Saturday 19 November 2011

100 days!

Hey guys, just thought I would write a post explaining what happened on our 100th day in Paradise ... I mean Punta Gorda.
Well, it was a Friday, Friday the 18th November and Ally and I decided we would make the walk up to Marble Hill Farms to see if we could go diving and finish our PADI Open Water diver course! We woke early and set off on the half an hour walk to the resort. We headed down to the dock and met our instructor Pol, who took us through what we would be doing that day, last two confined dives and our final open water dive. We did the confined dives first, doing skills such as swimming for 15 metres without a mask on (quite weird, I couldn’t focus on breathing and panicked! woops!) and the hover technique and also removing the scuba unit underwater. Both Ally and I completed these with minimal difficulty and so we got out of the water, had a cup of tea and some cookies while Pol briefed us on the upcoming open water dive.
We soon headed out on the boat and geared up and back rolled in, I will never get used to that first moment when you hit the water and look down and just see this whole new world beneath you! We started to head down in the water, but as I had had a cold the past few days, and my ears are quite sensitive to pressure anyway, it took me quite a while to reach the bottom, but I did get to have a good look around, seeing massive schools of fish and a couple of big jellyfish floating around. When you make your way down in the water, you have to equalize your ears to the pressure, otherwise they feel like they are going to explode! But because mine have been a bit blocked lately, this a long time, well until they eventually popped quite hard and it hurt a fair amount (however, now a day later and one of them is still a little blocked, going to get some decongestants later today - advice from our instructor!) but anyway, the pain soon disappeared and I got to enjoy the dive, seeing some huge groupers and swimming through a small canyon in the coral (feeling like I was swimming in a cave), as always, diving is just great and it was even better knowing that after this one, we would be able to dive anywhere in the world, without having to do any skills or anything, and just enjoying the swim. 
When we surfaced, Pol said those great words ‘Congratulations guys, welcome to PADI’, Ally and I both turned to each other with the biggest smiles we have ever had, after returning to shore, we headed up to the office to sort out some final paper work and get our temporary PADI cards (enabling us to dive anywhere, while our real cards are sent home). After sorting out everything and saying thanks (and getting told that we get two free dives with Marble Hill Farms ... :D   ) we headed to get something to eat at the restaurant called ‘The Crows Nest’ where we ate nachos, philly cheese steaks and angus burgers (philly cheese steaks are the best things ever! haha) after this we sat and admired the view before we began the walk home. When we got home we both just crashed as we were so tired (after getting up quite early) and both went for a late ciesta (at about 5 ish) thinking we would wake up before having to go to Mary Lou’s for dinner at 7, however, I was woken with Ally flicking on my light and saying, it is 8:15 .... WHAT!! bloody hell!! haha
We got dressed and headed down to Mary Lou’s to see if she was still able to give us something to eat ... well we were in luck! haha Apparently, it wasn’t the first time that to volunteers have fallen asleep and missed dinner! haha We enjoyed a nice meal of rice, fried plantains, and sausage before we came back and chilled out with a good film and some music! (obv not at the same time!) 
Anyway, we both agreed that this was a great 100th day and both of us cannot believe how quickly these days have gone, 100 already!! :O   Almost a third, unbelievable! But they have been the absolute best 100 day of my entire life! Cannot wait for the next 258 days! lol (we are flying back a week before the date we arrived!) 
Hope you guys have had just as good a time as I have, well probs not, but anyway, hope you are all good and happy!
Till next time,
Ciao! 

Saturday 12 November 2011

The Many sides to teaching!

