Christmas Break

I figured that during this three week break I would become more sure about wanting to stay a second year or more at Mayatan. All of these things that I have been plagued by in teaching I'm beginning to learn are just the hazards of being a teacher. That has helped me to not get as down on myself if I have a bad day. However, this has also contributed to my thinking, "do I really want to go through this every day/week/month/year?"
I have become more sure of two things this break....I for sure am in love with Mayatan, Copan, and my students and want to stay longer for them. I am also more sure of the fact that I am not going to be a teacher for life (I also said going into college teaching wasn't for me...I'm opening my mouth so there's room for my other foot perhaps). I love the town, the school, my students, but I can't see myself as a teacher for my life. It's such a hard and draining job. It's been getting better slowly as I've become more and more accustomed to the job...but still..it's draining!:)
There are days that I get along great with the kids and I think that they all love me and love class and it's just a great day. But then there are still those days in which I come home and I'm pretty sure that my students don't like me at all and hope that I just stay home instead of coming back at Christmas. I think that both those extremes are foolish, but I feel like the life of a teacher combined with my life is a life of extremes. Extremely bad days, extremely good days, and extremely interesting days.:)

Lo que extrañaré

Lots of other teacher have been getting really excited about going home for Christmas and the prospect of all sorts of things, ranging from carpet to friends. I was super excited about going home like a week ago, but over the course of the past week I have been almost dreading leaving Copan. I really like it here! I can’t help but compare it to how I felt about Spain. In Spain I had a list in November of things I wanted to come home to. Included in this list was; chocolate chip cookies, chocolate balls, carpet, no more ugly dogs, being able to drive, having lots of different friends around all the time, American traditions, American culture, not having to order things in Spanish, etc. But here those are all things that I wouldn’t even include in a list if I were making one. I haven’t even thought about making a list of things that I miss because for everything that I miss about the states I’m going to miss at least one thing (if not two) about Copan.
What I won’t miss is “lucha libra,” also known as WWE. Today I found two kids fighting in the hallway, let’s call them boy 1 and boy 2. I called them over and boy 2 explained that boy 1 was picking on boy 3 so he stepped in to break it up. Long story short, I took them to the office and had Norma (who was just there for today) talk to them about why they were fighting. Boy 1 has now been to the office 3 times for fighting, boy 2 five times, and boy 3 three times. Norma let boy 3 go cause he was the “victim” but called the parents of the other two. Come to learn that there’s been a fight between them for some amount of time now. Boy 1’s mom had this response to her son fighting with boy 2, “good for him! I’ve told him that he has permission to hit that kid! I’m tired of him being picked on and he can fight back when he wants to!” In fact, boy 1 has done just that, one time he got a bunch of his friends and went to find boy 2 to beat him up, luckily they never encountered one another. I can’t believe that this kids parents have given him permission to try and beat up another kid! It’s freaking ridiculous! And I wonder why some days I have trouble with kids fighting in my classroom….go figure. So on the list of things that I miss, the top ten list just has one thing on it, “lucha libre.” Oh stupid lucha libre…