Dia del Indio

Abuelito

Abuelito!

The Day of the Indian was much like the other holidays we celebrated: an all day assembly that should take about an hour that is filled with inappropriate dances and dramas that have nothing to do with the celebration.  For some reason, the students all want to dance to punta music, which comes from the black Garifuna population on the north coast.  I still cannot believe there is no oversight on what the kids can do in the assembly.  The funny thing is that I look around and it seems that the parents are loving it, so maybe it is just culturally sensitive to the gringos. 

Tiffany did a great job as the India Bonita, but they put a bunch of make-up on her and she looked kinda like an Indian witch.  Some of the preschool kids were calling her bruja.  You know something is bad when the preschoolers are in on it.  She even gave a great little speech that she memorized thanking everyone for voting for her.  Whenever we have an assembly we are expected to come early to the school and set up.  We always make these grand displays only to have the kids come and ruin it before the thing even starts.  I guess that is what elementary education is all about.

Most of my fourth graders dressed up as Indians and escorted Tiffany down the walkway to her throne.  There really wasn’t anything historical about the event, except for the kids dressing like they were going to a Cleveland Indians game.  It kinda rendered an important holiday useless and wasted a day of school, but the nice thing was that the assembly ended at 11 and we all went home early.

I met a guy today from Cleveland who will be here for 6 weeks working for a Catholic parish to install some water purification systems and to lead a couple medical brigades.  He said that I could come along to some rural villages and translate for the doctors and nurses, so I am looking forward to getting that experience.  I haven’t really had the opportunity to visit rural Honduran villages.  If I travel, I pretty much bounce between the big cities.  It will be nice to see how the other half live in Honduras.

It is the rainy season here and usually rains every day at 1 pm.  This makes it difficult to do the laundry.  If you do your laundry after the rain the sun isn’t strong enough to dry it and you are going to smell like mildew.  If you do it before the rain you better make sure you do it early or your clothes will get wet and again you will smell like mildew.  What I am getting at is that I smell.

The internet here has been painfully slow.  I am having trouble uploading photos.  It takes like an hour to upload 20 photos. Pretty frustrating.  Wuuuusahhh