Writing, hiking, building

The last few weeks have been trying. It's just been one of those “when it rains, it pours” times. So, in an effort to not get taken under, I've been trying to keep my focus on the things going well, because there are many.

I haven't really been getting much sleep this week. That's mostly my fault, but the nights I did actually go to bed at a good hour, I was unable to sleep and when I did sleep I dreamed poorly, but yesterday I took a two hour nap and last night I slept for 9 hours. Catching up is upon us.

I know I still have a long way to go with my teaching, but I am worlds better than I was a year ago, and better, even, than I was at the end of last year. Teaching a new class for science is giving me a different perspective too. When they came in, I had to adjust to them, and they've had to adjust to me. This class has a different personality than my class and I find myself having to teach them differently to keep their attention as a whole. This class, however, only has 5 students passing because almost no one turns in my homework. Emily is having similar issues with my class for Math. We've tried expressing that, yes, you do get a grade for this class, but they just don't get motivated. We make them write it down, when they go back to homeroom, I remind them of Math work they have and Emily reminds hers of Science. When they don't bring it in, remind them daily for a week, sometimes a few will bring it in then. I fear that it's going to take quarter grades, a lot of parent-teacher conferences, and about 15 science recuperation tests for anything to really change. But, if if it works, then I'll take it. I should probably just prepare a statement in Spanish to share with each parents I need to meet with about Science. The kids also had a chance to make up their quiz grades, and most did not.

However! For the first time in my teaching career, I gave a test that actually appears to have grades that completely reflect the student's understanding. The kids who get it, got good grades, the kids who don't get it and don't try, got very poor grades, and the kids who struggle, but work hard, got decent grades. Which, I can and will also share with the parents when it's meeting time.

I've also really been missing writing recently. I've been trying to get some of my old writing buddies to edit some of my work, but it's slow as they have no motivation to get it done and have other lives going
on. Plus, I just don't have that much to give because I haven't been writing much.

I found a word generator, that gives you 60 seconds to write the first things that come to mind, and I've started doing that a couple times a day. I'm also going back through my old notebooks where I wrote down ideas that never came to anything and looking up journals online to submit to/read their works. Kat and Emily are fiction writers, and Emily actually started a website for free expression concerning
domestic violence. She's printing an issue and is still working on it from here and I've volunteered my services since I worked in editing for two years at the Dos Passos Review and I miss it. Even though we're different genres, we've started playing with the idea of starting a mini-workshop here. I think that'd be great.

I've really gotten into stumbleupon.com and have spent the last couple of days just going through the categories “writing” and “poetry.” I've been reading more, writing more, and saving journals that I think I might like, or other tools (like a cliché finder, though it only does word-for-word cliches, not whole images, but that's okay).

I've also been hiking a lot recently. Yesterday a few of us went up searching for illusive waterfalls that we never found, but we did learn a little more about the flora and got to stretch the legs. Plus, Kat and I were able to geek out of the obsidian sprinkled road we were walking on. We just walked really slowly and picked up all the pieces we could find. Some were very clearly a part of tools, and the others are just pretty. We're thinking about going back up tomorrow and taking it more slowly.

I think, sometimes if you're missing something, you need to build it where you are. The tools are here.

A Random Mix, Ending on a Serious Note

Fun Facts:
*It's the tail end of the rainy season and I haven't bothered to replace my lost umbrella since I got here
*Fly bites lend to interesting results
*I'm finally breaking out of my Spanish-nervous-shell

Things I've been considering:

~I have a tv this year, and some of the shows are in Spanish, but there are a few channels that are almost exclusively English with Spanish Subtitles. When I watch these channels, I always read the subtitles. For a while, I was coming to the conclusion that Spanish isn't as dynamic as English. Subtleties to the language were being lost in translation. Otherwise, the translations were good. I couldn't figure why they would leave out the equivalent phrases unless they didn't exist. It's recently occurred to me that there are many different “Spanishes.” Guatemalan-Spanish is different from Honduran-Spanish, is different from Spain-Spanish, is different from Ecuadorian-Spanish. So, I'm now taking comfort in that the subtitles probably use the most direct and simple form of what is being said so it can be understood by a broader audience instead of choosing the colloquialisms that may only work for a couple of countries.

~I love taking pictures. I love the act of taking pictures. I love cropping them down to just capture the best parts of the scene. I have really enjoyed playing with space and light in my pictures. Feel free to give me tips!

~Probably the most important is: No sex ed leads to absolutely incredible rumors and beliefs among the students. Things you or I wouldn't even consider.

