Here we are already, 3 months in. It seems like a long time ago that we arrived in San Pedro in the middle of a hurricane. We have pretty much settled into our project now, we have friends, our classes are going well, we might even know what we’re doing a little bit (but don’t tell anyone!)… just in time to go travelling for two and and a half months!

Anyway, I thought this milestone should be marked with a special blog post so here I present to you ‘Survival Guide: Candelaria’! This is basically a summary of all the things that I have learned are necessary, or at least advisable, for surviving in Candelaria. To my family, take note for when you visit, these are invaluable to make you blend in, no one will be able to tell you’re not actually Honduran!

Survival Guide: Candelaria

• At least a mediocre level of Spanish or Edwin the English speaking barber will be your only friend. As funny as using charades to communicate for a year would be, it becomes slightly more impractical when you try and take it into the classroom.

• A taste for tortillas. And refried beans. And scrambled eggs. And plantain. And rice. And chicken. A Honduran diet right there.

•  A strong stomach for the bus rides. Ypu should also hope everyone else has a good stomach or hasn’t eaten breakfast so they don’t throw up on you (speaking from experience here).

• Strong sweat glands to deal with the temperature and the humidity. Unfortunately this means that twice daily outfit changes are not uncommon.

• Full body mosquito suit (or is that just me?). A different blood type to me might work too, mine is just too sweet.

• Strong calves to get you up and down the vertical roads. If the heat, mosquitoes or crazy bus drivers don’t kill you the physical exertion needed just to walk home from school might.

• Football skills or another coping strategy for boredom because that’s all there is to do here.

• A rucksack filled with assorted home comforts, among them as much chocolate as is humanly possible and tea bags, because we are British after all.

• An acceptance of Crocs as they are the chosen footwear of a large portion of the population. For some people this may be a deal breaker, but please, I implore you, look past the Crocs. 

• Jeans, as overwhelmingly ridiculous as that sounds. They are very à la mode here and shorts are off limits for women for modesty reasons so there are few other options.

• Tolerance toward some of the more noticeable differences between Honduras and home. For example, religion is a very important part of life here so people will assume you are religious and proceed to ask you whether you are Catholic or Evangelical, the two main branches of Christianity in Candelaria. They can be shocked if you tell them you aren’t and it can lead to some interesting, if slightly uncomfortable, conversations/discussions/arguments (we have experienced all three).

• Thick skin because as the resident white people you will attract some stares and possibly comments. If you are a girl, learn to ignore it when men catcall you, make kissing sounds louder than you thought possible and especially when they use the same noise they use with dogs to try and get your attention so you can still enjoy it here. The machismo culture is difficult but something that has to be dealt with.

• Patience, from having every child you see on the streets call out your name and being repeatedly asked the same questions to having to go over the difference between dog and duck what feels like a thousand times with first grade.

• An open heart because these kids will worm their way in there whether you like it or not. Cheeky grins, their boundless energy and a non-stop stream of hugs are sure to win you over in seconds.

Busy, busy, busy these past two weeks! We finally got back to teaching full days in the escuela after all the disruptions for Independence Day. Something I’ve noticed here that is very different from home is the approach to education. At home nothing short of 20 feet of snow or a royal marriage will stop school happening. Here a meeting for the teachers, a doctor’s appointment or a national celebration all lead to a day off for some or all of the classes.

This approach has it’s benefits. It gives life more room to happen naturally. It puts family first, arguably the one thing more important than education. For example, this week there was a funeral for the grandmother of a girl in second grade,and there were no classes for anyone so that the teachers and any of the children that wanted to could attend.

However there are also the obvious disadvantages. There is much more disruption to learning. Classes do not always receive the same amount of teaching, even within the same grade. And for us it can be extremely frustrating when our small amount of English time is shortened, cut in half or even eliminated for the week, as is the case with third grade who often lose out on their two lessons for the week when we are not in on a Monday or Tuesday.

Anyway back on to all of our goings on. Last Friday we were invited to a dinner to celebrate Día del Maestro (basically teacher appreciation day) which was held at the escuela and hosted by the mayor. We were honoured to be included seeing as we’ve not been here that long. The evening included a singer from El Salvador, some party games (one of which we were volunteered/forced to take part in, we lost) and cake! At the end of the evening we were even given a wee party favour of a special mug filled with sweets!

