Honduras Always Wins, And Has

Amongst the teachers at Day-Star School, there is a little phrase that is liked in order to make the difficulties we face in Honduras more of a game:  Honduras always wins.  It's pretty well documented in my friend's blog No Hablo Espanol where he keeps a running account of the gringos vs. Honduras.  (It's actually pretty hilarious, I suggest reading it through.)

I never really jumped on board with this because I moved to a developing country, I expected living here to be difficult.  Well, different and something needing adjustment.  And besides, thinking of it in terms of us versus them seems pretty combative in a way that isn't productive.  There are a lot of very beautiful things about being here, and I have met some pretty amazing people.

I have, never the less, decided to leave Honduras.

It is not the country, no.  This really is an amazingly beautiful place.  The people who are amazing I've met are not just my coworkers, but also some of the locals are excellent people, and so giving and helpful.  I have decided to leave because of my job, which is why I was here in the first place.  That, and learning how to speak Spanish.

My job is incredibly frustrating in a way that I do not want to deal with for an entire year.  At first, I told myself that once I adjusted it would be easier.  All jobs have their difficulties and seemingly arbitrary rules, it's just what you have to get used to.  In this job, though, the difficulties became harder to deal with and more frustrating, sometimes to the point were I couldn't teach my classes any of what I had planned.  The rules were never consistent, and what we learned in our training changed many times.  The hardest one for me to handle was the discipline of the students.  We were told constantly to be as strict with the kids as possible, but then later I was told that these kids have very important family members and you have to be careful how you treat them.  Read: be easy on them.  It isn't just me.  One of my coworkers had a consistently bad student and he was told, basically, to alter his rules for this one student.  No child left behind at it's worst.

Grading, too, is pretty crazy.  Honduran law dictates that if more than half of the class if failing it's not the students, it's the teacher.  How is it the teacher's fault that more than half of the class is talking and/or not paying attention during class?  Even if you have a well behaved class, like myself, no one pays attention, and I figured that out once I gave them a quiz and most of my students in every class failed it.  And not just failed.  Got 5 out of 15 or less failed.  For someone coming from teaching/tutoring college students, I was under the mindset that if you're spending money for your education and aren't going to bother trying in class, that's your problem.  Even though these kids are paying for this, they did not have that mindset.  I don't think I can emphasis more that these kids are the privileged, and I really don't know how to deal with that.

The younger kids are the worst, though, because they expect you to hold their hand through everything.  When kids would have a question on a test I would literally just read the instructions and they would get it.  But I wouldn't have any problem walking these kids through the assignments and tests and going slower if I had 20 students per class instead of 30, and for longer than 45 minutes every day.  I think that's why my 9th graders were so much more successful: there were 20 students per class and three days per week I had them for 1.5 hours instead of 45 minutes.

But that's pretty much just me bitching.

I don't think I'm the kind of person that can handle being a teacher.  These problems are the same sort of problems teachers have everywhere in the world.  Maybe not all at once, and maybe yes, all at once, but in either case, there are talented people that are not only good at this but love this.  I am just not one of them.

As far as my Spanish goes, it is inching, getting better slightly, but I've been here for 3 months and it is barely better at all to when I came.  Well, maybe instead of beginning 1 level I'm at beginner 2.  Not going to say it's not frustrating, especially when I'm on my own and tired and am talking to one of the less sympathetic inhabitants.

I feel that because my Spanish wasn't up to snuff coming here, I had a harder time keeping up with the vegan and as-local-as-possible lifestyle that I very actively try to keep, as I feel it is an incredibly important part of my life.  I am all but addicted to cheese again, and have definitely felt like an asshole when I order food in a specific way or send it back when it has ham.  I have had many meals of potato chips and accidentally eaten things that I really should not have due to my language problem.  This year  has been filled with cases of my not being prepared enough and needed to learn how to be more prepared, but the last 3 months of being unprepared were 3 months of being slowly chipped away at with very little support.

I knew this was to be the case, too.  I was excited to take every moment as a teaching opportunity.  I wanted to get into conversations with the waiters and waitresses about why I don't eat animal products, and learn about how food is made and transported in this country.  I was excited to teach my students about what it means to be vegan and vegetarian and open their minds a little to alternate ways of thinking and acting in this world.  I was especially excited to teach them about animal rights, at least.

But alas, I am not good at teaching.  I would rather do, I suppose.

I will, without a doubt, have a place in my heart for Juticalpa, Olancho, indefinitely.  But now is not the time for me to be here.  In the future, if my path takes me back to this place, I will welcome it with joy.

Good Teacher on Fridays

Fridays are the best days.

Not only is it the last day until the weekend, but I also only teach 5 classes instead of 6 on Fridays, which gives me time to do all the other things I need to do during working hours... Or go on facebook, depending on how I feel.

Yesterday was Thursday.  Thursdays are not the best days, and I was very harsh with the kids.  It's just so tiring knowing the the weekend is coming but you not only have to work today, you have to work an entire day tomorrow.

But not on Friday!  I know that I have only another # classes before I can go home and take a nap.  Or go drink a beer.  Or grade all the stuff I need to grade... No, I have all weekend to do that.  Today is Friday.  Today I do nothing.

