Time to vote...

Okay here is your chance to vote for which name suits me best. Here in Guatemala I have called the Taxi or numerous other travel agencies arranging for rides. They have texted me with the following names: Hecher, Heder, Heter, and Shela. Now it is your turn at the bottom of this post to vote for your favorite spelling of my name, just click comment and tell me your vote.
I know it has been a while since I last posted and I was going to tell you about our trip to Panajachel...well boy have things been busy since then. I feel like I am always a day behind in my lesson planning. We have finally ended our first quarter and that was both exciting and discouraging. Some students have shown phenomenal progress in the subject areas as well as behavior since day 1, but the struggle of teaching ELL students calculus when they haven't even taken Algebra is still challenging. The second quarter has started off nicely with one full week of classes and then a four day weekend this last weekend to celebrate Halloween and Day of the Dead. It was a wonderful opportunity for us to travel some more and relax away from the city. But before I tell you about this wonderful weekend we just had, I will address the highlights of Panajachel first.
When we were in Pana we stayed in a hotel located right on the shore of the lake. We had such a wonderful view of the lake as well as the surrounding Volcanos. We took a boat tour on the lake to a few of the surrounding villages. San Pedro, Santiago, and San Antonio all unique in their own way were quite interesting to explore even though there wasn't much to do there. In Santiago they have a Friday morning market, which was unfortunate for us. As soon as we stepped out of our boat on the the shore of Santiago we were surrounded by people trying to sell us their textiles and tuk-tuk rides around the city. The one thing I did like about Santiago was that I bought a pair of Keene's for $35 dollars and I love them.
The adventures continued in Pana when we went to the jungle and went zip-lining with the monkeys through the trees that over looked the beautiful lake Atitlan. It was really exciting and definitely something I would love to do again. Afterwards we went to a beautiful garden in Hotel Atitlan where we met our friend Karen and enjoyed a fabulous breakfast while being surrounded by Toucan's, several types of birds and gorgeous flowers.

This weekend was another wonderful experience for both Jenny and I as we hiked up 1 of 3 active volcano's in Guatemala. The Volcan de Pacaya erupted one year ago and still has smoking hot ash and igneous rock covering the top part of the volcano. We hiked as far up as possible where it was still considered safe. Some of the things that we experienced on the Volcano was roasting marshmallows over the still warm rocks, beautiful views of the surrounding volcano's, lake Amitlan, Guatemala city, and a natural formed Sauna from the eruption of the volcano.
Overall it was just relaxing to get out of the city and walk around Antigua comfortably. We stayed in a tree house one night at a place called Earth Lodge about 20 minutes outside of the Antigua. Earth Lodge is located on an avocado field and has a wonderful view Volcan de Agua, Volcan Acetenango, and the smoking Volcan de Fuego. I will have to post some pictures of our tree house a little later on. Anyway check out Jenny's blog to hear a little more about what has been happening with us while here in Guatemala.

-Hecher, Heder, Heter, Shela, HEATHER

1,2,3,4,5...does it pay to be a math teacher?

There is never a dull moment in Guate. Standing at the whiteboard all of a sudden the ringing of kids screaming, "get down, get down, get down," and rushing to the door while you feel yourself swaying back and forth with the building. Just when you think it should be over you still feel yourself swaying and think, "is the earthquake still going or is it because I am on the 3rd floor." Finally it stops and you get a little feeling of relief...the building didn't landslide off into the hole right outside of my classroom.

This was only the beginning of a long, or as the students might say a short, afternoon. My 4th period prep had just started when I saw students running by, then Teresa says, "we are all supposed to head down to the soccer court." Yep that is right another earthquake hit, this time it had a magnitude of 5.8. We sat outside as many of the teachers and students pulled out their blackberry's checking the news about the quakes. It was then that we found out that the epicenter of the quake was only about 45 mins away from us in Santa Rosa, Guatemala.

