Learning Tour

So I've been busy having fun again. Two weeks ago we had an MCC Learning tour visit Honduras. They were in the country for about 10 days, and had people representing Kansas and Texas. I got to catch up with a good friend from college, Caley Ortman who was the group leader. I was able to travel with the group to Ceiba which is a north coast city. We spent a couple days in Ceiba which included a presentation on the history of Mennonites in Honduras, stubed our toes playing frisbee (ok, maybe just me), and getting to hear from some local organizations that are working in Ceiba. One of the days was spent visiting a community that is located right up against the city's dump. It's amazing to be comfortable living in a poorer community for the last 8 months, and then to still be shocked by poverty living situations. We were shown around this community by a guy who had lived and worked in this community. He was able to point out challenges and signs of hope he saw in the community.

The last day in Ceiba was spent at a wild life reserve named Cuero Y Salado. We took a guided boat tour up a river to see birds, monkeys, Mangrove trees, bats, crocodiles, and a possible manatee sighting. After, we took a quick swim in the Caribbean and brought out the frisbee once more before heading back to San Pedro. The following day the group came out to 6 de Mayo and I got to show them where I work and explain what I do. We had a piñata for almost 100 hyper kids, It was out of control.  Picutres

I've got my final round of classes going, which will keep me busy up until I leave Honduras. The classes are going well and having lots of repeat students is helpful. Speaking of, I should probably get some lesson planning done before my classes tomorrow... Also, looking forward to a team retreat coming up later this week in the Tegucigalpa area.



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Clausura

This year has not been all fun and games, but you might not get that impression from this post.

I just recently wrapped up the second round of computer classes. So it was time again for a graduation party for my students. Last Friday afternoon I had 13 students graduate and celebrated with a short program and cake. There has to be cake. Most of the kids signed up again for the next level of classes. One kid’s father joked that I should just stay and get my girlfriend to move down here. I posted some pictures of the event.

Then on Saturday I got to check something off my list of things to do in Honduras. I was invited to go to a professional soccer game. A rivalry game no less, between Marathon from San Pedro Sula and Motagua from Tegucigalpa. It was awesome to be in a stadium full of people who are really into the game, something I hadn’t experienced in the States before. We sat next to the Marathon section that was constantly singing team songs, chanting, or just making noise. Unfortunately Marathon lost. Hope to get a chance to go again.

This week I will be registering students for my final trimester. Plus working on the seemingly never ending list of computer problems to solve.


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Semana Santa

I got to play tour guide for my family who just left to return to California. Mom and Dad brought Tyler down to Honduras for a week. We fit a lot of things into a week so I'll share some of the highlights.

For people who are interested in a map of where we traveled, I'll put one here.

Their plane came in after dark on Saturday March 31. The airport was packed with people picking up visitors who were arriving for the Holly Week break. The next morning we went to pick up the rental car that Dad reserved for the week. The first challenge was to navigate San Pedro since I mostly just know bus routes. But we made it out to my house and introduced my Honduras family to my American family. I showed my parents where I teach, go to church, play soccer, the important stuff. Then mid-afternoon we headed out for Tela.

Tela is a town on the north coast.We stayed in a tall hotel on a hill with an awesome view of the town and ocean. We spent 2 full days at the coast. The first day we explored the town and found a good spot along the beach to throw a Frisbee, jump in the warm Caribbean water, and drink some coconut. The second day we went on an adventure and took a tour of Punta Sal. Punta Sal is a peninsula of protected land and about  45 min by boat from Tela. On this trip we got soaked, hiked, saw monkeys, tried to avoid poisonous spiders, swam through a tunnel that connects 2 bays, snorkeled, and ate a traditional lunch. Intense day and was exhausting but a lot of fun. Then that night an unseasonal storm passed through (we're in the dry season) and cooled and reduced the humidity in the air. Which made our last morning at the coast very pleasant to be outside.

Our next destination was a small town called San Jose. This small town is where my host parents grew up. It's back in some gorgeous mountains, surrounded by corn and sugar cane farms. Sugar cane is ripe this time of year but we didn't get to see cane being processed since everyone was on Easter vacation. We only got to spend a short afternoon in San Jose but it was cool to show the family around.

