December in Honduras

Its kind of strange to post to the blog now. I’m writing as we’re on a plane back to the States for Christmas, and there are lots of different thoughts swirling around but we’re both really excited to be going back to see everyone, we’re actually excited for cold weather and by the time January comes around I’ll think we’ll be plenty excited to get back to balmy Honduras.

Melanie left off with some discussion of the devotion of school resources to the Christmas program and I will fill you in on how that adventure turned out. As Melanie was saying before, the two weeks before school ended we didn’t really have many classes and when we actually did have class there were 40 kids practicing a dance outside of our classroom. We weren't exactly open minded when we heard about it. We both had kind of a negative opinion of the program going into the 2 weeks of practice, it was just very different from the type of Christmas programs we both remembered participating in. The bulk of the program (The 12 Voices of Christmas) was monologues of the Christmas story, interspersed with praise and worship songs that the kids danced to. One of the main issues we had with the play was how little the students got to participate. Each grade or two had one song that they danced to and then for the rest of the show they just had to sit in the audience while students from Tegucigalpa lip-synched the monologues. So for the two weeks leading up to the performance each grade practiced their dance somewhere between 40-50 times. The way we practiced was to watch a DVD of the school in the Tegucigalpa doing the program and just copy it, so there was little creative input from us. It was hard to see what was going on in the DVD because of all the changing camera angles, but after 20 or so times we pretty much got the hang of it. The other twenty times were spent with kids in my grade reminding me I missed some move or teaching them at what angles they should hold their fake trumpets.
Here is one of the snacks of the kids at practice for the Christmas program, potted meat and a frosted flakes "granola bar":

Everyday it seemed like their was some casualty whether it be someone’s maraca getting broken, someone getting elbowed in the face when they went the wrong way in the dance, or some tears breaking forth because they didn’t win the audition for air guitar solo.
Four of my students in "the band" for our dance. The guitar solo was the envy of the entire elementary school:
It was also kind of crazy because the performance was at a church in town and so the three days before the performance we had to go to the church and practice. The entire school went and watched while each grade did their dance once on the stage and the rest of the time was crowd control. We had a dress rehearsal the day of the performance with the students from Tegucigalpa and this was directed by the drama director at their school. I personally was not a huge fan of the drama director. He showed up in really short shorts and running shirt (think gym teachers from the 80’s) and proceeded to give a little speech to our kids. The main gist of the speech was telling our students that even though they were from Gracias they could be just as good as the students from Tegucigalpa. I don’t think he meant it this way and I don’t think many of the students perceived it this way but to me it was very patronizing. I have experienced a lot of bias against people who live in rural areas and it seems like it is a pretty universal thing. The drama teacher did not think of our students as equals, he thought that if they tried really hard they could be at the same level of his students. That was just a little thorn in the side but he did a couple of other things that made me question the way he deals with people. Before my class went up on stage to dance I was going around to each of them telling them good luck and have fun and he came over to shoosh me. Later on during the performance I started to clap along with one of the other songs and he signaled to me from across the room very demonstratively to stop clapping. Now I’m not one for dressing up or a dress code but while all the other teachers were dressed up in their school uniforms, he showed up in a wind suit to the most important school event of the year. That all is a little cynical and slightly negative and I don’t want to give the idea that the program was this torturous thing that was a flop, because it actually went extremely well.
The 4th grade before the show:

We only got to practice the play one time with everyone, so I was a little nervous how it would go with so little practice and preparation. In Honduras there are lots of times when I think, sheesh there is no way that can work, its slipshod, no preparation, but then it turns out that it works great. In the States we have all the expectations and laws for how things have to be done but in Honduras as long as it works then its ok. So in line with that, the Christmas program went great.
Some of Melanie's kids before the show:
The kids all had a lot of fun, the parents were really happy seeing their kids perform and the kids did a great job. This also hit home another point for me. In the four months that we’ve been here I haven’t been open-minded about a lot of things. School is very different than schools I’ve been to or worked at before and too often if something is done in a different way I assume that it won’t work or respond to it in a negative way, and that is something that I really want to change.

