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.

The First Third: Frauds, Facebook, Frogs

Depending on the day of the week my angels and I begin our day with some form of impromptu P.E., art or music class. As I am not qualified to teach any of these, these 40 minutes usually consist of a lot of nervous eye shifting and mumbling on my part. Luckily nine-year-olds still think it’s more satisfying to eat the glue than to create a masterpiece.

Watching these kids eat glue, I am reminded of a defining moment of my middle schooling, which became my first insight into the power of media and the repulsiveness of squealers. In fifth grade, one of my friends (we’ll call her Heather) dumped a few ounces of glue on a less-than-popular girl’s (we’ll call her Leigh) chair, who expectedly and hilariously sat in it, and then expectedly and hilariously cried. Now, I did not take any part in this prank, but I did snicker uncontrollably causing Heather to assume she was the funniest person in class (which she wasn’t. This title was held by one Tony Riley). The point is, Heather bragged about this for weeks, months, a whole year, but then in sixth grade she was invited with nine other students from my school to be part of a local-programming shitty-quality talk show cleverly titled, Kid Talk, where a host with gelled hair and a polo shirt asked select students about trials and tribulations of being a pre-teen so they could connect with other angsty pre-teens who were skipping school at 12 p.m. on a Wednesday just so they could catch the fun on air. That show really needed a better producer.

ANYWAYS, Heather was asked by our gelled host, “Tell us about a time you were peer-pressured to do something you were uncomfortable with and how you handled the situation.” And Heather, without skipping a mother f*cking beat says, “Well, once my friend Kaleigh told me to dump glue on our friend Leigh’s chair. I said I wouldn’t because that wouldn’t be nice, so she took the bottle and did it herself.” Well, as I watched this unfold with my classmates on a recorded VHS the day after it aired, my mouth literally hung open. I frantically glanced around making eye contact with everyone in my class who seemed to conveniently forget that Heather was bragging about this deed LITERALLY two days previous during recess. Even Heather herself was shameless enough to look me in the eyes and give me a “how could you be so childish” glare. Leigh never talked to me again after that and I vowed to never become a journalist even though I would eventually receive a degree in mass communication…. People will do and say anything when sat in front of a camera or a recorder, and do it with conviction.

But I digress. After first period I have 40 minutes of a “planning period,” which basically means Facebooking and teaching myself 4th grade science. The kids love science, even though they don’t understand a single paragraph in the book. It must be the pictures and the strange disillusion they all have that they will be dissecting frogs at the end of this year. I’m sorry, but the previous teacher who told them this lie should be banned from education. I can’t even find decent floss in Honduras, how do they think I’m going to produce 30 frogs floating in formaldehyde? Telling these little doe-eyed chiquitos that we are going to do no such thing is the second time I’ve broken their hearts – the first is when I told them no, you will not be receiving candy every time you finish an assignment. Seriously, who is teaching these kids?

Science is refreshingly fun though. The day I was explaining the incredible concept of the chromosome was the first time I had the complete attention of everyone, which is saying a lot. Anyone who has taught knows that never happens unless you’re holding a dead preserved frog.

The second third will come soon...

A Day in the Life of Ms. O'Donnell

My day begins as I go to slam the snooze button on my alarm for the third time that morning at 5:30 am. About this time my responsibility kicks in and I peel myself out of bed and inch like a Honduran slug down my stairs to make some coffee - "Cafe Rey," to be exact, which I generously dump in a sock like contraption that dangles inside a can of boiling water. I will never complain about prepping a coffee machine again. After scrounging around for leftovers and soaking my apple in Chlorox water, I make a mad dash out the door. No need for a shower - I look and feel as if I just crushed the Boston Marathon record time about 30 minutes later.

In Honduras, everything has its place. The first corner I pass every morning, I am greeted with a "Que le vaya bien!" by an elderly couple enjoying the "fresco" atmosphere in only their underwear. Walking up the cobblestone fourth avenue I can glance through the iron and cement house fronts into their simple and tiled homes - kids swinging around in hammocks, abuelas beating tortillas, young mothers hushing their babies. I'm almost swiped by mopeds and taxis as I weave through all of the bipedal commuters on thin sidewalks. I tip toe past the leashed boxer/doeberman mix, who I'm very confident will break free one of these days. Leaping over permanent puddles, I hurdle past the old man in the white cowboy hat carefuly and efficiently peeling breakfast oranges. One more turn past the grimey and oily autoshop littered with smirking hombres, and I have arrived at last....DAY-STAR SCHOOL.

