A Couple Things from October . . .

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.