During last week one of the girls from our 1st Grade class told us that her mum wanted us to come round to her house at the weekend so she could meet us and we thought hey, why not? We turned up on Saturday afternoon and it turned out they had bought a cake just for us coming over! We spent a really nice afternoon with them before going for baleadas with a friend and finishing our evening at church. We don’t usually go to church but there was a special service because the next day was Día de la Biblia (Day of the Bible, because literally everything has it’s own day here). We enjoyed it a lot more than the last time we went, probably partly because we could understand a lot more (!) but they also had a family band playing who were brilliant!

Sunday brought Day of the Bible but also another morning spent making tomato soup – who knew it could make us so many friends! This time it was with a teacher called Enedina that goes to the adult English classes (that still haven’t started yet…) and who is really lovely. We got back to the house in time to see the church’s parade go past and then hear more music from the family band. 

In other news, last week was the opening session of our choir! We decided to start a choir at the escuela for every kid that wanted to take part, which the teachers didn’t seem to understand at first… We decided to do two, one for 1st-3rd grade and one for 4th-6th grade. So far we’ve not done much but we have taught them the first three lines of ‘O Flower of Scotland’! (I can’t insert the video I have of it here but if you want to see it you can go to my Facebook page, Sara’s Year in Honduras, and see it there!).

And now we’re gearing up for our first proper bit of travelling! On Saturday we leave at 4am to start the two day trek to Belize! Obviously the sole purpose of our four days there is to renew our visa and not sunbathe and swim in the sea… Obviously… I’ll see you on the other side!

A few more pictures of life in Candelaria – 

Thursday finally brought the day that all the preparations, all the marching, all the drumming, had been leading up to. The 15th of September brings celebrations to countries all across Central America as Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Costa Rica celebrated 195 years of independence from Spain. We were honoured to be able to be a part of the celebrations and even to represent our own countries in the parade.

We arrived at the bridge that was to be the starting point for the parade at 8 en punto but in true Honduran style nobody moved until at least half 8. We were in the second group at the front of the escuela‘s part of the parade, with me proudly holding the Scottish flag high and Amy holding the Union Jack with a little less fervour (she had been promised that they had an English flag for her but it seems Britain and England are interchangeable here…). We paraded along the main street that runs through town before circling the main square, where we even got a shout out over the microphone!

After our official duties were over we were able to enjoy the performances from the kids that continued through the morning, that included traditional Honduran dancing, an almost operatic version of the anthem and some drumming from the escuela‘s banda de guerra! Because of the heat here most events are done in the morning so everything wrapped up around 12pm and they even had the big stage down by 2!

On Friday we headed out to meet up with Jesse and Lucy, the Tomala volunteers, in Gracias while pretty much the rest of our group was in Tela. We went via La Esperanza, where our host family was going to spend the weekend, and spent a couple of hours wandering around there before catching the nicest bus I’ve been on in Honduras so far! We arrived in Gracias with just enough time to go for (more!) pizza and cocktails at our favourite restaurant, Kandil.

The original plan had been to spend our days off in Santa Rosa de Copan but a lack of affordable accomodation led to us just going there for the day on Saturday. Our bible (Lonely Planet’s Guide to Central America on a Shoestring) had Cafe Ten Nepal in Santa Rosa down as a must see, and so it follows that we spent an hour basically going round in circles as one person after another told us ‘two blocks down and then take a left’ or ‘down the street and around the corner’ before some kind stranger took mercy on us and told us it had closed down.

We didn’t mind that much because it meant that we had lunch in Santa Rosa’s hidden gem, Cafe de las Verlas. Frozen lemonade and a mozzarella, ham and pesto sandwich have never tasted as good as after a fruitless treasure hunt. Once we had eaten absolutely everything we could (and even bought cakes to take on the road with us) we had to hot foot it back to the bus station so we didn’t miss the last bus back to Gracias.

The evening was spent waiting out a power cut before we could go to dinner at Hotel Guancascos, which is where we usually stay but they didn’t have room for us this weekend because it was Independence Day and we were very last minute! In keeping with a wild weekend away from teaching and our communities we were all asleep by half 10.

