It begins...

May 4, 2010

Up at 8:00AM... Met the group at (:00AM at Arte Accion. Carin gave us a run down of the recent changes in Honduras. The military coup and its connection with the scam of the new President. Why we are not going to Barbasc--because there are other volunteers there at this time. She also said its not that safe now anyway . The town we will go to instead is called Chonco and is apparently more beautiful. We were also cautioned not to venture to the discos (bars/clubs) on the border of Copan (it's more dangerous since the President has changed). After the rundown of Honduras, Carin gave us some tips for what we would need to do at the schools.
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Richard, Deanna, Kelsy and I are at the biggest school (El Sinai) of the three. The writes from last year said that the teacher was "missing" a few times, so the children has to break into the school! There are 66 children there; grades 1-6. We semi-prepared for our first class and some lesson plans for Thurs and Fri. Tomorrow we will just e watching and helping Elsa from Art Accion at the school.

Thursday we planned to do name tags--using the foam paper and folders to keep their artwork in. Friday we will have a "Mother's Day Theme" and make pop up Mother's day cards. We jotted down some more crafty ideas and games to play with the kids (freeze, hot potato, duck duck goose, etc.) then went home for lunch.
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Our lunch was already prepared--chicken, rice, brocoli and cauliflower with tortilla. it was really good!

While Anisa has Spanish class at 1:30PM I ventured into town to meet some of the girls before my class. We chilled at Art Accion, then hit the internet cafe and changed some money.
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Spanish lessons started at 3:40PM for me. Katie an I have the same teacher so she's Katie uno and I'm Katy dos. We were 'quizzed' on how much we already knew then the lesson began. I reviewed the alphabet, numbers, colours then started on vocabulary. I'll have a homework book starting tomorrow. Fro now, I have a list of verbs to practice on top of what I reviewed today.
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At 7:30PM we watched a documentary about Maya Chorti culture, directed by Art Accion. Had some problems with the computer, but we were able to watch most of it. It talked about how lots of people in Copan didn't realize that they are Maya descendants. When asked about Maya, they replied that they didn't see any and didn't know much about the culture. When Arte Accion started (11 years ago) their goal was to teach about Maya culture through the arts to organize the people. Since then the people began to accept their heritage and are now more unified than before. There was some historical information in the film about the area and the ruins as well as a little colonial history and the after affects to the people in the area.
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The 10 of us had a drink at the bar. Took us forever to settle because at first this really weird guy was following us and trying to take us to some place... Took a while to get rid of him (almost an hour). Then two other places we tried were already closed. Finally we found a nice place, small and had a drink to toast our safe arrival, learning Spanish and good luck to working with the children!
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Everyone loves my fan. Glad I have it. Think I've got a little heat rash... I'm roasting!
Oh, ya and today I was almost "attacked" by wild turkeys (which I now called turkey vaulters).

Tomorrow 7:00AM wake up, Art Accion by 8:30AM for school.

Beuno noches.