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:

Coming Soon

I have many reflections to offer about our recent trip to El Salvador, but I will be busy the next few days so in the meantime I leave you with one of my favorite pictures from our trip. This is me with Cruzita.

El Salvador (Diana's version) This is a LONG one!

As many of you know, a huge factor in moving to Honduras was being so close to El Salvador, and having the chance for Ben to see the place where I was born and spent the first 12 years of my life. This past week, Ben and I traveled 6 hours on a tour bus with a final destination to San Salvador, I can't even express what a great and unique experience it was! (but I will try)

Our days were long and super busy, we woke up early and stayed up pretty late. We (well mostly me) shared a lot of laughs reminiscing about my childhood, there are just so many wonderful memories and anecdotes and 4 days are simply not enough time to unpack it all.
Many of my family and friends speak English very well, so Ben was able to socialize on his own, although most of the time the conversation eventually turned to Spanish-only and I did a very poor job at translating to Ben (oops) Despite my rudeness, though, Ben truly enjoyed himself. He was warmly welcomed by every family we visited, he was also treated and fed like a king. We had both lost some weight during the last 4 weeks in Honduras, but we are pretty sure most of it was gained back during our 5-day-stay in El Salvador. Our first day there, my godparents took us to a restaurant by the beach were we enjoyed THE most DELICIOUS shrimp we have ever had! (Ben was licking his fingers and all). From that moment on, food never ceased coming; we had pupusas, tamales, POPS (the biggest ice cream parlor in the country), El Chory (the best street hot dogs in the world), more ice cream, McDonalds, Pollo Campero, more pupusas, etc.

Ben will soon be posting about his experience so I will go ahead and share about what I thought about our trip:
I have only visited El Salvador twice in the last 12 years, but it continues to be one of the most special places in the world to me. Being there is such a bittersweet experience, though. I absolutely LOVE seeing all the familiar faces that despite time and distance continue to love me with the same passion, sincerity, and depth as ever. But being there without my mom, dad, Vicky and Jose only makes me miss them that much more. There isn't one place I visited in El salvador or a moment spent with loved ones that doesn't remind me of my family. There wasn't a single conversation where their names weren't mentioned. I wonder if there will ever be a time when all 5 members of the Romero family will go back to El Salvador together, what a joyful day that would be!
I am now 24 years old, I moved to California when I was 12. Which means I have lived exactly half my life in El Salvador, and half my life in California. It is the weirdest feeling knowing that I will never be fully complete in either place. When I am in California I miss my family and friends from El Salvador! And when I am in El Salvador I miss my family and friends in California! I guess that is the price I have to pay for being so lucky as to have so many people in my life whom I love and love me back.

Well, this post is turning out to be way too long, so I will leave you with some pictures and you can check out my facebook for the complete album.

~Diana

Political Graffiti

As most of you probably already know, 2009 was a politically tumultuous year for the country of Honduras. There was a coup of sorts that ended with the disposal of controversial president Manuel Zelaya, who still remains in political exile in the Dominican Republic. As we approach the end of 2010, the capital still bears marks of these staggering events. Political graffiti is profuse throughout Tegucigalpa, stirring national memory in a both revealing and haunting manner. I was able to snag the following photo, and hope to provide a more comprehensive photographic appraisal of the city in the coming months.

Translation: No violent coup and no hit to women will silence me. That’s why I tag!

Tracking A Storm

Buses

It has been a few days since the last update. We are still here! And still having countless priceless experiences. Let me tell you about our little, well what was supposed to be little, excursion on Monday.

Diana and I, as well as our friends the Vinlands, are going to be heading to El Salvador this upcoming Wednesday for the Central American Independence holiday. This will be my first time back in the old country to visit the friend and family community of Diana’s childhood. I am sure I will have much to report after that trip!

So after doing some research on the internet and asking around the school, we decided that we would get bus tickets from the Tica Bus company. It is a charter bus trip that is about 6 hours and costs 15 dollars each way. We had received multiple good reviews for this company through word of mouth, so it seemed like the way to go. The decision was made. We would head to the hotel mentioned on the company’s website that was the only vendor of Tica Bus tickets in the city. Yes, that is right, of course you cannot buy tickets online, because that would be way too simple for Honduras. And yes, in a city of nearly one and a half million people, it would make sense to have only one vendor on the other side of downtown from us. Despite these small inconveniences we decided to set out right after school on Monday to buy our tickets.

Being experienced riders of the bus, having a whole four or so rides under our belts, we decided that we would save a ton of money and take the bus to our location, as opposed to a taxi. The money collector on the bus assured us we would make it to our destination by 4:30, because the travel agency closed at 5. It was only 3:40 or so, and we figured this was probably correct. We boarded the bus. As it would turn out, we had boarded the slowest bus in all of Honduras, in the 30 minutes we were on, it did not go faster than 5 mph. No joke! We were still far from our destination 30 minutes into the ride and decided to bail. We hopped off the bus while it was still in motion leaving a stop. (Not too dangerous because if its snails pace.) During this process someone yelled at us in English that we were crazy kids who were going to get killed jumping off the bus.

After bailing, we caught a cab that got us to the travel agency 5 minutes before closing, which turned out to actually not be in the hotel listed on the website, but next to the hotel. That was just another stressor added into the mix. Once at the travel agency, we figured it would be a quick purchase. An hour and a half later, a trip to the bank to find out my card is blocked, a trip back to the agency to discover that I didn’t need to go to the bank, and the travel agency’s computer crashing, we finally had our tickets in hand. El Salvador here we come!

