I'm a College Kid: Honduras Day 5.

Today was by far the best day I've had in Honduras. Soooo much fun in one day!!

Journal Day 5 May 17, 2013

I honestly don’t even know where to begin for this day. So far, definitely the best day I’ve had in Honduras!

Again, it started early, which is starting to take a toll on us here. So many days of waking up at 5:45 am has lead to sheer exhaustion for most of us, and today was the first time we felt it! But I guess we’re going to have to get used to it considering we’re all going to be teachers and have to do this every day!

Breakfast consisted of cornflakes, a ham and cheese sandwich, fruit, and juice. After that, it was off to the school! During the morning, Becca and I had to finish grading the long standardized tests we were working on yesterday. Then came time to teach our very first lesson!! Miss Lacey had given us the teacher math book the night before so we could practice what we wanted to say and we discussed it with her this morning. It was basically a continuation of the bean activity we’ve been doing the past 2 days, only this time they had to visualize the beans and didn’t get to choose the numbers. So, Becca and I worked on finding the difference with the students, and it actually went pretty well! It’s so awesome how encouraging the teachers are and how willing they are to let us jump right into teaching the class, even though none of us have had prior experience with it. We even got to teach a language arts lesson too! Miss Lacey had it all set up for us, but it was cool getting practice being in front of the class. It went pretty well, and I just know I’m going to love teaching, especially if my students are as cute and precious as these are!

Kinder buddies was after that, which is where a 3^rd grader was paired with a Kinder student and they worked on an activity together. It was so cute and sweet to see the older students working with the younger ones. I think programs like that are really important because it allows students to act as role models for the younger students.

Lunch followed, which included fried chicken, rice, veggies, tortillas, and juice. By this time, we were wiped, and almost didn’t want to join the kids at recess because they always have a ton of energy and wanted us to play with them, but we wanted to sit and rest. However, we decided it was probably a good idea to interact with them, so I pushed some of the Pre-Kinder students on the swings and then went to play Hide-And-Seek with some of the girls from my class, but the bell rang. I learned the way they pick the person who’s it though! Instead of “Bubblegum, bubblegum, in a dish, how many pieces do you wish?” with the feet in the middle, they sing, “Zapatito, cochinito, dime quien va a cambiar….” And I didn’t learn the rest. But it was still cute to watch!

When recess was over, Becca and I also got to help Miss Lacey with the Word Wall words. We were so productive today! Helping out with 3 lessons and grading? We could practically be teachers already! (Haha, just kidding, I don’t think we’re quite there yet.) The kids played a little bit of Word Wall Bingo, and then Laura did her show and tell. As we were about to walk out of the classroom at the end of the day, one of our students, Ana, came up to Becca and I because she had earrings for us! They were really pretty and it was so sweet of her! Also, our little cutie, Leo, brought us mangoes in the morning (a lot of students like to pick them off the ground and give them to their teachers), so I ate one with Laura and Megan, and it was really good! I’ve never had a whole mango before, and some of the students were very surprised about that.

We headed to the pool after class, as usual, but not before Laura and I went to Espresso Americano to get coolachas and coconut cream lechadas. We read a little and swam a little, but we were too anxious about tonight’s plans to really do any work! But I’ll get to that in a bit.

I showered after the pool and got all gussied up for the night before dinner. We all met for dinner at 6 as usual, but we were confused as to why JoAnn and Eloisa weren’t there! So we decided to eat ourselves and were absolutely overjoyed to see that we had French fries and soda!! Laura and I had literally just been talking about how much we were craving a little bit of American food, and our wish was granted! We also had these chicken sandwich things too. I think we were all a little too excited because when I went to open a Coke, it exploded everywhere! Oops…

Eloisa came in halfway through dinner to tell us that the van was here with all the supplies they had bought earlier in the day for the rural school, so we all helped getting them out and bringing them to Brian’s room. (Since he is the only guy and has a room to himself, we had to store all the food and supplies in his room). And then, with Eloisa’s blessing (and a parental lecture about safety), we were off to our adventure!

