Mexico!

In March, I went to visit my good friends Lindsey and Brian Young, and their kids, Emma and Liam. It was a quick trip, but perfect weather and it was good to see them again. One bit of travel advice, however. If you plan on having just one day in Mexico City, try and plan it to not be on a national holiday, or everything you want to see will be closed. The Turibus will be running, though!

In Mexico City, we got to walk around on the roof of the Metropolitan Cathedral, the one you see in every picture you've ever seen of Mexico City. The roof! Of a 500 year old Cathedral! That was awesome. I visited the school Lindsey and Brian work at in Pachuca, and took a day trip to a small town nearby called Real de Monte, which was just charming. If you visit there, though, don't go on a Tuesday, because everything you want to see will be closed.

Librathalon 2010

This Tuesday and Thursday, Brian and I did Librathalon 2010. We visited every Denver Public Library in the city. I have wanted to do this for a while, because I love public libraries and thought it would be fun to try and visit all of them in one day. Because libraries aren't all open on the same day, we broke it into two days. We drove 120 miles and it took us 7 1/2 hours. At every library, I ran in and checked out a Nancy Drew book (or movie). Why Nancy Drew? Because she is awesome. Also, there are dozens of different Nancy Drew series that have been published, and they aren't super popular, so I figured there would undoubtedly be at least one Nancy Drew on the shelf. And I could locate them easily in a library, so I wouldn't be spending too much time looking for a book in each library. There are classic Nancy Drews, Nancy Drews for young children, Nancy Drew graphic novels, a Nancy Drew movie, and many many different young adult Nancy Drew novels. I now have 21 Nancy Drew books to read!

We visited 21 libraries, 15 on the first day, and 6 on the second. I have a picture of me outside each one with the Nancy Drew book I checked out from that library, but only a few pictures could be posted here. The rest you can see on Facebook. Brian and I also made some really sweet Librathalon shirts, and here is a picture of us wearing them outside the Central Library. It was really interesting to discover libraries in parts of town I have rarely (or never) been to. Some are really cute and old, some are big and quite new. Now I'll always know where a library is, if I need one in a pinch. (could happen!)

We've started thinking about Librathalon 2011 (maybe call it Library Dash?) and we think it should be a scavenger hunt-type competition. So we need some competitors. Anyone interested?

Chicken Bus

The buses that most people here take to get from one city to another are nicknamed chicken buses (can you guess why? As many chickens ride the bus as people!) The chicken buses are old American school buses that have been refurbished to be more uncomfortable, louder, and squeeze more people in than they did when carrying children to school. A lot of the bus companies repaint their buses, too. But many just leave the old paint on, I don't know if they think it's cooler or what.

So there is this one bus that I always see that still has painted on it 'DeKalb County Central United School District No. 49' and I think it's hilarious to see that driving through Honduras. I finally got a picture of it, sitting in the bus station across from my school. Here is also a picture of other buses waiting to leave the bus station.

The Circus Comes to Town!

The circus arrived in Gracias last week! It was fun to see it arrive, because it's just like what I imagine the old-fashioned small town travelling circuses are like. The kids got all excited at school as various trucks pulled into the town soccer field and set up the tent. A bunch of teachers went to the circus one night. Here is a picture of the outside and the rinkydink inside. It was an experience, but mostly the performing was awful. There was a couple of good acts, like the girl who twirled hula hoops and the girl who twirled a burning cylinder on her feet. But mostly it was just pathetic.

We arrived on time, but the electricity went out, so the circus didn't start for 45 minutes. They had clowns, a magician, acrobats, and out back we could hear the lions roaring, getting ready for their turn. But guess what!? They never brought out the lions! The show ended without one lion or even an ostrich coming into the ring! We were all very put out, it was not that cheap of entertainment, and the announcer said, sorry, we started too late, the animals can't come out, come back another time.

