Perfect. walk .... walk.... walk another sign D1-D60. more walking... D20-D60..... D25-D60.... Gall I wanted to scream!! But I didn't. I stayed calm. :) I talked to the people at the counter and got a ticket to leave tomorrow at 12:45. Sighhhhh. I just want to be there! But, I am staying in a nice, nice hotel room and the airline gave me free meal tickets. Tonight I sat at the bar, ate buffalo wings, and watched football ;) Thought I'd try to make my last night in America SUPER American :)

ANYWAY. Hopefully this is the last detour and I will be seeing Honduras tomorrow!

Last Blog by Laura Beth (for now :))

Shoot.
I kind of wish I could swear right now. Not in any kind of bad way just... in a way that sums up how overwhelming this day has been. It's ok though. 'shoot' will suffice :)

Well I left Honduras at 7 this morning (Tuesday morning) after quite a tearful goodbye. I'm definitely an emotional person- I really do cry when I'm happy, when I'm sad, when I'm mad... so any emotion basically. But this morning, I really tried not to. Ever realized that when you've resolved that you're DEFINITELY not going to do something, that's the one thing you're guaranteed to do? So, of course I did. I bawled all through getting ready at the hotel, kept having to wipe away tears on the way to the airport, and then cried my way through the line. It was pretty cute. However, on a happy note, my suitcases only weighed 20 and 30 pounds (compared the the 70 each when I was heading toward Honduras) which meant I didn't have to pay any extra fees!

I got on the plane and watching Honduras fade away put me on the verge of starting up the waterfall again, but I think God decided to take it easy on me because He sat me down next to a very talkative guy who has done extensive traveling in Latin American countries. (Actually, he's done extensive traveling to lots of places and kind of made me want to if I ever have money :)) The flight from San Pedro Sula to Miami was pretty good because of that and I actually laughed quite a bit and enjoyed the conversation. Landing was a little difficult- I have a little head cold which made the pressure-difference-descent horrendous. My head felt like it was going to explode, I couldn't hear anything my new friend was saying, and I couldn't tell how loudly I was speaking (New Friend informed me-twice, cuz I didn't hear him the first time- that I was speaking at a normal volume, thank goodness!) We arrived in the US (woo!) and I went through customs. One of the questions on the 'getting back into the country' survey was if you had encountered any livestock during your trip. Uh, duh. This was an obvious health concern due to the many diseases I might be carrying in so... I had to go in a special line. The airport guys asked me if I had been to a farm and I said the place I lived was rural so I was frequently in contact with animals. They were like, "Ok, so you visited a farm... what kind of animals did you see on the farm? Cows? Chickens?" I wanted to respond by saying pretty much any farm animal you could name had stomped around my yard at some point but I resisted. :) They fixed the problem by taking my shoes and dunking them in a bucket of disinfectant. Easy!

Coming in from an international flight, you have to recheck your luggage, so our flight went down to wait at Baggage Claim 2.... which after about five minutes of waiting, got changed to number 7. We all shuffled down to 7 and waited for another 5 minutes before another announcement was made that our things would actually be delivered at baggage claim 5. People were pretty frustrtaed and I had to chase my suitcases around twice cuz people were pushed right up to the conveyor belt with their carts and I couldn't get through. When I finally did catch up to my suitcase, I grabbed ahold of it and it dragged me past three people because I couldn't get it off the belt. I kept alternating between saying 'perdon' and 'sorry' cuz I couldnt quite figure out what language I was supposed to be speaking yet. Ahhh... Always anb adventure. :)

Also while hanging out in Miami, I visited a bookstore- pretty sure I'm goin to make it mandatroy for myself that I buy a book every trip I take. While in the bookstore, I heard the following conversation between the workers:

Worker One(17-ish girl): OH MY GOSSSH. Guess what I heard. There was this girl, she was crazy beautiful and she was a beauty queen or something and made her whole living on that and she was going to be Miss Universe or something and someone threw acid on on her FACE!! She didn't even see who it was, it was just some random person that threw ACID on her FACE! I mean, how can you recover from something lie that? I mean it was her career! Her face is ruined!

Worker Two (23-ish guy): Oh yeah, that's crazy. It's kind of like Nancy Kerrigan when that guy smashed her leg in.

W1: ok, it's kind of like that but Nancy Kerrigan got fixed from that. This girl is scarred for life. What is she going to do now? I mean she can't be a beauty queen anymore. She's going to have to start her life all over and they're probably not even going to catch that guy....

Oh to be able to completely understand random people's conversations. AND I know the famous people they're talking about! haha anyway, I picked out "Same Kind of Different as Me". Pretty good- lasted me the day!

