Hasta Algun Dia Honduras (Until someday Honduras)

So this is it! The countdown to coming home is smashing through the single digits and I'm finding it difficult to believe that by Saturday afternoon I’ll be Scotland-bound. Both Innes and I have already had to bid farewell to many people and places that we have become so familiar with over the last 12 months, but the hardest are yet to come. It’s going to be inexplicably difficult to say goodbye to friends, work colleagues, my students who I’ve become so fond of and my bosses and the children at Miqueas who I have developed a very special relationship with. There are many thank yous and reflections on the year that I wish to make but I will firstly recap a few highlights of the past couple of months.

Firstly was a 3 week holiday to Nicaragua and Costa Rica where the highlights included a volcano trek through the Costa Rican rainforest, hiring motorscooters, going canyoning and visiting numerous stunning beaches. The lowlights were limited to another bank card fiasco and thinking I would lose my mind on bus after bus after bus so all in all it was a great trip! Although I have spent significantly more time at my project than travelling this year I will still take away a number of lessons and unforgettable memories from these 8 weeks!

 

 

 

 

A couple of recent events that meant a lot to me were more work related. Last week Innes and I ran a quiz night for the 20 children at Miqueas and aged between 7 – 14. It was sad knowing that it was the last fun event we’d organise for them outside of normal classes but it was great to see the teams getting competitive and having a laugh throughout the rounds - the favourite was the Miqueas specific round. Featured questions included ‘who is the smallest Tia?’, ‘which child broke their arm in 2014’ and ‘if you were to add the ages of the directors/parents together what number would you get?’.

Another really memorable and special morning was the school celebrations for ‘Dia del Indio'. This day commemorates ‘Lempira’ an indigenous warrior and national hero who fought against the Spaniards in the 15th century. When we arrived at school in the morning we were honoured to find out that Innes and I along with a local friend would be the judges of the costume competition. This turned out to be surprisingly difficult as all the costumes were incredible with so much fine detail, decorations and headdresses made from colourful feathers, beads, dried beans, maize and cacao. Many dances were performed by groups of children from most of the school grades which they’d clearly been practising hard in the afternoons when we work in Miqueas. I was so impressed by everyone, especially the 1^st graders who looked adorable in their outfits and who took their dancing so seriously. One of the best things about the morning was that it brought together so many people from the community who we have gotten to know well over this year – teachers, Miqueas work colleagues, students, their parents and friends. It was a really lovely atmosphere and I know I will remember it for years to come.

 

 

Our last week is a busy one and we’ve yet to give the house an all over scrub, mark end-of year tests, finish packing and writing important notes for next year’s volunteers. Although volunteers have been coming to Miqueas for many years we are the first ones who have had the opportunity to work within the community as well, both in the school and kindergarten. The people here are clearly very thankful (and any opportunity is an opportunity to have a party!) so they have thrown us a couple of little events! When we saw that the kindergarten parents had prepared a surprise party for us, and in Honduran style this means, rice, fried chicken, fizzy juice, cake, balloons and a piñata, we were overwhelmed and so grateful – I honestly couldn’t stop smiling. The school teachers also threw a party for us this morning which was another emotional event although we're returning tomorrow to say our final goodbyes. It certainly feels like the last week of school before the summer holidays at home and there’s no doubt that it’s the end of an era.

 

There are a few ‘thank yous’ that I feel are important to make. Firstly to my family, friends and EVERYONE at home who supported me and helped me to fundraise as without you I wouldn’t be here. Secondly, thank you to everyone in Honduras who I have spent a lot of time with over the year and who played a HUGE part in making it the incredible experience that it has been. There are too many names to mention but you have taught me so much and have given me so many special memories of my time here. An enormous thank you goes to my Project Trust partner Innes for well, everything, and to whom I couldn’t have done it without, she’s been my rock, my best friend, my councilor, family and so much more. I should probably also thank everyone in advance (or maybe I should warn  them to have) patience in hearing ‘honduras this…honduras that’ over and over upon my return!

