Week 2: First week of work

Day 8 August 15
We had breakfast at one of the local hotels. It’s tradition that they give Mayatan teachers a free breakfast at the beginning of the year and show us the rooms. Great way to advertise since so many of our families come to visit. It’s a nice place, 8-10 blocks from my house. $50 a night and they offer Swedish massages for $30 an hour. There are closer and cheaper hotels, but that’ll be up to the folks coming to visit. There’s even a hostel a block from my house.
I did a few errands before meeting folks at the park including getting muy fuerte nails to go through my concrete walls and getting more money at the bank. Tammi had described this to me on my first day, but I hadn’t experienced it: two tellers were racing through their patrons trying to get me at their window. They kept glancing at each other, it was really funny.
Then we got together and went to the pool, which in the past the school paid for us to go for free for the year, but with the economy down we have to pay 75 lemps a visit. I don’t think I’ll be going very often.
I bummed around the house for a while and then went to Casa Villamil with Abby and Alan for interneting where I actually got to IM with J and my mom for the first time. It was really nice. I also looked up Ana and Bill, the two tropical storms headed toward Florida. I don’t think they’ll do more to us than bring a bit of rain.
A few of the teachers came over and we had a bonfire on the roof of the house. It was very pleasant to just sit around and talk.

Day 9 August 16
I forced myself to sleep in. I woke up, as usual, around 5:30, and was in and out until 9 when I let myself get out of bed. It was very pleasant, though the town was already very awake and various things kept waking me. I seem to be immune to the sound of roosters now, either that or they stopped sounding off in the morning, but I doubt that.
I’m going to do my laundry more frequently so I don’t have nothing to wear in the following days as the clothes dry. Also, I’m hoping that having fewer clothes drying in that small room will help them dry faster. So I spent the morning cooking, cleaning, laundering, and panicking because my blue bag that I take everywhere was gone. Luckily last night was one of the rare nights I had taken my wallet out and hung it separately from the hooks on my dresser. I was holding out for my roommates to either get up or come home, hoping that one of them had it, and sure enough Sierra had taken it on the group’s morning hike (everyday folks meet at 6:30 for a run or hike, but I’ve been enjoying my morning routine too much, I go on afternoon hikes). He’d taken out my things and put them in a pile in her room. I don’t mind the borrowing, I just wish I could have known where it was.
Sundays are the big market days because people come in from the surrounding el deas to sell the week’s produce. They sell for cheaper and it’s almost always more local than the regular fruits and veggies in the market. It’s very crowded, loud, and pretty hectic. The noise level makes it even harder for me to converse with people I’m buying from, but I made do. Many repetitions and “Como?” followed by “Gracias.” Also, mangos are getting harder for me to find, which is upsetting. And the two I got today were huge, but I think I got the “you’re an American, you’ll pay more” price, which is why I only got two. I was just hard up for Mangos.
I went back to tourist street because more folks come in to sell on the weekends and I got a couple more pairs of earrings. That was probably my last lavish spending for a while, at least until I get a paycheck.
Class starts in a week and next week is orientation, I’m cutting back on my Spanish classes to make time for work. I’ll be so busy I don’t know how I’ll find time to study, but I’ll make it work. I hope to have three classes, an hour each during orientation week. I’ll probably hold off on classes my first week of school, just so I can see how things settle in and then I’ll try to do it once or twice a week.
I spent most of the afternoon studying my Spanish and making flashcards. Sierra and I ate a Picame, bringing our work with us. Caroline called and brought Beth over the meet us as she had just arrived. Poor woman, she had several people all trying to tell her what they thought was important about settling in or Copan at the same time. I managed to slip in a question about how she wants to do classes, and she wants to split them up, so we’d both be in charge of 3 lesson plans. From what Caroline was saying, she was happy to hear I’m a science hobbyist because she’d rather do the reading, grammar, and handwriting. I’m happy with either group. I love to teach science, it’s what I have experience in, and I do enjoy math, but I also love helping kids with their reading. Handwriting gets a bit more difficult, as mine is awful.
As I finished up my flashcards, Sierra put in the OC, which is as terrible of a show as I had imagined and I appreciate when she pointed out “their acting is so bad!” It’s just one of those things that amuses her and she knows it’s not a…show of quality. I can understand why.