And now we’re back in Candelaria and had our first full day teaching today after 3 and a half weeks of sporadic classes! We are very pleased to be back doing what we are here to do and are excited about our first session tomorrow with the choir we’ve decided to set up at the escuela – expect lots of Disney! We are also going to try and set something up at the colegio, whether that’s another choir, proper English classes or just an English club. We’ll wait and see!

Last thing for now, we’ve discovered our new favourite thing to do here. Last week we were taken down to the river by some friends and shown this pool where you can swim and all these rocks you can jump off from. It is the most refreshing thing you can imagine and has satisfied my craving for a swim… for now at least!

Some picture from Día del Niño that somehow managed to escape their own blog post…

Over the past two weeks everything has been pretty quiet teaching wise here. The week after we got back from Gracias was an evaluation week, basically a week of tests, so the only time we had to go in was to distribute and then pick up the test during the slot for English.

We were all ready to get back into teaching last week but when we turned up to the school on Monday morning we found all the children outside their classrooms practicing their marching for the Independence Day parade! It seems that as soon as it turns into September here all thoughts go to the 15th, Independence Day. For three mornings that week the whole school was practising their marching for the parade and then on Thursday we helped with a street clean in preparation for a mini parade later in the day that was going to bring a torch of peace through the town.

All in all there were very few lessons last week due to prep for the 15th and then on Friday the celebrations started for Día del Niño, or Day of the Child. It was mostly celebrated on Saturday but on Friday the school brought in some clowns (payasos in Spanish). On Saturday there was a big show in the Central Park but we missed it because we were helping to decorate the area where second grade were going to have lunch with our host mum Saida.

We spent a great afternoon with second grade, eating lunch, playing games, having our dancing shown up by 8 year olds, and then watching them absolutely destroy several piñatas!

In other news, last weekend we spent one morning making Auntie Maureen’s tomato soup, which went down a hit with Lety and Victor, one of our host families – even all the kids liked it. It’s very different to the soup here which is more brothy and quite oily and has lumps of vegetables and sometimes meat in it. In comparison, they were amazed that pretty much all that’s in Auntie Maureen’s is veg, water and a little bit of sugar. ¡Qué saludable! I also received my second parcel, this time from my Uncle Paul, which just contained a book. Before I left I told him one of the things I would miss most while in Honduras was reading actual books seeing as I’ve brought a Kindle with me, so his plan is to send me a book every month. I absolutely love the idea!

So now we’re just waiting for Independence Day to finally get here on Thursday before heading to Santa Rosa for the weekend!

As some of you may remember from a previous blog post, this year I will be taking part in a programme called Language Linking, Global Thinking that links me in my classroom in Honduras to a class in Scotland. This is the first LLGT specific post that I’ve written, though there will be more throughout the year, but I hope everyone else will still find it interesting. Any LLGT specific blog posts will be headlined as such to let you know what you’re getting yourself into!

The link between myself and my school in Scotland, Grantown Grammar is going to be a cultural one between the S1s there and my current fifth grade class. At the minute, to get started, the pupils from Grantown have sent me a list of questions that they want to know the answers to about Honduras and about my project.

I hope that has answered all of your questions! If you have anymore questions, even if you’re not a pupil from Grantown Grammar, please feel free to leave them in a comment and I’ll answer them in the next blog post. 

I can now tell you a 6am, four hour long bus ride over bumpy roads with three people crammed onto each seat is totally worth it for a weekend in Gracias. That was how we traveled from Candelaria on Friday morning, arriving in Gracias relatively early but still after Jesse and Lucy, the volunteers from Tomalá. 

Friday was a very chilled day, making full use both of the sandwiches served at our hotel, Guancascos, and the hammocks outside our room. We also did a bit of shopping and hung out in Gracias’ gorgeous central square. On Saturday we were joined by Siobhan and Anna, the volunteers from La Union, and Grace and Hannah, the volunteers from Yamaranguila. Poor Hannah only arrived on Honduras on the Friday and was straight into Gracias to meet us!

After some lunch we headed out to La Campa, a nearby town, that is home to Central America’s highest zip line! In true Honduran style we had to wait a while after we got there to be taken up to the start point but La Campa is a beautiful town and while waiting we had the best baleada I’ve eaten since I arrived in Honduras! (A baleada is a big tortilla with refried beans, cheese and mantequilla in it.)

