...but you wouldn't know based on my blogging lately

I've been sidetracked. I've been very apathetic. A lot of stuff has been going on, but at the points I have had some free time, I haven't felt like sitting down and writing on here, because that takes, you know, mental effort. My mind is still not where I think it should be.

I have been seeing a psychiatrist. His name is Dr. Vittetoe, and his late wife used to work at International School. He speaks English quite well, and he's quite easy to talk to. I have met with him three times at this point (it would have been 4, but I got in touch with him just before his vacation). I don't really know what to expect from something like this, but I know plenty of my friends who have been in therapy and such who warned me, "Now I've talked to a lot of these folks, and it took me a while to find one that I liked. So just know that." I have no complaints so far. We've pretty much just talked and I've done very much of the talking (whereas I'm very good at letting others do the talking in many contexts). It's therapeutic and cathartic just to talk about whatever, and I can tell him pretty much anything because our sessions are the only point where he figures into my life, and he's a doctor to boot. So that's helpful.

I am on a prescription of a drug called Dogmatil, a name for the chemical sulpiride, which apparently isn't for sale in the US (something about not being approved by the FDA...oops), and it's hard to tell if it's been helping or not...

...because I'm still subject to furious bouts of discouragement and the aforementioned apathy, and my school work is greatly struggling. I only have 4 days of class left before exams, and I'm really stumbling to the finish, a strategy that worked admirably for my largely passive existence as a student, but incurs my students' greater apathy and resistance when I try to pull that as a teacher. In short, that's not the way to go, because stuff hits the fan quite readily.

I've been dealing with more and more disrespect issues in class, and today I came to a disconcerting conclusion: I can't command respect because I have a hard time believing I deserve respect myself. Since I know I haven't been trying as hard as I could, and since I've historically had a rather low self-image, I don't exactly respect myself as a teacher, and I think my students can sense this on some level. I take pride in certain abilities of mine, like my wit and extensive vocabulary, but I don't really respect myself. I don't know how I can grow to respect myself, either, which might perpetuate these problems.

I had another chilling moment of clarity today as I was looking at a piteously late exam from the first quarter (about 6 weeks late) and I didn't feel like grading it, and I caught myself saying aloud, "Eduardo, I don't care ab-" and the remainder of that quote was obviously going to be "-out you." I realized this flippant remark is likely very telling: I don't care about many of my students. And that is something inexcusable in my book. If I cared about my students and their well-being and their learning, I would have intrinsic motivation to be a good teacher, to give my all as I prepare and grade, so that they can learn from their mistakes and I can guide them in fixing them. But I don't. I know it helps to see motivation on their part as well, and given that many of them really don't care (and aren't really pushed by their parents either) I have a hard time giving a rat's ass if they improve in their English skills at all. I know some of my students are very capable, and very motivated, but I'm letting them down too. And that is what I think is most inexcusable. Not to mention frightening.

-------

One thing you expect if you live in a new culture is that it's going to be an adjustment, sure. But over time, you also expect that the culture will grow on you, and you can see the benefits of it, the advantages, the things you can see that the new culture just might have over your own. At this point, despite having lived in Honduras for nearly 4 months (one week shy), I think my opinion of Honduras is lower than it was before. I've grown accustomed to many of the differences, but I haven't started to look on any of them fondly. In fact, many of them I've grown to resent quite heavily. There are plenty of things about Honduras and its culture that quite simply piss me off. I can't fathom being a few months out of the country and looking back and thinking, "Oh, remember when every taxi driver would try to rip us off? That was great," or, "I always think about how our neighborhood watchman would ask us for food when we already pay him and then laugh derisively at our Spanish. Good times." Honduras has been a dark time in my life, and I foresee it always being a smudge on my timeline. I don't appreciate the culture. I don't want to be friends with Hondurans. I don't really care if my Spanish improves (I'm having a hard time these days seeing the benefit of knowing two languages, but that's another issue altogether).

To be frank, I still hate it here. And I've been operating under the assumption that I'll feel better once I go home for Christmas and be able to return with vigor and enthusiasm and all that jazz. But what if I don't? What if it's just 5 more months of hating existence, 5 more months of smudge on my life's timeline, 5 more months of feeling depressed and apathetic towards life while still putting half my pay towards a psychiatrist and drugs? Somewhere inside of me I still believe God's called me here. But did he call me here to spend my afternoons and evenings on the internet or sleeping when I should be writing the exam for my class that was due last Thursday and I've yet to complete? And if not, how the hell am I supposed to get back on track?

Looks like I'm going to need a positive, cleansing post about my trip to Nicaragua to follow this one up. Later. I have an exam to finish.

My students' Shibboleth

Yesterday, a student had a birthday. As usual, everybody began shouting the Happy Birthday Song, including the addition, "Ya queremos pastel, ya queremos pastel..." ("We want some cake...") and then, as apparently they were really into it, they added on another extra verse, which I really couldn't understand. Then they went through one more rousing version of the original song. (Singing Happy Birthday is a great way to waste time. IST students are very savvy when it comes to time-wasting strategies.)

After the song, I told my students that while I can speak Spanish quite well, I've always had trouble understanding spoken Spanish and even more trouble with sung Spanish. I've told them I can speak it a number of times before, but with their record of paying attention, this caught a number of them by surprise. So one student, Roberto, wanted to see how I well I could speak. He told me to say the word "ferrocarril," which means railroad, and apparently is difficult to say because of the double r not once but twice - that rr is very hard for gringos to get their tongues around, apparently.

I said it practically spot on. Everybody was impressed. I'm just glad Eduardo didn't speak up to have me say his name, because I have a much harder time with that - the d's and r's next to each other get me every time.

I still have a hard time understanding singing, though.

...and I'm still struggling

It's been another really difficult week. The depression is manifesting itself really strongly. I have little desire to do anything, yet I still have to prepare lessons and teach them every day. Some friends are planning to go to Guatemala for Thanksgiving break, and I know I should go, but really don't have any desire to. I'm struggling to find motivation to do anything. I'm once again flirting (more than flirting, really) with the idea of staying home after Christmas. If I'm having such trouble, it seems foolish to go to my home, the center of love in my life, and then leave it again. It would be so much easier, I feel, to get myself better there.

It's starting to manifest itself in the form of crying and whatnot lately, as well. I'm a crier in general, but I really haven't done much while I've been down here. This week I have been.

With God's grace, I will have a doctor's appointment this evening. Oh, I hope he can do something for me. I know people who have certainly had much more crippling depression than what I must be going through, but this right now is shit anyway.

It's a lot of work to keep reminding myself it's not my fault. That and sleep take up much of my time these days. (I was in bed by 8 last night.)

Monday and Tuesday I received many pieces of love from people back home and down here. It made a big difference, but unfortunately only momentarily. This stuff is tenacious. Still, I thank you all once again for your prayers and thoughts and words of encouragement.

I wish this blog could be the varied, exciting, picture-filled thing I'd envisioned it to be, but nonetheless I'm glad it exists as a means of mass communicatin'.

...but I can still get help from the States (as well as down here)

While I won't say my decision is completely made by this point, something inside of me is telling me I ought to be here for longer than one semester. I don't believe that God would call me down here to try to lead my students for four months and then leave them to other, untested teaching for the remainder of the year. I believe that God wants me to teach these students for a reason, but I don't believe I'm capable of teaching them what and how He's calling me to teach them in the state I am right now.

I am depressed; there is no denying that. I can barely control my use of the computer for relatively frivolous things. People I haven't known before coming down here can tell there is some sort of pall over me; despite my best efforts to be the wacky and punny guy I've been since high school (and relative success, for a depressed version of that guy), it's apparent to people that there's more where that came from, but I'm just not in a position to let that out these days. How much more effective of a teacher could I be if I were able to let go of this incomprehensible weight of depression on me, my mind, and my personality! How much more creative and authentically dynamic could I be in the classroom if the chemicals in my brain were at the proper levels! How much might I actually want to be here if I didn't have extenuating psychological circumstances at work in my head!

I had an extremely meaningful conversation on Tuesday with a fellow English teacher who actually has struggled with depression herself for many years. She assured me of the difference therapy and medicine can make, and assured me of the difference I could make in my students' English experience if I could get myself healed. She opened up the possibility of communicating with a therapist and physician over the internet, an idea I had never before entertained. (As tech savvy and internet-oriented as I may be, I very much prefer and value face-to-face contact.) So this weekend, I am pursuing a couple of leads I got from other friends back in the states, hoping I might be able to get recommendations on how I might wisely foray into the world of depression medication, which I can obtain down here without a prescription.

Don't worry, fair readers. I will be prudent. I won't rashly embark on this psychological renovation. I do, however want to expedite it as much as possible. I want assurance that I can positively change while down here and embrace my situation before I have to return home for Christmas. If I don't see promise of improvement, I may have to remain home and seek more intense help. But if I can get the help I need from a distance, then that is certainly the way to go.

