Barking Mad

It’s  4:30 am on a Sunday and I can’t sleep because the neighbor’s dog won’t shut up. I swear I am going to make myself a new fur rug for my room (once I’ve bleached it of course).

I don’t know where the time is going. The weeks are just going by in a blur of insanity and screaming children. Actually it’s not the kids screaming, it’s me. Tuesday night (I think it was Tuesday) a bunch of kids were throwing rocks at our house and I just lost it. I have to deal with disrespectful snotty kids all day, I was tired, and I was not going to take it in my own home. I charged out the front door, red in the face, screaming at the little monsters at the top of my lungs. The result was the kids vanishing in a VERY satisfying and somewhat comical dust cloud. Turns out that one of the kids is in Jeff’s class, and I seem to have made quite an impression on them.

Of course Wednesday night they were back, but by then I was feeling much more rational. I knew screaming at them again would just be what they wanted this time, and I had no intention of humoring them. I was about to go out and talk to them, but Jeff beat me to the punch. He thought that the “good cop, bad cop” routine would be a good thing to try. He was right, we haven’t had a problem since.

Well, I should say we haven’t had a problem since at the house. My students reached yet another all-time low this week, with at least three of the teachers at the school almost losing it with the students (myself included). After the little beasts have gone home, the general sentiment is “what’s the point in lesson planning when I spend 95% of the class just trying to get the kids to sit down and listen.”

Our mood was not improved by the week before last when we had a “teaching development” program, where a bunch of teachers from California came down to teach us about teaching. This was a waste of time on two fronts. First, we ended the school day early for us to go to the class, and the kids, who are rowdy under normal conditions, became uncontrollable when they found out that they were getting an early release. It would have been more productive to just cancel school for the week. Second, the teachers had NO IDEA what we needed. Oh I’m sure that all the stuff about lesson planning and group learning would be very useful in an American classroom, but here it was about as useful to us as a cleaning the kitchen with sugar (imagine the size of THOSE cockroaches!) Honestly, most of what they talked about I was already from the orientation at the beginning of the school year, and I don’t have a degree in this. The volunteers with actual teaching experience had it even worse.

TO top it off, the head of the CA group was abrasive, rude, demeaning, and had NO sense of humor. Apparently the dislike was mutual, as she thought we were inconsiderate and racist (honestly, you say “meester” once in class, and you’re pegged as a white supremacist.)

I could go on, but if I do this post will be ten pages long. I’ll spare the gory details for any who care to listen when I get back.

On a lighter note, I faced up to my childhood fear of beng hit in the head with fast moving objects on Thursday! We had our Friday futbol (soccer) game a day early as Friday was a national holiday (yes, another one). At one point the ball flew high into the air and started coming down strait at me. Time suddenly slowed down as I watched that black and white sphere slowly grow larger in my field of vision. “This is it” I thought “time to man up, face the music, take one for the team. You can do Andrew, you can OW!” One concussion later I was wearing a very goofy grin and having a trouble walking strait, but at least I headed the ball in the right direction!

I shall end this post with another installment of “Iron Chef: Honduras”. Today’s secret ingredient, frijoles!

Re-fried red beans are a staple protein in Honduras, and are much tastier than the yellow-brown ones we get in the states. I don’t know if it’s the different bacteria down here or what, but they also don’t have quite the same…um…“effect” as re-fried beans in the US.

Frijoles are an essential ingredient in baleadas, a popular dish in Honduras (it may be the national dish for all I know). You wrap a tortilla with frijoles, scrambled egg, sliced avocado, cheese, and mantequilla (I think that’s how you spell it) which is a sort of cross between cheese and sour cream. The best baleadas are the ones where the tortillas and frijoles are home-made. I intend to track down the recipe for both before I leave.

Well, the dog seems to FINALLY shut up, so I’m gonna crash. Let’s hope this week proves better than the last two…an unlikely even what with a rather sore topic rapidly approaching. Halloween.

More on that later.

Iron Chef Honduras: Grittin' your teeth

So I survived the week, and the weekend for that matter. Some of the other volunteers and I hiked up a nearby mountain called Boqueron. Beautiful views, but I am a bit sore today. We have Monday off on account of it being Columbus Day (a Honduran national holiday) so I got to sleep in. Thankfully no one set off fireworks at 3 am to celebrate this time.

The week to come should be relatively uneventful as we have half days in order to receive training from a group of teachers coming in from California. I hope they know something about uphill battles and how to avoid total mental breakdown in the classroom.

Anyhow, I thought I would take this opportunity to bring you a few posts I would like to call “Iron Chef: Honduras”. Here I will attempt to take you through the gastronomical side of my adventures, and the colorful local cuisine! I may even finally stop being lazy and try to post a few photos (this entails using another computer, as mine apparently can’t handle the resolution on my new camera), and maybe use it as an excuse to eat out a bit.

Today’s special ingredient is…DIRT!

That’s right. A major part of every diet down here, either from lack of running water or not-entirely-clean cooking surfaces (you try to keep all the dust out of the kitchen!) you are guaranteed to have your daily mineral requirement with every meal. Currently you will receive all the minerals you need with each breath, as we have not had rain in over a week and most of the nearby roads are not paved. You literally leave your house in the morning, and by the time you get home anything left in the common room is covered in a fine layer of brown dust. As several of our window slats (glass panes which open in the same way as wooden shutters) we cannot actually stop the constant insurgence of grime. I swear I washed the table on Saturday and already you can draw a smiley face on it with your finger.

