Jungle In the Jungle

This week, we had our first rehearsal for the SJBS’s first (annual?) spring musical, “The Jungle Book”.  I already know that this 90 minute production  put on by twenty 4^th-6^th grade kids whose second language is English will be the most challenging massive beast that I have brought upon myself to date. I am fearful. And also incredibly pumped. But not quite as pumped as the kids. Okay, maybe as pumped.

I have been working with these kids once a week on Tuesday afternoons teaching them physical work, voice work, concentration, listening, and storytelling. And of course, we play games, lots of games. As a little trial run, I taught them a little choreographed number to “I Just Can’t Wait to Be King” from the Lion King and they drank it like KoolAid (see the clip below for some cuteness).

There are so many questions I have in taking this on. Will I be able to put up a full production meeting with elementary schools for an hour and a half per week? I don’t think I could do that with a group of my friends. Are all of my kids going to drop out before we get to May? And also how will I be able to fund this? It is going to be low budget, but I do have to pay for the scripts that I  had copied, fabric to make masks and  some minimal costumes and materials to build a few set pieces.

Some parents mobilized already on the fundraising front… in Honduran fashion. They made choco-bananos to sell at school, which pissed off Grace, the lunchlady, because she can’t sell sweets. Two moms made 80 choco-bananos  and sold them at lunch. I was really grateful and it got me really excited about fundraising. Until they tallied up the money. In selling choco-bananos, we made the equivalent of $5.75 for the drama club. The moms told me that bananas are really expensive right now. But the truth is that fundraisers cannot function here in the same way that they do in the states. In the states, in a fundraiser, people pay more than they would pay normally pay for something because it is, well, a fundraiser. Children at our school really can’t pay more than 35 cents for a chocobanano, though.

Which brings me to my next point. If you would like to donate any sort of funds toward the SJBS production of the Jungle Book, let me know.  A little goes so far here. If I could raise $150 even, to get materials, we could do so much. Just think, if you donate $6, you would double what we have fundraised making and selling 80 chocobananos. Okay, I’m done. I promise I won’t pressure anymore. It is going to be a special thing regardless of funds. We might perform it on the grass in our school uniforms and it will be one of the most special event to these kids and parents to date.

I leave you with our little preview (click on the link) and a few pics from drama club! Stay tuned.

Nice mirror.

Brushing hair.

My Love is Complex, Mister.

"Confusion" by Margarita Isidora 

During integrado class (the integrated art class that I teach with the middle schoolers), we are now in the visual art quarter. This has proven to be the most challenging quarter for me to plan (the other two being drama and music). I don't know a whole lot about art. It might have helped if I had taken an art class at some point in my life.  I have been managing ok with the class.  I think I have them fooled into believing that I actually know something about art, when the truth is that everything I know has been learned from watching youtube clips over the past 3 weeks. 

We started doing continuous line portraits. Many of them sucked (because the kids didn’t take the project seriously or didn’t follow the rules to continuous line drawing, not because they don’t have talent). Some of them ended up really coming out great though. In continuous line drawing, the artist cannot lift the hand from the page from start to finish in the drawing.  It is a great exercise for the brain and causes an interesting abstraction of a portrait when you have to figure out how to get frm the eye to the ear without adding lines that will make your picture look like crap.

This past week we started color theory. We made some  nice color wheels, talked about primary, secondary, tertiary  and complementary colors. We also talked about the emotions that we associate with color and the ways in which we can use color in our paintings to our advantage. We looked at pictures from Picasso’s blue period and then I asked them to choose an emotion and try to paint a representation of that emotion using strictly warm or strictly cool colors.

