Thursday June 10, 2010
It is the last day of real school because tomorrow is a half-day full of different activities. In reality today really isn’t even a real day. Grades were due today so there is no more teaching or testing. All I have for my students is a small presentation on the Seven Natural Wonders of the World and a survey to fill out, nothing too exciting. Tomorrow the students are going to get to watch the World Cup. As I write this in the cafeteria they are installing an antenna for this purpose. I don’t even know if an actual game is going to be on, but supposedly we are watching Mexico vs. South Africa. It must be a delayed recording of the game that is being shown at 8 am because I think the actual game is in the middle of the night Mountain Time. Either way it should be fun.
After the game (10 am) my Nivalacion kids are throwing me a going away party—two parties in two weeks from my Nivalaicion class. It should be a lot of fun as well. I bought two big bags of candy and a pencil for each student. I’ll make sure to get some video of this.
Speaking of video, I have made a few different videos that I have been unable to post on the blog because they would take too long to upload. Those will probably be posted once I get back to the United States and will probably be here on my blog under one entry as well as on my personal website. So look for those come the end of June.
The kids go home tomorrow at 12. I will probably clean up my room a little bit and eventually make my way back up to Villa Verde. After this I am embarking on my end of the year vacation.
When I first got down here and mentioned this to the other teachers, the possibility of taking a big trip at the end of the school year, I got a positive response from everyone. However, as time went on people began to drop like flies and at this point it is only going to be Rachel and I. We have been slowly planning the trip over the last couple of weeks and it is going to look something like this:
Friday after school we are going to head to Santa Rosa, which is about a little over an hour away from Gracias. We are staying there for a night and then heading up to Copan early Saturday morning. We need to be in Copan by noon so that we can catch a bus that will take us out of Honduras and into Guatemala. We will be heading up to the town of Antigua for about 6 days (we will be taking a few trips to other places around Antigua). The plan was to hike a volcano, which is near Antigua, but if you have been following the news at all that volcano is (was) erupting and tourists aren’t allowed near it (for unfortunate but obvious reasons). Antigua is quite the place though so there will be much to do.
After spending some time in Guatemala we are going to head back to Honduras on the 18th and make our way to San Pedo. We will spend the night in San Pedro and on the 19th head to Cieba (which is right on the Caribbean) where we will catch the 3 o’clock ferry to Roatan, the tropical islands off the coast of Honduras and the most touristy visited place in all of Honduras. We will be in Roatan for the 19th, 20th, and 21st and on the morning of the 22nd we will head back to Gracias.
The rest of my itinerary in Honduras looks like this:
We arrive (hopefully) back in Gracias on the 22nd and relax. On the 23rd we pack and visit with everyone in Villa Verde. On the 24th we will head back towards San Pedro and on the morning of the 25th we will be hopping on a plane bound for DTW, where we are supposed to land at 11:15 AM on June 25.
January 10 – June 25, 2010. That is my time in Honduras and it has been awesome. This will probably be my last entry while I am in Honduras because I will probably be too busy once I am back after the vacation. Plus, you know how long it took be to get something posted about Semana Santa.
So, to all of you who have kept in touch with me through this blog while I have been down here, thanks so much. I hope you had a few laughs and enjoyed reading about my experience. I will see many of you while I am home but for those of you who I might not see look for a link to my new blog starting the middle of August—Teach Spain.
Take care!
Friday, June 11, 2010
Monday, June 7, 2010
As usual, it’s been a week since my last post. Update time.
So we did not have school this past Monday. Honduras was pounded with rain and the government closed all schools across the country because of flooding. That was a nice surprise. I found that out right before I went to bed on Sunday night. I ended up going to town on Monday and hung out at Guancascos and got my haircut too. It was a nice and relaxing day. I also had the opportunity to work on my TEFL class all day which I FINISHED! I just need to post two comments and I will be done.
School was usual Tuesday through Thursday. Things are wrapping up so it’s been pretty low key. I am giving my last set of tests to my history classes on either Monday or Tuesday (depending on grade) and final grades are due Wednesday with Friday being a half day and the end. It’s hard to believe I’ve been down here for almost 5 months. I feel like I just landed in San Pedro and Mr. Rodrigo and Mr. Bran were standing in the terminal with “Tad VandenBrink” written on a piece of paper. But here I am, 5 months later with a little more teaching experience and memories to last a lifetime.
