The last day of school was last Thursday so the teachers had a big teacher party on Friday to celebrate. Apparently they celebrate every year, which I find funny because all of the decorations said things in Spanish like, "We made it another year!" Not many people here are very motivated to teach because unlike in America, they get paid a lot to teach and usually do it for the money. The party was at a balneario which is basically like a town pool. They are privately owned and the owners usually live and work on the land, and they always have a pool, an eating place/restaurant, and fields for playing soccer. Balneario Aguagua also has two huge fish ponds, an illegal pet monkey, and they sell dogs for illegal dog-fighting. This party started at 10 and didn't have an end time in the afternoon. My host-dad's sister is a teacher at the school so I rode with her family and my 12 year old host-brother came along for the fun.
A Honduran party consists of a lot of food and talking. We didn't order food from the restaurant but made and brought everything ourselves. Basically the most important part of any Honduran event is the food. When we got there, the first thing everyone did was have a mug of hot arroz con leche (rice with milk) which I think is like porridge. Then all of the men sat around while the kids played in the pool (even though it was cloudy and cool), and the women cooked lunch. Around 12noon, we all sat down to a huge traditional lunch, after which they served cold beer and apples as dessert. I skipped the beer completely, but the Japanese volunteer who lives in my town and helps teach math at the school took a beer, and by the time I left 3 hours later had taken 6 more. I was really taken aback by this consumption of beer with teachers, but I guess the JICA program is not quite like the Peace Corps program. So after a dessert of apples, the men went back to sitting around, the children went back to swimming, and the women cleaned up everything from lunch. Then they got the coffee and cookies ready. After the coffee and cookies, we hung the pinata and everyone started to munch on candy, and then they brought out the two huge cakes. Thank goodness that is when my ride wanted to leave because I have never been so overwhelmed with food in my life. And this is what it is like every day. Breakfast, mid-morning snack, lunch, afternoon coffee, dinner, bedtime snack.
 |
| The pool with the crazy slides through the trees. |
 |
| The beautiful view of the mountains from the top of the slides. |
 |
| Our lunch area with Christmas decorations...... |
 |
| The monkey was determined to pull that banana through the cage. |
 |
| One of the fish ponds. |
 |
| My brother, Manuel, doing a flip into the pool. |
 |
| The women serving the plates. Do you see how much food is on each plate?? |
 |
| A few of the teachers. |
 |
| Me and Risa, the JICA volunteer. |
 |
| Me and my aunt Lilian. |
 |
| Risa hitting the pinata. |
 |
| Risa dancing with a teacher. |
No comments:
Post a Comment