But on top of all this relaxing and awesome free-time after a stressful week of teaching, I have found that I am also a much better and more patient teacher on Fridays.  Maybe it's the knowledge that I am soon to have 2 whole days of doing whatever I want, maybe it's the fact that I get so many breaks, maybe it's the classes I have on Friday, or maybe it's that the students are really happy to be almost done, too, but I will teach the same lesson on Thursday much differently than on Friday.  I will also be much harder on my students Monday-Thursday.  Way more warnings are given out on Fridays.  A lot more jokes are made.  I will hum and sing to myself.

In conclusion, Fridays are great.

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Advice to anyone wanting to teach in a foreign country:  Learn the bad words and the insults of where you're going.  One of the students could call you an insulting word and you would have no idea, when really he should probably get expelled for a few days for calling a teacher a "faggot" to his face.  Well, a maricon, but you know.

Coffee In Honduras

If you are a snob like me, you know that coffee is one of, if not the most important sustenance available to humans.

I am also a purist when it comes to coffee.  If I'm drinking espresso, that's what I'm drinking, and the same goes for drip or french press or socks... I believe that if you are going to order a "coffee" and buy something that's mostly milk, you probably don't like coffee.

This is how most people make coffee in Honduras: socks.

My main consumption of coffee in the United States is at home from a drip coffee machine, using filtered tap water.  Sometimes I use really expensive, local, fabulous coffee, and sometimes I use Foldgers, depending on the money available to me at the time.  That, or I dirnk from my parents' amazing coffee machine that grinds whole bean coffee for every cup.  It's amazing.  Then, in the afternoon/noon time I would get a venti iced coffee from Starbucks.  This was the hardest part, coffee-wise, of coming here: no iced coffee.  In fact, no drip coffee, either, unless you buy a machine or know someone who has one.  Luckily for me, my neighbor has a drip machine and I bought a huge hot-liquid container, so my life in the past week has gotten back on track.

Coffee in Honduras is not what you would expect.  Well, I guess it's only if you expect that coffee isn't exported for the rich and not really drank by the communities that make it.

The majority of the coffee I've had here is the shittiest coffee I've ever had: at my job.  Given, they probably don't put too much money into buying quality coffee (especially considering they won't even copy all the tests you need for your classes in order to save money), but keep in mind that this is coming from someone who loves gas station coffee.  So there's that.

Texaco: also one of the best places to get coffee.  

Gas station double Americano.

The best coffee I've had, by far, is when we went to Lago del Yagao, where there are coffee plantations right there, and so the coffee is really fresh.  Fresh to death.

Apparently, this is because the majority of the really good coffee plantations are more in the north and the west, and I'm in Olancho.  In the west, it's Copan, and since this is the final place in Honduras I truly want to see, maybe I'll be able to experience the fabulous slightly sweet and low acid Honduran coffee the region has to offer.

But there's also a little stand on the street on my way to school where I stop to get my breakfast of two baleadas.  Next to the lady with the baleadas, there's a lady with coffee, which is really good.  Unfortunately, I had to stop going there because she refused to give me coffee without sugar in it.  I tried for a week and every time there was a nice, thick layer of sugar at the bottom of the cup.  I'm starting to think that drinking black coffee is really strange to them, or maybe just to see a gringa do it is strange.  Either way, it has been a confusion many times.

I'm really looking forward to visiting a coffee plantation some time soon.  Hopefully.  And buying and drinking really fresh and delicious coffee.

Camping!

We decided to go camping!  We went to Parque Nacional La Muralla, which is obviously a National Park in Honduras about 2 hours away from Juti.  After leaving the city about 3 hours later than we intended and arriving at the cabin after dark, four of the boys worked on the fire, and everyone else ate sandwiches.  And yes, cabin, two people slept in a tent, and that's only because the man who owned the cabin highly suggested I not sleep next to the fire.  So, we weren't real camping, but the best part of camping is sitting around a fire drinking beer, talking, and every so often singing, so we got that right.

I took these in the morning.  A beautiful morning it was:

  

"The Earth is all of ours.  Some have already died, others are living, but the majority have not yet been born.

We protect our outdoors."

In the morning, we realized we had accidently run the battery all night and had to find someone close enough by to help us.  One of the gringos had taken his motorcycle out there, so he was able to find a farmer who lived nearby and who could lend us the battery out of his truck.  Funnily enough, though, the first people he found were Americans, refused to help, and ended up at the same cabin were we were waiting to get a jump.  It was pretty awkward.

This car has already taken me on some pretty great adventures, thanks to my neighbor.  Looking forward to the rest of them.

Recently, I've been having some very socially satisfying interactions with locals.  For example, I needed something from the local store (I'm not sure what to call it because it's a cross between a pulperia and a grocery store), but it was closed.  My friend and I asked some people at a near by shop if they knew were to go and they did, but they also walked us there!  And spoke to us in Spanish!  And helped correct us when we said something stupid!  They were some of the nicest people I've meet, but the thing is, after this happened, this sort of interaction is pretty consistent.  It's probably because my Spanish is getting better, and I'm absolutely loving it.  Well, my Spanish isn't that much better.  I told a woman "Vamos a un ATM" when I meant "Voy a ir un ATM."  I must sound so silly all of the time. 

But I'll get there.