Well friends, today is our last day in Copán Ruinas. It’s been a great trip, but I think we are all feeling a little ready to come back home. Even though I know we haven’t, I feel like we have seen every nook and cranny of this tiny town in our three weeks here. Nevertheless, I am sad to go.
Last night the three of us and our new friend Haley went out to eat at one of the nicer restaurants as a final hurrah so that tonight we can have a final meal with our families. I got something called a Gringo Taco (Gringo is the name for white people in Latin America). It was great! They also brought us this bean dip balanced on top of hot coals. We had seen it around before, so it was nice to try it. As is the case everywhere here, there was a tour group of about 20 post-retirement adults at the table next to us. They were pretty funny to listen to :)
This morning I got up and went to kindergarten with Haley, it was my last day and her first, which made for a weird combination of emotions. We had planned to just stay together in my teacher’s class, but as soon as we got there, my teacher ran up to me and asked for a “favor”. She does this every time I come. Usually she asks me to cut out 20 trees, or trace a bunch of “s”s on colored paper. Typical stuff. So of course I said yes without waiting to see what she wanted. As it turns out, one of the other 4 kindergarten teachers hadn’t made it to school yet. She asked me to watch the other class until the teacher got there.
I quickly found myself in a new classroom with kids that I did not know and an odd assortment of parents. My teacher introduced me as “the teacher for this morning” and left. Awesome. And then as soon as the parents decided I wasn’t completely incapable, they left too. So it was me and 19 5-year-olds this morning. About every half hour, my teacher would pop her head in to tell me that the class’s teacher would be there any moment. Two hours later, she did come. It was a long morning. We colored lots of pictures, sang a lot of songs, and had many futile discussions about appropriate classroom behavior. Those two hours probably stretched my spanish has far as it has ever been! It turns out that the teacher had some kind of emergency at home with her daughter, which is an understandable reason not to make it to work on time. I would think that this happens fairly often, and it makes me wonder what they do when there aren’t random white girls roaming around the school grounds. The whole experience made me thankful to know that in the states we have subs and paras and teacher aides.
Collectively my experiences at the kindergarten have made me thankful for many facets of education in the states. I have agreed with almost none of the teaching strategies that are used in the kindergarten, and it has been difficult for me to assimilate what I am learning about education and educational theories with what I am learning about Honduran culture and educational expectations here. More on that later, maybe.
Today is our last four hours of class (hooray!) then supper then packing then ice cream. Tomorrow we will endure a three hour drive down this mountain to the airport. We really aren’t sure how things will go from there, and prayers would be awesome. There are rumors of exit taxes with exact change that we don’t have. I’m worried that we won’t make our connecting flight in Miami after working our way though US customs. If all goes smoothly Sam and I will spend the night in St. Louis at Sarah’s house and leave for Omaha at 8:30 Sunday morning. And just that quickly, this trip will come to a close.
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