So much for keeping this blog up to
date=). Well, to be honest, I have had a few decent excuses that
have kept me from writing this post, including lightening striking
our school and killing our internet, and catching the nasty “gripa”
(flu/cold) that is apparently hitting a good portion of Honduras
right now. Still, I apologize for this post being so late.
Well, here are a couple of the things
that have happened since my last post:
I sort of kind of taught my first
English class – actually, technically my first real class in an
academic institution. I had been helping Sr. Dorita sell snacks
during the recreation period as usual, when, with only ten minutes or
less left, Sr. Roselba came up and asked for my help. Now, my
Spanish is getting better, but it still is really pretty elementary,
so I tend to catch on to things pretty slowly. My train of thought
went something like this: she needs help knowing how to pronounce
something correctly for her English students; oh, the other English
teacher is gone, so maybe she needs help teaching her class; oh, she
is describing the exercises to me so that I can teach the class by
myself, and it's two periods long, and it starts in about three
minutes . . . It was a little hectic, but I enjoyed it, and I think a
few of the girls now understand comparative and superlative
adjectives a little better. Here in Honduras, the majority of
schools (including Maria Auxiliadora) begin their academic year
towards the end of January or the beginning of February, and end in
something like early November. The plan is for me to work on my
Spanish for now, and start teaching English officially with the
beginning of their new school year.
The girls in the “Tercero Curso” (I
think that would be the equivalent of ninth grade in the States) put
on portions of several plays. I was amused to find out that one of
them was “El sueño de una noche de verano” - ie, a Spanish
version of Shakespeare's “A Midsummer Night's Dream”. To be
honest, I can't tell you how well the play translates into Spanish
because I really didn't understand much. At first I was a little
discouraged that my Spanish was still so poor; but I was comforted a
little because the 12-year-old girls who were sitting with me said
that they didn't understand anything either. Apparently the
translator was able to capture at least something of Shakespeare=).
Honduras is pretty excited to be in the
World Cup. Unfortunately, I was sick in my bed when Honduras played
their game against Jamaica, so I couldn't see it; but I got to
half-share in the excitement since the fireworks, gun shots, and
girls screaming down the hall were perfectly audible in my room=).
The youngest three grades put on a
science fair this Friday. There were all sorts of fascinating
experiments which I only half understood. Some of the poor girls had
obviously planned out exactly what to say when asked to explain their
experiment, and rattled off a long explanation in Spanish for me.
The combination of my very limited Spanish vocabulary and my very
non-scientific-oriented brain left me 'smiling and nodding' quite a
bit; but over all, I was very impressed.
I did have a fun chess
match with one of the girls – she completely creamed me. I thought it was appropriate that she happened to be sitting in front of this sign . . .
My Spanish is slowly coming along; it's
helping me get lots of practice in the virtues of humility and
patience=). I've heard that it takes about three months to learn a
language decently well via immersion. Monday marked the first day of
my third month here in Honduras, so I'm hoping that's true.
