I've made it to the end of my first school term teaching in Honduras. It's been 4 months since I've moved here, and I have to say, I'm still enjoying it as much as when I started. I could even say it's even better than before. Me and my partner Mali have settled into the community, we have friends!! And, well, things are good. My only complaint is the lack of decent chocolate and cheddar cheese. If anyone would like to send me a wee present of the above items it would make my year! Although I'm not sure the cheese would survive the journey.... Also, a shout-out to my Gran who sent smarties in the last package that made 6 volunteers very, very happy.
I've been slacking a little on my blog recently, and as of the next two moths things might be similar as, as of Thursday I'm off travelling Central America for my winter vacation! I'm not sure how well connected to the Internet I'll be but I promise to keep you all updated on my progress and adventure.
I would like to use this blog as a way of saying a massive THANK YOU to everyone who has supported me up until this point, everyone who helped me organising events for fundraising, people who donated money, ideas and things to sell, anyone who helped me in any way I'd like to say thanks! It's an amazing experience for me to have and I wouldn't be here without the support and continued support from you guys.
Last week was thanksgiving, and while it's barely celebrated in the UK and Honduras it's rather MASSIVE in the USA. We have a friend in the community, with children our school, that is from the states and he invited us to his house for thanksgiving dinner. The whole week leading up to this meal I was dreaming about roast turkey, stuffing, mashed potato, vegetables and gravy. Mmm gravy. When Thursday came it did not disappoint. After a long day at school we were ravenous and thankfully the turkey was HUGE. It's one of the best meals I've had in Honduras. Not because it was western style food (don't get me wrong I love Honduran food, there will be plenty of that cooked when I get home), but because the food was genuinely extremely good! '¡Que rico!' As the Hondurans say. And it was nice to have something different. So thanksgiving was success. We left the house so full, we probably could've rolled home.
Our neighbours have moved out. When we found out this news we were extremely sad, our neighbours are a family of 5, a couple and their three children ages 1,3 and 5. The past month they've been living next door has been one of the best. The kids come over to the house to play in the mornings, we end up inventing games like rolling duct tape down the hill outside our house for the kids (and us) to chase. Great hilarity watching two 18 year olds chasing a roll of duct tape down a hill, well for the surrounding neighbours that is... We also teach the father English on a wednesday night and informally teach the children as we play with them. They also took out washing in when it rained!! So now you can see why we were genuinely sad when the neighbours moved. But thankfully they weren't moving far. Just three (very long) blocks away. We arranged to go over to visit in a few days and were told something about a swimming pool. We thought we were going to go swimming but I think something was lost in translation as we soon found out. We headed out, swimmers on, towels in bag and walked the three long blocks to a part of Trinidad we had never been before, we turned off the main road, and continued along a dirt track, crossing a large river and ten continuing along a dirt track. There we came to a clearing, with two houses, two large swimming pools, another small pool, an outdoor stage, a volleyball and football pitch. All very overgrown, derelict and in need of a clean. It was soon clear that the family were living there, cleaning the place up until the owners (I'm assuming its the owners) come to live here, just before Semana Santa. I was in awe of this place, tucked away in a small corner of Trinidad, it must have once been a beautiful leisure complex where people came to swim, relax, eat, listen to music and play football. It was a shame to see it had been abandoned but with some work it could be a potential business again. We offered to help start the clearing process and were soon set to work cleaning one of the big swimming pools, with the enthusiastic help of the kids. Scrubbing, brushing, washing and running away from fire ants, in a beautiful surrounding in the sun was really awesome. We then started the process of filling the pool, connecting the old pipes together which formed, surprisingly, a functioning water source. And slowly, slowly the pool started to fill. What more was there to do than go for a swim. Well more a paddle as the water only reached the ankles. But playing with the kids in this pool we'd just cleaned was a blast. And to top it off we got a great lunch followed by lemonade and free fruit picked from the surrounding trees! After making arrangements to return after we get back from travelling we said our goodbyes and set off home, tired, covered in bites, mud and scratches but ultimately very satisfied after an enjoyable, fun day!
Yesterday was our last day working at the 'Jardin de Niños' (the kinder school we work at twice a week) for this year. We arrived expecting a normal lesson, but we're greeted with the smell of cooking, and singing children. Profe Anna explained that today we would be having a party to say goodbye and this would involve art class, eating pastilitos (small pastries, filled with a rice, chicken mix and deep fried) accompanied with coca cola. What more could we want? Art and food. Our favourite things! After completing the apple we were drawing and decorating with the niños, we were presented with a key ring each from Honduras, a message was written on it saying 'Para alguien especial que le Recuerda Siempre.' which translates to 'For someone special that we will remember always' a lovely gesture and a nice momento from Honduras. After eating the pastilitos, which were amazing, ¡Que rico!We were sent off from the Jardin with the niños saying 'adios gringas!'. Until next time niños.
