Survival Guide: Teaching

The past three months have sped by and I can't believe it's already time for another one of these! The idea that the next three months might go at the same time pace terrifies me. At the same time there are things I'm am looking forward to about going home but I'm not ready to say goodbye to Honduras just yet. 

With the next three months mostly taken up by teaching and that being the purpose of the year (despite what my Facebook photos make it look like!) this anniversary blog post contains some top tips for making it through teaching in general and especially in Honduras.

Survival Guide: Teaching

  

• Take every opportunity for a day off - the kids aren't the only ones that get homework in this job so it can take its toll at times 

• Be prepared to learn from them - this can be by them teaching you knew everyday phrases in Spanish to the games they like to how they learn best. Whatever it is, take note. 

• Sometime no matter how hard you try no learning is happening today - kids are fickle beings and have short attention spans and sometimes they are just not in the mood so on these days there's no use in running yourself ragged trying to force it to happen.
  

• Wear outfits that go with an inordinate  amount of stickers - if I don't come away from a day of classes without at least a couple of stickers, something's wrong. 

• Don't be ashamed to wing it - it's something we've all done. If you didn't have time to plan a lesson, if the lesson you did plan isn't working, if your class needs some unexpected revision, all are perfectly good reasons to just go with it. 

• No one is too old for If You're Happy and You Know It or Sara Says - personal favourites of mine they are perfect fillers for the last five minutes of class when 

• Give up all concept of personal space - between the mountain of hugs at the start and end of every lesson and their favourite game (a version of peekaboo mixed with guess who) there are always little sticky hands grabbing at you. 

• Don't let exam results get you down - you can be the best teacher Project Trust has ever had but at the end of the day some kids are not made for exams. Especially in the primary school, it's easy to forget how young they are and at this age, as at any age, test results are not the end of the world.

• Don't be alarmed when a kid brings a machete to school - machetes are something that you get used to quickly in Honduras but the first time you come into a class where every student has one under their chair, that's still a bit of a shock.

• A full week of teaching is a rare thing - classes are cancelled, teachers are off, there's a holiday, the list goes on and on but in the whole 9 months we've been here there has not been a week when we have taught every single lesson we are supposed to.

• Take pride in the small victories - sometimes the fact that your class can sing the alphabet without any help from you or that they answer the question 'how are you' without repeating it or that they are excited to see you when you walk into class is enough to make your day.

• Have fun with it - sometimes a lesson full of games is what everyone needs.

• Reduce, reuse, recycle - Reduce your workload by reusing old lesson and recycling ideas. Also beg, borrow and steal from other teachers, volunteers, anything you can get your hands on. 

When Home Came to Honduras

Thank goodness that's over! The last two weeks have been the hardest yet in Honduras. I have had to  translate everything into English, endure complaints about eternal bus rides from hell, find food that doesn't include refried beans or tortillas and worst of all, put up with being parented again! Jokes aside, it has been quite the experience having my dad and Kirsty here for the last two weeks, as I'm sure it was for them.

It started with picking them up from the airport in San Pedro Sula (thankfully with all their bags, Lucy's family weren't so lucky). Kirsty was understandably on edge, being in the murder capital of the world, even though that is technically now Caracas in Venezuela, but we were only there for one night and then started the all day journey to Candelaria.

With Amy's mum, Penny, and gran, Sue, in tow, I eased the newbies into Honduran bus rides with a nice minibus ride from SPS to Gracias, only to turn around and take them on the four hour chicken bus ride along bumpy, unpaved roads. In my dad's words - "It was four hours of us torture. I shouldn't have to sit there and try to convince myself that it doesn't hurt!"

Heaven in the form of a bus

Moving quickly onward, we spent the next two days in Candelaria where they got to see all of my classes, experience their first taste of traditional food (they weren't big fans) and get over their jet lag in 35 degree heat. It was definitely a tough start to their time but I think they enjoyed meeting my kids and seeing me in action.

Enjoying breaktime

Feat. fried chicken

On the Wednesday, we took Candelaria's only mini bus out to San Juan where we changed buses to go to Gracias. The luxuriousness of Guancascos was welcomed after an early start, especially the fresh passion fruit juice (my dad) and the strong wifi (Kirsty). It took a while for me to be able to drag them away but eventually I got them out to Fuerte San Cristobal, home of the best views of Gracias you can get without climbing a mountain. To end our first day we headed out to the Aguas Thermales, where my dad got to enjoy his first ice cold Honduran beer.

