How to Hunt for Easter Eggs in Honduras

Monday, August 23, 2010

Preparing for our charlas

This week we have three charlas to present to various people of all ages, backgrounds and sizes. In order to prepare for these I spent most of the weekend standing in front of my mirror talking to myself in Spanish pretending to give a presentation. During each of our charlas we are “graded” on our performance by our facilitators and they “take off points” if we use notes. Now, let me tell you…I have been giving presentations for a long time in English and anytime I give a four hour presentation in English I am bound to use some notes. So, the fact that I am giving a presentation in Spanish, my new second language, for four hours, is slightly intimidating and I might have a notepad here or there. So, anyway, after my group and I spent half of this morning working out the kinks for a couple charlas this week, I feel slightly better b/c I will be presenting a scavenger hunt to teenagers and talking with them about their “assets” and how to better use them in an action plan as well as teaching local community members how to pack an emergency bag and have it ready when disaster strikes. (Which is like right now in Honduras, with tons of flooding and dengue). I spent all day yesterday making a fun scavenger hunt for the kids tomorrow, so I hope they like it. (Something tells me they won’t, b/c they are teenagers and God Bless my other teacher friends who spend all their time in high schools.)

Making biodegradable sacks to plant trees

Later on in the morning I had my third technical placement interview with my Muni D bosses. This helps them to decide where to place me in a permanent site when I leave Cantarannas next week! I have a really good relationship with them and in my previous interviews I have given them a lot of feedback about the type of site I would like to be placed in, so today they told me that I will be going to a medium size site (somewhere within four hours of Tegucigalpa because I need to be near a large medical facility), I will be working with CBO’s (community based organizations), and I will be the first Municipal Development volunteer ever in this site. They also told me that there have been other volunteers there before, but never a Muni D volunteer, so they have high expectations for me and expect the bar to be set even higher when I leave. I hope I don’t let them down! I have no idea exactly what kinds of projects I will be working on, but I will find out exactly what those will be next week, along with my exact location…on September 1 site announcements are made. Crossing my fingers!

In the afternoon, we headed out to a tree nursery just outside of town where we received a charla on microcuensias and reforestation, etc before we planted about 40 new trees right outside of a school. We learned how to make biodegradable bags out of banana tree leafs, mix the dirt, prepare the seeds (who knew seeds had to be prepared?), hoed and sowed the ground, then partitioned off squares for the new trees to be planted. It was an extremely interested charla and I think it will be great to use as a cross cultural exchange when Arbor Day rolls around. Plus, as a Muni D volunteer, it’s always awesome to get out of the “office” and dirty our hands up a bit. It was also pouring down rain the whole afternoon, so we experienced some of what the PAM and water/san volunteers do on a daily basis. We were able to work with kids from the school during the afternoon and I am proud to have been part of that awesome experience; I hope those trees actually grow (LOL) and they have something to enjoy in 10 or so years!

Our Muni D group after tree planting

Look at my AWESOME care package-sent with tons of love!

p.s. Today was mail day and it made my entire week!  I LOVE all the support I get from back home in the States and getting a letter and package today from my friends D'Ann and Will and Karen made everything so much sweeter!  Hooray!!! (also, I have received the most mail and packages, ppl are jealous, so please don't let them down...keep 'em coming!) :-)
Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Talking to kids about their assets

