Im 26!

What’s been going on? Pues…(Well)…A LOT!! Get ready, this is a looooong one…

Last week Nader and Theresa (friends of Brian from college) came for a visit. They were able to see La Esperanza and even stayed in our site for a couple of days. While they were here we decided to get a babysitter for Maya. So, we took Maya to our friend and fellow Peace Corps Volunteer, Brianna’s house to stay. We stayed the night there on Friday – she lives in San Marcos a teeny tiny little town with little water. Her site is definitely tiny and her house is pretty primitive (we are living in LUXURY! compared to her), but it is a great site. Nice people, nice town, cute house, everything. Anyway, her backyard is pretty much open space so Maya was able to easily get away (we watched her climb the fagon and jump over a pretty large wall to escape). On Friday she got away and got stuck in some neighbor’s barbed wire. She then got attacked by some dogs. She ate Brianna’s chocolate chip banana pancakes, her head phones, and probably various other things. And now she may be preggers. I guess we will find out for sure in a couple of months! Now we know that taking Maya to someone’s house is not such a good idea – so from now on we will have our neighbor take care of her.

We started our projects (see previous blog) in the elementary school. We decided to only work with fifth grade right now because there are 50 fifth graders! It is difficult enough to control 50 5th graders, but then you throw in the fact that they only speak Spanish and my Spanish speaking ability is crap which should equal total and complete chaos, but as it turns out they are a great group to work with. The first session we had with the students we introduced ourselves, played an ice breaker, and made some nametags. Then, to form groups, we gave each student an animal (10 different animals in total) and the students had to find their animal group by only making the animal sound. That was CRAZINESS! It was so loud and insane, but the students, for the most part, all found their group and did not cheat too much. The cows totally won for the best animal sounds – they walked around the classroom with their arms around each other mooing – it was fantastic.

Tuesday, we did our second installment of the project. We decided to start again with an icebreaker (dinamica). It is called the human knot. COMPLETE DISASTER! The kids did not get it, we did not know how to explain it well, the teacher could not help us, and, yeah, it was just a mess. BUT it worked out well because the kids had no idea that we completely messed up and they had a good time. SUCCESS! The project also went really well (pictures to be posted soon). I think the kids learned a lot – how to understand gringo SpanishJ, to work in groups, to communicate well with one another, and to be creative and think outside of “the box”. Next week – the Puff Mobile or in espanol Puff (Poooooof) Auto (owww tow). We had to scratch using the LifeSavers as wheels because we received Breath Savers instead of LifeSavers and apparently Breath Savers do not have holes in the center – oops! But Brian and I practiced making Puff Autos and there is no need at all for the LifeSavers! Plus, we have been enjoying eating them and sharing them with kids.

Wednesday, there was a meeting for all the EDUCATODOS facilitators. The prometor guy (he is the person we go to for everything – I feel like ‘promoter’ is not a good English translation) came to our site and had a big meeting with everyone. We learned more about the program and what kinds of things we should be doing with the students. For example, the students need to complete a community project during the school year in order to pass (they didn’t do it last year because apparently no one got around to it – or they weren’t graded for it anyway – I am not sure). We also learned about all the forms that need to be filled out and various other very boring things. But we did get 300 Lempiras each for being facilitators (30 bucks!!); however we are not allowed to keep it because we are Peace Corps. So next week we are buying our students cake and soda to celebrate our birthdays!

Thursday, we went out to a little community to participate in a meeting at a Caja Rural. The woman (Paty) from the bank (which oversees the Caja) was holding a meeting to determine what the community needs and how the bank/Caja can help. It is basically a meeting to assess the needs of the community – so it can be anything from needing money to buy fertilizer for the farmers or wanting some basic business or basic math charlas (many people here do not go past 6th grade). Brian and I went to the meeting just to see how Hondurans run these sorts of meetings and to see how we can be of some help. Brian and I can definitely teach basic math techniques as well as give a basic business charla (one concept people sometimes have trouble with is that they buy 40 Lempiras worth of materials and then sell those materials, maybe in a different form, for 30 Lempiras – usually they think they made 30, but really they lost 10). It looks like in the future we will be doing both with some communities – it will be a different challenge working with adults, but fun! HOWEVER – we got to the community and NO ONE showed up! So, we went to a different community to try to find the people, but we could only find one guy (who informed us that the people no longer want to be part of the Caja)! Paty looked over some of their books and found out that a lot of people owe money to the Caja and that the Caja is still in debt to the bank. Big mess. Since we were in this community we decided to talk to the principal of the school about doing our creative projects there next month. He not only wants us to do the projects, but he also wants us to teach English to seventh graders. Pues, we are not quite sure if we want to teach English or if we even have time (he wants us to commit to two classes a week). We will see…

Friday, we were sitting at home relaxing and getting ready for my birthday lunch at Paty’s house (yup, I had a birthday lunch!! Arroz con pollo – YUM!) when the principal from the school in Llano Grande (an hours walk from us) came to house and asked us if we would go to a meeting in the local school. The meeting was for the teachers on the Junta de Directiva (I think this is sort of like a board of teachers, one teacher from each elementary school in the municipality). He didn’t really tell us why exactly he wanted us there, but we were to soon find out! They basically asked us about the creative project we were doing in the local school and then made the assumption that we are masters of arts and crafts. We were then asked to do a training in May (an ALL day training) for all the teachers in Colomoncagua about arts and crafts (manualidades). When they thought of this and why they didn’t ask us about it privately first, I have no idea. Needless to say, Brian and I sat there a little stunned trying to figure out what to say and how to answer all their questions. I knew when he asked us to the meeting that something crazy was going to go down. So, we will be doing a training (taller) for 130 - 150 teachers in May!! I am freaking out just a little bit! I so do not know enough arts and crafts to fill 8 hours.

Brian read Ceasar Millan and he is asserting himself as the pack leader – I think he likes that role! Also, as you may have heard, Brian ‘shaved’ his head. Not all the way, but pretty short. We met some Panama Peace Corps Volunteers and the boys decided to shave their heads with the clippers. Boys…

One last thing – we are soon going to be hitting ya’all up for some money. There is an extremely poor elementary school about an hour and a half – two hour walk away from our site in a little aldea. They are in real need of basic school supplies – notebooks, pencils, crayons, colored pencils, paints, erasers, pencil sharpeners, rulers, chalk, paper, puzzles, and books. We are hoping to somehow raise money to buy these supplies or to have them donated. Once we get our plan together we will keep you informed. So, start saving that extra change!

Abrazos y Amor,

Jess

It may be rainy season, but it is also MANGO season! Yum!