Construction, Animals, Laundry, and more

Construction:
The construction techniques used here are sometimes very interesting. I often see homemade and dangerous-looking scaffoldingAnother common sight is women, men, and children carrying large bags filled with heavy rocks, cement, or other building materials on their heads, shoulders, or backs. But the finished houses, at least once painted, often turn out simple but beautiful. Most have lovely gardens planted around them. Animals:
At least once a week I can find a small lizard climbing on the walls in our house. They are very small, about the length of my hand, and I rather like them being around since they eat other bugs that might be about. We haven't had much of a problem with bugs in our house. The ants are rarely a nuisance. There may be an occasional spider, mosquito, or centipede but not too often. And I welcome as many fireflies as possible.One cool animal phenomenon occurs only in the evening. Each night at dusk, about 200 birds descend to rest for the night on two trees growing in the river between the two bridges leading into the center of town. The majority of the birds are white but if you stare for awhile you will spot a few black ones. The first time I noticed this I thought they were large flowers until a few began to move. It is a beautiful sight which the photo does not convey. I have yet to get there early enough in the morning to watch their takeoff but I will before I leave. I will get a video of it too. And I saved the best creature for last, leafcutter ants. They are utterly fascinating. (Read more at Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leafcutter_ant.) Found in Central and South America, these ants feed on a fungus that grows in their underground caverns. The ants cut leaves and carry them to their home as food for the fungus. The leaves are often 4 times the ants body size. It just looks really cool to watch because from afar it appears that streams of leaves are walking across the ground. As the ants are out searching for leaves, they have to be on the constant lookout for a parasitic fly which lays eggs in the crevices of the ants head. Eww! Their queen can grow as big as a mouse! Click on the link to watch a video I took of a few toiling away by my school: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W5I0NeQVtg Laundry:
As I have complained many times, washing laundry by hand is hard and tiring. Since I got back in Jan. I decided to do a small load once a week so it would make it easier than having to do a bunch at once. It has been working out great except... I had to wash my beach towel. It is impossible to properly hand-wash a sunblock-soaked beach towel (BFF GG - when I buy sunblock in the future I will check to make sure it has no coral-killing chemicals, thank you). My small hands cannot properly squeeze the suds through nevertheless squeeze the excess water out. So...

I decided to give in and fork out some precious lemps to have it washed at the lavanderia (laundry). They have 2 lavanderias in Tela. They charge by the pound (not by the load), about 8 lemps ($0.42) per pound and you cannot do it yourself. But they have real, actual washing machines and driers.

I stuffed my beach towel, bath towels, bed sheets, and jeans (all of my hand-washing nightmare items) in my backpack, strapped it to my bicycle basket, and rode to town. Since these are my only towels and bed sheets, I made sure to get to the lavanderia by 8:00am. These would have to be done by that same night or I would have nothing to dry off with or sleep on. When I arrived at the lavanderia, the woman came out in her pajamas. She weighed the load, 9 lbs., and told me it would be washed and dried and ready in about an hour. Nice.

Later that night, I stopped by the lavanderia at 6:00pm on our way to dinner. All the windows and doors were shut. Oh, no! The sign out front proclaims their hours are 7:00am - 8:00pm, but you can never count on Hondurans to follow their posted times. Luckily a man out front worked there and opened it for me. He said they live in the back (as at many businesses here) and if it ever seemed closed to just knock and holler. The total came to 74 lemps ($3.90) and they were clean, dry, and smelled dreamy (especially since I use fragrance free products in San Diego).

I now am going to save myself the hand-washing nightmare and do this once a month (only for these items, everything else can still be hand-washed). (side note: The lavanderia man pulls a cart with his tractor every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday for rides around town. Imagine a hayride. Mostly fun for the kiddies, especially since he rings an annoying bell the entire ride, which can be heard in the background of Manuel's video below.) Music:
Before dinner on Friday nights, I have been in the habit of stopping by to see my friend, Manuel, at the Gran Central Hotel. He is the older (84) adorable gentleman who has the young wife (50) and numerous children, of which his youngest in 15. Anyway, I mentioned before that he is very into the big band era so I made him a CD with some old school songs I thought he might enjoy. In exchange, I told him he had to acquiesce to let me take a video of him singing. He happily agreed. So here is a video of Manuel singing a chorus of 3 different tunes. It was nighttime so even though I tried my best to make him stand in the light, it is a bit dark. Click on the link to hear him sing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=186CtSdYwhs

Since I can't seem to write a bog without mentioning the beach... There is a small, one block long, beach front boardwalk in Tela. It has a few of the more expensive restaurants (about 4) and hotels (only 2) which are $70/night. Crazy since you can go a block or two away and get a room for 1/7 that price. Of course, you pay for the view: After a hard day soaking in the rays, reading, and swimming. We often buy a drink (also from down the street for half the price) and enjoy it on the sand or at one of the tables along the tiny boardwalk watching the sea and people. Lately it has been getting busier as spring approaches with more tourists, even more Hondurans (who we rarely saw at the beach), and, inevitably, more vendors hawking jewelry, hammocks, hats, sunglasses, black market CDs, etc. in addition to the normal Garifuna vendors. We have even seen some strolling marachi musicians. Those Dreaded Taxes:
I finished doing my taxes online in only 2 hours and I am getting a good-size refund to help compensate for my dwindling savings account. Yay! Oh, and apparently you cannot deduct contributions to charitable organizations unless they are based out of the US. None of the donated books, shipping expenses, plane tickets, etc. were deductible.

School:
My students are doing great. Nothing much to report. Math, Science, and Writing are going well. Reading is a struggle since I only have a tiny library of books and even half of those are too high for most of my students, even for shared reading, and reading time is only a ludicrous 40 min.! Of course I do a lot of shared reading/read alouds in all subjects. During reading, to model and practice strategies, thinking, fluency, and intonation, and have real conversations around. In other subjects, to illustrate our topic.

Independent reading is harder but the kids either read the same "just right" books numerous times or try to access what they can from the higher level ones. One student today was reading a book and he found a photo of rain falling on the desert and contrasted it with a book we had read together that stated there was little rain in the desert. Another student found the word "flood" and he pointed to the picture saying, "see, in the picture it shows how all the water came in the house just like we talked about in spelling." Another student shared that the mom in her book was just like her own mom and, as evidence, read aloud an excerpt: "Do your homework!" Just a few small examples but it shows even with the limited resources the kids are slowly progressing.

My two lowest kids, they are still struggling to recognize all the letters and their sounds and level A is instructional for them, have been coming in for extra tutoring. They stay after school Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday for an hour, at no charge, so hopefully with the individual attention I can accelerate their progress. We focus on reading, letter/word study, and writing. (Just a reminder, these kids are 3rd graders. Of my 21 students, only about 3 would be considered "at grade level" in reading in San Diego. But then again, they had no real reading instruction in previous grades because none of the teachers have any training at my school, only the teachers at public schools must be certified teachers. The teachers here just read aloud the new story in the reading textbook as the children follow along, summarize as they go, and ask literal, explicit questions. How 1950's.)