How to make Pupusas

Diana's Parents visit Honduras!

My students were able to meet my parents and ask them questions about how i was as a kid. They loved it!




My parents brought them a little gift, giant pencils. They also loved those and used them to take notes the rest of the day.
My students are currently reading the book "Frindle" so in honor of the book (those of you who have read it will appreciate this photo) they all held up their pencils and said "Frindle"








Scared to be in Mr. Camp's class




The school has been decorated for Christmas. Here is a picture of my parents posing next to some decorations.

Cristo Picacho

Up on a mountaintop overlooking all of Tegucigalpa is a beautiful park that is home to Cristo Picacho, a giant statue of Jesus. Ben and I have yet to figure out where the name Picacho comes from or why the statue was given that name. But I do know that it is a funny word to say!
Within the park there is the central area where one can see the statue, and there is also a small zoo that has quite a variety of animals including, many monkeys, one jaguar, one leopard, 2 sloths, some peacocks, crocodiles, deer. There was also weird animal that's sort of like a small hippo (it was pretty ugly, it looked like a pig with a small elephant snout and loved being in the water) the name of this ugly thing is escaping my mind right now, so I will just go ahead and call it a 'pigliphant'. (We weren't able to take any pictures of the pigliphant.)





Our friends German and Claudia took us to Picacho one Sunday afternoon and it was a beautiful day, as you can see in the pictures. Seeing the entire city from up high just makes you appreciate what a beautiful city Tegucigalpa really is!

Tales of a Fourth Grade Science Fair

My students dressed up for the Science Fair on Friday Oct. 29th and they all looked so cute. Here are a few pictures I took throughout the day. It was a crazy day and I was glad when it was over. But I was so proud of my students for completing great projects and for presenting them so well!!!


My adorable boys.




My adorable girls.




Ronalt won the 2nd place in all of 4th grade!! :)





They looked so professional standing by their projects ready to answer the judge's questions. I love every single one of these kids :)



~Diana

The Faces of Copan

Ruinas de Copan PREVIEW

This weekend we traveled 8 hours north to a Mayan city. We had the chance to see some Mayan ruins, amongst other things...

Reflections after Finals

Despite numerous worries about how my students were going to perform for me this quarter, I am happy to report that they stepped up to the challenge presented by my high expectations. They diligently carried the burden of a heavy and challenging workload and their efforts paid off. This is not to say that I had an overwhelming number of A’s, but only that the students were able to sufficiently display to me on their final exams the effort and work, as well as developments, that they have put in and made over the past eight weeks.

It warmed my heart and brought a smile to my face when one of my students commented to me that he was more proud of the 90 he had earned on my exam, than the 97 he received on his math exam. I know this feeling of pride well. It is the point at which learning transcends grades. It took me years, and the assistance of key educators who were willing and darning to push me, to finally come to this realization. It is my pedagogical hope that I might facilitate this revelation for more of my students.

After handing the exams back I was able to both commend and exhort my students. Commendations were in order for those who actualized their potential. Exhortations were given to those who still languish in the realm of possibility.

-BP

C-A-L-I-F-O-R-N-I-A

I got to see my family!


With my 7th grade girls!!!



Katie and Aaron




At the USC game with Kim and Erica



Having some cake with the birthday girl

Oops!!

~Diana

The Light of Prayer

Prayer candles at Catedral Suyapa:



~B.P

Wonderful Weekends

As much as I love teaching 4th grade and my wonderful group of students this year, I still always look forward to Friday afternoon. I think it is just a natural human trait to love and live for the weekend! October is proving to be a pretty good month for us so far (given it is only October 2nd) but already we have had so many fun events.
Friday night we attended an opera performance ( a first for both Ben and I) at a beautiful theater in Downtown Tegucigalpa. Like our friend Gary Potter noted, there were a lot of bigger ladies in shiny dresses, but over all a very fun experience shared with co-workers. After the performance, the Vinland's, Miriam and us headed to an Italian restaurant, Tre Franneli. We enjoyed some very good food, good music, and good company.




Saturday morning (today) we had a Honduran Festival at school from 10 AM to 2PM. The festival is called "Fiesta Catracha" "Catracho" is a nickname given to Hondurans, just like how Salvadoreans are called "guanacos" :) The Festival was super fun, there was food, drinks (horchata, tamarindo, sodas, etc) parents, students, dancing, a fashion show, information about various cities in Honduras that are worthy of being visited, and many other fun things for students to be a part of.
I decided to embrace the Honduran culture 100 % and I borrowed a typical dress from my friend Miriam to wear at the Fiesta. I used to wear dresses like that in El Salvador when we had performances and dances at school. It was fun wearing one of those dresses again. I might need to purchase my own, BUT let me clarify, if I do it will have to be from El Salvador :)

Our weekend is not over! Tomorrow we are heading over to Valle de Angeles, a picturesque near-by small town. Stay tuned for pictures of "the valley of angels".

Gameday (Teaching)

Here is a picture of me at my desk wearing my "party-carty." Look good. Feel good. Play good. Things have been a little chilly here in Tegucigalpa, especially in the mornings. Hence, the need for more layers of clothing. Things have been going pretty good here at work. My students wrote some excellent essays considering symbolism in Steinbeck's little novella The Pearl. I was very proud of them and their work. We are now moving on to Wells' The Time Machine, the students are presenting background research on various topics that I assigned them in order to prep for their reading of this short text. We head full steam into the text next week. One other thing that I have been stressing recently is sentence diagramming. I did not do this when I was in school and as I got further into my education realized this was a major handicap. It was only when I began to learn Koine Greek that I began to learn English grammar. When learning Greek, I found sentence diagramming to be very helpful for me, so I am hoping it will be helpful for my ESL kids, which is pretty much all of them. Well, that is all for this brief update. I hope to offer my reflections on El Salvador soon, either tonight or tomorrow, mos def.

BP signing out.

Camera Work

I was able to finally bust out my camera on our trip to El Salvador and snap some photos. Here are a few of my favorites: