Where Does it Hurt?

I spent a large part of my day working on a website I have promised my host brother. He is deeply involved with a local soccer club and asked if I would make a website for the club. So basically I have been fooling around with Adobe Dreamweaver and Photoshop. It isn’t easy to create an attractive website! I haven’t done any work on this software in months, so I spent most of the day relearning both programs. When I get closer to a finished product, I’ll be sure to share it.

I haven’t written much about my in-class activities. I will share something we did last Thursday. I have been teaching my students body parts vocabulary (e.g. head, shoulders, knees and toes, so on and so forth). We have played Simon Says, drawn ourselves on poster board, labeling body parts, we even played an ESL rendition of twister.

On Thursday I tried this new activity. Teaching the verb “hurt” to my students, they learned how to say, “my elbow hurts,” or, “my stomach hurts.” Incorporating this into simulation, I had the students pair up. Each turn, they would play rock-paper-scissors to decide the role they would play (doctor or patient). The doctor says, “Where does it hurt?” The student playing the patient responds, “my arm hurts,” or whatever body part depending on a card I would pull from a hat. The doctor would then ask, “Can I help you?” and then would wrap up the arm, or the leg, or the foot in toilet paper. By the end of the class period I was surrounded with young Honduran mummies. It didn’t take that much toilet paper and they all seemed to have a great time.

I was walking home from the centro (town center) in Tocoa today at 6 PM. People were crowding the intersection near my house. At first I thought it was some protest to a 6 PM toque de queda (curfew). This was not the case. An eight-year-old girl walked out into the middle of Calle Chela and was hit by a car. She was thrown several feet upon impact, and suffered a severe bone fracture in her leg. I missed the accident by barely a minute, and the girl was carried to the hospital immediately before I arrived. Most of my neighbors were in tears, as this is a close community. It was an emotional experience; most of them saw the accident happen, including the four-year-old son of my host sister.

Calle Chela is a very busy and dangerous road. Traffic laws outside of the States aren’t as strict, and this served as a harsh reminder of that fact. Drivers here have no worry of traffic police, or speeding tickets, and have only their own discretion to govern their driving habits. These laws become merely suggestion.

I found out tonight that the young girl is going to live, and keep her leg.

I taught some friends tonight how to play Presidents and Assholes. If you are not familiar with the game it is a lightning paced card game popular in most universities across the country. Here is a link explaining the game. I tentatively renamed it Presidentes y Tontos, mostly because we were playing with a twelve year old. They were fascinated with the game, and even more so with the titles bestowed upon the winners and losers.

If you don’t know how to play, we can play when I come home.

Manuel Zelaya, the Honduran President exiled one week ago, is arriving back in Honduras. I have taken the advice of a friend here and will be spending the day at home. Nobody here knows what’s going to happen tomorrow, so I’m going to lay low.

Happy Fourth of July