Reminiscence

This is a video from a Jazz bar in Cairo, Egypt that Abby and I visited 2 years ago. Of course we're going to sing Christmas carols wearing reindeer antlers in Egypt...that's expected.

Those are some OLD rocks!

Thanks to the Mayan Ruins, Copan Ruinas is on the map. As of December, we had yet to visit these famous ruins. I took care of that though and went 2 days in a row! Once with the other teachers and the next day with my students :) The ruins are pretty cool and super old!
Allan and I on the center temple thing :)
We got to climb it too!



The fieldtrip with my students was really fun. They were SUPER pumped and could hardly contain themselves.Check out this picture of 20 kids plus 2 adults in a 15 passenger van :)
It was really cute because they were allowed to wear jeans, sunglasses, and hats, so it showed a more of their own little personalities. Before we left, we were reviewing rules and how we should act while at the ruins. My favorite rule that I had to create with my 2nd grade students was "No talking on your cell phone." Thats right...about 8 of my second grade students had cell phones that the administration allowed them to bring with them in case of emergency. The kids did a great job listening and paying attention though. It was a fun way to end the first part of the year too!

Second grade "A"!

B-I-N-G-O

One day about a month ago, 4 puppies were brought to Mayatan. They were there running around the next day too. And the next day. I was starting to feel sorry for the pups getting chased, passes, hugged, handled, and petted by 150 primary and secondary students. I didn't think they were going to make it!I finally decided to ask what the puppies were doing at school.

"They are prizes for Bingo." "So will they be here until Bingo? Its in a month!" "Yep..."

This year, Mayatan had their 2nd annual Christmas Bingo Fundraiser event. It was a packed house. Lots and lots of people came out to play bingo and win some good prizes (and possibly a dog!) The event was supposed to start at 6:30. Well at 6:15, the power in the whole town went out. That didn's stop Bingo! People still came, bought tickets in the dark, found seats in the dark, bought food in the dark, and about an hour later, the power came back on and we started to play!


I even bought a card to play so I could have a chance at some prizes!

It was a great idea to keep the puppies at Mayatan for a month before the event because the kids went crazy when the announcer said the next prize was one of the puppies! The kids all loved the dogs! One of Allan's students, Carlos, actually won one of the dogs. He was really excited..but I don't know how excited his mother was. I got to hold him for a little while...and I made him play a round of Bingo for me :)

It was a really fun event. Lots of people participated, it was good practice for my Spanish numbers and I even won a prize! (luckily, not a dog!) Santa showed up too to deliver the prizes. He took a picture with Allan, Beto, and Victor :)

Grilling 101

While on our excursion to Esquipulos, Allan and I found a grill. YES. A grill. and we were pumped. The thought of being able to grill chicken instead of cooking it on the stove made our mouths water for a little different flavor. We negotiated the price at the Market and ended up buying a little tiny grill. We were pretty excited.

After thanksgiving, I thought it would be really nice and special to cook a nice, different dinner for Allan upon his return from the USA. I thought "now would be the perfect time to use our grill for the first time!" So I went to the store and bought some charcoal. I bought some vegetables, skewers, and chicken to make kabobs on the grill just like I have seen my father do. I had everything ready and cut up so we could just "design" our skewers when Allan got back to Copan, put them on the grill and eat a good dinner.

I guess I have never really paid much attention all these years to the thousands of hamburgers, cheeseburgers, chicken breasts, etc. that have been grilled by my father, uncle, college friends, etc. It actually takes time to get the charcoal to the point where you can grill. I guess I was thinking about those handy gas grills we have in the USA.

I quickly learned that charcoal grills are nearly impossible to start on a windy evening with no lighter fluid to catch the charcoal on fire. So what did we do? I had the brilliant idea to move the grill inside of the house and use the fire from my gas stove to heat the charcoal. Fail. It heated the charcoal...and started a little fire :)


We decided to just put the skewers on the grill inside and see what would happen. Also not recommended. After about 40 minutes of cooking because the chicken would not get done, We ended up not being able to eat the ones we cooked on the grill because they tasted like gas, and finished cooking the vegetables and chicken on a skillet. So much for a change in dinner! Back to the skillet dinners!

A Christmas Celebration in Copan. (parties and caroling)

1...2....a-1,2,3,4!

