Finding the Good in the Bad

Hola a Todos, I hope this blog finds you well and you are ready for an update because I got a lot for you. So where are we here? This is the Catholic university´s campus that the junior high, where I teach at, IBSC, shares with the university. This is father´s day, a Saturday, and what a nice day to have it on too. Now, not always, but occasionally the power will be shut off on Saturdays, I think this happens so they can work on the power system. Normally it comes back on by 4:00. This happened to be one of those Saturdays.

Although we were taking a chance of having a school function without power we figured we would start in the late afternoon and then the power would come back so that we could show our father's day powerpoint presentations, play music, etc. Here are the families in the school cafeteria while we were getting started with welcoming, prayers, etc.

Well, 5:00 rolled around and the power was still not back so here are three fathers playing an improvised game that Johana (back right) came up with to buy time.

I hope this doesn´t seem like a let down but those are all the photos I have of that because the power didn´t come back until the next day and it was too dark to take any more. How does this fit in with the title (finding the good in the bad)??? Well, we learned that you can still have a successful school celebration (relatively speaking) without power. All you need, as Johana demonstrated to us, is a little creativity and confidence that things can be fun even without powerpoints, music and lights. It was interesting having to eat dinner with only the light of our cellphones though.

Allow me to further explain the reason for my blog's title.

Notice exhibit B: Meet Peggy McQuaid, Santa Clara Escolar directora. Her birthday was on a recent past Tuesday, so on the Saturday before, our director, Carlos, and her were running around doing errands. She was told one of the errands she had to do was to come along to look at the plumbing in Carrie and Anne´s house. Then she would have to attend a dinner with week-long volunteer group, who she really didn't know. She later said she really didn´t want to go to a dinner like that. Unknown to her we volunteers were gathered at Anne and Carrie's house for her surprise party. So, less than thrilled, she followed Carlos along on the plumbing errand, to find a us waiting to have a dance and dinner party with her.

Here's Peggy finding a good suprise in what she thought was going to be a bad night.

Here's Jeff, finding the good (that gringos can have fun), amongst the bad (that gringos can't dance).

Exhibit C: Here is a picture taken from the stands of the San Francisco de la Paz´s soccer stands, where Mario, three other volunteers and I were watching Mario´s brother play in the municipality championship game.

Here are the other teams fans getting rowdy in the upper seats. The started getting crazy and spraying water all over everyone, but instead of seeing this as a bad thing, we just had to realize that we were in Honduras, meaning it was 90 degrees out and a little water felt great.

Now this in all seriousness was a catastrophe. However, at IBSC we were able to get some good out of it. It just so happens a Japanese program called JICA, an equivalent to USA's Peace Corps, has volunteers in Honduras. Two of these volunteers, Iku and Makiko, have been giving presentations on hygene to schools in Juticalpa. By chance they came to IBSC, shortly after the earthquake and tsunami hit in Japan. As they were scheduling a time for a presentation with our science teacher I happened to be in the same room and, luck would have it, that week I wanted to dedicate my geography class to the Japanese earthquake and tsunami tragedy. After, and I think this is really cool, a short converstation that had to be carried out in Spanish, since I don´t speak Japanese and they don´t speak English, they agreed to come in for my geography class as guest speakers.

I forgot to take picture of the class, but it went really well. The students were asking questions and Iku and Makiko were telling their stories of trying to contact their families shortly after the earthquake and tsunami, which luckily were ok. It was a really cool cultural exchange and I think it opened our students minds a little bit more.

We found the good in the bad.

Exhibit D:

You might be familiar with tradition of "Moustache March." Yeah, there really isn't any good to be found in that.

What are you looking at?

The girls wanted to get in on the fun too.

Ok and last but not least. If you are or were a teacher then you might know that the months between Christmas break and Easter break can be a time of doldrums. There aren't many vacations and generally the weather is rainy (or snowy depending where you live). By the time Easter break comes around, students and teachers alike are ready for break! Well, since Easter comes so late this year, this time period was especially long for us. To help combat insanity we volunteers had planned on going on a three day weekend canoeing trip in a remote part of Honduras that none of us had ever been to before. We were stoked!

However, the Tuesday before three day weekend, we teachers had a meeting with OAF's jefe's, Carlos, Padre and Francisco (director of human resources). They were concerned about IBSC's numerous discipline reports and the number of students failing. Although it was an intense meeting it was definitely warranted and so I was glad it happened. What we were not happy about though, was that Padre ordered a parent/teaching meeting that Friday so that we could explain the concerns the school had about the students and the changes we were going to be implementing the next quarter: leveled class being one of them. With the meeting happening on Friday, we were not going to be able to go on canoe trip. We were devasted.

Maybe it was divine intervention or maybe just luck, but that same week, one of the parents of an 8th grader at IBSC who is an administrator at the Catholic Unversity next door, asked us if we would like accompany them on their quarterly retreats the following weekend, all expenses paid. The retreat was to be held in the southern part of Honduras, in Choluteca, on the Pacific coast and one of the days we would be visiting the island of Amapala, an island national park.

Well, the rest is history. Here's what we saw.

There was a zoo attached to a restaurant that we stopped at on the way down. Ocelot.

I don't know whose more curious here.

mountain lions

here's the retreat center, which seemed to be a converted high school

this is how you can get creative with old car tires

Friday consisted of singing, clapping and praying

talks with the sisters who run the retreat center

and a mass with priest whose hobby is guitar. he played some songs for us after the mass. they were so good we asked if we could some of his music. Luckily, he had made CD's and brought some by the next day to sale. All the singing, praying, talks and mass was good, but by the end of Friday, we were prayed out. Gracias a Dios (thanks be to God) Saturday was reserved for a day of fun in the sun.

Here I am in front of the Amapala before we left the boat dock.

Here's our group getting ready to take off.

Some of the richest people in Honduras live on the Pacific coast.

Here's the IBSC teacher crew

This is Playa Grande. If you look in the distance you may notice a yellow inflatable banana behind a blue motorboat. Yes, we definitely rode it!

Carlos giving us the thumbs up... cheque!

Miss Johana Ochoa doing here thing.

There was a water-filled cave that supposedly had treasure to be found in it....although the only thing people found was bat poop.

Happy in Honduras

After running around on the islands all day, we headed back to the mainland to San Lorenzo where there was a Feria Gastronomica (Food Fair) going on.

I liked San Lorenzo's church.

So we headed to a hip beachside restaurant...

ordered some pescado relleno con camarones fished stuffed with shrimp....

danced...

and enjoyed the fireworks.

We definitely found the good in the bad here.

Alright, well, I know I haven't written in a while but hopefully this blog makes up for something. I do have some bad news though. My camera got stolen today and so making future blogs might be difficult. Who knows, though, maybe there is some good to be found here...for example, the poor thief probably has never had enough money to own any good pieces of technological equipment such as my camera. Maybe, upon playing with it, he will discover in himself an incredible intelligence for technology and go on to invent something unbelieveable.... or not.

Hasta la proxima.