 

Two people who I feel deserve a special mention on my blog are Melody and Jacob - the Miqueas directors, parents to 36 kids and my bosses.  Innes and I have been lucky enough to create a really good relationship with both of them and in many ways they have been more like parents or friends to us over this past year, having gone above and beyond for us on countless occasions. I have learnt so much from them and they have always challenged me to look at situations from a different viewpoint which has been so valuable. They have worked and continue to work so hard for their children as well as the local community and are easily two of the most inspiring people I’ve ever met.

The next few days are going to be very strange as we make our final preparations for leaving and say our goodbyes. Spending a year in Honduras has been nothing short of incredible; in fact there aren’t even words to express it! ‘I feel as if I have achieved a lot over my time here and that this country has taught me so much’ - the overused, pretentious words of your average ‘Gap Yah Kid’ honestly carry so much truth and for me it expands further than just about this wonderfully diverse, chaotic and colourful country. Honduras has helped to shape my already existing views about poverty, inequality and social problems and beyond this I believe I now have a greater understanding of the world, its politics and it’s issues on a larger scale too. Another of the greatest things I have obtained from this year is an understanding about how to work with children. These skills will be so valuable to me in future jobs, in the Scouting world, other teaching or leadership roles or even being a parent myself. I could witter on for far longer about what I have learnt this year and even how the special the final week has been but I will spare you and leave it for my journal instead!

So it’s over and out from me in Honduras, see you all soon! Thank you for reading my blog and for the continued support.

Isla

 

303 Days in Honduras

A simplified version of Old MacDonald had a Farm and ´Moo´ … ´neigh ´… ´Sss´ …´ Bubblebubble´…´woof´ are among many of the unusual noises that have been emitting from the 1^st – 3^rd grade classrooms in English lessons this week... needless to say that the topic of animals has been very popular!  Teaching English has so much scope for creative and varied lessons and for this unit, I made animal finger puppets, masks and fold-out paper farmyards with my various classes. Both Innes and I like to take our kids outside now and again to play English games, which we also do in the classroom, - depending on the day they can be a recipe for success or sheer chaos. Innes´s class were having a ball a couple of weeks ago making and modelling clothes from newspaper which also provided a real laugh for the teachers who were snapping photos and clearly hadn’t seen anything like it before. Whilst crafts and such creative activities aren’t possible all of the time we both really enjoy these sorts of lessons – providing they go smoothly. The best thing is seeing the children getting inventive and being proud of the work they´ve made. This is particularly important to Innes and I as in contrast to our primary school education, the Honduran school curriculum is very textbook based and it doesn’t encourage much imaginative thinking.

 

A few weeks ago I spent a couple of my English teaching slots at the Campo (village field) with only the girls doing some football and football training. This was inspired by seeing the boys hogging the ball in the playground and the all-boys school football team playing in a tournament with the girls hanging around on the sidelines. Honduras is a football crazy country but it also has a very macho culture. It was great to get all the girls out and playing football at some point over the two mornings and I was really impressed by many of their skills. Whether it was just running in circles and tripping over their own feet and the ball (1^st grade) or properly structured drills and matches (5^th and 6^th grades) everyone appeared to be really enjoying the exercise and getting competitive, not to mention being extremely smug that and the boys didn’t get to come too. I personally really enjoyed spending the time with this great bunch of girls, many of whom I´ve not taught before, and it was a great feeling to be able to pass on something that I´m so passionate about.
 

In Miqueas I´ve also started doing a bit of football training for fun with the youngest kids. This is particularly good to let them run off a bit of steam after a long and quite intense (private school system – big difference!) day at school. Another change is that I am now doing 1 on 1 work with the 6 and 7 year olds who are starting to learn to read in English and this again is so different from teaching a class of 30+, a group of 4 or 8 or where there’s such a mix of abilities.

I was really impressed by my older English teaching group whose recent project was to make up a puppet show and perform it to the younger kids. They made up the script, puppets and puppet theatre and called the play´The 4 Friends and the Shark´. It even featured a snowman and a robot!  Another part of my Miqueas work is working with a little boy who is both blind and deaf. Prior to Christmas he wouldn’t eat unless spoon or handfed by a Tia but with a bit of work he now eats finger food on his own, uses a spoon with a bit of help and drinks from a cup independently – we´re all so proud! I´ve just started doing some activities with him to improve hand and finger strength, but this remains in its early stages…´Pedro, playdough and dried pasta are not edible´! 

