School and Copan

We actually did have an internet connection over the weekend, but we were traveling and hadn’t written a blog entry to post, so again, here are two. I’ll write about school and save the travel adventures for Aaron this time. We were finally able to post some pictures so we might have gone a little overboard.

Last week was our first full week of school. Wow. I have never been more exhausted in every way than I am at the end of a school day here. The school is still really short-staffed, so we have unpredictable free periods because we often have to cover classes that should be taught by another teacher, like Music or Art (there is an Art teacher, but he can more often be found wandering campus or folding uniforms than actually showing up to teach Art). Apparently, we are getting a couple of new Ph
ilipino teachers next week, but I’m not sure what classes they’re going to take charge of. At least the administrators are getting friendlier, and I have a good 10 minutes of time interacting with them in the office each day as I fill out my photocopy requests (it’s very important to have documentation of all of this, apparently). Luckily, this week was a short one because Monday was Independence Day and Tuesday was Teacher’s Day (glad they figured the best way to celebrate that was to have it off!). Tomorrow we’re supposed to have a little teachers’ meeting/party after school, so we’ll see what that holds.

The overabundance of energy that elementary schoolers have seems to be doubled here. Even compared to the heavy-on-the-ADHD mixture of kids that we taught at Landmark, these kids seem really hyperactive. I think a lot of that probably comes from the language difference…they can’t understand our instructions or grasp the guidelines of the classroom in general or those of individual activities, so they tend to just tune out what I am saying. Instead, they are more likely to talk to their friend, interrupt class to put a sticker on me, tell me (in Spanish, of course) that “so-and-so won’t let me use the glue” when we aren’t doing anything where glue would be remotely useful, or make airplanes out of rulers and pens and fly them around a bit. Most of their behavior problems are pretty harmless, but with every one of my 17 students acting this way 90% of the time, that’s a lot of chaos in one classroom for 7.5 hrs a day.
Here is a picture of Melanie's classroom door, pretty darn nice if you ask me.

That said, the kids are a lot more excited about school than the older students we’re used to, as Aaron said in the last entry. They love games and competition, and I don’t have to worry that lessons I plan will be too cheesy, lame, or babyish; the biggest danger is being too complicated to explain in English/limited Spanish, or being something that takes more time than their attention spans will allow. On one worksheet, I guess it wasn’t clear that “Word Bank” was a label and not one of the prepositions they could use to fill in the blanks, so two students wrote “the apple is Word Bank the table” as one of their sentences, choosing “Word Bank” instead of the simple, boring, “on”. They LOVE singing, and the song they seem to like best is one that they sing in devotional time in the morning with all of the other K-4th grade kids. The song is called (I’m assuming) “Jesus’s Love is Bubbling Over,” but the teacher who leads devotional sings it as “Jesus’s Love is Bumbling Over,” so that’s how all the kids know it. I’m pretty sure that’s not the meaning they’re going for, but the kids don’t know what “bubbling” or “bumbling” means anyway, so nobody’s going to step in and correct them at this point. It’s funny to hear some of the younger classes singing it as a way of ignoring their teachers…it’s kind of the rebel cry at school.

Progress has been slow, but my kids are getting slightly better at staying in their seats, telling me what day it is, how they feel, lining up at the door, and telling time (Math is the easiest subject to teach here because it requires the least amount of verbal communication). Science is the hardest because it’s nearly impossible to communicate concepts without relying on language. In my textbook, I’m supposed to be covering the 5 senses right now, and learning words like “cilia” and “retina,” “projected image” and “vibration”—my kids don’t even know what an eye or ear is, so we’re just sticking to those basics for now.

I think one of the reasons that kids have so much trouble working with structure here is that there really aren’t a whole lot of rules built into the culture here, or at least, not ones that we can recognize yet. For example, there are no obvious or observed driving laws…you can pass anyone anytime and drive at any speed, stop whenever you like, fit as many people in the back of your pickup truck as possible (and sure, they can stand up while in there and moving 60 mph, why not?), pick up hitchhikers, let their 8 year old kids drive…anything goes. In like manner, parents can stop by your classroom whenever they like, just to talk, tell you that their child needs to sit in front, ask you a question about the uniforms…all while class is going on and all of your third graders are about to lose it and start ripping into their snacks or climbing on the bars of the windows. The one hard and fast rule we have learned is that you can’t swim in the river in the National Park because it is the source of water for Gracias down below. We learned this the hard way one day when we got yelled at for being up there and looking like we just went swimming (which we had). We can swim by our house, though, and down near the school, so that’s a relief.

