A good few months

Hello everyone, I’m sorry it has been so long since my last blog post.

I’ve had a really good past few weeks at school. My kids are always saying the funniest things. Last week we were outside practicing writing the alphabet with chalk outside when they found a bug. I reminded them that the insect was our friend and not to kill it. They followed it about for a bit, and I suggested we give it a name. One child was insistent on “dragon” while another was set on “Henry”, so our new friend was christened “Dragon Henry”. However, while everyone was thinking about his name, no one noticed Dragon Henry sneaking off, and suddenly he was lost! My kids were very upset, so I suggested we all make little cards with pictures for Dragon Henry so that when he came past the class he would know that’s where his friends were. Without even thinking about it they managed to copy the words “Dragon Henry” off the board (score!) and the cute pictures are now adorning my classroom door.

I’m also really happy with their progress in English, numbers and letters. Most of them can now identify all of the letters of the alphabet, the silly actions I have made up for each letter, and I even started getting them to read some three-letter words. It was really touching last week when one of my parents came up to me and said she was really happy when her little girl said “mum, water please” all in English. I was so proud of her, and it’s just little moments like that, which make teaching so worthwhile.

I am less happy with the football practice at our school. Every year our school hosts the Montessori Cup in April, where all of the nearby schools will come to a big football tournament at the school. There is quite a lot of hype about it and classes will be cancelled for all of the matches. At first I was really excited, as I like to watch football at home, and even helped coach a girl’s team for a while. However, I was outraged when I found out that my girls won’t be allowed to participate. The older girls can play but apparently because the little girls don’t know the rules, they will have to cheerlead while the boys play. I find this ridiculous – it’s true they don’t know the rules but that is because no one has told them, and for me the logical solution would be just to teach them the rules because otherwise how will they ever learn them. So now, every day my boys get to practice football in P.E, while my girls just have to sit at the side and watch. I did manage to take them off and have a girls only practice one day, but unfortunately I usually have classes at the time they have P.E, so I can’t normally do this. It’s so unfair, but I just tell my girls to keep practicing and make a point to take them outside to watch when the older girls are playing, and hopefully they won’t be put off the sport altogether.

In other sports news I have finally started my karate club. There was a lot of excitement when I announced that there was going to be a karate club for the 6 – 10 year olds, and I was completely astounded on the first day when about forty incredibly hyper kids showed up at my classroom. I marched them all out to the basketball court (not ideal, but it works) and we played some games, learned some Japanese and I taught them some basic punches and kicks. It was a success, if slightly overwhelming and I have since limited the class so I now have about ten regular kids, which is much better as I can give them lots of individual attention. We now have classes on Wednesdays and Thursdays and if nothing else it is really fun just to run about on the field with them, playing games, doing karate rolls and having a good time. In particular I am really pleased by the attendance of two particularly difficult 2^nd grade boys who are nightmares in class, but who come along every week and work hard. It is nice to be able to congratulate and reward them instead of telling them off all the time.

My camera has run out of battery so all of these lovely pictures are Erin's

At the end of February the Honduran government announced a surprise “spring break holiday” which meant four days off school! We decided to go to El Salvador with fellow volunteers Kate, Rachel and Nicole. Despite its bad reputation El Salvador is a beautiful country all the locals are very friendly to travelers and keen to recommend their favorite places to visit. After a slightly hectic first night as we discovered none of our Honduran phones worked in the country, we finally managed to meet up in San Salvador. We decided to rent a car for two days, which gave us so much freedom and meant we didn’t have to rely on the famously unreliable chicken busses to get everywhere. Neither Erin nor I can drive but luckily Kate and Rachel are both really good drivers. It was still a little nerve wrecking when we first set out on the other side of the road, surrounded by famously reckless central – American drivers, however there were no major incidents and we only got lost once, and only for about five minutes.

Being on a road – trip was so much fun (once or twice we did get stuck behind a heard of cows) but just driving through the beautiful scenery with our friends and our Spanish radio fading in and out, made me so happy.

Our first stop was El Tunco, one of the famous beaches on the country’s Pacific coast. We had a great time relaxing, swimming and we even tried our hand at surfing. Needless to say with my sense of balance I wasn’t very good, but it was lots of fun anyhow. We then rode a truck up into the mountains and went on a hike to get to these spectacular waterfalls.

After the beach, we headed up to the “ruta de las flores” or route of the flowers, which is a trail of beautiful little artisan towns. All the towns were covered in murals, from the typical women and flowers painted on a wall, to murals on rubbish trucks and elaborate murals depicting the candidates for the next election. You can’t really picture people painting murals for David Cameron or Ed Milliband at home, can you? We wandered about the various cobbled streets for the day, just enjoying the sun and the peacefulness.

It was not long before our holiday was over. We had a very eventful journey back to Honduras involving our chicken bus breaking down and stranding us in the middle of El Salvador! That and some trouble in immigration meant it took us over15 hours to get back to Sigua, but we got home in the end, safe and sound.

These are all Erin's photos too

The cathedral in Comayagua

Last weekend we traveled to the nearby colonial town of Comayagua with our friends Jenny and Jos who are volunteers in an orphanage near El Progresso. Comayagua is a very tranquil town, and we went to visit the cathedral, climbed up the bell tower and I even got to ring the bells! We spent the rest of the time walking around, getting a feel for the place, enjoying the sun and we also managed to befriend some street children. It was great to catch up with Jenny and Jos and hear about their project, which we hope to go and visit soon. On Monday they came into school with us and met all the kids, which was great fun.

Last week was our school beauty pageant  - practice round. Although it was a strange idea to us, a school beauty pageant, and I wasn’t too sure about it before hand it did turn out to be a lot of fun, and although I’m not to sure about the older girls with all the makeup and reveling dresses, the little ones did have great fun dressing up as princesses and having everyone cheer them and throw confetti.

We also had our sports day on Friday, and although it was a lot more chaotic than at home, the kids all had great fun. A track was made with sprinkled flour around the field and there was running races, crawling races and a long jump. It made for a great break from classes and all of the kids were ecstatic when they all got a chocolate medal (made by the teachers the night before gluing chocolate coins to ribbons). Here, there are so few recourses, if you want anything the teachers have to make it themselves, but when you do put in the effort the kids appreciate it so much it is worth all the hard work.

That’s all the news for now, but we have a very exciting few weeks ahead of us. Our Project Trust Desk Officer is flying out to visit us at the beginning of April and then a week later my parents and sister are coming to visit. I can’t wait to see them after being away for 8 months (and am also very excited for the goodies they are brining – we will be introducing our host family to nutella, rich teas and bagels among other things.)