The last day we went to a city called Comayagua where they have a popular Good Friday tradition. Different groups paint sections of the street with colored sawdust to make what they call carpets. My understanding is that they start making the carpets around midnight of Good Friday and try to finish them before the mid-morning processional walks over them. This is a tradition that is done in various cities in Honduras but the carpets in Comayagua seem to be the most famous.We arrived early enough to see some groups putting on the final touches, some finished and being misted with water (help preserve them), and some that possibly would not be completed before the parade came by. It's a very colorful tradition that attracts a lot of tourists. Some people put a lot of work into a piece of art that has a life expectancy of only several hours.

It was a really fun and exciting week. It was interesting to watch my Dad's driving become more and more Honduran as the week went on. We lost a camera during the trip but I have a few general vacation pictures.

Also I have found out that I'll be getting back into Reedley on the 24th of July. Feels so close yet there is a lot to do between now and then.

Thanks for reading.

Father's Day Gift

I received my first Father’s Day gift this last week.

Before people infer too much I should make it clear that I’m NOT saying that I’m a father. “Dia de Padre” passed by about a week ago, I don’t know if it is the same day as in the States. (If it was, happy Father’s Day Dad) The week before the day, the ladies of the church made tacos as a fundraiser to fund a Father’s Day meal. So I was a little confused when the day came and passed without any acknowledgement, but then it wouldn’t be the first thing that I didn’t understand. A week later I came back from teaching and there is a bunch of food in the kitchen. The celebration had been postponed and was tonight apparently. I went to my room to read or something and soon I was told that diner was ready. I ate by my self since only my host mom was home and she seemed busy. She told me about how busy she had been getting ready for the celebration.

Judging by the fact that I was just fed, I assumed that the meal was a Fathers only party but I asked to be sure. When she confirmed that it was, I stopped worrying about changing out of my falling apart athletic shorts that are not presentable. I offered to help carry the food over to the church since the party was supposed to have started by now. I was assigned the 5 gal juice container and I make it all of 3 steps out the gate before another youth helps me despite my protest. He took the container from me and since I now was carrying nothing, I turned to go back to the house as the gate is being locked by my host mom. “Vámonos Miguel” she insists making a head nod that says I’m to come along. So I find myself at a Fathers only party.

Since we were only 30 min late, we arrived before most. It wasn’t awkward at first when people were gathering since people either know me or are interested to talk to me, but I felt underdressed. Then the celebration officially started with some of the women, who put it together, saying some kind words. Then they passed out some gifts that they had gotten for the men. This is when I started to feel a little uncomfortable, hoping that they wouldn’t give me a gift to avoid hurting my feelings. They skipped over me while passing out the gifts and I breathed a sigh of relief. I decided to slip out to avoid more of what I just went through. But as I stood up to leave, wishing the Fathers a good time, I was told to sit down by Jose (friend who lives next door). I said that I had things I could be doing and he just kept saying “No Miguel.” So I sat down, partly to avoid a scene but mainly because I now felt invited.

I passed on the giant plate of food, explaining that I just ate but still got funny looks. They made sure that I took a piece of cake though. I thought the party was kind of interesting because it mainly consisted of being served a meal. And I thought it was funny that this is probably how meals are the rest of the 364 days of the year. It is rare to see men in the kitchen. As the party was winding down the pastor disappeared and then returned with an MCC humanitarian aid box. From inside he pulled newspaper-wrapped objects and set them in front of the guys, and I got that uncomfortable feeling again. As he passed he set one in front of me. I have been lectured by a Honduran about the rudeness of not accepting things, and the context of that talk was denying a bag of chips. So I didn’t make any attempt to try to explain that I’m not a father. I made sure to thank him, and now I have a sweet coffee mug to remember the whole experience.

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Birthday

So yesterday was 23 years since I was born, or found in my crash landed space ship, or however it happened. It was a good and relaxing day.  I got lots of birthday wishes from both people back home and people around here. I was surprised how many people around here knew it was my birthday considering how few people I told.

My host family had a little celebration for me in the evening. They made a tres leches cake and from my experience with birthdays in my host family, I had a hunch that I'd end up wearing some of it. The tradition in my host family is that the cake you get for your birthday is yours. You have complete control over it including if, and how much you want to share. Therefore cutting the cake is a job only for the birthday person as they decide how greedy or generous to be. So after dinner my host mom pulled out the cake and they sang the first few lines of the birthday song in English. Only the lyrics were pronounced “Happy baby to you…” which put the biggest smile on my face. I then was instructed to cut the cake at which point the picture taking started going nuts. And before I knew it, I had cake smeared on my face as I had predicted.
It was a fun evening and delicious cake. For those of you who weren’t able to make it to Honduras to come celebrate I’ll post some pictures of the evening.

