Holaaaaa! Wow it’s over a month in, I don’t know whether I can believe it or not. It definitely feels like I’ve been here a month or longer, it’s a big milestone, and it’s crazy how much has changed comparing week one to week six (?!). I would like to apologize for taking so long to make a blog, I did try to create one about four weeks ago, actually I tried to make two, but turns out that being the only one in my family who can get Netflix on the tv is the limit of my technology capabilities.
Okay so six weeks to catchup on is quite a challenge as so much has happened yet it’s all a bit of a blur in my head. Week one, let’s just say it was probably the toughest week of my life and as glad as I am that it’s over, looking back it was important that I had that wobbly week. Day one, knowing that you still have a whole year to go, it’s overwhelming and seems like an eternity. It helps knowing that you have a partner who’s with you the whole year. Well I’ve heard it helps, I guess it depends on who you get stuck with for 12 months.
Let’s begin with mi casa. Iona and I have our own little dark room which can be depressing at times but we have an ensuite which I’m grateful for. Not grateful for the cold water. Nope. That’s just bad and will never get better but hey ho at least we have a shower even if it does mean sacrificing my teeth to the chattering . The first day we found a huge cockroach and that was quite traumatizing, and we had to get Neyzer (Host Mum’s nephew and in my 8th grade) to help us get rid of it. Proud to say, if you need an exterminator, I’m your gal. They will always be disgusting but getting rid of them is now easy peasy (most of the time), grab primero grado textbook, spray the bug until it’s in easy access place, drop book, leave till next morning to deal with dead cockroach. However unfortunately our easy to follow process isn’t always so easy to follow, especially when it’s on your face. Last week, during the night (11pm, we have early nights) I got woken up by something tingling my cheek. I put my hand up to feel what it is, bad idea. I jump up out of bed, literally screaming, wake up Iona and fumble around in the dark for the lightswitch. Lying on my bed, after just being on my face, is the biggest cockroach I’ve seen yet. We lost the cockroach for about twenty minutes as it ran down the side of my bed. Let’s just say I didn’t have the best sleep that night.
Teaching. Can I even call it that?! I’d like to think I do a bit of teaching but at least twice a day I give up on lessons altogether and we just play bingo for 45 minutes and when this gets really boring (for me) I just sit down and play and let someone else do the calling, this works great. Unfortunately, this doesn’t work with first grade (who I give up on every lesson) so I just get them to draw me pictures, lots of learning. With my 8th graders I decided to do months, quite simple, 12 words, that I know in Spanish and English (or so I thought), a great topic and a very well done lesson plan if I do say so myself, I was set up for a smooth sailing lesson. And to be fair, it was quite good, until it turns out I can’t spell, in English. How many ‘r’s does February have? Two? Three? And where exactly do they go? Febuary? Februrary? Yeh well turns out I obviously had no clue. Somehow, I added an extra ‘r’, please don’t judge me, you feel pressure standing up there and to be honest I was more focussed on making sure I’d written the Spanish right, as at least they don’t notice when I’ve spelt English wrong. By the time I’d noticed my spelling mistake they’d already written it down and I was too embarrassed to change it. We then proceeded to do translations where I had to continue spelling it wrong, so nobody pointed out I spelt it two different ways. We’ve now done three lessons on months and that is just going to have to be the way February stays spelt. Luckily only one person has a birthday in February, so the rest of the class will be fine, but to you Fernando, I’m sorry.
One of my worst experiences so far would have to be when I got dengue fever. I can’t confirm it was dengue fever and Iona says it wasn’t but she’s not a doctor and she had rabies, so she doesn’t get an input. Unfortunately, I was consistently sick all day and even more unfortunately everywhere. And when I say everywhere, I mean EVERYWHERE. I won’t give the deets but trust me it was bad. I was told that a Honduran tradition when someone has a sore stomach is to get oil rubbed on their stomach and to then drink some medicine. So that’s what happened. Here’s me lying on my bed with my top up, some random lady I’ve never met before kneeling by me and a room full of people watching. She starts rubbing olive oil onto my stomach, sorry, not rubbing, kneading, with her fists, into my stomach, my very sore stomach. Part of me was thinking that she better stop soon otherwise I’ m going to be sick all over her, and the other part couldn’t help but laugh at the whole situation, but mainly the sick bit. She asked me if it hurt, I told her yes, and she kneads harder. Surprisingly this method didn’t work, and I was sick afterwards.
If I told you that I would come back fluent in Spanish, that’s just not true. I’m currently relearning the colours with my little and only friend, Anderson. He’s three and lives in our house as he’s the maid’s son. He’s still learning Spanish (como yo) so after a day of saying ‘no entiendo’ ‘que?’ and ‘no se’ it’s quite nice to talk to him and regain a little bit of my confidence and pretend for a few minutes that I did actually learn something after four years of Spanish.
We’ve been on a few trips out of our little village of Belen (yes, we have actually been further than the café) but this is getting too long now, I’m bored, you’re probably bored, so let’s end this here and chat about them another time, when there’s not a powercut.
Adios!
Erin In Honduras 