The Last Weeks

Hey Everyone,

Hope all is well. I have to say off the bat that I am going to make this quick because I am in a rush. Don't feel bad for me though. I am in a rush because I in 2.5 hours I leave for Guatemala. So I wanted to get this blog up before then, because when I get back in a week I will have a whole new batch of pictures.

Ok, so where are we at? Well, The school year has ended, and here's how it went down.

This is our Instituto Biligue Santa Clara (IBSC) 7th and 8th grade picture at the end of finals week. It was a good day.


We don't have year books and so we signed each other's shirts.
We said our goodbyes. Here I am with some of our 8th grade boys. You might categorize these three as our "challenging" group. In fact you might notice Kevyn on the right lovingly trying to buckle my knee with his leg, probably for all the detentions I have given him throughout our two years together.
Here is Josseline and Lupita, two eighth graders, who I worked especially closely with this past year. The reason is because last year they both failed 7th grade math, which motivated Josseline (left) to literally try and bride me with crema de mantequilla, a lactose product that Mario love and buy from her parents store. Luckily I found the strength to resist the bride :-) but which meant that we had mandatory tutoring twice a week to review the 7th grade topics. Many times they, and I, dreaded our tutoring after a long day of school, but I think we got a lot out of it.
The IBSC teacher crew (left to right: Andrew, Johana, Andrea, Danna, Diana (both students), Maki and I). It was a big week, knowing that I wouldn't see many of them again.
The following week though we had to come to school. Honduran law states that any student that fails the school year can take a recuperation exam to try and pass again (Actually they get two! One they week after school ends and if they don't pass that, one in August before the next school year starts.) So that we administered exams. However, there was something else going on that week too. This is picture taken right next to the Cardenal building, in which we have been huéspedes (guests), this past year, since we don't have our own IBSC building yet. This is the location of the IBSC's future.
A parish group from Brentwood, Tennessee called the Holy Family, in addition to tremendously helping Olancho AID in many aspects, has raised enough money to fund a building just for IBSC. Also, they have been down here for the past two weeks, working alongside Honduras and laying the foundation.
Holy Family has been moving "big weight" figuratively and literally.
These is the future of IBSC. This June, July and August they hope to complete the first story and next year, the second.
So on Friday, the parents society, some students and we teachers of IBSC had a big thank you party for Holy Family.
Here are two of them with one of our 7th graders, Luisa.
We had the property on one of our teacher's brother's property on the outskirts of Juticalpa. I had a chance to talk with him one on one. He was an amazing person to talk to. It was one of those wise-men encounters you hear about in stories. I didn't want to miss a single word he said.
At the party we had traditional dancing, marimba, and typical Honduran food,
and they got presents.
Here' Andrew breaking it down with one of IBSC mom's.

When the weekend came it was time to get out of town. All of us volunteers knew that our time was ending and so have been trying to savor every last thing before we head back to the States. To our great excitement, the garderner of IBSC, Juancito (middle) invited us male volunteers to go amardillo hunting in the backcountry near his village. We were stoked!
We had to do some serious hiking,
but we got some great views.
Then we it trudging through the low lands under the blazing sun.
Here's Juancito investigating an amardillo hole.
As the hours past we we did come across some wildlife,
and a mango tree bursting with fruit. If you threw a stick into the branches about 7 mangos would fall.
However, we never caught or even saw any amardillos. In fact besides the cows, the only thing we saw was this little turtle Mike here found in a river. (Mike was a friend of Jeff's who was visiting).
That's ok though, we had a great time!
Saturday night was our volunteer goodbye/thank you dinner. Here's Mary with our jolly and amazing bus driver, Victor.

We received plaques and some kind words from the administrators of OAF.


Again, sorry if I am speading up now, but I have less than two hours before we leave for Guatemala. Sunday was going to be my last opportunity to go to Mario's village and say goodbye to his family.
Here is the flower garden Mario made for his mom in the front yard, which ironically has "Forget Me Not" flowers growing in it. (Thanks Amy, and they have grown a lot since we planted them.)

Sunday and ended and that brings us to this past week. Many of the Santa Clara Escolar (the primary school) left on Sunday, but we at IBSC stayed another week to work.


But, I can't say it was all work. Here we are on Tuesday night having a little IBSC teacher party. There might have been drinking involved.
Then on Wednesday we got invited to barbeque at Nasry's house (8th grader). Andrew and I received machetes. Anyone need any gardening work done this summer?
Thursday, it was time to start saying goodbyes IBSC. Here I am, demonstrating how gringos are just taller than Central Americans, with Juancito.



Probably the prettiest woman Honduras wanted to take a picture with me: Lourdes, the Cardenal secretary.
Finally, if there hadn't been enough events and activities, Cardenal had a student-teacher soccer game. They asked me if I wanted to play. Thanks guys you made more than just my day.

And that is where things are at. I booked my flight back to the States for June 28th so I would have a week to some last minute traveling, and so for the next week Mario and I head off to Guatemala. We will get back next Sunday and then I will be flying home on Tuesday. I can't believe it is almost over. Can't wait to see you all soon.

Coming to a Close

Hola Amigos y Familia,

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).