 

The past 6 weeks have also brought with them a lot of laughs, events and new experiences outside of work, as well as ever more lessons about the culture. One week we were incredibly sociable and had one of the Tias and her family around for dinner in an evening; walked up into the mountains a little way with her and one of her sons to a bathing spot at a river near us the next day; visited friends from a nearby village a few days later where we spent the entire day cooking and eating and a previous Scottish Miqueas volunteer came to stay for a week! We feel that there is an impossible amount of Honduran culture to learn about and experience and are constantly being surprised. In terms of priorities, a family might have a small but nice kitchen and living room with a big TV but sending their daughter to secondary school is too expensive. Or on the contrary, they might have more than one child attending university and a nice house, yet the toilet is in a little hut in the garden. I´m constantly being surprised by the big things right down to the little things. When eating with friends a couple of weeks ago I was shocked (and fearing for my teeth) to see that sugar went into all parts of the main course, with even a couple of heaped spoonful’s into the salad. Another cultural experience and memorable night was attending a community event which can only be described as a night of party games for all the family. The evening as a whole was such a laugh, including when I got up on the stage and embarrassed myself in front of all of La Colorada and my pupils in one of the competitions where I had to dance with a sombrero and broom horse…At least I won! What really blew Innes and I away however was the ´Punta´dancing. The ´Punta´dancing performed on this evening was very intimate with a resemblance to Twerking and was either performed by women alone or with a man or even with a pole. No one, parents or kids alike, batted an eyelid, whilst Innes and I were staring in disbelief.

Last weekend we attended a Carnival in a city a few hours away from us with 2 of the boys from another PT project. It was the first thing I’d ever seen of its kind and is said to attract people from all over Central America. The ´La Ceiba Gran Carneval’ was a huge, incredibly colorful event, with amazingly decorated floats of all different themes, companies, brands and advocating different issues including teen pregnancy, looking after the environment and very surprisingly one on LGBT rights. There were amazing masks and costumes, food and freedbies, even a BMX biker who flipped off a ramp on one float, as well as music and dancing all day and night.

 

 

 

 

 

Time is something that is never far from the front of my mind and this is certainly not something that I’ve picked up from Honduran culture. For the Honduran people (as a generalization) things happen when they happen, few events start on time, people are rarely in a rush and we’ve even found when inviting people around to eat with us or when booking tours, boats or buses that if they even arrive within an hour after the agreed or departure time - it’s a good day. Over the past 10 months I have come to realize that time here (and to quote Pirates of the Carribean) is´more of a guideline´ and it´s certainly not specific. Time has become particularly important to me for all sorts of teacher and classes and time-table and responsibility related reasons but above all it is because I have a deadline, a day on which I know that I leave the country if not for good, for a long time. As I have said over and over in my blogs, this time is ticking far too fast (although I do retract that statement for Friday afternoons, nights when homework or classes are running on past 6pm and in the rare occurrence of a temper tantrum or a class kicking off…).

The passing of time is inevitable and a reality that we all face. It is also an illustration of how other aspects of my year are constantly improving and progressing, which is particularly true for all of my different types of relationships I have made here. I feel like I have 30 younger brothers and sisters at Miqueas, 3 school classes who I am incredibly fond of, friendships that are only growing stronger, work colleagues and Tias who I have a laugh with every day in or outside of work and my project hosts who we have made such a strong connection with that every day it becomes harder to imagine leaving them.

Health day and Holidays

Maybe it comes as a surprise to  PT volunteers who find keeping a blog updated a chore but I really enjoy writing mine! One of the craziest things I find is looking back over the past month or two and reflecting on just how much I've done. Whilst I'm not losing-my-head busy all of the time, by the time blog-time rolls around and I come to write it out, it certainly feels like it! So let's try and keep this short...

