Day 7: May 28th

The voice of my host mom woke me up very early this morning. As I lay in my bed, I slowly rocked back and forth until Dorita opened the door, made a hand motion, and ran up the stairs. I looked at the clock not knowing what time it was. 2:30 the clock spelled out. I was so confused. Mafer told us it was an earthquake. Both Melanie and I were so confused because we really didn’t know what we should do. I laid my head back on the pillow and could still feel myself rocking back and forth. Earlier, I thought that I was just dizzy or something, but it all made sense. I was experiencing an earthquake. It was the first earthquake I had ever been it, and it really wasn’t that bad. It was just a slow rocking motion. Neither Melanie nor I got up at all because no one besides Dorita had gone upstairs. It lasted about a minute, which according to the family is a long time compared to the ten to thirty seconds they normally last. I later found out that the earthquake that we felt was part of a ripple from a 7.1 earthquake off the coast of Honduras. At this time, four people have died and some think the number could rise.

We all talked about our experiences one we got to the school. Some had felt the earthquake, while others did not even wake up. When we arrived, all of the kids were still taking tests to we waited a bit for them to finish. I actually noticed thought our class was taking the English test. They had to color an object according to the color listed, spell the color as the teacher said it, and finally fill in the verbs into the correct sentence with the assistance of a word bank. I found out from one of the teachers that all of these tests are considered standardized tests.

Melanie and I were told by the ESL teacher in the school that we would be teaching the English lessons next week. We will be teaching two lessons on Monday and no more for the rest of the week because when the teacher teaches English it is not when we are in the schools. We will be teaching a little bit about professions. The content is pretty strict. We need to teach: She is a….doctor, student, secretary, and writer for one lesson and He is a … lawyer, dentist, worker, and engineer. I thought it was kind of interesting the gender bias of the two professions. I still do not understand why we can’t teach the professions and then have the students answer He is/She is according to pictures. I just want to make sure that students understand that they can be whoever they want to be and I hope that this lesson will not limit their understanding of professions and working.

During recess time, I sat next to Bobby and a little girl that I had met, Beverly. Beverly showed me a large cut that she had on her foot. She was bleeding a little bit, but there was not a first aid kit at the school to help her cut. Bobby told me that she had got her foot caught in a motorcycle of some sort. I felt bad for this poor girl that was hurt and had no way to help aid her wounds. The school is just so impoverished. There is no toilet paper or soap for the kids. There is some in the teacher’s bathroom, but nowhere else. At recess, the kids were really crazy too. The girls and boys were chasing each other and they were pushing people out of the way to get away from the boys. It was kind of a hectic recess and as I had mentioned earlier, none of the teachers really seemed to care. No students were reprimanded for pushing people out of the way. It is just so much different from schools in the US, but I am definitely learning a lot and I still love the kids so much. It has been a wonderful learning experience in the school.

In the evening, we went to a party at one of the host family’s house to celebrate all the birthdays. We started by introducing ourselves and saying our favorite color. For those that spoke English as a first language, we had to say that line in Spanish. For those that spoke Spanish, they had to say the phrase in English. We had a great time hearing from everyone and watching everyone practice what they were going to say. We then played a game similar to bingo. We had eight spaces to draw pictures that you can find in a house. After we drew these pictures, Heidi, the host mom, pulled out words from a bag that had to do with a house. If we had that object, then we could cross it off our board. The person that had all eight of their objects crossed off won. All of the American students actually won a small bracelet. After we played bingo we played charades with a game called Mim-ik, like mimic. It was a fun game, but kind of hard at the same time because people were guessing in both Spanish and English so it was hard for the presenter to distinguish the correct guess. We finished the party by eating a food similar to enchiladas, along with tiramisu.

After having a great time at the party it was time for Dorita, Mafer, Melanie and myself to go back home, except Dorita decided to take us on a tour of the city. I must say it was probably the best car ride I have ever been on. Mafer turned on the radio and I started dancing to the songs that I knew. I love to make up small dances to songs and one of the songs we listened to was ‘Hot and Cold’ by Katy Perry. I showed them my little dance and they loved it! It was such a blast! Even Dorita was showing off some sweet moves during the trip. I was so ecstatic when my favorite song played on the radio: ‘Everything’ by Michael Buble. I sang most of the song, but there is a part where you can sing ‘La’ so I told everyone to sing along and we all did. It was so much fun! Other songs that we listened, danced, and sang to were “Boom Boom Pow,” “We’re All in this Together,” “Kissed a Girl,” “Bleeding Love,” and “One More Time.” We traveled most of the city looking at churches and statues lit up by the city lights. I think it would be great to see the churches and statues up close and actually explore the places another time, but for last night it was perfect to just watch the city pass me by.

Hasta Luego