holy moley it´s hot

16 August 2008
Hey, chochachos! It’s Saturday MORNING right now, which is crazy. I totally did a terrible thing culturally-integrating-wise…the rule of thumb is if you’re invited somewhere with the family, GO. But this morning, when my sister Dulce came knocking on my door at 7:45 to see if I wanted to go with the family to get coffee in a village nearby, I said…no. And then I slept until 10:00. And it was awesome. And I regret nothing. So there.

This week has been an interesting one, to say the least. For starters, I had another host brother staying in the house—he’s probably 30-something, named Carlos, and has a little 9-year-old son named Carlitos. They both spent a ton of time in England, so they speak excellent English with adorable british accents. Anyway, my little 7-year-old sister Alexa has had to suddenly share everything with her cousin, including toys, television time, and most importantly, her extremely cool new gringa friend. They’ve basically been bickering non-stop, several of which episodes have ended in tears. I really like Carlitos, he’s very bright and sweet and funny, so it’s a shame that they’ve dissolved into war.

I finally started doing some actual field-based training this week—so far it’s just been the same as it was in Valle de Angeles, going to classes all day without any actual practical experience. On Friday (yesterday), I took the 8am bus with three other gringa friends, Bug, Ana, and Sara, and we headed out to a little aldea (village) school named Buena Vista. The school was build by the community parents, and it’s tiny—just a building divided into two classrooms, one for the 1st, 3rd and 4th grades, and one room for the 5th and 6th grades. Each class has 20-30 kids, ranging from four-years-old to 16-years-old. There are just two teachers, and no principal or anything like that. They told us that the parents are heavily involved, and without them they wouldn’t have anything. The little school house is surrounded by patchy grass, where the kids play soccer during recess. They are several small scrubby trees, each housing about three little kids hanging from the branches. They have no electricity or running water—they don’t even have a pila! All the water they use has to be brought from home. The parents take turns bringing the Merienda Esoclar, or the state-mandated “school snack,” which arrives at about 11 or so every morning. It’s usually some rice and beans with some tortillas, though when we visited they had little tamales. A lot of bigger schools have their own kitchens so they can make the kids food on site, but little Buena Vista has no such luck. We showed up as the kids were lining up under a little thatched-roof awning, and the teachers had them clap to greet us, then sing the national Anthem, then pray for us. It was all very sweet. Then we split up, two gringas per classroom, and observed for the morning. Unfortunately, much of the Honduran educational system revolves around rote-memorization and copying, and it was no different here. The teacher would stride to one side of the class, show a card with the letter “T” on it to the little guys, then have them copy “Ta, Te, Ti, To, Tu” over and over again in their little notebooks. Then she’d walk to the other side of the room, write several long division problems on the board, solve them, and have the children copy it into their notebooks. Not a lot of creativity nor self-exploration being facilitated here…it’s hard because I’m looking at their culture through my own biases from being raised in the states, but I have a hard time valuing this style of learning. That said, these teachers have extraordinarily difficult tasks, teaching a classroom with such a wide range of developmental stages, and they work very hard for very little, so I can’t criticize what they do.

17 August 2008
Holy dang, it is raining like the dickens. It’s about 9pm right now, Sunday night…I just hung up with my folks! (Hi Mom! Hi Dad!) It’s rad, they call me every Sunday night, which always helps quell the homesickness I’ve built up over the week. I think about home every day, mentally re-living bike adventures in the warm Evanston night air, climbing little trees and skateboarding with Max and Harrison, dropping bags of water on people from my balcony…god, those were the days. Not that I’m not loving Honduras…I just had such a good time back in the states, too. I really, really miss everybody…HUGS.

This weekend was really awesome. Saturday was similar to last week’s…a bunch of gringos came to Talanga from their prospective FBT sites, and we lounged around, beating the heat by consuming fried chicken, ice cream, beer, soda, popsicles…we had plans to go hiking by the caves again, but the heat got the best of us and I spent a lot of the day in a semi-reclined position. Today, Sunday, was TOTALLY FREAKING AWESOOOOOME because my host family and I fried up some chicken, packed it in a giant plastic tub with a ton of tortillas and beans, put on our swim trunks and headed for the hills. We drove to a family friends’ house out in the campo, where we somehow loaded Dona Dulce, my sister Dulce, her brother Carlos, his son Carlitos, Alexa and her little friend, a family friend and her kid, me, and three other men into a tiny vehicle that can best be described as the cab to a big-rig, minus the big rig, with the normal tires removed and replaced with huge tractor tires. This tiny beast could scramble up Mt. Everest if it wanted to. Most of us, including myself, crammed ourselves in the “bed” of this thing, while everyone else wedged into the cab. We rambled through small fincas of banana, coconut, and mango trees, before making our way into a wonderfully fragrant pine forest, driving over cut rock and up and down impossible little hills. After about half an hour of butt-crunching driving (the metal truck bed was mega-ouchy), we arrived!! We unloaded the food and hiked down to AMAZING THINGS!! A river turned into a sweet little waterfall, falling into a small pool with lots of little rocks for climbing and jumping. We all sat down and immediately dug in, everybody ripping pieces of chicken off with the tortilla and then shoving the whole thing in your mouth. Soda was served up in plastic baggies, which are tied shut, with a hole nibbled into the corner for sucking (typical Honduran beverage consumption). After our picnic we swam around for a bit, then hiked down to an even MORE awesome sight. A huge waterfall plunged down into a very deep, silver-colored pool, which was like a giant crater, with the enormous rock walls rising 30 feet above the water. I got the balls to jump off the cliff into the water, which was awesome. Huge green jungle plants were growing off the rocks, with bright green algae poking out around the waterfall, and crazy ferns everywhere…it was beautiful. We swam around and jumped off the rocks for the rest of the afternoon, finally heading home around 4:00pm.

Oh man, guys. Hells of bedtime.
Love,
Hayley
P.S. I´ve been receiving from letters from you guys!!!! THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. Seriously it´s like the hungry kid who hides Kudos granola bars under her bed and secretly eats them under the covers at night, only instead of hungry it´s miss-y and instead of chewy chocolately goodness it´s letters from home. Everything else is accurate.