Last Saturday Innes and I returned from a 2 week holiday in Guatemala and El Salvador and we both agreed that it was perfectly timed. By the last week of term both the children in Miqueas and school were getting antsy and our patience and motivation levels were running low. 

First of all we headed up to Guatemala where our holiday got off to the worst possible start when I left my passport, money and credit card on the 4th bus of the day (or someone took them, details unsure). What then followed was probably some of the worst hours of my life (Project Trust tell you that losing your passport is one of the absolute worst things that can happen to you on your year away) as we hunted down the bus company, tried to return to Honduras, weren't allowed to cross the border and had to file a police report with the Guatemalan police. I cannot stress just how lucky I was to get my passport back after it was found and handed into the immigration officers who we'd been with earlier in the day who'd then driven half an hour to return it to me and caught us just minutes before we left the police station. It was an experience I would not repeat for the life of me but at least I got to ride in a Guatemalan police pick-up truck and on the back of a moped. 

After this the rest of the holiday went far more smoothly and although the passport trauma delayed us by several hours we still made it to where we needed to be that night. We spent our first 2 nights in a Garifuna town called Livingston. Garifuna is the name given to the people who live on the carribean coasts of Honduras, Belize and Guatemala and who have a very different life and culture to those who live inland. Then we took a boat trip up a river to stay in a town called Rio Dulce. The highlight of our time here was visiting a hot-water waterfall, which certainly made up for the hot-water showers of the past 8 months that I can just about count on two hands. It was a beautiful place and for me it certainly was an 'I'm-so-blown-away-by-nature-right-now' moments. Following this we took an unforgettable journey on a dirt-track road in the back of a pick-up truck through the mountains under the stars and full moon to a place called Semuc Champey, a tourist destination renowned for its turquoise limestone rock pools. We did a caving activity which had us swimming along whilst holding a candle in one hand at points, did a rope swing jump, climbed up to a viewpoint and spent time relaxing in the pools (along with what felt like the rest of Guatemala who were out to enjoy the Semana Santa/Holy week holidays). From there we headed to Antigua, a city where we spent some time in November, but for us this time it was just an overnight stop-off (and culture fix). We were lucky enough to be there (with enough time to party) and to witness some of the Catholic Holy Week parades and some amazing street art of all shapes and colours. As it was Good Friday everyone in the parades were dressed in black, the men wearing floor-length robes and shouldering what looked like painfully heavy wooden floats with life-size models of the saints and Jesus mounted on them. People wafting incense and marching bands playing ominous music made for quite an intense atmosphere and the whole thing appeared almost medieval to me. 

We spent the next couple of days in Ruta de Las Flores checking out the El Salvadorian mountain villages which have become well-renowned for coffee growing (yep Starbucks is grown here) and their amazingly colourful murals. We walked up to a crater lake and spent far too much time here eating pupusas, an El Salvadorian staple! Next it was down to the coast at El Tunco, a tourist hot-spot and surfers paradise! We got a couple of surfing lessons which we thoroughly enjoyed despite us not being much good! It also turns out that it's far harder than it looks but I did manage to crack the standing up after a while and I'd definitely do it again! Wishing we were able to spend more time here we headed to San Salvador where we enjoyed a cultural day visiting the palace and anthropology museum and didn't enjoy getting ourselves thoroughly lost on multiple occasions. I won't deny that a part of me was dreading returning to Honduras as it signalled that the end of the holiday was near, however as soon as I crossed the border I was glad to be back - everything just feels that bit more familiar. Innes and I stayed in Gracias, a town in the south, met the new 8 month volunteers Linde and Joanne and did one of the longest and highest zip-lines in Central America (an amazing but extremely scary experience) before returning home a couple of days later. It was a brilliant holiday and we managed to cover a lot of ground in 2 weeks. We're definitely lucky that Honduras is easily and geographically accessible to all the neighbouring countries so travel is pretty straightforward and we don't have to spend days on a bus to get somewhere. Above all, we returned to our project with a new-found energy and ready to get stuck in again! 

Getting steamy...

