The day after Thanksgiving I woke up in a strange hotel in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. It was 6 AM and I was awake for the day. The first thought that came into my head that morning was ‘I can listen to Christmas MUSIC!!!’ I immediately unlocked my iTouch and put on my Christmas playlist. As Michael Buble, She & Him, and Jim Brickman flooded the room my Christmas spirit was switched on…and it’s been on ever since.
If you don’t know me that well..I’m obsessed with Christmas. Last year my roommates wanted to kill me when I turned on the Christmas music during the first snow fall (which happened to be in October). And just because I live in a different country this year during the Christmas season does not mean I will celebrate it any less!! Thankfully I live with Gayle, who is also equally obsessed with Christmas and all that goes with it. We have had some fun and eventful times celebrating this special holiday.
The celebrations of Christmas have been going strong at our school. The Monday we got back from Thanksgiving break I started teaching my students Christmas Carols..they didn’t know ANY! I was quite horrified to find this out. We have been spending ½ a period or even a whole period on practicing their carols. Surprisingly, my students caught on quite quickly. Sometimes new songs can overwhelm them since A-they don’t know the language, B- they don’t know the tune, and C- we don’t have a piano or CD for them to sing along with..all a cappella! But I drilled the songs into them… I wondered if I was being a little too intense. I had students come up to me after class saying, “Miss Van Dyke, this hurts a lot,” while they were pointed to their throat. Nonetheless we have so far learned about 12 songs! In chapel last Wednesday we performed 7 of them; one of them being the 12 Days of Christmas…my personal favorite song. I think afterwards they were proud they knew so many good Christmas songs! It is also fun to hear them singing the songs outside at lunch and recess, or even when they are working at their desks.
Also at school, we have been spending the last month practicing for the Christmas program. My students joined 4th grade in doing a dance for the program….which I of course had to teach. Every single day for a month I worked for an entire class period teaching 40 children the dance. For the dance, there were two separate groups: the blue group and the red group. When I first made the two groups, I separated the students not realizing who the good dancers were and who the bad dancers were. Well, I had managed to put all of my talented dancers in the blue group, and all the students who can’t dance for the life of them in the red group. And of course the red dance routine was 3x more complicated than the blue dance. At times I felt like the whole school could hear me yelling “1-2-3 DOWN! 1-2-3- DOWN! BIG ARMS!! BIG ARMS!!” We rehearsed for the program on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. I don’t think I have ever experienced a more disorganized mess in my entire life. I felt very tense, and my poor students received the affects of it! Friday night we preformed our program. All the hard work was worth it!! My students did such a good job, I couldn’t be more proud of them! My red group wasn’t perfectly together, but they still looked pretty darn cute. :)
Gayle and I have also wanted to bring the Christmas spirit into our humble abode! We don’t have enough money to decorate our house for Christmas…even though every time we walk past a house with lights or Christmas trees we stare while ooo-ing and awwww-ing. Instead we have filled our house with Christmas music 24/7…and I mean 24/7. From the moment we wake up until the moment we go to bed. The same 70 some songs we have on repeat.
This past Saturday, Gayle and I invited everyone over to our house for a fun Christmas party. We spent all day Saturday in the kitchen; we made Christmas cookies, gingerbread cookies, pumpkin muffins, green been and potato dish, and TWO whole chickens. Oooh how the fun began with the chickens.
Gayle and I have not bought a chicken so far all year for one reason and one reason only: WE ARE TERRIFIED. I’m not especially great handling meat; it pretty much grosses me out. I sometimes would struggling touching chicken breasts in the U.S. Buying meat in Honduras is a little bit different in the United States. There is no meat market where you walk up to and tell the person what meat you want, while they package it nicely for you. Instead there are freezers inside the pulparias, filled with parts of animals. Before we went to buy our chicken, we asked Jake what we were in for. He told us where we were going to buy our chicken we most likely wouldn’t have to take out the chickens intestines. The minute he said that, I knew we were in for quite the adventure.
