1 month down, 11 to go! (AND FIRST TRAVEL ADVENTURES)

So it has now almost been a month since we arrived in Honduras…. I can’t believe how fast the first few weeks have gone! Saying that, however, it also feels like we’ve been here forever.  I feel that we’ve really managed to settle into the community, both at school and within the village. People are starting to recognise us and even kids we don’t teach often shout greetings to us if we’re walking past! I already feel very comfortable here and though we’re faced everyday with new challenges, cultural differences and communication barriers I know now that I have enough of a grounding and understanding of the country to get on with it and solve any problems that may (do!) arise. This is probably the most reassuring thing of all and gives me a lot of hope for the coming 11 months!

We’ve gotten pretty good at getting around the place now and quite often after school Ione, Katie and I will nip into Sigua for the afternoon. It’s a small city/ big town about the same size as Inverness but that’s more or less where the similarities end! We’re lucky enough to have a huge Del Corral supermarket which sells pretty much anything we could want/ need. The bus to town is 10 lempira which works out at about 30p, most things here are incredibly cheap! As there are 2 other Project Trust vols in Sigua (Ellen and Erin) it also means it’s really easy for us to meet up with them… always a nice chance to give our minds a rest from Spanish and have a good chat! Last week Ione and I got caught in the most horrific tropical downpour waiting for a bus back to Aguas Del Padre after school, it was genuinely like someone was tipping buckets over us… It would have been an amazing photo opportunity, if only I had a waterproof camera!

Last weekend the 5 of us went to a swimming pool in Sigua for the day, our first real chance to enjoy rather than avoid the heat of the Honduran sun! The pool was actually really nice and had 2 water slides, though we were the only people there. We’d only been there about 10 minutes when we decided – due to the amount we were sweating already! – we’d jump in and have a swim before even attempting sunbathing. 4 of us managed no problem but Ione (of course it would be Ione!) managed to hit her foot on the bottom and spent the next hour trying to get out… consisting of crawling across the pool to the kids section and trying to get up the stairs there. I think we all were a bit concerned at the time but looking back on it now it really was hilarious. Ohhhhh Noni! Luckily Katharine, our host, was able to come pick us up and took us for our first Honduran hospital experience. Bruised, drugged and in a wheelchair Ione was told to keep an air boot on for 3 weeks and 1050 lempira bill… Not bad considering she’s a little (lot) accident prone.

 

Last week was exam week at La Providencia… Gonna be totally honest with you, I was more worried about their exams than I ever was for mine!! Because the standards of the school are so high the students have to get 70% to pass and one chance to re-sit but if at the end of the year their exams don’t average to over 70% they have to move school… It seems so crazy that exams at Grades 1, 2, 3 and 4 can change their education so dramatically. This was the first time I really accepted just how much was reliant on me and my ability to teach. See why I was so stressed?! Luckily the majority of them went really well – there are some really excellent students here and their work ethic is incredible. Every morning we get on the school bus with the kids to get to school. It’s so much fun, they’re adorable and always so excited to see us… Makes 7am that little bit easier!!

 

Ohh also, we have now got our school uniforms!!! It’s super exciting, I know I’m getting a little sad! We have a different coloured polo top for every day of the week with the school logo and OUR NAMES! I have resorted to Miss Kayla as we realised within the first day that Michaela was just a bit too hard in a Spanish accent, I love it though!

 

For one of the other volunteer’s birthday a few of us arranged to meet up in Copan Ruinas, a beautiful little town on the west of Honduras, right near the border of Guatemala. Finally it was time to travel a bit!!! Although I love it here it was really exciting to be able to get away and see the others, if only for a weekend. On Friday after school Ione and I waited at the main road for a bus passing and set off on our first real adventure! We squeezed on (in typical Honduran style) to a tiny bus which took about 3 hours to get to San Pedro Sula. There was a lot of flooding – aka rivers where streets should have been – due to the amount of rain they’d had that day so there was a lot of traffic slowing our trip. We stayed at Dos Mollinos for the night and got a bus to Copan early on Saturday morning. Again the bus was tiny and crammed however it did give me the change to realise that having a huge rucksack on your lap turns into quite a good pillow! I also had a chance to practice my Spanish with some random guy on the bus… My favourite kind of conversation, haha.

In Copan we were staying at a really cool little hostel and met up with the other 6 vols pretty quickly. We spent the afternoon at a bird park (AMAZING) with loads of parrots, macaws, owls etc. We even got some up close action with the birds… First time having a parrot balanced on my head anyway! ALSO we got to drive around in tuk tuks, best fun ever, was just like being back in India! Copan is such a stunning little town with cobbled roads and cute little cafes, restaurants and pubs everywhere. We went out for dinner (and our first Honduran drinks!) on Saturday night for Rachel’s birthday with 2 guys from Uni in London who were also staying at our hostel, a Canadian guy and 2 friends of Rachel’s who were working in Guatemala… It made for a very fun night and a big change from what most of us had gotten used to over the past few weeks! On Saturday morning despite the hugely 'late night' (anything after 10pm is the middle of the night) my body woke me up at 7, nice and early. We decided to make the most of it and leaving Ione in bed we set off to the Copan Ruins (for which the town is famous) before our bus. It was absolutely incredible, Honduras is not exactly concerned with health and safety so unlike many other ruins we were actually able to climb to the top of the Mayan temples and really explore a bit. Perhaps not something for one scared of heights as the stairs to climb up were steep, uneven and really high… Thankfully Ione had decided not to come, I’m not sure how she’d have coped with the air boot/ foot brace thing! (I'll try and get some photos of the ruins up soon.)

