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Published: June 22nd 2007
I can´t believe it´s already the 22nd. Time is flying by! I´m getting used to my surroundings. I found a place to make a photo cd but I haven´t found a computer that will allow me to post the photos. Oh how I miss certain things that are so easy to do in the States. I also miss the food. It´s pretty much tortillas, refried beans, rice and some kind of meat here in ol´ Honduras. It gets pretty boring after a bit. It´s not India in that aspect.
I started school on Monday afternoon. Dennis is my teacher and we are basically reviewing all the fun stuff like conjugating but inbetween the lessons he stops and tells me stories about his life or his friends. All in Spanish of course. So, I can say that my understanding of Spanish is awesome. I´m still working on speaking it but that´s also improving after just a few days of school and talking to my family. It´s becoming more correct. I´m using the right tenses and such just not speaking very quickly. All in good time, huh? Dennis did say that by the end of my time here I would be the one telling all the stories and he would be listening.
I also started my volunteer work with the orphanage called La Casa de los Niños. It´s just that. A house with about 30 boys. They aren´t orphans though. Only 2 are actual orphans. Most of them are from families that are so poor that they had to make the decision to send them to this house so they could get an education and actually be able to eat. There is a long interview process for the house and the kids won´t be accepted if they have any kind of record or history of violence. They also have to show that they really do need the house for the right kind of help. Interesting huh? It sounds like these kids have already had to deal with a lot and they only range from 5 to 16 years old.
There´s not any structure as to what we are supposed to be doing so that´s a bit difficult. There are 3 other volunteers that have been there for about 2 weeks already and they have been teaching them some English. The first day I was there it was a madhouse. They weren´t listening to anything and just running around everywhere. It was very overwhelming. I realized that this was not going to be that easy. No structure and no help from the house to round up the kids so we could do something with them. So we all got on the web and brainstormed some ideas. I also watched them a lot to see what they gravitated towards. They have school in the afternoon so we thought it would be a better idea to incorporate learning into physical activity since they are so full of energy in the morning when we´re there. So we played tag to get them to start to listen to us and then we played a game called state tag. Basically, we drew a map of Honduras on the basketball court and then drew in all the different departments (states). We would call out a department and they had to run to that department without getting tagged by who was it. IT WAS A HIT!!! We got them to play for awhile and they learned the different areas of their country. We had a little review afterwards and it worked! What a great feeling! We then gave everyone that participated a piece of candy. A little bribe to maybe get other kids to participate next time. We´ll see. We gave ourselves a little pat on the back.
My school took us to the beach today. Get this. La Ceiba is on the coast so I thought it would be cool to go to school here so I could also take advantage of the beach. Well, there is a beach but the locals say that no one swims in the water. I checked it out. You don´t want to swim in that water. Nice. So you have to take a day trip out to a beach. We had such a great time today. We had our class on the beach, ate some fish and then played in the sun and ocean. That´s what I´m talking about!
Life is good, I miss you guys a bunch and I´ll try to post some damn pictures so you can see what I´m talking about.
Hope all is well
I love you Chance!
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mom
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teaching is creative
It is a thrill to hear that things are going well. Your story about using physical activity to instruct is awesome. Way to go, you teacher you! I'll show you all the research that supports that teaching strategy when you get home. Love you mucho.