December, January, February...

*Note, before you read: Having trouble with Blogger, so all the current photos are embedded in postings with hyperlinks underneath this obnoxiously long posting. In case you want to skip the commentary and go straight for the visuals.*

Wow, I am a slacker. While realizing every weekend that it has been mid-December since I've updated the blog, and each time I download pictures and create a new folder, I know that I have more than enough material for an entry... I somehow keep putting it off. It might be the fatigue of the long days that are already getting hot again and the constant and vigilant effort to get the kids to "speak English only" since a push from Peggy to get the upper grades to a stricter policy of English in the English classrooms. But then it might be that I am just settling down to my life here in Honduras. What used to be novel, uncommon, and surprising is now a part of the everyday fabric of my life here. When one of my students says something humorous or endearing, I laugh, tell my friends here the anecdote, and move on with life. When the water or the power goes off in the middle of cooking dinner, or I step backwards into the dark bathroom at night and hear the loud crunch! of a roach crushed under my flip-flop, I shriek, laugh, and go find the cleaning supplies to wipe up the evidence. When I run down the University road and construction workers shout from the hilltops, "Hey mammi!" and "Corre bastante bien, mi amor!" I flip my head in their general direction and shout "adios!" as sweat drips down my face, chuckling that apparently my most disgusting self warrants an ogling stare from Honduran men. (Of course, it was slightly strange the time I ran past a field and heard a man's voice in the distance, shouting loudly in English, "Where-are-my-keys?" I could not imagine how that statement could be directed toward me, but neither do I know of any English speaker who lives or works along that road.")

There has been a lot of violence in Juticalpa since December, and heightened security measures by the foundation have shortened the available evening hours to be out and about. Thus, I've had more time to be at home reading, relaxing, and generally just enjoying being a homebody, which has been nice, but apparently has also made me lazy about the blog! This is not to say that we feel endangered, just that there are more shootings, some of which are hitting a little too close to home, affecting staff members and students of OAF schools, and one shooting on Valentine's Day that was just around the corner from our neighborhood. It is very saddening, and the churches have had several special Masses to pray for peace. Next week we are having a school day devoted to Peace, which will culminate with a special service at the Cathedral downtown. A country in which so many people live in poverty no doubt has problems with violence and corruption, and in this time we volunteers are reminded of why we are here and the importance of educating our students in ways of peace, love, and sharing our blessings with those less fortunate.

But for whatever reason I have fallen off the blogging bandwagon, I do hope to get back on track and continue at least monthly to record my thoughts and observations, if only for posterity's sake. With that said, I will try to recount the past 2 month's adventures briefly, before I lose your interest entirely on such mundane subjects as the slow depletion of Anne's and my 12 jars of organic peanut butter that we brought back from Christmas. After a much-needed 2 weeks of traditional Christmas family vacation in a sunny, but cooler North Texas, and a chance to see some olden & golden friends and their adorable babies (see my very few pics), I returned to Juticalpa a little too soon for my liking. However, the rest of my volunteer friends seemed to be in agreement, and it's always nice to have friends of similar mindsets around, even if only to commiserate with. When I walked down the Houston terminal E to my gate and saw the familiar faces of Jeff, Anne, and Dan, I remembered that I was returning to a big group of new friends, and that my life in some ways was like a very extended summer camp counseling job, complete with weekend sleepovers and themed parties with my fellow counselor buds. Everything was just the same when we returned, plus a few roaches who hadn't yet figured out that we were back to stay and therefore they needed to go back into their little crooks and crannies. And it was getting hot again already. What was I thinking, bringing back all those long-sleeved shirts and the flannel blanket?

Apparently, looking back on my photos of the last 2 months, I have been busy. Two trips to Catacamas, a visit from my roommate Anne's mom, learning how to make tortillas, Andrew's English tea party/nighttime Rave birthday party, an English spelling bee and new "English only" rules at school... there is a lot to catch you up on. I finished about 10 knitting projects between mid-December and mid-January, and now I'm on a book reading binge. One definite bonus to this year is that I have a lot of free time in the evenings and weekends, which means I have no excuse not to read. I think I have finished more books in the past 6 months than in any time since college. The completed list includes The Shack, Lord of the Rings Part 1, Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers, Old Man and the Sea, C.S. Lewis' childhood memoirs, Sherlock Holmes, Anne Bronte's Agnes Gray, and El Principito (The Little Prince en español). Currently I'm engrossed in Dracula (fabulous narrative style- Bram Stoker was a genius at interweaving narrators and keeping the suspense going). I may never finish Moby Dick, but hey- I've come 150 pages closer, and I do feel that an individual with an English degree should at least have made an attempt once in her life to read what is known as the "first American novel". I am very much enjoying Magic Treehouse books in Spanish. I can read them almost as fluidly as an English book. Granted, they are on a second grade reading level, but... it's progress.

For now, I will leave you with a few student anecdotes of the past months, and then let you dig in to the many slideshows, that date back from the Grinch play in December. A lot of it will be out of season, but pick one or two shows to look at and turn on the captions to get a glimpse of my crazy, upside-down and inside-out life in Centroamerica.

Giggles- from Santa Clara kids, with love....

