Kids Say the Darndest Things

Situation: class is over, and one of my students, slightly angry with me for giving him a detention, is begging and pleading with me to take it away. His two friends are around him, laughing at his antics, when one of the friends asks me, "Miss, do you hate Jose?" I reply yes. "Miss, do you hate me?" Yes. "Miss, do you hate everybody?" Yes. "Even people from the church?" Yes, I tell him. "Miss, are you a NUDIST?" No. I am laughing too hard right now to say anything else. The other two students are laughing hysterically as well. He starts blubbering out, "Miss,Miss, I didn't mean nudist. I said Jewish. Are you a Jewish?" His friends walked him out of the classroom laughing.

Babies!

A few weeks ago I was presented with the idea to have our 8th grade students go through 2 days of classes about sexual education and parenting and then take care of electronic babies for a weekend by our school guidance counselor. I though this sounded like a good idea since our students are kind of sheltered in what they hear about this sort of thing through other sources and because the picture in my head of some of them taking care of babies was too entertaining to pass up. The first class went through the program Thursday and Friday of this week and yesterday were given their babies. If you have seen the movie "License to Wed" the babies we gave to the kids are slightly less technologically advanced versions of the babies they had to take care of in the movie. The babies can cry and move a little bit and they need to be fed, changed, burped, and rocked to stop them from crying. Unfortunately they don't actually produce waste like the babies in the movie. When the babies start crying, which can be at any hour of the day or night like a real baby, the students must try different things to determine what the cause of the problem is. They have to wear a sensor on a bracelet attached to their wrist so that they are the only ones who can care for the baby and the baby will only stop crying if it senses that the correct person is taking care of it. I can't wait to see their reactions when they come back to school on Monday after a weekend of taking care of their new kids!

The babies are all lined up and ready to go!

Last minute instructions on how to care for the babies.

You can actually hear the babies breathing!

Watching the kids picking up their babies and practicing burping them was priceless.

Three proud new daddies!

Are you ready for some Futbol?

Along with owning most major businesses in Honduras, our students' families also own the professional sports teams here, and by professional sports teams of course I mean soccer teams since that is the only sport which most people here are passionate about. What they lack in variety of sports teams they make up for in fanaticism for their soccer. The best team in the country over the last few years has been the San Pedro Sula-based team named Marathon (yes it means the same thing in Spanish and no it's not sponsored by the gas stations). It so happens that our middle school president made a campaign promise that if she won the election, she'd bring the Marathon team to school to play a game against the middle schoolers and to sign autographs. While this sounds like a crazy campaign promise, in reality it was made much easier by the fact that her uncle owns the team. Last Thursday she followed through on the promise and here are a few photos to prove it.

Marathon warming up.

Our middle schoolers warming up.

Header off of a corner kick.

The kids have never been this interested in class!

The game was played on the soccer field just down the hill from the middle school which you see in the upper left of the picture. Not a bad setting to play a little futbol!

The Marathon team bus has a T-Rex on it since that's apparently the team's mascot... kind of cool.

Another action shot... stop that shot Portero!

The girls got a shot to play against the team after the boys were done.

Many of the girls were even more excited after the game to get the autograph of this guy who they apparently thought was "dreamy".

Virtual School Tour

For those of you who haven't been able to come visit us down in Hondoland, you might not realize that we actually do have a beautiful place to go to work everyday. Our campus at Escuela Internacional Sampedrana is situated on the edge of San Pedro Sula at the base of the mountains that ring the Sula Valley. Being in the tropics the mountains are not high and snow covered, but rather covered in a dense tropical rain forest and cloud forest. Here is the view I get to see every morning walking up to my classroom.


The campus itself is designed as several buildings with open-air hallways connecting them. The only truly indoor areas on campus are the rooms which makes for a pleasant place to walk around when not in class.


The middle school is situated on a hill above the soccer field and is built in the shape of an L with open air hallways and an open air "caseta" or cafeteria. Here are 2 views of the middle school.



My classroom is located upstairs in the middle school and has a pretty decent view out the windows. The view and living next to mountains is definitely one of the things I will miss most when I move away from Honduras in a few months.

Kids Say The Darndest Things

Since last weekend was Valentine's Day, and since 6th grade girls love romantic stuff, some of my students asked me what Mr. N was getting or planning for me for the day. I told them nothing, we were just going to Tela. One of my students replied, "but Miss, he's a bad boyfriend. A woman has to get roses on Valentine's Day." This started a conversation on Mr. N's and my relationship. Since I choose not discuss our relationship with the students, they sometimes come up with their own ideas. However, as I tried to stop the conversation from continuing, one sweet, helplessly romantic sixth grade girl asked me, "Miss, one question. He's so tall. Do you have to jump to kiss him?" Priceless.

