I hope this blog finds you well. Como siempre (like always) it has been too long since I last wrote, but at least I'm getting to it now. You may have concluded from the title that my second year is coming to a close down here. That being the situation I have a lot on my mind: future plans for myself, the future of these students and this organization, leaving friends...changes. As of now I see myself on the 90/10 plan. 90% I am coming home on June 28 and 10% staying. I can't wait to see family and friends (you!) after all this time as well as live in the States again. There are foods I want to eat, places I want to see, and things I want to do again that I haven't been able to since I got down here. Also, I feel like I am ready to move on to the next chapter of my life. As of now, my most likely future seems to be returning to Santa Rosa for a few months and then hopefully moving back to San Luis Obispo to teach high school math and live with my old college roommate and good friend Michael Brew.
However, 10% still wants to stay. It is hard to leave the students, even though often times they seen to be the bane of my days. I love working with the people of OAF, the fellow volunteers and living with Mario. Also, I worry about the future here. As of now there is no one to take my place next year, as the junior high math teacher. Furthermore, looking at how much help is needed as the foundation grows makes one question how it will get done. Like always though, things seem to work out. Finally, I find myself wondering about the future of Olancho and Honduras in general...
One day, I took this photo from in front of my house. It is a little girl poking a stick in burning garbage on the side of the freeway. It made me sad and made me think about the poor state this country is in. After going to Mexico to the immigrant shelter I realized that even though I am living comfortably down here there are many people that are not. People are leaving by the thousands to go to the States where they hope for a better life. Also, lately, the violence here has gotten bad. The killing between people involved in drugs is very visible: hearing gun shots, seeing killings on the news, hearing about a friend of a friend being killed, being informed that a family member of one of our students was shot, or even the casual acquaintance suddenly having a funeral. Recently a Japanese volunteer organization, JICA, pulled their volunteers out of Olancho. Also, Peace Corps, pulled their volunteers out of the next town and don't plan on sending any more volunteers to Juticalpa after the current ones finish their time here. This is what I hear anyway. All of this makes me sad and makes me wonder about the future. Will OAF continue? Will Santa Clara have to shut down if volunteers can't keep coming? Just to keep things in perspective, I rarely feel unsafe down here and I have confidence that OAF would pull us out if they felt it was getting to dangerous for us. Also, like I said, the violence really only pertains to those in drugs. So don't worry about me, but this place could use prayers.
HOWEVER, if you sit around and think about the bad for too long you'll miss the good stuff that is also just as real.
And what better place to look for the brighter side of things than in the people that are right beside you in the fight. As you know Prince William recently got married, and with Andrew being English, he insisted we dress up and have 5:00 high tea. Long live the queen!
We recently had Dia del Trabajo (Labor Day).
Students can be a real source of joy if you step back for a moment from hounding them to pay attention or stop throwing their pencils at the ceiling fans. Here are my 7th graders thinking it is all too funny that they locked me out of the classroom before class. I'll see you all at lunch, ha!
We had Mother's Day.
Carlos Moreno, a familiar face around OAF, and a natural motivator came and did a dynamic workshop with the students about being unafraid to express their passion for God.
They got a real kick out of it...
and who couldn't with the activities like the human knot,
improvisational singing,
even though some were more reluctant than others to perform,
and a 50 person congo/massage line.
I brought the old guitar one day and the students joined right in. Here is Francisco, aka Pancho, filling in as back up singer/drummer for La Bamba.Then, Andrew came up with a great idea. Breaking away from the normal class routine, he decided we should have an Open House, where the students would put projects on display and invite the parents to come to see them. Being that we are at the end of the year, we definitely have some students who completely "checked out" academically and just want the year to be over. This Open House, however, seemed to spark something in a lot of them. I had kids who haven't given a hoot about school for months suddenly getting excited.
For Andrew's classes: history, art and activities (the equivalent of a home economics class), he had his students put up projects they had been working on all year as well as recently. These included:
Mayan calendars
Oriental writing
and Oriental paintings,
and four color paintings. Can you believe an 8th grader made this!
He asked us other teachers to come up with projects too, and so after consulting with the my salva vida (life saver) Cathy Brew, who is a veteran junior high math teacher in Santa Rosa, I had an idea for what we could do for math.
The 7th graders, since they were studying fractions, had to come up with a real life situation/problem that involved fractions. Then they had to visually and mathematically show how to solve the problem. I was really proud of Allison's Cookie project. She struggles a lot in math, but she was really proud of herself for doing this.
8th grade was required to take a recent topic we had studied in math and creatively present it: through a picture, song, poem, comic strip, etc. I liked this one (Buzz if you're reading this, this idea was thanks to you!)
square roots
negative fighting positives
I like this one a lot... the "Zero Zorro" (zorro meaning fox).
This one, however, took the cake. I was absolutely blown away by Rony's poem about adding negative numbers, not only because it was totally mathematically correct, but also because it was written by someone for whom English is a second language.Here it is:
The Adding Negatives Poem
When adding to numbers
its usually done
to make things grow bigger
like flowers in the sun.
But adding has ways
to get smaller too,
like going from a larger
to a much smaller shoe.
"How does that happen?"
you might wanna ask.
Isn't adding things up
a "get bigger" task.
Usually so,
and that's what they've said,
but if you add negative numbers
you go down instead.
That is you get lower
on the old number line,
going straight left
all of my time.
Adding negative numbers is a "get smaller" art!
You end up smaller than you did at the start!
You still see a plus sign, +.
by Rony Wilberto Castejon
Incredible!
We also had a science fair.
It motivated the students to do some good projects,
and really push their brains....yes, someone actually brought in a cow brain for their project.
This project was a real hit. Gerardo, Tony and Edgar did their project on non-Newtonian fluids, which, and I don't totally understand this, apparently defies the normal laws of viscosity. In laymens terms, they had a bowl of corn starch mixed with water, that when you put your finger in slowly, your finger would enter normally. However, if you tried to put your finger in quickly or punch the liquid with you fist, you could not break the surface....good job guys.
I can't see real good, is that Albert Einstein over there...no just Alejandro, but looking just as scientific.
This group, which did theirs on electro-chemical reactions won first prize. On the right were our guest judges, Heather and Eyal, peace corps volunteers here in Juti.
Besides all the school work, we are finding time to descansar un pocito (rest a bit). Anne and Carrie, two other volunteers and my neighbors decided we should go out to the Catholic Unversity for a picnic last Saturday and chill out. This is what the new part of campus looks like. They really friendo y comiendo (getting 'er done) with new classroom buildings and field/track.
Here they are.
I thought we volunteers were asked to come down to teach the core subjects: math, english and science, but Andrew seems to see things differently. Here he is showing the kids how to rave at school dance we had recently.
They were into it!Well that's all for now. I will get another blog up before I come home, maybe two. As of now, I have exactly one month left and as Aerosmith says, "I don't wanna miss a thing."
Cuídense (take care).
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