Orientation Week

Wow..this week has gone by so quickly! It's already Wednesday, and it's now T-minus 3 days until Open House and 5 days until the start of the school year! Pray that all the preparations go smoothly and pray especially for my 4th grade students as they transition back to school, after not speaking English for probably an entire summer.

I've been pretty busy this week with staff meetings, setting up my classroom, and trying to learn more about Honduras. The meetings have been very informative and have been on various topics, including Health Insurance, Banking, Curriculum, and how to work the school's technology (almost every classroom has a Promethean board-http://www.prometheanplanet.com/en/). At first, the meetings seemed like information overload, as I still felt fresh off the airplane. But then I remembered why I was here and realized I was thankful that the school was preparing us and giving us the information in the little time we have before the school year starts.

Some exciting excursions I have enjoyed while not at school:

*A wonderful orientation/welcome buffet at the high school principal's house. Complete with traditional Honduran dancing (will post a video soon).

*A trip with other teachers to El Metro Mall for grocery shopping and buying school supplies : )
I'm starting to figure out the price conversions from Lempiras to dollars, which is exciting, but I'll definitely need more practice if I want to avoid getting ripped off.

*Buying a bottle of clean water from the pulperia and visiting to the fruit guy.
-I bought a strange looking fruit, called Annona squamosa for the lempira equivalent of 50 cents and tried to convince my housemates to try it. I was surprise to peel back the skin of the annona to find a soft, white pulp inside. I scooped the stuff out and put it on a plate to serve everyone. However, I didn't realize that inside the white pulp were little black seeds, so, directly after I took the first bite, I ran over to the garbage can to spit out the seeds. My housemate saw my reaction to the first bite and declared, "I am not trying whatever that was."

After perhaps a bit of coercion, I convinced her it really wasn't that bad. Then another teacher came over and he tried it. First reaction: "Looks like casserole." Second reaction: "Tastes like casserole." When I tried annona the first time, I thought it could taste like banana, but after the other teacher said it tasted like casserole, I could not get the thought out of my mind. We ended up throwing the fruit away, because, in the end, no one really liked it. Oh well..did it for the adventure anyway.

*Taking a Latin aerobics dance class with my housemates
-The IST new teachers coordinator lives in the other part of my house, and she invited my housemate and I to come check out Chepe, an aerobics dance studio down the hill from us. Three things you should know:
A. The class is entirely in Spanish., B. Before this, I had never been to any type of aerobics class--ever.
C. I am the most gringa dancer you will ever see.
Combine all these and you will get 2 hours of hilarious entertainment and a very fun time of learning new dance moves to salsa music. I'm definitely going again!

(new Spanish words I learned: arriba, abajo, en frente, atras, y caderas)

*Having a Catch Phrase Game night at Casa Azul! It was so fun to get together with the teachers outside of the school and enjoy time together. I'm so thankful that I'm not in this journey alone-that I have an incredible community of people along for the ride!