I have been enjoying settling into my new home for the next year! I arrived in Honduras on Saturday, July 10th. I was picked up at the airport and brought to the town of Cofradía. There I was taken to the house of my host family. I will be living with them for the next three weeks and afterward I will move into a house or apartments with the other volunteer teachers.
My host family is very hospitable and welcoming. I am living in a family compound. Basically there are three houses that are all on one piece of land where this woman named Doña Alejandrina lives with her six children. Many of these children are married and have children of their own. It has taken me several days and asking lots of questions to figure out who goes with who and who lives where, but I think I have a pretty good grasp on it. One of Doña Alejandrina’s children has a daughter named Nicole that is going to be one of my 6th grade students. It has been fun to get to know her and very encouraging as she knows A LOT of English. Yesterday when we were talking she used the word ‘astounded’ in her sentence. I was highly impressed that a second language learner at her age would have the vocabulary to use the word ‘astounded’. Her cousin Angie also lives in the compound and is going to be a third grade student at SJBS (I will use this abbreviation a lot. It is the name of the school-San Jeronimo Bilingual School). Needless to say they are both very happy to talk to me in English and we have played many games of UNO and Go Fish. Nicole also has an 8 month old little brother named Joelito. It is fun to have a baby in the house, minus the joys that come with cloth diapers : ( I have my own room off the back of the house with a nice bed, a few shelves, and most importantly a fan : ) It is HOT here. I have been sweating more than I think I have ever sweat in my life. That includes my track and volleyball days.
The other volunteers are all really nice and interesting and have quite a wide variety of interests, backgrounds, and specialties. I think that will make for a really great year. So far we have been going to the school everyday where we have been receiving Spanish classes and teacher training. Despite the fact that most of what we are learning in teacher training is not new information for me it is a good refresher course on some great key things to remember when working with second language learners. The school is about a 20 minute walk from the center of town. It is located a bit outside of the center of town. I walk down a paved road until I come to the cigar factory(recently closed causing many in town to lose their jobs), make a right on to a rocky, dusty, unpaved road. There is a pineapple juice on the left side of the road and a chicken farm on the right. All along the road there are TONS of butterflies of all different colors that enjoy the benefits of the pineapple factory. At the end of the road is a gate with an armed guard, cross another street, and you are at the gate of the SJBS compound watched by another armed guard.
Some of my favorite things so far:
-The town is surrounded by mountains—absolutely gorgeous
-The sound of the rain on the tin roofs—its rainy season and it rains every evening
-fresh mangos and avocados : )
-The smiles on many of the students faces as they see you in town and ask what grade you are going to teach, hoping you will say the grade they are entering into
-cold showers-surprisingly, they have been pleasantly refreshing so far
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