At any rate, life this past week has been a vast improvement over the week previous, which led to my most recent blog post.

It all started on Tuesday, when I tied my bow tie as perfectly as I ever have on my first try and my hair fell in an acceptable manner without the use of product (yes, my vanity has a great effect on my outlook on life). I taught a great lesson on voice in writing that included sharing with my students an ancient blog post some of my readers from Xanga days may recall (though I will not share here - suffice it to say it was girl-angsty and left my students with sundry questions about my past). I had the aforementioned conversation with my fellow English teacher.

Wednesday's school day concluded with a "pep rally" for the school's basketball teams, who competed in a tournament this weekend. I was filled with disturbing (for my students, at least) amounts of pep.

Thursday I talked to my stepmom on the phone and enjoyed the night's television offerings as well as the radio offerings of Super100 (100.1 FM, your source for music from the 70s, 80s, 90s, and 00s in surprisingly apt playlistings, not to mention commercials no more than every half hour), which consisted of a solid 3 hours of Billy Joel music. When they say Three for Thursday (they don't say Three for Thursday, they speak Spanish down here), they don't mean three songs by an artist, but three hours of an artist, apparently. I've said before how much I appreciate hearing a song I like on the radio; well, imagine this appreciation multiplied by who-knows-how-many times.

Friday evening, five of us embarked on a food-and-basketball excursion. I had food plans all lined up and they were a surprise to almost all of my compatriots - I'd learned of a restaurant called The Wing Factory, and my friend Kristin had had an unfortunate turn of wing events the previous weekend, so I was hoping this would make up for it. It did. The Wing Factory is now my favorite restaurant in Tegus, with its triple play of food, ambiance, and musical choices. I shall return shortly. It is also relatively close to the American School, where the basketball tournament was held. We forewent the possibly-prudent taxi ride and walked the perhaps one mile to the school, balancing on the curb along a busy boulevard, racing across a deceptively not-busy intersection right in front of the one car turning onto it, hike up a ridiculous hill, and then pass through the beautiful-even-in-the-night campus of the American School. Our varsity team was playing a team from San Pedro Sula, and getting creamed even in the 2nd quarter. It was 2-22 when we walked in.

Honduran basketball is something to behold. Every pass is lofted with the strength of a half-court shot, simple breakaway layups are missed, and ball-handling is so clumsy I truly believe the players wouldn't do much worse if they were trying to do everything with their feet. The cultural preference of soccer is painfully apparent when watching this U.S.-created game. However, I had a blast cheering on my students, one of whom scored half of his team's total 8 points by the end of the game. (The other team ended up with 50-some points.) Despite the blowout, Nelson told me after the game it was the proudest day of his life, and though I suspect he was honestly proud of himself, I feel he may have been exaggerating a little bit. At any rate, it was a fabulous evening topped off with a half-hour ride home with 8 people in the back of a pickup.

The rest of the weekend has been fairly lazy, but I am feeling confident of my work ethic for the rest of the day. I'm loving the Scarlet Letter, and many of my students are surprisingly into it, too. Thanksgiving's 5-day weekend is a mere 8 school days away, and I'm eager to get help for the future. I know depression still has a hold on me, but it has loosened its grip for several days and given me breathing room enough to hopefully make a significant change in my life.

I appreciate the prayers you all have been sending up for me; I believe that this bright point in my time down here is a direct result of them. Please keep them going, and I will do my part to hopefully continue improving.

This weekend I decided to honestly, seriously consider the possibility of staying in the States when I come back home for Christmas. I have started talking with the people who are most important to discuss this with - tomorrow I'm hoping to talk with my principal about possibilities and feasibility, as well as call home to my dad.

I am simply not happy here. I have started feeling more successful as a teacher in the first week and a half of the new quarter, but my apathy still runs rampant. I know things I have to do and don't do them. I cannot rely on the excuse of ignorance any more and must simply come clean that I am shirking responsibilities.

However, despite how much I may complain about school and teaching, that's not the reason I want to return home. I understand that I would be complaining and toying with the idea of quitting right about now no matter where I'd be teaching. I have said numerous times that I truly do love my kids. I can't stand them at given times. But given the choice between loving them and not loving them, I have to go with loving them. All of this is not pushing me home.

I am depressed. I honestly think I am suffering from depression. Clinical, pill-popping depression. I would really like to be examined and diagnosed. Despite all the good in my world that I can acknowledge, I am not happy. I do not feel content, and I have no concept of what direction I could take in search of contentment. My free time, deserved or hacked out of time that should be spent working, is almost constantly spent on the internet, trying to connect with U.S. culture - reading news, watching TV shows, investigating new music or movie releases that I don't even have a hope of listening to or seeing - or sleeping. Over the last couple of weeks, I have really started feeling far too tired for my lifestyle. I am not overworked like you may expect from a first year of teaching. Yet I feel constantly tired. I am taking naps without even intending to - falling asleep while doing other things: I'm turning into my father!

Now, I'm sure I would feel depressed, be depressed, whatever terminology you want to use, even were I in the States. However, I would feel much better and comfortable in my situation to be depressed in the States, where I can surround myself with family and be in familiar territory than to be depressed in Honduras, where everything is still needlessly frustrating and I have yet to feel like a part of the community down here. I appreciate the people down here - nearly all of them are wonderful in their own regard, and the others are probably wonderful but I just can't see past the faults I have set up in my mind relating to them. But I have not felt, or let myself feel, like a part of the community. I don't love them like I love my RA staff or my Project Neighborhood house. I know those communities took effort and time to feel the way I remember them, but this is most certainly different.

I begrudgingly followed God's call down here. I honestly think something that could be called "God's work" has transpired because of what I have done down here. But I am looking for, hoping for a new call back home. I have not been able to rest in God's peace while down here. I feel more distant from God than I have in a long time, to be honest. I have not truly been able to possess a worshipful spirit while down here. Certainly these problems are not God's; he is infallible. But I believe he wants me to be able to feel close to him. I believe he does not want me to feel plagued by depression. I believe that by returning home I will be in a better position to work toward this.

Certainly this is not a done deal. My decision at this point is to simply actually discuss the possibility with people that matter rather than just let my fancies grow in my mind. Perhaps these discussions will lead me back to Honduras. Perhaps not. I'm once again seeking God's call, and I pray I will be able to hear it.

ESL moment of the week:

"My family is something very impertinent to me, and I plan on keeping it that way. I'll most likely be living on the opposite side of the United States, but I'll defiantly be visiting on the significant holidays."

The combination of these two typos in consecutive sentences is simply outstanding (I'm pretty sure they are typos). Thanks to my student.

*The thing is, this student is from Texas and grew up speaking English. She also once spelled failure "f-a-l-i-a-r." But she does better in general than most of my students.

Every day I consider not getting back on a plane once I arrive in Grand Rapids for Christmas. Every day I think about e-mailing my principal, to sit down and have a talk, to tell her that I just wanted to give her enough warning to find a replacement English teacher for the second half of the year. Every day I dabble with the idea of just buying a ticket from TGU to GRR ($620.10 leaving tomorrow at 12:25, arriving in GR 10:21pm...that's Michigan in 34 hours from now.)

I keep trying to have fun down here. I keep doing things with people. I keep turning sullen midway through the experience. I keep pushing people away. I keep streaming radio stations from Grand Rapids over the Internet, so I can feel like it's coming through my car radio or my alarm clock. I keep thinking of things I need to rummage up from one of my sundry moving-boxes in my dad's basement...only to remember that I won't be "stopping by" there any time soon.

This weekend we took a trip to Lago de Yojoa, a large lake in the middle of the western third of the country. The first quarter had ended, the final final had been taken by 11:30 on Friday, and at 1:15, a group of 20 teachers piled in the bus for a trip that should maybe take 4 hours. Thanks to Honduran construction that's even worse than Michigan construction in the summer (thanks in large part to lack of alternate routes or extra lanes onto which to divert traffic), and the SECOND TRAFFIC ACCIDENT involving IST teachers in 7 days (no one was hurt, the other guys were drunk, and the bus suffered hardly any cosmetic damage, let alone other damage), we didn't arrive to our hotel until after 7:00. We had dinner, I climbed a couple trees with some others, and then I went to bed. I woke up on Saturday at 9am, had breakfast, took about 7 pictures before my battery died, then realized we were trying to leave the hotel (which was quite nice and certainly in a pretty location) by 10:00. We didn't leave until 10:30, but still we had very little time there on a trip that was supposed to be relaxing. I didn't realize until we got back to Tegus that I had left my umbrella in the hotel room.

We went to this waterfall, which was rather large, quite pretty, and nice to look at. Then we went on this guided expedition INTO the waterfall. Climbing over rocks, jumping into pools at the bottom of the cascade, then clambering right into the deluge - it was a truly powerful stream of water - overbearing, in fact. I hated the experience. Nearly everyone else thought it was outstanding. I hated it. Consequently, I was in a lousy mood for the entire trip home, which thankfully went more quickly.