Day 10 August 17
As with all things that are big and new, I was unable to sleep well before my first day of work. Part of it was the cold, which came in with the rain. I also lost my immunity to rooster calls. I did get some sleep, and woke up 30 seconds before my alarm went off. I was impressed.
I decided to ride the bus with my coworkers, it was rainy and I had all my classroom stuff to haul up the hill. Judy was sitting on the stoop when I came out and instead of letting me stand outside on the street, she offered to open up all the doors that lead to the street and had me sit at a table. Shortly after, Abby and Sierra joined us. When the bus came, Judy waved us goodbye. She’s sweet to send us off on our first day of work. We were all cramped on the little bus, but it was fun. The guys were all clean shaven, the girls all in slacks or skirts.
The day consisted of meetings on protocol and rules. I hardly had anytime in my room, but I dropped my things off during lunch. It was all very informative, but not very interesting. They served us breakfast and lunch, so that was good. I did talk to Ann, who I finally met, about attending church with her and her family. She was more than willing and warned me, as Tammi had, that there are different expectations here. She goes to mass at 10 on Sundays, but if you ever wanted to join a small group or anything else, you’d have to go on a weekend silent retreat. And you’re expected to join a small group or anything else.
I got home and took a quick catnap before Spanish class, about 20 minutes. I’m doing better in class, but I’m having context issues when a word from my opuestos section, on the first day, comes up in a verb group. Same word, different context, so I don’t get it. I was pretty frustrated with myself, but I’ll just have to practice better. The flashcards are helping.
I went to finally check my mail, because I know there’s been a package waiting for me for a week, but they close at 4 and class ended at 4. I got there at 4:05. Maybe I can go tomorrow, depending on how long setting up my bank account takes.
I made fries, this time with oil and real garlic, they were tasty but I ate too many and upset my stomach a little. Speaking of which, over a week in Honduras and illness free! I must be doing something right.
Also, my cell phone is free for me to receive calls, but expensive for you. (504-9876-9574). I have skype (sn live2r1). Mail is always good. And for folks looking at visiting, every other building is a hotel, there’s a hostel a block from my house, and all the political stuff should blow over in November after the election. It looks like I’ll only be traveling towards the end of my two week Christmas break, so I *may* have some time before/around Christmas.

Day 11 August 18
The power went out at about 6:40 a.m., which apparently means we had power for 13 more hours than most folks. I love having a gas stove, I was still able to make eggs for my egg and cheese sandwich I brought for lunch.
Orientation went a lot better today. We went over classroom management strategies and started prepping our rooms. Tomorrow we’ll do lesson plans and work on our rooms more. There are so many work sheets and workbooks and games to go through I don’t even know where to start. I’m just working on making the room organized for now.
I’ve set up my room in preparation of receiving two more two person desks. It looks like I’ll have a 20 person class, but that’s not set in stone. It may be less. I’ve tried to optimize my space, making everyone as comfortable (and out of each other’s reach) as possible, even though we’ll be cramped. I made a lot of progress in the hour and a half we had to work on our rooms, and I laid out all the posters and decorative materials (both my own and what was left my last year’s teachers) so they’ll be more willing to go up on the walls tomorrow.
Beth doesn’t want to split up all the classes after all, but she wants to trade art for science (she’d teach both classes art and I’d teach both science.) I’m thinking about it, and even though she was an art teacher for a few years, I do want to play some with my own art ideas, as well as use some of hers. If she’s uncomfortable with the sciences, I can help her with that.
As with any school I’ve attended, I’m getting acquainted with the cleaning ladies and the security guards. The ladies are really sweet and the guards are also the maintenance crew for our provided housing.
The birds here are illusive, I keep trying to get pictures of them, but they won’t let me get anywhere near enough for even zoom to be effective. It look me about a week to see any outside of the bird park, other than this one species of black songbird. Since then, I’ve seen a few yellow chested or yellow winged birds. There’s one I can hear from the school, but haven’t seen that sounds like the sound affect of jumping from Super Mario World. I find it distracting just because I want to giggle.
I got to open my bank account and fill out insurance paperwork. Unfortunately the system was down still from the power outage and I wasn’t able to deposit money yet. Hopefully tomorrow.
I finally made it to the post office for the first time. As I knew it would be, my package from Lucy C. was waiting for me. A big bag of American candy to use as incentives in class and a bunch of really cool stickers. She used plastic bags to pack the box so things wouldn’t slid around and she didn’t even know it, but plastic bags are awesome to have here (zip locks are even better. We can get them, but they aren’t cheap.) It was pretty awesome, I’m hording them in my room so my roommates can’t use them. We share the ones we get from groceries, but these aren’t from groceries.
I bought too huge mangos, and my best guess is that big mangos are not very good. I cut one the day after and it was still really sour, I thought I should just let the other one ripen up a bit, so a few days later, when I noticed a bit of mold on the outside, I cut it open…still sour. I was not happy. I tried frying it, just because it was a thought and I really didn’t want to have to throw out more mango. The blocks of mango just melted, it was pretty cool. There was still a sourness too it, but the mango-goo was more sugary than it was before. I think it would make a nice sauce for fish or something, maybe pork.
My fan broke, I tried to fix it, but it’s something within the motor, not just something I can clean out. Sierra apparently does not like fans much, and hasn’t used hers since being here, so she let me borrow hers until I can get my fixed/replaced. Her only warning was that if it gets hot enough, she’ll want it back, which is fair.
And, to end the day: Giant Toad. This thing was massive. I just saw him hanging out on our patio area. He was larger than my fist and quick. He was also camera shy, most of my pictures come out blurring, because he was jumping, but a few were okay.

