All in a day´s work

This was my walk to work. Another pcv needed a helping hand in one of our Aldeas, El Cedral. It's maybe a 45 minute walk up the mountain by dirt road. This is Las Vegas in the early morning. Truly one of the most beautiful areas of the country. Green all the time.
















Trying to teach our class how to write their a,b,c´s.
Sadly, many of our 3rd graders still can't spell their names. This makes me enjoy teaching the younger ones--getting them ready for the later grades. In Honduras, many children won't go past 3rd grade because the families either can't afford to send them on, or they decide to start working in the coffee fields to make money for their families.

These little guys are primer grado. First grade. Note our dog in the background. She's a great teaching tool. When the kids finish a moth problem, essay or in this case..their a,b,c's--they get to pet the dog. Works like a charm.















Later that evening, I walked out of the bedroom to find a little game of ¨play dead¨ between the boys and Stella in our living room. The boys usually come over to play after their dinner every night...and after their lunch every day, and after school, and after they visit their uncle in Barrio San Juan...you get the idea.

These boys have helped me just as much as any teacher when it comes to learning Spanish. Dealing with kids is the best way to practice and learn a new language. Plus, they are unforgiving when you mess something up. Adults are typically too polite to tell you differently.

If I say a wrong word around these guys, I'll never hear the end of it.

Tipsy Chipsy

We recently traveled out to the wild west (a tiny little village up in the western mountains called San Ramon) to visit our friend K, and help her with some English classes at her school. This is a little story, as told best by her, about our encounter with the Chipsy man that afternoon.

My friends C & J came up Thursday to help out with my English classes, see what San Ramon is all about and meet the locos. After a pretty great English class (my kids were well behaved because there were 3 of us hounding them on their pronunciation) and a visit to the colegio (let's not get started), we went for a walk to a river about 45 minutes out of San Ramon.




When you are walking down the main road out of San Ramon, it starts to get really rural--no houses, just farm land--as you can see in the picture--so it's quiet and you don't see too many cars. Needless to say, it was surprising to us to see a parked ice cream van parked along the side of the road. It was warm and we had been walking for quite some time so ice cream sounded perfect. Here's how that interaction proceeded:

K: Hello? Hi!
C: Is anyone there?
J: Hello? (He looks behind the curtain of the van) To us: Yeah, there's a guy in there.
Guy stumbles out of the car, drunk, messing with his Razr phone (fancy phone for an aldea man) and looks at us.

'Yeah? What do you want?'

K: Do you have ice cream today?

Now this may seem like an idiotic question considering it is an ice cream van, but you just never know in this country.

'Yeah. We have ice cream bars only.'

C: Can we see them?

Again, may seem like a silly question--but again, you never know how ghetto this ice cream may actually be. If it's ice cream at all.

He stumbles into the van, pulls out the ice cream after much searching and it was real ice cream. We each get a bar, pay the guy and he stumbles back into the van. We continue walking and laugh about how this can only happen here and that while retelling the story may be funny, it just won't compare to having experienced it.

Update of Updates

So its been awhile since we've given a real update on what our workload has been. Believe it or not, at times we are actually busy!

1. For two weeks, I was helping out with this kindergarden class of 14 kids in a little town up and out of the mountain. Everyday at 6 am, a mini van picked me up, bringing me to this little classroom to help teach. I pretty much hated it after 4 days because teaching isnt my favorite thing in the world. And these kids had attention spans of less than 2 minutes before wanting their play doh. I was witness to alot of things being eaten...pencils, glue, tape, playdoh, candy wrappers, dirt, paper.

The saddest part of my two weeks with these kids was when one of my girls was killed in an accident. She was 5 years old and was getting off the bus by her house. She went to run across the street in front of the bus, and a car was passing on the left of it, hitting her head on. The closest hospital was 2 hours away, and she didnt get there in time, unfortunately. I felt really terrible about it, as she was a smart, beautiful little girl.

The class was really confused, and though I explained what had happened, it didnt work like I had hoped. They are 5 year olds, and just dont understand yet, which made it heartbreaking for me.

student> Teacher, when is Kxxxxxx coming back to school?
me> Remember what we talked about? Im sorry, but Kxxxxx wont be coming back anymore.
student> Yeah, I understand that she's dead, but when can she come back to school?
me> "blank stares"

It was alot of that for a week.

2. Then this past week, Simon, our sitemate, and I helped work at a medical brigade in our aldea. This was alot of fun and a bit more uplifting.

The two doctors who came to do the brigade were an older married couple from Vermont who have traveled all over the world. The man is an eye doctor, and he taught his wife everything she needed to know to help him with these eye glasses brigades. Our job was to work alongside these 2 doctors and do all the translating from what the Hondurans would say into English and vise versa, as a translating job usually works.

It was nice to feel really useful, and even more nice to see many poor hondurans from our aldeas, who would never have the money to get an eye exam, walk away with big smiles and a new pair of glasses. This one older man was seeing clearly for the first time in 50 years, as he told me.

All of the glasses that the doctors brought were used ones that people from the states had donated to their local Lions Club. So, if you have old glasses that you don't wear anymore, donate them! We saw firsthand that they can still get plenty of use down here.

3. What else...English Classes. Simon and I have also started this English course that is certified by PC and also the Honduran Government.

It is designed to be a class only for teachers, and teaches them the basics of speaking and learning English so that they can teach English to their students with more confidence, and with a better methodology. There is a new law here that all students have to take an English class in high school, much like Spanish, french, German, whatever classes in North American high schools.

We have 15 teachers in our class, and although we are not professional English teachers, and run into problems while teaching certain grammar rules, its still fun.

4. Baseball! Its that time of year again, and we had our first practice last week. The national tournament is in May this year, so we're preparing for that. Simon and I took over the positions of the PC baseball coordinators this year, so we're doing alot of emailing between the other teams, and setting rules to the tournament.

5. Last but not least, The Cogate Project! This is more my project than Simon's but he'll be helping out, Im sure.

This is a project started by PC and Cogate toothpaste. The company has donated tons of toothbrushes and toothpaste and other things to PC. We will be receiving 40 toothbrush kits every month for 5 months, and be teaching a kindergarden class at one of our schools the importance of brushing your teeth and washing your hands. 3 days a week, we will brush our teeth with salt water...because toothpaste is very expensive here and not easily affordable to most, and 2 days a week we will use our toothpaste.

This is moreso a project to teach good habits, starting at an early age. We weill give charlas about brushing teeth, and about the mouth and what goes on inside of it, we will color pictures, and hopfully in the end, teach the importance of being clean to the kids.

It should be interesting.

Well, thats about all for this month. Semana Santa "Easter week" is coming up quick and the country seems to just shut down for it. We will be in Nicaragua at that time catching some pacific sun rays, volcanoes, and good food. More on that later, though.

Miss you all. Take care, Crystal