New eyes

My brother, Mathew, has come to visit! The trip has been long anticipated, by me, by him, and by my students. When I told them that my brother was coming, they literally cheered. Then when he arrived, they were just so excited to talk to him. They don't see a lot of guys like him. He's tall, first of all...Hondurans in general are pretty short. Just to put that statement in perspective- when I'm standing in a group of Hondurans, I'm usually not the shortest one. But also, he has a lot of hair. When he first arrived, he said a few words to introduce himself and then I asked my students if they had any questions for him. To this, Javier raised his hand and said, "You are very hairy." Mathew and I both cracked up. He went to go watch their P.E. class, and he literally came back with three little seven year old girls hanging on him. It's been awesome having him at school.

But in addition to that, in addition to him being at the school, it has been so refreshing to have him here because he provides entirely new eyes--an entirely different way to see and to appreciate my life here. He is so staggered by everything. I still feel staggered by things, but it's different for me. It's not new. Having Mathew here makes me so excited to show him where I live and what I've been doing. It's made me so proud to live here and lead the life that I'm currently leading.

We started our week by spending a lot of time on buses. He arrived on Saturday, and on that same day we went to Copan. The trip took approximately five hours... a long time for him, after having traveled from the US, and for me, after having traveled from Gracias.






We only had one night and one morning in Copan, but we were able to eat some amazing baleadas and some ridiculously delicious breakfast (eggs, plantains, avocado, tortillas, cheese and coffee for $2.50/plate) before heading back to Gracias.

As I remembered, the ruins were amazing. Before we even saw any ruins, though, we saw some amazing wild macaws in the trees, as well as a gopher type thing that we couldn't really identify.




And then we looked at, climbed, and danced on some really, really old rocks.








The town of Copan is really beautiful also. It was a good way to introduce Honduras to Matty.




As I said, though, we only spent one day in Copan. Then we hopped on three more buses to get to Gracias on Sunday evening. Mathew kept expressing awe over everything. He couldn't believe the mountains, the school, the children, the wildlife, the silence, the smells. I loved seeing his reaction, and it validated what I already thought...that I live in paradise. Every time he voices his amazement at something, it rekindles my own amazement. It's awesome.

Mathew's being here has also made me question, once again, my decision to go back to school next year. He is a film and video major at RISD, and he's talking about going all around the world to make documentaries... and I really want to do that too! I think I'd be great at telling people's stories, and the idea of sitting in an office in the states for the rest of my life makes me feel very unsettled. I just can't see myself going to Ohio State (barf) for law school next year. I want to go to South America. I just wish I could find a productive way to travel, one that I feel would further my long-term goals. Traveling and teaching are both awesome things, but I know I don't want to be a teacher. It's so stupid... I'm two years out of college and still don't know what I want to do with myself.

For right now... I don't know what I've done to deserve the life that I'm currently living, but I am just going to do my best to enjoy it. Honduras es amor.

My music comes with me

It's funny. My life here is so unusual. It's so distinctly peaceful, it's incredibly rewarding, it's basically without real problems. I have grown accustomed to adorable children throwing their arms around me every morning, I'm used to seeing the mountains as I walk the unpaved dirt path to school, I expect to feel the warm breeze outside every morning, and I'm used to speaking Spanish to pretty much everyone except my fellow teachers. I often forget how unusual my life and experiences are. Many people never have the opportunity to experience anything like this.

And as the time passes, I realize that I must be changing, too. Things that might not have been normal for me a year ago are commonplace now. My mom noted over Christmas that I seemed more confident, my brother commented that I'm "calmer." haha. These subtle changes are not remotely noticeable to me, but I recognize that these experiences I'm having must have some sort of effect on me.

Today, I was jogging after school, and a very familiar song came onto my iPod shuffle. The summer I interned at CNN, I woke up early every morning to run, and I started all of my workouts with this particular song. While it played today, I could not help but remember the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial and the Reflecting Pool, which I looped around during my runs. They are such a far cry from the mountains that punctuate my reality now. I love that my music can come with me and remain constant. Every song holds memories and emotions, but I listen to many of them now cognitively. I remember the emotions without necessarily feeling them, I relive memories without feeling nostalgia. It kind of makes me feel old. It definitely makes me feel like I'm growing.