Day 12 August 19
The tutorial on lesson plans was really helpful and we got to watch videos of last year’s teachers teaching classes so we had an idea of how these kids respond, got to see who some one the rambunctious ones were, what methods don’t work, etc.
Today, at orientation, I saw a wild dog stalking around campus. I often see cows and horses at the edge of the fence, which is why they put it up, but today I saw a dog. He was big and thick, which automatically makes him different from the street dogs all over town. His stride and posture were different too but he didn’t look like any kind of coyote or wolf. I’d like to look into what kind of wild dogs might be in the area and if there aren’t any indigenous, maybe it is a street dog that just got smart and went off hunting for itself.
I really think my room is coming together. And I was really excited to get my classroom key and, at long last, my class list. Right now, we’re expecting 20 kids in my room, but the number may drop. Some parents are unsure if they can get the money together with the economy being so rough right now. This year 40% of our students are on scholarship or sponsored, it’s an all time high (it’s only $2,670 to sponsor one child for an entire year. We’re only of the only non-profit bilingual schools in Honduras.)
I really want my room to look nice by Friday afternoon when we have our open house. Parents will be bringing me supplies and meeting me for the first time. I want the kids to see the room and be excited.
I’m pretty nervous about teaching. I think I have enough activities for the first week, which take some of the stress off, but I definitely have more planning to do. Beth and I have decided not to split up the classes and when I found out she had an elephant in her room she very graciously traded with me for my alligator. I’m so much happier.
Now that I have my kids’ names, I’ve started making preparations like names on popsicle sticks for randomly calling on kids during class and picking the days “class helpers.” I need to buy more though so I can give them each two as bathroom passes. It better be an emergency, because once they’ve used those two popsicle sticks, they’re SOL. It’s really strange learning out to become a classroom, elementary school teacher in a week, but I think I’m catching on to what’s expected of me.
The girls came over for yoga again. I’m getting more flexible, slowly, and just take advantage of the opportunity to start doing core workouts, which inspires them to do the same. I cooked them cheesy fries, which were a hit. We’re also throwing a potluck at the house on Friday night. I know what I’m making (cheesy fries, if you didn’t get that.)
I finished my book today. I’m kind of bummed about that. It was really good, I’d been having a hard time putting it down, so I’m glad I finished it. I need to focus on working more. Hopefully, we can start up a book trade among the teachers. A lot of them are readers too. The only other books I have with me are The Giving Tree, The Bible, The Inferno, and The Flexible Giant (it’s about the social nature, body, and mind of elephants.)
Also, construction paper + permanent markers=all you really need to teach third grade. Other things are nice too, but not so needed. I even wrote a letter on in, since I didn’t have any lined paper in my room (writing back to Lucy, though I’ll have to find time to get to the post office to send it.)