Boat trip

Semuc Champey

SS street art 

SS parades

Pretty church ft. Miss Inez

Crater lake

One of the many incredible murals we saw

Surfing

Inez and her surf instructor

Basically heaven on earth

Zip-lining in Gracias. This was the tamest of 6 cables.

Our first week back was pretty different to normal as a Mission group of people our age led by Gaby's parents came from Michigan in the US to paint the walls and make closets for the new house. The new children's home building will house bedrooms for the girls, youngest children and Melody and Jacob (parents/directors). Since this comes to 24 kids in total, picture Cheaper by the Dozen but double the trouble! Instead of many of our normal tasks in Miqueas we found ourselves swapping pencil for paintbrush and getting well stuck into the painting too. A huge amount was covered in 5 days and by the time I upload my next blog it's likely that the new house will be ready for living. 

Classes in general have been calmer since we've gotten back and these continue much the same as normal. The children at Miqueas are eagerly awaiting to hear back from their pen pals in Aboyne Primary and this week we're going to introduce our English library to the school. If anyone would still like to send out (basic, basic) books (and thanks to those who already did!) they'd be very much appreciated, especially anything with English/Spanish translations...

1st grade having fun with chalk and shapes

Teamwork makes the dream work, or so they say...

Getting our 'paint' on

The English library 

Last Thursday and Friday Innes and I ran some activities for World Health Day as PT requires us to celebrate one international day to gain our 'One Award in Global Volunteering and Citizenship'. Innes and I both agreed that World Health Day was appropriate to celebrate as 1. Health is just generally so important and impacts pretty much everything we do in everyday and 2. Because Hondurans are not renowned for their healthy lifestyles - eating a monotonous low fruit/veg, high oil/fat diet, not exercising enough, poor dental hygiene etc. 

For me, one of the best things about our project is the variety we have in our teaching which for the health day activities was perfect. I could carry out classroom activities suited to many people and also more hands-on activities for which small groups were essential. With 1st and 2nd grade we started off with some mimes of things that were healthy and why. The main focus of the lesson was specifically on teeth and good dental hygiene. When I first came to Honduras 2 things in particular that I learnt about this that really shocked me. 1. Some people give Pepsi to their babies and children instead of milk because Pepsi is cheaper to buy. 2. It's quite a cultural belief that children don't need to look after their first set off teeth (in any way, shape or form!) as these will get replaced by their adult teeth. So this lesson was pretty important! I did most of the lesson in Spanish and they drew 'happy teeth' and 'sad teeth' along with things that are good and bad for your teeth. Apart from those who ploughed ahead and coloured in both sets of teeth blue, pink and green (despite my pictures to copy I think the point of the contrasting white and brown teeth may have been missed!) this went down really well. With 3rd grade we compared flashcards of things that are better and worse for your health and why, before carrying out a more general health lesson and making a big wall display which I'm looking forward to putting up! 

That afternoon with the 3 youngest that I work with we coloured in paper fruit and vegetables and threaded them onto ribbon to make healthy, colourful necklaces and also made decorated some banana people! With the help of Melody and Jen the next afternoon we got the 8 youngest together for a bit of food art fun where we made healthy 'snails' from celery, peanut butter, apple and chocolate chips. This was a suitably messy and yummy activity and lots of fun for everyone involved! 

The last health day activity was inspired by a competition we did in my primary school every Easter to decorate a boiled egg...except this time it was with bananas! It gave everyone the chance to be creative and certainly gave me a laugh seeing what they all came up with! I hope the change from normal classes for all the children I work with showed them that as well as being an important and serious topic, staying healthy can be fun too! 

2nd grade 

Happy teeth/sad teeth 

Wilma - "Que rico es el caracol" (the snail is delicious!)

Going bananas! 

Pretty ironically, on health day we attended our first (and hopefully last) Honduran funeral (or they closest they get to that anyway) for a couple of relatives of one of the teachers we work with. In Honduran funerals there is no service, just an open house or church for 24 hours where people come by and pay their respects. We were invited by one of the other teachers and when we arrived we felt completely out of our depth. We had no idea of the cultural norms: where to look; who to speak to; if we should look like we were praying; whether to accept the food offered to us; if we had to sit down, and how long to stay. The worst part for me was definitely the fact that it was an open casket. We were told that by the evenings of such events lots of people tend to hang out outside and it becomes a bit of a social event but whilst we were there it was pretty somber. 