In a sixth grade classroom discussion, HIV/AIDS came up and the teacher was quickly informed that men, or boys, cannot get HIV. Every student in the room believed it was true.

The seventh grader boys, during their library time, all gather around the book called “Where Babies Come From” but refuse to check it out because they don't want anyone else to know they are curious.

There's a lot of controversy about how sex ed is taught, or what it should entail. In this conservative society, it always been strongly suggested to me that I just avoid all topics that could lead to those topics (though, I do teach younger children, but they are getting old enough to start being very curious.) But nothing is not good enough. It never occurred to be how little is understood if no one at school OR home will talk about it. It is not okay.

The teachers have begun to get very concerned about the lack of sex ed. With so little understanding of how things work that an entire class can believe that males cannot contract HIV, the consequences have the potential to be horrible. We've started to push the administration to allow a sex ed class, starting in 6th grade and continuing into secondary. Someone needs to teach these kids the facts of live, or at least, the consequences.

Three Day Weekend

This weekend had another hike up to Yanatios to see Dona Lucas. This time with 4 new teachers. We told her that we would be back up in 3 weeks. Hopefully that will work out. I find it incredibly refreshing to go up there.

Sunday, we went on a horse tour up to another aldea for Sarah Harrington's 30th birthday. This was a couple of first for me. I haven't been on a horse tour and I haven't been to this aldea. The only downside was that my camera died within 5 minutes of us starting out.

When I first got on my horse, I was worthless. My horse only moved when the guide, Enrique, told it to. Every time Enrique was away helping someone else, my horse, Lito, would stop or slow down again. I got to chat with Enrique a bit in Spanish, which was fun. He asked if we knew any songs, but I don't know any sing-alongs in Spanish.

On the way back down, I was good at directing my horse, and having him listen, and slowing him down (since it was downhill). Enrique was adamant about the importance of going slow on the downhill, especially for those of us who hadn't known what we were doing when we got started. When we got back to flat, we started testing going faster. After I'd been experimenting
some, and even galloped a few steps, he asked if I wanted to gallop again and I did and we went a little ways like that. It was a lot of fun. The whole extravaganza was less than $10.

Enrique also says they're going to be starting up a school for riding in November. He hasn't worked out logistics or pricing, but he'll come up to Mayatan to talk to us about it later in October. I can see
being interesting and so are 4 or 5 other teachers. It might actually be cheap enough here for it to be worth it to me, but we'll see.

Staycation!

So, a few things have been going on lately. We had our first 4 day weekend. Almost all of the teachers went traveling around for our Independence/Teacher's day vacation. They took off Wednesday after the Independence Day parade and trickled back in Saturday and Sunday. There were mixed reviews of the vacations, but they all had stories to tell.

Kat, Lauren, and I felt a tightness on the ol' wallet and sprang for a Staycation. I was also house/dog-sitting for a missionary family that's back in the States for a few weeks. The main house/dog-sitter wanted a mini vacation too, so I subbed in for her. The house had internet, is about half a block downhill from my house, and has a very active golden retriever puppy.

Out big outing was on Friday when we walked and hitched up to the hot springs. We gave ourselves a kind of spa day and then hitched back down to town. It was a blast. Otherwise, I mostly cleaned, did laundry, or hung around in the other house. I did not do most (any) of the school work I intended to do, but I made up for it later this week.

The school week had two notable events. The first was when I learned and had the pleasure of informing one of my brightest students, who was previously being paid for by the Mayatan Foundation, which will only carry her to 6th grade, that a woman in the United States has decided to sponsor her through secondary. The look on her face was pure joy. She's the full package too. Sometimes we have stories of heart-break when a sponsor pours time and money into a student, but because of social pressures they drop out of school and get married. Elvira is smart, ambitious, and she has the familial support to go all the way. If her sponsor decides to take her through Colegio, which are the last high school years, Elvira could go college bond, easily.

The second, is the school came down with a widespread virus. Thursday night, around midnight for most of us, about 5 teachers found themselves ill. At school, 3 more came down with it, and a host of students too. That was less than exciting. Luckily, it was short lived.

