Huelgas, Catrachas and Brushing your teeth!

I can’t believe its August… more than halfway through August at that… I wore my bathing suit for the first time this summer yesterday when we went to visit the MuniD site (we picnic’d at a pool). I keep forgetting its summer since it’s not summer here… The school year goes from February through November… And we’re not near a beach!

We have three more weeks of training in Talanga and one week in Zarabanda before we all, hopefully, get sworn in as volunteers. LOCO!

What’s been going on… lets see….


Our El Rosario group gave mini health classes (health was a topic that the parents wanted us to cover) so we split it up between the 4 of us into washing hands, exercise, healthy food and brushing your teeth. I did brushing your teeth…. And made up a song to teach them!! It goes to the tune of Far-e-sha-ka (pardon the spelling):

Cepille los, Cepille los (brush your, brush your)
Dientes… Dientes (teeth, teeth)
Yo hago cada dia (I do it everyday)
Despues de la comida (After the food0
Sonrisa, Sonrisa (Smile, smile)

I POSTED A VIDEO ON FACEBOOK IF YOU WANT TO SEE IT IN ACTION!


We also made an AWESOME BANNER to carry in our parade! The big day is September 2nd. Whooooo! Thanks to Margarita's mom, for the daises! I'm having blog problems so i will hopefully post pictures later!!


Last week we did Dental Hygiene training, and then went and gave a class on it in a school (we threw in my song!). Peace Corps does a program with Colgate, and Colgate donates toothbrushes and toothpaste to kids if we work with teachers to carry through with the program. We talk about basic hygiene, cavities, healthy food and preventative measures… the kicker is getting the teacher to hold up her end of the deal and get the kids to brush their teeth at school (they get one toothbrush for home and one for school). Dental hygiene is a huge problem here... dentists are hard to find, and when you find one, they are too expensive to visit... a lot of kids have black spots on their teeth, which can only be removed by dental tools, and are caused by food/bacteria that was never removed. I feel quite strongly about the Colgate program given my recent dental fiasco... baaaahah..... if only someone came to talk to me about flossing during those 8 years I abstained from the dentist.....


We’ve also gotten training on TEAM, Teaching English and Methodology, which is a program to teach teachers how to teach English. They say that pretty much every YD volunteer ends up having a TEAM class. This week we have a two day training on HIV/AIDS.


This week marks the second week of the latest teacher strike… This is one of the challenges of youth development volunteers, as much of our work is scheduled around schools. It’s just the public schools that go on strike. There are also some private ones (which, as you’d imagine, they cost a lot of money that most people don’t have), and there is another kind of school that doesn’t get funding from the government to pay the teachers (though they get resources, like text books/materials) so every parent pays a little bit to pay the teacher, and since the government is not paying those teachers, they don’t go on strike (we did our dental hygiene class in one of those schools).


Despite the strike, the kinder I'm doing my individual project in has remained opened... some teachers (very few) have chosen to continue classes, just out of good conscience and devotion to their students (as they are the ones suffering the most)... it's a sticky situation because the teachers that continue to give classes during strikes are usually targeted by their colleagues. Buttttt I've had my story hour the past two weeks! We read a book about a puppy who didn't want to eat his dinner and got sick off of caramelos and made puppy masks (adorable, sadly I forgot my camera that day). And then today we worked with numbers and we made number necklaces! One of the teachers was so impressed, and the kids were so excited (yes, about NUMBERS!) that they got to take home their necklaces. Fun activities are lacking like whoaaaaa.


Oh! A kinder. That's like... a mix between preschool and kindergarten... its kindergarten aged kids, but there isn't much of a preschool system, and the kinder day is shorter, AND it is usually separate from the schools...


We had another interview this past week with the YD director and the Training Director, where we talk about our strengths and interests, and concerns about where we will be placed…. I got them to admit (kind of) that they know where they are sending me, butttt I’ve got to wait until September 1st to find out what Honduran community needs Lisa the most…. a community desperate for arts and crafts???


Friday was cultural day…. We all had to make a typical Honduran dish with our families to bring, and then each Spanish class gave a presentation on an aspect of our culture in the United States. One class did Thanksgiving, one did Football, one did Hollywood, one did the four seasons, and my class did the melting pot. There was quite the array of food… my host mom and I made Catrachas, which are deep friend tortillas topped with refried beans and cheese (a heart attack waiting to happen)… the word Catracha is actually another term for Honduran, and the connotation has a lot of national pride in it, so these little friend tortilla things are one of the national foods of Honduras.



OH! So. One of the aspirantes (trainees) met a man who wanted help in his english class.... so a few of us signed up to help last weekend... a few went in the morning, and Margarita and I went in the afternoon... The teacher thought we would stay until the school closed, and come back all weekend (8-5)! We went thinking we were going to meet with the class and talk about something that they wanted to learn but we went in and were assumed to be teaching the class... so, we gave an impromptu intro to English course.... I explained that we had other commitments and could not come back all weekend, but would return for an hour... I'm not sure why this happened... The teacher just... wanted us to teach his class... but this is probably going to happen an awful lot when we get into site... The problem is that it's not sustainable if we just pop in and take over.... But since we are just here for 3 more weeks, we'll just... teach some numbers and colors. It was such a weird situation.... hahahah we had said we had to leave at 4, and hour after we got there, and it was about 5 of 4 when we were asking the students (three 17 year old boys) the kinds of things they wanted to learn next time, and the teacher stops me and says we still have 5 more minutes of teaching left to do... WHOA! Tranquilo, budddy, tranquilo.


Annnnd.... Anything else? We've been having our dance classes.... i gotta say... i am not too graceful on my feet... Thats all i really have to say about that.


Thanks for reading, sorry about the technical difficulties, i really don't know what's wrong! Miss and love you all, take care!