Well! No fair! The best part of the circs though, which I took pictures of, risking the wrath of the guards, who had already told us we couldn't take pictures, was Zoltan helping the clown. The clown wanted to ride a tall unicycle, but said he needed help from the audience. Not surprisingly no one volunteered to help him, but we all cheered for Zoltan, our ESL teacher to go down and help him. And he was PERFECT. He is just the kind of guy that is great at that kind of thing.

He ran down to the ring and held the unicycle so the clown could climb up it. When the clown was up there, he told Zoli to let go, but as soon as he did, the announcer shouted 'cuidado!!' and the clown looked like he was about to fall, and Zoli ran back to catch him. The clown did this about 4 times, each time letting Zoli get farther away before acting like he was falling, and Zoli would run back and catch him. The final time he did it, the clown just reached down and shook his hand and let him go back to his seat. It was hilarious. Still, there's no replacing lions.

Another New Puppy

We have a new puppy at our house again. You can see this puppy is so adorable, it's like a living stuffed animal. It's really cute. The name of this puppy is still up in the air, the family is very particular about what it will be called and everyone has to agree on a name.

Science Fair

The science fair is finally over! Some highlights (and lowlights):

- All my students had arrived and were set up by 8:30. The fair started at 9, so this was quite good. We held the event at Villa de Ada, where we do all our big out-of-school events. It’s a ‘touricentro’; they have pools, hotel rooms, multipurpose rooms, various animals to look at, and a pond with a boardwalk and cabanas built out over it where you can sit and relax or eat. It’s a pleasant place.

- Diego and Julio’s group had been fighting since the first day of science fair groups. I don’t know exactly why they were so awful, they usually get along fine at school. The day of the fair was even worse, they were arguing about where on the table their materials would sit, who stood where, who got to do the experiment, on and on. Diego ran off and had a crying/pouting fit when Nicole continued to boss him around. But he was okay by the time the judges came around. When everything was over, they continued to fight over who would take the poster home. I was so glad to have that group finished.

- The judging took almost 4 hours. The judges spent way too long at each table. There were three judges and maybe 35 experiments. Thankfully, someone had the foresight to judge the primary grades tables first. 1^st, 2^nd, and 3^rd grades were in the same group, competing against each other.

- Santiago, the director’s son, fell apart while waiting for the judges to get to his table, which was the last of the primary grades. He was crumpled in a heap on the floor crying because it was taking them so long. I don’t know how, but he managed to pull it together and explain their experiment when the judges showed up.

- The director REALLY REALLY wanted Santiago’s group to win. I gave them the experiment that had won me the science fair when I was in 3^rd grade (thanks to my dad!) and Santiago is extremely smart and well spoken, so they had a good chance. However, some of the 1^st grade experiments were really interesting, and Julie helped them make beautiful posters, our posters were pretty much crap. I didn’t know if his group could win. I don’t know if it’s really because they deserved it or not, but his group won first place, and I get to keep my job. Somehow I also had the foresight to put my host brother in Santiago’s group, so I also got to come home to a happy house, not a disappointed one.

- Diego’s shoe fell into the lake. Of all my students, the one whose shoe is most likely to fall into a lake would be Diego. The lake (really a pond) was really murky and algae covered, and some guy that works at Villa de Ada was wading around in it, trying to find Diego’s shoe. I never heard if he got it back or not.

- 2^nd grade won 3^rd place, and a 1^st grade experiment won 2^nd place. This made all of us happy, because the 1^st, 2^nd, and 3^rd grade teachers are great friends and wanted each other to win, and didn’t want our student’s work to go completely unrecognized. Lindsey in particular, who teaches 2^nd, had a miserable week and we wanted her glass to win something. Science fair was stressful for all of us, they make a huge deal out of it and we really had very little idea of what was expected of us until we did something wrong. I am so relieved it’s over.

