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Published: November 27th 2008
Honduras
Team jerseys provide great shade.Paraiso is always a fun place to go. It is a really tranquil place. People don't move too fast, there is always that danger that you'll rush up your day. Moving too fast in Paraiso has a sort of extension chord in a vacuum effect. It is unnatural to move quickly in a place called Paradise... Unless your at a drag race that is. When participating in a drag race, it's ok to move fast. I would even be so bold as to say that quick movements are encouraged. Just keep it between the ditches and push your foot to the floor.
Paradise racer knows this theory all too well and they chose last weekend to give a public demonstration. The rules were pretty simple, pay money and then race for more money. Everybody and their mother lined the street to watch their friends and locals race each other. It was awesome. On our way to the race I flooded Karina's ears with questions. "What kind of cars are racing? Are there motorcycles? Are they gonna race taxi cabs?" After fielding a few questions she handed me over to her younger cousin. His attention level was at about the same
Cousins
These are my two new cousins. as mine, so our conversation about the race was havoc to say the least.
When we arrived to the starting line, I saw that the race was exactly what I expected it to be. Imagine a grass lot full of what appear to be useless, beat up cars, but are actually tweaked and modified Honda Civics. Loud, rude, rusty, screeching, belching, roars ripped out of every pipe as the cars went screaming down the street, two by two. After both cars passed everyone would crowd into the street to catch a glimpse of who won. It was a truly inspiring cultural experience.
Breathtaking mountains surrounded the race, as is the norm for Paraiso, and the sweet smell of singed rubber floated on the breeze. The sun was out, but was often found relaxing on the back of a cloud, so as not to disturb the bald heads of any spectators. Families enjoyed some shade along the road while cars zoomed pass and big speaker pumped out loud music. As a whole it was a day filled with many blessings.
A lot like thanksgiving, except instead of a turkey we had bumper-less Hondas and instead of eating around
a table we were holding down the backs of pickup trucks in the burnout pit. Other than those two minor details, it was almost identical to Thanksgiving. A topic I spent most of my day discussing.
Other than the usual talk of cranberry sauce I decided to update them on some of our new traditions. I taught my students what a Tofurkey is, we discussed the purposes in cooking a Tudurken, and we also proposed the idea of a Thanksgiving disco. Most of the students have never celebrated Thanksgiving in the USA, so they don't see the complications involved in combining a disco and a turkey dinner. However, they did come up with the idea of adding fireworks to the festivities. No surprise there.
Beyond talk of sweatpants and falling asleep on the couch, we discussed our new social experiment. Along with the participation of my 9th, 10th and 11th grade I have started a social network for El Alba School. We plan to explore the possibilities of cross cultural communication a bit further. After the success of the last blog, where my 10th graders posted messages, we feel that this "internet" needs to be tampered with a
bit more. So we started Talkin.ning.com.
Here you can partake in discussions with my students, post media, write blogs, and (due to Nour's ceaseless request) chat with other users. I encourage you to check it out and create a profile if you feel so inclined. The students get credit for participating and they all have guidelines. Already a few students, other teachers, and US citizens have joined the fun. Possibly even YOU!
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Tio Tom
non-member comment
Ahem . . .
You might want to consider changing the caption under "Esposa." Just lookin' out for ya buddy . . . Tio