We walked over to the pulparia and told them we were looking to buy two whole chickens. The girl led us over to the meat freezer. She started opening the freezer, and I could feel myself starting to feel sick. I did NOT want to see what animal parts were stored in there! I tried backing away and my backpack bumped into a shelf, knocking over bottles of pills. Thankfully that got me further away from the freezer. She pulled out two whole chickens for us and gave us instructions on how to cook it..she knew Gayle and I had no clue. Those crazy American girls… We purchased the chickens and vegetables to garnish it with. As we got back into our house we started the un-thawing process which only took a few hours (it takes a lot longer when you don’t have warm water). Once it was unthawed I started taking out the chicken out of the bag, forgetting how grossed out I am about raw meat. I suddenly remembered when I was holding the chicken in the sink by its two legs. I started screaming to Gayle, “I’M HOLDING A WHOLE CHICKEN..GAYLE..I’M HOLDING A WHOLE CHICKEN!!! GET ME A PLATE!! GET ME A PLATE!!” The chicken flopped down into the pan. I took a few seconds to recompose myself.
Now what?? Now what do we do with this whole chicken? We had obviously never done this before so we were a little lost. The girl at the pulparia told us we needed to cut something off of the chicken..but we weren’t quite sure WHAT to cut off. Gayle started cutting at one end of the chicken…and it started bleeding. This caused both of us to start gagging. Gayle looked at it and said.. “I think this is the butt….it’s butt is BLEEDING Erin!!” I called my dad to make sure we weren’t ruining our chicken. When it doubt, call your parents, right?? My dad informed Gayle and I that we needed to break off the chickens neck……ummmmm what?? I told him he better be joking…because there was going to be no breaking of bones in our house!! He continued to tell me that I needed to try and rough it for a week with him.. “back when I was young, I always had to kill chickens on the farm and gut them myself.” I apologized he had such a wimp of a daughter! Thankfully he said we could leave the chicken as is…so we did.
At this point I was crying I was laughing so hard. We were both so out of our element and trying so hard!! Next we were told to cut the chicken down the middle. Gayle bravely took the knife and started cutting. As she pressed down on the chicken (which was near its lungs) the chicken moved. Gayle jumped back and screamed, “IT’S BREATHING!! I THINK IT JUST BREATHED!!!!” We swore the chicken came back to life. After a few more freak-outs and meltdowns, we had cut the chicken down the middle. We stuffed it with tomatoes, onions, and green peppers…yum!
The second chicken was a little bit easier to do….we had a few less freak outs than the first chicken. Even though the entire time we kept telling each other, “I can’t believe we are doing this right now.” Finally the chickens were ready to be cooked! Too bad our oven wasn’t ready for them to be cooked. For some reason, our chicken was not cooking in our oven. Our guests arrived at 7…our chicken wasn’t ready to eat until 9:30. Apparently we had put too many juices with the chicken so it would not cook for us. But I have to admit, it was pretty delicious; even if we had to wait 3 ½ hours for it to cook! Thankfully our guests thought so too. Our Christmas party was still a great time—we played some games, we ate delicious food, and talked about all the fun things we are going to do on our upcoming vacations.
Our party made me that much more excited for the United States!! I can’t wait for two weeks where I don’t have to wash all my dishes by hand, where I don’t have to spend 3 hours cooking every evening, where the electricity and water continually works, where I don’t need to worry about cockroaches crawling in my bed while I sleep, where I can drive my car places, and where I can SEE all the people that I love!!! This past Friday, I had another new niece born; Brynn Alivia Van Dyke!!! I am SO EAGER to get home to see both of my new baby nieces!!
This coming week I plan on doing a lot of fun Christmas activities with my students. We are also planning a Christmas dinner with all of the teachers, which the American teachers are cooking for. Gayle and I volunteered the boys to cook the chicken; we had our fill for awhile. Friday I will begin my journey back the United States. 5 more days and COUNTING until home sweet home..CANNOT wait!!
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