Apology for a Third-World Affair

Bless me, America, for I have sinned. It has been 11 months since I’ve last watched Jersey Shore.

Or feigned interest in listening to white men talk football stats.

Or stuffed my face at Golden Corral.

In fact, my many issues with you as a country is the main reason why I moved to Honduras in the first place – to escape the rat race and to experience the real world, NOT the Real World. I jetted to a third world country to live in poverty and oh, it was wonderful. My dirty feet were charming, taking bucket showers was refreshing, and my Honduran city was culturally awakening.

I was in love, America. Head-over-heels, hot-faced, stupidly-speechless in love with your antithesis. I hitch-hiked down speed-limitless roads, I shared a bathroom with a rooster, I ate every meal with my fingers, and I never watched reality TV. A proverbial Brad Pitt, I broke your clean, wholesome Jennifer Aniston heart and let myself be seduced by the wild mystery of Central America’s Angelina Jolie.

It was a wild ride. But then something happened to me. I began to get a little twitch in my eyebrows around about the fifteenth time I was cut in line at the bank. I found my face getting hot as the computers at work shut off right in the middle of making a test, which of course had not been saved yet. I actually stomped angrily out of a store – the seventh store I had been to that day to try to add more minutes on my phone – when I was told for the seventh time that “today there are no minutes in all of the country. Come back tomorrow.”

It was on that day, America, as I tripped over the uneven sidewalks and dodged careless taxis just to arrive back at my house that had been without electricity for days that I came to the realization that I am American. Through tears of frustration and a fit of self realization I admitted out loud that I am an American pretending to be non-American, and oh, sweet Jesus, it felt so good.

I am a punctual, organized, efficient, pecan-pie eating, law-abiding, police-protection expecting, HBO-watching, Relay for Live-supporting American citizen who doesn’t understand why she has to pay to use a bathroom, or why said bathroom never has toilet paper, or why it takes 30 minutes to add up a check at the end of the meal, or why babies ride on speeding motorcycles or WHY GOD, WHY CAN’T I JUST GET SOME MUSTARD WITH MY FRIES INSTEAD OF MAYONNAISE.

Anyways. What I will say proudly about you, America, is that you do understand the concept of the condiment like no one else. But more importantly you understand efficiency, and expectations from the public and its officials, and the value of an education, and social services.

Sure, you may be in danger of being run by some incompetent, God-fearing crazies, and you may have a serious obesity problem, and you may have a military base on every country on earth, but Honduras could never give me that 401K like you do, or protect my civil liberties. And when I’m lying awake at night, you’re the one who gives me Netflix and Hulu pleasure.

Look, before this goes any farther, I want you to know that I regret nothing and Honduras will always have a piece of my heart. It taught me the true candid nature of the world, and gave me endless "firsts." America, I guess what I'm trying to say is, well, I'll be coming home on July 23, if you'd only let me. You're the one that I want. For you, I'd eat a Big Mac. I'd drink tap water only. I'd outsource the hell out of some cotton shirts. I'd even vote for the next American Idol for once in my life!

So whatdya say?

Night, a Profile

Night here is haunting, it is alive. Its creatures do not sleep. The street dogs run in their packs challenging others until the winners are distinguished through merciful squeals. Roosters strut and howl at the moon, longing for their time to come again. Women work into the night testing every piece of kitchenware they have in tiny metal-on-metal symphonies. The men, not to be outdone, bark orders at their children - who are up three hours past their bed time and scream back with tiny, tired voices.

The stars are a myriad and distinguished in Honduras's black, sticky sky. Their light seems to cluster in a cottony film right out of human touch, but does not reach my feet. Night here is haunting and thick and snuffs out the moon and the stars with velvety ease.

This velvet cloth sweeps aside to make room for the streetlights veiled heavily with orange and rusted plastic coverings, spilling light-goo through the alleys and into doorways, but never reaching "those places you must not go," as if legally contracted.

The night walkers are not the good kind - the sensible creatures have turned in. The sensible creatures know what the expect if they don't. Or they learn quickly, as we have...

Tía Chica, a Profile

Tía Chica, tall and thin like the ivy plant that slinked around her sister's white-block clay house. Holy eyes big and white like the hen's eggs, and a thick brown tongue that perched on the edge of her caramel gums. Her skin nearly as brown as her quick, slug tongue, but stands better compared to the deep brown of the coffee beans she always kept tucked in her bosom and close to her heart.

At the bottom of her long patchwork jumper sat a thick pair of colorful patent leather Nike tennis shoes, dusty from her walk from her walk from her house, north-west from her sister's white-block home - across two mountain passes and tucked in the Honduran selva. At her highest point lay thick, straw-like woven hair, a mossy grey-green color that complimented her undershirt.

