For Honduras, September is full of celebrations. Last Saturday was “Dia del Niño” (Children’s Day), which is a BIG deal here. The schools all hold huge celebrations with toys, food, games, cake, and piñatas….lots of piñatas! On Friday, Julie, Constance, and I went out to the school that we worked with for our self-directed project—Escuela Vicente Chavez in Liquidambar. When we got there, we found out that there were a bunch of high school kids that would be running the day’s activities. So, basically, there wasn’t anything for us to do or help with. We stuck around to watch the games, eat some arroz con pollo, and watch the kids break open the piñata. Kids doing a piñata in Honduras is like every teacher or camp counselor’s worst nightmare—kids pushing, shoving, almost hitting each other in the head with the stick. However, the teacher and parents didn’t seem worried…cultural differences I guess. We were disappointed that we didn’t get to help with anything that day, but the teacher invited to come back on Saturday, which was the actual children’s day. He was leading the whole thing himself, so he wanted us to come play some games. Constance had plans to celebrate with her family, but Julie and I decided to go.
Because it was a Saturday, the Peace Corps was not able to give us transportation, but they agreed to reimburse us for our travel costs. So, Julie and I woke up early and caught the big yellow school bus to Cataranas, which goes past the school. We were supposed to lead games from 9 to 10, but we didn’t end up starting until like 9:30 (cultural differences once again…punctuality just isn’t something that exists here). We played some games, helped hand out food and cake, and supervised piñata. We suggested to the teacher that they do different piñatas for different age groups so that not all of the kids were scrambling for the candy. It worked out much better, and there was much less whining and no injuries.
Today (I’m writing this on Thursday, September 15th) was Independence Day! Graciously, the Peace Corps gave us the day off (except they still gave us a worksheet of questions about Independence day that we were supposed to do), so we all went with our families to Valle de Angeles to celebrate. The parade was crazy! Each school in the area marched. There was such a variety of stuff, bands, some little kids acting like mimes (weird and kind of creepy), little kids in costumes, flags, girls dancing with batons, girls dancing with pom-poms, girls dancing with soccer balls and tennis racquets…really random stuff. I walked around with Yeisling and her cousin Paola, and took lots of pictures.
OK, I guess this is the important part….On Monday, we found out our sites. The site announcement process was really suspenseful, and Sandra, our project manager, loved watching us squirm. First, she made us listen to an inspirational song and talk about the lyrics that were most meaningful to us. Then she made us listen to it again and sing along (after 10 weeks of wondering about our sites, we really just wanted her to cut to the chase!). In order to announce the sites, she had a powerpoint presentation. She first showed us a quote from our personal statements, which we sent to her before we arrived. She read it, translated it into Spanish so that the Spanish teachers could understand, and then made us guess who wrote it. After some discussion and debate, she showed the name of the site, and then finally showed the picture of the person.
Of course, I ended up being the very last one, so by process of elimination I knew exactly which site was mine….SULACO,YORO! We each received a booklet of information about our site and our counterparts, and we spent the next 30 minutes sitting, reading our site descriptions, asking questions, and eating cake and ice cream. Here are some facts on my site, I’ll try to give as much info as I can, but I’m sure I’ll be able to tell you more once I get there on the 23rd.
· It is located in North-ish Central Honduras, and it is the southernmost municipality in the department of Yoro.
· Population 15,000 , with about 5,000 living in the casco urbano (main town) and the rest in the aldeas (other villages that are part of the municipality)
· It is located in a valley with mountains around it, there is a river and hot springs
· The people depend on small scale farming of beans, corn, fruits, and vegetables, as well as coffee and cattle farming
· I should have access to internet in my town (maybe in one of the schools or an internet café)
· Average temperature 85-90 degrees
· Looks like there’s at least one hotel and a few restaurants
· My counterparts:
o Escuela Francisco Morazan (primary school, grades 1-6)
§ Helping to organize the parenting school
§ Working with teachers who have already been trained in teaching English by the previous volunteer
§ Visiting poor families
§ Helping teach how to build home gardens
o Instituto San Juan de Sula (high school, grades 7-?)
§ Work with the English teacher to do co-teaching
§ Work with the counselor to organize parenting school, drug prevention, teen pregnancy prevention
§ Workshops for teachers on teaching techniques, discipline techniques, positive reinforcement, etc.
§ Work with the Spanish teacher to motivate the youth to read more
o Baseball team
§ I’m not really sure how this one’s going to go, I’m going to be working with the coach who is the physical education teacher, and I’ll be working with the team…should be interesting!
· My host family:
o The English teacher at the high school that I’ll be co-teaching with is also my host dad! And my host mom is one of the teachers I’ll be working with at the primary school. They have a 13 year-old daughter and a son who lives and studies in Tegucigalpa during the school year.
So, that’s the scoop! I’m pretty excited about my site. It’s really far away from the other people in my group, but there are a bunch of volunteers from other groups that are living and working in the department, so they’ll be within a few hours bus ride away from me.
The next week is filled with preparation for swearing-in and moving out to our sites. I already had my final language interview on Wednesday (and it didn’t go great, I’ll probably stay at the same level that I was before) and we only have a few hours of Spanish class left. We’re planning a celebration on Saturday night to spend some more time hanging out as a group before we’re scattered all over the place. It’s definitely bittersweet. I’m very excited to start working and be done with training, but the 15 of us have become so close and been through so much together in the past 11 weeks, that it’s going to be really sad leaving everyone. There’s definitely a strange mix of emotions in the group right now, but we’re doing our best to enjoy the time we have left together!
Thanks for reading! The next time I write will probably be from my site in Sulaco! Ahhh!
(p.s. I tried to post pictures, but the internet was not cooperating, I'll try to post some either here or on facebook soon!)
(p.s. I tried to post pictures, but the internet was not cooperating, I'll try to post some either here or on facebook soon!)
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