Open my eyes, I see sky!

Any Joshua Radin fans out there? I love listening to him up here on the mountains, especially in the mornings when I'm walking to school. His music would definitely be in my life-movie soundtrack.

Sorry for the lack up updates. I forget to blog sometimes because of the routine I find myself in now. It's not a bad thing, at all, because of the beauty of my routine. I love my job, I love my students, I love the mountains. I also know that my decision to come home in June only makes those feelings more palpable. I am aware that my time here is limited, and that knowledge drives me to try to constantly feel grateful for what I have left. Even the things I don't like aren't too bad. It's all just part of it.

Tomorrow's Friday, and next week is Semana Santa. My dad's coming! We should have a blast exploring Honduras. We are going to Lago Yajoa, the only lake in Honduras. Then we're going to swing by the ruins and then spend a few days here in Villa Verde. It will be awesome. I'm excited to break the routine a little and have some time off of school.

At the same time, though, I'm very aware that Semana Santa is the last big break before the end of the year. Really? The end of the year? I can barely believe it. I realized that since Christmas, I have felt extremely connected to my students. I take real joy in their accomplishments. There's one little boy in my class that I am so, so proud of. He's the one in the middle:

At the beginning of the year, he couldn't count. He wrote random numbers on his math tests, his average was a 22%. These last couple of months, though, he has been working so hard. He has learned how to add and subtract and multiply. And on his last test, he earned a 91%. I don't think I've ever been so excited to hand a test back. And he literally threw his arms around me and jumped up and down when he saw it. It's moments like that, and watching students like him, that make me never want to leave. Those moments reinforce to me that I am doing something important this year. Not that the students' accomplishments have anything to do with me, they really don't. But I feel like I'm a vehicle to help them realize their own potential, and that is something that I'm so happy to be able to do.

I'm so blessed. I don't even know how to count my blessings... they are just too abundant.

Heat and bugs

Well, summer in Honduras is here! I probably don't talk about the weather enough on this blog. The weather in Honduras is amazing, especially up on our mountain. The air is clear and fresh, up until last week I was always comfortable wearing a t-shirt and long pants or shorts, and I have really had zero things to complain about. Well, starting last week, everything just felt...warmer. I started to feel hot under my blanket at night, and I started to notice that my classroom, by the afternoon, felt somewhat like an oven.

The heat is hard to deal with. But dealing with the bugs is the real challenge. I have seen some of the craziest bugs in Honduras, and they are only getting worse. I wake up with bites up and down my legs, back, and stomach. We killed a scorpion in our kitchen the other day, and there's a nasty black bug that keeps showing up that apparently blinds people. I have included some photos that my friends (specifically, Sarah) have taken of a couple of the bugs here... they are big.

Party in the USA

Sorry for the Miley Cyrus reference, I couldn't resist. It's official... I am coming home in July!! I have been struggling and struggling with my decision for the past month or so, but after talking to my mom, my best friend, and people here, I am certain that my next step is to come home. As much as it will break my heart to leave my students and the mountains, I really want to make every year of my 20s a new adventure. I am ready for the next thing. I have some great options for law school (I haven't picked one yet) and I could end up in a lot of cool places. Most of the law programs I'm looking at have summer abroad opportunities also, so my traveling is nowhere near over.

Being in Honduras has made me really excited to practice law. I am hoping to study either international or immigration law, both of which would allow me to help people like my neighbors, friends, and students in Honduras. I want to use my Spanish and never stop traveling and never stop exploring new adventures. I mean, come on... I have the whole world in front of me!

So, I feel great about my decision. I'm excited to come home and drink Starbucks. But I'm more excited to come home and apply everything I've learned this year to my life in the States. I am just a different person now than I was seven months ago. I have changed in a way that I didn't know I could.

Today is Saturday, which means I'll spend the day lounging around in my hammock and looking at the mountain in my backyard. My life gives new meaning to the word blessed. And I think the best is yet to come!

Meetings

Well, things have been going pretty smoothly at Vida Abundante. The last three months have absolutely flown by; I cannot believe that it's the middle of March already. It's kind of alarming...where did the time go? But everything is so good. I feel confident with my classes, my students are well-behaved and seem happy, and I am comfortable in my little house on the mountain.

The biggest challenge I feel like I'm facing these days is exhaustion. Not just my own exhaustion, but that of my students as well. We haven't had a day off since we returned from Christmas break on January 4th. That's a long time. They also have very long days for an elementary school- we go from 7:40-3:00. I stay and tutor a student every day after school too, so I'm actually there until 4pm. Those are long days and long weeks. Furthermore, the students are all sick! I had 12 students in my class on Monday, and we're a class of 19. That's a lot.

So, I wrote to the administrators in Tegucigalpa, and asked them if we could have a day off. I have always had a gift for diplomacy, even for silly things. In high school, I was always the one asking teachers for an extra day to study for a test. Now, I feel that I'm often the teacher asking for stuff... who knows what they think of me over in Tegucigalpa! Anyway, they shot me right down about the day off. They told me that, and this is a direct quote,

"In our country, most jobs require employees to work Saturdays, education being an exception to allow teachers to rest. [...] We are just two weeks away from spring break, we are certain that if this time is managed appropriately everyone will have plenty of time to rest." Hmm. I knew I wasn't going to get anywhere via email, so I requested a meeting.

The meeting wasn't just for a day off. I have a lot of things that I think Vida Abundante could help work towards. So, I met with these two administrators when they came to our school. First, I explained why I had requested a day off. They were receptive; they said that although they couldn't just put a free day into the calendar, they would give us a week without tutoring and then they decided to have an early dismissal for the students on Friday. Hey... I'll take what I can get!

