Week 12

Watch this super cute video about HCA here

For many kids in El Porvenir, this past week was the first week of 'summer vacation.' Although it's not actually summer here in Honduras, the kids have off from school from mid- to late-November until February. What this means for HCA is that many of our students are free all day instead of just in the morning or afternoon. This allows us to split our classes up by age. At each location, there will be one class for kids grades 1-3 and the other for kids grades 4-6. We also change up the curriculum to make it more fun and diverse than normal.

In order to prepare for Vacation Activities Program (VAP), we took a week off from teaching.

Thanksgiving dinner

We began our week by preparing the bigger of the two volunteer houses to be fumigated. The week before, we'd been informed that fumigation to get rid of disease-carrying mosquitoes was required by some government department in Honduras. Everything had to be removed from all of the walls, all things fabric and paper had to be bagged up, and all furniture had to be moved to the middle of the room. I didn't realize how much I'd spread out and made myself at home until I had to pack everything in my suitcase and stick it under my bed. We had all hands on deck, but our house is huge so it took a few hours. We also brought some mattresses and other belongings over to VH1 (the other volunteer house) so that we could sleep there that night. The chemicals are only supposed to be harmful to humans for an hour after they are sprayed, but we didn't want to risk it.

Thanksgiving dinner made mostly by an Aussie and a Scot

That afternoon, the volunteers had time off while the managers met and planned the rest of the week. A few of us headed into Ceiba to do various things. On arrival in Honduras, we were all issued 90-day visas. However, because Yamit and I are staying for 4 months, we needed to get our visas extended by 30 days. After having a yummy lunch with the three other volunteers who'd come with us, we split up. Yamit and I headed to the Immigration Office. The whole extension process took about three hours but was relatively simple. We filled out a short form, went and paid $20 to the bank, got our passports photocopied, and brought them back to the Immigration Office. When we left at 4:30pm, we'd successfully gotten our visas renewed.

In the evening, we met Yamit's dad, Joel, in La Ceiba. He'd spent an extra day in Roatan and had taken the ferry from Roatan to La Ceiba. (The friend who he'd been traveling with had seriously injured his shoulder and, instead of being in pain for the rest of the trip, had decided to fly back to the U.S. to get treated there.) The three of us -- Yamit, Joel, and I -- went to a nice restaurant in La Ceiba that had more traditional Honduran food. After we'd eaten, we organized a taxi back to the hotel for Joel, and Yamit and I headed home to El P for our all-volunteer sleepover.

All geared up for rafting

The next morning, we woke up at 8am and hurried over to our house to return it to pre-fumigation condition. We started by wiping down all surfaces and unpacking our belongings. The volunteers from the other house came over at 9am and helped us reorganize the more communal spaces. In the afternoon, we had our first actual VAP meeting. We did fun group bonding activities and had good conversations about our purpose here and what HCA offers to the kids. Our group gets along quite well and, one of the topics we talked about was how lucky we are that we're all on the same page about why we're here. This make it easier for the program to run like a well-oiled machine and gives us a chance to offer more attention to the kids and how best to teach them.

Almost immediately after the meeting was over, Yamit, Joel and I got into a taxi and drove up into the nearby mountains to a nature/jungle resort where we were going to stay until Thursday. Over the next two days we spent most of our time relaxing. On Wednesday afternoon, we went whitewater rafting which was quite a blast.

Dessert is always the best part of Thanksgiving

For the past couple of weeks, the two managers (one Australian and one Philadelphian) have been planning our Thanksgiving celebration down to the most minute detail. When Yamit and I got back to El P on Thursday afternoon, we got to work immediately making chickpea patties and a chocolate pecan pie. This was the first Thanksgiving that I'd had away from home and it was strange for me not to be sitting in my grandma's dining room surrounded by family. When I think of Thanksgiving, I think of all of the typical foods that we have and of the drive up to my father's childhood home in New Jersey. The holiday has so many connotations for me, and is so saturated with family tradition, that it was hard to fully believe that I was celebrating Thanksgiving in a different way and in a different country. The best part though was that, out of the twelve of us who were there (we invited Joel as well), only five were American. Celebrating an American holiday with housemates and coworkers who are German, Australian, Scottish, Spanish, and Israeli was a profound experience. As our manager put it so perfectly, "I'm thankful that I get to work each day with my friends." I am also thankful that I got to be there for some of these guys' first ever Thanksgiving celebration.

Word of the week:
Animala: a very useful word to use when you don't remember what something is called. Is equivalent to the word “thing.” Example: "Pasame esa animala" "Pass me that thing"

Yamit quote of the week ft. Joel:
Joel: Are you really going to get that boxed up?
Yamit: Yeah, I'll eat it later. Trust me.