I find that dust pairs best with Plata, a brand of cheap rum you can buy in most places in Honduras. The Plata masks the flavor of the dust, and with enough of it you forget that all the dust in your mouth makes it feel like you haven’t brushed your teeth in three days.

Explosions!!!

This has been a VERY strange week…and its only Wednesday!

I started off the week thinking I was going to die, generally not the best foot to start out the week on. At 3:30am I was awakened by the sound of distant gunfire. This in and of itself is not so strange, in fact it’s a common occurrence, but this one was quickly followed by a very loud BANG. This sounded more like an explosion than gunfire, and was much closer to the house than the gunfire. The explosions and gunfire continued intermittently for the next three hours, sometimes closer, sometimes further away. Needless to say I was terrified. I lay in bed, certain that at any moment I would here the whistle of an incoming mortar before abruptly exploding. It really sounded like The Revolution was here.

Around 5, spurred on by a particularly close and violent bang, Jeff, Lacey, and myself emerged from our respective rooms simultaneously, all of us looking quite disheveled. It seemed we had all had similar mornings, and as another burst of something sounded (we all thought it was automatic gunfire), we all crouched down to duck and cover.

We finally found out that all the noise was in fact fireworks and celebratory gunfire, being let off at the hospital which is at the end of our street. Apparently it was Dia de San Francisco (the Day of Saint Francis) after whom the hospital is named, and thus a special day for them to recognize. Ironically, San Francisco is the patron saint of living things, peace, harmony, and cute little fuzzy creatures. So why on earth did they celebrate by making loud explosions and firing guns at THREE IN THE MORNING?!?

Tuesday found my blood pressure rising for another reason. After completely failing to clean the activities room on Monday, class 8A were to be punished during my Art class by having to clean all the school hallways. Not only did they take this to be an opportunity to visit their friends in other classes, but also to join the groundskeeper in chopping down trees with a machete. As I ran back and forth trying to make them work, three of the boys found their way onto the school roof. I even found several students who had helped to clean the previous day and were thus exempt from cleaning, helping to sweep the halls. When questioned as to why they were out here sweeping rather than in the classroom working on their art project, they responded that they would rather sweep than be in my art class.

To round out the day, two of the girls in my next class asked me if I was on a diet because I was fat.

I wish I HAD been blown up on Monday morning.

So Wednesday is finally here, and I have made it over the crest of the mountain that is my week. It can only go downhill from here. I think the apocalypse may be upon us because 7A, my little “angels”, decided to get out their pitchforks and horns today, while the dreaded 8B got through my activities class, not just working, but WANTING to work!

7A decided that today was not a good day for science, despite the fact that I actually had a lesson plan this time. They were just as monstrous in activities, and even Nemesis was giving me attitude. Talk in the teacher’s lounge has it that Nemesis has a new boyfriend, and he is being a bad influenced on her. I know this boy. He is in 8B. I hate him. He is that terrifying and infuriating combination of very smart, doesn’t care about school, and MAJOR attitude. Why do girls always go for he bad boys?

Meanwhile I am now afraid to turn my back on 8B in activities. Not because of what they might do to each other with the hot glue gun, but what they might create while using it. We are doing re-cycled material projects (a.k.a. cheap materials projects), and I swear every time I look the other way some random collection of bottles and cans is transformed into a new, imaginative sculpture or device. Even Dunia was working! The kids were so into their work the classroom was almost quiet; an eerie, unnatural sound in that class. One kid made a helicopter, another a sort of air cannon our of half a bottle and a balloon. A group of three girls are building a small floating island (no, I am not joking, they really are building a model island), and Dunia came up to me at the end of class wielding a Dalek! I didn’t even know they got Dr. Who down here.

Cleanup was a problem, not because they wanted to just leave, but because they wouldn’t STOP working! I had to chase students out of the classroom after the bell had rung. I’m afraid of what they’ll produce when we have a full 80 minutes instead of the 40 we had today.

Maybe I will get blown up this week after all?

Join in the adventure!

So for all of you interested in coming down to visit the beautiful country of Honduras, here are some dates that would be good. Although I do not have many three day weekends (unless you want to make a last minute trip at the end of the month…I have the 22^nd off) there are a few weeks where I don’t have classes. These are the weeks at the end of each quarter, during which we have half-days for the kids to take exams. Give me enough for warning, and I should be able to ask for my History and Science Exams to be early (or late) in the week, leaving me with free time to show you around (also, Maki is interviewing a potential science teacher on Monday, so let’s keep our fingers crossed that I don’t have to teach it for much longer!) These weeks are as follows:

January 17-21

March 21-25

June 6-10

June is of course our final exams. I’m thinking (time and money permitting) of going back to Utila after the school year ends, and then flying home from La Ceiba (for more on these places see earlier posts). Once you get to Utila, things are pretty inexpensive (by US standards), so if anyone wants to come down, scuba dive, or just listen to Evelyn’s stories let me know!

There is also a long break around Easter starting April 16^th. There won’t be classes again until the 26^th or 27^th, so this is an excellent time to come down to Central America. I say Central America and not Honduras because I have to leave the country for at least four days due to my visa being renewed. Many of the volunteers are going to Costa Rica, and I myself am thinking of seeing a bit more of down here rather than returning to the US for the week. This would be a fantastic time to have an adventure/vacation (hint hint Mum and Dad).