Valentine's Day

This weekend was the big Valentine's Day. Jesse and I had discussed our Valentine's philosophies, and we both decided that instead of buying flowers and chocolates, we would get out of town for the weekend and play tourist for a while. We are running out of time here in Honduras, and there are still places that we want to go, or visit again for one last time. We headed to the bus station, with the intention of going to Copan Ruinas. We have both been there before, both with large groups, and when family has come to visit. Going to the Mayan museum, shopping, and sitting while watching the Mayans in their traditional dress in the town center sounded like the perfect V-Day celebration. However, once we got to the bus station, we came to discover that the premier bus company of the country had not updated their website in awhile, and therefore, there were no buses to Copan on Friday. We headed back home, feeling a little defeated. We talked to some friends about their plans, and decided to go with them on a day trip to Tela.

Tela is a town on the Caribbean that is about 1 hour and 45 minutes away from San Pedro. It is the closest clean beach to San Pedro, and it is possible to go and enjoy it on a day trip. It is surrounded by two national parks, one on each end, and some Garifuna villages. The Garifuna are decendants from West Africa who have settled along the Caribbean in Belize, Honduras, and Nicaragua. They have a very distinctive culture with music and dance being very important aspects of their life.

Last year in January, we had come to Tela to visit one of the national parks called Punta Sal. We hiked along trails in the park, saw howler monkeys, went snorkeling, and ate a traditional meal of fried fish, rice and beans, and fried plantain chips. This time, we went to Punto Izopo, on the other side of Tela. This national park covers the area where the Rio Platano empties into the Caribbean. Mangroves grow in this area as well as many different bird species, monkeys, crocodiles, caymans, and snakes. The tour we took was a kayaking tour along the mangrove swamp area, to look for wildlife.

The freshwater from the river mixes with the salt water from the ocean and created a swamp. We kayaked for a few hours along different parts of the river looking for wildlife and enjoying nature. We had a guide with us, who actually had grown up in Minnesota. Talk about a small world!! Now, I'm not exactly an avid kayaker, so we did occasionally run into trees and get stuck on roots in the water. Jesse and I used a double kayak, and since Jesse is abnormally tall, the kayak was a little bit small for us. We made due however, and really enjoyed the trip.

This is me, in the kayak, with mangroves behind me. The mangrove is really an interesting tree, since its roots grow from the trunk of the tree down into the water to stabilize it and provide it with nourishment. It provides a very good habitat for many different animals and generally grows in brackish water.

Can you see the Central American crocodile in the picture? We actually saw four crocodiles during our adventure, one of whom was eating a huge fish.

Caymans are a small, crocodile-like creature. Our guide told us the difference between caymans and crocodiles, but I only remember that caymans are smaller. Here is a baby cayman sunning itself on a log. We also saw blue herons, white herons, many other birds of which I don't recall their names, and the coolest thing ever- a toucan in flight. Now, I've seen toucans on the Froot Loops cereal box, at zoos, and at the bird park in Copan, but seeing a toucan flying across the river in its natural habitat was the most amazing thing ever. We could see the colored rings on its beak as it was flying across the river. It was too fast to take a picture, but was absolutely beautiful.

After our kayaking tour, we went to the second largest Garifuna village called Triumfo de la Cruz. Its population is 8,000 people, with most of their sustenance coming from fishing and farming. The community is right on the Caribbean with a white sand beach. They have started to join the tourism route, introducing people to their traditional ways and their culture. Their dancing and music is especially interesting to listen to and watch, however this trip didn't include any of that. It had been rainy and cold for quite a while, so with the sun shining on Saturday, we sat on the beach and enjoyed the sunshine for awhile. We ordered food from a Garifuna restaurant: fried fish (with the head still on- the entire fish) for me, shrimp for Jesse, and fried plantains. Very traditional food and absolutely delicious! Jesse and I then returned to San Pedro, incredibly tired from the kayaking and the sun. Overall, a wonderful Valentine's Day.

The Wandering Continues

This past weekend Jenna and I interviewed with several schools from around the world and settled on our new location for the next 2 years... WE'RE MOVING TO PARAGUAY!!! I will be teaching high school biology and chemistry and Jenna will be teaching 5th grade at the American School of Asuncion. Asuncion is a city of about 2 million people and is the capital of Paraguay. More info to follow so stay tuned... and start saving money for those plane tickets to come visit!

Job Fairs and Soccer Stars

Yesterday Jenna and I set out from Honduras to Waterloo, Iowa for the Overseas Teaching Fair that is hosted there by the University of Northern Iowa. Waterloo seems a weird place to have an internatinal teaching fair since the nearest major airport, Chicago's O'hare, is about 4.5 hours away by car (which we know because we rented a sweet '09 Nissan Altima and drove it), but that's another story for another time.

We will be interviewing tomorrow with various schools from around the world and then will hopefully be faced with the difficult decision of where to take our lives for the next 2 years. Current candidates include Chile, Peru, Mexico, Ecuador, Paraguay, Bolivia, Korea, China, and the UAE. Any input from readers on where we should go and why would be welcomed and we of course will post as soon as we have made a decision.

On the way up here yesterday however, we had our 3rd encounter with a famous person at the San Pedro Sula airport. Now as some of you know, SPS is not the capital of Honduras but it does have the country's major international airport. Tegucigalpa is the capital but tha airport there is one of the most dangerous in the world as evidenced by the plane that crashed off the end of the runway there last year.

