asi es la vida

el idioma en la escuela

we gave our first charlas the other day. i´m in a small group of three and we are working about 2 times a week for the rest of field based training in a very large school in talanga. the morning classes are from 7:30 to noon and the afternoon classes are from noon to 5pm. we only work in the mornings. our goal (self established) is to talk with the kids about talanga, honduras, and themselves because autoestema y orgullo en su cultura (self esteem and pride in culture) are not focused on here. in fact the kids have a very hard time answering questions like, what activities do you have in your town? why do you like your country? once a few answer they get it. one thing we´ve all noticed is that children here seem to be taught that it´s more acceptable to all be the same and to all memorize than to use creativity or critical thinking. this is a rather large task to tackle as a group of 49 gringos (yes, someone did leave to return to the states. i think we were all hoping that everyone would stay, but it didn´t happen. hopefully she finds something she´d rather be doing right now. it is an adult decision and i think we as a group have handled it like adults thankfully).

on the up side, i have felt nothing but comfortable when talking in spanish in front of the kids. my mistakes are becoming more and more minimal and my lack of the ¨right¨ word is finally not bothering me so much because i now almost always know at least how to describe the word i want to find with vocab.

we started learning subjunctive, a tense very difficult to find if not non existent in english. now i use it all the time, even when i´m not supposed to. hmm.



caber mi ropa!

ay! i realized i had to stop eating so much when my favorite pants that used to be big on me left marks on my waist. so i told my host mom that i was getting too big for my clothes. since then it´s been awesome and i already feel better after only two days. i´ve eaten much smaller meals (a scoop of beans with half an avocado, por ejemplo) and a bit more frequently.



immigration

tomorrow we´re going as a group to tegucigalpa for immigration papers. i´ll officially be hondureña! yesssss.



la proxima semana

tambien next week we´ll be told exactly what we´ll be doing in our sites. because they know what our sites are. but we won´t be told our sites. hmm.



pictures

i´ve got lots of pics but not lots of time. i´ve been trying to put them on since i got here and it´s not working, so i know that i have to put them on photobucket and then here, which takes super long. so i´ll have to do that sunday.



tin roof

so my roof is tin. i have the top floor (hay dos plantas y dos plantas en la planta por arriba. yea i know spanish is weird... it just gets weirder and weirder.) and i´m the only one that lives up there and when it pours it is so loud. also did you know when you kill cockroaches it smells bad and if you leave them there 50 ants will come and carry away the whole body?

yea it´s gross.



las frases

i just want to humor you with some useful phrases if you´re ever traveling in central america and honduras in particular.

nunca he visto tal cosa: never have i seen such a thing

me lo enfada: it makes me mad

no haga un escandala por nada: don´t make a big deal out of nothing

el mero mero: the BIG boss

sampado, metiche, chute: all words for ¨nosey¨

gusano: worm, or bad person

papasote: goodlooking, only for men

patajuca: foot odor

telebasura: shitty tv

enbarriga, enpanza: just by the skin of one´s teeth

el anda embarazada: he´s got a big belly (literally, he goes pregnant)

chele (spelled similar to leche, which is milk): pale skinned, white

ábrete sésame! open sesame :)

RENCO: totally lame

¿que pedo? what´s up? (literally, what fart?)

sobaco, axila: armpit





Yes, these are things I learn in class. I hope you feel educated.



A man barked at us the other day. I had to be told it was a man, because for some reason I just thought it was a dog.



A kid asked me for money specifically for food today, which was hard. fortunately i only had a 100 lemp bill which is like 5 bucks and i couldn´t just give him that because even thought 5 bucks isn´t much a hundred lempiras is a LOT.



haven´t gotten hardly ANY mail. and like, everyone else gets mail.
so send me some freaking mail to

Voluntaria de Cuerpo de Paz
Dora Ragin
Apartado Postal 3158
Tegucigalpa, D.C. 11102
Honduras, Central America





gringas!



the kids like calling us gringas.-not in a bad way, but just when we´re walking by, it´s sort of like a surprise reaction. today a friend yelled back: hondurenos! they got a kick out of it and i almost died laughing.