"Gatito!" I called to the house kitty, who made its home in everyone's lap. And at this she chucked, or cackled, or keeckled, really. A KEEKEE-KEEKEE that rattled every bone in her body, but not her hair.

"Gatito! Gatito!" she keeked through her gums.

My eyes returned to the cat and back up to the old woman's hard-worn face, but she had taken off in a half gallop, half waddle that looked as if she were tripping her way to the field aside the house. Over the sticks she crept, like a toddler test-driving its new baby-calf legs, until only the top of her mossy head was visible bobbing down the hill and out of my sight from the time-eaten porch swing.

Cultural Differences I Cannot Get Over: The Stare

Do you ever get the feeling you are being watched? Me too. Every. Second. Of. My. Life.

In the States, we are used to some casual voyeurism - the nosy neighbor without a job, the skinny greasy cubical mate, your best friend's dad - but these voyeurists usually act with caution, and keep their distance accordingly.

Hondurans know no such boundaries and thus this is what I, and the other gringos, are subjected to each day




But really, this is what it feels like...



Oh yes, I know. We are white and different and everyone always looks at what they think is different, but what gets me is the longevity of the eye contact. I mean, these people must have the wettest eyes, because their lids are not blinking.

The other day while Emily and I were getting coffee, this man who was 6 inches away from me (seriously, I need to write another blog about personal space) was staring at me so hard from the side I could feel the hole being bore into the side of my head. I turned to look and make eye contact thinking that he would shy away (LIKE MOST PEOPLE DO) but he just held my eyes with his in the most intense non-sexual staring game of my life. We're talking a solid 9 seconds. The Staring Game should have its spot in the Olympics and Hondurans would kick ass.

Do you remember Will Ferrell's Robert Goulet skit where he has a staring contest with the plastic ram and the ram wins (he always does)? No. A Honduran would beat that ram. Every time.

Now, I've been talking about the "Honduran" stare, but as it turns out, some of us gringos have caught on to quite a bit of the skill. Take for example Chris Valdes



Look at that form! Now, while judging this I initially gave him a 7.5 because I thought at first that he was smirking a little, but upon further examination, this is just staring gold. Intense, deep, unwavering, terrifying. 9.9. Bravo.

I don't know about you guys, but I'm feeling a Chris v. Ram showdown. Winner plays the Honduran coffee-line patron.

Americans being Non-Americans

I obviously delight in learning and being immersed in new cultures. If I had a choice for a career, it would be a travel writer of a sort (call me National Geographic!), but if there is one thing I have learned from living in a foreign country it is this: You can take the girl out of America, but you can't take the America out of the girl.

As an American living abroad (Honduras, in fact, the third poorest country in Latin America), I can finally and guilt-free say that I miss luxury sometimes. I ADMIT IT I HAVE BEEN PAMPERED FOR FAR TOO LONG and now there is no going back. This has been an incredible 7 months in Honduras, but I am American and as such, I can now laugh about this charade that I and millions of other Americans living abroad are participating in. Any American living in an impoverished third world country that says they much prefer that lifestyle and would live there forever is lying or has the last name Kaczynski and in that case is probably crouching in a hut writing a manifesto and planning the sending of inconspicuous bombs to various unsuspecting recipients.

To sum it up, if I lived in Honduras for the rest of my life I would not stand for having my toilet be but a hole in the ground. In fact, I would probably have a bidet installed along with my porcelain toilet. In my front yard. So all my neighbors could see.

Thus begins my new blog segment: Americans being Non-Americans.

First, defining the American.

If you have sat through the Grammys, the VMAs, the Oscars, and any other award show in its entirety, you are an American.

If you own one of these
or one of these...You're an AmericanIf you have ever watched Sports Center for more than 3 hours straight, you're an American.

If you have ever made a game out of binge eating, like my friends in Hampton Roads, you're an American. This particular game is titled "Nugget Contest" and is particularly American since it combines binge eating for fun with McDonald's


If you have ever drunkenly sang "Don't Stop Believing" by Journey in a circle with all of your friends, you are an American (or just attended college between the years of 1981-The End of Time)

The list of "How to Identify as an American" goes on and on and includes Crocs, the Celtics vs. the Lakers, Frostys and Jersey Shore, but that is for another time. Now we are all fully aware that we are Americans, we can start to admit to cultural differences that scare the sh*t out of us...or at least miss the comfort of being able to visit Taco Bell at 3 am for some cheesy potatoes.

Stay tuned for the first installment of "Cultural Differences I will Never Get Over: The Honduran Stare."

The Third Third: Thanks, Thoroughness and Thoughts

In life, there are constants. These constants brace and calm us wherever in the world we may be. Like the warm mushy hug of your comfort food, or the security of the sunrise, constants never fail us. For me in Honduras, this constant is lunchtime – 11:40 p.m., euphoria. My 4:20.