That results in everybody who wants to leave Honduras by air doing so through SPS... including famous people. Last year on our way to Roatan we met Carmen Jara who is evidently a pretty famous Mexican singer as evidenced by her website http://www.carmenjara.com/



That same day while stuck at the airport for several hours we met the reigning Ms. El Salvador and I got my picture taken with her.



Yesterday we noticed a bunch of photographers gathered around a guy who was signing autographs and I guessed that he was probably a soccer player because that seems to be the only reason people in this country would get that much attention. I was correct... he is a player for the national team named Walter "Peri" Martinez and was on his way to join his new team in the Spanish leagues. Here are 2 Honduran newspaper articles about the event of him leaving at the airport if you care to read them: http://www.laprensa.hn/Deportes/Ediciones/2009/01/29/Noticias/Quiero-saltar-a-primera and http://www.diez.hn/Legionarios/Ediciones/2009/01/29/Noticias/Peri-viajo-con-su-mochila-de-la-suerte-a-Espana Of course Alex and I had to get our picture taken with him to remember the moment.

Asilo de Ancianos

This past week, I went on a field trip with my 6th graders to an asilo de ancianos- or a nursing home. This is not our typical idea of a nursing home- elderly people wearing a cable knit sweater, sitting in their wheelchairs in the living room knitting or playing checkers, looking at pictures of their grandkids. These people, for the majority, have been dropped off their children or relatives because they could no longer take care of them or afford to feed them. Many of the elderly were barefoot, with deformed feet after years of abuse, and senile. Some of them had wheelchairs that had been donated from the states, others had walkers or canes. Their common areas were outside, with a thatched roof over their heads, and dirt for a floor. Each adult had a twin sized bed and a three drawer nightstand as their only personal space. And these beds and nightstands were in a room with 30 plus other beds and nightstands.

The students were instructed to bring with them a bag of non-perishable food items to give to the elderly people. They were very happy to have it. This center is not a state funded facility, those don't really exist in Honduras, so it mainly runs on donations from the wealthy people in the community or from charities in the U.S. In December, the center has plenty of food, however January and February are lean months there. Some were eating their Pringles and Jello snackpack immediately upon receiving, while others were storing them away. There was one man who had dropped his cookie on the ground and was picking the crumbs off of the floor to eat them. I did hear stories of some of the elderly people stealing food from others that couldn't walk or protect their food supply.

A lot of parents came with us, and they brought with them a chicken rice dinner with dinner rolls for the residents. The children served a plate of food to each resident and then sat down and ate with them. Many of my students were telling me that they couldn't really understand what some of the residents were telling them, because they had problems with their gums, jaws, or teeth. There was a Red Cross station there, but no medical supplies that I could see of, except a makeshift catheter- a gallon jug carried around by the person with the tube coming out of the bottom of their shorts into the jug.

I'm extremely glad that my students were able to have this opportunity and that I was able to come with them. It was the most depressing thing that I think I have seen so far in Honduras. My students behaved very admirably; sitting and chatting with the residents, buying some of the goods that they had made in their spare time. I live in a developping country, but I don't see the true extent of what that means very often. This two hour field trip re-opened my eyes to the circumstances in which many people here have to endure, and I feel incredibly greatful to have the type of life that I am living.

Starting a New Year in El Salvador

After resisting for as long as possible, I suppose it's time for me to begin pulling my weight in this whole Wandering Wisconsinite endeavor. Since giving Jenna the title for the blog and providing the quote that adorns the top of the page I have been resting on my laurels for a couple of months but it will be more fun if I contribute as well.

A few months back we had planned to take a 3 day weekend and drive to El Salvador with our friends Alex and Caitlin as it was one of 2 Central American countries we had not visited yet. One slippery Guatemalan road, one large truck, and a "pay by the hour motel" later that trip was canceled, so we had to find another time to make it to El Salvador (for those of you who don't habla espanol, El Salvador is Spanish for... The Salvador). So we planned to dig out from under all that snow in Wisconsin a bit early and spend New Year's Eve on a black sand beach by the Pacific instead.

It was a worthwhile and fun trip and Jenna has already posted a few of the pics from the art museum in her last entry here so I won't bore you with details about that. However, I would like to make a few observations about the country from our breif visit there. As we have found in all of the other countries we traveled to in Central America, the roads were better than they are here in Honduras. No surprise there, but what was pleasantly surprising was how nice the city of San Salvador was in general. We were able to walk around at night, there were parks, people used the parks, and the sides of the road were not covered in trash. There was also a lot more "culture" there in the form of museums and such. Just though I'd pass that along to dispell the rumors that seem to be all over the place about how terrible El Salvador is and to encourage you to visit because we really enjoyed it.

I think I've rambled on long enough for my first ever blog post so I'll wrap up by giving you a link to my facebook album of pics from the trip so you can check it out/get jealous of us for being somewhere warm while most of you are freezing (literally from the weather reports I've seen) up in the Midwest.
Click Here for the El Salvador Photo Album