We got on our bus back at 11, and got to SPS by about 2.30, we were home to Aguas Del Padre by about 5.30 absolutely drained and running on empty. It was a massive amount of travelling for the night we were there but 100% worth it… I think we’ll be back in Copan any time we get a chance now! Meeting up with some of the other volunteers has just made me so excited to travel more and really gives us something to look forward to when teaching gets hard!

Our next adventure is probably going to be a trip to the gorgeous Honduran island of Roatan in September for the Honduras Independence Day to visit Max and Moos who are living there, we have a few days off after the parades with the schools. Roatan looks and sounds absolutely amazing so I’m sure that’ll be a very fun celebration! ALSO Max, Moos, Ione and I (and any other vols who can make it) is bound to be a good old time!

Until next time, mucho amor, Michaela (aka Miss Kayla) x

The start of an adventure...

¡Hola!

And so it begins… For many of you this will be the first you’ve heard about my Honduras adventure for a long time, it’s almost exactly a year to the day since I decided to take part in Project Trust and leave Scotland to work overseas for a year. I’ve now been in Honduras for a week and have well and truly fallen in love with the place!

Thankfully all 16 of us Honduras volunteers made it here without much trouble! We spent one night at a B&B in San Pedro Sula, the countries second biggest city, before heading off in all directions to our projects. My partner, Ione, and I were lucky enough to have only a 2 hour drive to our village, Aguas Del Padre, which is about a 15 minute drive from a large town called Siguatepeque. It is absolutely beautiful here!!!! It’s surprisingly green and lush, thanks to the thunderstorms that strike about every 2 weeks at this time of year, and we’re surrounded by pine tree forests. We have a stunning view from the school because it’s on a hill, though it’s a bit different to that at home!

Aguas Del Padre is a small, typical Honduran village built on one main, rocky dirt track. There are probably a couple hundred people here but the houses are quite spread out. It has a small church that on a Sunday morning wakes the village with the happy singing and enthusiastic clapping, it’s got a great vibe and I love it despite still massively struggling to follow what they’re saying! There are also a couple pulperias (small shops) which sell a lot of basic and random things.

Okay so now the house I’ll be spending the year calling home… Well we sure got lucky!! Our hosts are Don José and Doña Luci, they are kind and very caring! Their house is just beautiful, a 4 bedroom bungalow with a huge garden. They have 2 aggressive dogs which do make us feel very protected, I’m not sure I’ll be testing the ‘their bite is worse than there bark’ on these ones though! Luci likes to keep the house very clean and she cooks our meals (and teaching me!!) while José spends a lot of time tending to the many fruits and plants they grow in the garden. They also grow coffee so I’ve started to drink it every so often to keep them happy! We spend a lot of time talking to them in what can only be classed as ‘Spanglish’ and it’s always very entertaining. As Ione has almost no Spanish I’ve been acting as translator and have been pretty amazed at how much I can understand… Really thankful for those Spanish lessons back home! We also have a Californian volunteer, Katie, living with us though she’s been away the past few days. She’s been here since January and also teaches at the school. She’s great fun and it’s really nice to have another person who’s been through everything we’ll go through in our first few months guiding us!

The school, La Providencia, is only part of a much larger project and plan. At the moment on the property there are 2 orphan homes, a crafts workshop and a medical centre as well as the school. They want to continue to expand until they have 8 orphan homes (each with ‘parents’ for the children), a home for local widows (who will act as grandmothers to the orphans), an administration building and a retreat centre for mission groups. The eventual aim is for La Providencia to be self-sufficient. At the medical centre they have surgical operating theatres and 6 times a year medical teams come in to perform different operations for the community such as prosthetic limbs, eye surgeries and clubfoot surgeries. Amazingly not only do we have the opportunity to teach but also to get involved with any of the other projects! (Even to watch operations… there aren’t many rules about that over here!)

At the moment I am teaching maths and science to Grades 2 and 3 and PE to Grades 1, 2, 3 and 4. It’s been a pretty hectic week to say the least but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t having the time of my life. The classes are all fairly small (20 in Grade 1 being the biggest and craziest lot in the school!) and the kids are really good fun! As it’s a bilingual school we have to teach our lessons in English but the kids (and other teachers) do love trying to teach us Spanish at recreo (break). At the moment Ione and I are looking into starting up a music and drama club as well as an extra help class as there are currently no extracurricular activities running. We’d love to do a school play of some sort at Christmas so hopefully we’ll get something sorted out soon! There is definitely a very challenging but exciting year ahead of us! I’ve attached a few photos to give you a vague idea of what I’m experiencing though nothing will do it justice. I’ll write again soon, much love and thank you for all the support.

Un abrazo, Michaela x

 

The view from our school building. The medical centre and the workshop on the right.

 RECREO!

First day of school!