Nicaragua

The Cathedral in León, Nicaragua; the largest in Central America

It has been a bit of a whirlwind but in just 7 days I traveled from El Progreso in Honduras, south to Nicaragua where I visited León, Managua, and Granada; then back North to see San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador. A bad cold sapped my traveler´s energy a bit but I persevered to check out Nicaragua´s colonial cities. León and Granada both have the stone-paved roads and old churches that I saw in Antigua, Guatemala. But unlike the air-brushed beauty in Antigua, in Nica I got the sense that real people lived and worked here in these cities. It meant that things like trash, street dogs, pollution, markets, and general life were out in full view.

Parque Central in Granda, Nicaragua

Nicaragua was not too big of a change after 5 months in Honduras. The poverty is about the same, although the border town in which I entered was very underdeveloped. The Córdoba is worth a bit more than the Lempira but not by much. The food is better in Honduras, perhaps because they don´t make baleadas in Nicaragua. I only spent a total of 4 nights here and I didn´t get a grasp on what Nicaragua is about but I caught a glimpse. The national sports are baseball and boxing. The country is gorgeous but with many environmental problems. Definitely a place I´d love to go back to, but next time without the head cold.

On the road again

I have once again joined the ranks of the backpackers. After 5 months in El Progreso, Honduras I left my job, my friends, and my community behind on Sunday and hopped on a bus towards Nicaragua. For a wrap-up of my time in El Progreso you can check out the OYE blog: oyehonduras.blogspot.com

My pack (much heavier than before) and I now find ourselves in León, Nicaragua, a colonial city about 2 hours from the Southern Honduran border. As usual, my plan is a bit short on details but I want to hop around here for a few days and then backtrack north to travel through El Salvador (checking out the pacific coast surfing on the way). After some time on the beach, I will pass through Quetzaltenango once again to visit my host family and then it´s on to the real adventure: a stint in Mexico City.

Some friends have asked me, why Mexico City? To this I can safely answer, I don´t really know. I have a job connection there which will hopefully lead to me teaching English and making a bit more than the 7,000 Lempiras ($350/month) I was raking-in in Progreso. I also have friends there that I want to see, and I believe I miss the culture, the bustle, and the crowds of people that I experienced in NYC. I´m definitely not going to Mexico City for the air quality.

I already miss the life I left behind in Honduras, but I hope that this part of my trip turns-up just as many adventures as the last.

Feliz Navidád desde Roatán, Honduras

Yo pasé el primer Navidád sin mi familia en la isla de Roatán aquí en Honduras. Aunque extrañe mi familia, me sentí feliz para estar con mi amiga Erin y su familia en un lugar tan bonito; relajando y tomando el sol por las playas blancas. Les deseo a todos mis amigos un feliz navidad y prospero año nuevo. Nos vemos en 2009!

El arbol navideño artificial que llevamos al hotel. Santa nos visitó!

Final Days in El Progreso

I arrived in Honduras in August planning to stay one month. Now after five months in El Progreso I will be leaving in January for Mexico City.

Earlier in December I said goodbye to my teachers and students at Best American school and on the 20th I spent my last day as an OYE volunteer. OYE held it's "Entrega de Becas," a welcome event for our new crop of scholarship students which brings our group to a total of 75 youths.

At the event, my radio students provided me with one of my proudest moments at OYE. The group planned their 6th radio show to be a year-in-review and also coverage of the scholarship event. With only a little prompting from me, the radio crew scoured the room for interviews with new students, parents, and OYE staff members, and interviewed themselves about their experiences in the program. The group of audio editors took care of the sound and our music group presented their top 5 songs of the year. After months of teaching them what I know about radio (in Spanish, which was no easy task) I was overwhelmed to see them put it into practice with such ease.

The OYE radio group

There were times when the radio students struggled to keep their focus and when our weekly meetings were not as productive as I would have hoped. But on my last day I could feel the energy and passion of the kids and I wish that I could spend another five months helping them towards the goal of a live over-the-air radio broadcast.

OYE was what brought me to El Progreso and although i also found a job teaching at a local high school in the mornings, OYE was where my heart is, and I will miss my radio students the most.

Last Day of School

After four long, hard, fantastic, challenging, frustrating, joyous, and certainly interesting months teaching at Best American School in El Progreso, Honduras, I now arrive at my last day of school! Tomorrow I will say goodbye to my students and fellow teachers and leave behind a community that I never imagined I would find here in Honduras.

Riding the x-ray bike at the San Pedro Sula Plantetarium with BAS

Since my first day of work in early September I had to overcome plenty of hurdles for example:

a lack of textbooks, no prior curriculum, no teacher guidebooks, zero experience teaching high school on my part, 200 energetic P.E. students from pre-kinder to 11th grade, communication problems within the school, and apathetic 10th-grade students doing their best to resist my efforts to communicate why sociology and psychology (and later physics and chemistry) are worth studying.

But the joys have outweighed the hardships:

wonderful teachers to help me along, $7,000 Lempiras/month to help pay my expenses and extend my stay here in Honduras, 200 energetic P.E. students from pre-kinder to 11th grade, slowly learning the name of each of my students and then greating each one when I see them throughout the day, running into teachers, students, and parents everywhere I go in downtown Progreso, my wonderful 11th graders,reliving high school (albeit it from the view of a teacher in a central american country), and experiencing all the things that make Honduran culture different, vibrant, and alive.

It has been an experience that I will never forget.

Stephanie and Dulce (in the background) on the bus to Zizima water park

Two of my 10th-graders, Ivis and Noam

OYE el Ritmo update

Every afternoon I arrive at the OYE office to help with homework, give English lessons, and just do whatever is needed. But Fridays are when the action really gets going with the weekly meetings of OYE el Ritmo, OYE´s youth radio program. I am the head of the project--teaching the art of radio to 15 scholarship students and helping them put together internet radio programs. So far we have a total of 5 pilot episodes and the students are starting to make visits to a local radio station to get aquainted with live radio and even join the DJ on the air.

Two weeks ago I planned an audio scavenger hunt for the class. The students split into two groups, each with an audio recorder and a list of 30 sounds to find, ranging from a dog barking, to a toilet flushing. On the OYE blog you can read (in Spanish) the students´ own accounts of the ¨busqueda de tesoros¨ plus see some of the pictures they took as well. In addition, on the right hand side of the blog, you can listen to streaming audio of our pilot episodes!

The OYE blog: oyehonduras.blogspot.com

Progress in Progreso

Some photos from recent happenings in Honduras.

The last day of school for one of my best friends in El Progreso, Alicia. She got me the job teaching at the Best American School and left for her hometown Chicago, and then Portugal. Her 10th graders now have me as their chemistry and physics teacher.

Because I am now teaching 10th grade science I am no longer the school´s P.E. teacher! I´m going to miss my kindergarten class but not so much the roudy 1st and 2nd graders...

Nima (in the black shirt) worked with OYE in 2007 and came back for a month this summer to help out with the transition process into 2009. Nima speaks 5 languages, is originally from Iran but his family lives in Sweden, and he was basically broke after traveling around Brazil for 4 months. So he decided to enter a baleada (Honduras´s official snack food) eating contest to vie for a prize of 500 Lempiras. He managed to eat 4 1/2 in 2 minutes but the big guy on the right ended up winning with a 3 round total of something like 23!

I was a bit politics obsessed (just ask my roommates) for the last months of this year´s election. Although we dont have cable in our house, my fellow volunteers andI used a projector and an internet connection to watch the live feeds of the presidential debates and of course the election night coverage!