Sports Day

On Friday we had Sports Day. It was more a morning of games in the outdoors than actually sports. The whole school was divided into groups, mixing up ages, with a teacher or 9th grader in charge of each group. My group was Italy and I had a big 7th grade boy named Felipe who named co-captain and put him in charge of ordering the rest of the team into a line at each event. I also had 6th, 5th, and 4th grade girls. I really don't know any students above 4th grade, they have different schedules and are in a different part of the school. I had Diego, from my class, who Tony probably put in my group because he would drive any other teacher crazy with his total inattentivness and wandering around. Then I had a 2nd grade girl, Alexia, who was cute as could be, and a 1st grade girl, and a 1st grade boy who is even worse than Diego for wandering off. But our group was pretty good, and Felipe and the 6th grade girl helped keep them all together as we went from game to game.

We had a blindfold egg race (all games, we competed against another team), we had a dizzy race, the kind where you turn around 5 times then try to run in a straight line, tug of war, and other games of this type. Our team did pretty well, and the kids had fun. Felipe later told one of the other teachers he had fun, which is pretty high praise for a 7th grade boy stuck in a group full of little girls, playing silly games.

I have a picture here of Diego doing the egg race. Florian, one of my students but on another team, is running the dizzy race. There is our whole team doing tug of war, and my favorite was at the end, with Felipe at the very back, and Alexia and Deborah pulling hard right in front of him.

Even though I had put sunscreen on my face, I had forgotten to do my neck, and I discovered it had gotten quite burned. But I wore my new sunhat that I bought on sale at REI in December (not the most popular time for sunhat purchases) so my scalp didn't get burned, yay!

The kids had a good time, and we got back to school just before lunch. My student's first class after lunch on Fridays is gym, so they got a lot of games that day!

New Puppy!

My host family got a new puppy last night! It's really cute and even pet it and let it put it's paws on me. It is a German Sheperd, and they haven't been able to agree on a name yet. Anyone have any suggestions? Toby and Coby have been vetoed already, Thunder is a possibility. Here are some pictures, one with Jonathan holding the pup.

Hiking on Celaque

I had a very nice Saturday this week. Two of the Peace Corps Volunteers here, Bert and Kalin, invited me on a hike. We decided to hike partway up Celaque, the highest peak in Honduras, which is about a 30 minute drive from downtown Gracias.

We intended to start at 7:30 am, but it was raining pretty hard, so we hung out at their house, playing games, until 10. It had cleared up somewhat by then. We got a ride (with a couple of the medical missionaries in town this week) as far as the road up to the mountain, then we got another ride a good part of the way up that road. Getting rides from strangers (hitchhiking, if you’re gonna get technical) is very normal here, and people are usually quite happy to offer a ride, and I am usually quite happy to accept them up steep roads leading to National Parks.

We walked the rest of the road and into the park. When we got into the park we had to walk up another mile of road to get to the visitors center. We passed a couple from France walking down and had a strange Spanish/French/English conversation with them. We got to the visitors center and started on the trail proper. After about 5 minutes on that trail it was time for a snack break. (We had already hiked over a mile, remember!) We sat down in the misty drizzle and had a snack, and as we were eating, an American family came down the mountain to where we were. The dad is a veterinarian in another city here in Honduras, and his three teenage kids were with him. They were pretty silent teenagers, except the youngest one did tell us he liked pinecones.

After our snack/chat break, we continued on the trail, to discover that they have very recently put up brand new signs with maps and details about each of the 4 trails up the mountain, built a new bridge, and repaired the trail we decided to take. It was pretty impressive.

We took the short hike, because it was still raining pretty hard at times, and it was about lunchtime. We found an orange tree and helped ourselves to some extremely sour oranges. We also explored some ruins, which we think were probably 20 years old. When houses are made of mud bricks, it doesn’t take long to turn to ruins. We crossed some streams and looked at cool plants and took pictures. It was a really neat hike, because everything was wet and the mountain was foggy (it is called a cloud forest, and it really looked like it). The ground had pine needles and deciduous leaves, and everything was beautiful. We had a fun time.