Day 13 August 20
My classroom is almost all set up. I brought in my broken fan and the school replaced it by evening=awesome. I spent the day making signs, hanging posters, scrubbing desks and seat, sweeping the floor, organizing papers, reviewing the computer lab, making worksheets for the first day, and showing off my room. I’m pretty proud. I’m trying to act the role of teacher until I can become it. Every time I come up with a teachery idea, I’m very proud. Most of my ideas, or rather, procedures in class, are other people’s ideas that I have stolen. That’s a-okay with me. I don’t mind being a thief of other’s ideas if it means I’ll be a better teacher.
I’ve figured out activities for most of the first week, but have no idea what comes after that. I don’t have text books, or even a schedule yet (I am given a schedule of when me class has Honduran teachers and lunch. From there I figure out when I want to teach what, have computer time, library, etc.) I’d really like to start planning, but all I can do for now is get my room ready for the open house on Friday at 3 and finalize my plans for the first week over the weekend.
After school I went home, and made more signs for the room (simple question set ups for beginning of the year refreshers “How do you say __________? Where is the __________?” I met Sierra and her classroom assistant Ffarah in the park so Ffarah could show us where to find school supplies much more quickly than if we’d been searching on our own. I got more popsicle sticks (bathroom passes!) and we can get Velcro on Saturday, they’re going to San Pedro on Friday.
Afterward, I went grocery shopping. I picked up eggs (without breaking any this time), cheese, milk, mango, and potatoes for making fries for the pot luck on Friday. I then headed to Casa Villamil for internet and relaxing. Work starts late in the morning, but the bus still leaves at 7:30, and I’d like the extra time to work on my room.

Day 14 August 21
I hung my new posters, made up my Classroom rules, created my award chart, decided one of the activities for the kids during the first week would be to create their own cards for the chart, I labeled things in the room, and plan to have an activity where the kids label the rest, trying to recall through an English-less summer what the words for simple classroom items are. Shortly before lunch we got our schedules, which was a huge relief. I could finally start working on lesson plans. The schedule was just when my class had their three Spanish class, recess, and lunch. I fill in when I want to have which subject once I have that information. I got some advice from Beth, who’s taught before, about what classes were good for transitioning, different times of day, etc.
I kept working on my room and finished up everything around 2:15, with the open house to be at 3. I wrote up a big “Welcome to Third Grade!” along with the date and my name. I copied the document I was to have the parents decide on (who would bring what for Día del Niño) and continued working on lesson plans. The sun came beating in around 2:30. That’s the only thing I have left to do, I have curtains, but no way to get them up.
By 3:20 all of the teachers were getting pretty anci. We stood around and chatted until 3:40 when Norma got started with an introductory speech. There were very few parents there, but as it was explained to me: the parents were notified in advance, not the day before the event and this is Honduras. Advanced notice doesn’t help anything, you have to plan things shortly before they are to happen or folks forget.
After the speech I had two parents and no children come to my room. The father of Nilvio, who works at another fairly local bilingual school (he complimented my room!) and the mother of Fernando. I learned a very important lesson: here, they refer to people by their first name, possibly their first and second name, and by their first last name, not their second last name. I had put up all my kids’ names by the “Helper of the Day” elephant with by their first and last last names. I’ll be redoing those this weekend. We also learned that one of my desks is very sharp, the wood does not cover the corners, and it cut Nilvio’s father’s leg. I promised to find something to cover that before Monday, as well.
I got home and cleaned up the house for the pot luck. I cut up about half of my potatoes for making fries and rushed out to meet everyone for a short get together at Twisted Tanya’s. Caroline, as is normal, had met a couple of tourists and these two med students from England had just arrived in town. Copan is the last 4 days of their 2 month travels in CA before going back to school. They came with us to Twisted Tanya’s and were really interesting to talk to.
Abby and I left earlier than most folks to get home and work on cooking before folks arrived. I was in the midst of cooking up my potatoes when the bulk of folks arrived, and apparently everyone had decided to just cook at my house. We had about 10 people in a very cramped kitchen. I was amazed no one got burned. I had to start protecting my fries, because every time I’d turn around with a new batch, they’d be gone.
After about an hour of eating in the house, folks migrated to the roof for a couple drinks and another rooftop fire. It was really relaxed and fun. I think it was a good bonding night. Around 11 the power went out in the whole town, which was really cool to watch from the roof. We watched the stars for a while and I finally spotted Cassiopeia. After a while, Theo brought back the fire, which had died down to just embers. Folks started turning in shortly after that, but a few of us stayed up there until midnight.
When Sierra and I came back in, we discovered that my flashlight, strategically positioned on the stairs, by the door, for the very purpose of power outages, was gone. I was pretty upset, because I had no idea who had taken it, why, or if I would get it back. Sierra was sure it was in the house, but I figured the most likely situation was that someone took it to help them on their way home and it would be returned eventually. I was right-ish. Alan had used it to get home, but was returning later. He wasn’t able to get in the front gate (because Picame was closed, and when they close the front gate to the house is locked) so he climbed up along the door to the balcony and had dropped the flashlight onto the door cover of Picame in the process.