There was also some great news the last day when we were practicing for the Christmas program. The administrators from Tegucigalpa were in Gracias to check out the program and they decided that we wouldn’t have class the next week, that the program would be the last day of school for the year. We weren’t flying back until the 22nd so that gave us more than a week to travel. Eunice (the school superintendent) also worked it out so that we could have a free place to stay in La Ceiba, the third biggest city in Honduras and a hoppin beach town. Melanie and I cobbled together some plans very quickly and arranged it so that we could take Spanish classes during that week. We had a lot to do before we left on Sunday especially considering that we were planning on having a Christmas party at our house on Saturday to use up our food. So Saturday we had to pack, clean, and get ready for the party and get our house ready to be closed for a few weeks. The party was also the maiden voyage of our “grill”. The grill was some sticks with nails spaced evenly and one of those camping grill baskets that you can move up and down on the nails over our fire pit. We had some burgers and dogs and some tandoori chicken skewers that Melanie made and the grill did quite well, although I think it will be better served for smaller scale operations. We had a huge table of desserts, more than we’d had the entire time we’d been in Honduras. There were cinnamon rolls, brownies, key lime pie, sugar cookies, cheesecake, and eggnog. We had another big stroke of luck at the party; Someone who came to the party was actually heading to San Pedro Sula the next day and offered to give us a ride, and he even came and picked us up at our house! We didn’t even know how we were going to make it down the mountain with all of our stuff and we were saved the 5 hour bus ride as well. This made it seem a lot more like vacation. When you have to be crammed on 3 buses constantly watching your stuff it isn’t exactly relaxing.

We caught a bus from San Pedro to La Ceiba where our host met us at the bus terminal. It was really nice of our administrator to find a place for us to stay and it was really nice of the people to host us (they were very friendly and hospitable), but it was also a little awkward because they moved their daughters out of their bedrooms so that we and the other couple could sleep in them. Their house was really nice, with a really funky swimming pool, but it was far out of town so we either had to ask them for rides or take taxis everywhere. The pool looked like something from a mini-golf course with really intricate concrete work and decoration; it even had a grotto that you could swim into with seats to relax in.

We started Spanish classes on Monday morning, both of us with a different personal tutor. I think it was really good for both us in different ways. We spent four hours each morning of the week studying and speaking with our tutor. I think it will make a huge difference in my Spanish when we come back. I’ve picked up a lot of Spanish words during our time here, but having never studied Spanish formally, I don’t really know any grammar. Even though we had to start back at square one grammar wise I think I’ll be able to synthesize grammar and vocabulary pretty quickly. Melanie seemed to get a lot out of her classes as well, but for her it was more a review of advanced subjunctive forms and an opportunity to spend a lot of time talking to someone whose job it is to correct you. Hopefully when we come back to Honduras we will both have more tools for our Spanish and a little more confidence to go with it.

La Ceiba itself was not a town that we would probably spend a lot of time in again, but since we were there for a week we got to enjoy lots of things that we’ve been missing up on the mountain. Within the first two days there, we had already gone to Pizza Hut twice, which is more times than both of us had been in the last ten years. The first time we went to Pizza Hut for the food but the second time was for the super high speed (for us) wireless internet. Restaurants like Pizza Hut, Burger King, and Wendys are really different here. The buildings are extremely big and modern looking and since the food is a little more expensive than it is in the states, it is really expensive here and only upper middle class and upper class people can afford to eat there. The whole week we were in La Ceiba we had to eat out so we had ample opportunities to sample the fast food fare the city had to offer, and those Whoppers and Frostys sure tasted pretty good after a few months of not having any beef or ice cream. Another feature that appealed to us was the fact that it had two movie theaters. It wasn’t like they had amazing movies or anything (we actually sat through all of Stepbrothers) but since we haven’t even watched TV just sitting there with the flashing images in front of us made us feel right at home and it also helped that it only cost a dollar.

Everyday after Spanish class we would either explore La Ceiba (finished that in one day), or other towns and areas around La Ceiba. There wasn’t too much to see in Ceiba itself, with the beaches being contaminated and night clubs not really being our thing, but the thing about Ceiba is that there are beautiful places just a couple of miles away. From Ceiba itself you can see Pico Bonito National Park which is several gravity defyingly steep peaks completely covered with jungle. Even though the peaks are only five miles from the entrance to the park, it takes at least a week to reach them, and those days apparently are spent hacking through the jungle and fending off mosquitoes and vipers. Whenever a group does decide to climb the mountain everyone follows it in the paper and on TV because either something bad happens or they make it out triumphantly.
We didn’t brave the snakes and climb the mountain but we did get to explore lots of other good places. One afternoon after class it was especially hot and we wanted to go to a beach where we could actually swim, so we caught a bus and headed ten miles down the coast to Sambo Creek. The beach at Sambo wasn’t pristine by any means but compared to Ceiba it was paradise island. We walked down the beach to a place where we could change and realized that we both had forgotten our swimsuits. Normally this would have been resolved by skinny dipping but because of recent flooding the water had so much debris in it, skinny dipping didn’t seem like a great option. The solution we came up with was to sit on the beach and relax which served our situation quite well.

