Parading, Payasos and Piñatas

Over the past two weeks everything has been pretty quiet teaching wise here. The week after we got back from Gracias was an evaluation week, basically a week of tests, so the only time we had to go in was to distribute and then pick up the test during the slot for English.

Most of them look like they know what they're doing!

We were all ready to get back into teaching last week but when we turned up to the school on Monday morning we found all the children outside their classrooms practicing their marching for the Independence Day parade! It seems that as soon as it turns into September here all thoughts go to the 15th, Independence Day. For three mornings that week the whole school was practising their marching for the parade and then on Thursday we helped with a street clean in preparation for a mini parade later in the day that was going to bring a torch of peace through the town.

El desfile de paz - the peace parade

All in all there were very few lessons last week due to prep for the 15th and then on Friday the celebrations started for Día del Niño, or Day of the Child. It was mostly celebrated on Saturday but on Friday the school brought in some clowns (payasos in Spanish). On Saturday there was a big show in the Central Park but we missed it because we were helping to decorate the area where second grade were going to have lunch with our host mum Saida.

Stage all set for the main celebrations in the square

We blew up all of those balloons. There's more too...

We spent a great afternoon with second grade, eating lunch, playing games, having our dancing shown up by 8 year olds, and then watching them absolutely destroy several piñatas!

In other news, last weekend we spent one morning making Auntie Maureen's tomato soup, which went down a hit with Lety and Victor, one of our host families - even all the kids liked it. It's very different to the soup here which is more brothy and quite oily and has lumps of vegetables and sometimes meat in it. In comparison, they were amazed that pretty much all that's in Auntie Maureen's is veg, water and a little bit of sugar. ¡Qué saludable!

I also received my second parcel, this time from my Uncle Paul, which just contained a book. Before I left I told him one of the things I would miss most while in Honduras was reading actually books seeing as I've brought a Kindle with me, so his plan is to send me a book a month. I absolutely love the idea!

So now we're just waiting for Independence Day to finally get here on Thursday before heading to Santa Rosa for the weekend!