Day 50 September 26
Saturday was another day of not really dealing with Will. I woke up and went to Carnita’s where all the bikers were. Cathy and I talked a lot, and Caroline came and went. Around 4 we went to a house outside of Copan, it was beautiful. One of the bands from last night came back to play there. I ended up calling Nilvio’s folks and telling them I wouldn’t make it because I was outside of town, the rain was heavy, and I didn’t know how I’d get back. This was all true, but I was also trying to distract myself as much as possible.
I danced a little, but by nine I was wiped out, and despite the cries of no from these people I’d just met, I headed out. Just before I went, a woman walking by accidentally spilled red wine on my skirt (she was tugged by the owner of the house.) She said if you put white wine on, it’ll come out. So then white wine was thrown on my lap. People kept offering to buy me a new skirt but I just wanted to get home. When I did, I set the skirt to soak and went to bed.
Day 51 September 27
Sunday morning I got up before my alarm and started cleaning up downstairs, which I hadn’t done all weekend. While doing my laundry Will’s death really hit. It was the first time I had thought of it outside of the context of “Everyone in my family is fine.” Which is simply how it had processed for two days. Sunday morning it finally hit as “Will is gone.”
I didn’t want to go to church, but I knew Kathy had been worried about me this weekend and I hate the idea of my students not seeing me there, at this point. I also knew staying in the house would do me no good. But, I didn’t want to go to the “English Worship” after. I thought about it, and knew I really needed to go be with people and finally start talking about it.
Church was over crowded and extra long. It was kind of painful, since I understood none of what was going on. My bench had 3 too many people on it and the back was packed. After communion I stood outside for the last part of mass, just so I could breathe. I ended up talking to a local man who was happy I was teaching at Mayatan.
By the time mass ended, I was half an hour late to the English worship, and this week it was at a house further away. I went on along and they were still in the eating portion of it. Vicki lent me her daily reading Bible, which is also in chronological order. It seems pretty cool.
Once the singing started I had a hard time keeping myself together. I would turn my face away, but everyone was in their own place, so no one noticed til toward the end, and Megan noticed a sniffle. She asked me about it on the walk home (I also got Vicki’s toaster-over, which she was going to throw out.) I told her about my weekend and what was going on. She was very supportive. We’d been trying to make time to get together some time and decided that the evening would be the perfect time. I had been invited to another church service, which Megan would go to after we had dinner, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to.
Tammi also called, asking if I wanted to be with someone for the evening, I told her I’d come over after eating at Megan’s.
I spent the afternoon online, finally reading through all the e-mails and messages I had gotten since Will died. It was hard, but good. I was glad so many people were concerned about making sure I knew. I was in his Facebook profile picture, which is now the picture for his “In Memory” group. It makes me feel closer to everyone going through this at home. Luckily, no one was upstairs at Casa Villamil for several hours, so I was able to be emotional without concern.
Megan, Beth, and I had a meeting for school, which went well. I know my mood was off-putting to Beth, so after I told her what was going on, just so she wouldn’t take it personally.
I went home for a bit and then went to Megan’s for dinner, which was delicious. The conversation was good too. When she went to church, I headed to Tammi’s until about 8:40, when I headed home for bed.
Day 52 September 28
When I woke up, the power was still out. I woke up Sierra and lit a candle for her before hoping in the shower for a brief moment. I was ready half an hour early, and I’m usually the she has to wait on. The walk up was quiet, but I drank coffee when I got in and tried to be all energy with my kids.
I could tell Nilvio was upset with me. I apologized for Saturday night and he responded with a curt “It doesn’t matter,” but it obviously did, and I said, “no it does matter.” I then decided to just tell him that I’d had a hard weekend, I’d had some bad news, and that we’d reschedule. He seemed to do much better after that.
My kids were pretty out of control, and I tried not to lose my cool, but I know I was shorter with them than usual. After lunch, one of my girls came up to me and said, “Miss Sarah, today, I think, you are very very sad.” I told her I was a little, but not at her. I guess I’m not good at hiding things as I had thought, at least not from children, who notice everything.
After school I wandered around from room to room just looking for anyone to be around. The disconnect it very strange. I never thought what it would be like to mourn when no one around you knew the person at all. There’s also a greater lack of reality to it.
I left school as soon as I could manage and got online for my Skype date. Talking to J helped a lot, especially since it was the first time I’d heard his voice since I’d come to Honduras.
I also got to talk to Brendan who is in China for a year. It was almost 7am there and almost 5pm here. Crazy. It was a brief conversation, but a nice one.
Eileen and Michael wanted to come over to the house for showers and Chris wanted to exchange pictures from Guatemala and other computery type things. So, I headed back to the house and had a nice long with Chris.
When he left I went up to bed.