You see, I had talked to Gustavo, my newfound friend from the cat incident earlier, on Facebook, and he told me he and his friends would make us dinner tonight! I asked him if it would be okay if there were 13 of us, because everyone was interested in going, and he said yes! So around 6:45, we began our walk to the guys’ dorms where we were meeting them. We were a little nervous about leaving so early; we were supposed to meet at 7, which, in Honduran time, really means 9 for parties, according to Eloisa! Apparently in Honduras, everyone shows up late to everything, and it’s no big deal. Megan was freaking out and thought that it would be really awkward. And when we showed up, to be honest, it was a little awkward! There were several guys standing around outside where we had originally met the guys, but of course, we didn’t know any of them! So, a group of 13 Americans (all girls but one) just showed up out of the blue for this party! I was slightly nervous because I was the one who sort of got it all set up, and I was afraid that the group wouldn’t have a good time and it would be my fault for getting them into this mess. Everyone was looking at us kind of strangely, so I went up to one of the guys who was working on building a fire and asked where Gustavo was. They called him outside, but he took awhile and it was really awkward standing there because we were all really nervous. In the meantime, some guys put some chairs around in a circle for us to sit in, so we all kind of secluded ourselves into this circle because we were too timid to talk to anyone. Finally, Gustavo came out, and I went up and completely nailed the kiss-on-the-cheek-then-hug greeting they do down here. He welcomed us and offered us something to drink. We all politely refused because we were again, too shy. He then asked if we like country music, to which most of the girls cheered. So the guys proceeded to pull out a huge speaker system and plugged in their laptops for some music. Well, country music isn’t exactly the go-to music for dancing, so we changed it to a couple songs they had on iTunes, including “Yeah” by Usher. Some of us danced around a little bit, which was really fun. Some of the group broke off to watch, and later join, the card game some of the guys were playing, and some of the group had some one-on-one conversations with the guys. It was awesome!

Then, some of us wanted to learn some dances that Hondurans do, so my new friend, Juan, began teaching me reggaeton, which is basically just kind of moving your hips back and forth to the music. He told me that you follow your partner during the dance, but I had some trouble with that because let’s be real, I prefer freestyle dancing and am too independent for following my partner! But it really was a lot of fun! And Laura and I were eventually referred to as, “the dancing girls,” because we were going crazy and that’s how he recognized us.

Laura and I also got to chat with some guys, Norman and Emanuel which was pretty cool too. And then the guys all got together to perform a traditional Honduran dance, the punta, for us. It was really fun to watch, and they called Katie and me up to dance with them. We then returned the favor by teaching them all some American line dances, such as, “The Cha-Cha Slide,” “The Cupid Shuffle,” and “Wobble.” It was awesome getting to share our cultures with each other!!

One of the funniest parts of the night was that Gustavo sort of fell in love with Katie. He joked around with her the first time we met, saying, “Speak, Katie!” because she had been so quiet. So tonight, he continually said things like, “Dance, Katie!” and such. He once even stopped the music because she wasn’t dancing!! They got to dance with each other a little bit and then they got some pictures together which were absolutely priceless. He was seriously/jokingly in love with her, and it was so funny because the whole night he kept calling out to her and wanting to dance with her.

The whole night was just an absolute blast! There were a lot of funny moments, such as Megan trying to speak Spanish (“Yo quiero Ricky Martin), and the time I saw the cat and ran after it. Oh, and also when the song, “It’s Getting Hot In Here” came on and one of the Zamorano guys began doing a strip-tease of sorts, and then I fake lassoed him with my scarf and we danced a little. It was hilarious!!

However, all good things must come to an end, and around 9:45 we were sort of kicked out because at Zamorano, the students have a curfew of 10:00 pm. So we thanked everyone and got lots of hugs and kisses on the cheek and left. Everyone had such a great time! When we got back, the hotel desk person didn’t have our keys for us because Eloisa had taken them all so we would see her when we got back after the party! We thought it was really funny when we were all standing outside of her room waiting for her to answer the door and give us our room keys (which are legitimate keys, mind you). She was glad we had a good time though!

Laura, Katie, and I decided that we needed to write our daily journals immediately because so much happened today, so we all came to our usual spots in the lobby and began the long process of journaling. But even then we got super distracted from Facebook with everyone uploading pictures of the night and with Gustavo messaging us! And then we saw a skunk!

Tonight was absolutely a blast, and I hope we will have a couple more fun nights like this before we leave! I also hope we get a chance to see some of our new friends before we leave!

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