All I could think about was how much work I should have been doing. I'd been so diligent for about three days, and I really needed all the time I could get to finish all my grading, and feel confident for the coming week and the whole next quarter, and I'd have been fine with taking the time off if I were able to actually feel relaxed, but it turned out to be a 30 hour trip with 8 hours taken up by sleep and 14 hours spent on the bus, putting me in a bad mood and once again removing my ganas to work today, when I actually have the time. I might not sleep tonight, but any other time I've let that be a possibility, my eyes have gotten so heavy I have to go to bed at 11:00 at latest.

So now I'm listening to A Prairie Home Companion on Michigan Radio over the Internet, drinking coffee and trying to work up the desire to actually work. And trying to quell my feelings of homesickness and nostalgia.

..working my tail off

Gun cocked, aimed, and finger on trigger...I'm this close to shooting myself in the foot. I have let far too much grading slide, and now that it's exam time, time is drastically waning. And I still will have class on Monday, starting a brand new book, of which I've read 30 pages! On top of all that, I decided to go to Lago de Yojoa for the weekend with many other teachers to "relax." I will more than likely have my grading along with me and will hardly do any fun stuff. Glad I'm spending money on it.

Maybe the trigger's already pulled. I've put myself in dire straits here, and now I have to deal with it. But it's helping to keep my blog posts under 200 words for a change!

...when the streets are filled with honking after two soccer games

Tonight was huge. Tonight was the last batch of games for World Cup qualifying in the North and Central America and Carribbean section. The last games were Saturday (remember? I was Canadian for a day?) and by the end of tonight, I can say I'm proud to be an American in Honduras.

The U.S. and Mexico were already qualified, with insurmountable leads in the standings. Trinidad and Tobago and El Salvador already had no chance of qualifying. The top 3 of 6 get automatic bids to the Copa Mundial, leaving Honduras and Costa Rica still in the balance, with Costa Rica with a two point lead. So every Honduran TV tonight was basically switching from the Hondu/El Salv game to the US/Costa Rica game. Honduras had to win to have a hope of qualifying, as a win in these games gives you three points toward the standings. But they couldn't do it alone. The US needed to keep Costa Rica from getting its own 3 points to stay ahead. Costa Rica jumped to an early 2-0 lead, leading most to believe it was over.

Hondu scored a beautiful goal mid-second half, which was exciting, but relatively futile with Costa Rica ahead. Then the US scored shortly thereafter. But still, time was waning, the regulation time ended, and stoppage time began (both games were at nearly the exact same times). It looked grim. The Honduras game ended with a win, with the US still losing. Suddenly houses down the street exploded with noise. In the final minute of stoppage time, the US scored! Scraping together a tie, to give Costa Rica only one more point, thus tying them with Honduras in the standings. But since Honduras beat Costa Rica in their earlier matches, Honduras edges out from the tie and has qualified!

I know that soccer is much more important down here than I can even imagine. But people have been out shouting in the distance, and cars have been going by honking constantly for an hour now, and it's even beyond what I had realized. Quite a night. So both of "my" countries are going to the Copa. Woo hoo. I'll have happy students tomorrow. Let's see if they're studious students as well - it's been a hard week. Very very very hard. This afternoon, thoughts of buying a plane ticket once again crossed my mind. Maybe I'll tell you about it sometime.

...where communication is not the greatest

To/Para: Middle and High School Teachers/Maestros de Intermedia y Secundaria

From/De: General Secretary

Date/Fecha: October 15, 2009

(etc., etc., basic memo stuff...now the body:)

We need your help to fill out the student's comments, look the folders and find the signature which you help teach, then choose 3 comments that best qualifies each students.

Please have it completed by Friday, October 16.


...I received this after school today. The text means no more to me than it does to anybody reading this back in the States. Grammatical errors aside, "comments, folders, signature" mean nothing to me. I have not even two days to do I don't know what.

Did I mention we have a six day school week? Saturday school, here we come, if by "we" I mean myself and likely a third of my students.

...when I'm proud to be a Canadian

Yesterday was the fabled USA/Honduras World-Cup qualifying soccer match in San Pedro Sula. Honduras was poised to clinch a berth in only its second-ever World Cup, and emotions had been steadily growing all week. I was frankly surprised it took until Wednesday for one of my students to first get in a dig about Honduras' inevitable conquering of the US. I returned in like, and on Friday, several students were missing because they had already headed out of town to go to San Pedro for the game.

Around 16 teachers went up to San Pedro to see the game, but didn't leave until early Saturday morning. I had been planning on going, but once I realized the total cost for transportation, hotel and ticket would be approaching 100 dollars, to say nothing of food, compounded by the fact that the upcoming school week has SIX DAYS (count 'em: Monday through SATURDAY!! but that's another story) and I had a lot of work to do (for the record, I still do, and Sunday evening is upon me), I decided it would be more prudent to forego the game. It helped my decision to know that my friends Kristin and Sage would also be sticking around, so we'd be guaranteed some quality hanging out time, and consequently I was comfortable with not joining the majority of my colleagues on one of the more exciting cultural events of the semester.

And we certainly did have a good time. Kristin, Sage and I had awesome pizza at La Albahaca on Friday, followed by coffee at the best-ambiance coffee shop we've been to yet, then watched TV. On Saturday, Game Day, we trekked out to Mall Multiplaza, the nicest mall in the city. Early on it was established that this day, to avoid any Hond-US sour grapes, we were not in fact American but rather from our neighbor to the north, Canada. We brushed up on our Canadian lingo (marking instead of grading, writing tests instead of taking them, "aboot" rather than about) and discussed the merits of hockey in the taxi, recited the lyrics of "O Canada" and bad-mouthed Torontans who make the rest of Ontario look bad in the mall's food court, and got nostalgic for maple leaves (especially red ones in the encroaching fall season) as we sat down for coffee and grading-- er, marking, at Espresso Americano (the Honduran Starbucks) for the afternoon.

We went to TGI Friday's in the mall for dinner after our school work, a good hour and a half before the US/Honduras game began. Our waiter asked us where we were from. "Somos canadienses," we replied. "Ah, oh, que bueno!" he breathed, actually appearing relieved. While the BIG game was not close to beginning, there were about 5 other games from Central and South America going on, and a large group of Ecuadoreans were around the bar, singing and cheering their country's team against that of Uruguay. It was quite an experience, although Ecuador ended up losing. We savored our sandwiches, and got out of there before the inevitable rush of catrachos who were going to show up to watch the game there - being the only gringos in a Honduran eatery during the big game was not appealing, even though we were Canadians, eh?

We grabbed a few quick groceries, dealt with some questions and, in the case of the girls, some blatant flirting, at the check-out ("Somos canadienses" was our reply once again), the quickly snagged an overpriced taxi in the rain back home, just in time for the National Anthems.

Playing Settlers of Catan while watching the game, and then flipping over to SNL was a fine cap to a fine weekend, though I've still had a Sunday of work and procrastination after it.

The U.S.A. team won, though Honduras had a penalty kick that went high and a goal recalled because of an off-sides call. This means my powerpoint background for tomorrow's class will most definitely be an American flag. You know, in solidarity with my neighbors to the south. :)

...long enough to weary of my title schema

I always set rules for myself. And they're unreasonable and difficult to continue adhering to them. Either that or I'm just sick of limiting my titles with a once-clever (in my estimation) system that has become stale and stretched after 30-some . So look for more normal post titles in the future.

It's been a very busy week. Our exams and study guides for exams were due this afternoon, which kind of caught me off guard - we had about a week's notice (not counting the date noted on our year-long calendar that's been there from the get-go). So I've been busy procrastinating about that all week. I got little sleep last night and worked through all my free time during the school day, but I got both in within 15 minutes of the 4pm due date - it's like I'm in college again!

Procrastination and lack of sleep aside, today was a very good day for three main reasons. Okay, four. The fourth is that I actually was productive and got good work done. The first is that I had my first Spanish tutor meeting. The school provides free Spanish tutoring for all levels for the North American teachers, and the tutor is a fabulous Honduran lady who's live in New Orleans for 40 years before returning here. Because I'm pretty advanced at my Spanish, I wouldn't get too much out of her worksheets and things, but we'll probably just be doing a lot of talking and I'll get more conversationally fluent - that's what I'm really after. So that's a nice beginning.

The third (or is it second?) thing that made today a good day was playing soccer with my students. The school is built around a court called the inner cancha that is the venue for countless pick-up games of soccer, and some of the 11th graders are especially good. They've been trying to convince me to play for some time, and I finally brought some other shoes to play, and it was so much fun. I actually played pretty well and almost scored a goal! 15 minutes of fabulous. I have to do it again.