The pictures are of me in the back of the truck that took us up the mountain, Kalin and Bert in the cloud forest, a coffee tree along the trail, and me being very tough in the jungle. : )

Body Spelling

Today to practice our spelling words, we did body spelling. The kids had a lot of fun spelling their words with their bodies and hands. I took some pictures while they were spelling, also you can see this weeks spelling list on the white board behind them.

Cold Season!

They told us it would get cold here, and guess what? It did! There is a cold snap going through the country right now, and during the days it's low to mid-50s here, and colder at night. I know that's not really freezing, but it's really cold for here. Also we teachers are mostly unprepared for it being that cold. I have one long sleeved shirt and 2 sweatshirts that I just pile on top of each other and wear day and night. It's especially cold for sleeping because I just have a small fleece blanket, so I wear all my warm clothes to bed. I hope none of those three long sleeved things gets too dirty, because I can't wash them until the cold snap ends, since it takes at least a full day to dry clothes, and then I wouldn't have anything to wear in the cold!

Everyone is saying it's colder than last year, but I'm not complaining. I know it will get hot again soon enough. After Thursday this cold snap is supposed to end, and then by the end of February it will be HOT. Jonathan, my host brother, got a new warm coat, and he has been wearing it around. He likes to say he is an astronaut and is going to the moon.

The cat, Wrinkles, came in to my room Saturday and jumped on the bed (where I was hiding under the covers almost all day). I was happy to have his warm body on the bed, and I stuck my feet under him while he got comfy and slept the day away on my bed. It was great.

San Ignacio

We took the bus past La Palma to a small town called San Ignacio. There was a cheap but pretty nice little family run hotel there, with a pool. We moved in, then went out to find something to eat. The town is very small, and there wasn’t much to find. We ate, then went back to the hotel. The kids swam, I watched TV. In the later evening we went out again, and again found something to eat. An early night, and in the morning we caught an early bus to the border.

The bus dropped us off near the border. We walked through a completely deserted border station. The immigration office was closed, everything was closed. We thought how strange it was, that maybe we could just walk right across the border. We almost did, too. We were past the last building in the border station when an official came up behind us and told us she needed to check our passports. She checked them, and then said we had to pay 3 dollars each. Well we kicked up a fuss because we are cheap, but she was firm about it.

She led us back to the main building, took us into the immigration office, and we had to fill out some stuff and pay up. Lindsey asked if they had an El Salvador stamp, but she said no. Lindsey kept asking and saying how she really wanted one, and eventually the lady caved and found a stamp and stamped all our passports.

We were on our way again. We got into Honduras, got a taxi to a bus, took the bus to Santa Rosa. Stopped in Santa Rosa for some groceries, got our last bus back to Gracias.

El Salvador 2009- Suchitoto

The bus ride to Las Augilares was one of my favorites. I had a comfy seat and wasn’t crowded. And in El Salvador, they have much more interesting bus food for sale, and people making elaborate sales pitches for burn cream and advil. When we got to Las Augilares, we got off the bus in a smelly, dirty, busy city and quickly went to the bus to take us to Suchitoto. That was a nice bus ride, too. We rode for about an hour through pleasant countryside, and the bus was quite empty.

Suchitoto
The first thing we had to do in Suchitoto was find a hotel. We went to all the places in the guidebook, only to find they were WAY overpriced. If there is one drawback to traveling in El Salvador, it is that they overcharge for hotels, everywhere. At the last hotel we tried, the 2nd and 3rd friendliest men in El Salvador called 3 or 4 other hotels in the area and asked about room availability and prices for us. We finally found one called Posada del Sol that sounded decent. When we got there, we liked the rooms, and managed to talk them down to a price that was only a bit too expensive instead of ridiculously expensive. We had cable TV, which we wanted so we could watch the elections in Honduras. They had great cable TV, including our Denver NBC affiliate station. So I also got to hear the local news and weather report for Denver. It was cool. The hotel had two pools, which made the kids happy. It was a cute hotel, but we were again the only people in the hotel, and it was really also a family’s house. So the lobby of the hotel was clearly their living room. But it was fine.