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
Monday, November 26, 2012
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
A late blog....
I realised I haven't blogged for about three weeks. Now is as good a time as any, sitting in a maca (hammock) listening to the music from the discotheque, to compose a blog about the past few weeks. Where to start?
Well. As we are here on a tourist visa, every three months we have to leave the country for a period of 72 hours (legally that is...). So off we went, having planned to go to Copan, a beautiful town just 20 minutes from the border with Guatemala and jump across the boarder for a couple of hours, pay some money and jump back. Getting all the stamps we need on the way. After a relatively uneventful busy journey of five hours, which I spent in an uncomfortable state as I seriously needed to pee, and we seemed to be on the slowest, bumpiest chicken bus in all of Honduras. It became interesting only when the bus ran over a candy floss vendor. We were made aware of this fact when there was a ridiculous thump on the side of the bus, lots of shouting and witnessing a toppling candy-floss stand. The man seemed to be fine, just shaken, his candy-floss however was not. After paying the man off, with around 500 lempiras ($25) we were off. Once arriving in Copan, I fell in love with the place, it was beautiful, colonial and busy. It had a small market and was surrounded by nice picturesque countryside. We ended up meeting two travellers that we had met previously on a trip to Lago de Yojoa and explained our plan. They were unsure it would work at this particular border and explained that we might have issues at other borders if the stamps on our passports showed that we hadn't been outside the country for more than 72 hours. After consulting a few other people we decided that we'd get a shuttle to Antigua the next day and spend three days chilling in Antigua. Not a bad plan.
Leaving the next day, on an uncomfortable 6 hour bus journey to Antigua, a cosmopolitan and colonial Guatemalan town. The border crossing was no problem, exit stamps, entrance stamps and just over $2 to be paid, we were in Guatemala. The first thing I noticed were the roads, so smooth. Little or no potholes, providing us with a relatively bump free journey to Antigua, if you ignore the erratic driving that seems to be commonplace in all Latin American countries. It seems to me that sides of the road don't really exist here... You can spend a good half of your journey somewhere driving on the opposite side of the road. Somewhat daunting at first but you soon get used to it. Anyway, we made it to Antigua in one piece. Found a hostel and set off exploring. Antigua is another beautiful town. It is surrounded by two volcanoes, which are both currently, slowly and gently erupting (if you can call an erupting volcano gentle). We couldn't see the lava or any of the eruption because the weather was pretty cloudy. It is winter after all. But still like a summers day at home. Shorts and tee shirts are more than enough. The first thing I noticed about Antigua was the amount of tourists. Everywhere I looked there were tourists. And I mean everywhere! Bus tours, backpackers, families, couples, Americans, Germans, Canadians, French..
Now having lived in a town for three months where there is only one other 'gringa' this came as a but of a surprise. And in a weird way, I know look at the tourists and say to myself, oh look white people. As if I, myself, am a local. I'm far from it.
I think I saw more VW Beatles in Antigua than I ever have in my life. I have no idea why, but they are vey popular. An I must say, I think I know why.
Our time I'm Antigua was pretty chilled. We explored the town, and tested about as much food as we could. The weekend in Antigua was spent eating, relaxing and talking to other travellers. And discussing out plans for our winter vacation which starts in just under three weeks. We have 7 weeks of holidays where we plan plan to explore Honduras, Guatemala, Belize, Nicaragua and possibly Costa Rica. This part I'm really looking forward to. But you'll here about this in future blogs!
Antigua was a good place to recover and relax before the last hectic weeks before the end of term.
The last week of term involves, fourth partial exams, final year exams, reinforcement classes, final grades, so much paperwork and of course the end of term party! So while I could say that this has been the reason for my lack of blog, it's just me being a bit lazy...
Me and Mali are working on a project with a partnership school in Washington. It's called 'Bridging the Americas' and it's all about migratory birds that spend summer in the states and migrate to Honduras for winter. So for the past couple of weeks, our heads and lessons have been filled with birds, bird pictures, and facts about migratory birds. It's been good fun. We're just about to send off the information sheets to exchange with the school and hopefully soon we'll get a Skype session set up! As a result of this project we decided to organise a field trip to the nearby mountains to look for birds. Our head teacher owns a small coffee plantation in the mountains, with a small old fashioned homestead with a open fire stove and very simple in structure. We headed off with the kids (only an hour late..) in the back of the pick up trucks. We have now named this method of travel as 'trucking it'. It can get pretty cold sitting in the back of the truck, especially when you're heading up unit the mountains, so I was pretty glad I had my wooly Antiguan jumper on. Heading up into the mountains it got mistier and mistier. The temperature dropped and the air got pretty damp. About 3/4 of the way up the trucks stopped and one for the teachers got out. That week I'd had a bit of a cough and had been sent to the doctors for medicine and was told I had a chest infection. I highly doubt that I had a chest infection, just a cold with a cough. Anyways, due to me being 'very, very sick' I wasn't allowed to travel in the back of the truck anymore. I must say I was very gutted. I didn't bother to protest because it just showed that they cared about my health, which was nice! Although suffering the looks and sniggers from the pupils did make me feel a bit silly.