On Wednesday night after the last day of school before Christmas break, the entire student body marched though the streets of Copan with capes and candles mumbling, humming, screaming, pretending to sing by actually just moving their mouth (which is actually very easy to differentiate from actual singing even if you can't hear because you and the gringa are screaming yourself) Christmas carols. It actually turned out to look pretty cool, like an evening vigil, but the kicker was that Abby and I were the ad hoc “music directors” for this event. It all started with a “hey, would you and Abby like to help with the song practice today?”one morning. We assumed that meant there was someone running the show, and we were going to be there for moral and volume support, but when the time came to practice, it was just us- we had to wing leading Christmas songs for the first time ever in front of everyone (which of course was a disaster because it ended up being just us singing). Did I mention that half of the songs were in Spanish and that we had never heard them before [except for maybe el Tamborilero (yes, you know it-... ro-po-po-pon]? Exactly. Think about knowing just the part that goes "ro-po-po-pon" and then trying to play it/lead it for 200 kids and teachers.

Some of Abby's students pre-parade.

Well, by the end of it, I was bringing my guitar to the school-wide practices to help keep everyone together or at least on the same words (because without it we always had 2 endings to the songs, 1 from the left side and 1 from the right- for example, "You'll go down in history!...istory!) and I began to realize that the show on Wednesday night was going to be up to us. I say "show" because plenty of times the students were doing more talking than singing, and the rest were just watching me play the guitar and Abby sing her heart out. Concert five!

However, the night of the event, another Honduran teacher Hernán and Michael (the other 4th grade teacher who actually is an amazing, jazz drummer) with a snare drum attached to his waist were leading the parade with us. We marched and sang (see video to see who had the most Christmas spirit :) around town, finally ending up in the central park or as the locals say parque central where we repeated our entire set list (with a little grumbling and even quieter singing from the Mayataners), and then the kindergartners and 1st grade had special presentations/songs for all the families in attendance.

Bottom line: Parents loved it. Kinder and 1st grade are always cute when they try to sing in costumes. It was a success.

I was also the accompaniment for the 1st grade who sang Michael Jackson's “We Are the World.”

BTW have we mentioned how popular the (late) King of Pop is in Central America? During the Christmas party in 4A classroom, all the boys took turns dancing (hip shaking, leg shakes, moonwalks, and even do-the-Egyptian) to “Beat it” and “Thriller” (- played using my iPod) in front of the class. Then we served popcorn and watched a movie. While all of this was happening in 4th grade, the cute, mini students in 2A with Ms. Abby were taking not 1, but 2 tests! Then they were given homework over the break!! haha. Poor 2nd graders :) They still love her though- we know this because they keep writing her notes (while they should be listening in class) telling her so.

Candles and capes! This was great idea, nice visual effect, until a 4th grade girl's hair caught on fire and charred it up to her scalp.

Who ever said the REINDEER have to be cheery? It ain't all fun and games. (See headline below)

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,580899,00.html

and here we are ladies and gentlemen...

The official 2009-2010 Mayatan faculty and staff picture (taken by a mother 5 minutes after we were supposed to have been in class!). Good looking group!

Left to Right, Top to Bottom: Rudy, Cathy, Pedro, Theo, Allan, Sierra, Michael, Nash, John, Tammi, Mario, Lorena, Suly, Eva, Viki, Farrah, Helen,

Ada, Abby, Beth, Marisol, Megan,

Sarah, Norma, Keyla, Eileen, Christopher, Carolyn, Diana, Gabriela, Alexis,

Norma, Marisol, Carla

Thanksgiving travels!

Since Allan had an interview in the good ole USofA during Thanksgiving, I decided to go with some of the other teachers to Guatemala again, but this time to Antigua and Lake Atilan. It was a pretty sweet trip and we saw some cool things (like always). Below are some pictures and short stories of my travels :)


This is the famous arch of Antigua...and it really was beautiful! There used to be a convent there and the arch helped to mark where the convent was for people!



We spent 2 nights in Antigua and then headed to Lake Atilan. A group of us signed up for a hike starting at 4 am...thats right...4 in the morning. It was dark. and scary. We had 2 flashlights. I only fell once. But it was totally worth it. Check out the photos below. God is so creative. The sunrise was gorgeous! and it was nice to have a workout done before 630am.


This is Beth and me when we first arrived to the top! :)


Andddd we got to see a Volcano spurt some smoke :)


After the hike, we walked to a little village on the side of the mountain because it was market day there. And boy was it market day. Wow. It was really fun to see though. They were even selling the little chickens below :) How cute.



And....probably my favorite thing about the whole trip was finding these in the supermarket in Antigua. In the USA we sell frozen pizzas. In Honduras, they sell frozen pupusas, which are one of the most commonly made food here (pupusas are cheese, or bean, or chicken, or other type of food or a combination of all of the above-filled tortillas) .