Another event of the past 5 weeks was a weekend trip to the Cuero y Salado nature reserve with fellow PT volunteers Aled and Hugh. There's no road to get here so we had to take a miniature train (which in the past was used to transport bananas from the banana plantations) and where we did a beautiful boat tour through the mangrove swamps. The highlights were seeing lots of monkeys and a crocodile and alligator! 

I'm In March I was also invited to attend a 1 night Scout camp which was a great experience. The location was changed from somewhere outside of the city to school grounds within San Pedro Sula - I didn't think I'd be camping here when I flew into this city 8 months ago! The main evening activity was a group work problem-solving cooking over a fire and all that shabang activity and there was also a campfire for everyone together. The next day after 3 hours of sleep, the group of 15 of us plus leaders climbed up a hill (the route was actually a downhill mtb track which made me nostalgic) from where we could see the city through the trees. Just another fab weekend!

Choo choo banana train 

Mangrove swamp tour

Campfire's burning

This weekend has been suitably relaxed which was exactly what was needed after the travels of the past few weeks. We took the kids to play Rounders at the field, I went with one of our Tias and her family to church and to eat lunch with them after and even found time to kick back in my hammock with a new book - a very rare occurrence indeed! Whilst I've gotten pretty excited for uni recently from sorting out my course and accommodation, I know that I can't imagine saying goodbye here yet. In fact I can't even imagine my life without all the people who are in it now. 3.5 months to go sounds like a long time and yet is feeling more and more like a home-straight every day with the time just whizzing faster and faster beneath our feet. 

School days, Spelunking and chicken slaughters

After March 4th I will officially be able to say that I am "going into my 8th month in Honduras". Yes, I can't believe it either! I feel like I have matured and grown up in so many ways here and I've learnt about so many things that I never could have imagined. I remain very grateful for all my sponsors and contributors to my fundraising back at home, I couldn't have done this without you!

Our main project in the Miqueas children's home remains yet the same in main ways, however there also been new developments alongside normal classes. The children celebrated 'Robbie Burns day' in our holiday classes by learning about Scottish culture and traditions (they particularly loved watching videos of the Pipebands), designing tartan sashes, trying their hand at poetry and even having a mini-ceilidh with the dancing we'd taught. We even got the directors dancing and all in all it was a good morning! 

Last week 4 of the bilingual school children who'd written to children in my old primary school in Aboyne in Scotland last year received back replies and I don't know who was more excited, them or me! The highlight for me was watching them read them for the first time and pointing out the similarities and differences between their lives. One of my girls Heidi, was delighted to hear that her penpal Cristina wanted to be a doctor just like her. Since this has been a success now all our kids aged 7 - 13 have also written letters to exchange letters with the full P5 class. Not only will the Scottish pupils get to practise their written Spanish and the Honduran children their English but it's also eye opening from a global citizenship point of view and hopefully all involved will learn that children even on the other side of the world are similar in many ways to themselves!  

Due to a re-shuffle in school and after-school English class times, I have had time in my day to start an art and motor skills class for the youngest who don't yet attend school and those who finish earlier. This is proving stressful, not to mention messy when paint is involved, but some good work has also been produced and it's keeping me on my feet for sure! Ladybird headbands, monster faces, finger-painting, playdough, bead necklaces, puppets, you name it, we've made it! Miqueas art gallery coming soon...

Since all the children at Miqueas, exempt the 4 youngest, now attend school during in the mornings this has led to a shake-up in our routines! This change has allowed us to start a new project, working one morning a week at the village kindergarten and to expand on our English teaching at the school from 1 day a week to 3. Our work at the kindergarten is to teach English for 45 minutes and assist with the work they're doing - learning basic writing skills, playdough or other Spanish songs and games. We're definitely still finding our feet and we've discovered that working with a class of 25 (very cute) 4 year olds can be very challenging and hard work. As they have such short attention spans we've split our English into half an hour at the start of the morning and a 15 minute recap at the end. The kindergarten building consists of 1 smallish main room which is painted and with lots of posters and a few games, a bathroom and some tyres to play on outside. As with the primary school, the children have to bring all their own resources - writing books, pencils, glue, scissors, playdough etc. And like the school again, although we know that in our village there is a full range of children attending from very poor to quite well-off families, everyone is always immaculately dressed. 

