Made it to Juticalpa

I am in Honduras.  This is crazy.  Honestly, it feels really natural, I just need to learn the language and I'll be set...  But I guess that's just the case whenever.  Though, I don't really look like I fit in; people keep saying, "Hello!" to us as we walk by and laughing.  So, anyway, I'm no Honduran, clearly.

The school I'm working at is slightly not as nice as the Middle School I went to, so it's pretty nice.  More tropical, though, so the windows are thinner and have bars on them and the walls are painted very National Geographic.  You know, with the dark wood and the dark blue paint on bottom and the light blue on top.  Actually, the basketball court is the only thing that looks a little run down, but that's not something I'm going to worry about. 

I was really confused about my classes at first.  They gave me my schedule, and there was a time slot for Musica and for Arte, but everything else was under one heading, so my boss had to spend 20 minutes explaining it to me, (but that's mostly because he uses a lot of words to explain a simple idea).  Basically, I'm in charge of what subjects I teach when to each class.  Apparently, though, I have the most confusing schedule because I am alternating every week between two schedules and everyone else is doing the same thing every week.  I think tomorrow I may tell him what I think my plan is, and if it seems like I know what I'm talking about, then I understand my schedule. 

But I do have to and will be for the 12 days planning my curriculum. One of the art projects I'm planning to do with the kids that I am so excited about is going to be street art/graffiti.  I probably will be able to find pieces of concrete and recycle it for canvases, and I already asked about using spray paint in the classroom, I just have to teach them about it first.  Maybe I can show them Exit Through the Gift Shop and it can do that part for me.  But I think I'm going to save this to be an award for everyone in the class being good and working hard for, like, two weeks or something at some point.  Or maybe I'll tell the kids that if they get less than a certain number of checks (that each will get for bad behavior) each day for two weeks they can watch the movie and do a project.

The Reward/Consequence thing is pretty intense here.  We each choose how we want to do it and I think I've come up with a pretty good system...  But we'll see.  I might have to change it at some point.

So far we've been doing orientation.  Another teacher and I were one day late to orientation because we were told the wrong date.  It worked out for me, though, because otherwise I wouldn't have been able to go to the end of summer banquet for my summer job, and I don't think I missed too much anyway.  Next week is the orientation with the returning teachers.  I'm pretty excited to meet everyone, especially since so far everyone I've meet have been really cool.

I'm going to have two roommates and one of them is here already and the other is coming on Monday.  We're going to wait to get internet until then, and then have all three of us and the girls that live in the other house in the same complex pay, too, and we can all share.  I'm currently in a Texaco gas station with some people for the internet, so getting our own sounds like the best and cheapest option.  Our houses look like something that would be in the United States, so they're really nice by Honduras standards.  Apparently, all our houses have maid quarters because everyone middle class has maids (not us), so that's neat.  We're going to get a maid service twice a month from the women that work at the school.  I hope they come soon because I have some ants eating some dead bugs in my room and I'm not sure how to go about getting rid of it.

Juticalpa is... hard to explain.  Once I get pictures on my computer, I'll put them on here, but I also don't want to be one of those annoying, tourist, white people taking pictures of dark people.  I guess, if they'd think that, they'd think it whether I was taking a picture or not, so maybe I'll just not worry about it and get great pictures.

The food is exactly what you would expect it to be, just without anything spicy (which might be what you expected).  I just had a plate of beans, rice, and fried plantains and a cup of coffee, for example.  Last night we had pupusas, which are basically tortillas stuffed with stuff.  I had beans in mine, and it was served with two kinds of salads (pickled vegetables in one and cabbage in the other), and it was really good when putting the salads on top and eating it like an American taco.  Also, there's a lot of fruit.  A LOT of fruit, which is something I'm not used to.  I'm excited to get some food and start cooking, because everything is local and seasonal, and I'm only really used to cooking with pasta, broccoli, zucchini, and garbanzo beans.

All of the stuff we don't really think about every day sucks down here, so be grateful for being able to flush toilet paper, for example, and trash containers all over the place that are used by people who have trash that are collected by the county to be stored out of sight, and electricity that works consistency and wires for electricity that don't look like if you touch them you probably will be electrocuted.

The weather is awesome right now, but everyone is really worried about February and March, which are the hottest months of the year (and December is the coldest, which I thought was weird).  It's just that then it's going to be hot and humid and it isn't going to rain.  Now it's hot and humid, too, but not as hot and cloudy and when it rains it cools down a lot.  The hardest part will be the humidity, because I'm definitely used to the heat.  Actually, speaking of being used to it, and probably the reason why it feels natural here, is because a lot of this reminds me of a mix between the poorest parts of Southern New Mexico with roads the size of old European roads.  Juticalpa has a definite higher class and I haven't seen anyone homeless or begging or anything yet. 

The last thing I'm going to touch on before I head out is the whole street-dog situation.  There are street dogs, yeah, but for the most part they look mostly healthy and well-fed and are really well behaved.  Some are mangy and most of the females look like they are or have been pregnant recently.  But I heard that no one owns dogs here, and apparently that's not true at all.  I still don't think it's a good idea to bring Uhura unless I decide to come back next year because the culture surrounding dogs is so different.  I just wanted to clear that up in case I said something untrue before.

I'll make sure to post pictures soon!