A little trip to Esquipulas

Close by in the country of Guatemala is a city called Esquipulas (S-key-pull-us for those non-Spanish speakers). About 3 weeks ago Allan and I made the trek because we had heard there was a great Basilica that we should check out. We also heard there was zoo! The Basilica was pretty cool. It is the home of "black Jesus" shrine. This is quite the tourist attraction. Luckily Allan and I waited in line on Saturday to see the black Jesus because the line was SOOOO long on Sunday to just walk past the shrine in the front of this Basilica. It was interesting to see this kind of devotion and how important just walking by this shrine of Jesus was for people.

We also enjoyed the zoo a lot. It was a zoo like I had never seen before. Allan and I paid at the "entrance" and then were told we had to walk or take a moto-taxi up a huge hill (the picture above with the Basilica in the background is taken from about half-way up!) and back down it to reach the actual zoo. Since we are cheap, we decided to walk! It was further than we thought and funny. The zoo, which turned out to be like a family fun park, was even funnier. There was one ostrich, stuck in a small cage, 2 emu's, monkeys (in 3-4 different cages AND an island in the middle of a lake full of monkeys... I guess monkeys can't swim, because they couldn't escape!), birds, goats, ducks, deer (a little taste of the homeland), baby cows, and lions! It was crazy funny and worth the hike.

Another cool siting of the trip was the futbol field (pictured above) that we happened upon. I have NEVER seen a futbol field like this. There was no grass and lots of dust, but the children were playing in an organized soccer league on this field. I was atleast happy to see organized soccer, but I couldn't believe this field. They seemed so content though! And the fans were cheering them on! :)


One of my favorite things about Esquipulas, however, was the market. They had such a crazy intense market. The streets were filled with food vendors (pictured!), artisans, and tiny stores all selling the same things. Inside the market was even crazier though. Tons of fruits and vegetables and MEAT! In Copan, our market sells meat on Sundays (a man just plobs the cow meat down on a small table near the entrance of our market...last week he had the cows nose sitting with the meat. Yummy!) In Esquipulas, the market walls were lined with mini-stores selling meat. They just had it hanging in the back of the stores and would cut it up right there for you. Allan even got some coke in a bag :) What more could you ask for?

Look what I found in Copan!

Of course this would be here in Copan...cause North Carolina is da bomb. :)

I can't wait to be there soon!

Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope everyone is having an amazing Thanksgiving. Abby and the rest of the foreign teachers left for Antigua, Guatemala yesterday, but I'm still in Copan because I don't leave until tomorrow afternoon for the great U.S. of A. It's strange to be here basically by myself, but it has also been good because I have quite a few things to prepare before departing.

Last night, after tutoring Miguelito in English, his family and I went over to Elisa's (the girl who Abby usually tutors) house because she was having her birthday party. It was a lot of fun. I talked the most with the grandfather of the family mainly about fruit and politics as we were continually brought Cokes and plate after plate of food.

After the presents but before the cake, we all sang "Feliz Cumpleaños". Well, we sang several birthday songs in several languages including the emergent creole they call Spanglish; one of which was "Sapo Verde to You". This literally means "green toad to you", but they sing it to the tune of "Happy Birthday" because that's apparently what the English words sound like to Hondurans. Then, Miguelito's dad, Miguel (there are at least 5 Miguels in their immediate family), and I took on the boys in a little game of futbol, the All-Honduran pastime. We played until about 10PM, but we fell defeated to the youngsters because we were badly outnumbered, 'm not the goalie that I once was, and these people live for the sport.

Today, the missionaries Bill and Mary have invited me and a few other people to have a Thanksgiving lunch at their house, so I'm headed off to that. These people are so amazing. Because of them, I won't be eating celebrating Thanksgiving in a comedor by myself. This day has been great to reflect on all the blessings that surround me daily, such as Abby, absence of loneliness, support from my family, and the means to accomplish anything I've been called to do.

I'm sorry I'm not able to post any new pictures from our recent adventures including a trip to Esquipulas, Guatemala because Abby left with her camera that has them all. However, I promise we'll make a media-rich post next week though. I appreciate all of you. Thanks for your prayers and support.

butt buddies

We've all heard of butt buddies...but today we actually saw some butt buddies.