Finally (or is this one secondly? I have completely confused myself) I had something of a breakthrough with one of my classes. We do bellwork every day to just get the period underway, get everyone in the class mindset, and that goes over with varying success day-by-day, as well a varying participation, even though participation is figured into grades. Today I must have just had the right prompt for bell work, something about the value of teamwork with good leadership compared to focus on individual accomplishment in relation to our book, and my C section dug into it, every last one. I had been asking and summing up what people had to write all day anyway, but I knew these kids were going to have something to say. And boy did they. As soon as we began discussing, 4 hands shot up and these typically reserved (except when it comes to talking amongst themselves) kids just TURNED ON. It was all I could do to keep the train of discussion from jumping off the tracks. I think this must be what they'd waited for. When someone would make a good point, people would yell and applaud, but they were saying good things and making coherent arguments! It was absolutely awesome! And I was exhausted by the end of it (this was last period, to boot), but it was definitely the satisfied sort of exhaustion. Now I know what turns at least this class on.

...becoming a culinary genius

Okay, that may be a bit of an overstatement. But I have been surprisingly pleased in the last few weeks at my adventures in cooking. Rice and beans dominate the Honduran culinary landscape - pouches of refried beans are a ubiquitous grocery trip acquisition. I've got nothing against rice and beans, but I certainly like to get other things in my diet - it's just healthy. And certainly other produce and meat are readily available at the supermercado, but I'm not big on preparing multiple things for a meal. I'm not a fast cooker, and I have lots of procrastination to do. So I tend to just throw everything in with my rice and beans - tomatoes, onions, canned corn, green pepper more recently, salsa, hot sauce, "crema" (kind of like a sourer sour cream - really good in stuff, a bit face-puckering by itself), or any combination of these - mix it all up in a pot on the stove, and then dish it into a bowl and eat with tostadas or "Dippas" - kinda like Doritos without any seasoning (aka tortilla chips, but they are actually a Frito Lay/Dorito product). I'll make something like this 3 or 4 times a week. However, I have tried getting a bit more daring as of late, and I am blown away by my latest attempt to cook something new. So I'll share this "recipe" for Something Something Smashed Potatoes (in my own typical style, of course).

Ingredients:

Something like 2 lb smallish potatoes you managed to find at the grocery store when you've never seen that kind at any grocery store before. They might look like Washington Golds? Is that a kind of potato?
1/3 head of garlic, each clove smashed with side of knife to remove the skins
Just under a quarter stick of margarine
1 large meaty sort of tomato, kinda like a roma (by large I mean large for that kind - most juicier tomatoes are bigger than this one)
3/4(?) cup of chopped onion, unchopped
1/3 large can of canned corn
"crema"
salt
curry powder
hot sauce

Preheat oven to 150 or 160 Celsius. You can't tell because the scale on the dial isn't the greatest. Rinse potatoes. Boil them on high in a large saucepan with the smashed garlic cloves. Begin chopping the tomato and as-yet unchopped onion. Warm kinda rusty, the kind that leaves bright rust spots if you don't dry it completely upon washing, 9x9 pan on another burner on low so that you can effectively coat it with up to half of the rather crappy brand of margarine your roommate bought. Let the potatoes boil for 15-17 minutes after you first notice the waters's actually boiling. Drain the potatoes and garlic into a strainer and let sit for 3-4 minutes. Mince one or two of the boiled garlic cloves and discard the rest. Arrange the potatoes in the bottom of the "buttered" pan, then smash them with the bottom of a glass, leaving them rather chunky. Put 4 pats of the remaining margarine on each quadrant of the pan. Drizzle crema over the top of the smashed potatoes as thickly as you'd apply mustard to a sandwich. Dump the tomatoes, onions, corn, and minced garlic on top of the whole mess, then sprinkle a healthy bit of curry powder and not quite as much salt on top. Mix everything with a wooden spoon, then smooth the top and put in oven. Let it bake for as long as it takes to wash all the dishes and utensils you've dirtied so far, and maybe a few things from breakfast if you're a fast washer. Remove dish after 10-12 minutes, mix with wooden spoon again (dang! you shouldn't have washed that one) and serve.

Serves one man with a rather large appetite. Twice. And his roommate who just wants to try a little because it smells so good.

...right?

Apart from the faces in front of me in class and the vendors passing by nearly all hours of the day, yelling out their incomprehensible pitches* advertising their wares - I still have no idea what "Ohhhh-WAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYY-LAAAAAHHHHHHS!" are, nor have I been able to hope to decode "Rrrraaahh-lay-mo-comp-a-toy," and I still think that the woman on her motor scooter with the milk crate lashed to the back is just saying "Adiooooos!!" - it would be very easy to forget that I'm in Honduras.

I have hardly left my house this week, and it's not because of the political unrest. In fact, if you've been keeping up with the news, both sides seem to be relaxing their stance, and although things seem to be moving in the direction of Mel being reinstated, which is not ideal, hopefully he'll come to his senses and realize that he has no hope of turning himself into the Hugo Chavez of Honduras and he'll finish out the last 4 months of his elected presidency in sanity and without delusion.

No, I've been staying home because I'm trying to get myself to work harder. I have become rather apathetic toward my planning, and I guess I'm trying to remove rewards (i.e., going out, doing other stuff) to encourage more diligence, but I'm finding many ways to procrastinate on the Internet.

This procrastination has led to more ways in which Honduras does not seem like Honduras for me. I have taken great lengths to feel like I am still abreast of many goings-on back in the states. I've "watched" nearly every Tigers game of the past week through MLB's GameDay feature on its website. I podcast my favorite NPR shows, and stream Michigan Radio on Saturdays when I can and when the Internet is working properly for me. I almost religiously check my various music news blogs, wired.com, npr.org, mlive.com (more occasionally, usually to see how the high school football teams did each Friday night - yes, I'm a HS football junkie?), and several other blogs I associate with life back home. I downloaded a program that veils my Honduras IP address and allows me to access supposedly U.S. only services such as Pandora music streaming, although the TV network websites see through my ploy and still thwart me. Fortunately, cable down here includes NBC, CBS, ABC, and FOX, as well as ESPN and some news networks. I do crosswords from a book, and people brought down plenty of pleasure reading books. I really don't have to feel like I'm in Honduras if I don't want to.

Obviously, this isn't the best attitude to take. I should be embracing being down here, but I still really haven't. I still would truly rather be in West Michigan. The lack of work ethic that manifested itself early on (largely, I feel, due to a lack of direction provided from the school that's caused me to largely shut off that I still feel exists) is obviously still affecting me. I still admit I like my students and am starting to take a real interest in how they perform (on the other hand, many of them don't seem to care themselves how they perform), and maybe it's incredibly selfish of me to still strive toward home and away from where those students are, not to mention where God has put me, but that's still something I struggle with.

*I will attempt to make sound recordings of these people coming past sometime while I'm down here. I would love for some collaboration in figuring these things out from my Spanish-speaking readers.

...when certain Spanish words tickle my fancy

I'll be honest: I don't think my Spanish is improving as much as I thought it would down here. I can get around fine, sure, and if I ask someone to repeat something and they finally slow down enough, I can understand most of what's said to me. I'm in a bit of a self-concious, non-experimenting phase of Spanish: I don't feel fluent enough, so I avoid talking more than I need to. But I am continually absorbing, and paying attention to things (especially foods, for some reason). And I've come across some interesting points in the Spanish language, points especially interesting for a wordplay guy like me. So far they fall into two categories: words that strike me and seem especially apt in Spanish, which seem to convey more perfectly the precise meaning more fluidly than any English counterpart I've found, and Spanish words (more commonly, brand names) that approximate an English word using the different pronunciation of the Spanish language. It's that second category I want to focus on, and if you don't get what I mean, you should catch on quickly.

Fud - pronounced "food," Fud is a name brand of prepackaged meat (unless I've missed other "Fud" items carrying that moniker). While it certainly is truthful in what's inside the package, I kind of wish the brand could be more specific (Mit) as to what I'm buying or try to make me feel like it's a positive purchase (Gud Fud, or Teisti Fud), but no. It's just Fud. Eat it.

Chiz - now this is the specificity I'm talking about. Chiz is obviously a cheese product - it's pronounced exactly the same! Of course, this is an emphasis on the "product," as Chiz is a fake prepackaged cheese dip mix. So you get the idea as to the nature of the product more than Fud, but it's still quite misleading, as Chiz is not really cheese, but more of a cheese affiliate.

Dogui - an interesting use of Spanish pronunciation, as the "u" is necessary to harden the g followed by an "ee" sound (otherwise it would be pronounced "dohi") Dogui is a dog food brand. The name has little to do with the actual contents of the package, unlike Fud and Chiz.

Sponch - this is a true approximation, as the Spanish language does not have a hard "j" sound. The equivalent unvoiced "ch" is as close as it comes. Sponch is a type of prepackaged cookie, actually. It's got some sort of wafer topped with spongy (ah, there it is) marshamllow things. It looks about as fake and unhealthy as the Chiz.

Yipy - Clearly an attempt to spell "Yippee!" Another cookie brand, this one is pretty straightforward if not indicative of what to expect from the product apart from glee of some sort.