 When I was circulating around the room, I noticed that one of my students was crying. I went over and checked out her painting and it was of raindrops falling on a dark, stormy sea. At the top was painted in black ink “sad.” I wanted to comfort her. I really wanted to give her a hug, but am always aware of my limitations as a male middle school teacher. I put my hand on her shoulder, got down to her level and told her that I really loved her painting, asked her if she was alright and if she wanted to step out to get some air. She nodded implying that she was fine and wanted to stay.  This student lives a very modest life in a very small house with her grandmother and has no parents. I have gotten the feeling that her home-life is not the best. I felt bad for her, wondering what the depth of the sadness was that she was experiencing in that moment. At the same time though, I felt filled with a feeling of happiness, with this being one of the few instances that a class lesson so clearly had actually reached and affected one of my students. I told her I was around if she decided she wanted to talk and told her that sometimes when we express ourselves through art, it can stir up some emotion and that this release is so important. Then I let her be.

I walked around the class to some other students and came across one of my sassy 8^th grade girls. She was painting a red-orange heart with green trim. I asked her what emotion she was expressing, while I already had a bit of an idea (despite the cryptic symbolism). I said that it looked great, but explained that for the assignment, I wanted them to use explore using either only warm colors or only cool colors. She rolled her eyes at me, gave a middle school girl huff, and said, “Mister, my love is incredibly complex.” I’m sure. Lots of feelings today. It must be art class.

"Calm" by Moises, 8th grade

Continuous line drawing by Keneth, 7th grade

Continuous Line Drawing by Edgar, 7th

Continuous Line drawing by Henry Salomon, 9th

Continous line drawing by Andres, 8th

Public Enemy #1

The perpetrator, hiding in the ruins of Copan.

My sister and dad came down to visit me last week. I was so excited to have them come and experience firsthand my funny life here. Char barely made it out of New York due to an impending snowstorm and arrived in San Pedro at 10pm on a Tuesday night. I hired Don Will, the father of one of our students and a man with a good heart who talks more trash about the people of Cofradia than anyone I know. After a 45 minute ride of listening to Don Will’s griping and giving the customary nods, trying to diffuse the shit-talking fest, Don Will and I arrived at the airport in his 25 year-old pickup truck of questionable functionality (one that he starts by hotwiring and he insists that he must keep it because new cars get stolen).

We arrived at 10pm and waited and waited as the rest of the passengers on her flight came through immigration. Finally Char came through, escorted by an immigration official, and I could tell by the look on her face that something was not right. I gave her a hug and said “what’s happening?” She explained  that her passport is due to expire in February and that Honduras has a law that doesn’t allow people to enter the country if their passport expires within 6 months. They told her that she couldn’t legally be here and they were going to send her on the first flight back (at 7am the next day).

We were furious! Why wasn’t this something that the airline told her in the states, or why didn’t American Airlines even catch this when she booked her flight online and put in her passport information? We pulled out all of the stops with immigration, I repeated “this is ridiculous” a bunch of times to the woman from American airlines.

This tactic was unsuccessful.

We wanted to talk to the American consulate to see if they could give her some sort of extension to her passport. The woman behind the desk was not very sympathetic and said she would have to leave on the first flight out. We pleaded with her to put her on a later flight so we could at least talk to the consulate and she said there was nothing that she could do, but to come to talk to the boss-man at 5am the next morning.

Frustrated, we realized that there was nothing that we could do at this point. I hugged Char, not knowing if I would see her again in Honduras and she went off with an immigration guard to a hotel that the airline was paying for. The female guard slept in her room while I went home and scrambled, emailing our program directors, my dad who I hoped would have some consulate and I called the American Consulate’s “Emergency Line”.  A US Marine Corps Sargeant answered the line and I stalled and said, “uh…. I am not sure if this is an appropriate emergency, but my sister is in San Pedro Sula, and is having problems with her passport etc...” The sergeant said, “Oh, bummer, we might be able to help, but can you do me a favor and call me right back. I picked up a phone in the other room and I can’t transfer you from here.” Um, ok, sure, I’ll call you right back. So I called him and he said, “Oh, ya, I remember now  let me transfer you”, and then he hung up on me. SHIT! I called him back, “hi, it’s me again.” “Oh, sorry sir, let me try again.” This time the call went through, rang twice and a tired old man cleared his throat and answered the phone, “Hello.” This was clearly his home phone. I apologized for waking him up and explained the situation. He was very reassuring and said, “I think we can help you, but I can’t do anything at this moment. Call us at 8am tomorrow.” A glimmer of hope.

