Fiesta Tipica

Yesterday was our schools Fiesta Tipica.  It was a big party in the park to raise funds for our school, and our school in La Union.  All of our staff dressed up in typical Honduran clothing, and sold food and drinks in different huts that were made just for this event.  The day was filled with lots of beautiful and colorful clothing, music and dancing, and delicious food and drinks.  My group sold drinks in our hut, “La Gota Fria.”  In English it doesn’t translate very well, but it means something like “The Cold Drop.”  It turned out to be a very busy hut to be working in, and sticky, and filled with bees from the sweet drinks.  But all in all, it was a LOT of fun serving everybody.  Some of the grades at our school even performed cultural dances, which were fun to watch too.  It was a beautiful day overall, and fun to play dress up for the day!  The La Union school has their Fiesta Tipica in February that we will go there for too. 

Other than the fiesta, everything else has been going really well too.  I wrote my first note in Spanish home to the parents, and I said everything correctly when I had my assistant read it.  I was SO excited.  It was a note about needing the names of all the family members that live in the same house as each student, so we can make potato print families for the letter F this week.  A few of us are starting Spanish tutoring lessons on the 15^th, and I cannot wait!  I am so excited to continue to learn more and more of the language so I can have deeper relationships with friends here.  

I’ve started to have my students make the letters we are learning with their bodies for a fun interactive activity to get them moving.  They seem to enjoy it a lot.  Let’s see…what else..we started doing “No More Monkeys Jumping on the Bed” everyday too.  I made monkeys and put contact paper over a picture of a bed I drew, and we sing the song and move the monkeys and they really enjoy it.  They’ve even picked up on a few of the lines and say them with me when they can.  This makes me really excited because a LOT of the time, my students don’t repeat things after me.  I have to constantly remind myself that these kids are learning English, so it makes it that much harder.  When I start to feel myself becoming impatient, I stop for a second and remind myself how frustrated I feel when I can’t understand anything someone here is speaking to me…I’ll just say it’s been a learning process and I continue to grow more and more patient, which is a huge blessing and much needed! 

I have a puppet in my room, and his name is Bubba Bear.  The kids LOVE him.  As soon as they see me go reach for our friend, they burst out laughing.  You’d think their laughter at the same thing would get old, but I can assure you that it doesn’t.  It just makes me laugh and smile right along with them!  I used to have them only say “good morning” or “good bye” to me, but they have that down pat now.  So we’ve added in my name as well, and it turns out “Miss Kendall” is easier for them to say.  So most of them say “good morning/good bye Miss Kendall” but there are a few that say Miss Ross.  It’s pretty cute to hear them say (more so try to say) my name though.  And now that they know “good morning” it’s the first thing almost all of them say to me with a smile on their face when they walk into my room.  God has blessed me with 13 amazing children who I am blessed by every day.

 

 

I've been trying to figure out what to purchase for the school with the money many of you helped me raise.  It's been challenging for me to decide because our school has a number of things, they just don't utilize them in the best way.  For example, our school has a really good amount of books, but the library was just recently cleaned up and books were put on the shelves, but it is not user friendly at all, and students cannot go into it.  But after a lot of thought, I've decided to purchase more classroom sets of books for the students and teachers.  Many of the classes don't have these, and the kids need to read much more than they do now.  I plan to purchase as many books as I can, for all the grades, and hopefully our school can work together to get the library up and running in a very user friendly way.  It's essential for their learning that they have the opportunity to read books that fit their reading level.  So it's taken awhile, and still might take a bit to figure out what books to buy for each grade, but it's a work in progress and I hope to have the books here when we all return after the New Year!