Hello hello hello,
It’s a Sunday, I’m a bit bored, a bit of a common thing here so I’m going to use my time to write another blog. So, my last one was about El Tunco, aka best week in the best place ever, yes I’m still not over it, still listening to that playlist. If you haven’t read my last blog post that was about our holiday then I think you should, just a suggestion. I have now been back for two weeks, and I have one more week until our Visa Extension run to the big bad San Pedro. I’m very excited as we’re stopping in Santa Rosa for a couple of days, a city bigger than Gracias, and rumour has it there is a pizza hut and a shopping mall, so that’s my plans sorted.
Soo what’s been happening these past two weeks? Not a lot to be honest, we haven’t left Belen so that limits our capability of doing things. On the 9th of October, we had a visit from Vegas, who is our country representative for Honduras. This means that he is a volunteer for Project Trust, who lives in Honduras (Roatan) and he overlooks all 20 Honduras volunteers. He is a point of contact for us if we need any help in our projects, or while travelling or if we get stuck in a bad situation, he can help. We have only spoken to him twice, once on our training course in Coll where we video called him to have a chat about our project, and once when we first arrived in Belen to make sure everything was alright. We met him afterschool at the café where he bought us food and a drink for lunch and we sat and chatted over general things about our project – accommodation, timetable, Spanish, etc. He then drove us to Gracias to go to the hot springs, I was a little nervous for this as we’d never met him before, and I was worried it was going to be awkward. It was a bit, I won’t lie but it could have been worse. We took this opportunity to chat about travels (one of our favourite topics) and he gave us some helpful recommendations. After the hot springs, we got changed and went to get tea. We went to Guancascos, the hotel in Gracias that we normally stay at (has a good restaurant as well) because our project host (just another contact who lives closer and knows our town better) owns it. I got spaghetti Bolognese which was delicious and a nice treat on a Wednesday night. Our project host joined us for a chat as Vegas wanted to run over some issues that we’d mentioned to him with her. This was a little awkward as she clearly doesn’t want to be involved, something she actually told us within five minutes of meeting her for the first time. So when Vegas mentioned things such as inappropriate behaviour from students, she’d just shrug her shoulders and say “it’s just the culture”. Luckily Vegas likes to take things a lot more seriously and when we went back to Belen we went to the café again to meet with the owner who is also a teacher at the school as well as our host mum and issues such as this were raised. We were very grateful to Vegas as he bought us lunch, dinner and pudding (we were full, but he pretty much forced us to at least share a brownie and ice cream) and took us to the hot springs, so overall it was a better afternoon than expected.
The weather here has become a lot rainier. It’s still extremely hot mid-day but the rain starts a lot earlier now, normally around 1:30 compared to 3:30ish like it would about a month ago. It’s currently 9:50 am and 27 degrees so like I said, still hot, just more rain. I quite like the predictability of the weather here, I know roughly when it’s going to rain, when I’ll need a jumper and when it’s going to be hot. The school is meant to finish at 1:30 (although it’s not consistent) but with the rain beginning a lot earlier school for the next couple of months is ending at 1pm since a lot of the students have to walk a long way to get home and they don’t want to be caught in the heavy rain. I’m not complaining about ending half an hour earlier though, nor getting lunch half an hour earlier.
Biggest thing that has probably happened is that we now have friends, yes proper Honduran friends. One of them can speak English although we mainly communicate in Spanish, so it’s a great way to learn. This means that we actually now have plans in Belen which is very exciting even if it’s just going for a walk or to the café. The only downside is that our plans are always made for after tea at 7:30/8ish, when normally I’m in bed by that time. I’m not joking, i’m almost always in bed by 8, teaching is more exhausting than I thought. However, at the weekends they said they’d take us to San Juan, a neighbouring little town with a café only 20 minutes away and to Gracias to get ‘the best baleadas we’ll ever taste’.
Recently I’ve been a lot more adventurous, especially in the kitchen. This has involved me making a cup of tea, with one of the two teabags I brought with me here. So one afternoon when I was chocked up with a cold and feeling brave I asked if I could have some “agua caliente porque no me siente bien” that literally translates to “hot water because I don’t feel well”. This was a pre-practiced sentence so when she looked at me funny and said she’d need to ask Delmi, I panicked at what I had said and frantically started saying that if I couldn’t have any then it’s okay. I then realised that she thought I meant I wanted hot water, as in for our shower, so that was awkward and I cleared up that I meant for my tea. Anyways I know now how to work the stove for boiling water.
I opened one of my birthday presents early (oops) but only because I was telling Mum how I wanted fairy lights and she told me Auntie Joanne had gifted them to me for my birthday (thank you very much) so after feeling my wrapped presents I managed to guess which one it was and I now have fairy lights wrapped around my bed! I don’t turn them on much because they attract the bugs and I don’t want to take Iona’s share of them. However, they’re cute to have on when we are having one of our little movie nights. The last film we watched was really quite bad – I can’t remember the name of it sorry – and we have to watch it on my phone but snacks make everything better, so it still makes for a good night.
The first day we arrived there was two bags of clothes sitting there that we assume were left by previous volunteers. Scared we would find cockroaches in them we just shoved them under the desk and never looked at them again. The other day while packing for San Pedro I decided to have a look through them, and we actually found a lot of things we both liked – and thankfully no cockroaches! So, we decided to procrastinate from packing and have a little try on fashion show instead. We only have a tiny little mirror that is cracked so we couldn’t see the outfits properly so after each outfit we just took a photo. After spending a good hour having a mini fashion show we were left with a big clothes pile to tidy up but some good finds. Unfortunately most of them fitted Iona but I’m not too bitter I promise.
School has definitely become a lot less scary and a bit more enjoyable. I think I might do a separate blog post if I find time on school – all the grades I’m teaching, what I’m teaching and how classes have been going so I won’t go into too much detail. I’ve seen most improvement with first grade, I no longer dread a 45 minute class with 35 five year olds. I won’t lie, they’re not my favourite class and they are a handful but I’ve started noticing what they like and what works well with them which definitely makes a world of difference. What I’ve been doing is teaching a different song each week – they love it! Esther gave me some songs which she’d been learning with her kinder so I’ve been using them and it’s been a game changer. When we first start learning the song nobody knows it so it’s only me singing it and I have to sing it really loud to try encourage them. If you’ve ever heard me sing you’re probably feeling sorry for all these kids now but I’ve got over the embarrassment and it’s great watching all the kids singing along in English.
Edit – I’m really bad at blog posts so I’m actually already back from San Pedro Sula now but hopefully once I get this one up I’ll find time to write about that before our travels next week.
Sorry I don’t have more photos on this blog – they’re not working and it’s doing my head in so I’ve given up 🙂
Adios!
Erin In Honduras 