Honduras: Day 3

I've started a running list of things I should have brought with me. Most of them aren't practical to take around the world, I realize this. And many of them are wants, not needs.

1. hangers - there were four in my room, but I have at least 9 shirts.

2. a bag between a backpack and a cross body bag - there are times when i don't need the whole thing, but have more stuff than can go in my cross body.

3. my clarisonic charger - I feel stupid for even writing this because the people we are helping don't even have running water, let alone a special tool to help exfoliate their skin. 

4. bobby pins - i'm going to bum some off of a student, but seriously, there are only so many ways to do hair in this humidity.

5. dirty laundry bag - luckily I had a spare target bag that has been used to transport my dirty laundry to and from Larry and Angie's.

.....this list will continue to grow over the next two weeks I'm sure!

So by this point I'm 4 days in and starting to make friends with some of the students, but no BFF's yet. I'm also trying to stay in the adult roll and not confuse the students on how to address me. So I'm keeping to myself a lot and hanging out with the adults more. I also go to bed at 8:30 our time here, and they all stay up laughing and talking until 2am. Not me. I can't do that. Trip Mama needs her sleep.

At the beginning of the third day on the trip, an our second day in country, we started out the morning with pancakes for breakfast and then headed to Siete de Mayo to make lunch for the school children. We were again at someone's house using their outdoor 'grill'. We were told that each of the villages we went to the living conditions would get a little worse. This house was right across the street from the school and the students cut up vegetables to be cooked for the lunch.They were served a potato type base with cole slaw and sliced tomatoes. Each of the meals we fix are nutritional, as they go along with a lesson that teaches the village residents how to create nutritional dining options. Diabetes is really common here because many of the residents eat cheap junk food instead of cooking nutritional things (sound familiar USA?). The difference is here in Honduras they don't have the opportunity to purchase fresh fruit, vegetables and meat. They also don't have a way to control the diabetes disease. They just eventually have to amputate a limb. 

We also went over to the school to serve to each of the individual classrooms. The kids were really excited for the "kool-aid" and the lunch. It was really sad to see some of them hiding their plate under their desk so they could get a second serving. Dr. Cano shared that some of these kids probably hadn't eaten in days and this might be the only meal they have for a few more days. 

Social studies information on the wall. (Also, they serve 3 liter bottles of pop here, not 2 liters like in the USA.)

A class waiting on their plates!

The classrooms were a lot different than I expected. I knew there would be limited resources in each of the rooms, but I was actually surprised to see the classrooms decorated with posters, maps, times tables, and bulletin boards similar to how they are back home. The kids also had text books that they were using that were similar to the workbooks we had in elementary school before we got hardback books. Some the teachers were very strict while others had no control over the class at all. When we were outside, they would come outside. We were very much a distraction to the students.

These are the houses these students live in. They are one room houses with hammocks.

After we left this village, we went on to see the vocational school that is kind of like Larry's project that he focuses on. We ate lunch there and then got to see their five buildings which include an administration building with a large classroom, the admin offices, and a computer room (all laptops from the late 1990's), two auto mechanics classrooms/buildings, a welding building, and a sewing building. These buildings are similar to a pole barn and are just one big room. They're divided up into different areas by paint on the floor and one area is the "classroom" and one area is the "shop."

The classroom part of the welding room. You can see the stations in the background.

I was really excited to see the sewing classroom and I wish we could do more with them. Each girl has their own sewing machine in the classroom. They learn to use the 'old' pedal style, a modern machine like what I have at home (almost the same one) and also an industrial machine. It melted my heart when our guide shared that some of the girls wore the dresses they had made to graduation last year!!

The industrial machines.

The old pedal machines.

We left the vocational school and headed back to town. We had dinner at Larry and Angie's, then went to get smoothie's at a little place near the hotel. One thing I noticed as soon as we got into town, and it continues to bother me is the trash that is everywhere! No one throws away trash and they definitely don't have recycling. I just want to spend hours cleaning up the streets and areas around here! IF there is a trash can anywhere (there was a very small one at the smoothie place) it usually doesn't have a trash bag in it.

We have tours scheduled for the next few days and then we will be working a full day at the vocational school, followed by a rest day! Looking forward to day of worshiping Jesus (in Spanish) and sitting by the pool!

Official study abroad blog: Day 3