Meanwhile, my dad called his embassy contacts and I got a list of peeps from our BECA program director. Then I went to bed. It was 1 am. While this was going on, Char was shuttled to a hotel near the airport and accompanied by a female Immigration guard who slept at the hotel with her… in the bed next to her. Char then woke up at 4:30am and went back to the airport. She pleaded with the “Jefe”

to move her flight back to 1pm so she could have an opportunity to speak with the embassy. He finally gave in at 8am she called the embassy.

Fast forward to fourteen hours later, 10 hours of riding buses to and back from the capital city of Tegucigalpa, a purchase of a Honduran cellphone, a fire-drill in the embassy that almost made getting a new passport impossible, a frantic state of running around Teguce in attempts to find an ATM because their credit card machine was down and a teller that would only accept exact change and Char made it to my doorstep with a new passport.

While this was the most ridiculous day for sis, (one filled with stress, little sleep, and reeking with bureaucracy) when all was said and done, Char got into Honduras, my dad joined her  and we had a really fun couple of days together. Plus, Char became really close with the immigration guard that slept in her room (I hear they had great pillow talk) and the guard actually ended up helping her out a lot to make this whole thing work out. She let her use her cell phone, pleaded with her boss, and helped Char buy a Honduran phone for herself. Char won her over, no doubt. This was clear when I went to the airport to pick up Char’s bag for her,  and I needed to get into a secure area and I shouldn’t have been able to do so being that I wasn’t a passenger. But Char’s guard, gave me her security badge, gave a wink to her friend in security and shuffled me on through the employee entrance. This surely would not have happened if TSA were in control of the situation.

At the end of all of this, though, I am left thinking…. Really, Honduras? Really? Why would a small, blonde, Jewish girl from New York City want to be sneaking into your country? Or why would anyone for that matter. Give us a goddamned break.

Enjoy some pictures of my dad and sister’s stay with me…

A free woman, enjoying coffee in Copan.

Dad taught a seminar for the teachers.

And he did a little magic.

Char and I with some friends at snacktime.

Drama workshop!

Drama workshop  #2!

Fam.

Copan Ruinas.

Mom paid a visit.

A loss for SJBS

It was a difficult week for the SJBS community. Miss Sandra, one of the Honduran teachers at our school, has been very sick for the majority of the year. None of the American teachers really knew what her condition was but we believe that it was complications with lupus. She teaches the preschool and kindergarteners and has two boys who are in our 7^th and 8^th grade class.  On Friday afternoon,  when we were playing our weekly soccer game, Andrea,our Program Administrator gathered us around and told us she had news. In the past when we had uncalled meetings like this it was when our 2^nd grade teacher was leaving, and when the teachers from the other school were robbed at gunpoint, so these types of meetings make us nervous.

She told us that Miss Sandra was due to get surgery today and that she had died before the surgery. We were shocked. We all knew that she was sick and having troubles, but none of us knew the extent of her illness.

My heart collapsed for her boys. They are very attached to her, are behind others in their class in terms of individuation and are not fully formed people yet.

I was the same age as Andres (8^th grade) when my mom was diagnosed. This experience brought back so many memories of that time. Sitting in the hospital doing my homework and receiving that news, failing to understand or believe it. Trying to live a normal 8^th grade life when I was facing these huge fears and circumstances that were larger than I could take in.

