Blogs from Central America Caribbean - page 1933

So after basically a 6 day vacation, I started work yesterday at Escuela Bilingue Honduras. I'm very excited for the kids to come in about 2 weeks. We had a meeting with all the staff yesterday and all staff was able to meet each other. Today, I went to a training with the Spanish Speaking staff on how to use Microsoft movie maker on the computer. It is beyond cool. I'm hoping to make the equivelent of a supercool powerpoint of the my stay here using movie maker. Other than that my last two days have consisted of doing annual planning at the school. (annual planning: a very tedious process whereby we are required to plan out the whole year using a hodgepodge of teacher's guides which between two fifth grade teachers we have the whole ... read more

After leaving the farm in far more relaxed style than we arrived ( taken down river in a boat by some neighbours - nice) we crossed the border into Guatemala by boat to Livingston. But only after Tash attempted to order us some breakfast before we got on the boat, which was proof that we needed to improve our Spanish: we had seen what looked like a little shop selling hot food and cold soft drinks, ideal for a quick breakfast, Tash went and ordered some meat taco´s and a couple of cokes and and ended up with some dry tortillas and two cups of watery lime juice. yummy! we know the shop did sell real food because everyone else was eating nice breakfasts!! Anyway, after going through the "strict" (optional) border controls at the port ... read more

Panama City is definitely much closer to the U.S. in terms of atmosphere etc. than Quito was. There are huge skyscrapers everywhere, and American brands and logos and ads. We found that in Quito as well, but not nearly to the same degree. Another major difference was pollution level - Panama City air smelled so clean! They have the same buses and trucks as in Ecuador that are clearly lacking any sort of pollution control device, bút there are much newer cars. I have never been to any big cities in Florida, but Josh says Panama City feels just like Miami. We got to Panama in the evening and took a taxi to the Casco Viejo (Old Town) to have dinner. It"s a neighborhood you"re warned not to go to after dark as a tourist unless ... read more

8am we had to be at the school. The administrator explained a lot of things in Spanish and then did a smaller, translated version of the same in English. I was amazed by how much I actually understood. I think there are just similar words in English I guess... I don't know. Anyways, he later had a seperate meeting with us "gringos" and explained a lot more to us, all in English this time. We also had a lot of questions for him, that I don't think he was ready to answer all of them. He's new to this school as well, so some things he'll be learning along with us. He seems really organized though. He's fun and he's helpful but he also seems like he'll make sure stuff gets done. We then had some ... read more

Guate My single day in Guate (abr. Of Guatemala city) was enough for realizing, that it justly gained its bad reputation as a fucking dangerous city: All the groceries are closed by iron doors, and the owner serves you via a little window with SORAGIM; stores, which sell valuables, have private gunman standing at the entrance; and by night you here explosions and alarm. As I knew all of that in advance, I chose an hotel just near the airport, and tried not to wander around too much. And thus, ironically, after being used to wake up by the voice of the birds in my brother’s place in New-York, now I had to wake up from the noise of a Boeing 747, taking off just 10 meters above my head. Orchid The guidebook tells about a ... read more