I'll keep watching out for these, and keep collecting them. I find them interesting, and hopefully you sort of did, too.

...so I may write with more regularity

6:30 in West End

A warm spot still lingers on
the table as the waitress
brings la cuenta, banana pancake
conduction under my hand and
the sound of some mysterious
citrus fruit, juiced, sluicing
into the container below. A lone
other diner who'd wandered into
Rudy's during the presentation of
the pancakes slouches over his
fruit plate, another gringo beginning
his coffee as I finish mine.
The morning sun, not yet an hour
old, renders all outside the cafe a
bit overexposed, forcing eyes to
adjust upon switching subject
or when following the hummingbird
swerving and flashing amid the waxy
leaves - ad hoc walls for an open-air
restaurant. The dirt/sand sendero
of a main drag merges seamlessly with
the beach, the beach with the water,
water with sky, which holds the newborn
sun still rising over Roatán with its palms
and blooms and cactusy vines, the sun
which lights e'en before it's there,
which awoke me ere it was present and
impelled me from my hammock nest
to capture it and the entire rest of the
morning, to capture this island, to
capture Rudy's - I'm still alive - to
capture myself once again, and so
I have, perhaps.

...when I have a lot to tell you over just a few days

Edit: Go ahead, read my blog first, and if you find you still have time to spend reading blogs, go to my friend Kristin's blog and read her great post from today and be sure to watch the youtube video she links to. Or read hers first and revel in the time you didn't spend reading my wordy prose.

I've been lazy. Very lazy. Not "Oh, you're working hard so you deserve a break sometimes" lazy, but "Why don't you get off the computer and take a shower you slob" lazy. Self-satisfaction is very low. Motivation for planning is nearly nonexistent. I can hardly blame it on the craziness of the flu closings backed immediately by the Zelaya crap, because I was headed in this direction 3 weeks ago. Honduras needs prayer, certainly, but I need prayer for more reasons than tensions in my city. I need to find motivation somehow, and I'm really not sure where to look.

So, updates on Z-Liar (pronounce it like a Brit and you should get it). To recap: he arrived early Monday and has been holed up in the Brazilian Embassy ever since. His supporters (both legitimate supporters and anarchy-inclined folks who just like breaking things, especially if they get paid for it) have occasionally demonstrated, though depending on who you ask, those demonstrations were either peaceful and then broken up by police which turned them violent, or started violent and then broken up by police. Rumor has it another demonstration is in the pipes for tomorrow.

Curfew was instated by the current government at 4pm last Monday, and stayed in effect until mid morning on Wednesday. (Curfew was in effect basically to discourage folks rallying and demonstrating, I think.) It was lifted then for 10 hours and reinstated Wednesday evening, to allow people a chance to go buy food and take care of things they may not have been able to take care of since there was very little warning when the curfew was first imposed.

A side note: School was obviously canceled Tuesday and Wednesday, given that no one was allowed outside of their houses those days (we didn't know the curfew would be lifted Wednesday, but still school would have had no hope of running that day).

Given that no one knew how long the curfew could last after it began again Wednesday evening, basically the entire city of Tegucigalpa was out and about to stock up on food. We teachers were among them. It's hard to keep a lot of extra food on hand, so even 40 hours left our supplies dwindling, and water was truly a problem. We resorted to boiling a good amount just so we had water to drink. The school sent a busito around for us North American teachers, and we went to La Colonia, a grocery store chain. By "went" I mean it was a drive that should take 15 minutes and tool us an hour and a half. We actually got off the bus in the middle of the street and walked to the store.

When we got inside, the place was packed. There was no hope of obtaining carts; most people had poached plastic flower pots from the non-grocery section to carry their purchases, although empty cardboard boxes or the large plastic flats that typically hold bread were also put into use and carried by mothers and fathers through the crowded aisles. I saw men carry carts over their heads and over the crowds just to move them to a different part of the store. Everyone stayed calm and were actually quite helpful in general; there were just so many people that the entire shopping trip was a disaster. Lines for the registers stretched through aisles, basically to the back of the store. We teachers got what we could and got into line quickly, but the lines hardly moved at all. Noon passed, then one o'clock, then two. Curfew would be back on by five, and we legitimately were concerned we would not be out of the store by then. I finally gave up on waiting in line - I had very little that was actually necessary, and I began feeling socially anxious and decided that getting out of that store was preferable to the slight stockpiling I'd accomplish through waiting in line four hours. So I dropped my stuff and three or four other teachers accompanied me out of the store. As we passed the registers, we could see families buying sometimes two cartloads full of food - undoubtedly more than many of them could afford to spend on food at one time, but given that the curfew could be imposed for days once again, these desperate times called for desperate measures. I frankly couldn't have cared less about my food supply at that point. I was more concerned about the actual amount of food in my belly at that instant.

Across the street was a restaurant called Big Baleadas (a baleada is a typical Honduran food consisting of beans spread on a tortilla, sour cream-type stuff, some kind of meat optional, and possibly some other topping depending on where you get it) and we went there just to hang out and more importantly satisfy our hunger. The baleadas were great, and certainly big. We stayed there until all of the other teachers were out of the store. All told, it was a pretty unsuccessful shopping trip, but an experience I don't regret having.

But the hassle was all for naught, since the curfew was lifted again during the day on Thursday, along with the urge to return to jobs (reports say that every day the curfew is in place it costs the Honduran economy $50 million), rendering the panicked stockpiling unnecessary. The curfew has been in place every evening since, and lifted every morning since, and we can assume this will be the case until further notice.

However, the craziness of the week is not yet exhausted. School was canceled for Thursday as well early Wednesday evening, but upon the announcement of the lifted curfew for Thursday, we received an e-mail from the school saying that there actually would be school tomorrow after all! (This was at 8:45 the night before, mind you.) Just a half day, though. Most of us were very upset by this news. Half days are not very practical for teaching.

But at 6:30am Thursday morning, the bus came around and we were all aboard. The teachers of IST were there, "ready" for a half day.

But only about half the students were. Big surprise. Late notice + political tension = half the student body. I had my students free write. And I wrote myself. It was not a productive day, but it was nice to just have some time with only some of my students. It was an interesting, solidarity-building day.

Friday was also a half day. Nearly all of my students were there that day. We still didn't do too much more - free reading and some looking ahead at hopefully gathering up what's left of this marking period, which only has three weeks left in it.

Saturday was a respite of sorts - no responsibilities, no curfew - so two other teachers and I went to the mall. For all we could see, life looked normal in the context of the mall. It turns out our trip was maybe ill-advised, as public places of any kind are liable to be venues for demonstrations, but everything turned out all right and we had a nice ride with one taxi driver in particular where we all bonded over listening to Michael Jackson on the radio. It was a rare moment of true happiness over the last month or so, when I could almost viscerally feel the deep human connection that spans culture and language - and it's all thanks to the King of Pop!

And today I've been lazy. We have another half day tomorrow, and we're on a day-to-day basis regarding schedule. It really stinks. I knew teaching in Honduras would be a very different experience, but none of us knew how different, or what sort of factors would make it so different.

...to mark a pretty significant anniversary

There is so much to blog about right now. Things are ridiculous down here. I'm not even referring to things like possibility of violence or tension about what's going to happen with Mel. Curfew stuff and lifting of curfew stuff is primarily what's lending to the ridiculousity of the week, and today in particular. I will share it. I have to. But not tonight any more.

What I do want to note is that back home, it is after midnight. With that in mind, I can think of it as Sept. 24, which marks the 10-year anniversary of my mom, Gertrude Eding, finally losing her battle with colon cancer. It's been a decade. And that impels me to give this thought. I simply hope I can allot the time and energy I need to consider it amid all the confusion of junk down here. And there is plenty of junk down here. I just felt the need to mark this while I could. I'm quite confident I will have more to say on this as well.

I'm just waiting for the weekend, and two of our three school days so far this week were canceled. Life is strange.

...but the inside of my house seems like no country in particular

We are in hour 27 of the mandated curfew. It's been extended through 6am tomorrow morning, and will likely be extended even further. School has been canceled for a second day tomorrow, so if somehow we do have school on Thursday, it would be our second day of school since Sept. 9. And school will not be fun when we do get back. As I've said, there are students whose parents are at high levels in Mel Zelaya's camp as well as the new "regime" as most US news media outlets are unfortunately and appallingly referring to Micheletti's administration.

I cannot understand why so many other countries are falling into support of Mel. I certainly believe no one wants to see Honduras fall into terror and violence, and it's true that many of the negative outcomes for Mel might easily lead to that (if Mel's arrested, as he most certainly will be as soon as he sets foot outside the Brazilian embassy, his supporters (and people who don't care either way but just want to set things on fire and cause commotion) are certain to go nuts. I've heard about possible plans to try and assassinate Mel, and that'd sure to create much huger problems and I pray it never comes to that), but the simple fact is that MEL IS IN THE WRONG. What he was trying to do was totally unconstitutional, and most anybody with their head screwed on straight down here knows that. A friend of mine pointed me to this article from the Wall Street Journal, and it was such a relief to see that not all of the American newspeople have their heads (pardon my French two days in a row) up their asses. I am extraordinarily disappointed in the way the Obama administration is handling this situation, and I pray he/they may see the light about what's going on down here soon. As the WSJ author said, the support from the US is huge for Zelaya - it might be making him feel invincible. If he feels invincible, one side or the other is going to do something rash. And I frankly would not like to see that outcome.

