Trujillo

Hey all,

I hope that Minnesota has warmed up over the weekend. IT is STILL hot in Honduras. I went to the local gym for the first time today. A monthly membership is 350 lempiras ($19.50???). It's certainly not the best facility I've been to, but at the same time its all that Tocoa has to offer, so there we go. The gym is only open from 5:30-8 AM so I need to be there around 6 if I want to exercise in the morning. I had my morning class today at 8 AM, we worked on simple present verb pronunciation. They are a bunch of sharp kids, even if they can't sit still for 2 minutes.

After class i took a nap in a hammock. This is turning into one of my favorite activities. But it rained for 20 minutes before I woke up so I had to go inside. And I don't like having my air conditioner on during the day, so its pretty hot in my room right now.

Yesterday I went with Orlin and his friend Carlos to Trujillo. Its this little town about 45 minutes north east of Tocoa. It was the place where Christopher Columbus landed in Central America in his last voyage to the America's in 1502. Trujillo is on the Caribbean sea, so I was able to go swimming in the ocean for the first time in my trip. We ate at this place called La Perla del Caribe. I orderd this Sopa Marinera, and what I got was this. Yes those are fins and yes those are crab legs in my soup. It was a veritable seafood extravaganza (plus lobster, shrimp, etc.)!

Then we went to The Fort of Santa Barbara, a 400 year old fort that the Spanish built to protect Trujillo from Pirates-unsuccessfully, but it was still pretty neat. The fort was in a poor state of disrepair- 7 million lempiras (L18=$1) had been given to its restoration but it has already been spent. Pretty interesting though, I saw the place where the 19th century filibust William Walker was executed after he tried to conquer Central America.

Then we went to this old museum, or more accurately an old building that was the American HQ in the early 20th century. Inside were a bunch of artifacts from ships and trains and Mayan culture, a bunch of rusty chachki's, really.

I read or heard somewhere that
Next week there's a carnaval in Trujillo. I think that I'd like to go to Ceiba instead.

I'm Still River

I started teaching the simple present tense of verbs yesterday to my evening class. They seemed pretty receptive, but I need to remember that they are new to every word I teach them, and I can't take it too quickly with them. Nothing to worry about though. The thing that has helped me most is setting clear objective when writing my lesson plan. This brings clear purposes to my classes. Like I want to have them familiar with X today, or introduce vocab X-Z; then the next day make sure they are competent in conjugating only X,Y & Z verbs. Overall it has been rewarding to see myself grow into this leadership role. Growing into this leadership role has so far been very rewarding, and I look forward to the rest of the summer. This has been a new experience for me, but despite the the work everyday, has been a lot of fun.

Last night Orlin and his Boca friends don Vidal and Elling were waiting for me after class. They wanted me to help them write a letter from the Tocoa Boca Club to the Argentine Boca Club. After writing a couple of drafts explaining the history of their club, we went to Orln's brother Marvin's house. Marvin has a degree in education, and is also a good writer. We wrote the first draft that will be emailed/ mailed to Buenos Aires in the coming weeks. But to get recognition for the Tocoa Bocas Marvin thought the only way to really show them what Tocoa Boca is about is to create an official website for their club. So they asked me to create that for them, while I am here. I am really excited to do that, not only because I got done with the 4th course in the Education technology certification at UMD, but also because I bought the ADOBE software to do so before I came to Honduras. Making them a website will be my side project for the summer, when I'm not teaching. I'll keep you up to date on its progress as it develops.

I never thought I would be writing a letter to Boca Juniors!

I live on Calle Ocho

the Banegas family, my hosts here in Tocoa, are big fans of soccer. They love soccer so much that the founded their own club here in town. The club is called the Boca Juniors. If you're not familiar with international soccer, Boca Juniors is the biggest club in Argentina. It is the 8th most successful club this year. It was even the club where Soccer Idol Diego Maradonna spent the majority of his career.