Lesson learned from this event: Everything takes at least three times longer here in Honduras. (I should have known this by now after multiple 2 hour plus meals!) Sometimes this is a pleasant thing, and other times an unbearably frustrating thing.

(The picture I included is of me at my workstation.)

Quitter

So today I had to break one of my rules. The rule that I broke was: No doing work at home. I have been attempting to only work from 7 to 3, Monday to Friday. That is what I get paid for so that is when I work. Well a huge stack of papers had accumulated on my desk by Friday and I was forced to bring them home to grade. So between reading for Fuller in two blocks I did a 3-hour block of grading.

After this full day of school and work, Diana and I then went to meet up with our friend Jenna at her place in downtown Tegucigalpa. We decided to grab a taxi and head downtown. We passed up the first two taxis and then got a price we liked on our third try. Our ride began like any other ride. We hopped in and began to enjoy the exhaust fumes that somehow find their way into the back of every taxi here. This taxi was in decent shape, meaning I wasn’t concerned that the wheels would be falling off at any moment. (We had one of those last night!) So everything is proceeding as expected until we hit downtown. We get into downtown and there is quite a bit of traffic, but what can you do it is traffic. Well, apparently our taxi driver is not used to the traffic, despite his experiences as a taxi driver, go figure? But it is Honduras. So being overwhelmed by the situation he throws up his hands and declares that he can take us no further. He cannot get us where he told us he would take us. You would think that he would pull over to let us out right? Of course not! He simply stops in the middle of the street and says we can find another taxi. Diana tells him that we aren’t going to pay him our agreed upon price. He proceeds to bitch about how he did do the job for us. All I can say is homeboy was lucky I don’t speak Spanish, because he got away with a steal by getting two-thirds of the original price for a job he didn’t do. So we square up the cash and Diana and I leave the taxi. Luckily, we were only a 15-minute walk away from Jenna’s apartment. Yet, not so luckily, it was 15 minutes straight up hill. This resulted in the most profuse sweating of the trip to date, as well as a livid, cursing Ben. But, alas we made it to Jenna’s where we were treated to a gourmet meal, BJ’s style, of Buffalo Chicken Pizza and Pizookie.

All’s well that ends well right? Nope, this is Honduras. As we were walking back from visiting Jenna’s work, someone graciously speeds through a puddle resulting in the picture you see below:

Kate Gosselin in Action...

Due to Ben's lack of attention and ability to tune out my voice, I was forced to pull a Kate Gosselin at the bank earlier this afternoon. Here is the story of how it all went down:
We went straight to the bank after school with 15 or so other teachers, we all had to get some things straightened out in order to have access to our money. Well, Ben and I took much longer than most of the other teachers because our debit cards had somehow been blocked. The lady helping us was extremely helpful and she eventually got our accounts up and running.
To finalize the process, however, she had to assist us with entering our pin number into the ATM machine, which was located on the outer part of the bank, separated by a large glass window and a rotating door. At some point during this process Ben zoned out and didn't notice I had walked out with the assistant and he had engaged in conversation with a group of friends. (For those of you back at home, you know it is impossible for Ben to pay attention to multiple things at once) So when I called him to come with me he failed to follow. I was hoping he had heard me, and would be right behind me, but that was not the case. After I had input my pin, it was Ben's turn. The problem was Ben wasn't there to input it, I looked through the glass window and there was Ben, deep in conversation. Since the lady was waiting on us I had to rush through the rotating door back into the main building, I called once "Ben!" no response. A second time "Ben!" Five heads turned and looked at me, none of those heads were Ben's. That is the point at which I unconsciously switched to Kate Gosselin mode, "BEN!BEN!BEN!BEN!!" No joke! I called his name 4 times in a row, very loudly and everyone else looked....except Ben. Eventually someone told him to look, at which point he did and realized I was not happy, he came rushing through the door to input his pin.
Now try to picture this: 10 of the teachers inside the main building witnessed this first hand, the other 6 or so were by the ATM machine and had also heard me yelling and seen the whole thing go down. I was humiliated, I could not believe I stooped down to that level, worse yet I could not believe I was "forced" by Ben to do that.
I was not happy, but everyone else found the event pretty funny! I can laugh about it now, but I was NOT HAPPY at the time.
Still, I think it makes for a funny story, hope you were able to enjoy it.

Below you can see pictures of some of the group that went to the bank and got to experience the show Ben and I put on.
There is also a picture of us , the Vinland's and Judy Potter (the 3rd grade teacher) and one of the sweetest women I have met.

~Diana

The highlight of my week!!!

Today (Thursday) was a long day! I know Friday is just around the corner, so the day just seemed to go by very slow. I was also very tired, I think getting up at 5:00AM every morning is starting to catch up with me. At about 1:30 PM, after I had spent 30 minutes talking to a student who was being emotional and difficult, I walked up to the office and the secretary had a surprise for me: A LETTER FROM CALIFORNIA!!!!!! It was from Holly Shevelle, one of my 7th grade girls from Grace (my home church) I immediately opened the letter and got the biggest smile on my face. The letter was 3 pages long, super colorful, and super cute! I read it twice! I felt so loved, and it came at the perfect time. THANKS HOLLY!

I have included a picture of the sweet letter that made my week as well as 2 pictures of my cool 4th grade students. They truly are a cool, intelligent, and wonderful bunch! (see if you can guess who the one that was being difficult is).

Love,
Diana