School's Out

No More Pencils, No More Books…

The school year has ended here in Honduras, and thus begins a drastic change in my daily schedule. Naturally, since all of my programs and counterparts are in the public schools, I have no real formal work at the moment. Thus, I’m going to have to get creative to stay busy.

One thing I have done so far is start to teach English classes to a couple groups of sixth-graders here in town. The project was suggested by my director from Peace Corps when she came to visit with my counterparts several weeks ago. Whereas I was worried that teaching English would pigeon-hole the perceptions of how I am able to help the community (I really don’t see it as something that will help this country by itself), I do see it as an opportunity to get to know better a group of students. I will also get a chance to see for myself what it is like to manage a classroom of Honduran students first-hand.

I had the support of my counterparts in advertising the classes and selecting a group of students. Originally the plan was to just have one section of about 20 sixth-graders (who are just about to enter High School). However, there was such a demand from both schools that I ended up agreeing to do two sections of 20, one from each of the two elementary schools. On paper I was set to go, with a list of students and a clear schedule (one hour a day for each class, five days a week, for 5 weeks).

I thought it would be a great activity to keep me busy until just about Christmas time, but things haven’t been going as well as I had hoped. Despite the apparent demand to take the classes, attendance has been the number one problem. For example, at one of my elementary schools (Escuela Francisco Morazon) a group of 24 students was selected out of a total of 80 or so students, the majority of which eagerly claimed to be interested. However, on the first day only about 15 came. I thought that would be fine enough, but each day less and less students came. I had to cancel class the other day when only three students showed up. There are some meetings at the school this week, so I plan to talk with the teachers to think of how we can improve attendance.

There have been some positives in spite of some of the difficulties, however. For example, on my first day at the Luis Portillo school, I was a little frustrated when only 5 girls of the 20 students showed up. However, I decided to make the best of the opportunity. I had a list of the entire group of 20 students, as well as a small group that happened to know where everyone lived. I decided to ask them to help me look for the rest of the class. The girls were really helpful and agreed to lead me from house to house all over town (for almost two hours in the hot sun, without complaining at all!) to remind the other students about classes the next day. I actually had fun with them, and it was also a good opportunity to introduce myself to some parents and families. Along the way I got to see some other parts of town I hadn’t seen before, including this view from a hill, which features a panoramic view of the whole downtown area of Teupa. I don’t have the best camera, but hopefully this will still give you a sense of how things look:

The trip around town was mostly a success, as the next day we had a group of about 13 or so, and a consistent group of ten for the rest of the week. The following week, however, the group dwindled down to only 5 students. Though I’d love to have a larger group, it’s not so bad to work with the group that’s the most interested and fun to work with. We did another trip around the neighborhood this week, so hopefully that will help again as time goes on.

Outside of the English classes I have no real formal work. My counterparts are telling me that it’s going to be very hard to convince parents and families to attend any kind of events during the vacation, so I’ll just have to stick it out. I plan on doing some slightly informal activities, such as playing soccer with kids in the town park. Almost every kid in town knows my name, so I’m thinking it might not be too strange if I just show up at the court and ask to play. Like I said, it’s nothing formal, but hopefully it will help me to build trust with the students and make myself more visible to the community.

Yuscaran

In other news, I finally got to meet some more Peace Corps volunteers a few weeks ago! Most of the volunteers from my department came. The departments are basically equivalent to ‘states’ back in the U.S. For perspective, the I’ve heard the country of Honduras is about the size of Tennessee, and thus I would estimate that more or less each department is more or less the size of Rhode Island.

Anyways, they had a welcome party for me in Yuscaran, a really beautiful town that’s only about 2 hours or so from Teupasenti. Yuscaran is definitely one of the most picturesque towns I have seen in this country, and as I was shown around the cobblestone streets and saw the spectacular countryside views from the mountains, I definitely felt quite jealous that I wasn’t living there. Here are some pictures:

That day as a group we hiked through the mountains a bit in search of some waterfalls. It was a nice hike (and not too tough), and along the way there were some cool sights. For example, here’s an old gold mine that we came across (I don’t remember how far it dates back to):

It was pretty creepy, but wasn’t all that deep. It maybe went in about 15 or 20 feet.

Then of course there was the waterfall. I decided to go in the water, which was quite cold:

The hike was a lot of fun, and it was cool getting to know the other volunteers along the way. On our way back we took a break on someone’s rooftop/porch, where there was perhaps the best view of all. You can literally see Nicaragua in the distance:

After all that we had a nice meal at a local comedor, which is sort of like a laid-back restaurant that feels more like eating at a neighbor’s house. We then grabbed a bit of ice cream, and loaded up on some ‘beverages’. We then spent the rest of the night consuming said ‘beverages’ and playing ‘beverage-related’ games. It was simple but a lot of fun.

I also used the time to copy a ton of movies and TV shows onto my hard drive from the other volunteers here. There’s a whole system set up where the volunteers share files, so now I have a ton of stuff to watch when I get bored. I may or may not have watched four entire seasons of How I Met Your Mother in the following two weeks.

Finally, we all slept in the house of the volunteer that lives in Yuscaran. The next day I felt surprisingly well-rested after sleeping on the hard floor with nothing but a sleeping bag in a room full of volunteers. We all took a bus home early in the morning, and a few hours later I finally made it back to Teupa.

Qué Más?

Coming up I have a decent amount of social events to keep me busy, and hopefully will help me through the dry spell of work. There’s Thanksgiving this weekend, Donkey Polo in Yuscaran December 10^th (And yes, that is playing Polo on bareback mules. Be jealous.), Christmas, New Year’s, and then finally, my birthday. It’ll be tough to spend the holidays away from my usual friends and family. However, I do have new friends and family to share it with. The plan right now is to visit my old host family in Las Cañadas for Christmas (who basically are a second family), and the rest with my new PC volunteer friends.

Once all the fun stuff has passed, I’ll only have one month to kill before the next school year starts. I have plenty of planning and preparations to take care of, so by then I should be plenty busy.

That’s all for tonight, and as usual, I miss and love you all.

-        -  Peter