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!