During the long week last week, I think every one of the foreign teachers and most of the Honduran teachers all felt close to throwing in the towel at some point and just leaving the job altogether. It’s a huge challenge that we’re facing, but every one of us has our own particular concerns based on our classes and life situation. Aaron and I are lucky that we have at least some teaching experience, and that we have each other, and we love our house and the setting here. It’s good that Aaron got a class that speaks a little English, and although we didn’t know the details about what we were getting into this year, we knew it would be tough but ultimately rewarding. We’re keeping our fingers crossed on that it will be rewarding, but for now, we’re trying to stay positive for us and the other teachers, especially the younger foreign ones. I just wish we had more support to give during the day, but for now, we’re barely surviving each day ourselves! This week has been a little better (maybe just because it’s short), so I think as we get through more and more days, our tolerance for chaos and miscommunication will meet up with some manifestation of the structure we’ve been trying to establish, and we’ll find our stride at school.

I could go on about school quite a while, but we’ve got lots more weeks of blogs to post, anyway, so I’m sure it’ll all come out eventually. Aaron’s going to write about the weekend of travel we had…it was good to get out on a little adventure…and the next long weekend is coming up in just a couple of weeks!

Well as Melanie said last week was a verrry long and trying week at school and everyone barely made it to the weekend. Having a four day weekend seemed like it might be the perfect recipe to restore the patience and energy of some frazzled teachers. By chance it turns out that all seven of the foreign teachers ended up going to the same place. I say it was chance but there weren’t really that many choices of places to go to spend four days. Travelling anywhere takes an extremely long time here due to the terrain and nature of the bus system (more to come on that later) so there are really only a couple of places in our range for a four day weekend. Our destination this past weekend was Copan Ruins, in the northwest corner of Honduras on the border with Guatemala. Copan Ruins is probably the most popular tourist destination in the country. It is only 50 miles away from where we live as the quetzal flies but by land it is a little over a hundred miles away. Still you would think hmm 100 miles, maybe 2 hours, but everyone we had talked to said it would take about 4 hours. If only we had been so lucky.
We left our house around 8 in the morning on Saturday hoping to catch a bus around 8:45. We tried riding our bikes down to town but its pretty rough and my bike had a flat tire so we didn’t make it too far. We left the bikes at Leah and Aren’s house which is right next to school. They are two other foreign teachers from Michigan who got married a week before they came to Honduras. Leah teaches second grade and Aren teaches fifth grade. Anyway, so we walked down the mountain with them and our laundry and made it into town a little after 9. We ran a couple errands watched a little bit of a parade full of kids and then went to the bus station because supposedly there was a “direct” bus at 9:50. Well, the bus didn’t end up leaving around 10:30 and it wasn’t direct by any means. Here buses sort of have scheduled departure times, but those take a back seat to how many people are on the bus. A bus won’t leave until it is at least half full, so even if it is 15 minutes past when it was supposed to leave it will still wait until it has enough people. Now it is only 30 miles from Gracias to Santa Rosa but it takes an hour and a half. So why does it take the bus an hour and a half to go 30 miles you may ask? First of all the roads are extremely curvy and hilly. Even though the old school buses are supped up with tractor trailer engines, it is hard to carry a load up a 20% grade and a 40 degree turn. The main reason though is that the bus stops ALL the time. Rarely does the bus go more than 2-3 minutes without stopping to either pick someone up or drop them off. When there is actually a flattish straightish stretch though the bus goes about 80 miles an hour. So when you average together bat out of hell speeds, mountain roads, and forty stops, you get a speed of about 20 miles an hour.
So we finally made it to Santa Rosa around 11:45. We needed to stop there to get money from the ATM (there is no ATM in Gracias for some strange reason), so I got in line behind four other people to use it. I was getting antsy because the first person in line took about ten minutes, I thought they were just doing lots of transactions but it turns out the ATM wasn’t working that well. They finally finished and the next people moved up and then all of a sudden the machine just turned off. I thought “That’s too bad, but its okay I’ll just go into the bank next door and get my travelers checks cashed. I walked to the bank and got the door closed and locked in my face. This was a bad thing, I checked the time and there was still 10 minutes until the bank was supposed to close, but the guard just decided to close up early. I’ll now tell you why this was a bad thing. We had no money between the four of us. We didn’t have enough money to go on to the next stop or even enough money to get back to Gracias. You would probably say, “Oh, Aaron, that’s no big deal just go to another bank.” Well apparently every single bank closes at 12:00 on Saturday morning for some reason. We were pretty much in desperation mode now, so Leah and I hailed a cab with the remaining dollar we had and have them drive around town looking for another ATM or bank that was open. We went by two closed banks and finally found an ATM that was open, so the quicksand situation we were in ended all of a sudden. Its seems like money has a little stronger hold on you here, yes we have less of it, but that’s not the problem. It is just that it is so hard to get. We can’t get any money during the week because the only time the bank is open is while we are in school and when you go on Saturday the line is an hour and a half or two hours. I never thought that direct deposit would be a pain but I really wish we got our stipend in cash. Anyway, enough about money.
So we finally got out of Santa Rosa with money and took a bus to our next stop, La Entrada. As soon as we stepped off the bus we realized how lucky we are to live where we do. I would describe La Entrada as 90 degrees, dusty, and loud, all of which are fitting as it is a highway crossroads town. We got there and realized that we had 40 minutes until the next bus to Copan Ruins so we set off in search of a bathroom. No such luck. We found a little food and I was searching for a suitable building to relieve myself against (per Honduran culture) but I couldn’t quite bring myself to do it, but I’m sure it will be only a matter of time. We made our way back to the bus station and found our sweet new ride, aka an old school bus. This one was supposed to be a little step up with coach seats instead of school bus seats, but unfortunately the seats weren’t bolted down correctly and were all leaning in at a significant angle, so we spent the next two and a half hours feeling like we were constantly going around a really sharp turn. We went in and out of rain for the last leg and it was clear that it rained really hard before we got there as evidenced by the mudslides and places where the road was washed out. It was really touch and go as to if we would actually make it to Copan because there was only about 6 inches of road on each side of the bus that hadn’t washed into the river yet. As we were going slowly over one particularly treacherous part we watched as a 40 ft tall tree floated past us down the river, there have been few times in my life when a tree has moved faster than me in a motor vehicle.
So we finally made it Copan around 4:30 and made it to our hostel in the rain. It was nice finally being settled after a long long day of traveling. I won’t get into too much detail about the hostel except that it was really nice, an old colonial home that they renovated with lots of nice tile and artsy touches. After drying off and unpacking we met all of the other teachers for dinner at one of the foreigner restaurants and had a nice big dinner of thai curry and potato lasagna, two things I never thought my tastebuds would touch while we were here. It was also hearing everyones’ stories about the bus trip, some people getting hit on by 80 year olds and others who had to change seats because their window was broken on the seat. We did a little bit of people watching in the plaza after dinner and called it a night.