What hit me the hardest with the news is knowing the different ways that they are going to have to cope with this loss. There is so much that they aren’t even aware of yet. All of the “firsts” that they are going to have to face in the next year:  the first birthday without mom, the first time that they will go to call her cell phone number out of habit, the first time that they will wake up, forget that she is gone and then remember. They don’t know that their whole family dynamics are going to change, or that they will never actually be able to believe fully believe that she is gone, that the ache will lessen, but it will always be there, that the grief becomes less angry, less painful, and that they will change their relationship with it and the way in which they process it, but that it never really goes away. I don’t want them to have to know that.

We went to the funeral the next day. We loaded into a school bus with some of the Honduran  teachers and some of the SJBS families and rode to the cemetery where she was to be buried. The cemetery was unlike any that I had been to. It was much less clean, much less tranquil than the cemeteries that we know, there were cows grazing and walking over the graves and the grounds were unkept  and seemed more like a landfill than a cemetery. Her plot was in the very back of the cemetery, surrounded by dense brush, that they would most likely cut away later as the cemetery would expand. It was hot and we stood with a group of maybe 50 Hondurans crying as we sweat.

The service was short. A few prayers from a priest,  a eulogy from our principle, a hymn sung by one of the mothers of our students, and a few words from Sandra’s brother. Then they started the burial. The mound of dirt that they were shoveling into the grave was filled with plastic bags, aluminum cans and other items of trash that had accumulated layer upon layer over the years. It was really difficult to watch Placing that dirt on a grave felt so far from sacred.  I remembered how hard it was watching my mother’s casket lowered into the earth, and couldn’t imagine what it would have felt like to see her covered in dirt filled with trash. I would have been so angry. It didn’t seem to affect the Hondurans, though. I can only think that it is so common in this country to see trash in the earth here that they don’t even see it anymore; in the same way that I don’t really notice anymore the piles of trash along the route that I walk everyday to school.

We hugged our two students and told them that we were here for them, feeling like we wanted to do more, but knowing that there wasn’t anything else that we could do.

When we got to school on Monday, we honored Miss Sandra at actos civicos (flag salute) and held moments of silence for her in all of our classes. On Tuesday, when I arrived at school, Astrid, a 3 yr old who is the cutest thing ever and is the daughter  of one of the lunch ladies told me in her little voice that Grace’s husband (Grace is our head lunchlady) was murdered the night before. Thinking that Astrid got confused with her words, I asked our Andrea, our administrator, about what she told me and found it to be true. The man who was murdered is also the son of a 6^th grade boy in my drama club.

With this news, the whole BECA team felt we were kicked when we were already down. It was so difficult to process both tragedies at once. The students were also somber, but were functioning just fine. I have never in my life known someone who has been murdered, but it is not so uncommon here. I have at least seven students who have parents or siblings who have died early or been killed. Death is as normal as birth here. It seems to leave Hondurans with a different relationship with death.

After this experience, I am left wondering if the normalcy of death here makes the way that they experience grief any less severe.  As we can only truly know our own experiences, I  guess I will never know.  Although this was an incredibly hard week, it was a very important experience. While I stood surrounded by Hondurans in the baking sun, sweating and crying, with a hand on Andres and Gabriel’s shoulder, I felt for the first time in Cofradia that I was not an “other.”  I felt like I was part of a community, grieving together.

Cena Navedeña

In anxious anticipation for her ballet routine. 

Today I experienced the splendor of the SJBS “Cena Navedena” (Christmas Dinner). It was an all day affair that started at 9am this morning with the building of balloon arches, candy cane posts from PVC pipe, poinsettias fashioned from balloons and a near death experience hanging out of the back of an SUV, trying to keep an industrial-sized freezer owned by our lunch-lady Grace (who also drives like her objective is killing pedestrians) from catapulting onto the carretera. Excuse the run on sentence, you might have to read it a couple of times…but there was so much I wanted to tell and periods were going to disrupt my flow. Cena Navedena ended at 8:30 tonight with Grace hauling away plastic chairs  in the back of her pickup truck stacked 5 ft. above her truckbed with her children riding on top of them. It all comes full circle. Needless to say, today was a uniquely Honduran experience.