This was not candid, Kirsty was hiding

Kirsty blending into the fort

Los Aguas Thermales

Day 2 in Gracias saw us head to La Campa to do the highest zipline in Central America. Kirsty very bravely got through some nerves to do the first two ziplines accompanied by one of the guides and the rest by herself and my dad even more bravely offered to step back and take pictures. My hero.

Our next stop was the Copan Ruinas, a first for me too. We only had one night here so had to make the most of it. After we had some delicious lunch in Casa de Cafe, next to our awesome hostel, La Iguana Azul, we went to Macaw Mountain, a scarlet macaw sanctuary. It was brilliant place with an amazing array of birds and you even get to hold some of them!

Yes we can!

The main attraction at Copan, as the name may suggest, are the ruins. Alongside our excellent tour guide Virgilio, we wandered around the remains of an ancient Mayan civilisation. I have seen a fair few Mayan ruins recently and I have to say that Copan might possibly be my favourite. Not only is it in Honduras making me a bit biased, it is incredibly well preserved and a very compact site, making it easier to imagine what the city would have been like back in the day.

No rest for the wicked as we were off to San Pedro again for a night before hopping down to La Ceiba for the boat to Roatan. Let the holiday really begin! I know this was the bit Kirsty was really looking forward to and I have to admit some R&R sounded good to me too.

It seemed like half of the PT volunteers were on Roatan that week which meant that wherever we went, there was usually a lot of us! Over our four days in Roatan we sunbathed, swam, snorkeled and went for a ride on a catamaran, among other things. We also went out to visit Calum and Tom´s project in Punta Gorda and to celebrate Garifuna Day with them. Garifunans are the people that live in Punta Gorda and arrived in Roatan from St Vincent.

Stay cool Roatan

Before you ask Amy, I don't know what fish they are!

Just cruising

The whole crew in Punta Gorda

My two favourite parts of the week were visiting the sloth sanctuary and our night dive. How many people can say they have been clambered on by a monkey, dive bombed by a macaw and hugged and kissed by Sid the sloth all within half an hour?! And then seeing as we were back at Honduras' reef we decided that we might as well make the most of it. But why not mix it up? And that´s how we ended up doing a night dive and seeing bio-luminescence and strings of pearls. It was the most magical experience, like swimming through the night sky, even when we got lost in the dark!

The monkey wasn't my best friend...

But I loved Sid!

We had to fly back from Roatan to San Pedro as we were leaving on Good Friday and there was no public transportation. One more night in San Pedro Sula before heading back to the airport, two weeks after they arrived. I would like to say that it was a tearless goodbye but I'm afraid I can't. 

Proof of my dad in Honduras seeing as he was behind the camera most of the time!

After this visit I really feel like I'm on the homeward stretch, a feeling that excites me and terrifies me at the same time. Having part of home come here has made me realise just how much I've missed it but the thought of leaving Honduras makes me want to cry at the same time. I guess I've still got a few months to come to terms with it!

Guat's Up Belize

I know I've been a bit quiet over the past month but that's because the last month has been a bit quiet too. Saying that there have been a few interesting things. 

A few weeks after my birthday we went to Santa Rosa with a small group of other volunteers for some celebrations followed the next weekend by a trip to Gracias. This one was quite interesting because we were trying to get back to Candelaria the same day as the primary elections. This meant there were less buses running or in the case of Candelaria, none.

Happy birthday to me!

Seeing as we couldn't get back on Sunday we decided to take an impromptu trip back to Yamaranguila with Grace and Hannah (free accommodation, what can I say?) and because our bus to Candelaria from La Esperanza wasn't until 12 on Monday, we got to visit their school.

Classrooms at Vida Abundante

Nivelacion class - an intense English course for the kids starting in August

Abundant Life Christian School is a big contrast to Escuela Urbana Mixta de José Cecilio del Valle. It's a bilingual school which we hadn't actually seen before and blew us away. The school is also in a beautiful location surrounded by mountains and pine trees and in cool air. 

We did eventually get ourselves back to Candelaria and in the next two weeks we finally started some adult classes with a small group including our host mum Saida; celebrated World Water Day with a parade through Candelaria; been laid up in bed for a week (that one's just me); and had our visit from Vegas and Fra. 

Parading for World Water Day

Vegas is our in country rep who lives on Roatan and visited us back in October to see how we were settling in and Fra is our country coordinator from Coll. Thankfully I was just about better from my bout of sickness in time for their arrival. We had lunch together and Fra came to see us teach in the colegio in the afternoon and then we had a meeting with the people involved in our project in the evening. 

