El Camino

The shadow of the dog that bit me.

On the roof a house on the way into town lives this enormous pit-bull-looking dog. It’s locked up there and gets its kicks barking at passers-by. I took the picture above several months ago, when it was safely up a story and behind a fence.

This was not the case last week, when I was heading to Cafe Via Mil (a favorite hangout of Mayatan maestros due to it’s WiFi). There was a bunch of traffic on the street, trucks and tuk-tuks whizzing by in the randomness of Honduran traffic patterns. I finally saw the dog when it was about five feet in front of me. At that moment, I thought, “Is that that huge dog from the roof on the hill?” At that same moment the dog thought, “Is that that gringo I’ve been meaning to bite for months?” Then it bit me in the arm and I smacked it in the face. And that was it. It continued on it’s way up the hill, and I continued on my way down, taking a pitstop at a friend’s house to wash off my arm. Luckily the dog didn’t bite nearly as hard as it could’ve, barely breaking my skin. And of all the dogs of Copan this one, in a strange way, is a better one to have bite you. The street dogs are all so scraggled and sick that you consider an arm amputation a reasonable preventative measure.

My students and I both have been trying to grapple with my poetry unit, with mixed success. Poetry is particularly challenging for English language learners, I think, because there is less context to hang on to. Last week, however, we worked on writing haikus which went quite well. I choose a few to share…

Person doing things
for all people of Japan,
Things to do all day

-Fabiola

Guatemala City
A moon with a horse in it
The night always there

-Alicia

In winter I’m asleep
And I drink coffee with bread
And I put on a sweater

-Luis

The snow is white and
we open presents and
we burn with the fire

-Eduardo

Oh my little El
Salvador I don’t live in
you El Salvador

-Hector

A good day to get
some honey in a country
with a lot of sweet

-Jorge L.

The fall is good to
see the birds sing in the tree
and to play soccer

-Jorge A.

We’re working on letter writing in my fourth grade class. In that vein…

Dear Laptop,

 Thank you for your six years of faithful service. Thank you for being so gracefully putting up with years of late night paper writing, many unfortunate MP3 selections, constant digital photo sorting, and my on again off again addition to the game Civilization. You were an excellent laptop.

 I’m sorry I didn’t provide you with appropriate surge protection in Honduras. I bear the responsibility that your motherboard is fried. Sadly, you are beyond the repair of even the computer repair guy in Chiquimula, Guatemala. He can fix anything supposedly. Except you.

 Remember when I bought you a replacement battery and a new hard drive? Those were the days, full of whirring hard drive platters, blinking lights, and multitasking. I so wanted to fill you full up with pictures of Central America. I wanted to pen many eloquent blog entries on your well-worn keys. I wanted to cart you many times to Copan’s Cafe Welchez to attempt yet another phone call on a sketchy Skype connection. Sadly, it is not to be.

 So long dear friend.

 Sincerely,

Gabriel

The final installment of the pila series. It’s done! Pictured below is Koali tackling our first load last weekend. It was a heroic effort, one aided by our neighbors drier when the afternoon rain came a little earlier and harder than expected. I washed the laundry today, and other than a few strange looks from the neighbors (laundry seems to solely women’s work in Honduras still) it went well.

On our way to breakfast this past weekend I bumped into an old college friend outside the bank. Strange to run into fellow Oberlin graduate here, in a small town in Honduras. We spent the afternoon drinking iced coffee and reminiscing about Oberlin, our time at Tisch, and traveling in Central America. Miguel is on his way to Chile, traveling via land. He’s planning on making a movie about mining with his dad down there. Sadly, he had a schedule to keep and wasn’t able to spend the night or visit our school. Several hours after initially seeing him, he hopped on another bus heading south.

Our slow moving but diligent brick layer installs a drain for our pila, while we play with the neighborhood kids.

The view from our kitchen area: