Spanish Language Week

My last week in Honduras, of course, wasn't an average week of school.  Gotta go out with a bang, I suppose.  As such my last week in Juti was a wonderful week dedicated to celebrating the Spanish language.  Just to add to the craziness of figuring out how to try and wrap up my last week as best as I could under the circumstances and to find someway to say goodbye to my kiddos, my days at school were full of events, kids getting pulled out of class for this that and the other thing, and just general craziness.  But, like any Honduran event, it was over the top, engaging, a celebration of love and learning, and soooo fun.

Tuesday we celebrated the Spanish language with a spelling bee.  The spelling bee was first vs. second grade.  Rosita is very competitive and doesn't like to lose.  She was so nervous for the competition because last year her first graders beat the second graders, but now they were second graders so she thought she was going to lose.  Rosita prepared those kids so well though and first grade prevailed.  Hector was the spelling bee champ!  

Wednesday we celebrated the Spanish language with an oral language competition.  I'm not exactly sure how it differs from a talent show, but apparently it does.  For this competition we competed first, second, and third grade.  There was a drama/skit competition, poetry reciting, joke telling, and more.  True to Honduran fashion, it was long, with intense costuming and over the top decorations.  Most of my kiddos got bored and took advantage of the time to play around with my camera.  I'm not even sure which categories we won and which we didn't.  I was pretty distracted with my kiddos too, ooops :-)

Thursday we had the writing contest.  It was more like a spelling contest than anything.  First grade faced off against second again. Each kid had a dry erase board and would have to write the word correctly.  In some senses spelling is easier in Spanish because of how phonetic it is, but then there are all the accents and everything.  I thought some of the words were pretty tricky myself.  I was so proud of my ninos, we got first and third place in the contest.  I was especially proud of my dear Alexa who won the contest.  Alexa is a phenomenal student (and neighbor), but she is often plagued by extreme shyness/timidness and she does not like pressure at all.  Rosita and I worked with her all year, as she consistently was a top performed in both of our classes, but she didn't have confidence, she hates messing up or making a "mistake" and just didn't like to participate.  She grew soooo much this year in terms of all of that.  When I found out she was in the writing contest, I knew she was smart enough to win it, but I kind of thought her fears would overcome her intelligence...I was wrong!  So proud of that one.

Friday was the big day.  Last day, tear, and the culminating talent show for language week.  It was an awesome day, but a lot was going on for it to be my last with my kiddos.  I would have preferred a quieter, more intentional, non-stressful way, but sometime you just gotta roll with it.  I pretty much just spend the day showering as much love as possible as I could on my kiddos and enjoying every last minute I could with them.  We danced, sang, and played around.  We played splish splish splash! and took pictures.  I wanted to make sure I had class pictures with each class.  And after each picture Miss Fanny yelled "Hug!"  So I had 25 kids tackle me with a hug, I'd gotten used to this over the year, but this one was extra strong and they ended up toppling me over until i was on the ground covered with 25 kiddos.  To which one of them shouted (in Spanish) "If we just stay on top of her, she can't leave!"  bwahahaa.  It was wonderful to just soak up all the time I could with them.  

                                                                               

Then we had the talent show.  Which, true to Honduran fashion, was incredibly long, well costumed, intense, and full of talent.  Each grade level did a dance, poetry contest, joke contest, drama/skit, and more.  It was crazy.  The kids were sooooo good.  Man can those preschooler punta!  And Edward and Rolando were amazing at working the crowds as they told their jokes.  There was some great talent.  

I had the brilliant idea that since this was our last day and we were given the gift of a talent show, we needed to go out with a bang and just enjoy our last day.  So we came up with a plan to do a surprise act in the talent show.  We decided to do a punta, which is the traditional Honduran dance.  So we all wore mini skirts, Honduran jerseys, and punta'd our butts off in front of the school.  Wendy had come over the night before and we literally practiced like 3 times.  Luckily Wendy stood in the back reminding us what to do.  I must say, for how difficult punta is and how little we practiced, we were good.  Most importantly, however, my kids LOVED IT.  When we finished, my first graders got up and decided to rush the stage.  Oh how I love them sooo.

Unfortunately as Honduran events tend to go, this one went a little long, so the end of the day and goodbyes became a little rushed.  The school honored each of us with a certificate at the end of the talent show which lead to a school-wide waterworks session.  I kid you not, I've never been apart of something like this before.  It was kind of awful.  They tried to honor us, but Peggy was crying, we each started crying, soon all of our kids were crying, and then the whole school was crying.  What a way to end a talent show :-/  But, we all headed out went back to my classroom.  We had like ten minutes left in the school day and Rosita wanted us to all get together as first graders.  Rosita, Fanny, and Flor all spoke way too kindly about me and then Rosita asked the kids if they had any words they would like to share with me.  Since my kids don't really speak English yet, they mostly just said "I love you." "I miss you"  "You best teacher."  Some of them said some beautiful words in Spanish as well, which just kept the waterworks going.  They gave me cards and hugs.  I reminded them how much I loved them and gave them some special treats as we said our last goodbyes.  Afterwards, Rostia and Fanny made me lunch and brought me cake.  It was quite the despedida.  For all the tears and emotional heartache of the week, Santa Clara did not disappoint on the goodbye front and it truly was a wonderful celebration of all this school offers.