A Day Off = A Workday

I am my father in female form.

This statement is true on many, many levels. Today it is true because I had a day off, and I used it as a workday.

As of today, Honduras officially has a newly inaugurated president. His first task as president? Personally escorting Zelaya (the old president) from his hideout at the Brazillian embassy to the airport to put him on a plane to the Dominican Republic.

And, of course, Zelaya's last words before boarding the plane? "We'll be back!"

It sounds so ominous.

I hope his second presidential task will be to send out troops all over the city armed with rollers, brushes, and paint with the goal of getting rid of all the graffiti that has apparently appeared in the last year.

The interim president attended a special mass this morning before handing over the office. Apparently the televised activities of the day were all full of prayers, Scripture, and mentions of faith, and the man stepping down made a grand statement that he hopes that all leaders of Honduras from this day forward will hold the Bible in one hand and the constitution in the other.

I told Erika that her country is becoming more Christian than mine.

So anyway... Thanks to all of this pageantry and the threats of protests and demonstrations, we got another day off of school - a MUCH APPRECIATED day off of school. However, I spent much of it working in my classroom and then continuing to work at home. In fact, I invested a bit more than my standard ten minutes on next week's lesson plans, and I am thrilled with the result of my efforts. These are probably the best lesson plans I've written all year. Now I just have to stick to them...

Perhaps all this work has made me hungry. I'm pretty sure I've consumed more than 4,000 calories today. Blech. Most frustratingly, I've been craving home food. I think it started when I indulged in some country music streaming from a Birmingham radio station while working in my classroom. The next thing I knew, I could practically smell the bar-b-que, sweet iced tea, McDonald's french fries, CHICK-FIL-A, etc. In an effort to satisfy my cravings, I cooked the only things in my possession that shared a little resemblance to these items of my longings. I baked frozen chicken nuggets, frozen french fries, and frozen mozzarella sticks. More specifically, I baked the grossest variety of these frozen items that I may have ever had.

Sigh.

I'm not thrilled about returning to school tomorrow, but it's Day 4 again (yay for lots of breaks and little instructional time) and then Friday is another half-day. Perhaps survival of the month of January is already guaranteed. Yesterday was MUCH better than Monday because, instead of Miss Benton, the wicked witch of the west showed up to teach for the day. We had a silent day in which students were not allowed to speak without permission. A little over the top? Yes. Unrealistic for everyday with 10 and 11-year-olds? Of course. Exhausting for a teacher to monitor and consistently enforce? Absolutely. But at least for one day, I attempted to (successfully?) reestablish the classroom control and authority as that belonging to the teacher and not the students. It was nice. It was like a flashback to home. At the end of the day, I told them that their behavior looked exactly like what would be expected of them at a school in the States and that I had no idea how they had ever gotten away with anything less...

And the final topic of the post... growing up. As it turns out, while I'm merely growing older behind the gates of this campus, many of my friends all over the United States are actually growing up. They're getting engaged, getting married, finding out they're pregnant, and going into labor all around my facebook world.

Really???