Never know what you'll see in Copan.



and yes....they were really stuck like that.

more of the cutest baby in Copan

Diana should be on a commercial or advertisement or something. She is so beautiful and so happy. Her brother is a student of Allan's and her mother, Eva, is a house-keeper at Mayatan. I have fallen in love with this family. Eva is such a sweet, hard-working, joyful woman. I have never seen her without a smile on her face and that smile has transferred to her children! This past week, Eva cleaned Allan and the other boy's house and I got to hang out with Diana and Jose. Allan broke out his camera and took some amazing shots of these beautiful children :)






I think Crest should use this to sell floss. I would buy it!

Every week, we take Spanish classes at a local Spanish school here. Through Allan's teacher, we were introduced to two families that were interested in their children learning English. We now teach 2 children English every Wednesday night in exchange for a home-cooked meal complete with dinner conversation in Spanish! (so its good practice for us!) Little did we know that these families (the mothers are sisters!) happen to be the nicest, most-inviting families in all of Copan. Seriously. We love hanging out with them and they really treat us with good ole southern hospitality.

The first week, Allan and I tutored separately at different houses, but the next week, they wanted us to tutor together so my family could meet Allan, and Allan's family could meet me. They have been so nice to us. They invited us to hang out at their church one Sunday afternoon and watch the inter-church futbol games. Then they invited us to celebrate a birthday with them the next night. This was so fun. One of their siblings own a local bakery in town so we met at their house (because the bakery is in the basment of the house, see picture below!) and hung out, ate pizza (some of the biggest pizza I have ever seen!), sang happy birthday, and just talked for a while. We both are really excited that we have had the chance to meet families like this is Copan. We were thanking them at the end of the night and said that we always felt so invited by them and that meant a lot to us, and one of the fathers replied "You are always invited." That is so nice! :)

Happy (belated) Halloween!

So this post is a little late, but that's ok :)

My kids wanted to wish all of you a.......




Nothing like a 48 cent costume :) We should have spent a little more money and bought a few more balloons. I think we would have looked more like the grapes we were trying to be :)

Where the Wild Things Are

My class is so cute. We read Where the Wild Things Are and made our own wild things that day for art! The kids loved it and I was so happy with how the monsters turned out :) One monster even had high heels and a purse :) So scary!

No lions, No tigers, No bears...OH MY

The CIRCUS is here! (and has been for about 5 weeks) Apparently when the one-ring circus comes to Copan, they set up shop for an extended stay. Not knowing this, we made plans to go as soon as we could in fear that it would leave, and we would have missed a unique cultural experience. The first available time was a Monday night after school. I'm not sure about in the U.S., but Monday night is not the preferred circus night for most Hondurans. Abby, our friend Chris, and I bought our tickets with giddy anticipation not knowing what to expect, and as we entered the circus tent, that anticipation turned into hilarious disbelief of people in the audience, which consisted of...NO ONE! Laughing, we took some time deciding which seats to pick since we had the entire stands (or gradería) to ourselves. The circus was supposed to start at 8PM, and it was already 10 after, and it didn't look like anyone else was showing up. Having time to contemplate the circus and the fact that these people were going on with the show (well, we assumed they were) even with an audience of 7 people, we decided upgrade our seats to the next level (equivalent to $4 instead of $3 for the "grand" stands). These seats were nicer, had backs, and were about 8 feet closer to the ring that our previous ones. We were excited to be able to see everything because no one was going to sit in front of us, and we were only about 10 feet back from the ring.

At 8:30, the show started after 8 more people trickled in. The first act consisted of a scantily clad cowgirl dance sequence to capture the male attention from the get go. Applause. The second act was a unicycle riding juggler who had a nearly flawless set. The only mis-haps were dropping a ball, hitting himself in the nose with a spinning bowling pin, and then falling off the unicycle. Tremendous applause from the gringo section. Next was a 5 minute clown dancing routine. Applause. Then, the magician came out (who also dubs as the door man) and performed an almost perfect show. He only accidentally showed one false bottom, but performed the pull-the-cloth-out-of-the-red-

bag-that-has-a-handle-and-a-zipper-on-the-bottom-and-a-switch-under-the-handle-that-hides-the-contents trick that we've all owned at one point. Still followed by roaring gringo applause though.