Being one of two musically inclined teachers here, I played a large role in Cena. Too large, in fact. On guitar, I accompanied the 4^th graders in their remix of Jingle Bell Rock entitled “4^th grade wants.” “Fourth grade, fourth grade, fourth grade wants, presents for us and everyone else.”  I also led my 7^th grade integrado class in  “Home” from Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros (you can see a rehearsal video here) with the seventh graders and “No Woman No Cry” with the 8^th and 9^th, along with a guitar/piano  duet with 9^th grader Henry who wrote a song about undying love of an 8^th grader who is now dating his best friend. It was intense.

"La Reina"

The largest honor that I was bestowed with, however, was not in the delivery of this message of love, but instead was playing the entrance music along with heartbroken Henry for the “Reina de Cena Navedena.” There is nothing more Honduran than the conception of the Reina. This coveted prize goes to a girl in the school whose family “raises” the most money for the school the year before (Disclaimer: this idea is the brainchild of the parent assoctiation… not of BECA… if you need a catchup on the difference, check here). As a reward for the funds provided, she gets to wear a princess gown and sits on a throne for the duration of the 4.5 hour cena navedena. The idea is essentially: Buy your daughter a crown! This year’s queen was a kindergartener. She wore a beautiful gown, lipstick and eyeshadow. She looked very sleepy. Her mother said that she didn’t get to take her nap, but she learned that beauty is tiring. Isn’t she regal?

The Cena lived up to all of the expectations of a Honduran event: there was chaos, electrical equipment failure, it lasted 2 hours longer than it should have, there was too little food, and too much noise. But this Honduran-ness is really in its own way special. And, lets be real… these kids are ridic cute. I am going to leave you with a few pictures and a link (click here) to a 9 yr old named Derek who is my hero.. and apparently the hero of the girl at the end of the video as well.

The boys.

Feliz Navidad. In seven days I will be at the lookout on Oak Street, eating a Maui Bowl, scratching my head and wondering when I had woken up from the weirdest  5 month-long dream of my life. Then two weeks later, I will go back to that dream, torn between my desire to be back in a world that is filled with things and people that I love, one that mostly makes sense to me, and a world in which I get to sing with kids every day, get them excited about science, learn to play soccer  and experience things that I couldn't dream of.

Oh, and, I almost forgot… in the middle of performing with the fourth graders I looked out to the audience to the fourth row to see a woman with both of her breast flopped out of the top of her shirt and sagging to her belly buttons. No baby in sight. I am hoping that dad maybe just pulled the baby off before I looked up. Even still... both breasts? It was one of those things that you can’t really process in the moment because the experience is so surreal… and you’re on stage.  I think I pushed it into my subconscious until it was an appropriate time to take apart the moment. I will be working through this experience for a bit.

Two favorites. Jahir in the front is in kindergarten and is better at soccer than I am. No Joke.

The Power of Silence

Silence is something that I have seldom experienced in Cofradia. Living  with four roommates and next to the town square makes for a constant barrage of noise, be it from trucks rolling through the square, Reggeaton blaring from the billiards hall of ill-repute that catty-corners our apartment or the shrill “Yoooo hooo!” that comes from a  man who walks by with a cart of novelties goods that no one wants. (This yoohoo is less like a hello from a creepy man and more like a cry from a  16^th century courtesan soliciting services. “Yooooo hoooo!”

On Friday morning, however, we all reached a breaking point with the noise. At 5 am  we were awoken by a man ‘s voice booming from two large speakers in the park advertising $1 toothbrushes and $3 cell phone chargers. 5 in the morning!!!!! He kept at it for 15 minute stretches, until his voice got tired, I presume, and then they played some obnoxious reggaeton at a level that was worthy of making my bedroom a club.  Then the ads started again.