In other happier news, I am officially an uncle for the third time! My brother Jeff and his wife Lynnette welcomed Nathan Jeffery Eding into the world just a couple hours after I started this house arrest, and this evening I was able to video chat with the proud parents, the proud grandparents (i.e. my folks...as well as Lynnette's parents) and my other sister Lara and her husband Steve, all in the hospital on wireless! I praise the Lord for technology like this that lets me see him and them, and I can't wait to see all those folks in person come December! (Even earlier for Dad and Carol, Lord willing...they're planning on coming during election time, which might prove problematic, but we will see and pray and hope it will all work out.

Read that article. It's awesome. A breath of fresh air. I thought my whole country had gone stupid.

Edit: Here's a blog post from a blogger for the Huffington Post who's stationed in Tegus. He saw a bunch of the action with the demonstrations and police action firsthand. Quite intense.

...guessing who's back, back again

Mel is back, tell a friend.

So a school without functioning Internet is a secluded place to be. During one of my later hours, students suddenly became very antsy. Apparently Mel Zelaya's back in the country. You know, the ousted president who made so many of you concerned for the well-being of us teachers? According to news sources, he's chillin' in the Brazilian embassy here in Tegus. And somehow (illegal cell phone in class?) the rumor spread like wildfire in my class. After school, my fellow teachers told of anywhere up to six of their students in their class being taken out of school by parents due to this news.

Okay, sure, I think. Some parents are protective, and I do know that some kids are children of higher-ups in governments old and new, so don't take any risks. But this has little to do with me. I have a test to give tomorrow.

Then I get home. I'm biding time until my friends walk past, because we're planning on hitting up the grocery store. My roommates, who would be taking the late bus home an hour and a half later, end up getting dropped off by another teacher in his car 15 minutes after I arrive. Hmm, that's strange. I guess they were done prepping and the other teacher was ready to head out as well.

Dan and Al walk in. Apparently there's a 4pm curfew (it's 3:50 at this point). And it goes until 7am (school starts at 7:15). So school won't begin until 9:15 tomorrow if it happens at all.

Pardon my french, but shit just got real.

So much for the grocery trip.

10 minutes after Dan and Al arrive, the phone rings. It's for me. It's another teacher from our neighborhood, Sage. She just wanted to tell me that our aforementioned friends won't be coming around to grocery shop. "Oh, so they found out about the curfew, too? I just found out when Dan and Al got home earl-"

"Oh, there's a curfew? No, the girls were just robbed at gunpoint."

........

So they had been on their way. They were right in the middle of our neighborhood, in broad daylight, for Pete's sake. As far as I know, all the mugger got was a set of keys, a cell phone, and 20 Lempiras (see previous post for conversion information!) And they got away unscathed, which is all you ever hope for anyway. So they went to Sage's house, which was closest, and they're decompressing there.

Since then, it's been a bit of a frantic relay of phone calls and instant messages to make sure everyone is accounted for and most of all, safe. Of special concern regarding the "safe" part are the girls' two other roommates, who were dropped off at their house after the first two girls left, now with some malicious guy walking around the neighborhood with keys to their house (of course, it can be fairly common knowledge which houses are the "gringo houses). Cell phone service was dropped at some point in all of this, adding to the confusion and lack of communication (our land line won't make calls out, either - hooray for late phone bills!). Everyone is safe and accounted for after a tense hour, the other girls have been picked up and will spend time at other houses, and school is still either up for a late start or cancellation.

I've heard a few distant car horn sounds that sound as if they're part of some demonstration. Even the car alarms aren't going off with their stupidly regular frequency. It's rather suddenly mostly quiet. Only dogs barking from time to time around the neighborhood and the rap-rap-rap-rapping sound of the geckos accompanies the occasional sound of a passing car.

The girls are safe. We have pretty (and cheap) flowers on our table. The curtains are drawn. It's still quite warm, with a clear sky as the sun approaches setting.

...because my wallet is overflowing with cash

Dear reader, do not be confused by my title. I am not implying that by moving to Honduras I am raking in the big bucks (I make around 500 dollars a month) nor that as an American in a third-world country I am comparatively wealthy. I truly don't think that's so, if only because I am a rather recent college graduate who's never earned a salary. I just want to paint a picture of the way money works down here.

The current Lempiras:Dollars ratio is around 18:1, but I invariably round it to 20:1, making one lempira around 5 cents. Lempiras are further divided into centavos (100 per lempira, or "limp" as we lovingly refer to them).

As far as I know, there are 4 denominations of coins: 5, 10, 20, and 50 centavos (maybe there are 1 c. coins, but given that even 5 c. coins are worth 1/4 penny, I'm guessing the need for 1/20 penny coins isn't too high). I know the sizes of US coins aren't totally sensical (dimes are the smallest, where every other size increases with value - dollar coins have gone all over the place, but they've been a joke anyway so they don't count), but at least the colors follow some order: lowly pennies are copper and everything higher is more valuable...silver colored metal! (It makes more sense when you take the old materials into account.) But check this:

5c. coin: around the size of a nickel, golden in color
10c. coin: larger than a quarter, also golden (I'm now realizing that the colors follow a coherent pattern, unlike what I set up in the last paragraph)
20c. coin (worth a penny): size of a dime, silver in color
50c. coin: around the size of a quarter (between the 5c. and 10c. coin), also silver

The sizes are all over the place! And while the smaller denominations are one color and the higher ones are another, you'd maybe associate the golden color with being more valuable than the silver color. But maybe not. I haven't used a single coin yet as it is anyway; I've only gotten them in change. Sometimes they won't even bother with them in giving you change and will round up to the nearest Lempira if they'd owe you 60 c. or something. I say good on 'em. (I also think the U.S. should abolish the penny, but whatever.)

What I really wanted to talk about was the bills. I carry so many bills in my wallet I'm like George Costanza even without any receipts even adding to the wallet's girth. At least I carry my money in my pockets, unlike my female compatriots using their bras as purses. (Though maybe extra bills isn't all that unwelcome there then? I'm sorry, I'll stop.)

Here's why: bills come in denominations of L.500 ($25), L.100 ($5), L.50($2.50), L.20 ($1.00), L.10 ($0.50), L.5 ($0.25), L.2 ($0.10), and L.1 ($0.05). That means apart from the equivalent of U.S. pennies, I'm carrying all of my change around in paper form in my wallet! That adds up quickly. And given that you can't even count on an establishment having enough change to break your L.500 bill (that's right, many places don't have $25 in change!), you don't want to be carrying those around much to save room. As I write this, I have in physical money four 100 notes, three 20's, one 5, four 2's, and ten 1's. That's 22 notes, totaling the equivalent of 32 U.S. dollars, which would be 4 bills in the states. I admit, I could have made some better use of small bills in getting change in a transaction or two, but this happens. Regularly. I've had to rethink my wallet organization, and I've decided a bifold may be a worthy investment in lieu of my current trifold (it stands to lose its shape already due to keeping fewer cards in it)...and you all care about these minor developments in my money storage.

Anyway, I thought I'd get something a bit different in here for you. Be sure to check my last post for links to pictures!

...and I've had trouble, but I'll finally let you see pictures

All right, I figured a solution to my inability to put pictures up here. My facebook pictures are available for public viewing, so I can post the links to those albums. People on facebook have probably already seen these, but nonfacebookers can finally see some of the things I have.

Honduras in general:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2080396&id=15300281&l=30e87d9531

My very recent trip to Roatán (the captions sort of tell a story, pay attention!)
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2082334&id=15300281&l=1479195a72

Please let me know if these work or not; I'm just glad to have some kind of solution!

...but this didn't feel like Honduras

I went to the island of Róatan this long weekend, even longer thanks to the flu, and I didn't have Internet. That didn't keep me from blogging, though! I wrote a ridiculously lenghty post on my second day there, and here it is now. Consider it posted 10:45 am, Sept. 13, 2009 (Honduras time - 12:45 pm EDT).

Well, let me just say that days off from school have helped me to more truly appreciate the new place in which I am living. The cessation of constant stress has been a Godsend, and I am once again thinking more positively about the country of Honduras. Now that I am on the Caribbean island of Róatan, it’s clear this country has a lot to offer.

