Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Almost three months...


On Monday, April 23rd I will have been in Honduras for 3 months… which is absolutely crazy!  I can’t decide if the time has flown by or if it feels like I have been here for way longer (I’m sure you know how that feels).  But anyways, I figured I would: 1. Give you my daily schedule so that you know what I do with my time every day – or how I waste it – and 2.  Write a little summary of what life here has been like overall for the past three months/ what new things I have done/ tried/ accomplished.

1.  My weekday schedule:
5:15 AM – Wake up
6:00 AM – Supervise the internas’ breakfast
6:20 AM – Supervise the internas’ morning chores
6:45 AM – Eat breakfast
 7:20 AM – Tech English to the Primer Bachillerato girls (depending on the day, the time changes, but class is always 1 hour and 20 minutes)
9:15 AM – Sell snacks during first recess
10:00 AM – Time to lesson plan/ do laundry/ catch up on anything that I need to do
11:45 AM – Sell snacks during second recess
12:00 PM – Eat lunch/ free time for me
1:30 PM – Supervise the internas’ lunch
2:00 PM – Supervise the internas’ afternoon chores
3:00 PM – Mondays: Hang out with/ tutor the girls who need it
Tuesdays: Go out into the town with the girls who need to go shopping
Wednesday: Teach an English/Math review session to Segundo Curso girls
Thursday: Teach a Computer review for Primer Bachi and Primer Curso girls
Friday: Hang out with/ tutor girls who need it
4:30 PM – Recess/snack for internas, I pretty much just hang out with the girls
5:15 PM – Pray the rosary
5:45 PM – Supervise the internas’ “Estudio Riguroso,” Thalia and I switch off with this
7:15 PM – Eat dinner
7:45 PM – Night time recess with internas
8:15 PM – Night time prayer/get ready for bed
8:45 PM – I’m officially off the clock

I have a free day on Saturdays.  And Sundays are pretty much the same as the week day except we get to sleep in until 6:30 AM, we teach an English class for adults from 8:30 AM until 11:00AM, go to mass at 11:00 AM, and then start with lunch with the internas at 1:00 PM.

2.  What I have learned:
  • I eat more beans in the course of a week than I have in my entire 21 years of life on this planet before I came here (and according to Monseñor, eating beans makes you less intelligent)
  • I now occasionally think of the Spanish word for something before the English (but this is VERY occasionally – and usually the Spanish equivalent to “bless you” when someone sneezes, which if you were wondering is “salud”)
  • And when I don’t understand what the sisters are talking about, but am clearly the subject of the conversation, I have learned to smile and nod at all the right parts to make it appear that I at least have some sense of what is going on… it is REALLY hard to understand Spanish through laughter, when 5 other people are talking at the same time, and the person who is talking has food in their mouth, just in case you were wondering.
  • I have eaten more types of bananas and in different ways than I knew existed.  Did you know that there are bananas, there are mini-bananas, there are “bananas” called plantains that are not as sweet and are harder than bananas, and there are green bananas?  And all of these can be cooked, baked, boiled, or fried in a multitude of different ways.
  • There are also different types of mangos.  There are the big yellow/orange ones that you can buy at the supermarkets in WI, but there are also smaller ones that are either orange, yellow, or green depending on how ripe they are.  These are sold on pretty much on every street corner here.  But the mangos are eaten with a ton of salt and with a chilli mixture poured over it… I still haven’t really gotten used to the chilli/mango combo and I prefer straight-up mango, but it is slowly growing on me
  • I have taken an unknown number of cold showers (I don’t even want to think about counting how many)
  • I have taken 3 bucket showers
  • I have, for the most part, figured out how to navigate the insane bus system in Honduras
  • I have become an expert at washing clothes by hand (that is actually a complete and total lie, I still don’t know how clean my clothes are getting)
  • I have made corn tortillas by hand, but I still haven’t tried making flour ones
  • I learned that cockroaches can swim
  • I have been called tall more times that I can count, and the girls continuously come up to me and say: "I'm as tall as you, right?" when they are not (and I'm NOT tall)
  • I have been told that my eyes are green way too many times - they are not, they are BROWN (maybe light brown)
  • I have acquired a number of nicknames.  The sisters call me "Nicolita" (or occasionally Nicole with a Spanish accent), a majority of the Primer Bachi girls have changed "Nicolita" to "Nicolitas," all of the externa girls from my class call me "Miss," and the adults on Sunday either call me "Profe" or "Teacher." This means that when I go out in town and someone recognizes me (which isn't really that hard since I'm practically the only gringo in Santa Rosa), I get yelled to from across the street with one of these various names.
  • And probably a ton more things that I can’t think of at this moment.

And now I have 2 and a half months left… what more can I accomplish, what more will I experience?  Only time will tell…



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