Charla day! It’s always nerve racking before a presentation, but when you are being evaluated (in Spanish), it is even more so. So, after I ate my bowl of cornflakes (sorry, no Wheaties here), I hopped into the PC car and our Muni D group took off to a private school for presentations (the public teacher strike has no end in site). Once we got to the school loud band music was playing and cheerleaders were dancing in the school yard. It wasn’t even 8:00 AM yet, but we were told that they were practicing music until 8:50 AM; so we had an extra hour to prep for our charla. After setting up, we took our supplies outside and began to prepare for the next charla we have tomorrow on disaster preparedness, since I don’t want to be up all night working on it. As we sat there coloring in pictures of batteries and canned foods (things you might need during a hurricane), the band began to play knock off’s of current hits, like Shakira’s World Cup song and it took me back to Junior High when I marched on the football field holding my clarinet and played “One Moment in Time” by Whitney Houston. Now those were the days. Finally, around 9:00 AM our students staggered themselves on in the classroom, cell phones in tow, tucking their shirts in, holding hands with their boy/girl friends and all I could think was “I am glad I am not the parent/sister/teacher/anyway related to the life of a teenager.” Only two minutes in to our presentation, I confiscated some drum sticks. By the time the charla was over I had confiscated another parir of drumsticks, a baton, one USB, and two cell phones. I have no mercy, especially when I busted my ass all weekend to prepare for you and you don’t listen to me. Cheque?
The scavenger hunt was right at the beginning and after I divided them up into two teams, they took off around campus to search for the 12 objects I had laid out. They were pretty quick; although I like to think I gave them pretty easy objects (One, b/c I didn’t know the layout of their campus, and two, b/c my Spanish is still pretty basic). So, after we had gone over their answers and after other members of my group had talked the “kids” decided the biggest issue on their campus was the food in the cafeteria. They needed a bigger range of food, more fast food and more hot food. They also wanted access to Coca-Cola’s and more junk food. This was surprising to me, since you can get crappy food almost anywhere in Honduras, so I have a feeling someone very influential has thrown money at their school to make sure they can only get juice and Baked Lay’s. (Remember, they also have band instruments, this is a PRIVATE SCHOOL). So, by now we are like an hour or so in and I have moved to the back of the classroom, I have also moved several boys around so they can’t sit next to each other and F&%K off b/c that’s what they are doing and I have no time for disrespectful little teenagers. Do it on your own time. When it is my time to discuss their ventajas, or assets, I divide them up into groups again and two boys look like they hate me, but what do I care, I’m never coming back to their school….I actually take a minute to ask them if they are bored and they say yes, so I tell them we are bored, too, but teaching them is a requirement of our PC training, so can they help us out by not being bored today? They pretend to snap out of it and during my part they come to the front and write down their assets, then a few more of them talk until I am done and thankful another charla is checked off of the list. By the time I leave I no for sure I never want children, EVER. Between having a four year old around constantly and seeing what they grow up to be like, I don’t think the word “parent” fits with Jenifer Bubenik. Maybe just disciplinarian. Cheque?

On the way back to Field Base Training, we receive the best news ever; our other charlas for the week have been canceled! This will give us time to prepare for our charlas next week (yes, we have two more then as well). I am just producing charlas by the truckload down here. If there is a game that can be tossed in there, count me in. People love visuals and I am the master magician of them. Although people in Honduras don’t always understand the rules, but I have decided to just go with it and throw in some candy at the end. As long as they learn the objective that is needed, that is all that really matters!

In the afternoon, we meet up to discuss Thursday, which is Cultural Day here at FBT. Each class will present something common to America and share it with our host families. In exchange, our host families will be making all kinds of yummy (and some not so yummy) Honduran food for us to eat. After racking our brains for 10 minutes, the boys and I (I am in a class with two guys) came up with a long list of things Americans do. Unfortunately, most of these surrounded drinking. Seriously, why is it anytime a group of Americans get together it mostly involves 12 solo cups, some beer, and a little white ball? Or, a deck of cards and a 12-pack? This is great for Fourth of July, but not good when I need to teach a family in Honduras what we are about. So, our list consisted of things like whiffle ball, bob for apples, pin the tail on the donkey, and our final decision hunt for Easter eggs. We decided we could boil eggs (b/c they are basically free in this country), then decorate them with markers and hide them in the park. Easter is a huge holiday here anyway, so we would just throw this new tradition in. Let’s hope it goes well. Let’s also hope that us boiling 100 eggs is not a total freakin’ disaster and that all the dogs in the park don’t pee on them before the families can finish the game.

Here comes Peter Cottontail...

Tonight my boss dropped by the house and brought me all the plastic eggs they could find in Teguz. There were 10 of them in the bag. Now, I am not a rocket scientist, but I think there will be more than 10 kids at the Easter egg hunt/Cultural Day tomorrow. So, I filled up all the eggs I could with candy, then hit up my group with other ideas. We decided we will fill bags with candy and let the kids at least grasp the idea of what they are supposed to do. This will be the most ghetto Easter egg hunt I have ever participated in, but at least the kids will get candy out of it.