So on Friday my kids decided to throw me and the other teacher (Mrs. Lopez) a birthday party. My birthday is today and Mrs. Lopez’s was on the first. My students blew me away. They not only decorated the classroom and wouldn’t let me or Mrs. Lopez in to see it until the party, but they brought food (pizza, chips and cake) and even brought in a piñata. It was incredible. Check out my new Picasa album for pictures from the party.
After the party on Friday Rachel, Laura Beth and I left school early to take a bus to La Union. We were going to visit the other school there and I was also going to hang out with my friends who are doing the microfinance company. We took the 12:30 bus to La Union and it was a bumpy and curvy ride through the mountains. It was some beautiful scenery though. We arrived in La Union a little before 4 and ran into Renske and Laura (the European teachers whom I have talked about before) walking home from school. We ended up hanging out with them for a bit and eventually connected with Jake (another teacher and guy who taken on a leadership role in my school and who actually hired me back in December) and my friends. We had dinner at a family that everyone in La Union has gotten to know pretty well. They own a small convenient store in town where most of my friends do their shopping. They grilled us pork and steak for and it was delicious and it was a lot of fun.
I really was looking forward to seeing my friends in action with their microfinance company. I had my opportunity early on Saturday morning. I got up at 7 with Pat and Mike and walked about 30 minutes outside of town to the La Union coffee growers cooperative. Here there is a giant warehouse where Mike and Pat were storing recently purchased fertilizer. The day before they had started to hand it out as loans to approved farmers (farmers had to go through an approval process which the guys have set up. Basically the cooperative is made up of farmers from about 15-20 towns around La Union. They guys have organized a local elected boards of directors for each town who look at the applications of each farmer and help Mike and Pat decide if the particular farmer is responsible enough to take the loan, use it well, and pay it back) who had requested “x” amount (usually only a bag or two of fertilizer). They continued this process on Saturday morning and I got to watch them interact with about a half-dozen farmers. I have talked some about what they are doing, but to actually go to La Union and see them do what they do was awesome. The guys are now starting to look into the possibility of buying some land and building a “model” farm that they could use as an example for the area farmers and also a place to hold meetings. They would also use it as an investment to grow and sell the coffee.
After some time things began to slow down so we decided to walk back into town to get lunch. We stopped at a comedor (restaurant) and had a nice tipico (beef, rice, beans and tortillas). After lunch I decided that I wanted to head back to town to try and connect with the girls. They had done some hiking while I went down with Mike and Pat and had plans to go to a pool. However that ended up not happening and I ended up playing volleyball with Jake, a couple of his students, and a couple of the local guys. We won 3 straight games, even though my volleyball skills are far from impressive. It was a lot of fun though. After volleyball all of us (including three current U of M students who are interning for my buddies this summer) went out to dinner. One of the intern’s birthdays was this past week as well so it was a birthday dinner for the two of us. After dinner we ended up going back to Renske and Laura’s place where they had made a birthday cake for me. It was delicious. Overall it was a pretty awesome night of hanging out. The only downfall was that my buddy Mike had gotten a nasty stomach bug during the afternoon and had actually come home throwing up and ended up not coming out to dinner or to the girls for cake with us.
We left La Union this morning, on the only bus to Gracias on Sunday, at 5 AM. We arrived in Gracias at 8 and grabbed some breakfast at Guancascos before heading up the mountain. I took about a two-hour nap when I got home and have just been hanging out since. A pretty relaxing birthday, and a birthday weekend I’ll never forget.
Anyway, the last week of school has arrived. I am actually going to be taking a vacation into Guatemala and out to Roatan after school, so I will be sure to write at least one more time before that starts Friday afternoon. But that may be my last post in Honduras—I could be writing my final posts talking about my vacation state side. June 25 is rapidly approaching but I still have some incredible adventures ahead of me.
I hope all is well in the State. Take care!
So we did not have school this past Monday. Honduras was pounded with rain and the government closed all schools across the country because of flooding. That was a nice surprise. I found that out right before I went to bed on Sunday night. I ended up going to town on Monday and hung out at Guancascos and got my haircut too. It was a nice and relaxing day. I also had the opportunity to work on my TEFL class all day which I FINISHED! I just need to post two comments and I will be done.