We heard about a good swimming hole the next day that was freshwater and set out to find out about it. We rode the bus a couple miles down the road again and got off a little ways down the river from the swimming hole. There was a road/ path next to the river and we followed it for 20-30 minutes until we could hear the waterfall. All along the way there were houses with small farms situated along the river with huge trees shading the houses and water, very peaceful and picturesque. After walking for a little while the path headed uphill and we got a nice view of the land between us and the sea, full of banana plants and nice places to live.
Eventually we heard the loud water and plunged down through thick plants to the waterfall. The waterfall was probably 20 ft high and 20ft wide with a deep blue tennis court sized pool at the bottom, in other words exactly what we had been looking for.
The waterfall on the Rio Maria:
As soon as we got there some local kids showed up and started playing around on the waterfall. I’ve seen people jump off of waterfalls and stuff but these kids were sliding down the waterfall, which to me seemed really scary and like instant death (who knows what kinds of rocks are under the fall) but each time they emerged unscathed. We spent a couple of hours there swimming, jumping off lower rocks, lying on rocks, and just enjoying the cool air courtesy of the river. We didn’t really want to go back to Ceiba but we figured we probably should before it got dark. We spent another afternoon just figuring out bus service for getting to the airport and then on Friday we headed back to the Rio Maria waterfall for another dose of cool water relaxation. We finished up classes for the week and although we liked it a lot and got a lot out of it, I can’t imagine doing Spanish classes for a month. A week was a nice boost for us and hopefully we’ll be a little more motivated to practice.

One of the sailboats they use in the Cayos, with a sail made of trashbags

The crown jewel of our adventure in Ceiba though was our weekend trip to the Cayos Cochinos, a protected marine reserve of keys about 15 miles off the coast of Ceiba. There are two big keys which are used for marine research and most of the smaller keys are private and either are someone’s vacation home or uninhabited.
Some volcanic rock off one of the keys
We went out with a local tour operator and learned a little about the islands before doing some snorkeling. I didn’t know before we went but off the coast of Honduras is the second largest barrier reef in the world after Australia. We got on our gear and headed under to check it out and it was stunning, stretching for as far as you could see were probably ten different kinds of coral, some 20 feet high with 5 or 6 different kinds of fish swimming in and out. We snorkeled for an hour or so swimming in and out of the coral before getting back on the boats and heading to the one island in the keys that is inhabited called Chachahuate. Its pretty small, maybe a little bigger than a football field and somewhere between 50-75 people live on the island.

A view of the entire island of Chachahuate

Another perspective of the island
There is one restaurant on the island and we had the best fish I’ve had in years with really good red beans and rice. The rest of the tour group went back to Ceiba but we wanted to do something on our own so we decided to stay on the island in a little hostel/cabin thing they have. All of the people on the island are Garifuna which means they are a long way descended from shipwrecked slaves in the 1800s. Living on a tiny island with 75 people might seem like some kind of tortured reality show but after spending a day there we saw what they had going. We spent the rest of the afternoon snorkeling at a part of the reef just off the island and then when it got dark we just sat around and talked to the people who live there. There is sometimes electricity for a couple hours a day but most of the time it seems like people spend a lot more time relaxing and talking rather than watching TV and surfing the internet.
Here are two kids who had apparently gotten in the water and rolled around in the sand:
Everyone just seemed to enjoy living, talking to all their neighbors, going fishing for the day’s food, just going for a quick dip in the clear water whenever you feel like it. We were just sitting on the beach and half of the kids from the island went bodysurfing and a few of their moms came with them. I know this is probably idealistic and short sighted but it seemed like it was summer vacation all the time. We talked politics and soccer with the people for a couple of hours then called it a night but not after watching a rap battle and forced grinding/dancing content among the younger kids.
Some of the lobster traps they made to catch the clawless lobsters:
We woke up the next day, drank some coffee, did some more snorkeling and spent more time relaxing and just enjoying the island. The tour group for that day picked us up and we did a little more snorkeling before coming back to Chachahuate. We left with that tour group to go back and after a little seasick ride we made it back to Ceiba where we got some food and started to pack to come back. We went out to a restaurant to eat and made sure that they had the Panthers game on and unfortunately we got to see them lose along with a British and Canadian guy we’d met through the language school. We went back and finished packing in our kind of slummy hotel room, and tried to fall asleep despite being really excited about going back, two very loud mating geckos (it sounded like there were birds in our room), laying in an uncomfortable bed and being really hot. The next morning we woke up early to catch a bus and head back to the States and that’s where we are now. This is getting posted after the fact but the travels back went really smoothly and pretty soon you’ll get to read Melanie’s post about all the good times we had back in the States.