The chaos of the kids was finally calmed and students started heading back to their classrooms. I again started in on my preparations for the next class period when bam 10 minutes later there it was the 3rd earthquake. It wasn't quite as big nor did it last as long, but it was quite surprising to feel 3 quakes in one day even to the Guatemalans. This time when we had gone outside it was raining =(...standing in the rain waiting and waiting to see if it had finally stopped.

We all headed back up to the classrooms and before 4th period was over we felt the fourth quake. As little as this quake was it was still shocking enough that the owners of the school decided to send students home early.   I am not sure I have experienced a school cancelation due to anything other than snow or power loss. After all the students had left we teachers had a meeting with the principal to come up with some type of evacuation plan, it was then that we felt the 5th and hopefully final earthquake for the day. Speaking with some of the local Guatemalans, they said they haven't ever felt 5 earthquakes in one day.

Having lived in the Northwest most of my life I have little experiences with earthquakes and feel a bit frightened when they hit, especially that many in one day...yikes! Your prayers for our safety would be much appreciated, as well as calm nerves =). Thanks!

Heather

P.S. An update on our adventures for the past 4 day weekend is soon to come....

Belly dancing is definitely not for me...

Oh so much to say, where do I start?! The last couple weeks have been so busy at school, but through it all God has been revealing himself and teaching me a lot. It is amazing how cultural differences can completely transform your style of teaching. As many of you know Han Al school is 70% Korean students, but the majority of those students have lived most of their lives here in Guatemala, so in reality the school is 90% guatemalan students. One thing I have learned about Guatemalans is they love to talk...even if it is to themselves. There are both good things and bad things about that. The good is that the students personalities aren't hidden and they aren't afraid to share their thoughts and opinions. The bad is you have to fight harder to keep discipline and order in the classroom. Anyway we have had many obstacles to climb and get around so far, but none the less have found some joy and excitement in the relationships that we have built with our students.

Outside of school we have had the opportunity to see a few of our colleagues perform in various ways. The week before school had started we spent many hours lesson planning with our friend Luisa and found out that she did belly dancing. It was exciting for us to hear that she would be performing in a show the weekend before school had started and we were invited to go watch. It was such a blast to sit in the crowd with the locals and watch our friend. The show consisted of many belly dancing groups from around the city performing with snipits of a play in between performances. The great thing about communication is even though we didn't understand a lot of the language we could still gather that the play was about a prince who found this girl who he liked and was attempting to use a love potion to seduce her. Well it was really entertaining to see that the crowd got into it by yelling "no no don't drink it" while the prince's servant was grabbing to drink out of the container that had the potion in it. =) it was entertaining. After the show we found Luisa and she was sooo excited that we had come to watch her and convinced us to come try belly dancing with her. So I can now officially say that I have tried belly dancing and it is much harder than I thought it would be, but kinda fun =).

Then last night we got the opportunity to watch another colleague perform with his band at a cafe/bar/restaurant. His name is Manlio and he is the ELL/Psychology/Music appreciation teacher at Han Al. He played music ranging from Bruce Springstein to spanish songs that I have never heard before. Again the crowd was really into the show, they were waving the candles back and forth, dancing and singing along at the top of their lungs =)! I felt like that band's groupies because Teresa, Christy, Jenny and I got a table right up front and got a shout out from Manlio half way through his show. Below is a picture of Manlio with his electric guitar.

Tomorrow is elections so I am excited to see what the city will look like tomorrow, the Guatemalans have been talking about the elections for weeks now and I guess most of the businesses if not all are closed for a good portion of the day so that they can go vote.

Well I best get going before this post gets to be too long. We have a lot of fun activities at school this week and may try and get out of the city to lake Atitlan this coming weekend so I am sure that I will have lots to post about within the next week. As for now take care!

Heather

Taxi Amarillo please...

Ah the weekend, how I have been waiting for you. Lesson planning has been going great but there is only so much you can do when you don't have your schedule of classes nor periods that you will be teaching. And Physics...I don't even know where to start. After three days of work from 8-4pm though I feel very prepared for the first week of classes.

