The Tale of a Traveling Teacher: The Week of Many Holidays

Last week was all but "normal," as there were several holidays that affected our schedule at school. Last Monday, we celebrated Children's Day. By the sounds of it, the school scaled down the festivities from prior years. However, it was still utter chaos. They deicided to dedicate the middle chunk of the school day to playing games with the kids, not the END of the day where we could just send the kids home after they all went crazy. And, us North American teachers had to plan the games. So, with little notice, we each came up with a game and were going to rotate our classes through it. However, that plan was foiled after some of the other teachers came and took kids to play games, messing with the rotation. Also, one of my kids' parents brought ice cream for my class, so we had to bow out of the game playing early (darn). #1 rule of Honduras: Schedule? What schedule? #2 rule of Honduras: There is no such thing as planning.

The next holiday was Independence Day, which was this past Saturday. Such a holiday is celebrated with a parade. It sounded like all the schools in town would normally have their own parades, however, the public school teachers were on strike. Therefore, Minerva was the only parade. This being said, our school administration was extra worried about making it "just right." I mentioned before, but parades are BIG deal. And the funny this is, is they really aren't all that organized, either, which brings me to rule #3: the non-existence of organization. (seeing a theme)? In an attempt to appear organized though, we took 4 hours out of our school day to have parade practice. This consistend of the entire student body walking around the neighborhood with the band playing during the heat in the middle of the day. The ironic part was, that once the actual parade rolled around, they changed the order and lines that the kids were standing in at the last minute (reference rule #2). I turned on my "go-with-the-flow" attitude and did just that. It's the only thing to do, really! My favorite part might have been the Moms that stayed nearby their kids during the whole parade so they could feed them water, fan them, and dab their sweat.

Anyway, the parade was just fine. Just a cluster of people walking through town. The kids really looked cute, though! Thanks to my friends with cameras, I have some pictures! These first ones are of some of my students:

Really, aren't they the cutest ever? Hold onto your hats (or blue and white visors), though, and get ready for these pictures of the cuties from my roommate's Pre-K class:

Here are some other parade pictures:

The final holiday was yesterday, and my favorite! It was Dia De La Maestro (Day of the Teacher). How did we celebrate, you ask?! With they day off! Myself and several of the other teachers went to a very small, nearby town called La Campa. It's about 16 kilometers from Gracias. However, getting to and from is not so simple. We just started walking and eventually picked up the one bus that runs between the two towns. La Campa is known for it's pottery and it's ziplines! The ziplines were definitely the tallest and longest I'd ever seen. And for a country that has little to no safety standards, I have to say I was a little hesitant at first. So glad I fought through it, because it was amazing!