First it was the to-do list that was longer than my arm and now it's this blog post! A couple of days ago Innes and I realised that we'd flown out to Honduras exactly 4 months ago! 4 MONTHS! The time is going crazy fast and I'm struggling to accept that Christmas is just around the corner!
Our work at Miqueas continues to go well and rehearsals for the Christmas Nativity play are well under way! The parts have been cast and the songs have vastly improved since we started! It's bizarre but really quite cool to hear Honduran children singing the songs I sang in Primary school - 'It was on a starry night', 'Little Donkey', 'No Room in the Inn' etc. Even those who claim to hate song practise can be heard singing later in the day when they don't realise we're around! The next couple of weeks are going to be jam-packed with line-learning, rehearsing and scouting out costumes and props.
On top of this, most of the children have just started a 2.5 month holiday over the Christmas period meaning we're running 9 classes and activities a day to keep them busy, entertained and learning! For me this involves teaching Honduran geography, writing and football! This is proving interesting, yet challenging as we're working with small groups of children of mixed ages from 5 - 10. I'm still working with Pedro a 5yr old boy who is both blind and deaf, doing English classes and preparing some of my younger ones for starting school in February. There's certainly no time to be homesick!
At the end of the school term we also had to set tests for the children at the public school. We were generally very pleased with the results although not everyone could be expected to pass as the attendance rates from some pupils is very low. The evening of the tests I went home with nearly 90 tests to mark and 2 of the boys from my class had to help me carry all the jotters home! The marking itself caused a little entertainment but mostly a lot of outright confusion. Everyone in Honduras has 2 first names and some had written one name on the test and a different one in the jotter, made worse by the fact that many of the boys have the same names (Juan, Jose, Junior), many of the children were absent the day of the test and don't even get me started on children not putting writing their names on their work..... Teacher life!
This Thursday Innes and I started a project additional to our work at Miqueas and the school in the form of running a 'English group/holiday club' once a week for local children. There's no organised extra-curricular or holiday clubs for the children in our village and we thought it would be a great way to provide something for the school children to do during the long break and to keep them learning English. As with anything new, we were quite nervous that no one would turn up and the whole thing would be a massive flop and so were pleased that for the first week 10 pupils attended. We did just over an hour of playground type games that had them running about but also practising the vocab they knew like numbers, days of the week, body parts etc and finished with a game of football! It's not been good timing that we've gone away for a week after the first week of setting it up but the children seemed to really enjoy it (as did we!) and hopefully word will spread and we'll be able to continue it! Another possibility is that if it remains a success we'll continue it as an after school club when the schools resume in February.
Towards the end of November our weekends outside of work have also been pretty busy! One weekend myself, Innes and the other volunteers at our project went and stayed overnight at a little guesthouse in the mountains run by friends of Melody and Jacob. It was in a gorgeous setting on a farm, our hosts brought us an abundance fresh fruit they'd grown, we went for a walk in the rain and Gaby found a baby fresh-water turtle, we learned how to make bread, ate some fantastic meals provided by our hosts and we even went horse-trekking and swam in a river with howler monkeys watching us from the trees above! It was a really nice break from our little village and we even bought some chickens! They've laid their first few eggs for us but they're going to need to up their game a little if they don't want to end up in the pot!
I also went to a Scout meeting with a troop in San Pedro Sula as I was very involved with my own scout troop in Scotland. I loved seeing the differences and similarities between the two countries and although Scotland and Honduras are two vastly different countries many of the principles remained the same. Being able to discuss badges, campfires, lashings, flags, jamborees and international scouting events so far from home was great and reminded me just how much of an international community Scouting is. The meeting was a little hard to follow at times as it was all in Spanish but the leader and all the scouts were incredibly friendly and helped me out immensely! After spending over 3 month teaching and taking responsibility for children it was very strange to move back down the hierarchy to being in the position of the 'child' under the leader who ran the meeting. It made me appreciate even more how much i've grown up over the last few months. For me this was particularly highlighted at the end of the meeting when the scouts were getting picked up by their parents and I realised I was 6,000 miles away from mine and had to take a taxi and a bus to the village 1.5 hours away to where I now call home.