During lunch yesterday Jenny and I walked with two of our fellow colleagues to an authentic Guatemalan lunch stop...it was really good. We ate chicken and mashed potatoes. I know, sounds pretty American. Then today for the lunch the owners of the school treated us to steak and potatoes. I was hesitant that I would dislike the food here, but so far so good =)!

I learned that Guatemalans are split between rooting for "las rojas y las cremas", two soccer teams that play every weekend in the stadium here in the city. It brought joy to my ears to hear that females get to watch the game for free; you know where I'll be most weekends!

Today we were able to see the stadium as we traveled to zone 1 with a colleague, Moises, to Parque Central (Central Park). Moises has been teaching for 26 years and offered to take us around the city to see some of the major cites. He took us to Centro Historico where we saw lots of cool buildings. There was the national palace which has now been turned into a museum as well as some old churches. We pulled into this dark parking garage and when we stepped out of the car I realized that we were in a building that doubled as a nightclub. There was a stage, lots of chairs and a bar as we were heading out of the garage. We had about an hour and a half to walk around because the parking garage closes at 6. They close by 6 so that they can clean up and set up for the nightlife...it was very interesting. We walked around the open market and ate "shucos", which are basically a mini hot dog with guacamole and cabbage. On our way back to our apart-hotel we drove by a baroque church called "la iglesia de la yurrita", it was so beautiful. Here is a picture below:

la iglesia de la yurrita

It was wonderful to be traveling with a Guatemalan, especially after hearing about how dangerous the city is. We heard story after story today about muggings that have happened to some of the other teachers. We knew that we should not walk around after dark...so last night after we had stopped off at the ritziest mall I have ever been to and did our grocery shopping next door we thought: let's take a taxi because it is now dark outside. So we counted our money and walked back to the mall to catch a taxi (side note we knew how to get back to our apart-hotel but we didn't know the address, try explaining that to a taxi driver). We hopped in a white taxi and after a few out of the way turns we made it back safe and sound. Well...we have now learned, from our Guatemalan friends, NEVER take a white taxi...they are dangerous. ALWAYS take a yellow taxi! Good news is now we have a phone and taxi amarillo is one of the few numbers programmed in our phone =)! Well thanks for reading, I will post more soon!

Heather

First Impressions...

It was a beautiful day, blue sky with fluffy white clouds and temperatures around 75*F when we landed in Guatemala yesterday morning. It looked promising that it would be a gorgeous day until, during our delicious lunch out, we were interrupted by a huge crackle of thunder and then it began. The storm rolled in from no where bringing hail the size of marbles with it. The receptionist in the lobby of our apart-hotel was scrambling to save her laptop from the rain that was pouring all over her desk due to the holes in the roof caused by the hail.

It was relieving to discover wireless internet in our studio-sized, mosquito filled, half thatched roofed apartment =)! It may be small and a little less than "nice", but it isn't the worst I've stayed in. After taking a below 50*F shower today our "near future" roommate shared with us exciting news that we were not intelligent enough to figure out how to use the hot water (she put it in a much nicer way =)). This new knowledge has bumped my ratings of this room up a few notches.

After the discouragement of hearing that Han Al American School lacked significantly in the technological tools we are used to having in the states, today brought anticipation and excitement as we started our first day or work. The resources that are available to use in textbook form is incredible. I spent most the afternoon logging and exploring through 30-40 resource books for only a few of my classes. I am still waiting for further textbooks to come my way for the rest of my assigned classes. It will be with great challenge that we teach our students with the far less than exhaustive list of tools available in our classrooms. Lights, student desks, and a whiteboard concludes the list of what our classrooms consist of. Yes, that means no computers, projectors, or tvs in the classroom. Sporadic Internet concerns me as I think about effectively utilizing my prep time at the school. I am eager to have this challenge and find creative ways to teach the students of Han Al the content of Algebra 2, pre-calculus, calculus, and physics.

Through the stress of being overwhelmed, God has shown himself present with the beauty that surrounds us, the encouraging words of acquaintances that have lived/traveled to Guate, and the anticipated attendance of a highly suggested american speaking church on Sunday. I appreciate all your prayers and concerns.

Heather B