Hey again, I know I am becoming a bit lazy with these lately and I do promise to try and blog more often, but the truth of it is, that after a long day, I just want to crash down with a movie, and not have to sit there and write! However, I am going to try really hard from now on.
So here goes ...
This week is coming up to the end of the 4th Parcial (term) and of course everyone needs to do exams, so I look at my mark sheet for every class that I teach and ... “Shit, I have hardly done any tests!” I say to a calm as ever Ally as he is mulling over his mark sheets. I therefore whack out my teachers planner and plan nearly two weeks worth of lessons to see if I can cram in revision sessions and tests into one week. Turns out I could, but only being seriously cruel to some of my kids, like 2 tests in a week and a homework sheet, haha. Glad I didn’t have me as a teacher! But as ever, the weather decided to put a dampener on things and rained off two days worth of these plans, so I had to scrap the revision session and just pop in during one of their other lessons and tell them there was going to be a test, and have an unscheduled class on one other day (the classes here have like no timetable to them, so we can pretty much turn up when we want and give a class!).
So here I was planning like mad, and making up so many draft tests in this little note book I found, about 3 different spelling tests and 4 different exams, luckily there were some worksheet books in the house from past volunteers, so some of the work load was lifted a bit for the younger years with the help of ‘Activity Packs for Young Learners - Pupil’s Pack - Delta Publishers’ (cheers guys, I can always rely on you!). Luckily none of my students complained too much, it is just hard to get them all where you want them at one time, there is quite often a couple of students missing, so I then have to schedule a re-sit test for those that missed it during break, but of course, not all of them turn up, so have to do it again until I get far to frustrated and just say no! 
This is all great, because I don’t actually have to teach and just walk around the class while they are racking their brains on how to translate and spell the word ‘Baloncesto’ (answer at bottom of page) and look over their shoulder at how they are doing, oh and also laugh to myself at the cunning of some of my students and to what lengths some will go to “hide” the fact that they are cheating, like one guy saying he needs a book to lean on, and me turning round to see that he is in-fact opening this book instead of leaning on it, or another having their english book open inside of their bag on their chair, and the pretend to be tired to lean on their arm and have a cheeky look inside, or as Ally describes one of his kids leaning over and very un-subtly pulling a folded up piece of paper out of his top packet and passing it in-front of his face and very noisily putting it back into his pocket, only to repeat the process for the next question!
But as always, with a mountain of exams, comes a mountain of marking. Me and Ally had to sit there for a good 2 - 3 hours, while we ticked and crossed every single paper we had. The next day, we were accosted by our students asking for their marks and papers back, and whether or not they would have to come back into school on the weekend to do ‘recuperaciĆ³n’ (basically where they sit one other exam and if they pass that, they pass the year, hardly fair I know, but still, these kids do have a few screws loose!)
Anyway, I may sound as if am moaning quite a bit, but I do love it all, and it hit me the other day how much of a teacher I have become when I stood at the front of the class and waited there with my arms crossed for silence! haha
Till next time,
Ciao!
P.s - one thing that does scare me is angry parents! Especially when one of them is the deputy head!

Meet with friends, break the law and have a few drinks to celebrate!

Well the first three months have been and gone by, flew by so quickly (cannot believe I am already a quarter of the way through my time here, and only 1 month away from being a 1/3rd of the way through!!), and due to it being 3 months already, this meant our Visa was running out, so we needed to do some traveling to get it renewed so we could live in honduras (legally) for another 3 months.
Previously, we had heard so many different rumours about what we had to do, ranging from you have to travel outside of the ‘Central-4’ (guatemala, el salvador, honduras, nicaragua) for at least 3 nights to you can travel into guatemala for just 2 hours and then head back in. We didn’t really know what to do, so we decided we would prepare for the worst. All we knew about this before heading off, was that we had to at least leave the country, and it was going to cost (previous volunteers have had to spend up to about £200)  but it is something we have to do, so we weren’t to worried about that, also we were getting to meet up with one of the other volunteers that we hadn’t seen before, Sarah who lives in a town near to La Ceiba, called Tela.
We got up quite early on the friday morning to catch the ferry, and got on a bus pretty much straight away to meet Sarah in San Pedro Sula, the transport capital of Honduras. We arrived just after 1, after nearly a 4 hour journey looking at all of the mountains passing my window, and also managing to buy a Milkyway Caramel at the stop station (like my 2nd bit of chocolate here, was SO GOOD!!). When we arrived we sat down in the bus station and had a coffee at our favourite place, Espresso Americano (could be better than starbucks ... no I am not joking!) and waited for Sarah to arrive.
When she did, we quickly got on the bus to a town called Puerto Cortes, where we would then change to another bus to a town called Omoa, where we would be spending the night. This journey was great, catching up with each other about how we were all getting on, and how much we are loving life out here!
The night in Omoa was really nice, found a really nice little restaurant which served some great food, even Sarah’s ‘Chicken Fingers’ (only nuggets) were pretty good (or so she says), we then went and sat in one of the many beach bars and had a couple of drinks and chilled out for a while, before a very early start the next morning and lots more travelling!
We caught a very early bus from Omoa to a place called Frontera (the guatemalan border) where we had to walk into the immigration office and explain what we wanted to find out, and explain that we had to get back as quickly as possible as we had exams to do e.t.c, and as being the best spanish speaker among us (well probably not the best, but the most willing to try and make a fool of myself) the task fell to me to interpret what this man was saying. 
Turns out the government over here is pretty underhand!!
Only had to pay this man $50 each to be allowed into guatemala and then back out again within an hour .... or so we thought!
We walked over the border line and saw a run down duty free shop (gutted it wasn’t open, was looking forward to a giant toblerone) and hopped on the bus to the guatemalan immigration office. Here we were met by a man who said we also had to pay him 200 quetzals (about $35) to be allowed back into honduras this same day! I even asked whether this was a flat rate which the law dictates we can pay to which he replied ‘No, just me. The law doesn’t know!)
WHAT .... Yeah, I am now officially an illegal immigrant people! (where is my grande party ... oh wait ... I am supposed to be lying low ... sorry! .. ssh!)
Well we all decided to pay it anyway, as we needed to get back and it would have been cheaper than paying for 3 nights stay and food and drink, however, something good did come of this, we were told there is an immigration on our island, so we don’t need to go all of the way to guatemala next time, however there is still a little doubt because surely 10 years of past volunteers would have found this out already! 
So we decided to have breakfast in Guatemala and spend the rest of our Quetzals and then head back to Sarah’s town to relax and explore Tela.
Tela was great, but we were all absolutely shattered after such a long day of traveling so much and spending hours on rickety buses crowded with people, however we still managed to find the energy to go out with some of Sarah’s american friends and have a good night of fun in a new city! Living the life of the traveller eh??
Well the next morning, I think we found a new meaning to the word tired and exhausted, especially after we had to cycle into town on 3 old bikes, all with flat tyres and one a lot worse than the others! Anyway, we explored Tela a bit with Sarah and had a look around the Sunday Market (didn’t buy anything, all a tad expensive!) and then Ally and I decided to head back to catch the afternoon ferry back to Roatan, and continue our exams with our students after a nights sleep of 12 hours, however Ally woke up and was very ill so didn’t manage to get much teaching done, so all the other teachers, including me (if I had time during my classes) helped out as much as we could. It also turns out that word spread quickly hear in punta gorda, becuase every single teacher we met was asking how he was and offering us soup or some other kind of medication or health advice, even though we had told just our head teacher!
But, all is well that ends well, Ally is feeling great now, all our exams have been finished and there is only ‘recuperaciĆ³n’ left to do.
So, till next time,
Ciao!