Almost a year ago, I left for Europe with my best friend. We toured around Spain and Italy and spent an infamous weekend in Morocco. We celebrated Carnival in Sitges, ate pesto in Rome, bartered with some salesmen in Tangier and went to a bullfight in Madrid. I laugh now, thinking about how much we freaked out about a cockroach that made its way into our kitchen... if only I had known the size of the bugs I'd be facing a few months later! Those experiences don't feel like they could possibly have started a year ago. I listened to a lot of music as we traveled through Europe and spent weeks lounging on the Mediterranean beaches. I know that the songs I associate with that trip will always hold very specific memories of the places, people, and emotions that I felt while I listened to them.

I have no idea where I'll be in a year from now, and that's kind of scary. But it's really nice to know that no matter what, my music will come with me.

One minute before the bell

I turned on my computer and just started taping while the kids were playing... they're so cute! Notice Maria, at the end of the tape, who takes the opportunity to stick her tongue out at the camera while hugging me.

The River

Since Christmas, I have been spending more time at the river. I live on the side of a mountain, and there is an incredibly gorgeous natural river that runs next to our house. It's so peaceful there. The sound of the river is amazing, it smells so clean and fresh, and it's just unbelievably beautiful. I brought my iPod there the first time I went, but didn't even turn it on because I didn't want to drown out the sound of the moving water. I went rock hopping probably a half mile up (it's enormous, I have no idea how far it goes) and I have spent time writing and reading there. I constantly have to remind myself how lucky I am to live somewhere like this. The pictures are of the river and the only street in my neighborhood. More to come.

Santa Rosa

I went with four other teachers to Santa Rosa this weekend. We had a good time... Santa Rosa is a small town just 45 minutes away from Gracias. We just wanted to get out of Villa Verde for a day and get some good coffee and watch cable TV, and we did those things. It was great.

Santa Rosa isn't anything special. It has some bigger grocery stores than we do here in Gracias. It has a cute park, a pretty church, and a variety of places to eat. It also has a great deal of poverty. We have poverty in Gracias, to be sure. But poverty elsewhere in Honduras is a little different than what we see in Gracias. Here, we have people living in tiny mud huts and in extremely poor living conditions, but in bigger cities like Santa Rosa, there are children everywhere who just seem to be on their own. They sell random things, they're always dirty, they never have anything on their feet. When we first arrived in the city, a little boy who looked to be seven to eight years old kept following us around, trying to get us to buy socks. I asked him how old he was, and he told me twelve. He said that he's small because he doesn't eat anything. I just couldn't believe that he was twelve, but one of the Honduran teachers who came with us confirmed that many children here simply don't look their age because they are malnourished. I gave the boy some money and another teacher bought a pair of socks, but the situation with the children makes me feel so helpless, because I just can't give all of them enough money.

The next day, these two little boys followed us into a coffeeshop and just stood there while we drank our coffee and ate our cookies. We bought their popcorn and their peanuts, but they still wouldn't leave. It made me feel terrible and pretty helpless. In a practical sense, I didn't know what to do about it. I didn't know whether to be super compassionate or standoffish. After we bought their things, they still didn't leave and I just wasn't sure what to do. Seeing children like that just breaks my heart. They should be in school, or playing with their friends. These kids don't have a childhood, they're selling old food on the street in the hopes of getting fifty cents from us. Kids shouldn't have to do that.

Poverty is so hard to see. It's hard because I don't know what to do about it, it makes me feel guilty (why am I so privileged when other people are struggling so much?), and it's just easier to ignore, sometimes. I often think about Haiti. After the earthquake, people worked so hard to send money and aid over there, and that's great. But I think it's important to remember that it took a natural disaster and hundreds of thousands of deaths to get people to stop ignoring the poverty that has been there since long before the earthquake struck. That's not a criticism of the aid... it's just an observation that I think we need to keep in mind.

I don't like feeling helpless. I wish I had a satisfying end to this blog post, but I don't. I enjoyed my weekend away in Santa Rosa, but it made me astutely aware of what I have and how lucky I am. It also made me astutely aware of how much work still needs to be done in our world.

Rowdy children, half birthdays, baby showers

Well, I haven't blogged in over a week...it feels like a lot longer. Not because things have been bad here, they haven't at all-- but time moves a lot slower here. My pace of life is just so slow. I love it. Anyway, we are back in the swing of things, finally. It's hard to believe, but we finished our second nine weeks and have moved into the third quarter.