Amy and I plus the girls from Tomala and the 6 month project San Francisco have just gotten back from Belize where we have been to renew our visa. We stopped for a few nights on the way in Livingston in Guatemala. Livingston is only accessible by boat but it's the same boat that takes it across to Belize so it was kind of perfect. 

We stayed in Casa de la Iguana, a hostel highly recommended by Calum and Tom who have stayed here before, and used our few days to do a few boat tours in the area, one of which was to Rio Dulce where part of Jurassic Park was filmed and another where we had dolphins swimming around our boat! 

At Casa de la Iguana

Livingston was covered in gorgeous street art

With our man Edmar on a river tour

Just what we needed!

We moved onto Hopkins in Belize because as nice as it is, Guatemala does nothing for our visa. I'm not sure if I've explained this before but it's because there's something called the C4 in place here. It basically means your 90 day tourist visa is valid for Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua do a visa run involves a quick hop into Belize or going all the way to Mexico or Costa Rica. 

Hopkins is one of the most chilled places we've been. That's maybe because most of our time was split between the beach and the hammocks in our hostel, The Funky Dodo (what a name, I know!). 

We wrapped up our visa run by heading back to San Pedro Sula to pick up our families at the airport! I now have my dad and Kirsty visiting for the next two weeks which should be interesting! 

(Also I apologise for the title to those people who find puns offensive but I really just can't help myself, there's just too many good ones!)

Food Glorious Food

Something I often forget is that all the things I now find normal after seven months in Honduras are probably still at least a little strange to a lot of people at home. To help with this, I have a series of blogs planned to so you can understand some everyday parts of my life a bit better. First up is a food diary from the 13th to the 19th of February. It just so happened to cover my birthday weekend so there's a bit more cake involved than my average week but I'm not complaining!

MONDAY

Breakfast

* Frijoles, ricissimo, green beans and egg, plantain and tortilla 

* Banana licuado

* Mora juice

Frijoles and torillas are a very important part of any meal. We eat frijoles at least twice a day, with breakfast and dinner, and a torilla with every meal. Frijoles come in many different ways such entero (the whole bean) or revueltos, meaning refried (as shown in the picture).

Merienda

* Tamal de frijol

* Coffee

Merienda is basically when the kids get a snack at school, although sometimes it's more like a meal. We uesd to eat it every day but because of timetable changes since the holidays they have it later, just as we're heading home for lunch.

Lunch 

* Frijoles, rice, chimichurri, beef and tortilla

* Mora juice

Lunch is our most standard meal of the day. It is usually composed of chicken, rice, salad and a tortilla. Once a week we get beef, as we did today, once or twice a week it's spaghetti (the best days) and occasionally fish or soup.

Chimichurri is a salad of tomato onion and coriander.

Snack 

* Pan de piña

Pan is a very loose term in Honduras. In Spanish it literally means bread but it encompasses so much more. Pan is usually eaten with coffee and can be a sweet bread kind of like brioche, more cakey, or basically a biscuit.

Dinner 

* Frijoles, ricissimo, green beans and egg, courgette and tortilla

 I have to admit here that I'm not actually sure if ricissimo is actually called ricissimo. It is kind of like cottage cheese but softer and smoother. We also have something called cuajada which is very similar cottage cheese too. The actual cheese that we eat here is very different from back home, not a bit of cheddar in sight. It is very hard and tastes a little bit like parmesan. I really like it but Amy's not a fan.

 

TUESDAY 

Breakfast

* Frijoles, plantain, egg and ham, tortilla 

* Black coffee and sugar

* Banana licuado

 Licuados are basically milkshakes but so much better (for no specific reason). The most popular is banana followed by strawberry but I have to say I'm a banana fan. Very refreshing.

Lunch 

* Chicken, rice, cucumber, tomato, tortilla 

* Mora juice

We are very lucky that we have fresh juice to drink every day. Mora means blackberry and is surprisingly nice. Other flavours include orange, melon, lemon with chia seeds, passion fruit, a green one (not sure what it is but has to be healthy, right?), and mango.

Snack 

* Pan de piña

Dinner 

* Green beans and frijoles enteros, cuajada, beetroot, avocado and tortilla

* Water

* Kit Kat 

We usually have a stash of sweets that have either been sent over by kind friends and family or that we've brought back from weekend trips. Especially with chocolate, you've got to get it when you can.

* Cake! 

We were invited over to a friends house to celebrate El Día del Amor y Amistad (Valentine's Day) and there was cake! I know what Valentine's Day needs at home now.