Eventually we got up to the start of the first zip line. Yep, that’s the first one, because there are actually six zig zagging across a valley. It was an exhilarating experience that I’ll never forget and the views were stunning, especially in the golden sunlight of late afternoon. I would definitely recommend it if you ever happen to be in the area! 

The only way the day could have gotten better was with a big pizza and a frozen cocktail… Which was how it ended, celebrating Grace’s 18th birthday a few days early. We were all up bright and early on Sunday morning to walk the short distance to the San Cristobal Fort that looks over all of Gracias. It’s quite small, with not a lot of information about it but the views were the main attraction.

Half of the group left later on on Sunday, leaving Amy and I with the Tomalá girls to grab a Chinese that left us in a food coma (there is not a single Chinese restaurant in Honduras, and there are a lot, that has a grasp on the concept of portion control). We spent the evening starting to plan our Christmas holidays as we all work in schools that use the Honduran rather than American system so will be traveling together for a few months over December and January. 

After another four hour long bus ride over bumpy roads with three people crammed onto each seat, only not at 6am this time, we are now home! No English lessons this week because of tests but I’m sure we’ll find something to fill our time with!

Buenos dias! It’s been a wee while since the last update but the last two weeks have been a bit quieter as we settle into a routine here.

When I say routine, our teaching can still be a bit sporadic. Last week we only taught two days, this week we had Friday off and next Monday too. Next week is also an evaluation week where the kids are tested so we’ve spent some time creating the English tests for each grade.

It hasn’t rained here since Sunday, meaning that it is almost unbearably hot and humid, though I’m still wearing jeans, mostly to avoid adding more mosquito bites to my impressive collection (more than 15 on one leg!).

Despite the heat we’ve been very active! We played volleyball with Victor, the host of our project last week and while we were both rubbish and dragged our team down a lot, we loved it! Also, after saying in my last blog post that I don’t like football, we now regularly play in the late afternoons before dinner with whatever kids from the escuela (primary school) or colegio (high school) are there. It’s a lot of fun, a good way to get some exercise in and we now have more than one friend over the age of 10! Progress. It can turn quite competitive though, especially when Scotland and England go head to head…

We’ve experienced the full range of power cuts that Honduras has to offer recently, ranging from lasting for more than 24 hours to the lights turning off for five seconds then back on and repeating every few minutes for the next hour. One evening during a power cut, I finally got my ukulele out for the first time after lugging it across an ocean and then most of Honduras!

On Saturday two girls that we teach appeared at our door, trying to tell us something. With our halting, though improving, Spanish we eventually figured out that they weren’t asking us about our run but telling us that we had mail! (The word for both is ‘correo’ in Spanish, you can understand our confusion!) We immediately followed them down to the post office where we gave the post mistress our phone numbers for the next time any mail comes in for us and paid 20 Lempiras, or $1, for my first package from home!

While I was expecting most of what was in because I packed it before I left, there were some surprises, including some lovely cards from my family and an advent calendar each for Amy and I. Looking forward to the next one *hint hint*!

If anyone feels like sending me a letter or a postcard or anything else (mosquito spray is always welcome!) feel free to send it to:

Sara Morrison 
+50495776655
Candelaria
Lempira
Honduras
Centro America

And that’s pretty much what our last two weeks have been like! We’re now in Gracias for a long weekend with some of the other volunteers.

A very busy first weekend was had here in Candelaria! On Saturday we were finally able to have a lie in after getting up at 6am every morning! It’s fine though because I’ve taken to having naps when we get back from school, before we have lunch. The heat really does tire you out!

After a relaxing morning and some lesson plans we went out with our host mum, Saida, her daughters Daniela and Jamie and their cousins Yeverson and Justin to go and see their cows. We were looking forward to getting out of Candelaria for a bit and seeing more of the stunning scenery which we had front row seats for from the bed of the truck we drove out in!

We were only able to see the cows from afar because they’d gone wandering but we did get to go and pick fresh beans and eat passion fruit straight off the tree! We also got to see the hills of El Slavador, as we’re pretty close to the border here.

We started our Sunday morning with an early run (what was I thinking, trying to run in this humidity?!) and while it was hard, it was actually pretty nice to sweat with a purpose for once! The market was back today, which we were aware of from 3am when they started to set it up, so after breakfast we went for a wander around and bought a few things each.