School was usual Tuesday through Thursday. Things are wrapping up so it’s been pretty low key. I am giving my last set of tests to my history classes on either Monday or Tuesday (depending on grade) and final grades are due Wednesday with Friday being a half day and the end. It’s hard to believe I’ve been down here for almost 5 months. I feel like I just landed in San Pedro and Mr. Rodrigo and Mr. Bran were standing in the terminal with “Tad VandenBrink” written on a piece of paper. But here I am, 5 months later with a little more teaching experience and memories to last a lifetime.
So on Friday my kids decided to throw me and the other teacher (Mrs. Lopez) a birthday party. My birthday is today and Mrs. Lopez’s was on the first. My students blew me away. They not only decorated the classroom and wouldn’t let me or Mrs. Lopez in to see it until the party, but they brought food (pizza, chips and cake) and even brought in a piñata. It was incredible. Check out my new Picasa album for pictures from the party.
After the party on Friday Rachel, Laura Beth and I left school early to take a bus to La Union. We were going to visit the other school there and I was also going to hang out with my friends who are doing the microfinance company. We took the 12:30 bus to La Union and it was a bumpy and curvy ride through the mountains. It was some beautiful scenery though. We arrived in La Union a little before 4 and ran into Renske and Laura (the European teachers whom I have talked about before) walking home from school. We ended up hanging out with them for a bit and eventually connected with Jake (another teacher and guy who taken on a leadership role in my school and who actually hired me back in December) and my friends. We had dinner at a family that everyone in La Union has gotten to know pretty well. They own a small convenient store in town where most of my friends do their shopping. They grilled us pork and steak for and it was delicious and it was a lot of fun.
I really was looking forward to seeing my friends in action with their microfinance company. I had my opportunity early on Saturday morning. I got up at 7 with Pat and Mike and walked about 30 minutes outside of town to the La Union coffee growers cooperative. Here there is a giant warehouse where Mike and Pat were storing recently purchased fertilizer. The day before they had started to hand it out as loans to approved farmers (farmers had to go through an approval process which the guys have set up. Basically the cooperative is made up of farmers from about 15-20 towns around La Union. They guys have organized a local elected boards of directors for each town who look at the applications of each farmer and help Mike and Pat decide if the particular farmer is responsible enough to take the loan, use it well, and pay it back) who had requested “x” amount (usually only a bag or two of fertilizer). They continued this process on Saturday morning and I got to watch them interact with about a half-dozen farmers. I have talked some about what they are doing, but to actually go to La Union and see them do what they do was awesome. The guys are now starting to look into the possibility of buying some land and building a “model” farm that they could use as an example for the area farmers and also a place to hold meetings. They would also use it as an investment to grow and sell the coffee.
After some time things began to slow down so we decided to walk back into town to get lunch. We stopped at a comedor (restaurant) and had a nice tipico (beef, rice, beans and tortillas). After lunch I decided that I wanted to head back to town to try and connect with the girls. They had done some hiking while I went down with Mike and Pat and had plans to go to a pool. However that ended up not happening and I ended up playing volleyball with Jake, a couple of his students, and a couple of the local guys. We won 3 straight games, even though my volleyball skills are far from impressive. It was a lot of fun though. After volleyball all of us (including three current U of M students who are interning for my buddies this summer) went out to dinner. One of the intern’s birthdays was this past week as well so it was a birthday dinner for the two of us. After dinner we ended up going back to Renske and Laura’s place where they had made a birthday cake for me. It was delicious. Overall it was a pretty awesome night of hanging out. The only downfall was that my buddy Mike had gotten a nasty stomach bug during the afternoon and had actually come home throwing up and ended up not coming out to dinner or to the girls for cake with us.
We left La Union this morning, on the only bus to Gracias on Sunday, at 5 AM. We arrived in Gracias at 8 and grabbed some breakfast at Guancascos before heading up the mountain. I took about a two-hour nap when I got home and have just been hanging out since. A pretty relaxing birthday, and a birthday weekend I’ll never forget.
Anyway, the last week of school has arrived. I am actually going to be taking a vacation into Guatemala and out to Roatan after school, so I will be sure to write at least one more time before that starts Friday afternoon. But that may be my last post in Honduras—I could be writing my final posts talking about my vacation state side. June 25 is rapidly approaching but I still have some incredible adventures ahead of me.
I hope all is well in the State. Take care!
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