Yesterday I hiked up to Yanitios with Christina and Kyle. It took us about an hour and a half to get there and on the way we saw the most incredible, huge, hairy caterpillar. I geeked out over it a tad bit. Once we did get there, both Napoleon and Dona Lucas greeted us and brought us 2 oranges each. We ground corn, then ground it more, then patted out tortillas, and cooked them. We ate a huge meal of beans with ground roasted squash seeds and tortillas. Then we explored around. Napoleon gave us nancies from a tree and took us down to where they grow sugar cane where we stood around, talking, and sucking on sugar cane. When we came back up to the house and Dona Lucas got clay so she could teach us to make whatever we chose from her pottery wall. I made a little serving dish and the others made bowls. Before we left, she gave us each a whiskil, we bought some pottery and paid her for the food. We hiked back down, stopping again at the caterpillar, who had finished his leaf and moved on to another one, and had pineapple smoothies at their house.

Dia del Nino

Friday was Dia del Nino at the school. We went to school an hour late, left at 11, and just played games and partied.

As per usual, the school was not on the ball. We were supposed to arrive at 7:30 to set up our stations and get the rooms ready for the party. However, none of the administration was here at that time. By 7:55 we were still waiting on the woman who had the maps of where the stations were, so no one knew WHERE to set up, I was still waiting on the woman who had my supplies (I was in charge of sack racing, and I had no sacks), and the woman with the copies for the students to get checked off when they went to each station was not there. Fifteen minutes later, stalling with a class of crazed, out of uniform students, we finally got everything we needed (15 minutes is a long time when you have nothing to do with them!) and sent the kids off and went to set up the stations, a bit after the fact.

I was in a high energy station, in which I was running around, helping the kids, and yelling instructions. I got to wear a silly hat one of my students brought me, because he didn't want it after making it at the hat making station, and the younger students ate it all up. For each race, I gave sticker to the winner and if it was anywhere near close, I called a tie. It was a lot of fun, but it was exhausting. I finally had to send one 1st grader away because he won 7 times and I wanted some other kids to get a chance to play.

After the events were done, the kids came back to the room, which was decorated while I was away by parents, and we gave our Secret Friend gifts. My secret friend was Luis, and I got him a chocolate and a toy truck. I was Fernando's secret friend and he got be a new giraffe mug and a bobble head cat. It took up most of our party, which was good. We still had plenty of time for our three pinatas, pizza, and cupcakes. My kids were surprisingly well behaved during pinata time, until the pinatas burst open, but that's excpected.

Emily and I had our first big moment of teamwork, when one of her students confessed to not bringing in a gift for her secret friend. Her secret friend is a special boy who already has a number of problems at home, so we didn't want him to know she hadn't bothered to get himsomething. We quickly went through out classrooms and got him a page of stickers, a box of markers, a grizzley bear bookmark, and a dinosour. We wrapped it in tissue paper and used airplane stickers ro seal it. At the end of the day, he told Emily that this was the best party he'd ever been to, so we assume he doesn't know, or if he does, he's not too bothered. (This is a boy who was born to a cleaning lady, adopted by his birth mother's employers, never wanted by his adopted father, who is a rich man, but will not pay for anything because he already has kids and treats our student like a chore.)

* * *

On Sunday, I went to the library because Norma Murcia had invited me to go to Los Sepulturas with a few folks from the library for a lunch. This was my understanding of it in advance, anyway. When I got there, more details began to unfold, as more people arrived, including Tiffany and Davean. By the time we had loaded up the truck with bags of clothes, pinatas, and candy, I still was sure what was going on. When we drove past Los Sepulturas (another part of the Mayan ruins, that I actually haven't been to yet), to the next dirt road, drove down it and were greeted by a host of children from the nearby villiage, I began to get a better idea of what was going on.

We parked the truck and let the kids help us carry all of the supplies we brought. We crossed a wooden hanging bridge, with several repaired spots, that swayed as we walked. We continued to walk through a large grass field with old drying barns for tobacco, that are now used as chicken houses. I was dressed as though I'd be walking a firm trail, not through puddles and in ankle deep mud.

We called all the kids down from the villiage. We set up the pinatas, played games, and read them books. We gave out cookies and coca-cola. At first we gave out 3 cookies to each child, but there was plenty left over, so I then gave them to the mothers who were around and to children who looked at me with any amount of longing. Some of them were just hungry.

Before we left, we gave each child a bag of candies and an article of clothing that would fit. There were left overs of the clothes, so we kept handing them out, but some of the girls, especially the older ones, and some of the mothers were very pushy. It was hard to blame them, there were two early girls, budding into puberty who wanted all the cute clothes. It was interesting, and probably good for me to see, that it's not just in our culture of excess that teenage girls want more and want to be as pretty as possible. They got fairly grabby by the end, and it was hard to make sure that the more timid kids also got their share of the clothes.