After an hour and a half of our tossing and turning,  cursing this man into the pillows over our heads, our alarms went off. We peeled ourselves off our mattresses  and with stinging eyes,  planned our sabatoge for this man’es operations. Our scheming wasn’t quite as productive as we hoped, though, and the final product ended with my trouncing over and telling the man behind the mic. “This is absolutely ridiculous. There is a community that lives here and you think it’s okay to blast this bullshit about toothbrushes at 5 in the morning?” To which he replied, “Public property.” Somehow it didn’t make me feel better.

I got to school and prepped my room for my 8^th and 9^th grade music class, which was to start at 7:10.  I waited and waited, and 7:18 rolled around and my students were still not lined up at my door. I looked over the balcony and they were all standing beneath me chatting away. I caught one of their eyes with the piercing teacher stare and he queued the others to rush up to the classroom.  Very calmly, I asked, “what were you all doing?” One of my students sneered at me and said, “Mister, we thought you were going to come get us.” I reamed  into them about my expectations for them  to be lined up after the first bell, expectations that have never changed from day one and told them to sit down, get out their materials and turn this day around.

 Frustrated, and feeling let down, I started my lesson on transferring what we knew about the keys of a piano over to the notes of a musical score. I asked them all to raise a hand and help me fill out the piano chart that I put on the board (something that they all knew and had a quiz on the day before). Silence. In the morning in which I was barraged by noise, I now had silence in the only moment that I had asked for noise. I waited, and waited… still no hands.  Boiling inside, I then sat down in my chair, crossed my hands in my lap and stared back at them for what must have been a minute. They all started looking at one another in confusion, and I said, “Oh I’m sorry, were you all expecting something to happen? That must be really frustrating  to be sitting around waiting for something to happen.” Embarrassed at myself for resorting to such intense passive aggressiveness, I tried to spin it, and looked them in the eye and said, “lets change this right now.”

I got through that painful lesson with mild improvement from the students ending it thinking, “I never want to teach again.” I then went out to the pouring rainy lunchyard for my recess duty, sitting with my raincoat over my head and hoping that no kids would come over and bother me.

A group of 5^th graders came running out onto the blacktop with hands raised in the air and mouth gaping open to catch raindrops. Squealing with delight, they stomped in puddles and sang, “Who let the dogs out!” Omar ran over to me, drenched and covered with mud, and with a wide grin he cried, “Mister, this is glorious.”  Zabdi, an elven creature who is the ringleader of the 5^th grade dumped a puddle out of her shoes, ringed out her socks and said “Mister, I am going to have to tirar these calcetines in the basura!” Bessie then came over and put her hand on my shoulder and said “Mister Greene, you need to stomp in puddles, be kid again!”

The bell rang, these creatures ran to class and I was left sitting on a chair by the blacktop, sopping wet. Silence for the second time today. I smiled, had a chuckle and felt a ping of ouch. This was the first time in my life that someone has told me to be child again. I never knew I had stopped being one. I would like to be more child. And a little more silence would be nice. Most of the time.

Math Songs in 4th Grade

To this day, whenever I need to divide by 3, 4, or 6, I run through times table songs that my dad taught me in 4th grade. He came into my 4th grade class in 1994 and taught my friends these songs and many of them still use them as well.

Since coming to Honduras, I pretend I am many-a-things. I pretend to be a science expert, a yoga teacher, a  drama teacher, an expert musician, and now I can add to the list: elementary-school songwriter. Ok, I didn't write the songs, but like Puff Daddy (ehem P Diddy) did in the 90's, I adapted these little babies coined by the papa Greene and they are way better than the originals. Sorry dad, but you can't deny I have better rythm.

Right after I finished these songs, a student raised his hand and said, "Mister, why don't you have one for 7's?" Another girl raised her hand and said, "8's mister?" implying that I have been lazy in my songwriting.... Back to the drawing board. Sevens and eights are in production.

Sit back and enjoy. My favorite part is clearly my right hand man in the front:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8ms6TE6GKM