Fancy Feast 2008

Down here in Honduras we've turned Anah's birthday into a week-long event. First the government closed the schools on Tuesday in national celebration for Anah (or there was too much rain and flooding... you decide), Wednesday her students and parents threw Anah a classroom party, and last night we hosted all of the teachers for "Fancy Feast 2008," the official birthday party for Anah/another excuse to drink.

What is "Fancy Feast" you ask (OK, maybe you didn't ask)? The answer:



Honestly, we didn't think that people would take the "fancy" part all that seriously. Our school has a dress code and the teachers have to wear nice stuff everyday so we thought most wouldn't want to pull that off on the weekend. The whole theme was kinda just an excuse to Photoshop the image on the invite (picture first... idea second). But not only did the comfort food come out in droves so did the fancy-ness.

The teachers went all out! Ties, dresses, etc... they were dressed to the nines. It was great to see. The house was packed and most every teacher was there last night. We put together a bumpin' soundtrack (Bob Dylan meets Dr. Dre meets The Fiest meets Old Crow Medicine Show).

The teachers brought so much food I had to bring the desk from upstairs down and put the coffee table up on blocks to make room for it all. PB&J, pot pies, chip dip (yes.. THAT chip dip), and more... it was a smorgasboard of delicious comfort food.


There was a lot of imbibing (one of my weekly vocab words!) last night and Anah hit the sack and I ushered the last of the guests out at about 3am. Thinking it was a good idea I decided to clean the house. Even though I was exhausted this morning it certainly made the rest of the day more tolerable having only to mop the floor.

As we relaxed today I was thinking more about the party. Even though it was a hit and it was great to hang out with all of our new teacher friends it was a harsh reminder of how much Anah and I miss our friends back home.

Back in Milwaukee we threw a few, and attended even more, of the same sort of parties we had last night. Last night was missing Nic, Anna, Rob, Tara, Nick, Pree, Kevin, Emily and all of the people (you know who you are!)that had made our time in Milwaukee so much fun. It was exactly the type of party that they would have loved. Now, more than ever, we can't wait to get home to see everyone for New Year's.



WE MISS YOU ALL!!!!!!

Red Peppers, Limes and Rum

No, not a funky cocktail, but rather things that I love that are plentiful and cheap in our new hometown. A giant bag of limes is less than a dollar, and a 4 pack of gorgeous red peppers is only slightly more, and a bottle of rum far more delicious than any rum available in the States is only around $7.

There are loads of things that I love that are not-so-plentiful in our new hometown. Things like fresh air, green space or bike-friendly roads (geez, how much of a hippie can I sound like?) are not easily found, so whenever I am missing things like this I remind myself of the many things I can appreciate here.

Tonight while Dan naps I am enjoying all three of my new friends at once; the rum working with the lime in my rum and coke, and the red peppers smelling delicious as they cool after roasting them for some red pepper hummus. Tomorrow my after-school Spanish class is having a little party, and I am going to be bringing some homemade pita and hummus.

Tonight was my first try at roasting my own peppers, and it was a lot of easy fun. I was under the impression you could only roast them on a grill or with a gas stove, but a little research showed me another method of roasting them in the oven under the broiler. Enjoy the pictures and give it a try yourself...even if you have to pay a little more than a Honduran might. Fix yourself a rum and coke, and you're practically here!

First, burn the heck out the peppers under the broiler (turn 'em often).

Peel off the burned skin to reveal the lovely red flesh. Enjoy!

Anah's Kids Celebrate Her Birthday

Yesterday Anah's student's parents were planning on throwing her a surprise birthday party during lunch, but because of the rain cancellation to school it was not held. Not to be so easily deterred, they went at it again today.

I was invited to participate and by this time her party was no longer a surprise. Either way I made the jaunt down to the elementary part of EIS (a good 10 min walk) to join in the festivities.

