Maybe it comes as a surprise to PT volunteers who find keeping a blog updated a chore but I really enjoy writing mine! One of the craziest things I find is looking back over the past month or two and reflecting on just how much I've done. Whilst I'm not losing-my-head busy all of the time, by the time blog-time rolls around and I come to write it out, it certainly feels like it! So let's try and keep this short...
Last Saturday Innes and I returned from a 2 week holiday in Guatemala and El Salvador and we both agreed that it was perfectly timed. By the last week of term both the children in Miqueas and school were getting antsy and our patience and motivation levels were running low.
First of all we headed up to Guatemala where our holiday got off to the worst possible start when I left my passport, money and credit card on the 4th bus of the day (or someone took them, details unsure). What then followed was probably some of the worst hours of my life (Project Trust tell you that losing your passport is one of the absolute worst things that can happen to you on your year away) as we hunted down the bus company, tried to return to Honduras, weren't allowed to cross the border and had to file a police report with the Guatemalan police. I cannot stress just how lucky I was to get my passport back after it was found and handed into the immigration officers who we'd been with earlier in the day who'd then driven half an hour to return it to me and caught us just minutes before we left the police station. It was an experience I would not repeat for the life of me but at least I got to ride in a Guatemalan police pick-up truck and on the back of a moped.
After this the rest of the holiday went far more smoothly and although the passport trauma delayed us by several hours we still made it to where we needed to be that night. We spent our first 2 nights in a Garifuna town called Livingston. Garifuna is the name given to the people who live on the carribean coasts of Honduras, Belize and Guatemala and who have a very different life and culture to those who live inland. Then we took a boat trip up a river to stay in a town called Rio Dulce. The highlight of our time here was visiting a hot-water waterfall, which certainly made up for the hot-water showers of the past 8 months that I can just about count on two hands. It was a beautiful place and for me it certainly was an 'I'm-so-blown-away-by-nature-right-now' moments. Following this we took an unforgettable journey on a dirt-track road in the back of a pick-up truck through the mountains under the stars and full moon to a place called Semuc Champey, a tourist destination renowned for its turquoise limestone rock pools. We did a caving activity which had us swimming along whilst holding a candle in one hand at points, did a rope swing jump, climbed up to a viewpoint and spent time relaxing in the pools (along with what felt like the rest of Guatemala who were out to enjoy the Semana Santa/Holy week holidays). From there we headed to Antigua, a city where we spent some time in November, but for us this time it was just an overnight stop-off (and culture fix). We were lucky enough to be there (with enough time to party) and to witness some of the Catholic Holy Week parades and some amazing street art of all shapes and colours. As it was Good Friday everyone in the parades were dressed in black, the men wearing floor-length robes and shouldering what looked like painfully heavy wooden floats with life-size models of the saints and Jesus mounted on them. People wafting incense and marching bands playing ominous music made for quite an intense atmosphere and the whole thing appeared almost medieval to me.
We spent the next couple of days in Ruta de Las Flores checking out the El Salvadorian mountain villages which have become well-renowned for coffee growing (yep Starbucks is grown here) and their amazingly colourful murals. We walked up to a crater lake and spent far too much time here eating pupusas, an El Salvadorian staple! Next it was down to the coast at El Tunco, a tourist hot-spot and surfers paradise! We got a couple of surfing lessons which we thoroughly enjoyed despite us not being much good! It also turns out that it's far harder than it looks but I did manage to crack the standing up after a while and I'd definitely do it again! Wishing we were able to spend more time here we headed to San Salvador where we enjoyed a cultural day visiting the palace and anthropology museum and didn't enjoy getting ourselves thoroughly lost on multiple occasions. I won't deny that a part of me was dreading returning to Honduras as it signalled that the end of the holiday was near, however as soon as I crossed the border I was glad to be back - everything just feels that bit more familiar. Innes and I stayed in Gracias, a town in the south, met the new 8 month volunteers Linde and Joanne and did one of the longest and highest zip-lines in Central America (an amazing but extremely scary experience) before returning home a couple of days later. It was a brilliant holiday and we managed to cover a lot of ground in 2 weeks. We're definitely lucky that Honduras is easily and geographically accessible to all the neighbouring countries so travel is pretty straightforward and we don't have to spend days on a bus to get somewhere. Above all, we returned to our project with a new-found energy and ready to get stuck in again!
Getting steamy...
Boat trip
Semuc Champey
SS street art
SS parades
Pretty church ft. Miss Inez
Crater lake
One of the many incredible murals we saw
Surfing
Inez and her surf instructor
Basically heaven on earth
Our first week back was pretty different to normal as a Mission group of people our age led by Gaby's parents came from Michigan in the US to paint the walls and make closets for the new house. The new children's home building will house bedrooms for the girls, youngest children and Melody and Jacob (parents/directors). Since this comes to 24 kids in total, picture Cheaper by the Dozen but double the trouble! Instead of many of our normal tasks in Miqueas we found ourselves swapping pencil for paintbrush and getting well stuck into the painting too. A huge amount was covered in 5 days and by the time I upload my next blog it's likely that the new house will be ready for living.
