...hitting the ground running

I've been in Honduras for...not even 60 hours, so there hasn't been much time period, but I feel already that downtime is a luxury not to be wasted. My problem is deciding what constitutes wasting. Some of my readers know how poor I am at loading pictures from my camera to my computer, and then further on to the Internet. I don't consider that time wasted, but I'm not trained for it. I'd put pictures on this post, but it's quarter of ten and I have to wake up at quarter after 5 to catch the busito an hour later. I determined posting was better than loading pictures I wouldn't end up posting anyway.

Things take time here. Fortunately, many of my fellow teachers live nearby - as the crow flies. Given that I can neither fly like a crow, nor even drive, walking is what I'll generally have to rely on. On top of this (now, I'm not complaining as a guy, since I know it's gotta be frustrating to be female and not be able to walk by oneself) it's likely going to be necessary to backtrack by escorting the ladies. Example (and again, I'm not complaining - it's a sheer fact of life and I'm happy to do it): Today Kristin and I walked to La Despensa, a grocery store, just to see where it was and what it was like. (Another caveat: we didn't particularly have this in mind; we did merely want to walk around and get our bearings.) Kristin's house is a 10-minute walk in one direction. La Despensa is 10 minutes in the other. So I walked to Kristin's, then we walked back to and past my place to La Despensa, checked it out (we didn't even buy anything), and then walked back, all the way to Kristin's, and I still had another walk ahead of me. I'm sure things will become more efficient as we still settle, but after my excursion with Kristin and then playing a game of Settlers of Catan (I knew I'd find people who enjoy it! Purchases validated!) it was time to start thinking about bed, and writing this post. Things take time, and I have to reeeaaallly work on managing it.

I haven't even talked about the real reason I'm down here - the school. We had our first day of orientation today, and I set foot inside my classroom (a good blogger would post the pictures he took of the various things he mentions here, pictures I did indeed take). Not a lot to it, with the one real exception of a SmartBoard, which I'll explain for you all some time. We had a few meetings and toured the school. I am admittedly impressed with the vistas the position of the school affords. (Again with the unhelpful, unillustrated blogging.) Perhaps some day those views will grow stale, but I in my pessimism can't even jump ahead to those days yet. There was ample time to settle into our classrooms, but I do not have much settling to do - I brought down very few "accessories" so to speak. I'm quite sure I can look for some given things down here, but again getting around is a challenge and at this point downright foolish depending on how I go about it.

I'm really hoping to get more support on my curriculum in the next few days. Of course, it's very hard to realize that many of my fellow teachers haven't even had educational training, haven't had to plan a lesson before, and things must be even more seemingly up in the air and incoherent for them right now (and almost everyone has more preps than I do). But I'm still getting hung up on the facts that my students come from a culture I have only been in for several dozen hours, that I don't have freedom to print my own stuff at my leisure, that I cannot run to Meijer and pick up some random supply I may (or may not, for that matter) end up needing, that I can't stay at school as long as I want (easily, at least) to plan in that space later as needed. Perhaps I would come up with as many perceived blockades between me and my finished curriculum even were I in the nicest of West Michigan schools, but I'm especially uncomfortable with not knowing the students' culture. As an outsider, I feel I'll have a really hard time feeling entitled to teach them, if that makes sense. I wish I could expound on that thought, but my brain just farted.

I need to find a way to create downtime, but as it stands already, I'm not sure where actual planning will come into play. I want to say so much more, but stuff just got real.

One more thing: if you are a twitterer (which I hardly am yet myself), I feel like some of my random observations and notes may be better suited to Twitter, so I cannot let myself go off on tangents without coming here. So keep an eye out at @aarone46 and some day, when I give myself the right kind of downtime, I may even figure out a module that posts my recent tweets right here! (Some folks may ask what's wrong with my facebook status updates. Well, they feel less permanent to me. And when I get a line as good as "expedited digestion," I'd like some posterity.)