El Espiritú Aventurero...

...is the Spanish translation of "The Spirit of Adventure", a key phrase from the movie UP, which I just watched the other day. And I'm not sure if it's just my English degree that made me see this, but the movie's story and symbolism really addressed some of the issues and frustrations I've been having here lately.

When Señor Fredricksen (I watched the movie in Spanish) goes off on the adventure he and his wife had always wanted to have --by tying a bunch of balloons to his house to make it fly-- he's so intent on his goal of getting his house to Las cataratas del paraíso that he's not able to see the crazy adventure that's going on around him (involving talking dogs, exotic birds, crazy kids, etc). And it's not until he actually accomplishes his ostensible adventure that he realizes that, in the process of getting there, he actually missed out on the 'Spirit of Adventure' that was the whole reason for going off in the first place.

At which point he has to --both emotionally and literally-- throw out all the baggage that's keeping him weighed down, so that his house can fly again and he can go save his boyscout friend Russell (it took me a while to figure out the name they were saying in Spanish).

In the same way, I've recently been struggling with feeling like I'm not doing things right, like I'm not giving my whole self in my work here, like I should be taking more advantage of being here. But the movie helped remind me that all of these are expectations of how I'm 'supposed to be'. They're expectations which turn into frustrations and thereby actually make it harder to be open hearted, harder to remember the Spirit of this Adventure.

An adventure which is, as I like to put it, "learning to be open-hearted in the middle of Honduras with a bunch of crazy orphans" (actually, I just added the 'learning to' part after finding myself struggling with the kids almost immediately after finishing these thoughts).



What I wrote down in my notebook after finishing the movie reminded also me of Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon, which I recently finished. (And, to be honest, I also just like the idea of comparing Toni Morrison and Up). Learning to fly is also very important at the end of that book: flying as a way of reaching your dreams, and also of breaking free from the emotional/historical/literal chains that bind us.

One of the cool things is that, in the book, the purpose of flying isn't so that you can fly away from the world (which the main character, Milkman, is trying to do the whole book). Rather, learning to fly is a way of being more fully part of the world. And our ability to fly is based on our dreams, and on the emotional connections build with one another-- connections that make us feel respected and loved, and dreams that give us motivation and excitement.

Which, I think (I hadn't planned out this part), brings me back to why, for me, maintaining my 'Spirit of Adventure' is so important: that through that spirit, I can try to help the kids feel the same way, help them to find those connections and dreams which will allow them to fly. I like that idea- though of course writing it is much easier than enacting it.


*The English major in me also makes me feel like I need to note that this is a pretty rough interpretation of Song of Solomon, which --without the balloons and talking dogs-- is a little more morally ambiguous than Up...

Bagels!

This weekend I finally had some time to just sit around, and I made bagels. I was inspired after one of the other volunteers made a recipe that involved boiling bread dough, and I realized that if I was already making bread it shouldn't be that much harder.

The taste definitely reminds me of home! (Even though they're not quite up to 'New York Bagel' standards yet). Plus, I figure if I can't get a job when I get back, maybe I can sell bagels on the street (I actually really like that idea...)

I also had a difficult time trying to explain them to Patricia, the Spanish girl here: ...Son una comida tipica de los judios en nueva york...O sea, no es que todos los judios comen bagels todos los días...tal vez son más una comida tipica newyorqueña...pero también lo comen en muchas partes de los Estados...umm, no sé.

Any better ideas for describing bagels to foreigners?

Quiero presentarte a mi madre

Earlier today, during a special mass for quinceañeros (the traditional party for kids turning 15), that's what one of my kids, Yunior, said to me. His mother had come for the event because Yunior's brother was one of the quinceañeros*.

But what made me feel really, really good wasn't that he wanted to introduce me to her, but the proud smile on his face when he brought me to meet her (for her part, she just seemed confused about this extranjero that her son was introducing to her). It makes me feel really good to have something to do with him looking so proud and excited to show off to his mother.

A foto of Yunior and I fighting before graduation the other day. He's both in my hogar (where I east dinner and spend 6-8 on weekday nights), and I also have him in one of my classes at school.

Their family is also just generally really cute- Yunior's younger brother Yeison (yeah, they spell a lot of names with Y's here) is in the reading club I help run once a week with one of the other volunteers. One day he and I were drawing with crayons, and afterwards he said I should keep the drawing. "¡Pero hay que poner to nombre!", I told him ('You have to put your name'). Then, as everyone was leaving, he handed me the drawing. He had written "Yeison y Max son amigos". (Yeison and Max are friends).


*A number of the kids here on the ranch still have a living parent, but that they're here means that that parent could no longer take care of them sufficiently.

I finally decorated my classroom!

These pictures make my English-teaching career look a lot more under control than I feel like they actually are. Though I definitely am proud of how the room looks (maybe because decorations are something small -and fun- that I feel like I can control...).

Parades, bachatas, dinosaurs, etc.

Por fin, something that's actually "about my time in Honduras"!