Myself and Anah's teaching partner, Kim, kept her busy while her students planned her "surprise." She walked back into her classroom and the kids went nuts! They all ran over to her and I thought she might be buried alive in the combination of hugs and handmade cards the students had for her. Too cute!



Examining their handiwork.



The card carrying mob.



One more card!



This guy wasn't quite finished with his card so her was working on it under Ms. Tatiana's desk so she couldn't see it until it was done.

The moms made about a million balleadas (a Honduran favorite: tortilla, beans, cheese, and butter... awesomely delicious) for lunch and brought a cake as well. I was the recipient of many balleadas which I had no complaints about.

Then it was cake time. Trick candles and frosting up the wazoo... the kids loved the fact that the candles wouldn't go out. I think the whole cake had a bonus layer of first-grader spittle from their attempts to snuff out the flames.

Of course no party is complete without "Happy Birthday."



Now let them eat cake! Anah's students break to their desks like mad to sit and get their cake.



- Dan

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ANAH!!!!!!!!

Rain Day, but.....

Wisconsin has its snow day and Honduras has its... rain days. Due to the effects of Tropical Depression 16, which, yes, a week later, is still hanging around, the country has declared a "estado de emergencia" and school was canceled.

Some of Anah's students sent her e-cards (psst... because its her birthday) today and wondering if we had school canceled not because of the rain, but because the government made their teacher's b-day a national holiday! Cute!

Obviously the rain is pretty intense, but just to calm those who might be thinking of sending us ark supplies... everything is fine with us. One of the difficulties in living in a developing nation is that these sort of natural "troubles" hit the poor disproportionately. So while our habitations, our school, and students have little or no troubles its the rest of the country that has to deal with the real impacts of these rains.

Yeah... my roof came in, but that's nothing to a whole school disappearing, yeah.... the street in front of our house has a mini-lake, but our house isn't in the middle of a river, and yeah.... our students have giant SUVs so rain is easily forded unlike the rest of the countryside which travels by foot, bike, or donkey-cart. Its easy to see why a state of emergency was called.

While we enjoy the day off... more time to plan for the rest of the week and Anah's birthday party this weekend... I'm also thinking about those here who are really suffering.

Checking out our neighbor

Last weekend we decided to explore something other than an island, and decided it was time to visit our neighbor Guatemala. We'd been hearing wonderful things about a town called Antigua, so we packed our bags and hopped on the bus.

The first night after an eight-hour bus ride, we made it to Guatemala City. There was a giant convention in the city, so the only available rooms were at the Howard Johnson Hotel. It was a bit fancier and more expensive than most of the places we've been staying, but it was quite lovely. Much nicer than most HoJos in the States. The best part was after the 8 hour trek, we pulled into the bus station and there was a little man with a sign that said "Howard Johnson welcomes Daniel Wiersema"- it was a total surprise because we hadn't requested a shuttle, but it was a more than welcome turn-of-events at 10 p.m., especially in a city that was unfamiliar to us.

The next morning we got up early, enjoyed a free breakfast courtesy of our friend Howard, and took a cab to a "Chicken Bus" station. Chicken buses are all over Central America- basically, they are the buses locals ride and are WAY cheaper than the buses that tourists use. For instance, if we would have taken the tourist bus to Antigua it would have been US $17, but for the chicken bus it was only US $1. The ride to Antigua is only an hour, so it was an obvious choice! In addition to the cost factor, chicken buses have a whole lot more character than tourist buses and are a lot more entertaining. The best part was the entire 1 hour trip there is a guy who hangs out the door yelling at people on the side of the street to get on the bus and if there are any takers he reaches out as the bus slows down and he helps hoist them on. We were entertained the whole way wondering if he would lose anyone! Although for long trips the chicken bus isn't ideal, we will definitely be using them more for local jaunts.


We arrived in Antigua around 9:30 a.m. and walked to our hotel, "La Casa de Cristina" to drop off our bag and get our bearings. The hotel was only $30/night, and it was perfect. The room was nicely decorated with Guatemalan textiles and there was an awesome view of the volcano that Antigua is at the base of.