This is funny because Boca is the arch-rival of my favorite Argentine club, River Plate. Once I told everyone I was of the Banda Roja (River) and not a Bostero (Boca), ha we exchanged the expected trash talk between teams. River has done fairly poorly this year though (#87 globally, I think). I still think it's cool that they are such huge fanaticos, though. They've gotten sponsors (like Orlin's friend don Vidal), and have their own barra (superfan group). Orlin wants me to help him write a letter to the original Boca Juniors in Buenos Aires so that the Tocoa Boca Juniors can get some international recognition. Maybe some sponsorship??? Even though its my archrival, I like this little club since they're the underdog and just getting started.

They are also for Real Madrid while I am a Barça fan.

Note: We are writing that letter tonight.

My classes have been going fairly well. I have 13 students in my evening class, all in the secondary school range. They all have fairly advanced English textbooks they use at school, but don't seem to be able to construct English sentences without help. The established purpose of this school was to assist with English conversation, so being able to form a sentence would seem to be pretty important.

We're just getting started with nouns and the simple present tense of verbs right now, along with some vocabulary practice. Last week my students made family trees, with key words like mother, father, brother, sister, etc. There is a strong sense of family in Honduras so I figured this would be a practical place to begin. Otherwise we have been reviewing numbers, the English alphabet, and basic phrases, which they seem to already have a basic grasp. I feel like everything is going well in class, and that these kids will make a lot of headway in the next 3 months.

By the way, I found out the street I'm living on is called CALLE OCHO. They called it this because there used to be a big nightlife on this street. Cantinas lined both sides of the street and it got to be pretty crazy. I guess a bunch of people got killed so the government shut it down like four years ago.

Red Card=MP5

Hey I haven't blogged in a week but I will tell you what I know...

Every morning for the last 2 weeks I have been waking up at 7 AM to a gratefully cool 82 degrees, and enjoy my coffee. By 9 AM we're back up to 89 degrees or so. I have an air conditioner in my apartment and am loathe to shut it off when I start my day. At 8 AM I teach a small group of 4 sisters. We play word games, practice vocabulary, and work on pronunciation in the morning. Their ages range from 7-12 years old. One of their favorite games to play is big karuta. I hide flashcards around the Banegas compound, shout them out in English (one at a time) and the girls have to sprint around the yard looking for the right word. This activity usually tires them out enough so that they will sit through a quick grammar lesson. Even so, they are fountains of energy and are ready to leave by 10 AM, when classes end.

After that I usually eat breakfast, tough it varies. Today for breakfast I ate an omlette, some kind of fried bean/chile, crumbly white farmer's cheese (not my favorite) and some sort of fried banana/maduro/platano/verde. I am a pitiful judge of what kind but I know its served at every meal! By 11 AM I amsettled down into one of the five hammocks hanging from varying mango trees on the Banegas Compound. I usually prepare my lesson for the night class at this time, though I usually nod off for a bit during the midday sun. There is a breeze right now, but at a price: the majority of the roads in Tocoa are dirt and as such blow a lot of dust into the air. Sweeping is a regular chore.

1 PM is usually lunch time. I don't know what we will be having but maybe I will blog about it tomorrow. Banana!

My associate/hostess Diani has a 4 year old son named David. He is a precocious and energetic little boy that made friends with me the night I got here. David calls me Elik. He likes to show me everything, like food, tables, hammocks, locks and explain how they work. He also likes to ask questions and He invited me to his birthday party. Which happened on the 28th of May, haha. The goodwill was there though.

For the last two Sundays I have been hanging out with my host brother Orlin. I go with him and his friends don Vidal and Joel Caballero to Sava to watch the Division 3 soccer playoffs. His club, The Boca Juniors, were knocked out a couple weeks ago so Orlin was there merely as a fanatico of fútbol. This last Sunday was the championship, between Juventud of Sava and Trujillo, a coastal city an hour north of Tocoa. After 90 minutes Sava was up 1-0 and gameplay became continually more agressive. In the end, a Trujillo player unsuccessfully tackled a Juventud player from behind. They started fighting and the Trujillo player got the red card. So the T. player charged the Ref and started roughing him up. 2 cops came onto the field to subdue this guy. One of them had a pistol and the other held back, brandishing an MP5, making sure the teams nor the fans started getting too rowdy. I have never seen automatic weapons on the soccer field, so of course I thought it was awesome/hardcore/ messed up.