After we'd given it all away, we picked up all the trash, left it in a bag, packed up the rest of our things, walked back through the field and mud, across the bridge, and to the car, where we sat in the back and ate empanadas with cabbage. We then drove back to town.

Finally Settling In

With the first two weeks down, I am amazed at how much easier this is the second time around. I still tired very easily, but I think I am doing a much better job of establishing myself this year and preparing them for what is to come. I also feel like I have control of the class, unlike last year. We practice procedures over and over so that all of my expectations of the class are very clear, last year, I had expectations, but too often they would learn them by not meeting them and that's not okay.

As we've stepped into review, I find myself presenting the information in a much more logical and understandable manner. More of my kids are getting it faster. Between their grown minds and my growth as a teacher, we're moving leaps and bounds faster than last year!

Though, nothing is ever certain, and my class list that was finally complete after the first week, has been changed again for the third week. Silly me, in a blind moment, had written out my kids in my grade book...in ink. Now, I will not be getting the twins when they arrive, I will be getting Sophia because she is new and having problems in the other class. Me getting Sophia had been the original plan, but the mother didn't want to switch her (so by original, I mean original after it was decided switches had to me made) to my class and let Emily get the twins. Now that there are problems, the mom has requested the switch, and the twins still aren't back from the States, so they won't get jerked around.

Speaking of Emily, last night, I went to the bus station at 10 to 6 to meet her. As I walked up, the guards were closing and locking the door. I asked if the station was closed. The man said, “No.” I said, “Then why are you closing the door?” The man said, “We're closing the door.” I stood there a moment, until the man said, “What do you need?” I said, “I'm meeting a friend on the bus.” He said, “The bus will not come until 7 today.” I said, “So, should I wait on the other side?” He said, “No, the bus won't come until 7.”

Around this time Cathy came up and she got the same info I did, but another man told us the bus comes between 6 and 6:30, so just to make sure, we waited around. At about 6:40, a taxi driver came up and said that he had a friend on the bus and the bus was just no leaving San Pedro. It would get in around 9:30. Fantastic. Poor Emily.

I was exhausted, and knew Cathy would pick her up. I told Cathy if she needed anything to call me or stop by the house (because we both knew my phone as been out of sorts for the last two days) and I went home to bed. I simply hoped that Emily made it and I would see her at the park at 7:45 when I met all the teachers to take them to the breakfast at Casa de Cafe, a hotel that always offers the new teachers a free breakfast at the start of the year as a “welcome to town” and a “when you're family and friends visit, they should stay with us!”

She was there and after the breakfast we took off on a quick tour and then went up to the school to hash out some school things. She's taking on Math, I'm taking out Science, and we're taking the other's class first right after recess. So I'll call her kids in and bring them to my room for class, then we'll switch back. We talked a lot about standard problems, parents, and theories of teaching. It's still shaping up to be a good year.

Last Friday, I saw my student, Juan, who didn't make it back to Mayatan this year. It was a tad awkward, but I got a hug out of him, asked him when school started and told him if he needed anything to please let me know. Today, I saw his father and told him the same things.

Ants in the Night

Ants. I get obsessed with the ants here. I even did a presentation at Nature Camp over the summer about ants I've seen here. I had been thinking of writing up an entry on my latest observations: the nocturnal ants of my apartment, when I came across this blog entry:
http://lagringasblogicito.blogspot.com/2010/09/organic-fire-ant-control.html

La Gringa is a blog I've been following for a while. She's an ex-pat in La Ceiba, Honduras who married an Honduran and knows a lot more about the cultural differences and political situations that go on than I do. She's pretty well informed and thought out. Sometimes she writes about obscure things I have no interest in, but generally, I find her blog useful. I love that she wrote about ants.

However, she didn't mention the night ants. They're still in the house when I wake up, and I have to be careful, they stray from their lines frequently and I'm not sure how aggressive or painful they would be. They are large and red, some have huge heads, others have large abdomens, they stop to communicate a lot, but never for long enough for me to get a decent closeup photo. They always leave around 5:30. I don't see them again until a few hours after dark. I have spent the last few mornings trying to get a decent picture of them, but so far it has failed.

They come in and swarm my trashcans for small particles I can't even see and they go under the toilet through a hole. I don't know what's under there, but they like it. I really can't be worried about them, yet, because they are rarely around when I am awake. I may have felt one on my arm one night while sleeping, but I brushed it off and that hasn't happened again. I've never actually seen them in the bedroom. I have noticed an increase in the morning numbers, but hopefully that's because last night's trashcan was just particularly exciting. I've emptied it, so we'll see where we are tomorrow.