Org. Studies Doesn't Exist in Honduras

I still don’t know what I am teaching. It is kind of becoming a joke between the other English teachers and me that we probably won’t find out until our first day of school. (Ben, remember when I told you I wouldn’t put that past them…?) They have Friday and Monday left to tell us, so we shall see. It is just difficult for me to understand what the heck they were doing all summer. I mean, I know there is a lot of work involved in running a school, but you would think that scheduling might be a top priority? Maybe? Just a little bit? Come on now.

For the past few days we have been picked up at 8:00am, which really means 8:30am or 9:00am, by Triny and she has taken us to school. The first day we went over some rules and regulations for the teachers. Latin America is strange…I guess not strange, because I suppose we are strange to them, but different in that they tend to be, what I like to call “formally inefficient” whereas we are “informally efficient.” For example, we are very concerned with getting things completed on time, having effective schedules of events that are executed like clock work. Here they don’t really understand this concept. To illustrate, today and yesterday we sat in the teachers lounge for literally four or five hours and maybe did a half hour of work, which was copying classroom rules and famous quotes onto big pieces of paper. The rest of the time we hung out and talked. In the States we would never have people sitting idly by doing nothing and getting paid for it! I must say, as an Organizational Studies major this can be quite a hard bandwagon to jump on. The U.S. stresses quality content over quality exterior. We want to be smooth running but don’t care as much about our messy handwriting, whereas a student here will spend hours making his or her homework look immaculate while the answers are all incorrect. The inefficiency could drive a person crazy, but I suppose to them they are being efficient…much more so than most of the schools in the country. Just something I will have to get used to I guess. At least I don’t have to worry about being super on time for things…

The main part of the school. Each grade has its own classroom and the teachers, not the students move around for each period. (Count 'em: NINE periods, 40 minutes each)

Sitting around in the teacher's lounge doing nothing :) On the table you can see my beautifully decorated 'quotes signs' including gems from Einstein, Mother Theresa, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ghandi. Yeah...you know how we do.

One good thing about not having anything to do at school is that we have befriended two English teachers, Sid and Hamlet (yes, like Shakespeare!), brothers from Santa Rosa. They speak perfect English (and Spanish, obvi) and I am so glad we have become friends with them. They help us with our Spanish for one thing, and yesterday Hamlet took us around Santa Rosa helping us shop for cell phones and a wireless router, you know, the essentials of living in a 3rd world country. We also went to this little café where Abby and John had some legit Honduran coffee and I had limonada con soda, which is basically like a frozen lemonade slushy…if that even exists? The café was really cute, half indoor, half outdoor, free wifi! and we saw, count ‘em FOUR GRINGOS there! Once the fourth one came we knew we had to leave because the ratio was getting far too much in our favor. But I really want to go back, and I am definitely going to take any of you who visit me there, so get excited.

John and Abby (house/teachermates) at the Ten Nepal Cafe. See the beautiful courtyard in the background.

Later that night, Hamlet took us to “la feria” or “the fair.” I guess August is their “fair month” so every night there are fireworks and music all around town. We even had a marching band come down our street last night carrying an altar of Santa Rosa de Lima, the original namesake of the city. (I think…I could be remembering this all incorrectly, but just go with it.) The fair was so cool though! A bunch of booths with really really good, greasy food (pulpusas, tacos, empanadas, etc), candies, toys, and other decorations- maracas and piñatas included! Behind the main set up of the fair Hamlet led us to un partido de futbolito that was going on. Basically anywhere there is a mass gathering of people there is a futbol game happening somewhere. I wish I could play, but goodness knows those guys would run circles around me. But! I am a gringa girl, so maybe they’d let me play anyway :). As we were walking home we stumbled upon this stage set up in el centro (downtown) where people were competing for prizes by dancing or singing or whatever. We seemed to have missed most of it, but right as we got there they brought these two little boys on stage who danced impromptu to some sweet Latin beats and OMG was it hilarious. These boys, no older than five or six were dancing these sexy moves and it was so funny slash borderline inappropriate. Fortunately for the little boys they both won the applause vote because I have a feeling if a tie did not occur they would have had redo dance offs all night long.

Me, Hamlet, and Abby at la fería (I just learned how to do accents on a mac!)

Small child dancing bootyliciously.

Right now it is raining mighty hard and I am just chilling in the house. We can’t get our freakin wireless to work, but lucky me I have the cable hook up in my room so I can go on all I want…holllaaaaa. I have the hookup, LITERALLY. Bah, I’m so funny. I’m loving your guys’ comments…keep them coming. It’s nice to know that someone other than my mom is reading this. Not that my momma ain’t cool.

Missing you all, loving you lots. Muchos besos de Honduras!