A Trial Run

Yesterday marked the first day of “Summer Institute,” a two-week educational camp for a select group of kids that acts as a trial run for the new teachers. We have been developing the lesson plans for the last week for our respective subjects, mine being science. In science, I am teaching with a few other teachers a unit on digestion. I spent last night in fury, drawing pictures of bananas, cartoon renderings of bacteria, and poop for the lesson I had planned for today. Yes, in my job, I get to draw cartoon poop. Amazing.

So I presented my first lesson today and I was really happy with it. There were of course things that I learned, adjustments that I will make in the future, but on the whole I was successful. I got the kids excited about science, they achieved the objectives that I had created for the lesson, I got through the whole lesson, no kids were crying or on fire, and the lesson ended with an uninhibited group chant of “science Science SCIENCE SCIENCE….!!!!” Like a dream.

The highlight was probably when for my fun fact about myself I shared with the 5^th and 6^th graders that I cut up a dead person before (in my former life as a med student).  One student raised her hand with a look of apprehension and asked, “Did you kill the person that you cut up?” I said, “ya it was a former student.” OK I didn’t actually say that. But I wish I had. I instead explained the process of body donation.  Not a bad first day.

The Art of Honduran Cuisine

My Honduran Cookbook

Baleada:

- flour tortilla

- mantequilla (buttery sour cream?)

- refried beans

- cheese

Pupusa

- corn tortilla

- cheese

Pastellito:

- fried corn tortilla rolled into pastry form

- cheese

Quesillo

- deeper fried tortilla

- cheese

Catrachas

- thin fried tortilla

- cheese

 Do you notice a pattern here? For the love of god, please give me a vegetable.

Worst. Robbers. Ever.

Last night Julio (fellow teacher and current homestay mate) and I were walking home  at 10 pm from a long Sunday of lesson planning. 10 pm in Cofradia is like 4am in the rest of the world. The streets are dark and empty and the only people who are out are drunk or homeless. So, Julio and I were walking along the “broadway of town” having a nice chat about the upcoming summer camp that we were preparing for when two small men in their early 20’s approached us. I was preparing my response of “gracias, pero no fumo( thank you but I don’t smoke),” my catchall response for all 20-something Honduran guys who approach me because the universal conversation starter with this demographic is always “want some weed?”.

These men, or boys really, however, were approaching us in a slightly more aggressive way than I was accustomed to, waving their hands in our face like members of the Wu Tang Clan. When the smaller one with the ill-formed moustache told us to put my verga (penis) to the floor, I realized that they were not in fact trying to sell us drugs, but rather were trying to rob us.

            Julio and I, emboldened by the fact that we had both of our laptops in our bags, possessions that in no way were we going to just hand on over to two little Honduran dudes, argued with them, trying to buy time, figure out what our game plan was and suss out whether or not the boys had weapons (an integral piece of the puzzle which would definitely have been a game-changer). The two guys held their hands in their shirts unconvincingly pretending to have knives and were trying to back us against the wall. I looked beyond their angry little faces and noticed that there were two “non-robber” women walking down the street. A very good sign. Having never been in a fight in my life, I opted for “flight” and slid past the larger of the two little men into the middle of the street to make us more visible. This caught them both off guard and they changed strategies and started to push Julio.

            Seeing these two little men push around my roommate, my caveman instinct suddenly kicked in, and I went into madman mode. I raised my green water canteen over my head as if it were a saber, moved toward them and started yelling insults at the top of my lungs. I had no intention of actually doing anything (I mean, a canteen….seriously?) but merely to attract attention to the situation in the hopes that some nice little lady would come out of her house and scrape us off the pavement if need be. Apparently this did the trick, though, because the big tough robbers held their hands in the air and scurried off down the street…. Babies.

            To Char, and any of my surrogate mothers out there who are reading this, I just want to let you know, if there was any indication of weaponry or even if these robbers were slightly built, I would most definitely not gone into caveman mode. I would have cooperated, handed over the goods and walked home safely. But my laptop is very dear to me, and these guys were so small, and they really just pissed me off. Yes I am a metrosexual theater kid, but I do have a bit of pride and masculinity. I don’t know where that untapped fury came from, or why it actually scared them. I attribute the success to my newly formed beard. 