Sure, I may say a silent prayer every day that I soaked my apple in enough Chlorox to not end up with explosive bowel problems, but still I know that these 40 minutes every day are mine. I can read if I want to, I can speak with my teacher friends if I want to, hell I could even sit in complete silence if I wanted to. Most importantly though, my sweet 29 nine-year-olds are at least 30 feet away from me at all times. If I could liquefy “lunchtime,” I would put it in a porcelain bathtub with 100 rose petals and soak in it for 40 minutes. It is delicious.

But ah, alas, it is 12:20, and 12:20 is often quite rotten. Like myself, my kids are in Home Mode, where we just try to coexist peacefully until it is time to leave school. Of course, I am still teaching them to the best of my abilities, but their learning switch as been turned off, which is trying on my patience (READ: Somebody please buy me a stress ball before I use someone’s head). 12:20 marks the beginning of reading class, which I am always entirely too excited for, and which they loathe more than English.

I don’t blame them entirely. Reading is where we practice most of our writing. They are a little offended by this. Wouldn’t you be too, though? I can read the word LIAR being licked by hot flames in their eyes when I say, “OK time for reading class!” and do a little jig up to the board where I write “Plot and Resolution,” and then merrily add “What is the plot and conflict of ‘Awful Aardvark? How is the conflict resolved in the end?” When I turn around to face the wolves, I can see the fire flickering out, and then they quietly and hesitantly get to work. Oh wait, I forgot:

PLEASE WRITE IN COMPLETE SENTENCES.

I don’t know what will come of the world on December 23, 2012, but I imagine it may look a little like my classroom after I drop the Complete Sentence Atomic Bomb. The sky turns a dark green and purple, cliffs fall into the sea as easy as sand being pulled into the ocean, the sun reels us in so close that we are whipped by it’s flares, and Pat Robertson gets a bid for the presidency. After that madness, a few of my kids slam their heads on their desks and angrily erase the beginning of their incomplete work.

“You’ll thank me for this later,” I assure them. But I know that they are nine-year-old kids and “later” means 4:00 at home playing their Wii, or tomorrow when they can’t decide to use their orange or purple marker to number their spelling test. Eventually they will look back on this formative fourth-grade year and think, wow, that Ms. O’Donnell sure did us a solid for always making us write in complete sentences. For now, it is their job to dislike me as they commiserate about schoolwork. Hell hath no fury like a fourth-grader scorned.

The last and most strange and interesting class of the day is TEAH, which stands for Technical Education, Agriculture and Health, and which most conveniently, I know nothing about.

At Day-Star School, there is no curriculum, which is equally frustrating and liberating. Luckily we have textbooks for every subject. So while, I have absolutely no idea what to teach my students, the books do, so I follow them like a Rabbi with his Torah. The only class that does not have a textbook is TEAH, and so I am writing its curriculum on my own.

This is hard because of two reasons. 1. It is the last class of the day and my students could give two shits less about what I say 2 . It is extremely difficult to keep 30 nine-year-olds occupied without resources. I’m trying very hard though going over things like the different parts of the body and the food pyramid and the five senses, but getting them to understand me is like getting my friends to understand my love of the band Phish, impossible and heartbreaking.

(Author’s note: If you would like to understand my love of Phish, listen to their album Billy Breathes or any one of their live Hampton Virginia shows. Also, if that isn’t enough you can watch the documentary Bittersweet Motel.)

Sometimes in TEAH I, gasp, give up, and we do homework, or have guided discussions, which the kids seem to enjoy. In eighth grade in Portsmouth Catholic Elementary School we were given a class like this called, Creative Writing. Being the novice writer that I was, I was over enthused to begin this class, until I learned it was to be taught by our gym teacher, Ms. Patty. Ms. Patty, the woman who made us dance to Richard Simmons on perfectly sunny days. The woman who watched in delight as our history teacher made us run laps for every question we got wrong on our midterm.

The first class of creative writing that year began and ended with us stapling Ms. Patty’s personal papers and my heart breaking. I don’t remember the rest of our time in that class, and probably for a good reason. I know sometimes I may get lazy at the end of the day, but I’ve promised myself I would never leave them with the kind of memory that I have of wanting to learn and having that want denied. I promise to never make 4B staple papers against their will.

The bell rings at 2:20 and my kids walk quietly out of the door in a single-file line until they are sure they are out of my view. Then I hear their screams and their feet hitting the pavement as they run to their buses. I sit at my desk and for a moment it is very quiet and still. I look at their empty desks and collect my breath and my thoughts and their art projects. I don’t know how I’m going to leave these kids at the end of the year. I’ve come to know their senses of humor, the way they write their names, how their faces scrunch when they are confused, and what they dream of being when they “grow up.” I want to be there when they “grow up,” and I want to laugh about the time Nathalia put her feet behind her head, or when a giant white horse interrupted our meditation session in the grass with the loudest neigh any of us have heard. But this year will come to an end and so all I can do is teach them as best and as well as I can now and hopefully they will remember how to indent a paragraph and the importance of planting trees.