Today began around 5:20am, when I was shaken awake by my roommate, Dan. I had intended to wake up around 4:00, allowing me ample time to shower, make coffee, eat some cereal, and most importantly, pack for our 4 night stay in one of the touristiest yet gorgeousest locales of all Honduras. I was to be ready for the bus around 5, as that’s when it began its rounds to all the teacher houses. It got to my house around 5:15, honked a few times, sent someone to ring the doorbell and to call my cell phone in hopes that I’d be right out. Little had I known that though I set my alarm for 4am, I neglected to turn it ON. My backup alarm in my iPod, in a similarly delightful situation, was set to 4PM. So though I was not roused, Dan was and was capable of the heretofore impossible. The bus had gone to another house and was planning on making a return, during the interval of which I threw anything I thought I could possibly need for a 4 night stay on the Caribbean. Then I got on the bus, then promptly back off because I had forgotten underwear and a bathing suit. Then back on and we began our 8 hour (including stops) busito ride to La Ceiba:

Note: Straight shot? Hardly. Look at the map: we went from Tegucigalpa, through Comayagua, SanPedro Sula, Tela, and finally arrived in La Ceiba. You can see the long island of Róatan just above the name "La Ceiba," as well.

We arrived at the ferry dock well in advance of our 4pm departure time and received a complimentary Dramamine with each ticket. Nice. We spent a good two hours in the waiting area, serenaded by the outrageous blood and gore of the movie Doom starring The Rock on the television in the front of the room.

When we finally boarded the ferry, several of our number went to the top deck in the back of the boat in hopes that the open air would prevent seasickness despite the overbearing heat of the sun, while others (myself included) stayed in the air-conditioned main level. I sat with one of the other teachers, Michelle, and we ended up talking for the entire 2-hour ferry ride. It was a bit of a choppy ride, but nothing terribly nausea-inducing (there were a few pukers, but aren’t there always?) At one point, Michelle and I headed to the top deck to see how the folks up there were faring, stopping for a good 10 minutes along the railing on the side, basking in the whipping wind, salt spray from the front of the boat, and of course the sun working its way toward the Caribbean horizon.

As we stood at the edge of the ferry, we watched the 40-mile island of Róatan loom closer through the ever-present haze. The sun tucked itself behind the serrated surface of the island just before the ferry came in to dock at the town of Coxen Hole, so twilight was rapidly becoming night as our 16-teacher group boarded the bus/taxi that took us through the twisting, wooded highway leading to our final destination of West End. West End was hosting a bit of a carnival this particular night, so there was a bit of a delay in reaching Posada Orquideas, our hotel.

The delay was worth it, let me tell you. It is a fantastic hotel, with large patios, each equipped with a hammock and a view through the trees of the Caribbean. A dock sticks into the channel behind the hotel, with a landing perfect for a group of twentysomethings to lay down on at night and gaze at the brightest stars I’ve had the privilege of seeing in about 9 years, which we did within 25 minutes of arriving.

A few of our number were rather peckish, it being 8 or so at night, so after a shower and change of clothes, we split into two groups and walked the 10 minutes into the main drag of West End (“main drag,” in this instance, describes a 1.5 lane-wide sand road along the coast with buildings on one side and buildings built on docks on the other side). The Carnival was not much other than loud, so we continued on to see what the numerous restaurants had to offer and my group finally settled on a bar/grill built over the water. ‘Twas a very nice place. Shortly after we got our drinks, the entire town lost power (a theme common to the entire country, not just Tegus, apparently). It was a very brain-screwy experience to be essentially outside and to suddenly be thrown into darkness I associate only with underground places like basements and Mammoth Cave. Not phased, the restaurateurs quickly procured battery powered fluorescent lights and continued cooking, and our burgers, chicken sandwiches, and calamari (not mine) arrived as quickly as could be expected nonetheless. As I ate my Hickery [sic] burger in the weak fluorescent light of the blackout-coping restaurant, surrounded by some great people most of whom I have not known more than 4 weeks, I felt oddly satisfied. The pineapple-and-onion combination of toppings tasted unnaturally good, and the Salva Vida beer (my first in a good long while) was simply refreshing. For some reason, despite 13 hours of travel and 3 more of wandering around and socializing (a good chunk of which was in near darkness), I couldn’t have felt more alert and aware, soaking in the experience. That said, it didn’t take long at all to drift to sleep once we returned to Orquideas and I got into bed.

The alertness and awareness returned in force this morning as soon as the 5:50 sunshine made its way onto my face through the screened window. I was immediately able to arise and make my way, camera in hand, out to the dock from the night before, now silhouetted by the newly-risen sun above the channel’s other bank. I snapped a couple dozen photos of the dock, the dawn, and the assorted foliage surrounding the hotel, basking in the already-warm-approaching-hot-6-AM-very-early morning and the simple evidences of God making himself known in numerous ways.

My day beginning without me even having to will it whatsoever, I began the same stroll from the night before and continued snapping pictures on the way to the not-yet-awake town of West End. Closed-up shops, bars, and restaurants, now in daylight, again lined the route. On the south end of town, the lone open establishment, Rudy’s, was my breakfast venue. On the recommendation of my guidebook (thanks Nate and Emily), I had sought this place out for its coffee and banana pancakes, both of which made up my desayuno. Most of my time there, I was the lone patron, until another single gringo came in for coffee and a fruit plate. I was truly relishing the isolation I’ve had a hard time feeling thus far in Honduras, but once breakfast was over and paid for, I made my way back to the hotel where others had begun rousing themselves, and here I have spent the rest of the morning thus far.

At this particular moment in time, my thoughts when I hear “Caribbean paradise” may differ from the average thoughts of someone else hearing that phrase, even though we may envision the same sort of place. Nonetheless, “Caribbean paradise” is definitely what I am currently experiencing, whatever that exactly means. I suppose it’s what I’ve just described in 2 single-spaced pages. And I have 3 more days of this to go.

...with a bit of free time

Regarding my last post: Swine Flu, H1N1, gripe porcina has most definitely hit with a vengeance. So much so that International School has closed for today...and tomorrow...(we weren't going to have school on Monday or Tuesday because of Independence Day)...and next week Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday! Students may have been a little nutso yesterday afternoon - my friend Leslie had an especially difficult time with her 9th grade mental patients - I could hear their yelling, cheering, and clapping in unison from my room. I whipped my (slightly) more mature 11th graders into shape and tried not to take craziness for an answer. Fortunately, I had my best class last, and they kinda love me from what I can tell (superstars, let me tell you), so my job was made easier.

Now we have time off, but work doesn't stop. My students are still responsible to keep up with their reading, and I have to post updates to our (rather unreliable thus far) online class center (Blackboard, for those acquainted with it). And now I get a chance to atone for my delinquency thus far in journal reading (I took ~70 journals home with me yesterday - no getting back into school for us teachers, even).

But amid the continued work, I'll be heading with a group of teachers to the island of Róatan, probably the most touristy, luxury place Honduras has to offer. 4 nights of Caribbean sweetness. I'm planning on renting a bicycle for a day or two and just relishing independence, while still getting some relaxation and advance reading on The Scarlet Letter, my next book to teach, which I have not yet read. I also look forward to photo ops.

I've a couple silly posts brewing; interesting list-type things I foresee being revised and added to, which I'll probably get going in the next day or so. Stay tuned.

...when each class period begins with a ceremonial hand-washing

Swine Flu has hit Tegus again! Panic! Run for your lives! Drink as much hand sanitizer (70% alcohol at least, please) as you can lay your hands on! It will seep out of your pores and cleanse you from the inside! Stop breathing - that's when it gets inside of you! And by all means, cough and look pathetic in class so that your teachers have no choice but to send you to the doctor so he can check you out and make sure it isn't actually swine flu! Panic! Run! Don't breathe! Don't even move! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

It's just a matter of time before I start feeling lousy. Both of my roommates have come down with what seems to be a six-day cold, and plenty of other teachers have been feeling under the weather as well, at least one of which needed to call in a sub. If what I've heard is correct, a good third of the 9th grade was gone today. It's a minefield of germy-wermies, apparently, and yet I'm just as skeptical of swine flu as ever. Maybe I have no reason to fear, because I drink a lot of coffee. That's kind of like getting lots and lots of sleep, right??

I had forgotten it's Labor Day. Nonexistent down here. I hope everyone is having/had good days off.

...when the power goes out from 8:10 to 4:30

I never realized the hidden powers of my blog name/post title framing technique! I had planned on just using it in a sense of "I may be in Honduras but I don't have to like it" or "...but things aren't so bad." Then this week one of my coworkers saw my page on my browser and took note of the title and inquired if my posts were all of a "You might be in Honduras when..." a la Jeff Foxworthy. So I have another tool in my box for keeping post titles fresh. Thanks, Kathy.

And yes, the power did go out for the better part of the day. Our entire little area of town. They were doing some sort of electrical work and turned the power off for the section of the city all of us teachers live in. So there was a mass exodus of us teachers to malls, coffee shops, and the like to make up for our ability to cook, websurf, or most importantly make coffee.

And Car Talk had just come on as I was streaming NPR when the power went out. Boo.