Anyway, ego aside, it was still a nice journey up to the mountains and once arriving we headed off on a exploratory walk around to look for birds and other wildlife. Of course with a large group of very loud, very noisy and very excited children we saw nothing. But that didn't detract from the experience. We were still able to pick oranges from the tress, and picked up a huge banana bunch, which was now ours to fund Mali's banana eating habits. I'm pretty sure most of the children hadn't ever been up in te mountains like that before. The excitement was evident from their faces. They were having a blast and so were we. After a typical Honduran lunch of fried chicken, beans, tortilla, rice and plantain, and plenty of coffee. Mali, me and two other volunteers headed off with our head teacher, Tato, to forge for fruit. First we found pastatillo (spiky vegetable that is similar to courgette but more watery). Cooking pastatillo in the oven with cheese, salt and coriander is fantastic! After we'd exhausted the pastatillo tree, aguacate (or avocado) was next on the list. The unfortunate thing was that the aguacate tree was the highest tree around. A small problem we thought. Or not. Tato produced a ladder and proceeded to climb up, once reaching the top he started climbing further, barefoot. Once in a relatively safe position he was handed a very long bamboo pole with a small bag attached to the end. This was for knocking the aguacates off the tree. We had to count the number that fell off the tree so we knew roughly how many to collect. As soon as he stopped knocking aguacates off the tree we were off.Running, sliding, crawling about in the undergrowth trying to be the person who collected the most aguacates. I'm ashamed to say I got two, Mali on the other hand collected eleven. Now we're sorted for aguacates for a while....
All that was left to pick was grapefruits. And we got 'hunners'. We couldn't fit them all in the fridge so we gave some to our neighbours, also to say thanks for taking our washing in when it rains.
Heading home in the back of the trucks, laden with free, hand picked fruit, I was happy, content and knackered. I've got to say, that was one of the best field trips of my life.
The photos of the filed trip will follow, soon. I hope!
Well. As we are here on a tourist visa, every three months we have to leave the country for a period of 72 hours (legally that is...). So off we went, having planned to go to Copan, a beautiful town just 20 minutes from the border with Guatemala and jump across the boarder for a couple of hours, pay some money and jump back. Getting all the stamps we need on the way. After a relatively uneventful busy journey of five hours, which I spent in an uncomfortable state as I seriously needed to pee, and we seemed to be on the slowest, bumpiest chicken bus in all of Honduras. It became interesting only when the bus ran over a candy floss vendor. We were made aware of this fact when there was a ridiculous thump on the side of the bus, lots of shouting and witnessing a toppling candy-floss stand. The man seemed to be fine, just shaken, his candy-floss however was not. After paying the man off, with around 500 lempiras ($25) we were off. Once arriving in Copan, I fell in love with the place, it was beautiful, colonial and busy. It had a small market and was surrounded by nice picturesque countryside. We ended up meeting two travellers that we had met previously on a trip to Lago de Yojoa and explained our plan. They were unsure it would work at this particular border and explained that we might have issues at other borders if the stamps on our passports showed that we hadn't been outside the country for more than 72 hours. After consulting a few other people we decided that we'd get a shuttle to Antigua the next day and spend three days chilling in Antigua. Not a bad plan.
Leaving the next day, on an uncomfortable 6 hour bus journey to Antigua, a cosmopolitan and colonial Guatemalan town. The border crossing was no problem, exit stamps, entrance stamps and just over $2 to be paid, we were in Guatemala. The first thing I noticed were the roads, so smooth. Little or no potholes, providing us with a relatively bump free journey to Antigua, if you ignore the erratic driving that seems to be commonplace in all Latin American countries. It seems to me that sides of the road don't really exist here... You can spend a good half of your journey somewhere driving on the opposite side of the road. Somewhat daunting at first but you soon get used to it. Anyway, we made it to Antigua in one piece. Found a hostel and set off exploring. Antigua is another beautiful town. It is surrounded by two volcanoes, which are both currently, slowly and gently erupting (if you can call an erupting volcano gentle). We couldn't see the lava or any of the eruption because the weather was pretty cloudy. It is winter after all. But still like a summers day at home. Shorts and tee shirts are more than enough. The first thing I noticed about Antigua was the amount of tourists. Everywhere I looked there were tourists. And I mean everywhere! Bus tours, backpackers, families, couples, Americans, Germans, Canadians, French..
