One of many differences between Spanish culture in Spain and in Central America (in particular, Honduras), is the use of the word "adios". In Spain they don't use it, in Honduras they do. But what I always found really neat in Honduras was how they use it.
In Honduras, "adios" is used as a greeting, as a goodbye, and just a thing to say in passing. This was always encouraging for me, because "adios" is used to literally say: "go with God", or "God be with you". It is a way for people to communicate love and encouragement in a word. Strangers will say it to you in passing on the street, instead of quietly averting their eyes when walking past, as they seem to do in North America. It is so much more meaningful to me than a hasty "hello" or "goodbye", and I like it because it can mean either one. This is why my last post from Chapter 1 of my travels this year, has to be entitled "Adios"; because the fact that I'm leaving does not mean that it is a final goodbye.
It is not a "goodbye", it is not a "hello", it is just a well-wishing to all back in Cofradia, and a notice that I hope the people I met there can continually meet God in all they do everyday. Dear Grade 3 and all Cofradians: God be with you, see you soon.
Peace.
Friday, December 21, 2007
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Update
The ¨We wish you a Merry Christmas¨ song is sounding a lot better. If you wanted to know. The hardest sentence is ¨We won´t go until we get some¨... it often sounds a lot more like: ¨We washa wa we want some¨ (in thick spanish accents). But give us a break, we´re trying. Enjoy the pictures.
Peace.
Peace.
Sunday, December 9, 2007
Field Trip! Music!
Friday was a field trip to Copan. If you can even picture how crazy 100 spanish kids would be at school, try to picture loading them onto 2 school buses and bringing them to another private school 3 hours away, and then bringing them on a tour of a bird sanctuary and mayan ruins. Those of you back home that know the size of those tours (anyone from the Crescent trips), know that that amount of children is insane. However, it was really fun to just hang out with a bunch of the kids outside of a school environment and Copan is a cool place. Plus their parents accompanied them, so us teachers left the discipline of crazy students to their mother or father while on the trip.
There were a few lowlights to the trip.
#1: waiting in lines.
#2: The fact that only about half the students from the school could afford to come on the field trip. The mind-blowing thing was that it cost about 8$ to come. For many parents that I talked to beforehand, that was simply a luxery they could not pay for.
#3: Even for the kids that were "rich" enough to come, the visit to the other private school was anything but educational. They would probably have described it as embarrassing. The other school was actually a VERY wealthy school, and seeing their green acres of fields and well supplied classrooms, basically just made our students feel humiliated. 60%-70% or our students can't afford school, so they are on scholarship, and the people that pay full price, pay about 150 limpira (about 7-8 dollars) a month to come. The private school we went to charges about $150 per month to go. But I was proud of our kids. I'm convinced our kids are funnier, cooler, and...more rad. But maybe I'm just biased.
Myself, Cat, Caroline, and Alex all stayed in Copan after the field trip and hung about the town friday night and saturday morning. It's a cool town, so it made for a fun weekend of shopping, eating at cool restaurants, and meeting bearded Central American backpackers that were passing through.
The last bit of this update will just be to tell you all that I have recently been given a whole lot of new music. Katherine(one of my students)'s father and I found out that we are both really into music, and he has proceeded to burn me a whole wack of sweet mp3 cds. Just thought I'd let ya'll know that piece of news. He's a really cool guy too, and I basically go to their house, help tutor Katherine, then talk to him about music and listen to his favourite Neil Young albums (he LOVES Niel Young). Good times.
Peace.
There were a few lowlights to the trip.
#1: waiting in lines.
#2: The fact that only about half the students from the school could afford to come on the field trip. The mind-blowing thing was that it cost about 8$ to come. For many parents that I talked to beforehand, that was simply a luxery they could not pay for.
#3: Even for the kids that were "rich" enough to come, the visit to the other private school was anything but educational. They would probably have described it as embarrassing. The other school was actually a VERY wealthy school, and seeing their green acres of fields and well supplied classrooms, basically just made our students feel humiliated. 60%-70% or our students can't afford school, so they are on scholarship, and the people that pay full price, pay about 150 limpira (about 7-8 dollars) a month to come. The private school we went to charges about $150 per month to go. But I was proud of our kids. I'm convinced our kids are funnier, cooler, and...more rad. But maybe I'm just biased.