Americans Practicing Moderation

The Honduran principal of our school is named Amarylus. She is a smiley woman in her 30’s who loves to dance (which we found out at the welcome party thrown for us by the Honduran equivalent of the PTA) and whenever she talks in front of a group of three or more people she always uses a formal presentational voice that is just a little too loud.  She doesn’t come from Cofradia (the small town where I am living) and that is apparently very important to me because she has points it out frequently. I like her a lot, but mostly just because her name is Amarylus, which makes me feel like I teach at Hogwarts.

We had a meeting with her today in the volunteer apartments. The twelve teachers crammed into the little hot, sticky living room of one of the apartments for this meeting after having been in training for 8 hours on what has been the hottests day yet in Cofradia. Sticky and smelly and totally burnt out, we were not the most receptive audience for a meeting on school discipline policies.

Amarylus started the meeting by stressing the importance that we follow rule that there is no food or drink allowed in the computer room. She explained that the computers have all been donated, they have had many problems with them breaking, we need to set positive examples for the students. Great, totally makes sense, got it. Then she reemphasized the importance of this rule. Then she repeated herself. And repeated herself again. For 20 minutes she talked about food and drink in the computer lab.

As our eyes began to sink into our skulls, she suddenly brought up the issue of alcohol. “Hmm… a cold beer sounds good,” I thought.  She told us that in the past they had a problem with a teacher coming in drunk to class! Wow. She then conceded that it’s something that happens occasionally and all she ask is that if you come in to school drunk, just come to her office and let her know so that she can cover our class for the day. We get a thirty minute talking to about having a nalgene bottle in the library, but we have one free pass to come to work drunk?!

Then she went onto the subject of marijuana.  Surely, I figured, this cannot be ok. She explained to us that there is a cultural difference here in Honduras. Hondurans, Amarylus told us, don’t know how to modify their consumption like Americans do. If they smoke, they will smoke at 7am 8am 9am and will pass out by noon. She said the she realizes that Americans, on the other hand, have self control like to smoke just to relax. She said that is totally fine with her, just be careful that none of our students are over at the apartment when we do it, because it is a bad image for the school.

The most mind-numbing meeting of our lives took the most unexpected turn. The happenings in this town succeed in shattering my preconceptions on a daily basis.

Derechos de los Homosexuales

While sitting at dinner yesterday my host mother Juana, an apparently evangelical, jovial and strong-willed woman asked Julio (my fellow teacher living with me) and I how we felt about gays adopting children. Julio and I glanced at one another,  acknowledging a collective feeling of “Oh shit.”  and nodded to one in another in agreement that we had to keep it real. I asked her if she was sure she really wanted to know and she smiled and said “Pues, claro (of course).”

I then explained to Juana that I grew in a very inclusive community and was raised with gay friends and even had a friend in high school with two moms. I explained that I know many gay couples that have happy, healthy relationships, relationships that are many times healthier and more functional than those of many of my heterosexual friends. I further made the point that there are so many children that need healthy homes and that there are gay couples out there that can provide those homes.

I paused, bracing myself for the impending rebuttal, the moment of truth. She smiled and said, that makes a lot of sense. VICTORY! She than replied, “I really like gay people. They are so nice, and so BEAUTIFUL, too! I love looking at their nice nails and styled hair.” She then told me that a gay cruise came through La Ceiba (a neighboring beach town) and they all went out to La Ceiba to see them.

Julio and I cringed on the inside and decided to celebrate our small success and just leave it at that. Two steps forward, one step back. I imagine it was for the better that I didn’t explain to her that I performed in a drag show from age 7-15 to raise money for AIDS services foundation. 

Something Eerily Familiar

There is something eerily familiar about this mode of transit. Sitting in a huddled position, knees pressed against the back of the seat, it actually makes me feel small again. A sign on the ceiling of the bus, "No bullying" serves as a reminder that this schoolbus, now deemed unsafe for transporting small American children, was at one time shuttling elementary schoolers some 15 years ago in a small town in Minnesota. Apparently, it is safe enough to transport upwards of a hundred Hondurans.