We spent the remainder of the day bumming around the city, primarily at the fantastic artisan market. The market is huge, and full of Guatemalan goods; paintings, blankets, embroidery, pottery...it was fantastic. It was hard to decide on any particular vendor, because like most markets every stall had pretty much the same wares. We ended up finding a painting we loved of people picking coffee as well as a great quilt. Of course, we also found some awesome Christmas presents.

After the market we roamed around town, checking out the various pubs and eateries. We managed to sample several different treats, including lots of great nachos and delicious "Gallo" beer, a close relative of Honduran "Salva Vida". At the end of the day we found a great dinner, and also Dan was pleased to find a bar that was playing the USA vs. Cuba soccer match. We were content to just walk around (something we can't do in SPS, unfortunately) and enjoy the safe and cool climate Antigua offers.



Sunday started off on a slightly sour note, with the previous evening's lovely dinner making me quite sick. Our original plan had been to hike the Volcano, but that had to postponed for a later trip as I was in no condition to exert myself too much. We were disappointed, but still found plenty of less strenuous things to do in town. Antigua is full of old churches, mostly from the 1600-1700s, many of which were destroyed in an earthquake in 1770. However, the ruins are still present, and are open for visitors to explore. They were gorgeous and fascinating and provided endless photo opportunities.

One of the remaining operational churches

Some of the less operational!

Can you see the volcano?

The rest of Sunday was just spent walking, with intermittent drink/food breaks to refuel. We headed to bed early, as we had to catch the bus out of town at 3 a.m. on Monday in order to make our connection in Guatemala City to get back to San Pedro. It made for a long day, as we didn't get back to SPS until 2 p.m. that afternoon, but it was well worth it. We will certainly be going back again, hopefully with a little better luck health-wise so we can attempt the volcano!

Tropical Depression Number 16

If you're a fan of the National Hurricane Center like I am you'll know that our lovely country is currently experiencing Tropical Depression 16. While it is not expected to become a tropical storm or hurricane, that doesn't mean we haven't been experience some "nice" weather here.

Tropical Depressions, by definition, are nothing serious (don't worry, moms). It usually means a lot of rain, but the wind speeds are harmless. Like I said its just rain... lots and lots of rain. Check it out:



Over the last couple of weeks the oppressive heat that has blanketed San Pedro Sula has transitioned to cooler temps (70s and 80s) and frequent showers. About a week or so ago it rained pretty hard and thundered about as loud as I have ever heard. Given we're living in the Sula Valley those in the area without adequate shelter has been at a big risk.

Suffice to say, I (Dan) was surprised to show up at school and be greeted by this outside my classroom:



Yup... the ceiling outside my classroom has become separated from the rest of the building. Not cool. Luckily, my classroom is fine and the damage is all outside it.

That was until today. As TD16 came into town the last 24 hours has been extremely wet. All day it has been raining and the state of the ceiling became perilous. After reporting the damage over a week ago, maintenance finally came over to the middle school to fix it.

Oh wait... I'm just kidding. They put a bunch of red tape (ironic huh?) around the area that I had already cornered off with tape last week (you can see my handiwork in the above picture). So I spent I significant amount of time after school today scolding kids who we're trying to wander into the closed off area (which now included one set of stairs). Their logical assumed that convenience was more important than safety.

My fear-mongering finally paid off when about 10 minutes later the ceiling collapsed blocking access to my classroom. Here are some pictures:







Needless to say it was relatively entertaining to hear the creaking of the ceiling, watch it slowly shift in a downwards trajectory, and then see it all come down in its drywall and aluminum-braced (I've got a guess why it fell!) glory.

So lucky Mr. Wiersema gets to be the roving teacher for the next couple of days while our top-notch maintenance men will clean up the mess and then leave the ceiling exposed for the next couple of months (just a guess).

Good times!