I traveled from Miami to Chicago and sat next to an older lady and talked for the whole flight about life and its perks and problems. :) Once in Chicago I went on a hardcore American food binge. I mean not really. I have no money and 7 hours in the airport so I tried to pace myself for every couple of hours but my list of tasty treats ran as follows: Krispy Kreme custard and chocolate donut; McDonalds cheeseburger and fries; a Caramel Pecanbon from Cinnabon; and a banana. :) I will say Honduras definitely beats the Chicago airport on their banana but there is no comparison for those other tasty treats. :) I spent the afternoon reading and writing some of this blog and basically de...something. de-compressing maybe? :) As much as I hate sitting around in airports all day, I do think it does something for helping me transition back to something that is completely different from what I've been doing for six months.

I finally arrived in Des Moines at 11 pm and instantly cried when I hugged my mom (lame! I need to stop that!) It was so great to see everyone and even greater to see some of my friends when I got home. I can't wait to see everyone else in the next few weeks.


So.... thanks for reading! Maybe I'll see you around Iowa! :) I'm heading back August 8, so I won't be here too long but... I'm going to try and make the most of it!

#21

21. I like to spend time alone now.

So, if you are a faithful follower, you'll know that upon my arrival to Honduras, I had quite a few obstacles. I had to stay in the Houston airport for like two days and then when I finally got here, I was sick for about three and had to stay locked up in a house all by myself. I almost lost it. I seriously almost did! Dorm life was so great for me in school because if my roommate wasn't home or if there was absolutely no one on my wing, I could choose from seven other wings and if that didn't work I could wander the whole campus for company. I never had to be lonely! So, that first week was very difficult for me to be alone for so long.

Now here I am in the last week of my year, and I am once again alone. Rachel and Julia left on Saturday (ish), Kirsty and Jacki left on Sunday, and Sarah left super early Wednesday morning. I spent all of Monday just hanging out and relaxing with Sarah, Tuesday I worked at the school for 6 hours organizing all the extra school materials the other girls left me (it was like Christmas! Paper clips, white boards, stickers, pencils and pens!!), and then came home and cleaned the house for a little bit. Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday I worked at the school all day/went to graduation. And now Saturday and Sunday. Yesterday I spent all day and part of the night cleaning and organizing the house. I don't think I'm going to live in this house next year so I'm packing up all my stuff to store at the comedor. I had round-the-clock trash burning yesterday and brought all my laundry down to be cleaned. I put all the baking materials that will keep for 6 weeks in tupperware containers so that the 3 mice that have decided to inhabit our house will have no access to it. The only thing left for today is to clean all the dishes and clean out the fridge.

But anyway, back to why I like being alone now. I still don't really love it. But I'm content. I can spend the whole day by myself working on something and feel productive. There were a couple times during the year where I wished I actually had a place to go and be alone- not because of the girls necessarily, but just because our way of living dictated that we spend every second together and I realized that there were times where I didn't need that. That it would have been nice to have a Starbucks to go to by myself and just read. I'm very curious to see how I adjust to having lots of people to see again. When I really can choose if I want to be alone or go out. Or to even be in big groups of people where everyone can understand everyone. I'm not really used to that. My world of people that understand me here has become so small (like smaller than my family! haha) that I think it will be a big shock to come back and realize that everyone can understand my conversation, or that I can go to church and have a conversation with anyone, or that I can go to a restaurant with a big group of friends. That I can go to a store or a library or the gas station and not have to practice the conversation I'm going to have with the person at the register in my head! Ah.... it will be different, but I am still excited to be home and see everyone. Until then, I have my internet (sometimes :)), some hot water on to boil for tea or hot chocolate (or both!), the beautiful, delicious Honduran outdoors, and a whole sink of dishes waiting for me! Pretty sweet huh? :)