“Hola Mees,” says the limpiadora with her broom and mop. I gather my things and head out.

“Que tengas un buen día,” I smile back as I skip down the stairs to start planning our adventure for next week.

The Second Third: Sanctions, Speech and Stats

My kids are antsy. I can see their little toes tapping and eyes twitching. You’d think they were all about to pee their pants, but no, it is not their bladders that are about to burst, it is their heads out of pure excitement. The bell pierces our ears at 9 a.m. – RECESS. They all start to sprint out of their seats, but I have trained them better than that. Excruciatingly slowly, I allow the girls to line up, then the boys (to try to crush the machismo seed before it will inevitably blossom into a catcalling/sexist monster), and then they are free to scream and act like animals for 40 minutes. UNLESS you have committed a “no no,” and have to spend your recess with me.

This of course is their worst nightmare. They are tormented by the idea of their peers bounding through the courtyard in slow motion, while they sit in their desks staring at my beautiful face and wishing they had stopped talking when I had asked, or resisted that last spit ball. Despite the fact that I don’t get to chat with my teacher friends for the recess period, hearing them repent for what they have done is oh so satisfying. Sadistic? No. Entertaining? Yes. Speaking of sadistic, if I’m feeling really underappreciated, I like to bring the kids who are b-a-d bad outside so that they may watch their friends frolic in delight. They sit by me, and are not to talk to anyone, “just watch what you’re missing.” I like to call this “Kamp Kaleigh.”

While I’m watching my sinners squirm, I like to think about if my teachers from the past enjoyed giving out detentions and other punishments if it was deserved. Since I’m pretty sure I’m not mentally unstable or akin to Jeffrey Dahmer, I like to think the answer is yes.

I was only held in for recess twice, and both times were painful. The more tolerable of the two was in third grade when I couldn’t pass my 7’s multiplication test. The heartbreaking punishment happened in kindergarten after a misunderstanding during naptime.

At Portsmouth Catholic Elementary School we were allowed to play with our Quiet Boxes during naptime. A Quiet Box was a magical shoebox capsule, which held any quiet toy we wanted to play with – as long as we did it silently and in our personal space. This was PCES’s first mistake (The second being hiring a middle-aged, sour ex-nun for its principal). Let’s be real. Expecting five and six-year-olds to remain silent for 40 minutes while playing with toys is like asking Kanye West to stay in his seat at an awards show. It.Will.Never.Happen.

Being the Tom-boy that I was, my box was filled with Luke Skywalker action figures and matchbox cars. On that fateful day, one of my cars lost its wheel and I could not find where it rolled off to. I finally spotted it, lying lonely next to Chelsea Flemming. Everyone knows you cannot roll cars unless you have all the wheels, so I NATURALLY wanted it back. After a successful Morse Code session, Chelsea quietly rolled the wheel in my direction. Just as I was reaching for my missing piece, a mammoth-sized white tenni smashed it into the ground. That was that. I spent the next two hours bawling my eyes out next to the teacher’s bowl-cut assistant. And so I ask you, what’s wrong with wanting all the wheels?

As my kids die from heat exhaustion, I begin V.H.S. (Vocabulary,Handwriting,Spelling). In my class though, it’s pretty much V.S. Cursive is archaic, haven’t you people heard of computers! Admit it, you always hated those kids who ACTUALLY tried to be the best in handwriting class…unless you are that kid. Getting my kids to pronounce our new words is time consuming and very hilarious. If someone walked by our room they would think it was 30 Hispanic whales trying to communicate…

ssssssccccrruuuuuuubbbbbbeeeeeeedddddddd

After a few hearty laughs about how ridiculous we sound, I hit them with horrific news: Time for English. Not much to say about this class, we’ve all been there and probably hated it. Turns out, if you’re a non-native English speaker, you hate it more. I don’t blame them, last week I spent 30 minutes practicing how to indent a paragraph and a large majority of them still indent the second line of the paragraph…I am truly confused.

What I find myself even more confused about every day is math. I understand math about as much as Sarah Palin understands the respective geographic locations of Alaska and Russia. I was overexcited to find out I would be teaching fourth grade until I remembered I cried during a fourth-grade fraction test, and part of the reason I opted to become a communication major was the alluring six-credit maximum for math. I am coming around to those crazy numbers because the kids love it. It’s their easiest subject because there are no English words, just beautiful universal numbers.

Plus, if I don’t know the answer to a question, I pull the old “Class, can anyone help Raul?”

Works like a charm.

The third third is coming soon.