Classes in general have been calmer since we've gotten back and these continue much the same as normal. The children at Miqueas are eagerly awaiting to hear back from their pen pals in Aboyne Primary and this week we're going to introduce our English library to the school. If anyone would still like to send out (basic, basic) books (and thanks to those who already did!) they'd be very much appreciated, especially anything with English/Spanish translations...
1st grade having fun with chalk and shapes
Teamwork makes the dream work, or so they say...
Last Thursday and Friday Innes and I ran some activities for World Health Day as PT requires us to celebrate one international day to gain our 'One Award in Global Volunteering and Citizenship'. Innes and I both agreed that World Health Day was appropriate to celebrate as 1. Health is just generally so important and impacts pretty much everything we do in everyday and 2. Because Hondurans are not renowned for their healthy lifestyles - eating a monotonous low fruit/veg, high oil/fat diet, not exercising enough, poor dental hygiene etc.
For me, one of the best things about our project is the variety we have in our teaching which for the health day activities was perfect. I could carry out classroom activities suited to many people and also more hands-on activities for which small groups were essential. With 1st and 2nd grade we started off with some mimes of things that were healthy and why. The main focus of the lesson was specifically on teeth and good dental hygiene. When I first came to Honduras 2 things in particular that I learnt about this that really shocked me. 1. Some people give Pepsi to their babies and children instead of milk because Pepsi is cheaper to buy. 2. It's quite a cultural belief that children don't need to look after their first set off teeth (in any way, shape or form!) as these will get replaced by their adult teeth. So this lesson was pretty important! I did most of the lesson in Spanish and they drew 'happy teeth' and 'sad teeth' along with things that are good and bad for your teeth. Apart from those who ploughed ahead and coloured in both sets of teeth blue, pink and green (despite my pictures to copy I think the point of the contrasting white and brown teeth may have been missed!) this went down really well. With 3rd grade we compared flashcards of things that are better and worse for your health and why, before carrying out a more general health lesson and making a big wall display which I'm looking forward to putting up!
That afternoon with the 3 youngest that I work with we coloured in paper fruit and vegetables and threaded them onto ribbon to make healthy, colourful necklaces and also made decorated some banana people! With the help of Melody and Jen the next afternoon we got the 8 youngest together for a bit of food art fun where we made healthy 'snails' from celery, peanut butter, apple and chocolate chips. This was a suitably messy and yummy activity and lots of fun for everyone involved!
The last health day activity was inspired by a competition we did in my primary school every Easter to decorate a boiled egg...except this time it was with bananas! It gave everyone the chance to be creative and certainly gave me a laugh seeing what they all came up with! I hope the change from normal classes for all the children I work with showed them that as well as being an important and serious topic, staying healthy can be fun too!
2nd grade
Happy teeth/sad teeth
Wilma - "Que rico es el caracol" (the snail is delicious!)
Pretty ironically, on health day we attended our first (and hopefully last) Honduran funeral (or they closest they get to that anyway) for a couple of relatives of one of the teachers we work with. In Honduran funerals there is no service, just an open house or church for 24 hours where people come by and pay their respects. We were invited by one of the other teachers and when we arrived we felt completely out of our depth. We had no idea of the cultural norms: where to look; who to speak to; if we should look like we were praying; whether to accept the food offered to us; if we had to sit down, and how long to stay. The worst part for me was definitely the fact that it was an open casket. We were told that by the evenings of such events lots of people tend to hang out outside and it becomes a bit of a social event but whilst we were there it was pretty somber.
Another event of the past 5 weeks was a weekend trip to the Cuero y Salado nature reserve with fellow PT volunteers Aled and Hugh. There's no road to get here so we had to take a miniature train (which in the past was used to transport bananas from the banana plantations) and where we did a beautiful boat tour through the mangrove swamps. The highlights were seeing lots of monkeys and a crocodile and alligator!
I'm In March I was also invited to attend a 1 night Scout camp which was a great experience. The location was changed from somewhere outside of the city to school grounds within San Pedro Sula - I didn't think I'd be camping here when I flew into this city 8 months ago! The main evening activity was a group work problem-solving cooking over a fire and all that shabang activity and there was also a campfire for everyone together. The next day after 3 hours of sleep, the group of 15 of us plus leaders climbed up a hill (the route was actually a downhill mtb track which made me nostalgic) from where we could see the city through the trees. Just another fab weekend!
Campfire's burning
This weekend has been suitably relaxed which was exactly what was needed after the travels of the past few weeks. We took the kids to play Rounders at the field, I went with one of our Tias and her family to church and to eat lunch with them after and even found time to kick back in my hammock with a new book - a very rare occurrence indeed! Whilst I've gotten pretty excited for uni recently from sorting out my course and accommodation, I know that I can't imagine saying goodbye here yet. In fact I can't even imagine my life without all the people who are in it now. 3.5 months to go sounds like a long time and yet is feeling more and more like a home-straight every day with the time just whizzing faster and faster beneath our feet.