Home of the Pirates

This past weekend we had an extra day off, so we hit up Utila, another island off the coast of Honduras. It's a much smaller island than Roatan, but we'd heard many good things and our friends Jesse and Jenna were going so we figured we could check it out. We were glad we did.
In addition to being smaller, it is much less developed than Roatan, and also much less tourist-y. It's main business is diving, so the majority of the hotels there also offer diving. We saw very few people we'd call "locals" and I think that's because of two reasons. The biggest reason being that most of the people living on Utila are kids our age who came to Utila for a weekend to dive and then never left. Because there are so many diving businesses these kids can work as instructors at there pick of places and basically work for their room and board, plus maybe a little drinking money. Not bad work if you can get it, I suppose! The second reason we saw no "locals" is because an Utila local doesn't look like a typical Honduran. Many of them are blonde with blue eyes because they are actually descendants of pirates that long ago landed on the island! This information has not been fact-checked, and is only from our favorite source, Jesse who has proved to be generally reliable. We will of course look into this and let you know if we can verify this information.

We enjoyed the less-developed nature of Utila which made the hotels much cheaper but still we were able to find great food and plenty of ways to entertain ourselves. Because of the large number of young ex-pats in the town, there were many restaurants with VEGETARIAN options and that was unbelievably exciting. Our favorite restaurant find was "Bundu"- we ate there 3 times! We enjoyed 2 great breakfasts there- featuring homemade yogurt with fruit salad and plenty of eggs and bacon for Dan.

The highlight of the trip had to be on Sunday when we rented kayaks and explored the mangrove canal on the island. We had read about the canal in our trusty Lonely Planet guidebook but it gave limited details so we were a little nervous about finding the entrance to it on our own. But, we've been getting used to trying new things since being down here, so we figured we'd be able to handle it. We rented the kayaks and started out.
The trip began with some early excitement when we passed a fisherman who was speaking the bizarre island mix of English, Spanish and what sounds like Jamaican but essentially he flagged us down to check out a giant fish he caught. Turns out the giant "fish" was a shark! We paddled up to his boat and spanning nearly half the boat is a giant shark, complete with the giant Jaws fin. Yikes! He assured us he caught it way out in the ocean, and that we had nothing to worry about where we were. Sure.



Undeterred, we continued on and managed to make our way to the canal. We were a little timid to start down the skinny path of water, okay I was a little timid but Dan convinced me it was fine so into the mangroves we went. It was awesome. I honestly felt like we were on a National Geographic special- loads of birds, creepy crawlies and the classic mangrove stink. We paddled very quickly, mainly because I figured if we were going quickly enough a snake couldn't crawl into my boat or fall into it from the trees above.

At the end of the canal, we were greeted by the desolate north side of Utila and the open water. There were absolutely no people, buildings or any signs of life on the north side but there was a gorgeous beach as well as water full of funky coral and fish so we sat on the beach and enjoyed a snack and paddled around to check out the coral.

Since we were more sure of where we were going on the way back, the paddle back seemed much shorter and a little less nerve-racking. We made it back in good time, about the same time Jesse and Jenna finished up diving so we headed back to the hotel to shower up and then back out for a few relaxing drinks and a lovely wood-fired pizza dinner.
Tuesday was back to work for another 4 days and this weekend is another 3-dayer so we're off to Guatemala. Hmm...some might say great work if you can get it, right?


You can see all of our photos from Utila HERE.

Baila Tipico

What is cuter than first graders? First graders dressed up in traditional Honduran outfits. And cuter yet? First graders in traditional clothing doing traditional dances.

My "Varones" (Honduran Boys)


A few of the Chicas

Last Wednesday we celebrated "Dia Tipico" which means typical day, and on this day all elementary students come to school wearing their traditional Honduran clothes and then each grade level performs a traditional dance for the entire school as well as loads of parents. Of course, since my students were the youngest they were the most adorable and yes, I'm completely unbiased. They were very excited to dance and I was amazed at how bold they were! I was very proud of my boys especially, as they were full of confidence and were not embarrassed at all to show off their skills.