The bus exudes  all of the smells that I have always experienced as associated with schoolbuses.... a healthy mix of plastic from the leather seats, a leftover sticky candy smell from the hands of grubby-children-past, and a suffocating diesel haze. This bus also has smells that  that I don't quite remember from my elementary school days. The stale odor coming from a sweaty middle aged man, that is squeezed in 3 to a seat next to me. A diaper that is in desperate need of being changed and sticky spicy chili mango.

On no other form of transport can you expect to see a man with a painted clown face (accompanied by son in clown face) attempting to sell you hair gel, live chickens, a man verbally accosting you with readings from the bible, and an exposed breast with a 5 year old child latched on to it. You, chicken bus, are truly special.

Honduran Kids Get Real About Sex

Question from last year's 5th grade sex ed. class. Get excited

My Morning Walk

The walk to school every morning takes about 15 minutes. We are in training from 8:30- 4:30 (an attempt to cram the necessary information from a Masters teaching credential program into four weeks of instruction), so the  morning walk is a great time for me to process  all of the new information I am exposed to. I think about  new techniques that I learned from the day before and try to figure out ways to incorporate the techniques into the lesson plans I am creating.

Along the route, I pass the houses of children that go to our school. Parents  of the schoolchildren smile and wave and say "Hola Mister!" There is a 70 year old French man that is a neighbor of my host family that I have walked by the past three days in a row. Every day, he sits shirtless in the town square in a wheel chair and, being very proud that he speaks English, cries out to me like clockwork," Hey man, whats up!" When I first met him, I thought he was homeless, but it turns out that he owns most of the stores on our block.


The volunteers for the school have a great reputation for the positive things that they have brought to the community and while the gringos clearly stick out when walking through town, most people have overwhelmingly positive views of us being here. Their welcoming spirit is one that I am not used to and due to my constant fear when I am traveling that someone is trying to take advantage of me,  it sometimes   catches me offgaurd. It is a complete mental shift for me to realize that I am not traveling.


The dirt road that I walk down weaves past a closed-down cigar factory (apparently one that employed many in the town and closed last year). Just after the cigar factory I take a right on a narrower dirt path that leads through a functioning pineapple juice factory and a chicken farm. The sweet caramel aroma from the factory intermingles with the sour smell of chicken excrement. This noxious combination is one that is uniquely Honduran.

I continue on through the property of one of the richest men in town, a man from what I can tell fronted a lot of money (if not all?) for the building of the San Jeronimo school. I wave to his guard, armed with a shotgun and arrive at school.

My Brain Hurts

My language skills are definitely out of practice. Sitting in the livingroom conversing with my host family takes so much brainpower.  It is frustrating because I remember living in Argentina and getting to the point where I didn’t feel as if I were translating anymore. I was merely thinking.  I dreamt in Spanish, and there were words that I could think of in Spanish and not in English. It feels like I have lost so much.

My host father, Don Max, really likes to talk. Seriously. Conversations with him are less conversations than they are lectures. It’s not that he is pushy about his opinions, more just that he gets really excited about them and they flow forth out of him in a massive deluge that makes it impossible to interject (even if it were in your own language). Then he asked me what religion I am. I told him I was Jewish. It caught him offgaurd and forced a pause in the conversation. Just enough time for me to slip out to take a shower. It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy talking to him, my brain just hurt.

First Impressions

Cofradia, my new home, is more substantial than I had imagined. There are paved roads in the six block radius surrounding the central plaza, which surprised me.  The test of the roads are dirt and rife with potholes, but in the center of town you can almost fool yourself into believing that you are in any other dirty city in Central America. A layer of dust from the surrounding roads is caked on most storefront walls, giving the town a somewhat bucolic old-west feel. The“downtown”  is busy. There are colorful storefronts, three wheeled tutuk taxis that look like tincan death traps and there is a little shop that sells delicious mango “licuados” and is apparently the hub of all the town gossip. We are 30 miles from San Pedro Sula, a city that is the second largest in Honduras and the HIV capital of Central America. Cofradia is nestled in a very fertile valley at the foot of beautiful mountain lush with greenery. Much greener than I had imagined and believe it or not, much more charming than I had imagined it. In a way.

