7/13/09

Hi all! Bienvenidos a mi primer blog! (Welcome to my first blog)

Thanks so much for coming to my blog to keep up with what I’m doing down here in Cofradía, Cortés, Honduras. Feel free to invite others. This first entry was written a few days ago before realized I want to blog my topic instead of focusing on recapping days so it will be different later on. I will start blogging with topic headings like Homestay, BECA Voluntarios, Health, Community, etc so everyone can pick and choose more easily what they want to read. I’ll also write just a general introduction later so everything makes sense to everyone. But for now, enjoy this window into a day and know that I’m safe, healthy, excited about teaching, bonding with other volunteers, meeting students, adapting, and in good spirits.

7/13/09

Trying to journal has been pretty challenging here. Everyday I have so much I want to put down in words but just so little time to do it. Very little alone time. But I’ll start jotting down a few of the major things tonight before I forget.

Today was the first day of the Summer Institute, or the 6 week training session for the yearlong teacher volunteers. We started off the day 8am with a Spanish class held in the courtyard of a church. For the greater part of the 2 hours, we played an icebreaker that was amusing but seemed a little endless and didn’t involve very much Spanish at all. I’ve been craving some more formal Spanish instruction as I’ve been here about 4 days and have just been picking up new words here and there in many confusing conversations. The Spanish classes are taught by a Honduran teacher, one of our colleagues SJBS quien se llama Linda.

Next, we had a meeting at the volunteer house to cover some logistics. I really enjoy Laurence, the program director, and Mike, the program administrator, but the meeting seemed to last forever! Beside logistics, it was an introduction to the conceptual basis on which BECA was founded. We briefly spoke about educational reform in the context of economic development, a topic I love talking about but the heat of the early afternoon was rolling in at that point.

Then it was finally time to break for lunch. We split into groups to scavenge for different parts of a meal around town. I was on the hunt for tortillas de maize with some other guys and we took a beautiful walk as we tracked down some fresh tortillas. We visited four different homes until we found one with women in action. Thirty tortillas for thirty lempiras. This house is right across the street from one of my favorite features of our area, the Wisdom Tree, a great tree that must be thousands of years old with something about it that just seems to emanate a sense of calm reflection (except it’s next to a soccer field).

Lunch for the eleven of us cost about 7 dollars.

After lunch, we went to the school for the first time. School to be described more later...

Katie’s workshop. One of the teachers here is an experienced teacher and she has started giving us some pointers about how to prepare for our classes. We’re currently in the stage of going through a lot of material left from the previous years. Will write more in “Becoming una maestra.”

When we got home, the other BECA volunteer I’m staying with, Katy, and I made tortillas with Juana, the mother of Seydi, my hostess. They put us to work because I had mentioned the night before that I’d like to learn how to cool local food. It was amazingly difficult to make tortillas that were up to par but definitely a lot of fun as Juana is quite a character (read: likes to give me a hard time and joke with me even though she knows I barely understand her)

Ending notes (more snippets of today that I don’t have time to elaborate on)

Getting a lot of mosquito bites because I’m trying to limit my use of deet bug repellant. Don’t worry, it’s not yet dengue fever season.

Dinner with Seydi and Juan (a friend of the family) during which we chatted about seafood, taking a trip to Los Angeles (a nearby community), chopsticks, fruit... Feels great to start to get to know Seydi as I had a lot of trouble communicating with her the first few days.

Used the wireless internet at the apartment, a common space for BECA. Talked with Dave while I was there. Inspired me with some pictures of his sculptures and shows he’s put on. TBContinued when I write about the other BECA volunteers (I really like all of them so far).

Went home and spent some more quality time with Seydi looking at baby pictures and showing her and Moises my WuSauce Dance-off video. Moises clapped at the end.