Day 53 September 29
When I got to school, there was a gecko in my candy jar. Possibly there to eat the ants I’ve been dealing with recently? It was pretty cool.
In reading groups with Miss Megan, the kids are practicing reading so they can read to the second grade classes. It was hard to be all energy while listening to them read, I wouldn’t be even if I wasn’t sad. After, Megan asked if I was okay. Apparently letting down my “All energy” guard brings out the tired and sad in me. And some of it is tiredness. I haven’t been sleeping much.
My kids were even more rowdy today. I was very short with them. They also broke my pencil sharpener, which was on my desk and one of the class rules is not to touch things that are on my desk without asking. We had a nice long talk.
There are still improvements, but today I put my grades on the computer, and I’m going to have some unhappy parents. All the advice from folks who have taught here before is to make sure you grade strongly in the first quarter so that later on the parents aren’t so shocked. We’ll see what happens. I have to have my progress reports done by Thursday, and I haven’t done much other than calculate grades for 20 students for 7 classes each (okay, so that look a little while, but thank goodness for the computer! I started out trying to do it by hand, and I don’t even have a calculator.)
I walked home to finish working on my grades. At 5:30 I got ready to go to Nilvio’s house for dinner with the family and a movie. I don’t know how kosher it is—it feels pretty weird to me, but separation of personal and work life is pretty much non-existent here. Both because if you live here, you’re part of the community ( = friend ) and partly because there’s no difference between life and the education of children. It’s always education time.
Naturally, I got lost on my way over. I knew they lived near Caroline and Beth, but I couldn’t even remember which street to go down to get there. I wandered for a bit and called Kelvin, who also lives down that way. As soon as we met up so he could show me the way, Nilvio jumped out of the darkness and darted all around. He was so full of energy.
Kelvin went in to say hi and I apologized for being late. They had also been running late, so it all worked out pretty well. Nilvio was even less capable of sitting still than when he’s in class. He chose “The Vampire Hunter” which is an anime. It was interesting, cheesy in it’s way. I would have been scared of it if I was a kid. We stopped the movie halfway through for dinner, which was amazing.
Frankie, Norma, and I talked about teaching. I received the best compliment I could have gotten from two veteran teachers who have seen me teach/heard about me from their sun/ seen my room set up: they thought I’d been teaching for a few years. They were surprised I was a first year teach (yeah! Fake til I make it!) They also thought I was older and then felt old, but I tried to reassure them that 34 is not old (it’s not. I mean, I have spent the last 4 days saying “He was only 35, he was so young.”)
I got home around 9 and went to bed, but I did feel better for having gone.
Day 54 September 30
Copan had a planned power outage from 7-4:30. I copied all my grades into my grade book from my newly made excel spreadsheet. I was feeling a little sick, and wasn’t up for a whole lot of activity, so I had a worksheet heavy day (followed by a many “I don’t want to hear any talking. Work on this by yourself”s.) After library I had a really (probably the most energy high thing I’ve done this school year) energetic science review. I just got them really pumped up and everything went really smoothly, but then I was back to exhausted.
I stayed after school to be shown what in the high school science room we can check out (the equipment looked great, but I was almost more interested in the activity books.) I then packed up and walked home. At home I did almost all of my progress reports in a few hours and then headed to Casa Villamil for some internet, even though the power was still down.
I researched some education helper websites and caught up on everything I’d missed in the world in two days. After a few hours I got hit with hunger (haven’t had much appetite since Will died, but I have been eating at school which is always well balanced. Also, last night at Frankie and Norma’s.) I said my goodbyes and headed home to make mac and cheese with the food I had left in the house.
I took advantage of being home early and went to bed around 8:30.
Day 55 October 1
Despite going to bed so early, I failed to sleep well. I was up every hour or so. Around 2:30 I finally fell asleep until my alarm went off, two hours later. When I came downstairs, there was a note waiting for me from a student’s mom. Apparently, she goes to the Mormon church, so she knows my neighbors. They showed her my place when she was very concerned because Isaac thought we’d had a test on Wednesday when I had told them the test was another time(I gave them a worksheet I didn’t allow them to work together on, since that usually just means giving each other the answers and I wanted this to be an independent assignment. They kept asking if it was a test because they had to be silent and I said no, but be silent like it’s a test.) When I got to school I told Isaac it had not been a test and I would write his mom and note in his homework notebook.
The first thing I did when I got to school was finish my last 4 progress reports (since I get there an hour before school starts, I have time for things like this) and turn them in with my list or tuorias students. Marisol, being amazing (for you Grainger folks, she is the Lisa of Mayatan.)
In reading stations with Miss Megan we’re practicing reading books so we can read them to the second graders. Today, I was emphasizing emphasis (hehe.) So I was all energy with high pitches in the middle of sentences and excitement where every I could put it. The kids loved it and it was a lot of fun for me too.