Things in general have been good in school, but I don't know what's going on with my students. Maybe it's mid-year jitters, but I have had such a hard time controlling them these last couple of weeks. It seems like they just want to talk and talk. Today I was really hard on them, and at the end of the day I actually made them write lines (I remember doing that in elementary school and haaaating teachers for it) because they just would not listen. I hope things start to get better, or it's going to make for a really tiring year for me.

Other than the rowdy children, I've had a very relaxing couple of days. Last weekend was pretty great, and this upcoming weekend should be awesome also. After Tad moved up here, he, Julia, Rachel and I have started playing Euchre pretty regularly. I've never really known how to play Euchre (despite various attempts from Alex to teach me), but I think I finally have an understanding of the rules. And it turns out, I really enjoy playing cards! So that's been a lot of fun.

On Saturday, I decided to head to town in the morning with Tad and Mr. Bran. On our way down there, we ran into some doctors who are visiting from Michigan and running a clinic in Gracias. It was awesome... they showed us around the clinic, which was really impressive, and asked us to come help out if we can. I really want to try! We don't have a lot of ways to get down to town during the week, but they said that we could help out with surgeries if we want to! Dude... I want to scrub in on a surgery, that would be crazy. I kind of doubt it will happen at this point, but maybe. Anyway, they also said they needed some translators and asked if I'd be willing to help out with that. I guess since the clinic only runs for a few weeks, they get inundated with people and need help figuring out what everyone's problems are. I really hope I get a chance to help them.

That same day, the girl teachers went to a baby shower for one of the teachers at the school. It was actually the first baby shower I've ever been to, and it wasn't nearly as painful as I expected it to be. I think that's in large part to the lack of gifts- the principal asked us all to just donate money to the mom, so there wasn't much to open. We played some games and ate some food... it was an experience. haha

And that's about it! This weekend a few of us are going to Santa Rosa to celebrate (get ready for this) my HALF birthday! I have never had a half birthday celebration before, but apparently I'm going to turn 23 and a half in a big way. So that should be fun!

Even though time moves slowly here, I can't believe January's over. The weather has turned warm so I keep forgetting what month it is. February's around the corner (and Mathew's visit is quickly approaching!!), and the end of the year really feels like it's looming over me. I'm starting to hear back from law schools and figure out my plans for next year... it's hard to think about. So for now, I'm still just hanging out in the clouds.

Age and death in Honduras

Most people who know me know that I am constantly being told how young I look. The summer I turned 21, a bartender wouldn't let me into a bar because he was convinced my ID must be fake. I think the fact that I barely clear 5 feet combined with my baby face just make for an extremely young-looking 23-year-old! Most people tell me I'll appreciate it when I'm 40. Well, I received the shock of my life a couple days ago when I learned that one of the Honduran teachers was extremely surprised when she found out that I'm only 23! She was sure I was 27 or 28. She had similar reactions to learning all the teachers' ages...she couldn't believe we are all in our early 20s. I have no idea what she's talking about (I don't look 27!), but that being said, we Americans are constantly surprised by the Honduran teachers' ages also! That particular teacher has a five-year-old son and she looks to me like she could be 30...but she's 22. Age throws me off here, I always think everyone is older than they are.

Sometimes something happens here in Honduras that makes me remember where I live. It's so easy to get lost in the night sky, and the mountains, and the beauty of the school. My kids are impossibly cute, my friends are so great, I love my job, and I love Honduras. But the fact is, Honduras is the second-poorest country in Central America, and sometimes stuff happens here. Last night, a father of one of our third graders was murdered in Gracias. It wasn't a random crime, apparently this father was involved in the Honduran drug trade... but that doesn't make death any less tragic. This little boy only knew his father as that- his father.

It's very grounding when something like that happens. The reality of the situation in our school is that many of our students have lost a family member. Many of them live only with their mother or only with their father, and some don't even know where the other parent is. Many of my students come from broken families. From what I've heard, it's pretty common for people in town to have "enemigos"- enemies who want to kill them. Death is much more of a reality here, a much more present part of life than it is to most children in the United States. Children here have to deal with the world at an early age. I've seen so many children who should be in school selling food on the street. I know one of my second graders goes to a farm on the weekend to kill cows for dinner. And I know that several of my students have parents or siblings who have died. It's very strange, to experience other peoples' realities. It makes me feel lucky, guilty, sad, helpless... a lot of things. In any case, my heart breaks for our third grader who's left without a dad, and all of our other students who have to grow up so much faster than they should.