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Where did the time go?

To bring you up to speed with what's been going on with me. I just started teaching again about two weeks ago. I've noticed a significant difference from this round of classes compared to the last. Most significantly is being able to communicate with students starting on the first day. Everyday I am reminded how little Spanish vocabulary I seem to know, and how much work it takes to improve. Yet also everyday I am reminded how much Spanish I have learned, and that I am able to interact and converse, most evident in the ability to answer student's questions. I also set my class sizes more intentionally this time, I enrolled kids in smaller groups. Something I learned from was that my teaching style is much more effective in a small group setting than trying to control larger classes, a fact that probably doesn't surprise people who know me. But in order to have smaller class sizes I decided I needed to offer more class periods. So I now have 7 hour long classes that I teach Monday, Wednesday, Fridays which has felt like the teaching equivalent to a marathon.

I feel that I continually get more accustom to the culture. I've noticed some gradual shifts in my perceptions and notice that I understand things I previously chalked up to mystery. A simple example is in the culture of the rapidito (my main form or transport, What is a rapidito?). I'd never encountered a form of transportation like the rapidito before, and I especially didn't understand them for a long time. They seemed to try to persuade the whole world to get in their vehicle without regard to how many people were in already. Then at some point, money is collected and then you shout the name of your stop as you approach (some stops near my house are Spanish translations of cockroach, donkey, clinic, deposit). After six months of using public transportation I have figured out that the rapiditos do have a passenger limit, and can tell how many more passengers they are looking to pick up before the focus shifts from picking people up, to quickly getting to the destination. I also sometimes now play a game where I try to guess, within a city block, when I am going to be asked for my money. Also since I'm a computer science guy, I sometimes think about what it would take to create a successful GPS service here since the majority of directions I give and get are relational to landmarks. No breakthroughs yet.

Honduras has had some headlines in the news in recent months. Most recently there were two big fires that occurred within the same week. Often the stuff that makes the news is the negative. Honduras has its problems going on but it's important to recognize that there is also good happening too. Even small stuff like getting offered an orange from a student's mother after her son's lesson, or bigger things like the children's clinic that is opening just down the street. It is easier for me to remember that acts of kindness exist here since I see them daily, but it's a privilege that most people who read this blog don't have.

Some other things that are going on:
The Proyecto MAMA English classes are changing their computers because they were slowly dying. So I recently inherited some of these computers to try to revive (better computers than the computers that I currently have). So now I am starting to review these computers and clean them of all the junk programs or viruses that have been installed. Plus I need to set them up in Spanish because my students don't normally know English. This will keep me busy in between my marathon teaching days.

And now I have officially been in the country for 6 months already.

Thanks for reading

A New Year

So it´s been a while again… and this time it looks like I’ve written the better part of a book. There has been a lot of stuff that has happened since I wrote last. I tried to break the entry up into sections so that you could read the sections that interest you, or get a snack half way through or something. There is much more that happened then what I had time to put into words, feel free to shoot me an email if you want to know more.

Pictures from Vacation

Christmas

I spent Christmas with my host family in a town called San Jose, where both my host parents grew up. I am glad to have experienced Honduran Christmas but I can’t say that it will be difficult to go back to Christmas I grew up with. I don’t claim that my experiences are pan-Honduras Christmas traditions, but I have heard similar stories from others. Firstly Hondurans will say that they celebrate on the evening of the 24^th, I fell for that. They really mean midnight or 1 a.m. which then is really the 25^th.

The 24^th started early when my host family and I loaded the truck at five in the morning for a two hour drive to San Jose. The 24^th seemed to be a full day of cooking, thus the reason for leaving super early. Traditional Christmas foods my family made were: tamales, bread, and leg of lamb. I spent most of the day with my host brother, Christian, visiting relatives and of course every place you go gives you a little something to eat. I don’t think I actually ate a meal all day.  The “evening” of the 24^th celebration consisted of the kids setting off fire works in the street followed by a secret Santa gift exchange at midnight with my host Mom’s family. And since we’re on Honduras time, we didn’t get started before 12:30 a.m. So everyone was tired yet excited, plus everyone wanted to joke around making it impossible for anyone to give secret Santa instructions. When the exchange finally ended we had coffee and sweet bread before going home at two in the morning. It was a long day.

