Alfombras de Aserrín

The long loved Latin American sawdust carpet tradition reached Copan Ruinas for the first time (and thankfully not the last time) last year! So here I am, it’s 5:30 in the morning, I just pulled an all nighter to help build the carpets. It’s the most amazing and awesome process. We started at 6pm. Actually, I started at 7pm or so cause I was finishing watching the Honduras Olympic qualifier soccer match with Guatemala (Honduras won on penalties 6-5 and is in the Olympics!). So from 7pm to 5am I worked with only about 5 breaks for coffee and 10 breaks for the bathroom… coffee runs through ya, am I right?:)
Ok, so we first make a layer of sawdust over the cobblestone street, flatten it with 2x4’s, stomp it down on top of cardboard. Then lay down the cardboard molds over the top of the first layer…put colored sawdust on top of the original layer to make the picture, then press it down again with cardboard, and there you have it, beautiful sawdust carpets which will only last a couple hours until the procession and drunks destroy it. We had no problems with drunks destroying the carpet tonight, just drunks yelling at us, particularly any gringos helping (like me!). We had a couple of stupid dogs run through the middle of the sawdust carpets after we had finished parts of them, that was a very not-high-light of the evening. I already hate the dogs here, but they aren’t climbing up my list of most liked animals in the world quickly with behavior like that.:) At the start tourists were lined up all over the street to see what we were doing and taking pictures. Then they slowly left and we were left with like 50 people working on the carpets….slowly the numbers got less and less until at the end about 10 of us were left, maybe 15 or so. That was fun to be one of the last survivors, and I got an invitation to help next year (they said, “Hay que contratarlo el siguiente año también!” Which means, “we need to get him a contract next year!”). Ok, I’m going to go take pictures of our work now and hopefully later they will be put online. Hasta later gang!

Que Semana Macanuda

Just when I think that school is getting too routine and boring I have a week such as this that mixes things up and reminds me why I love life down here so much. Today, Maundy Thursday, I am going to be working on the sawdust carpets for the Easter parades. I’ve tried to go work with people to prepare the sawdust but have never been able to for a variety of reasons from forgetting, showing up late, them finishing early, or them canceling the meeting last second. Hopefully I have enough energy this evening to participate in the decorations. Last year people came up from the Catholic Church in Comayagua in order to teach and train people here in Copan on how to make the carpets. You should look up pictures of the sawdust carpets in Comayagua, there’s quite impressive.
In other news, last night I went out to Marisol’s just to say hello and her husband decided that I should witness what it used to be like with the Mayatan staff, so we should have a bonfire! We called up Tyler, changed everybody’s plans, and had a bonfire with marshmallows and hang out fun at their place. They used to have parties over at their house when the school was smaller. It’s grown from about 180 students to 280 in just a couple of years.
Funny story of the week… A drunk guy came up to Sam and I at the fair and asked (in Spanish), “where are you from?” Sam responded in a friendly manner, “the U.S.” The man proceeded to then go off about how he didn’t like the government, Sam defended it, they went back and forth a little bit. I tried to stay out of it because you could just smell the alcohol on this guy. Anyways, then he turns to me, “where are you from?” “Oh,” I responded, “I’m from here in Copan.” He responds with a confused look, “no, where are you from originally?” I just kind of smile and tell him, “I’m from Copan, born and raised 100% Copaneco.” He gets this look of confusion on his face, looks at Sam, looks back at me… “But you look like a Gringo.” This made me smile a little bit more but I just responded calmly, “I know, people tell me that a lot. I’m 100% Copaneco though.” Our drunken friend gets a bit smile on his face and says, “Que bueno!”
Moral of the story; alcohol makes you so dumb as to believe that a tall white guy, blond hair, American accent, and green eyes is from Honduras… so just stay away from alcohol.

La Santa Semana Santa

It's that time of the year when everything feels wonderful. Children laugh and smile once again, teachers smile brighter than Christmas break as the weather is now warmer, and the reason for all the smiles is the lack of classes happening for another week!:) That's the good news, it's Semana Santa (week before Easter) and we get the entire week off for vacation! Unfortunately the Copan fair falls on the same week and so we don't get two vacations, just the one. However, it's from now until Monday after Easter, then back to school on Tuesday. Today I wandered out to the fair for a little while and hung out with two of my friends and it's always funny to walk around with Catrachos (Hondurans) here because people are used to Gringos, but not Gringos that hang out with Catrachos I feel like. So I had lots of calls to me and random stupid things that people said.
The fair is very much so geared towards high school aged kids and younger but it looks pretty fun. Not so much tonight cause I'd just had dinner and didn't feel like the rides were a good idea to go on. However, I'm going back to that pirate ship! It's the kind that goes way up high on either side but not all the way around. I like that one, no upside-down-ness.:) There's a couple other fun rides, a ferris wheel, shooting games, fishing games, and some other booths of random darts and such. It's like any fair in the US, except somebody died there last week and it's still going on... I suppose that's a little different than the states in which the place would be shut down faster than the person died.:)
This week break I think that I'm going to just be relaxing around town and hanging out. Maybe I'll go to the river for a little while and hang out down there, go over to a couple profe's houses, visit Eva's mom's house again to make baleadas up there with her, and then...um... relax!:)

Pobre Savio...

Unas lagrimas me curaron de le perdida. We went to San Pedro yesterday with a big group of teachers to see a soccer game and hang out at the mall there for a little while. The mall was not my favorite part, but I survived and we got some window shopping in as well as a Quiznos sandwich that cost me an arm and a leg. We got to the soccer stadium like 2 hours early so we played cards and just hung out. I had a blast of a time at the soccer game despite the fact that "my team" lost. Real Espana and Deportes Savio were the two teams, Real Espana is from San Pedro and Deportes Savio is from the Copan department, so of course I had to root for Savio. One of my ninth grade students also came along with her mom and since they were supporting Savio I had no other choice but to choose them.:) It was a really good game but Savio did anything but dominate, they were lucky to only be losing 3-1 when we left half way through the second period.
I've begun to realize that so many days here my life involves school (Monday-Friday), planning for school (Monday-Sunday), grading for school (Monday - Sunday), and then relaxing on Friday and Saturday evening. My life is so dependent upon school. I've been looking into the possibility of staying around here next year...if I weren't teaching I think that I might start to get bored. I guess that I'd have to go get a bunch of friends or something, that's a novel concept. It's hard though, because it's so built into the city around here that the Mayatan teachers come for a year, teach, enjoy, and then leave at the end of the year. I think that if I were to come back another year that I would be able to enjoy some actual friendships...although I would be that awkward exchange student that only the really nice and friendly people hang out with because only they have the patience to talk to me. What's wrong with that though?:)