In the afternoon we headed to Mapulaca, a town about an hour away though the distance is only 15km, to watch the football between Candelaria and La Virtud. The football wasn’t actually that interesting for me (anyone that knows me knows that I’m not a football fan) though don’t tell anyone I said that because football is a big thing in Honduras! What was pretty cool was driving to the border with El Salvador after the match as Mapulaca is only five minutes away!

After having yesterday off because the other teachers had a meeting we found out that we weren’t going to have classes today either or on Friday I think. I guess we’ll just have to save our lesson plans for later! We were also supposed to start our adult classes this week but they’ve been postponed until next week. We’ve spent our days off doing a bit more lesson planning to stay ahead of the game, relaxing, exploring more of the town and now blogging!

Some pictures from while we’ve been exploring the town – 

Estamos aqui! It took a eight hour car journey to get from Gracias to Candelaria that took us out of the department of Lempira, into Copan and Ocotepeque and then back into Lempira (it doesn’t actually take that long, we had lots of stops for our driver to pick up and drop off things). At first the road was really good, lovely and smooth but then came the potholes and after we passed Tomalá (hi Jesse and Lucy!) it was down to a very rocky dirt track. However we were distracted the whole way by the unbelievable views. The mountains don’t look like the mountains at home – it looks as if they have been carved out of the earth, raw, awe inspiring and difficult to capture in a photo from a moving car!

When we arrived in Candelaria, we were greeted by Victor Cruz, the host of our project but not our host family, and found out where we are living for the year. We are living with a teacher in another school nearby, Saida, and her family. She has two adorable children whose new favourite song is ‘If you’re happy and you know it’, thanks to a book that Amy brought. 

We arrived on Saturday and had the rest of the weekend to relax and settle in before an orientation on Monday and teaching on Tuesday. It’s the middle of a term here so there’s been no rest for us! We each have a Kindergarten class, I have the younger ones, we share the first, second and sixth grade class and we have our own third, fourth and fifth grade class. 

So far I love teaching! The kids all seem to really enjoy English and they love us. We can’t walk anywhere in town without constantly having them call out our names or run up to us and when we walk into school at the start of a day we are greeted by a small mob, all trying to hug us. What I don’t like is lesson planning but I suppose it’s a necessary evil. 

We’ve only been in Honduras for about 10 days now and in our projects for less than a week but I already feel like I’m adapting to life here. The food is very different (I’ll tell you more on that in a different blog post) but I just accept now that whether it’s breakfast, lunch or dinner, there’s going to be tortillas. Time is also more fluid here and some times other things get in the way of English class – for example, today we didn’t have our fifth grade classes because they were helping to pick the maize that grows next to the school and then sixth grade was late to start because they had to finish eating their corn before we started (it was fine though because they shared with us!) 

The only thing I’ve yet to adapt to is the heat!

A meriend (snack) of flame grilled maize, lemon and salt and piles of maize in the sixth grade classroom

27 hours, three flights and one tropical storm later, I’ve made it to Honduras! 

I left Edinburgh at 7am and met up with the rest of the Honduras group at Heathrow before flying to Miami. It was all going rather well until we landed in the States where baggage problems made one girl almost miss the flight! Luckily for her but unluckily for pretty much everyone else the flight was delayed for two hours. 

Eventually we made it to San Pedro Sula where we were met by our country rep Vegas and torrential rain! At this point the 17 of us had to split up, with some heading straight to their projects and the rest heading to two different hotels in San Pedro. 

After a long overdue sleep the seven volunteers at my hotel were picked up by Jake and Rachel, the hosts for one of the other projects, in an old school bus to take us to Gracias for some more teacher training. We’ve now been here for a few days now, got some really helpful books for teaching with and even made a trip to Gracias’ famous hot springs (that I’d never heard of before!). 

So far I’m absolutely loving it! The food is delicious, with lots of gorgeous fresh fruit, I’ve already found a bright orange, banana flavoured fizzy drink that tastes almost exactly like Irn-Bru (which I don’t even like but hey, it tastes like home) and the weather is finally starting to clear as Hurricane Earl moves away from the Caribbean. I’m really looking forward to finally getting to my project tomorrow and being able to unpack my bag at last!