Here's to Disease and Colonialism!

Who doesn’t love to celebrate disease and pillaging native civilizations? The U.S. doesn’t celebrate Columbus Day as openly as they used to, I think it stopped being a school holiday for me in about 5th grade. Despite the U.S.’s failing to recognize the great achievements of Christopher Columbus and his men, the wondrous killing of native tribes, raping of women, bringing in white man diseases, and discovering that the world is not in fact flat, Honduras still commemorates it in full force. As Abby said, “If there is anyone who shouldn’t be celebrating it, it should be Central Americans. He pillaged and killed your people first!” Valid point my friend. However, we both agreed, “When in Rome…”

Dia de la Raza is a very big day on the campus of HEM School and its celebration was somewhat reminiscent of high school homecoming with the addition of lots and lots of really good food. Needless to say, completely up my alley. Each class competes in decorating either a “champa,” for the older students, or a little area outside their classrooms, for the primary grades. AKA Decorating a homecoming float. A champa is a little hut/food stand, which must be decorated using traditional materials.

The finished champas, unfortunately you can't really see 10th grade's in this picture. It's a beaut.

The day before we began decorating, my 10th grade classroom had tons of banana leaves, sticks of bamboo, and palm leaves just chillin there, all collected from the students’ backyards. Banana trees in your backyard? No big. We began decorating on Thursday and as their guide teacher I was obligated to help the 10th graders. Wasn’t much of an obligation as I was continuing to decorate after all of them were pretty much done. Nerd alert. I must say, we made an absolutely STELLAR champa. David, one of my students said I should be an art teacher, it was that good. Flattery will get you everywhere.

Me posing with the 10th grade girls. They are great girls...so glad I get to be their guide teacher...even if they are too cool to smile in this picture.

Some further parallels to high school homecoming are the other events that happened throughout the day. First of all, the students dress up in ropa tradicional, traditional Honduran clothing. AKA Spirit dress up days. Now, it is not like “Pajama Day,” or “Red & Blue Day.” More like, the girls wear these pretty dresses and the boys wear cowboy jeans and plaid shirts, it’s quite precious. Not to mention, there is a prize for the best costume. In addition, a few of the primary grades have mini performances, AKA Skit! “Dad, I have skit today.” Ah the memories. Once again, however, instead of performing “funny” parodies of Charlie’s Angels, they present little skits, dances, and songs relating to Honduran culture…or so I think, I couldn’t really hear anything they were saying. Wah wah Miss Sarah.

The 1st graders performing a traditional dance. Adorable. Or as we say in Spanish, Adorable.

My favorites- the fifth graders. Oh the are just too wonderful for words. I think I am going to video record them one day in class. The crack me up everday and make me feel oh so loved.

Now, the best part about Dia de la Raza is what actually happens inside those champas that I described above. FOOD. Food, food, and more food. The 7th-11th grades all sell different, traditional Honduran foods in their champas, all day long to students, teachers, and parents. Such a delicious learning experience, I highly recommend it.

The 10th graders selling tamales, tojadas de carne, and Copan Dry in their champa

I tried most everything,…tajadas con carne, fried plantains, tamales, ticucos, yuka, horchata, copan dry, limonada in a bag, pastelitos, pupusas… but there was so much, I still left some dishes untouched. My favorites where pastelitos and pupusas. Pastelitos are what many of us would think of as “empandas,” little fried pockets of yummy goodness. Pupusas are these small fried tortillas made with meat. I can’t really describe them but they are basically to die for. The best part is that one of our fellow teachers, Geovany, owns a pupuseria literally half a block from our house. Will I be frequenting there often? To quote Sarah Palin, “you betcha.”

Pastelitos...unfortunately I didn't take pictures of the food. Why? I don't know...but google images does a fine job.

Another google image- Pupusas. My favorite! And I love that there are places that ONLY sell these, and nothing else.

We were really lucky with the weather. It was certainly a gorgeous day to just sit and eat, which is exactly what I did. Sat, ate, walked around, ate, talked to some students, ate, met some parents, ate, and ate and ate. Best day of school to date. (Hey that rhymed!) Oh, and in case you were wondering, 10th grade TOTALLY won the Champa competition. She’s still got it!