The Ruins of Copan

Sunday morning we got up pretty early and headed out to the ruins. Its about a km outside of town and there was this really nice stone sidewalk that was in the shade the entire time. We got to the ruins and found out that the entrance fee was $15 for foreigners and for Hondurans it was $2.50. $15 seem like a fair price in the States but here that is four days working at a decent wage here and its not like we have tons of money. We asked the cashier if there were any discounts for teachers or volunteers and she responded sarcastically that there were no discounts for teachers or volunteers or men or women or Catholics. We shelled out the dough and headed to the entrance. The ruins are amazing for several reasons one of which is the setting. The ruins cover several hundred acres of what used to be a large Mayan city with 6000 or so inhabitants and 30,000 people in the “metropolitan area.”
When you enter the archaelogical park you are completely enveloped by ancient towering trees, trees that make you think they are going to lift up their roots and start walking and talking like the Ents.

One of the Ents of Copan


So you’re walking along staring up at the trees and airbrushed looking macaws that hang around and then you walk out through an opening into a grassy (think golf course grass) olden plaza full of stone pyramids and altars and statues.



Its pretty overwhelming, I have never seen such a large flat place in Honduras, much less one with grass. Mainly its overwhelming because there is so much to see. Every rock there is full of history and information and there are millions of stones placed in hundreds of structures. I’ll give you a brief little history of how the ruins came to be one of the biggest tourist draws in all of Honduras.
In the late 1820s- early 1830’s Franklin Pierce funded several exploratory expeditions through Central and South America. One of the expeditioners when traveling through Western Honduras heard of some ruins from a local farmer. The farmer took him to them and he was impressed, bought them from the farmer for $50 and then wrote a book about his travels that became one of the bestsellers of the 19th century. He didn’t really do any official archeology but in the 1880’s some actual archeologists inspired by the book came to Honduras and started large scale excavations and reconstructions. Its hard to imagine how much work this was. When you go to the ruins today, it is very pristine. Most of the structures are intact, but apparently in the 1800’s there really wasn’t all that much to look at, plus it was in the middle of a jungle. So the archeologists had to clear the jungle, excavate this huge site, try to figure out who, when, and what it was, and then reconstruct some of the structures. Luckily for the archeologists the Mayans left them a little help. Instead of knocking demolishing buildings when they wanted to build something new they simply built on top of the existing structure. This left a perfect linear record of what was built when and allowed easily correlation between buildings, rulers and times. On lots of the stones there are carved pictures that the archeologists thought were a language. Finally they figured out that they were actually pictures that represented events and they uncovered a huge staircase (probably 75 ft tall) that told the entire history of the Copan Mayan dynasty from 450-950AD.


Some of the carvings on the stones



The residential district of Copan

It was also really interesting that out of the 200 or so structures there were probably only 10 that you couldn’t walk on. Although it felt kind of wrong to be tramping all over the ruins it was a pretty unique perspective from atop some of the pyramids.

That is Melanie pretending to eat what we called the "Hamburger." Its interesting to note that the hamburger is where they put the organs of those who were sacrificed to the Gods (you can see the path for the blood to run down.

After being saturated with sights and information we headed back to town grabbed some lunch on the street and then walked out of town to a bird park called Macaw Mountain. They have 200 or so birds that are all rescued birds and there was a nice tour with lots of information about the different species but the best part by far was getting to have all of the macaws and parrots crawl all over you.




A little cheesy yes, but still cool