Getting ready to strut their stuff!

Following the dancing we returned to our classroom and had a little Dia Tipico party, where the moms from our class brought in various "Typical" treats- some of which were actually pretty good. Including a candy that's called "Dulce de Leche" or milk sweet, which is basically a caramel fudge.

You can judge for yourself, but I am pretty sure I have the coolest and most adorable students. But now, I've worked at two schools where the kids can dance better than me...


Check out the rest of the photos from Dia Tipico HERE.

Track and Field Day

So I found myself at Estadio Olympico for the second time in a week and, no, it was not for a football match. Today, the middle school participated in "Track and Field Day: and, yes, we happened to rent out the biggest stadium in Honduras for it.

Normally, a place like Sun Prairie, WI would just head up to the high school field, but EIS's policy is "go big or go home" and so we went "big."

What does Track and Field Day entail? Well... I'll spare you all of the details, but since it deals with:

A) incompetent gym teachers (who had a week OFF to plan the event yet the whole thing appeared as though they wrote the plan on the back of a napkin last night)
B) insane, poorly behaved middle schoolers
and
C) heat, poor time management(i.e a half day of school went over by 1.5 hours), and general exhaustion

One can assume that the day was a nearly complete and total loss. On the other hand many of the kids were super nice and stayed out of trouble and it was also nice to be out of the classroom.

Overall, most of the evidence point to a huge deficit of intelligence and motivation on behalf of the event planners.

Perhaps I should have just waited a few days to post all of this and not be such a negative nelly, but this is what you get dear readers. I'll just end my rant and post a few pictures of some of my kids and "Track and Field Day."



My seventh graders. The blue shirted kids are my homeroom and my responsibility. Notice how they're all sitting down compared to others!



Chaos at the shot put station.



100-meter dash: It took two hours to run this event.



Some of my students participating in the 200-meter dash. This didn't take nearly as long.

MAIL CALL!

Yippee! We made our first SUCCESSFUL trip to "Transexpress" today and were able to pick up a few packages from some online shopping as well as 4 letters. From the post marks on the letters it looks as though they took about 1 month to get here, but hey, better late than never! It was very exciting to get some mail, so thank you very much to Anna, Erin and Grandma Sally! Hint, hint to the rest of you ;-) Just kidding of course, as we all know I'm not the best correspondent.

BREWERS WIN!!!!! BREWERS WIN!!!

Going... Going... BRAUN! (get it?)

Holy shit! The Brewers made the playoffs! After a very disappointing weekend for Wisconsin sports (Packers loss, Brewers loss yesterday, and the Badgers implosion against Michigan) I was kind of expecting a big let down, but the Brew Crew pulled one out.

CC Sabathia is friggn' horse. Complete game, no EARNED runs, fields a grounder to the mound bare-handed, and nearly a game-typing homer in the seventh that went juuuuust foul. Ryan Braun... I think I'm divorcing Anah and marrying you.

Jesse, Sava, and I were sitting in this crap hole restaurant down the street from our apartments. The food sucked their were flies everywhere, but it had Dish network (stolen I hear) and this beautiful picture:



Yep, that's FSN Wisconsin right here in sunny, San Pedro Sula. Globalization at its finest. We're all jumping around, yelling at the TV, moaning at all of the Crew's strikeouts... with a bunch of Hondurans giving us weird looks (more than usual).

I don't even know what to say except for thanks also to the Florida Marlins. When was a baseball fans when I was younger the Brewers weren't my favorite team, the Marlins were. My dad went to college with a guy who ended up being the VP of the Marlins and so I wrote him a letter and he sent me a bunch of stuff of theirs. Now they finally pay me back for all that support like 15 years ago (I was out of love with baseball when they won those two World Series.. so those don't count as pay back).

I can't wait to read the Milwaukee JS about all of this!!!