The 25^th was really relaxed with no plans and lots of leftover food. I took advantage of being in a really safe small town and went for a run in the mountains, something I miss being able to do. The traditions here feel different so much that I forgot it was Christmas a couple of times, each time asking myself, “How do you forget it’s Christmas?” It was interesting to participate in different traditions and to think that these traditions mean as much to people here as my traditions back home mean to me.

Roatan

I was lucky to have my girlfriend, Liz, able to come visit during my SALT term. She arrived the evening of the 1^st, and the following morning we left to go check out Roatan. Roatan is the biggest of the islands off the north coast of Honduras and is famous for its large coral reefs, white sandy beaches, and blue waters. We took a 2 hour ferry ride from the main land to the island. We arrived on the tail end of a storm so the ferry ride out was kind of rough, and the water was stirred up for the first day or so. The weather and water cleared up in time with gorgeous days at the end of our time on the island. Roatan has amazing diving and snorkeling. Unfortunately the cost of diving would stretch a MCC stipend a little too thin and because of the weather early on limited our chances of snorkeling. I went through culture shock a little upon arriving because we were still in Honduras, but the island culture is different and has a lot of American influence because of tourism. I found myself unsure of what language to speak because my instinct right now is to speak Spanish unless I know the person speaks English, and most people there will first engage in English unless they know I speak Spanish.

We had a great time and relaxing time on the island, I had wanted to go ever since our family came in ‘05. The town where we stayed, called the West End, has a main road that travels about a half mile along the beach with lots of diving companies, souvenir shops, and restaurants. We tried a few of the restaurants plus we found a place that sells fresh fish and were able to do some cooking. Shrimp curry happened a couple of times. More than once we found ourselves on the deck of a restaurant watching a Cruz ship slide silently by in the near distance.

One of the mornings we took some kayaks out to explore the bay.  We raced around, gliding over clear blue water and live coral that was sometimes as close as a foot or so from the surface. The waves that hit the bay would break at the entrance of the bay because of the coral, which made the water calm inside the bay. Liz found out that you could kayak surf and ride the waves that were breaking at the entrance of the bay. This was fun until a wave caught her kayak at the right angle to roll her out and carry the kayak away, leaving here stranded in a patch of shallow coral. Luckily I was able to retrieve the kayak and she could use her oar to push away from the coral to avoid bad injuries. But the scrapes she did get made the idea of being in salt water much less appealing.

Guatemala

When Liz booked a ticket to come down, we knew that I had a MCC retreat scheduled for one of the weeks she would be here. It was a weird situation, me going to Guatemala while she was in Honduras visiting me. But it was the only time a visit would work, so we made the most of it. Liz spent a week in Copan while I met up with MCCers from all of the Central American countries in Guatemala. It was cool to catch up with SALTers whom I haven’t seen since orientation as well as meet other longer term team members. The location of the retreat was on a lake call Atitlan, which is a gorgeous lake surrounded by towering volcanoes. It was interesting to make comparisons between Honduras and Guatemala. I at one point had the naïve notion that all of Central America was practically the same. I’m still amazed by how blatantly wrong I was.

After Guatemala

After returning to Honduras I had a week left with Liz to give her a tour of my SALT life. We went to visit the Stephens (MCC family just outside of San Pedro). We went to see a waterfall, sailing on the lake, and ate fresh coconut. Then went back to San Pedro to visit my host family and see where I live and work. My host mom (Consuelo) taught us how to make flour tortillas, which was hilarious. Consuelo can make perfectly round ones in half the time it took us to make shapes like footballs or Swiss cheese. Then for diner, Consuelo served Liz’s tortillas to me and my attempts to Liz. It was a fun night and I was able to translate which takes a lot of energy, but kind of fun.

Now the vacation is over and I’m back to work. I’m registering students for my next round of classes which start next week. It’s a little tough to switch back into work mode, I was getting used to vacation, travel, and visitors.

On a more somber note, my grandma (Erna Graber from South Dakota) passed away this month. I was not able to go home to attend the funeral. It was hard not to be able to go, but I’m really lucky to have support of the MCC team. It has helped a lot.

Thank you for reading