Despite my body odor bursting through my deodorant like Orcs tearing through the walls of Gondor, I tell myself it will be a fantastic day with a big plastic smile, and wait patiently for my hellians...oops, I mean children, to arrive.

To be continued....

Portrait of a City

Oh, hello Readers. I figured since you were all insanely engrossed in my blog, I should tell you a little more about the city of Juticalpa, Honduras. So without further ado, a portrait...

Juticalpa lies in the high dusts of a valley surrounded by mountains, although I'm not sure which ones. Possibly the Sierras? It's a big city of about 50,000, but seems much smaller. The houses are like Legos - colorful and smashed together with a toddler's chubby hands. It is not dimensional, but flat with very few two or more storied buildings. There are only about 6-8 paved main roads, and even those are not paved all the way through from point A to point B. The other streets are dirt and stones. The streets have no order or pattern - the city planner must have been on drugs, PCP is my guess. There is a central park that is spread in front of a towering, white cathedral like an inviting blanket.

Pulperias are located on most corners and are differentiated by the woman's name who owns them, Puleria Sonia, Pulperia Flores, etc. These are like small, family owned 7-11's, and it's not unusual to see a kid running the register, or their family chatting on the stoops. All the stray dogs have their own corners too. I pass the same scruffy pups every day on the way up to school. While it is tempting to harbor all of them in my home, 87% of them have lice/rabies...but this is an assumption.

Taxi drivers hunt for passengers in Toyota models from the 80's. Sometimes the smell of poop stays with you so long that you actually check your shoe to see if you're the a**hole who has been walking for 20 minutes with poo on the bottom...but alas, that's just the way the city smells in some places. The Eskimo ice cream shop is a popular hang out for ages 2-97. It has A/C. Hondurans have warm and wide smiles and can't get over the fact that we are white.

Olancho, the department (state) I'm living in is considered the Wild West of this area, and that couldn't be a more accurate description. Everyone has a gun and all proudly display them in their belts. Armories are stationed on every other street. The second most frequent is a barber shop.

You don't see many homeless Hondurans. This might be a stretch but it seems like most of the people here do nearly the exact same blue collared job. I've seen very few large houses. Also, it isn't common for houses to hold entire families - like 15 members. But perhaps I just can't distinguish the homeless from the homed, which is a real possibility.

It's the rainy season and when it rains, it pours to use a cliché. Streets become flooded, and this is probably why there is such a huge problem with dengue fever here - puddles are rampant and unfortunate breeding grounds for mosquitos. Speaking of those foul bastards, they are very different here than in the States. Here they are so terribly small, you don't even notice them until they have been biting you for some time.

It's hard because I see all these problems and I know how to fix them, even with only 22 years of existence, but I really just can't. This is a subject for another blog though, excuse me.

Honduras is hard, but it's real. Whenever I feel frustrated with too much dirt in my eyes, and poop on my shoe, I can look up in any direction and look at the beautiful and awesome (as in its true definition) mountains, and remember that this is absolutley where I want to be.

Dirty Feet

My roommate in college, Drew, and I used to fight for the shower. It seemed we both had trouble with time management. When I would rightfully lose my first showerer position, but unscrupulously take it anyways, the shower would always be frigid for me, no matter how long I waited. As soon as he stepped in, it would warm up. He claimed to be the "Once and Future Showerer." I've tried this approach the first few days I have been in Honduras, but no matter how long I wait...it stays cold. That's it.

There is no hot water.

This is ok. An icy shower is a blessing every morning. It is so damn hot. When I ran three miles in the midst of a sweltering Virginian summer, I never sweated, only glistened. I sweat 96% of the day in Juticalpa, Honduras - the other 4%, I'm in the shower.

I'm not complaining. I love it. It's one of the few things that I've come to adore here already after only a few days. My showers are cold, there are lizards in my toaster, and my feet are always dirty.

Honduras is very green, very poor and very pure. The houses are what you would expect - broken and fragile, but somehow their chaos is beautiful. It's simplicity in its truest form.

The simplicity does come at a price though. You can't drink the water here of course, the streets are littered with homeless and thin street-savvy dogs and everyone is literally surviving. Despite all this, la gente are so happy. Everyone has been very helpful, kind and willing to put up with my trying classroom Spanish, which is already improving a lot. Everyone here is a hard and honest worker and respectful of each other MINUS the incessant cat calls.

Despite all the "Hey baby cutie" comments, I love this simple place, and I love my dirty feet - it makes me feel a little less like a gringa.