Has It Only Been A Week?

Santa Rosa de Copán

Estamos aqui! It took a eight hour car journey to get from Gracias to Candelaria that took is out of the department of Lempira, into Copan and Ocotepeque and then back into Lempira (it doesn't actually take that long, we had lots of stops for our driver to pick up and drop off things). At first the road was really good, lovely and smooth but then came the potholes and after we passed Tomalá (hi Jesse and Lucy!) it was down to a very rocky dirt track. However we were distracted the whole way by the unbelievable views. The mountains don't look like the mountains at home - it looks as if they have been carved out of the earth, raw, awe inspiring and difficult to capture in a photo from a moving car!

When we arrived in Candelaria, we were greeted by Victor Cruz, the host of our project but not our host family, and found out where we are living for the year. We are living with a teacher in another school nearby, Saida, and her family. She has two adorable children whose new favourite song is 'If you're happy and you know it', thanks to a book that Amy brought. 

The view of Candelaria from my school

We arrived on Saturday and had the rest of the weekend to relax and settle in before an orientation on Monday and teaching on Tuesday. It's the middle of a term here so there's been no rest for us! We each have a Kindergarten class, I have the younger ones, we share the first, second and sixth grade class and we have our own third, fourth and fifth grade class. 

La Escuala Urbana Mixta de José Cecilio Valle

So far I love teaching! The kids all seem to really enjoy English and they love us. We can't walk anywhere in town without constantly having them call out our names or run up to us and when we walk into school at the start of a day we are greeted by a small mob, all trying to hug us. What I don't like is lesson planning but I suppose it's a necessary evil. 

We've only been in Honduras for about 10 days now and in our projects for less than a week but I already feel like I'm adapting to life here. The food is very different (I'll tell you more on that in a different blog post) but I just accept now that whether it's breakfast, lunch or dinner, there's going to be tortillas. Time is also more fluid here and some times other things get in the way of English class - for example, today we didn't have our fifth grade classes because they were helping to pick the maize that grows next to the school and then sixth grade was late to start because they had to finish eating their corn before we started (it was fine though because they shared with us!) 

The only thing I've yet to adapt to is the heat!

Una merienda (snack) of flame grilled maize with lemon and salt

Piles of maize in sixth grade