Myself, Cat, Caroline, and Alex all stayed in Copan after the field trip and hung about the town friday night and saturday morning. It's a cool town, so it made for a fun weekend of shopping, eating at cool restaurants, and meeting bearded Central American backpackers that were passing through.
The last bit of this update will just be to tell you all that I have recently been given a whole lot of new music. Katherine(one of my students)'s father and I found out that we are both really into music, and he has proceeded to burn me a whole wack of sweet mp3 cds. Just thought I'd let ya'll know that piece of news. He's a really cool guy too, and I basically go to their house, help tutor Katherine, then talk to him about music and listen to his favourite Neil Young albums (he LOVES Niel Young). Good times.
Peace.
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
New Volunteer.
Yep, the rumours are true. We have a new volunteer from Canada. She´s also a gap year-er, also from Canada (actually Toronto), and she also happens to be helping with my grade 3 class for the next two weeks...and then we´re taking the same flight home, and apparently we have seats next to each other on the plane. Oh yeah, and her name is Catherine Taylor, and she´s also my girlfriend. weird eh?
So...partly due to a really big surprise this past weekend (the arrival of our new volunteer), I have been doing excellently. Sadly, the time continues to race by with no sign of slowing down. In grade 3 we are furiously working towards the deadline of December 14th (the Christmas performance), for the grand showing of a thirty piece accapella choir singing "we wish you a merry christmas" at the top of their little lungs. But by golly, you should hear the way the sound echoes along the classroom walls when they are at work. Frightening. Glorious. Ebert and Roper give it two thumbs up.
It´s been really helpful having Catherine here to help teach. All the struggling students now have the ability to go out and work with her in small groups, and we also get to do a lot of reading practice in groups outside. The last week or so should be fun...we´ve finished the science project, we´re working on an english project now, and we´ve got some pretty cool games, "science experiments", and final week festivities lined up. Should be ill.
The hospitality of the people here is very very cool. I may have mentioned this before, but I feel that this point needs re-stating. If anyone were to ever plan on going to a country like this to teach kids (or live and volunteer in some way), I strongly recommend getting involved in the community: reaching out to families outside of school (or wherever you are working), and accepting invitations over to their houses for dinner, despite the feeling of "you barely have enough for yourselves, why are you serving me!?". They WANT to have you over, they get so excited showing you their cd collections, serving you their best refried beans, and the parents are more than willing to be patient with a young white guys broken spanish. As amazing as the grade 3´s are, I´m equally blown away by the love and hospitality of so many of their parents and families. I DON´T WANT TO LEAVE.
Peace.
So...partly due to a really big surprise this past weekend (the arrival of our new volunteer), I have been doing excellently. Sadly, the time continues to race by with no sign of slowing down. In grade 3 we are furiously working towards the deadline of December 14th (the Christmas performance), for the grand showing of a thirty piece accapella choir singing "we wish you a merry christmas" at the top of their little lungs. But by golly, you should hear the way the sound echoes along the classroom walls when they are at work. Frightening. Glorious. Ebert and Roper give it two thumbs up.
It´s been really helpful having Catherine here to help teach. All the struggling students now have the ability to go out and work with her in small groups, and we also get to do a lot of reading practice in groups outside. The last week or so should be fun...we´ve finished the science project, we´re working on an english project now, and we´ve got some pretty cool games, "science experiments", and final week festivities lined up. Should be ill.
The hospitality of the people here is very very cool. I may have mentioned this before, but I feel that this point needs re-stating. If anyone were to ever plan on going to a country like this to teach kids (or live and volunteer in some way), I strongly recommend getting involved in the community: reaching out to families outside of school (or wherever you are working), and accepting invitations over to their houses for dinner, despite the feeling of "you barely have enough for yourselves, why are you serving me!?". They WANT to have you over, they get so excited showing you their cd collections, serving you their best refried beans, and the parents are more than willing to be patient with a young white guys broken spanish. As amazing as the grade 3´s are, I´m equally blown away by the love and hospitality of so many of their parents and families. I DON´T WANT TO LEAVE.
Peace.
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