We went out to the main square to look around. It was a very pleasant square, with a nice fountain, trees, and benches. We looked around the small handicraft market on one side of the square, and spent quite a bit of time in the church, which was clearly very old. It was also very big. This church was a classic Spanish cathedral, with large columns, and statues lining the outside aisles. We got dinner in a little café on the main square, which was very nice, being able to sit outside and watch people going past and having dinner.

Back to the hotel after dinner, the kids played in the pool, and I relaxed by the pool.

On Saturday, we got up fairly early and went back to the square. We ate at a different café, that served bagels! Then we wandered around the town some more. We went and looked around the Teatro, where they were preparing for a play that night, but we walked around the small art gallery outside the auditorium. It was a really elegant building inside, nothing you would expect in a small town in El Salvador. We also saw the city park, which had lots of trees and places to sit. We decided to walk down to the waterfall that was in our guidebook. First we stopped by the cultural center and had a look around, but it was severely lacking in charm or anything interesting. We started down a dirt road toward the waterfalls, which a friendly woman had said was 15 minutes away walking.

We ran into a tourist police, which is a special arm of the police specifically to help tourists. We chatted with him for a while, he told us all the places in the states where he had relatives, and said the waterfall wasn’t too far to walk. Really we didn’t have much choice, because there were no moto-taxis or anything in the town. We kept walking. After walking for about 20 minutes we were getting grumbly and hot. We kept walking. Finally a truck pulled over and we asked the guy how much farther it was. He was very friendly and said we were almost there, but offered us a ride. We accepted, and in another 2 minutes we were really there. We first walked to the scenic overlook, which was shaded and pretty and looked out over the lake, and it was a very beautiful view. Then we hiked down to the actual waterfall. This was a bit of a stressful hike for Lindsey, because there was no real trail, just jagged rocks sticking out everywhere, so very dangerous to take the kids down it, but we managed. The rocks that form this waterfall, and all around that area are in hexagonal shapes. It is natural, but it looks man-made. It was really remarkable.

After we hiked back up we decided, it is too hot and too far and all uphill. We will sit here and wait for a ride back up. We waited a long time, and one completely empty truck went by, and even though we waved and thought the children looked pretty pathetic, he didn’t stop. But finally a cable repair truck stopped and picked us up and gave us a ride back up the hill. It was the best ride ever.

Back in the town, we had lunch at our hotel, and then rested. The kids went swimming, I took a nap. In the afternoon, we went back out, and happened on another parade, this one much smaller than the one in La Palma. It just happened that this weekend Suchitoto was celebrating their founding day or something, and that night was going to be the crowning of the new Miss Suchitoto, including entertainment and a free play at the Teatro. There was a military marching band stationed in the square, and we sat and listened to them play ‘My Way’ and ‘Let it Be’. Then Lindsey asked a tourist police about a restaurant we had heard about that had art made out of civil war artifacts. The very friendly tourist police man offered to drive us there in the police van. Well, alright!

We went a little ways out of town to see this restaurant, which was neat, and had some interesting artifacts, but actually no art made out of artifacts. Lindsey bought her kids a coke, and the police got a coffee and a juice, and we sat around and asked them questions about the war. We are pretty sure the police that drove was on the side of the rebels, and the other police was on the side of the national army, but now they are friends. When we finished our drinks they drove us back to town, and we ate dinner at one of the sidewalk cafes and watched the preparations in the square for the crowning. A local astronomy group had two telescopes set up to look at the moon, and people lined up to look through. Someone was juggling fire, and there was a bit of a colored light show being projected onto the church. It was great stuff.