I am amazed by the dichotomy of modernization and stagnation that exists in this town. The house where I am staying  for the next three weeks has cable television with 90 channels, an amenity universal to virtually every Cofradia resident. It is equipped with high speed internet and all four members of the household where I am staying have cell phones. Usually while we eat dinner, the 16 year old in the family is on facebook or messaging his friends. Maxito, the 18 year old is constantly in and out of the house, grabbing a snack on the way back from class, before going to play futbol  with his friends. In some ways it feels entirely like an American household. On the other hand, the house also has a roof made of ribbed metal (think refugee camp) and last night when I went to take a shower, there was no running water. This is apparently a common experience in Cofradia.

Being that it was a Sunday on my first full day, there was an outdoor market in the town square. This is not a “farmers market” in the Oakland sense of the word (no organic produce, artisan butter, artwork, 60 yr old hippy playing Joni Mitchell or massage tables.). It is more like a swap meet (a plethora of cheap sandles, handbags, hammocks, baby chicks that they painted really bright colors). Yes, you read that right.  You can see the picture below.

I walked through the market with Guilo, a Venezuelan-American teacher who is staying in the same homestay with me, and we saw a huddle of ten kids giggling like crazy. We walked over to see what all of the excitement was about and discovered that they were taking turns weighing themselves on a digital scale. We walked over, and they all introduced themselves and offered us a chance to way ourselves for 1 limpira (8 cents). We thanked them for the offer, declined, and went on our way. I did hit up the booth right next to them for a bag of 5 mangos for 15 lempiras (the equivalent of 80 cents). Delicious.

Tomorrow, Honduras.

I can think of no better time to start my blog than at this moment. I am sitting in my hotel in Costa Rica, coming off of a week of surfing, hiking and exploring and a month of travel. This morning I surfed a point break south of Dominical, Costa Rica, completely alone. I rode waves in 75 degree water looking back on a rocky beach with palm covered mountains in the background. Last month, I bounced around the mellow villages of volcano-ringed Lago de Atitlan in Guatemala, I swam in the crystal-clear limestone pools of Semuc Champay, and climbed the ruins of Tikal.

Three months I have been in the process of leaving. Moving furniture into storage, cancelling cell phone accounts, arguing with an unreasonable subletter, notifying banks, dropping my health insurance, fixing two broken car windows, paying my incorrectly filed taxes (never use a free tax service), fixing a flat tire that turned into a bent rim, dropping my AT&T cell phone plan, dropping it again because they didn’t cancel it properly, then dropping it once again because they still were having issues, and shopping around for med-evac insurance.

All of this preparation has, in essence, been leading up to tomorrow. Tomorrow I fly to Honduras: “home” for the next year. I am truly a master of denial. I am virtually unable to experience reality until it is right in front of my face. Sitting in my hotel room tonight it just hit me. BAM! It's here. A wave of anxiety has rushed over me.

What if I am an awful teacher? We have all had them. I had a calculus professor at Berkeley that turned me off of math for life. That asshole! I used to love math. What a huge responsibility it is to be teacher. Teachers, like parents, have the ability to destroy children or help mold them into adults. What a power. Mrs. Dunlap, my 10^th grade English teacher, taught me how to write. She single-handedly got me through college. Mrs. Barker, Mrs. Nieve, Sr. Ortiz (though I wouldn’t like to admit it) have been so formative in making me “me.”

More superficially, I am actually afraid of the heat. I have never experienced true weather. I am going to a steamy humid foothill region that is at this moment 90 degrees +. No A/C.

The first three weeks in Honduras, I will be living in a homestay. I just received a little profile of the family I am staying with. The parents are named Max and Juana, they have one boy who graduated from the school where I will be teaching and another boy who will be in my 9^th grade science class. I’m having a bit of anxiety about this homestay situation. Homestays are usually overwhelmingly positive experiences, but I have a knee-jerk reaction to them. In high-school, I lived with a family in Argentina with a bipolar abusive mother. Although she was never abusive to me, I the older brother would rail on the little brother, and then the mother would beat on the older brother with a wooden spoon. Talking about it now, it seems comical, but, at the time, it was pretty intense. Especially for a 13yr old California kid that was raised by an ex-hippie, flower power mom and an educator for a father in a household where we rarely raised our voices. Needless to say I am wary of homestays.

Tomorrow I fly to Honduras. How fitting that I am travelling on my mom’s birthday. I can feel her smiling. Regardless of the anxiety I am feeling, I know that this is what I am meant to be doing right now. It’s good to feel that certainty.