August 27, 2013, 27-8-13

Hello friends.  I found out last week that my main job here is to be a teacher of “educatodos bilingue.”  This is a class of nine kids who have shown great potential to learn in the past, but haven’t been given many opportunities.  They all really want to learn English.  There’s not really a curriculum so wish me luck!  We begin on Thursday.  I have a Honduran co-teacher who knows a lot of useful information that I don’t, like how to laminate posters by hand.  We spent the majority of two days cleaning and setting up the classroom.  I had to relearn how to set-up a classroom with minimal supplies and without being able to run the nearest Walmart.  Tomorrow, we’ll be planning our lessons.

I’ve started to settle in a little more, and the kids are continually the best part of this place.  I love hanging out with them, though my conversational skills are still limited.   Weekends here are like summer camp.  This past weekend, we played ultimate frisbee, capture the flag, kickball, soccer, and card games.  On Sunday, we had a couples dance competition.  One of my favorite kids (a tiny little guy about 7-years-old) claimed me for his partner as soon as it was announced.  It was great.  In the evenings, we watched movies.  One night the sound for the movie (Astroboy) didn’t work.  There was something faulty with the dubbing I think. The kids sat on hard wooden benches in the cafeteria and watched it for an hour without sound.  It’s a different world here.

A couple nights ago we got to have the oldest “kids” over to the volunteer house for dinner.  They all grew up here, and they’re all really cool.  The oldest is twenty-five, and he’s in charge of the agricultural department now, and the youngest is twenty and is still studying in high school.  We asked them for advice for our year here at Amigos, and they told us to respect the kids and the kids will respect us.  After dinner, we played games, including the card game, Pig or Spoons.  It was a pretty fierce competition and entertained all of us for about an hour.

Sorry, there aren’t pictures yet!  They’re coming!