But more importantly, I talked to them about two proposals I have for our school. In my last blog I talked about the gender roles here in Honduras. I proposed that the administrators initiate some sort of sex education program for the junior high and high school students in Vida Abundante. This school offers an amazing opportunity for students. Learning English opens all sorts of doors for them. However, knowing English won't do much if they have to support children while they're teenagers. I suggested a program making students aware of the ramifications involved in the decision to have sex, and how to protect themselves if they do decide to have sex. By doing this, we would be empowering both our male and female students. I am really happy to say that the administrators were extremely open to that idea and seemed interested in trying to start some sort of sex education program in the schools.

I also talked to them about starting some sort of dialogue with parents about proper discipline methods. Spanking might be culturally acceptable, but that doesn't mean that we can't strive to change that. I'm not talking about the legal issues of spanking (like they thought I was), I'm talking about it as a moral issue. An adult shouldn't be striking a child. That's just the bottom line. The administrators said that they are going to look into seeing what they can do to start some sort of dialogue with parents about how the school would like to see children being disciplined at home-- i.e. without violence.

Anyway, it was a good meeting. I feel happy that they were so receptive to what I had to say, and I'm optimistic that something might actually come out of it. In the meantime, I'm still working on this decision that I have to make by Friday. I'm starting to feel some peace with what I'm going to do... I'll write about it after I have the meeting with my principal on Friday. Until then... if you read all of that... thank you. and que le vaya bien!

Women and Honduras

The norm for women in Honduras makes me really sad. The majority of women here seem have a very specific goal in life, and that goal is to be a mother. I am going to include two disclaimers here. The first- I'm not pretending to know how all of the women in Honduras feel. But based on talking to my neighbors (and the strange looks I always accrue when I try to share my liberal, feminist ideas with them), and the high school students at our school, it really does seem that most of the women here just take it for granted that they need find a husband and make babies....and sooner, rather than later. For this reason, there are an incredible amount of teenage mothers here. One of the 22-year-old Honduran teachers at my school has a five-year-old son and another on the way. She’s married to a 35-year-old man.

My second disclaimer is that, of course, there is nothing wrong with being a mother. Being a mother is a wonderful and important thing. The part that makes me sad is the lack of choice. Women here have to fight so hard if they want to do something different. They are met with huge societal obstacles when they dream about something else. This reality upsets me the most when I think about the girls in my class growing up with that mindset. They will have to fight so much harder to not only fulfill other dreams, but to even have other dreams to fulfill. I want my students, both the girls and the boys, to know that their dreams have no limits! They can do whatever they want to do! Especially the girls. Some of the girls in my class are just such bright children, it breaks my heart to think that they might ever doubt their potential to soar.

I don’t want my students to ever, ever grow up and think they can’t do something. I try to tell them every day how smart they are. I try to tell them every day that they can do anything they want to do when they grow up. It's not much at all, but what else can I do? I have always been someone who strives to effect change. I like to try and change things, even on a very tiny scale. But here I am faced with a situation that I really can't change. For now, all I can do is be a strong role model and show these girls that they don't have to be teenage moms, if they don't want to be. It's hard to not get down on myself for not doing more...but I don't know what else to do.

Good Christians

My neighbors, who are missionaries from the Philippines and also teachers at my school, play Christian music really, really loudly every day. It's playing right now. I don't have real windows in my house (they're more like holes in the wall), so I also get the pleasure of listening to their music in the afternoons. As a side note, I also get the pleasure of hearing the revving of their motorcycle every single morning and the barking of their crazy dog at all hours of the day and night. Anyway though, today, I was horrified (but unfortunately not surprised) to realize that their music was covering up another sound- the sound of parents yelling and a child screaming.

I have wanted to blog about this for a while, but I haven't. It's a very sensitive subject, and I don't want to take this topic out of cultural context. In Honduras, parents spank their children. It's a cultural norm. Please don't get me wrong. I hate spanking, and the fact that it's a cultural norm doesn't make it okay. It's tragic. But it is the reality of life here.

There are varying degrees of spanking. In the United States, whipping a child with a belt is unheard of. It's child abuse. Here, it's common. This has been the thing I have struggled with the most this year. I have students who get severely hit if they earn a bad grade on a test. I have others who are severely hit when they get sent to the office for discipline reasons. I have spoken to the principal about it, but while he is understanding of my concerns and always voices the intention to help, he never actually steps in and does anything. So I am left in the position of trying to do everything in my power to not cause my students to be beaten by their parents.

My Filipino neighbors beat their four-year-old son. I have heard them yelling, him crying, and the sound of beating. It has gone on for varying lengths, anywhere from five to fifteen minutes. If I were in the states, I would call the police. Here, I'm left lingering outside their house, pretending to be on the phone and speaking really loudly, in the hopes that they might see me and stop. I tried to stop them once. I actually walked out of my house and stood in front of theirs, only to find myself paralyzed and unable to yell their names. What would I say if they came out? What if they punished their son even more severely? I have never felt so helpless in my life.

I have talked to the principal about it, but nothing has happened. It's unbelievably difficult for me. I don't know how to listen to a child be beaten without stopping it, but I also don't know how to approach my neighbors and colleagues about the fact that I think they're abusing their child. They won't listen to me, and they'll probably take it out on their son.

A couple of minutes ago, the Christian music stopped, and so did the sounds coming out of that little blue house. I'm left with a heavy heart and the smell of hypocrisy lingers in the air.