Thursday, August 26, 2010

Enchiladas Caratchas

Mucha comida

Bienvenidos Dia a la Cultura! USA meets Honduras. Cultural day goes something like this: Each host family prepares food unique to Honduras and us Peace Corps trainees present something cool from American culture. Well, my mom decided to prepare enchiladas catrachas, which has about 30 ingredients in it and about 30 more steps in the preparation department; so imagine my dismay when I found out that we had to stand up in front of everyone and describe the preparation process. Of course, my mom didn’t tell me any of the preparation process until lunchtime today, so I had about an hour to learn a bunch of new words. During this time I also had to help actually prepare the enchiladas, which consisted of me making a cabbage salad that goes on top. Now, I am not a fan of cabbage. Being from the South, this might surprise a few people. But, I don’t RUSH to the BBQ place and order coleslaw, I don’t hurry home on Sunday’s and throw back Bojangle’s slaw and biscuits; there is something about the vinegar and cabbage mixed together that makes me vomit. So, when a little lady in Honduras asks me to spend an hour chopping up cabbage and mixing it with vinegar, it doesn’t exactly make me jump for joy. Add that in with finely dicing cebollos (onions) and you have yourself one cranky Jen. Sorry, but I would much rather help you dice up the meat and potatoes which were also one of the other 30 ingredients. After finally getting everything in order it came to my host mom’s conclusion that I wasn’t chopping the cabbage like she wanted…maybe that is because I have never chopped cabbage….like EVER. It is the one vegetable I don’t like. Now, I just feel like I am cooking in my mom’s kitchen in the USA and not doing anything correctly…apparently being a mom is cross-cultural (I think I will take a break and walk away here). So, my host sobrina and I let my mom finish and I continued with the Easter eggs.

Honduran dancers

Cultural day was supposed to start at 3:00 PM, which means that at 3:30 PM we were still missing three families. Nothing ever starts on time in this country, but we went ahead and cranked up the microphones anyway and were joined by local dancers who taught us Honduran customs. Then, each aspirante (trainee) stood up and explained the dish they brought and who their host family was. We were supposed to do this four aspirantes at a time, but somehow several of us got left out, including me (b/c I was busy hiding eggs), which means that my mom’s dish wasn’t recognized and she was severely PO’ed at me. Strike one for cultural day. As my group was busy hiding eggs out in the park our main objective was to make sure the drunk bolos didn’t swipe them before the kids had a chance to run around and search. This meant that one of us had to stay outside in the park, while the other two went back and presented our introduction. We were the first group to welcome people to American day and invite them to participate in an American culture, which is totally cool, I like grabbing people’s attention in the beginning when they are still fresh and not too bored. So, anyway after I introduced “Busquede de los Huevos!” and asked them if they’d ever heard of it before, of course I got a rounding applause of “NNOOOOOOOO.” And before we could even finish giving a time limit the kids were running out the door and jumping over the fence in the park. So, while we might not be able to speak Spanish that well according to the Spanish teachers, the local people understand us…and that is what is important. After about 3 minutes the kids had found all the bags and eggs we had hidden in the park (I would say about 60) and I wished we had more, but this is a government budget after all. So, we concluded that they really liked it, our Spanish went over well and the day was saved! Other groups presented swing dancing, ultimate Frisbee, a surprise birthday party and American words vs. Honduran words.

All the Easter egg kids and my Spanish class at cultural day

Kids racing for Easter eggs during cultural day

Finally, when it was time to eat a lot of people showed up that I hadn’t seen the rest of the day. Free food brings out a lot more people. There was so much deliciousness to be had! Baleadas, enchiladas, fried donuts, rosquillas in honey, anything and everything fried, sweet candy, coconut and rice drinks, and more. I ate a lot because I have already gained like 10+ pounds from the tortillas in this town and can’t lose them until I leave, so I figured what does cultural day matter? After all was said and done, the day was declared a success by our boss and I thought so, too.