Wednesday, el 15 de septiembre, was Honduras' independence day. After practicing marching on Monday and Tuesday (which meant that, although I technically had class in the mornings, no one was in any place to do anything; and after a terrible class Monday morning, I learned my lesson and just played soccer with them on Tuesday morning), on Wednesday we went to Talanga, the nearby town, and participated in a parade with a bunch of other area schools.




These two are two of the boys from my hogar.

When we came back, everyone was totally exhausted. While waiting to eat lunch with my hogar, everyone fell asleep, including me and the tíos as well. I had a child asleep on me, there were kids on the tables, on the floors, all over. It was super cute, and also felt very, well, familial. They also put on bachata music, which I discovered is super relaxing. Today I picked up a CD by the group we were listening to, Aventura.

Then we had Thursday and Friday totally off, and a bunch of us travelled up to Lago de Yajoa, a gorgeous lake about 5 hours (and a number of bus trips) from Tegus. It was much more tropical in that region, and often what I'd stereotypically imagined Central America too look like.



More than anything, though, I was struck by the lake- it felt very old and natural (primordial would be the fancy word), and I wouldnt've been surprised to see a dinosaur wander by in the distance. I guess one thing about Honduras' relative lack of tourist infrastructure is that, taking a row boat out on the lake (which was an adventure in itself), besides a few fishermen, we were really the only people out there.
All the northwesterners (most of the volunteers are from Oregon and Washington) say they're used to this kind of scenery, but for me it was very beautiful. Click on the picture to see it full size.

Jane Jacobs is a Baller

I generally don't use that phrase but it seems appropriate here. Totally unrelated to Honduras, I recently started trying to make my way through The Death and Life of Great American Cities, and so far its pretty awesome:

There is a wistful myth that if only we had enough money to spend --the figure is usually put at a hundred billion dollars-- we could wipe out all our [urban problems]...

But look what we have built with the first several billions: Low-income projects that become worse centers of delinquency, vandalism and general social hopelessness than the slums they were supposed to replace. Middle-income housing projects which are truly marvels of dullness and regimentation, sealed against any buoyancy or vitality of city life. Luxury housing projects that mitigate their inanity, or try to, with a vapid vulgarity. Cultural centers that are unable to support a good bookstore. Civic centers that are avoided by everyone but bums, who have fewer choices of loitering place than others. Commercial centers that are lack-luster imitations of standardized suburban chain-store shopping. Promenades that go from no place to nowhere and have no promenaders. Expressways that eviscerate great cities. This is not the rebuilding of cities. This is the sacking of cities.

...There is nothing economically or socially inevitable about [this]...On the contrary, no other aspect of our economy and society has been more purposefully manipulated for a full quarter of a century to achieve precisely what we are getting.


What's really impressive is that this was written in 1961, but it seems like many of the problems she lays out we are still facing today (even, in many ways, in Tegucigalpa, Honduras). Its also just so well --and hard-corely-- written!

What if Calvin and Hobbes were written from the teacher's perspective?

I've been having some great emails with Theresa Tensuan recently, and this is one response I wrote that I thought was pretty interesting (though edited to make more sense and sound less obnoxiously intellectual...I felt like I could indulge myself since I was writing to a professor).

Theresa had written to me about "kids' creativity and resourcefulness in countering adult authority", noting: Here I'm realizing, a la Solnit, that often, as we think we're imparting one one kind of lesson the folks we're trying to reach are learning something else entirely.


The same evening I read the email, I found myself reading a Calvin and Hobbes book before bed, and was thinking about the fact that exactly what makes the comic strip so funny is that Calvin is on an entirely different plane of existence than the logic of the adults and general outside world.

Or, to use some language from English class, Calvin is always undermining the structures of our day-to-day adult logic-- and thereby, he often exposes that these structures really aren't quite as important, or logical, or infallible as they seem to be when we're saying them.

And whereas I general like to think of myself as siding with the 'underminers of social structures' in these kinds of situations, I suddenly find myself as the person who is trying --more or less-- to impose structures onto others. (Here you could make a pun about imposing 'grammatical structures' as well as social ones...).

So I was also thinking, if I were Calvin's teacher, what would I do? Or similarly, what if Calvin and Hobbes were written from the point of view of his parents, or of his teacher? It might still be entertaining, but probably would be a very different kind of comedy (...or, I like the idea of Calvin and Hobbes as more of a 'Freedom Writers' or 'Dangerous Minds' style drama, too).

- - -

Additionally, I had just finished reading Daniel Wallace's Big Fish, and as I finished the book I was really moved emotionally (I love the movie too, which really does a good job capturing the book's spirit).

In the end of the book, the narrator has to accept that is father IS the stories and jokes that he always tells. In other words, accept that his father can only be the 'myth' made up of the stories he's wrapped himself in, rather than idea of 'what a father is ' that the son has always wanted him to be.

And that acceptance is what I think is so moving for me. In the case of working with kids, I guess it means really being willing to accept who they are, rather than my idea of 'what they are supposed to be'. With both the humor and the frustration of their ability to be "learning something else entirely" from what we're trying to give them...and I guess use that acceptance as a starting point for figuring out how to teach/work with them?

(It seems like it would be more ideal if it there were more humor and less frustration, though...Why does frustration seem like an inevitable part of the process?)