Scouts are family
It was whilst I was waiting for this bus that I met 2 Australian travellers and had an epiphany about how much I've learnt about Honduras over my time here. They declared to me they didn't even know which city they were in nor which currency they were using. Not only could I inform them of this, how long their bus journey would take and a couple of other things about SPS but I realised just how little travellers in general must learn about this country in stopping by for such a short period of time. Learning about the culture as well as the horrors of political corruption, deforestation, palm oil, gangs, drug trafficking, immigration to the US and poverty (not to even go into the multiplier effects of these problems) has been not only eye opening but also hugely interesting. It isn't possible to learn these things on a week long visit, especially to the Bay islands, and that is what has been particularly beneficial about volunteering as part of a long term project. 
Jen, Gaby, Innes and I on a rain walk whilst away for the weekend
Another new experience for me was celebrating Thanksgiving for the first time! Although it's not actually a Honduran tradition many of the Honduran Project Trust volunteers celebrate it with their American project hosts. At Miqueas us 4 volunteers celebrated with our hosts Melody and Jacob, some of their friends and some of the children. Everyone made their contribution of food, Innes and I made bread rolls! We had a huge meal which was absolutely delicious and whilst the food was one highlight of the evening, another was when we went around everyone and said 1 thing they were gratefull for in their life. The whole evening was very enjoyable and family-like and I really hope it's not the last thanksgiving I get to celebrate!
The night of Thanksgiving Innes and I returned to our house to finish packing for a 9 day holiday in Guatemala. We decided after 4 months we deserved some time off! The week set off to an interesting start when we found that the direct bus to the city of Antigua in Guatemala didn't leave for another 12 hours. With no time to waste we had to go cross-country... Without going into too much detail the journey took 3 buses, 2 taxis and 10 hours more than planned but still ended up cheaper than the direct bus would have been. Some of the more interesting points included; going to the wrong hondy/guat border crossing; temporarily thinking we were completely lost in southern Honduras; befriending a Guatemalan family who were incredibly kind and put us back on track to
Antigua (I don't know what we would have done without them); sitting on a stationary bus in a traffic jam in Guatemala City for 2 hours and arriving at our hostel in Antigua at 12.30am without an address for our hostel 20 hours after leaving home. Many travel lessons were learnt but it was certaintly a crazy day and quite the adventure!
From there the rest of the week went more smoothly. We spent a couple of days in Antigua (probably the biggest tourist hotspot in Guatemala) where we explored the traditional town, climbed to a view point, visited a couple of churches and took part in chocolate making workshop. The cacao bean grows prevalently in Central America and we learnt about the ways the Mayans originally made and used chocolate as well as making our own from scratch including roasting and crushing the beans.
After a couple of days we headed to Lago de Atitlan - via
ChiChicastinango the biggest market in Central America - a lake dwarfed by 3 volcanoes and nothing short of one of the most beautiful places I've ever been. Although this is also a very popular location with tourists a lot of traditional Mayan culture remains which was really interesting to see! The majority of the local women wear a conservative outift of a colourful blouse and long patterned skirt held up by a thick belt and in one of the villages we also saw some of the men wearing bright coloured shorts and knee length skirt-like cloths. I was quite surprised to see these women riding motorbikes or with their smartphone tucked into the belt. Additional to Spanish, in Guatemala there is approximately 35 Mayan languages spoken which further split into over 200 dialects.
On Lake Atitlan we visited several different towns on the water's edge - all startlingly different to the next. One was a really hippie settlers town and within minutes of arriving we'd caught snippets of conversation like "I'm going to the other lake because I have a better spiritual connection with the water there" and "we got on so well I think we must have met in another life". Another town was much more traditional and full of women's weaving co-operatives and here we dropped by at the local school and chatted with the headteacher. Other highlights of the week were renting kayaks and swimming in the lake, walking up a ridge to see the sun rise over the volcanoes, checking out the reggae nightlife and walking up Pacaya volcano! I even took the time to find out how the lake was created - dad you should be proud!
Kayaking - sorry parents it was 'banana-boating'
It was a brilliant week and we really enjoyed getting to know our fellow travellers. This said, I think I would now be able to recite my name, country of origin, travels, type of volunteer work and what I think of Honduras in my sleep and I'm looking forward to not having to explain this to anyone for a while! We returned to Miqueas to find the Christmas tree and decorations were up and all the children were beginning to get excited. We've decided to spend our Christmas here with the Miqueas family and then the plan is to meet with all the other volunteers on the island of Utila for New Year. I may be lying on my bed recovering from our travels right now but there's plenty of things to look forward to, with a high likelihood that we'll be starting new community and teaching projects in February!
As always, sending my love to everyone at home, hope you enjoy the festive season and have a great Christmas! And if you have snow I am 110% jealous!