I’ve been taking advantage of my kids’ kindness all week, in that, I know if I let them draw pictures and make art when they are done with their work they will give it to me. It’s the perfect pick-me-up during a hard week, though. I’ve posted pictures of the art in my bedroom, all with notes of love and a new addition: You are a good teacher. I’ll take it.
Today we had two tests, spelling like we do every week, and Science. Science was not so good. I had several kids get perfect scores or only missed one, but half the class got a 50% or lower. That’s not good. I don’t know what else to do, and it seems as though second grade and fourth grade are having the same problems I am with Math and Science. I have to figure out something, because I can’t fail half of my class.
At the end of the day, I passed out their progress reports (which Marisol had translated for them, an amazing woman) and tutorias (tutoring) slips for those who start tutorias next week. I told them that any student who brings back the forms signed on Monday will get extra credit in their class with the lowest grade. I don’t know if that meant much to them, but hopefully it’ll be an incentive.
After school I went to the bank with Tammi (finally got my pay!) and then we went grocery shopping. While we were out we stopped by my student’s house. She used to tutor Isaac, but with the trip to Guatemala and the broken rib, she hadn’t been in a few weeks. This is also the same student who came to my house last night with his mom because they were concerned about the “math test.” She had gotten my broken Spanish note about what had happened and understood the situation, so that was all fine. We agreed that it made more sense for me to tutor Isaac anyway and that I would come Tuesdays and Thursdays at 4, starting next week. I hope to start Spanish lessons again next week too.
I went home and started cleaning. I hadn’t done much of that during the last week. I put away my food and started to pick up my room. I didn’t get much done when Abby invited me to Twisted Tanya’s for an end of the week relaxer. I went, and was glad I did, because Judy was there. Judy, who I hadn’t seen at Picame recently, was let go because business is just too slow. There were no hard feelings, but she realized how much she doesn’t like this town when she has no work. She’s been here for 20 years, and had been thinking of going back to the states when they asked her to work at Picame to help cover for Jessica while she was in Holland. Judy said she wasn’t sure when she was going to go back, but she promised to give us plenty of warning so we could throw her a proper goodbye. Who am I supposed to watch the Superbowl with now?
When I checked out, the woman working wasn’t sure how much ‘bread and water’ (I had gotten this huge bread appetizer, which was delicious and filling, with sauce and cheese and butter) cost, since Tanya wasn’t there, so she charged me 30 lemps but told me she might charge me more next time. I was so okay with that, 30 lemps is about a buck fifty.
Everyone else was heading out to a bar, but I really wanted to get home and finish my cleaning and I was really tired. When I walked by the Picame door, I remembered that Ann and her family were getting dinner at Picame at 7 (it was 7:10 and they were there.) She had invited us, so I went in and sat with them. I got a smoothie for desert and enjoyed the conversation.
I got inside to continue my cleaning, and did so pretty lazily as Sierra and Chris played guitar and sang songs. It was a nice background. I’d gotten in from Picame around 8:30, but was up talking, cleaning, and organizing until shortly before midnight. They were planning to stay up until 2 when they were catching a bus to Gualemala for a 24 hour trip to Antigua. I was not about having another busy weekend. I was looking forward to some lazy time off and catching up on sleep.
Day 56 October 2
I slept in until 10:30. It was the latest, I think, that I’ve slept in since I got here. I woke up at 5 when my alarm went off, but went back to sleep immediately. I woke up a few more times, but never for more than 5 minutes. It felt amazing. When I finally did get out of bed, I (and I know this will shock you considering my trend of late) started cleaning. I spent my morning scrubbing, sweeping, doing laundry, reorganizing, and cooking. It was great. I felt so good. When I was done, I took a long hot shower (I was lucky that on this day of good cleaning, the water was hot in the shower.) I even scrubbed down the shower while I was there.
During my cleaning spree, I was surprised to find Sierra, who was supposed to be in Gualemala, in the house. They caught their ride to the border at 2, but two things happened: 1) Caroline forgot her passport and 2) the border didn’t open until 6 in the morning and their connecting bus left at 5. They came on back and went to sleep.
At about 1, I was content with the cleanliness of my house and headed to the internet with some school work in hand. I stayed there until Chris called, wanting to make dinner over at the house.
We made a great pasta with many vegetables and cheese (from the states!) and all sorts of great stuff. We sat up on the roof and ate while Allan and Abby were cooking, which means they had great music playing. It was fun and very philosophical. His girlfriend is teaching at another school in Honduras between here and San Pedro, so we get to talk about her a lot, which is nice to hear too.
At about 9:30 he decided to head home and I went to bed, ready to get up for waterfall adventures with Caroline and who knows who else in the morning.
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