WEDNESDAY 

Breakfast 

* Green beans and frijoles enteros, cuajada, avocado, plantain and tortilla

* Coffee

Plantain is like a sweet banana you can only eat when it's cooked. This is my least favourite way to have though the softer it it, the nicer. It can also be cut into strips and pan fried, which is delicious. When the strips are deep fried they become kind of like chips and are called tajadas and if you deep fry thin slices they are like crisps!

 

Lunch

* Spaghetti in a tomato sauce, frijoles, ricissimo, tortilla

* Mora juice

Today was a good day - spaghetti for lunch!

 
Dinner 

* Frijoles, cuajada, avocado and tortilla 

* Mora juice 

Avocados are a blessing of Central American cuisine. I don't eat them much avocado back in Scotland but I don't think it will stay that way once I return. Sometimes they're a bit hit and miss but more often than not it's a home run.

THURSDAY

Breakfast 

* Frijoles, ricissimo, scrambled eggs 

* Mora juice
* Coffee with sugar

People who know me at home know the closest I get to drinking coffee is getting a nice big whiff of the smell. I don't really like coffee but here it's a different story. I do need a lot of sugar with it but seeing as we don't have milk to go with it I think that's allowed.

 
Lunch

* Chicken, rice, tomato, cucumber, tortilla

* Mora juice 

 
Dinner

* Frijoles enteros, ricissimo, scrambled egg with tomato and tortilla 

* Fresh orange juice

FRIDAY 

Breakfast 

* Frijoles, cuajada, scrambled egg and ham, fried plantain, tortilla 

* Fresh orange juice

This is my favourite type of plantain to have!

Lunch 

* Chicken, rice, tomato, cucumber and tortilla

* Fresh orange juice

 

Dinner 

* Baleadas (with frijoles, cheese and egg) 

* Plum

* Mora juice

Ah, baleadas. By far my favourite food in Honduras, baleadas are made of a different type of tortilla to our usual, filled with refried beans, Honduran cheese and mantequilla (kind of like a mix between mayonnaise and sour cream) and then folded in half. This is called a baleada sencilla or you can have con huevos (with scrambled eggs). The king of Honduran food.

SATURDAY

Breakfast

* Frijoles, spinach and egg, plantain, cuajada and tortilla 

* Mora juice

Ever since I got a touch of anemia in October (coupled with the flu which made it look worse than it was), our host mum loves stuffing me full of spinach and I must say I have a new found taste for it.

Lunch

* Chicken enchilada (crispy tortilla, chicken, potato, tomato and shredded cabbage) 

* Banana licuado

If you've read my previous blog about my birthday weekend, you'll know we climbed a mountain next to Candelaria so thought we were well deserved a treat. We went to a local cafe and got some enchiladas, which are thin, deep fried tortillas with toppings.

Dinner

* Cena tipica from a comedor (frijoles, scrambled eggs with onion, chicken, cheese, plantain, avocado and tortillas) 

* Coca-Cola

 I actually forgot to take a picture when we were out with Jesse and Lucy at a comedor (a restaurant that kind of looks like it's in someone's front room!) on their last night with us so this is from another day but just imagine this plus a slice of avocado!

An interesting thing about drinks in restaurants is that as well as buying cans and plastic bottles of juice they also come in glass bottles that you return at the end of your meal. It's obviously much more eco-friendly and I personally think that Fresca (a grapefruit flavoured fizzy drink) is never more refreshing than out of glass.

* Cake!

It was my birthday weekend and we decided to have the cake a bit early. Cake in Honduras is another weird one. After baking the cake, it is usually soaked in milk to keep it moist (more like sodden). At first we were repulsed by this but over time have come round. I did still opt for a milkless cake for my birthday though.

SUNDAY

Breakfast 

* Frijoles, cauliflower and broccoli, plantain, cuajada, tortilla

* Water

Lunch

* Fried chicken and tajadas with salsa

* Pineapple juice (in a bag)

We went out into our weekly market and were treated to a free lunch by our friend's parents as a birthday present. An interesting thing with this meal was that our juice came tied up in a small freezer bag. You bite the corner off and suck it out through the hole. This is not uncommon and bags of water are seen in most shops which actually saves on money and plastic if you already have a bottle.

 

Dinner 

* Frijoles, mantequilla, avocado and tortilla 

* Orange juice 

Bonus!

This food diary was supposed to be a week long but I knew our dinner from the Monday after I finished it had to be featured because it's one of my favourite meals.

Dinner
* Tacos flautas (topped with a tomato sauce, shredded cabbage and grated cheese).

These tacos are unlike any I had had before coming to Honduras. Instead of typical taco shells or soft tortillas, it is a tortilla curled into a flute shape and stuffed with, for us, chicken. The best way to eat tacos, in my humble opinion.