I am in Honduras!!!

So I am in Tocoa Honduras. It is a town of ten thousand plus about an hour south of the Caribbean Sea. I came here to teach English to youngsters, and will be doing just that through the middle of August. Woo!

Getting to Tocoa was a journey though. Back last Friday my friend Jake drove me to Minneapolis. I spent the evening packing and repacking all of my things, which included a backpack full of school supplies for my new classroom (pens, pencils, notebooks, textbooks, activitybooks, markers, a whiteboard, flashcards, etc etc etc).

At 3 AM Jake, Nelly (good friend and Jake´s fiance) and I left for the airport. We forgot which was the Airport was the international terminal (humphrey of lindbergh) and I was accidentally dropped off at humphrey (woops!) Finally, I got to the Lindbergh terminal where my Boss Anna saw me off.

So I went through the security check, nothing particularily new to me, and I FORGOT TO TAKE MY LAPTOP OUT OF MY BACKPACK! So I got held up by three guards who wouldn´t let me touch my stuff until they could verify I wasn´t a terrorist, or something. If it couldn´t get worse, they didn´t assign my flight a terminal until a half hour before departure!

Not such an auspicious start.

Things smoothed out after that. I flew into Houston by 8:30 and flew out an hour later. By 11 AM I had arrived in San Pedro Sula, Honduras´second largest city and their industrial capital. When I disembarked their was a team of workers screening passengers for the swine flu. I had to sign a statement saying I wasn´t sick, then they filmed me for a second so they could record who they checked. I waited outside of customs for like twenty minutes until Cindy, Anna´s in-law found me.

She drove me around San Pedro, a veritable circus of activity and a traffic nightmare at that. She showed me the cathedral, anbd then bought me lunch from SUPER CATRACHO fast food place (rice, yuca, chicken and tortilla). Then she drove me to the bus terminal, which seemd larger than the airport. Getting on the bus, I was told by Tony (relation of Cindy´s),
¨cuidado cuidado en el bus!!!¨Errrr................not such a good thing to hear...

I rode window seat on this old bus that didn´t have air conditioning. It wasw probably ninety degrees inside of their for the first three hours of the trip. Although it was intense, I pretty much stuck my head out the window for that entire time, even after it started raining, which was such a relief.The bus ride lasted from 1 until 7 PM, and we rode through La Ceiba, Sava, a bunch of little towns.

My socia Diany picked me up in the Tocoa bus station a little after seven and brought me to the Banegas compound, where I will be spending the next three months. I get my own room with a private bathroom, and even an air conditioner (threw that on right away).

I spent Sunday getting settled in. Orlin, Anna´s brother in law took me to a soccer game in Sava, about 20 minutes away, during the afternoon. With us went his friends Joel Caballero, and Jose (don´t know his last name). We ate at some Argentine parilla (grill) restaurant ($4 entree pf grilled beef, beens, fried maduro chips, ensalada and tortilla) then drove to te stadium. There was an armed guard protecting the parked cars. Tickets were 30 lempiras, which is like $1.50 or so. It seemed like a high school level game, and each team had their own hinchada (crowd) banging drums and blowing horns constantly. It started raining an both hinchadas crowded underneath the stand´s awning. Players kept getting injured from the wet field, but they finished after 90 minutes anyways in impate (tie).

Today is my first day of teaching classses. It starts at 6 and goes until 8. My nine students are elementary age, and I am keen to see how we will get along. I dont have any pictures up, and probably won´t until i find a faster computer. I am well, and hope you all are too.