My kids are getting better at using English, with a new "English only" in the English classroom rule. It has cut down a LOT on the incessant chatter, and the kids are eagerly working to earn their "Passport," a little incentive scheme I dreamed up and have been spending a lot of lempira and clear packaging tape to put together. But some of them are plowing away at reading English books, saving up pink tickets to earn a trip to the Ciné with Ms. Susong to watch an English movie. So something's working... anyway, the new attempts to speak English have brought on a slew of random Spanglish nonsense words and phrases, which (scarily enough) I understand completely every time, including:

"Tutor-ation? Miss, I have tutoration today?!" - ask my tutoring students. It sounds like "Termination" to me. Like something Arnold would have done, or what we do to the cockroaches in our house. We are working on fixing this mistake, but it is somehow engrained in their heads as a real word now, and bothers me more even than their using the Spanish word "tutorias."

"Grapp me, Miss. Grap!" - Spanglish for "I need you to staple my note, discipline report, etc." or "And, the grapper?" - for "I need to borrow the stapler." The Spanish words are, respectively-- "las grapas" for staples and "la grapadora" for stapler.

"Miss-- I can bore? I bore now?" = "Can I erase the white board?" (borrar = to erase)

While in the midst of some sort of witty exchange with my morning class (it is great that they actually get my jokes now), someone said something silly that I didn't quite get the first time, at which point they told me, "Is only a brome, Miss. Is a brome." (Una broma = joke)

"Dance, Miss! Dance!" - this came on from an incentive for everyone to pass their vocabulary test one week. I said I would teach them some ballet. Amazingly, they all pulled through and passed the test, so I did some pliés and grand-jetés across the room, and accidentally hit a kid when my shoe flew off. We ended the lesson with learning the numbers 1-10 in French, and how to say "Bonjour, comment allez-vous?" They loved it. I had all the girls (and some of the boys) sticking their legs up on their desks and probably pulling a few muscles trying to do the splits (NOT my idea). I love how easy it is to make these kids happy!

Tired at the end of a long day and an additional after school tutoring session with Maho, one of my most difficult students, he started to sing Queen's We are the Champions. Only knowing one line, this became more of an out-of-tune humming with a lot of air guitar mixed in. Quick to catch on, I told him if he did the rest of the problems quickly, I would teach him the lyrics. I've never seen a kid whip out a pencil and paper so quickly before. He diligently copied out the entire lyrics and sang it with me several times. How did I forget the power of music?! (oh yeah, no electricity in the classroom.... that's why)

In the midst of some sort of wildly digressing lesson with my quirky, high on personality-low on attention span afternoon class... one of my boys (probably Oscar) made up some nonsense sentence to tease me, which then somehow turned into a comment about Mr. Ball... the kids seem to think (as all kids do, whenever there is a male teacher in an elementary school) that Mr. Ball and I are together... "But Miss, why you and Mr. Ball always together?" To which I explained that Mr. Ball and I are always together with all of the English teachers, because we do not have many friends here in Juticalpa, and so we are together because we are the only friends we have. Wendy piped up, "Miss! I am your friend!" along with several other kids, and of course one or two boys who retorted, "No Meez! I no your friend!" Oh, but tis all a "brome, Miss! Only a brome!" :-P jajajaja

My students are now on high alert, not only to catch other table groups "He is speaking Spanish Miss! Strike!", but also I have them trained to tattle on kids hiding food in their desks. "Is EATing, Miss! Galletas, in the DESK!" To which I begin the usual spiel, "Do you know why you are not supposed to eat and put food in your desk?"---choral reply---"YES. Because there will be ANTs. And COCKroaches!" How far we've come since that first few weeks, when I went into a tirade in English, and then again in Spanish, to make sure I was understood, as Sergio gave me that blank stare and pulled the mushy cupcake out of his desk. (I now recognize this is his normal look, and is no indication that he has not understood me. In fact, he is one of my best English students. He's the Godfather kid.)

And, my favorite line of late... in math, I have finally given up on place value and rounding, and we are now multiplying. After two weeks of area model method, Keydy (who comes to tutoring for math), exclaimed in class, "Miss! This-is-EAASY!" woohoo! So glad I'm boring my students out of lack of challenge, instead of failure to "motivar los".... as the parents keep reminding us English teachers to do.

Which brings me to Valentine's Day, commonly known as "El Dia de Amour y la Paz" en español. When I asked the kids how they celebrate in Honduras, my U.S.-savvy students said, "The same as in the States." Oh really? I asked. In the States, all the children give Valentines to all the other students in the class, and we have a party with cookies and refrescos. While it wasn't quite the same here, we did still get to do my traditional candy heart math activity (thanks to Cuz Ali, whose package with the candy hearts arrived just in time!!), and I got rid of the rest of my Honduran candy saved up from Halloween and birthday parties. And we did the friendship circle, which involved writing one nice compliment about each student in the class. I include a photo in the February slideshow. From the above anecdotes, I am happy to observe that my students must enjoy my class, despite the grumblings and daily whining, "No, Miss! Naaawwwohhh!!!" whenever I ask them to do, well, anything that they don't particularly wish to do. My fav compliment was from Favio (the one Lauré said she wanted to take home when she visited in October): "Miss Susong is the most great person." I'll have to save viewing my compliment heart for the lowest times in my days, so as to keep my ego in check... ;-P

Oh, my favorite part of the friendship circle brainstorming activity was when someone asked, "Miss, how do you say... flat? He is flat. How do you say... flat--- in English?" (I think, judging from the person to whom they were referring, they meant to ask, how do you say "flaco", which means thin...) And a couple of people wrote about boys, "He is fine." or "He is beautiful (for a friend)." My students love to use the word "beautiful" to describe anything they like. I must remember to put adjective-vocabulary expanding on the growing list of necessary grammar lessons. Since we have started doing book talks, many of my girls tell me, "Miss, I LOVE this book. It is BEAUTIFUL!"