Bitter Ends and New Beginnings

It’s barely a week into the second quarter, and I can already feel some major changes setting in. We have a new schedule (I now have World History three times a week for 40 minutes) which is proving to be a MUCH better arrangement. The weather has been beautiful, I have some great ideas for my classes, and La Colonia (the fancy grocery store in town) has frozen turkeys! This means we don’t have to go all the way to the capital city (a three hour ride by bus) to get our Thanksgiving meal (which we are having on Sunday for some reason).

 I must admit to being a little put out about having Thanksgiving on a Sunday. It means that I have to worry about being ready to get up early and tech the next day, which I feel will severely detract from the whole food-coma experience. There seems to have been some sort of dispute about when and where the great feeding was to take place, so I can only assume that this is the best arrangement for all concerned, and be content with getting a Thanksgiving at all. Goodness knows there are bigger things to worry about…

…for instance the imminent departure of our dear Megan, a fellow volunteer who works in the organizations office. She is heading home for a shoulder operation, and makes her the second volunteer to leave us (the first I have not blogged about due to the private nature of their departure, which I have no intension of blaring out all over the internet.) Tonight we are getting together to say goodbye, which is a great excuse to eat at the taco stand near Megan’s house (which is delicious…the tacos, not her house.)

On the matter of school things are getting…interesting. The parent teacher conferences last weekend went pretty well all things considered (exactly 50% of the kids parents showed up, which is a marked improvement over the beginning of the year.) Most of them were really concerned about their kid’s performances, many of which were abysmal. I am fairly certain that most of the parents had no idea how their children were doing, due almost entirely to the fact that the kids are in the habit of lying through their teeth about their homework (that will soon be changing as we are implementing school wide homework journals, which have to be signed by both the teachers and the parents.)

Meanwhile, in the classrooms, the battle between good and evil is reaching high school soap-opera levels of intensity! We have our hopefuls and near hopeless causes, good girls gone bad, bad boys making a turn around, bullies, budding artists, and enough drama to choke a Honduran street dog (which can, and will, eat ANYTHING!)! A few kids may soon be leaving the cast of our little theatre, while at the same time we are greeting a few new faces.

The biggest change though, for me at least, has been in me. Today on the bus ride to school, I looked up from my morning reading (“Brimstone” by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child) and saw the mountains basking in the sun, draped in the last vestiges of mist. It was truly breathtaking, and I thought “that is what I came down here to see.” But as soon as I thought this, another image popped into my head. The day before, seeing my students in 8A actually getting excited about their research topics in World History. And the way their faces lit up when I showed them how to draw a cube in perspective, and they felt that amazing sense of accomplishment when the little box took shape on the page as if by magic. I remember that feeling back when I was first learning how to draw. And those feelings, that excitement for learning something new; it was MY ideas that gave it to them, my teaching that helped them to achieve that goal.

The mountains didn’t seem quite so spectacular anymore.