Sunday May 9, 2010
What a tough week. I don’t know if it is that point in the school year for me or what but I am really lacking energy with the kids at school and one of my students even called me out this week. During class he basically asked me why I wasn’t as energetic while teaching them now as I was back when I first got here. Ouch. I sat down on Thursday and talked with Laura Beth about it. She is one of only two other trained teachers down here and I wanted to here what she had to say. She reminded me that where we are in the school year is one of the most difficult times in regards to having energy with the kids because it is close to the end of the school year but we aren’t there yet. She also said that this is my fourth month of teaching (their seventh month) and that back in the states the third and fourth months are usually the most difficult (write before Christmas in a typical school year). With this said I have had a couple times down here where I’ve had to remind myself that I am down here for the students and the experience. That is what I had to do this week because that’s what gives me the energy to work with these kids on a daily basis. It is draining though, and when you just finish grading a test where the average grade was a 62 percent it is even more difficult. Speaking of that test, I had to give 0’s to my first students for cheating. It was blatant. She was making hand signals—the first being numbers (holding up fingers) and the second making letters (a,b,c,d). I gave the signaler and whom I believed was the primary target of the signals 0’s. They are getting demerits as well so I think I will let them try and redeem themselves on a make-up test—a really hard essay response question. We’ll see. So that’s another reason it was a tough week. I hope the following week goes a little better as well as the remaining 5 weeks we have here.

I had to refocus myself this week as mentioned and one of the ways I did that was by putting together a video on iMovie using pictures and some video I took of my nivalaicon kids performing a fashion show. They did this on Wednesday and it was a lot of fun. I finished the video and I am hoping to upload it to my YouTube account and post a link (if not the actual video) on my blog. Hopefully I can get it working.

Today was a fun day (other then working on school work and TEFL stuff). There is a Filipino couple that are missionaries here in Honduras who also teach at the school and it was their son’s birthday today so we had a party. Rachel and I got put in change of decorations for the party so we were up early this morning decorating the comedor (where I live). We had bought a birthday sign, some balloons, and some streamers in town yesterday. I tied at least 50 balloons this morning, but luckily didn’t have to blow all of them up thanks to the help of some of the neighbor kids. The party itself was a lot of fun with the highlight being the food. We had some really good sandwiches, potato salad, and chips and cheese and salsa. We even had a fresh fruit salad and a cake. It was fantastic. As mentioned, after the party I spent the rest of the day working on schoolwork and my TEFL class.

Yesterday Rachel, Laura Beth, Paola (the fourth grader of the host family I live with) and I went to town around 9 in the morning to watch some of our kids play soccer. Our kids were split into two teams, the U12 team that we watched at 9:30 and the U14 team that played after. Unfortunately we weren’t able to watch the older boys play because Rachel and I had to run to the bank and we promised Paola we would take her out to lunch. After the soccer game, in which our boys punished the other team 9-0, the three of us went to the bank in town. The line was so long (reminded me of Semana Santa in Tela…) that we decided to forget the bank and just go buy some decorations for the party and grab lunch. Rachel had enough money to cover these expenses. We grabbed some lunch at Guancascos and afterwards headed back home. I ended up doing some TEFL work and graded the tests I mentioned earlier in which the average grade was a 62 percent. Ugh.

Anyway, that’s a pretty good update. Sorry it took a week for me to post again, but with my TEFL class and school work I have been super busy. I have even unfortunately gotten out of the habit of running 4-5 times a week. I need to get back on that.

Anyway, I hope all is well and I hope all the mothers who read this entry had an excellent Mother’s Day!