Being able to teach at the school 2 more days a week than before Christmas has been a great improvement, both for the pupil's progress in English which we're already noticing and also for our classroom relationships with them. We're both missing the English holiday club a little (our final week ironically had the highest turnout) but it's also been good to get back into our school routine. My classes have changed since I am now teaching the new 1st grade (34 5 year olds!) and I no longer teach my old 3rd grade as they've moved up to 4th and Innes teaches them. Since I feel like a bigger part of the school and that the school is a bigger part of me I thought it might be an interesting time to mention some of the biggest differences to Scottish primary schools. For Honduran standards I am told that our school is pretty well-off as it has enough desks, chairs and textbooks for the pupils, which apparently was not the case a few years ago. So, what are the main differences? 

1. The school is made up of 3 buildings which house 6 classrooms, there's a tiny school office (that I've never seen anyone use), some toilets in wooden huts outside and a decent sized playground with football goals. There's no staff room or inside hall (in fact when a pastor came to do a bible class a couple of weeks ago all 150 children squeezed into the biggest classroom - I was super impressed), facilities for children with learning disabilities or even glass in the windows. The water fountain is a tap in the ground outside and although the school has the basic resources like textbooks the teachers or children have to pay for anything extra. 

2. There is not a single computer or laptop, and Smartboard, you've got to be kidding! The electricity is only used for the classroom lights on dark days and to run the fans when it's hot. Saying this, a few of these are broken and when there's a power cut its all irrelevant anyway! 

3. The school doubles up as a Secondary school on Saturdays. In many ways this is a great concept as it was set up so that young people who have to work to earn a living during the week can continue their education. Likewise if they can't afford a bus everyday to one of the neighbouring villages where there is a high school. However I am just a tiny bit dubious that for a minority of parents whose children have just left primary school it is a cop-out from looking into all the possibilities of the other local high schools where if their child went 5 days a week instead of 1 they would inevitably receive a better education. 

4. The teacher/child relationship is a bit different from home which surprised me a little at first. All the children hug their teachers, the teachers will refer to them as 'mi amor' (my love) in classes (although that's quite common in Honduras anyway) and a child might even sit on his teachers knee. This is quite simply just a cultural difference, but at home in Scotland it would not be acceptable. 

5. Despite there being 6 grades (P2-7ish) in the school (and apparently there always has been) the government only pays 4 out of 6 teachers to work here. They believe that 4 teachers is sufficient to teach 6 big classes and so in 2 of the classes the parents have grouped together to pay the salary of the teachers who otherwise would be unpaid. Needless to say i was shocked to find this out, it makes little sense to me but at least the parents in the village have a decent enough income to make this possible! 

A better teacher than me! 

Both at Miqueas and at the school I feel like I'M still learning every day as well, I suppose that can only be a good thing, there's just so much to soak up and take on board in the role of a teacher! In the school we're hoping to set up a small library corner of basic English books over the next month, and if anyone from home would like to send out second-hand books to contribute, these would be very gratefully received! (Address : Miqueas 6:8, Aldea La Colorada, El Progreso, Yoro, Honduras, Central America). 

We spend Friday mornings in Miqueas doing organisation or tidy up work that needs to be done. A new house is being built next door to the current building in which 25 of the children will live (as they are currently outgrowing their shared rooms) so there's lots of things to move over from the current house and everyone is very excited. 