But I had some awesome fajitas and dare I say even better conversation at TGIFriday's, went to about the only teacher-friendly store in Honduras and got some posterboard (which apparently I can get about anywhere but haven't seen).

I have yet to do any planning or grading for the weekend. And tonight is the much anticipated Honduras v. Trinidad & Tobago futbol game (That's right, Honduras is so good they're taking on TWO opposing teams -- huh? ... Not two? ... ... Oh.)

Although, next week is Mexico (in Mexico) and Oct. 10 will be the USA team here in Tegus. I think we teachers may try to go to that.

At any rate, the entire Honduran population is dressed in getup like these guys, whoever they are.


I hope my dear readers are doing well (some of you keep me abreast of your goings-on in life through other means), and I hope my blog has been useful and helpful for you in keeping tabs on me. I apologize for the lack of pictures, but given the 12 megapixels of my camera, each of my photos is around 5 MB and takes forever to upload. And then they turn out small like that flower picture. I'm not sure what gives. If anyone has tips, please let me know. I can try another one:

I give up. I waited 10 minutes for it to load. You can check facebook; facebook is there for me where blogger is not.

...doing activities along with my students

Well, the punt got me far enough downfield. I am satisfied. During the 10 minute free-write each class did, I wrote right along with my students. (I made sure to glance around from time to time, making sure my students were actually right along with me, but my pen nearly never stopped moving.) I thought I'd share these three 10 minute writings with you.

(Context for the first one: that morning we had a flag day assembly out in front of the school, where students should have been paying attention and being patriotic, not to mention simply being respectful of what was going on. I was completely unimpressed by the behavior of my 11th graders. Many of them were acting like second graders - talking with their neighbors WHINING when a teacher would split them up - "Meeeester...no. Meeeester, no." They're all right in class, but the girls especially are terrors when in larger groups like chapel or this assembly:)

#1
This morning we had acto cívico for flag day, and every student from 6th-12th grade met out by the flagpole for a ceremony of raising the flag and a speech from Mr. Barahona about the flag, the national anthem, and pride for your country. (At least that's what I could gather from the speech in Spanish.) What I was really struck by during the assembly was not the sound of the anthem being sung, or the carefully thought-out words by Mr. Barahona, but the fact that so many of my students couldn't seem less interested in being there. I come to expect some national pride from everybody, or if someone is not proud of their country I expect them to be vocal about it or make protests or the like - but these students couldn't seem to care about anything but making sure their hair was straight or talking with their friends about things they can talk about countless moments out of the day. It really makes me wonder why it's worth being down here in Honduras teaching. I'm expecting to teach the future leaders of the country, but those future leaders don't seem to care about their country. Why should I bother trying to teach them or inspire them? I hope they can prove me a reason why in the near future, because their apathy is incredibly discouraging. I can understand not caring about English or reading - I come to expect that, in fact - but I'm not seeing much besides frivolous things that certain students can actually invest energy in. I hope I'm seeing things wrong.

#2
The second class of the day. Things are moving forward. The smaller children are playing outside, with an occasional scream punctuating the half-silence of the room. Silence comes at a great premium here at International School. The Honduran heat necessitates open windows, and the close proximity of elementary, middle, and high schools ensure that some group of people will be somewhere nearby making noise at all times of the day. I think my students in general are accustomed to it, but I am not yet. I hope I may grow to be accustomed to it, to appreciate the joyous noises of youth, and allow them to complement the way I teach rather than fight it.

There is much I need to grow accustomed to here in Honduras. It is a beautiful country, but changing your lifestyle is never an easy transition. I pray to God every day for continued smoothness and the grace to adapt, and in general, I can see him answering my prayers.

#3
The end of another day. 7 school days down. I'm starting to feel the groove of the year and understand how each week can be expected to go. Of course, next week we won't have any actos cívicos or half days, and I'll really be able to understand that, but for now, I'm just glad to be able to remember which classes I have double periods with and when.

I'm glad that I feel comfortable in front of class. I'm glad that the class, my students, seem comfortable to be in class, even when they come sweaty and tired from PE. Being comfortable is the most important thing for learning, I feel. I know I have to plan things competently, but even planning will be easier when I know whatever happens in class, we all will feel at ease. When we feel at ease, we are more willing to take risks. When we take risks, we can really grow. Once we grow, we feel comfortable in even more situations and the process starts all over again. This is what learning should be and, I feel, what God expects of us. I pray that my efforts, as well as those of my students, will help this happen.

...punting a lesson for the first time

Well, I'm not exactly punting. But some technical difficulties regarding my smart board/more importantly, my projector have left me in a tough state for my classes tomorrow and I'm moving up a period to be spent free-writing and sharing bits from that free-write while this would have come later in the week. The fact of the matter is that I've already come to rely on the board, and since I'm doing Into Thin Air I had wanted to share a bunch of pictures of Everest and Edmund Hillary, Tenzing Norgay, and Thomas Mallory, since the part of the book students will have just read deals heavily with that. Now, thanks to the wonders of technology, I'm punting with a freewrite. Problem is, one of my classes I have for a double period in the afternoon. What shall I do about that extra period, you may ask? This is where 4 periods of prep in a day come in handy, I suppose. I'm going to bed.

4th and long.

...on my front porch, to be more specific

...for a long time

As of 2 hours ago, I have lived in Honduras for two weeks. This is very nearly the reasonable length limit of what I call the "vacation stage." While some vacations can last longer than two weeks, many are not much longer than a week or week and a half. It's my estimation that when moving to a new place, it's very easy within that "vacation stage" to convince yourself on some subconscious level that you are on nothing more than a vacation and that your return home is coming in a very timely manner. I have a feeling that within the next few days, the concrete, disillusioned realization that my return home is not coming until mid December, and then after that not until late June is going to devastate me somehow. The breathing room of the first weekend of teaching is a very viable possibility for this vacation-ending epiphany, as this morning I sat down to check e-mail and momentarily considered turning on the radio to listen to the NPR Saturday morning "cartoons" of Car Talk, Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, and This American Life. Sure, I can subscribe to the podcasts of each of these shows and listen to them at my leisure, but my leisure shouldn't have anything to do with it. These shows are for Saturday mornings. Or at least in the States, when one can listen to real NPR at will, are they for Saturday mornings. When you are not on vacation, they are for Saturday mornings.

You may be thinking that this last paragraph is a hiccup in the trajectory you've seen in my most recent posts: a trajectory of new hope, of settling, of beginning to enjoy Honduras (or at least see positive things in it) and being here. Those certainly are true. But I'll still maintain that I'd rather be at home. I'd rather not have to try to make some place home. I'm certainly still frustrated by plenty in this country and culture, and I know from speaking with veterans (seasoned or otherwise) of being down here and teaching at IST that those frustrations always stick. I'm looking forward to the end of the year and have been since before the year even began. Some part of me does believe God has a plan for me to be down here and that this is where I'm supposed to be, but many other parts are still kicking and screaming as they get dragged along.

Sure, the people I work with are a lot of fun to hang around with after school and I have no hesitation in already naming many of the other North Americans among my friends. They are great people no matter what the context. And sure, I'd have met none of them if I hadn't come down here. It's fun to laugh at things that wouldn't happen were we not in a Spanish speaking culture, such as my friend Jenny ordering chicken-flavored soda with her meal yesterday. Sure, a trip to the mall in a group of white people in Honduras is hardly any different than in the States. Well, I take that back: I can't rightly say I ever went to the mall in a group (of white people or otherwise) back in the States. But you get what I'm saying. Life with the fellow teachers really is a lot of fun.

Sure, Honduran 11th graders within the context of the classroom behave hardly any differently from average high school classes in West Michigan. You've got your overachievers, your underachievers, your students you couldn't pay to read a book, your troublemakers, your wily teacher-distracters who get you off track. Some of the grammatical struggles are different from 11th graders back home, and I more frequently have to ask students to repeat themselves because fans are a necessity (I misspelled that word on one of my presentations this week and was corrected by a student) and because they speak quietly and with varying degrees of accent. But my classes are relateable, and I've deeloped a running joke that their comparative government teacher who graduated from Hope, Mr. Manting, and I have a bona-fide feud going on. Sure, I may feel entirely overwhelmed as I look at the coming year and planning for it; making curriculum that is effective, makes sense, and interests my students; and maintaining positive relationships with all my students, in the classroom and in the hallways, but I do know these are struggles that I'd face in Holland or Grand Rapids.

I have a great amount of homework to do. It's not grading, it's reading journals. A bunch of reading. I'm actually interested in it, but it's an overwhelming amount of work to face down. On top of that, I have to still do copious amounts of planning, including what exactly I'm going to do for an hour and a half come the time students walk into my room at 7:15 Monday. There's plenty I'd like to continue sharing here, but I suppose I ought to set priorities straight. Readers, rest assured: I'd still rather be in the U.S., but it's easier to do what I ought to be doing since I am here now than it was a week ago. Maybe because back then I was still on vacation.