Now having lived in a town for three months where there is only one other 'gringa' this came as a but of a surprise. And in a weird way, I know look at the tourists and say to myself, oh look white people. As if I, myself, am a local. I'm far from it.
I think I saw more VW Beatles in Antigua than I ever have in my life. I have no idea why, but they are vey popular. An I must say, I think I know why.
Our time I'm Antigua was pretty chilled. We explored the town, and tested about as much food as we could. The weekend in Antigua was spent eating, relaxing and talking to other travellers. And discussing out plans for our winter vacation which starts in just under three weeks. We have 7 weeks of holidays where we plan plan to explore Honduras, Guatemala, Belize, Nicaragua and possibly Costa Rica. This part I'm really looking forward to. But you'll here about this in future blogs!
Antigua was a good place to recover and relax before the last hectic weeks before the end of term.
The last week of term involves, fourth partial exams, final year exams, reinforcement classes, final grades, so much paperwork and of course the end of term party! So while I could say that this has been the reason for my lack of blog, it's just me being a bit lazy...
Me and Mali are working on a project with a partnership school in Washington. It's called 'Bridging the Americas' and it's all about migratory birds that spend summer in the states and migrate to Honduras for winter. So for the past couple of weeks, our heads and lessons have been filled with birds, bird pictures, and facts about migratory birds. It's been good fun. We're just about to send off the information sheets to exchange with the school and hopefully soon we'll get a Skype session set up! As a result of this project we decided to organise a field trip to the nearby mountains to look for birds. Our head teacher owns a small coffee plantation in the mountains, with a small old fashioned homestead with a open fire stove and very simple in structure. We headed off with the kids (only an hour late..) in the back of the pick up trucks. We have now named this method of travel as 'trucking it'. It can get pretty cold sitting in the back of the truck, especially when you're heading up unit the mountains, so I was pretty glad I had my wooly Antiguan jumper on. Heading up into the mountains it got mistier and mistier. The temperature dropped and the air got pretty damp. About 3/4 of the way up the trucks stopped and one for the teachers got out. That week I'd had a bit of a cough and had been sent to the doctors for medicine and was told I had a chest infection. I highly doubt that I had a chest infection, just a cold with a cough. Anyways, due to me being 'very, very sick' I wasn't allowed to travel in the back of the truck anymore. I must say I was very gutted. I didn't bother to protest because it just showed that they cared about my health, which was nice! Although suffering the looks and sniggers from the pupils did make me feel a bit silly.
Anyway, ego aside, it was still a nice journey up to the mountains and once arriving we headed off on a exploratory walk around to look for birds and other wildlife. Of course with a large group of very loud, very noisy and very excited children we saw nothing. But that didn't detract from the experience. We were still able to pick oranges from the tress, and picked up a huge banana bunch, which was now ours to fund Mali's banana eating habits. I'm pretty sure most of the children hadn't ever been up in te mountains like that before. The excitement was evident from their faces. They were having a blast and so were we. After a typical Honduran lunch of fried chicken, beans, tortilla, rice and plantain, and plenty of coffee. Mali, me and two other volunteers headed off with our head teacher, Tato, to forge for fruit. First we found pastatillo (spiky vegetable that is similar to courgette but more watery). Cooking pastatillo in the oven with cheese, salt and coriander is fantastic! After we'd exhausted the pastatillo tree, aguacate (or avocado) was next on the list. The unfortunate thing was that the aguacate tree was the highest tree around. A small problem we thought. Or not. Tato produced a ladder and proceeded to climb up, once reaching the top he started climbing further, barefoot. Once in a relatively safe position he was handed a very long bamboo pole with a small bag attached to the end. This was for knocking the aguacates off the tree. We had to count the number that fell off the tree so we knew roughly how many to collect. As soon as he stopped knocking aguacates off the tree we were off.Running, sliding, crawling about in the undergrowth trying to be the person who collected the most aguacates. I'm ashamed to say I got two, Mali on the other hand collected eleven. Now we're sorted for aguacates for a while....
All that was left to pick was grapefruits. And we got 'hunners'. We couldn't fit them all in the fridge so we gave some to our neighbours, also to say thanks for taking our washing in when it rains.
Heading home in the back of the trucks, laden with free, hand picked fruit, I was happy, content and knackered. I've got to say, that was one of the best field trips of my life.
The photos of the filed trip will follow, soon. I hope!
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