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.