Skip ahead past more clown and cowgirl dancing, and we get to the monkey part. In short, the monkey was on a leash and was allowed to run back and forth while doing tricks like somersaults and holding a gun. Somewhat less noisy applause from the gringos. When the lights went out we could see the silhouette of a lion in a cage pacing back and forth in a crack in the curtains, but then a spotlight suddenly illuminated a man dressed in shiny, tight clothing in the middle of the ring. He raised the microphone to his mouth and proceeded to lip-sync and pantomime the entire song. The ridiculous part was that he actually started directing some of his actions...dirty, dirty gestures...to me (we know they were to me because we were the only ones in the section, and at 10 feet you know when someone is looking at you). Nothing like feeling extremely uncomfortable at the circus. It gives me chills to think about it. Confused and hesitant applause from the gringos. Next is the trampoline: the circus cast brings out a giant trampoline and starts taking turns jumping and doing flips on it. Remember, we are only about 15 feet from this rusty, rickety trampoline, and since having a very similar one at Merritt Mill, I've grown an apprecation for the dangers posed by trampolines, even for bystanders, like springs flying off at any moment. Chris gives me a funny look when he sees me crouched down and shielding my eyes, but after the grown-man-clown jumps, and a spring actually snaps loose and flies off, he is right with me, praying for the jumping to stop. Finally, after a little audience participation in which a young girl nearly breaks a leg jumping on the trampoline and after a baby of no more than 1.5 years old jumps too, we hear on the speakers, "Llegamos al final!" which means "That's the end!" The lights come on and people file out (to make sure they don't get stuck in the parking lot traffic :). Very confused and sparse gringo applause.

We stay seated asking ourselves: Are we missing something? What about the lion? I saw it! I know it's there! We call a worker over to ask him, and he tells us to come back tomorrow to see it. So we leave. Tired, entertained, confused, enlightened, saddened, disappointed, and satisfied. The Copan circus was the most bizarre and entertaining cultural experience to date and wouldn't have had nearly the same effect if it had been any other way. We've done some pretty sweet things with little money here (coke=$0.45, orange-$0.03, maid=$4), but this was one of the best. We were scared to take pictures (because of something we thought we heard in the opening announcements), so we only got a few, but we hope they help you understand what we're talking about a little better.

Here is a video we took waiting for the circus to start :) Enjoy!



and here is a video of the grand finale :) (yes, that is a baby)

Lets go on a Field trip!

On Thursday, the 4th grade had their first field trip of the year! With 2 weeks of good behavior, I told them they could go to the Bird Park (which is right down the road from the school)! What a great incentive to behave well, right? They all were excited to go swimming and brought their suits to school. When we arrived (with 32 4th graders- which is no small feat), we saw that the little dam was opened because of the rain the night before. The water was moving too fast and would have spilled over. The kids just saw this as meaning: NO POOL. They started to get upset and frustrated, but then the most resourceful/swim-hungry ones just jumped in the river. Everyone followed suit and actually ended up finding a little swimming hole just deep enough to jump into and splash around. Catastrophe avoided. They all had lot's of fun and no one got hurt! A blessing in itself. So next week we can make it educational by giving some writing assignments about their experience and tie in science lessons with it too.

belated birthday blog

Although my students recorded this for you on your birthday, I am just now getting to blog about it :) I am so sorry for the delay, pops, but I hope you had a great birthday. You are very loved by me and many, many people in this world. Thanks for being you.

P.S. My favorite thing is how they pronounce your name :)

not so unBELIZABLE

Since we are just "volunteers" here in Honduras, all of the teachers have to leave the country every 90 days to renew our visas. Mayatan organized a trip for all of the teachers to go to Belize to renew our visas (because you have to be outside of any of the C-4 countries which includes Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua to renew your visa).

This was our first trip to the Guatemalan border...even though it is only 12 miles away. It was pretty exciting. After we went through the border check there, we drove through Guatemala to catch a ferry to take over to Punta Gorda (fat point), Belize. The ferry is pictured below. It was just a smalllll boat that sped through the water and made you feel like your face was going to get blown off. We made it to Punta Gorda to discover that probably about 50 years ago, it was a booming port town with lots going on, but now it is a ghost town. Lots of the buildings are boarded up, there are not many people, and its just empty. It was nice to have a weekend to do ABSOLUTELY nothing, because there was nothing to do. We rented a boat with the other teachers one day and went to some desserted keys off of Belize. It was fun to do that (and I held a starfish!) The rest of the time was just straight chillin. :) The hotel had T.V.'s so we did get to watch some sports and movies :) and Punta Gorda has an icecream shop and it tastes like real icecream :) That was fun too :)



The teachers waiting for the boat to set sail :)


Where is everyone? Oh yea...there is NO one in Punta Gorda!


In case you were looking for the Chocolate Center of the Universe...its in Punta Gorda, Belize.


We were trying to go out to eat and saw this place...lots of beef choices, and pork...but NO fish :)


Allan's Mini Market in Punta Gorda :) Pretty cool.