Stress--and a Roots and Wings post

In many ways, the rural Honduran environment is wearing on the group.  The tension is palpable in the house.  I think everyone is a couple degrees away from a personal meltdown.  Oscar won’t be returning from La Ceiba to teach so that he can be closer to home.  After the death of her other son, his mom didn’t want him to leave.  Oscar could have come back and should have come back because there aren’t any jobs for him in La Ceiba.  It was a choice he made and I think he made it in part because it really isn’t easy living in Olancho.  The difference between even Olancho and La Ceiba is striking.  Unfortunately, in a situation like this, the students are the only ones losing out, although it has worked out okay since we have Honduran student teachers working at our school.  They aren’t so good at English, but at least they can look after the kids in the classroom.

I have been engrossed in the search for a new teacher for the last week.  I posted the job on the internet and have been receiving applications from some extremely qualified candidates.  I have interviewed a couple and would be willing to hire any one of them.  Fortunately for us, we found a bilingual girl in Juticalpa that spent about 12 years in the United States, so she has a pretty good command of the language.  I think we are going to hire her and she will start on Monday, so the gap has been filled.

Other than that, my disciplinary council has been implemented and it is functioning like a well oiled machine at the moment.  We already met to discuss the behavior of a student and we decided to suspend the student for a day.  It was really nice to see something go from an idea to actual practice.  It really gives the feeling of creation.  Going along with the theme of creativity, I have been trying to put together a website for the school and it is harder than I realized.  In addition to writing the content, which I often need to translate from Spanish, I have to make sure the site looks professional and not tacky.  Even though I am using Wordpress and the templates are already made, it has been really tough for my creative side to construct something worth while. 

Regardless of the difficulties we are having, the weeks are piling on and in a couple days it will be 6 months that I have been here, leaving 4 months to go until my contract is up.  Not sure whether I will teach for another year or look for something in another country.  We really do have a great situation here, but as I said before, living in a town like this really wears on you.  Last night I was in the kitchen and I heard something in my room.  Someone was reaching in through my window with a stick trying to grab something from my room.  The funny part was that I am pretty sure they were trying to steal my underwear, because we found a pair of my underwear out by the window.  It was just a really weird thing.  5 minutes later, Oscar called me from the other side of the country and asked if I was alright because he heard someone tried to rob me.  News gets around pretty quickly.     

Please check out my Roots and Wings post at http://rootsandwingsintl.org/blog/2011/07/violence-follow-up/