What was I thinking?

No, I'm serious. What was I thinking?

The kids stopped being cute about a week and a half ago. I feel like I look older every day. I have never been this tired in my life. I can't remember the last time I had solid poop. My arms hurt from trying to wash my clothes by hand over the weekend. Also, I ruined one of my shirts in that laundry-washing process. This morning I found two cockroaches in my house, and every day I find a new spider nest in my room. We lose electricity several times a week. My students don't speak English. They just straight up don't speak English. Today I asked them to write two sentences on a piece of paper, and half of them just wrote random words down. When I asked each one of them (very kindly!) what they were writing, they all just stared at me. This job would be hard in English... in Spanish, it feels impossible.

If anyone out there is feeling bored and/or feeling like they'd like a change of pace...please come to Honduras and be my teaching assistant. Another person in that classroom would make things so much easier for me! Think about it...

Anyway. Today was a really long day. Usually I have at least a couple of planning periods, but today I had my second graders from 7:40am-1:20pm. That is a very, very long time. By the end of the day, they were simply wild. I don't really have any efficient way to control them in the afternoons, because my only threat to them is to take away their recess for the next day, which seems really stupid to me. The curriculum is ridiculously demanding- it would be challenging for native English speakers! We didn't even get through half of the reading lesson for today. Furthermore, I know that although some of them can read, most of them don't understand what they're reading. I have no idea if my students are retaining anything I am trying to teach them. I feel like when I try to do things to make the lessons more fun or interesting or easy to learn, they just get so out of control so easily. For example, today I gave them pennies to count and they just started smacking the pennies on the desk and throwing them around.

We don't have any windows (we have open-air classrooms), so closing the door does nothing for noise. Half the time I don't know if my class is being loud, or if the noise is coming from outside. When it's recess, I can't hear myself talk, so there's no way the class can hear me talk. Trying to teach math during the other grades' recess is a nightmare, because balls are being kicked against the wall, children are screaming and laughing, etc. There is also always construction going on, which is really horrible to try to speak over.

In the morning and before they go home, my students will all run up to me and give me big hugs and hang on me and play with my hair (it's light- not something they're used to), and I would love to say that that makes it all worth it. But honestly, all I can think about is how tired I am and how inadequate I am for this position. I am scared of letting this kids down, of not being able to teach them what they need to know.

I can still say that Honduras is still one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen, and every time I walk out of my classroom and see the mountains and the cloud forest, I am still overwhelmed with their grandeur. I love the family I live with, and the other teachers at the school, and I feel so lucky that I'm not sitting in an office every day. I love my students, especially the troublemakers. And I do still think they're really cute (except when they won't stop talking during class). I am just scared that I'm going to fail these children because I don't know what I'm doing. If I knew right now that my students would be fine and right where they're supposed to be at the end of the year, then I wouldn't complain anymore. But I'm very scared that for all my efforts, successes and failures, at the end of the year they won't be where they are supposed to be, and that will be my failure as a teacher. I guess I wasn't really comprehending the responsibility involved in this job when I signed up for it. :(