A slice of Home!

Well, well, well, the rainy season has truly begun! My word, when they say it rains, it bloody rains here! haha
To be honest Ally and I had been a little bit disappointed with a so called rainy season here, after we had enjoyed some of the hottest days yet, and even managed to top up our tan (not that we needed it, just that y’know when it starts to get cold, tanning potential takes a serious hit, we need all that we can get before that happens, so that we don’t turn back into ‘white tourists’ (or gringo’s as they are known here)), so come one wednesday morning, we wake up to find the school playground flooded and the roads turned into pretty much a river, we were satisfied with the ‘rainy season’ at last. It was mental how much rain there was, it went on for hours without even a hint of it stopping, we couldn’t even walk down the steps into school with out getting soaked. The playground was just a sea of brown, muddy water (think of the chocolate river from Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory, and no ... I did not take a sip and get sucked up the giant big tube, my name is not Augustus Gloop!). I had to resort to teaching in my crocs (which I inherited from the previous volunteer, and boy are they a life saver) which wasn’t actually all that weird, because everyone wears them out here (Megs!!) so I don’t look that weird, and it was super comfy, but because of the rain, only about half the class was here so I just played a few games and found out that Honduran kids are rather good at cheating, and that english volunteer teachers are rather bad at stopping it!
Any-who, Ally and I thought this was it for the rain for a couple of weeks, but our hopes were dashed when we say Jami and Ed (two canadians who live in the next village over, and who help the school so much) said that another tropical storm was on its way and would hit on the weekend, great!!
Anyway, to combat the rainy days, we had bought one of those cake mixes that you just add water and eggs to to and bake for the perfect ‘America’s favourite recipe’ cake! So we popped over to see Karen (who had arrived back about a week ago) to see if we could use  her oven (as we seem to lack one) and do some baking (for ourselves this time, each cake we have baked previously, we have given away, we kind of want to try one! haha, gotta love a bit’o cake!). She agreed and let us wreak havoc on her kitchen! When we returned home, the jumble sale at the school (which we had helped organise the day before, pricing up items and things) had got underway, so we decided to take a look, and we managed to get a 1000 piece puzzle to complete for about a pound. This was such a good buy as it brought back many memories of my mum getting so into a puzzle at home that she would sometimes forget to cook for us or even run us to school (this was a joke, but she used to get really into them, well we all did really, never knew why, we aren’t even the brightest of families!) and I could just see myself working on this puzzle night in, night out, and forgetting to get up and go teach! haha
All of these things, the rain, the cake, the puzzle brought back some good memories of home, ones that I will cherish, but what brought back the biggest memory of them all was that, for the first time I have been out here, the temperature dropped below 25 degrees and I had to wear a jumper. It was cold!!!! 
And on that bombshell ...
Till next time,
Ciao!