Outside of work has seen some other interesting adventures including a long weekend trip to a lake a few hours south called Lago de Yajoa. Here myself, Innes, Gaby and Jen went kayaking, walked up to a ridge to watch the sun rise over the mountains and the lake, visited and swam above a stunning waterfall, relaxed, met with Maia and Alice (2 other PT volunteers) and tried 'Spelunking'. As it turns out this is effectively caving and in the caves we saw some amazing stalactites, stalagmites and other rock formations (I sound like such a geography nerd but it was cool ok). We had to crawl along, climb up and scramble over a lot of slippy, slippy rocks and although it was actually quite difficult it was a really enjoyable experience and so different to anything else I've ever done! Once we were in the cave as far as we could go, our guide instructed us to turn of our torches and it was the darkest, most silent place I've been in my life - which was really quite weird, it's such a different world in there. 

We returned from our trip to the lake to find a rat had moved into our house. It had chewed through the mesh on one of the windows and found our stash of chicken food in the kitchen. Innes and I were both absolutely terrified and the rat's games of hide and seek in the following days felt somewhat traumatic. We were certainly very glad to discover where the hole was and to get it blocked up. Big shout-out for Jacob for helping us to search for us it in the dark when we were at our most scared! 

January also saw the slaughter of our chickens. For the past 3 or 4 months we'd been keeping 4 chickens and a rooster (yes I was extremely glad to see him go!) in our garden but when they stopped laying enough eggs to pay their keep (and not wanting to attract more rats) we decided it was time for them to go. Whilst Gaby sold hers Innes and I got the help of one of the Tias to help (and by help I mean do everything) to kill them. First Rubi and her son Manuel (one of Innes' 5th graders) ran around the garden catching them (because we were so intimidated by them that we couldn't even touch them) and then  began the process of the actual slaughter, the plucking of the feathers and the cutting up of the meat. It was a surprisingly complicated process which aside from helping pluck the feathers the most I contributed was a lot of 'ooh'ing and 'ahh'ing! Since meat is more expensive to buy here the chicken has been a treat and so far it has been in fajitas, soup and rice and stir fry! 

Since I've been to meetings with a scout group in the nearest city to where I live in the North of the country I was invited to attend an event for 'Founders day'. This is is a big event in the Scouting calendar as it commemorates Baden Powell (who founded the movement)'s birthday. This was an event with an attendance of I'd guess 200+ scouts aged 7-20 + leaders and made for a really interesting and sociable afternoon and I met a lot of really nice people! What's also relevant to note is that the scout community of Honduras is only made up from the middle and upper middle classes and I don't think I met a single person my age that day that didn't speak fluent English. If you have money here the done thing is to send your child to private (mostly English bilingual) school. The wealth disparities here will never cease to blow my mind, whilst some people have so much others have so little. I've been wondering if the higher social classes perceive the profound poverty in their country as irrelevant or as something they want to help address. And then it occurred to me that although our poverty isn't on the same scale, is it fair to say that our middle and upper classes in Britain pay a fair amount of attention, respect and willingness to help our lower classes? The politics of the situation are definitely different but it made me think, a lot. 

I'm in there somewhere...

Over the weekend we had our Project Trust desk officer visit which was fun for many reasons and I think we both enjoyed getting to 'show off' our project. One of the  final thing I thought I to mention was the 'Zika' virus. Whilst it blew up on the news at home, we've heard only a small amount about it here despite being in an at risk country. The truth is that people here just get on with it, they have no other option. We've known one person who's had it but I've interestingly come across numerous articles that claim that the link between the virus and microsephely is a media cover up for something else as plenty of healthy babies have been born in Latin America to mothers who experienced Zika symptoms. Government officials came to our school and went around the village with the 5th and 6th grade pupils giving out bags of solution to every house to put in their pila (outside water source) to kill mosquito larvae, I have received 2  texts from Zika@HN and we've seen a couple of signs and newspaper headlines about it but aside from this it's generally not a hot topic. 

5th and 6th grade pupils out and about with then pila solutions. 

So that's February been and gone! It brought with it some very cold weather (there was even rumoured to have been snow in one part of the country) which was not appreciated and one evening I was even wishing I had my thermals whilst hiding under an extremely thick blanket! The sun is back for now and we hear that it's only going to get hotter until our leaving date at the end of July. Roll on orange and mango season and let's pray for some bananas and avocados on the trees before before this day.