When we were done with dinner it was still over an hour before the show was supposed to start, so we went over to the teatro to see if the play was on. It was packed! Lindsey and Brian picked their kids up and let them watch for a few minutes from the back. They said it looked very professional, good costumes and sound and lighting. We went back to the square, but the kids were very tired, so we went back to the hotel before the crowning started.

On Sunday morning, we got up and went out for breakfast. We ate a place that had pancakes on the menu, but when we ordered four orders of pancakes they said they were out, so we said, well that’s too bad, guess we’ll have to leave. Then they found pancake mix and made us pancakes. We decided to go back to the hotel and pack up, but on our walk back, we happened upon a bus going down to the lake, 30 cents a person. We thought, sure, why not, let’s go down to the lake. The ride down was pretty nice, on a nice paved road lined with trees. When we got to the bottom, we found ourselves at a tourist center that we had to pay 50 cents to enter. So we paid. Inside the tourist center was a huge restaurant, 3 artisan carts, and a small playground. There was a lawn leading up to the lake, where guys in boats tried to sell us a ride out to the islands, but we declined. The kids played on the playground, and then we left. It was an entirely underwhelming tourist center.

We caught the bus again, and thought we were headed back up the hill, but we were wrong. We drove down a little bit farther and picked up a campesino and his dog. The dog looked us, and we looked at the dog, and the bus started to back up. The bus backed down a bumpy hill for a long, long time. Finally, after about 10 minutes, it stopped and let a woman off. Then it drove forward up the hill and drove us back to the city center. We got off a couple stops after the dog.

Then we headed back to our hotel and packed up. We caught the bus back to Las Augilares, where we waited in the heat and exhaust fumes, for the bus back to La Palma. Both bus rides were uneventful.

El Salvador 2009- La Palma

On the Thanksgiving holiday, I went to El Salvador with Lindsey and Brian Young, and their kids, Emma and Liam. Our first stop was La Palma, just over the border from Honduras.

La Palma was a lovely little town. Once we got settled in our hotel, we went out to check out the town. All over the town are murals and paintings. On all the buildings, in the park, on lamp posts, walls, everywhere. Fernando Llort, who is probably Central America’s most famous and influential artist, lived here. He invented a particularly colorful style of folk art, and then opened a workshop to teach the people how to do it. Today everything in town is in his honor, even though he now lives in San Salvador. We walked around looking at the wall art, and went to an artisan market, which had all kinds of neat things for sale. We also went through the Central Park. The park had mosaics on its benches and areas of the ground, and it had other artwork throughout. The mosaic benches really reminded me of Park Guell in Barcelona, designed by Antonio Gaudi. It was a great little park. We went to the Fernando Llort museum, which had one room and about 6 pieces of art, but had lots of information about him and what he did.

That afternoon, wandering around, we happened upon a parade. It was a parade for children, really. There was a great little band marching at the front. There was a mime, people walking on stilts, jugglers, and people in costumes. There was a kids’ band, made up of kids with toy instruments. At the very end was an ambulance. It was great to sit and watch a parade go by! It turns out that weekend they were celebrating the anniversary of the signing of the Children’s Declaration of Rights.

When it was dinner time, we went back to the Hotel La Palma, where we weren’t staying, and checked out their menu, but decided it was a little expensive and didn’t have anything the kids would like to eat. There was a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant across the street from our hotel, so we went there. It was amazing! They served us enormous burritos and quesadillas, that were cheap and so delicious. We talked about that restaurant for the rest of our trip.

The next day, Friday, we found a café for breakfast, and visited the church, which was the first place that guerrillas and the government met for peace talks during the civil war. It was a quite modern church, but very pretty. We visited the tourist office, where friendliest man in El Salvador gave us bus information and called hotels for us. Then we went back to the art market to look around some more. We had lunch at our favorite hole-in-the-wall, and then got on a bus for Las Aguilares, where we were going to change buses and head to Suchitoto.