top 20

how honduras has changed me

1. I now like vegetables.
2. Bugs crawling in my shower, bed, clothes, (basically anywhere) don't really bother me.
3. I enjoy watching soccer. (Honduras plays Spain on Monday... in the World CUPP!!)
. The number four on my computer no longer works because rain dripped down from my roof to the keyboard. whoops!
5. I can kind of cook.
6. I probably won't be able to drink water from the tap at home without seriously thinking about it for awhile.
7. Ditto on the throwing TP in the in toilet
8. I am used to the power going out (se fue la luz!)all the time
9. I write about my feelings a lot more- not necessarily because I want to, but because sometimes it is just impossible to get ahold of someone down here! :)
10. my body. I will probably have mosquito/spider/whatever scars on my legs until I'm 80.
11. I've been a real teacher for a year!
12. I can tell the difference between a moto taxi, car, and motorcycle coming up a mountain.
13. This isn't really a change cuz I've always known it, but Honduras has highly reaffirmed the benefits of having supportive and loving family and friends.
fourteen. I think I can call my Spanish competent now.
15. I can't pronounce my name in English anymore. I always say it in Spanish in my head!
16. I now know that wherever I end up, I want to have plants right outside my house that I can just go pick whatever right in the middle of cooking
17. I now know that wherever I end up I DO NOT WANT to have a kitchen sink outside. I need it in the house haha
18. I don't mind riding on buses stuffed full of people and animals and strange smells.
19. I Gotta Feeling by Black Eyed Peas is always going to have a special place in my heart.
20. I am more aware of the world and the people in it. I have learned that I want to be less judgmental , but I think in doing that I've become judgmental of everything that I am- white, American, rich, Christian. Not sure how to change that- maybe that can be next year's project :)

ALMOST HOME!!!

Beginning of the End.... (year one)

I had to say my first goodbyes today. At 4:45 this morning. Rachel, Tad and I visited La Union this weekend, which where the other Vida Abudante school of our municipal is. We have some friends that are teachers there and we've spent some time with them over the year. There's Jake, who recruited me, Renske from the Netherlands, and Laura from Scotland. I've blogged about them before and I'm pretty sure I always talk about what a great time I have with them. This weekend was no exception! (Thank goodness!:))
We got permission to leave school early on Friday so we left on the noon bus and drove for about three and a half hours on windy, rocky roads.... I never get car sick, but this trip... I was pretty close. I even had to stop reading my book! (never happens haha)But, we made it safe and sound just as the girls were finishing teaching. We headed to their home and got settled in. The girls took us around to meet some of the families that they've gotten close to and then we had supper at the home of one of their families. After supper the kids wanted us to play marbles so we did that for probably an hour... or more :) I won ten marbles!! (I didn't really, the kids gave them to me, I think because my ridiculously poor playing ability made them feel sorry for me :)) We visited Jake's house and made some choco-bananos (this one's pretty easy- bananas dipped in chocolate :)) We were all pretty tired so we went to bed around 9:30 but it was a great first day!

On Saturday morning, I was woken up by several things. First (at 5 am of course) the bus went by and woke me up. Then, people started singing at the Catholic church right next door. Into microphones. That seemed to have speakers pointed right at our house. Third, people started setting off firecrackers. At 6 in the morning! It was a little ridiculous. But, I forced myself back to sleep until about 8 when I was good and ready to get out of bed. The four of us girls (rach, renske, laura, me) went on a tour of La Union. It is a beautiful little town. It is much smaller than Gracias and is very agriculturally based (everyone grows coffee) so there are LOTS and lots of men in cowboy hats and boots walking around town. :) We hiked part of the mountain and ended up at a spot that the girls visit all the time called La Campa de Serro (Hillside Field)- and that is what it is. It's a big open field in the middle of the mountain and it is beautiful. There were some horses grazing there when we got there and we just sat under a tree and talked and watched all the butterflies flying... oh it was lovely. :)

We came home and chilled for the rest of the afternoon and then Saturday night we celebrated Tad's birthday. We ate another home of a family and then had everyone over to the girls' home for cake and games. The boys (Tad stayed with some of his friends that actually live in La Union working for a microfinancing business)left but we girls stayed up and talked until about 2:30. And then. We had to say goodbye.

Now, these girls haven't been with us the whole time. But, we have spent a decent amount of time with them and have always really enjoyed their company. (PS Renske is 18/19 and Laura is 17- isn't that crazy??)So. To say goodbye was hard. I kind of forget that just because I'm coming back next year doesn't mean I'm not going to have to say goodbye to people cuz... like everyone else is leaving :) Since these girls live in Europe, the chances of me seeing them are quite a bit slimmer than most of the other teachers. (although I do have free places to stay in both countries should I ever choose to visit :)) We talked about it a little bit yesterday how we probably won't ever see each other again and how we can't just be sad and depressed about that, but that we can be really happy about a year of great friendships. coooooool. Makes me REALLY happy :) but, I think that's what happens when you go to other countries. You build relationships that you won't be able to keep up. But, it doesn't mean you shouldn't form those relationships. I have learned so much about the world and other people and life working here- obviously the Honduran life, but these great girls have been able to share with me a little bit of their view of the world. So, I'm a little sad. But I'm happy that I had such a beautiful year with those girls!