El Día del Niño

El Día del Niño (Children's Day) was held on 11th September, a significant day in Central America.   A few weeks before there was a special meeting with the parents of each class to decide what food the children were going to have.  In my class, there were promises of cooked chicken, rice, sandwiches, bottles of coke and sprite and of course, a huge cake from parents at the meeting.

The poster at the front gate.

Glenn dobbed me in the day before the event, when Vanessa said no-one in the school could draw and they needed someone to draw the children for the poster.   I spent several painful hours with a pencil in hand and this was the best I could come up.   I drew the children and the flowers which other staff members cut out,  and made the rainbow.  It was a nice team effort!  Glenn found a quiet corner and read his book.

Children's day arrived and school started at 1pm instead of the normal 12.00.  Everyone, including the teachers were allowed to wear free dress.  Only a small proportion of my class turned up with only 8 out of the 16 children, 7 girls and 2 boys.  They came in dribs and drabs along with the food, which was certainly was not the huge spread of food that had been promised.   Not to worry, the kids certainly had more than enough and plenty of drinks, cake and ice-cream that had to be eaten without spoons.  The spoon supplier didn't turn up.

The school clown.

When the children arrived they were greeted at the gate by the clown, Ms Sumaya, the assistant teacher in Grade 1, who took on the role brilliantly.   Please remember that the temperature was in the mid 80's  with a humidity of 100% when you view the photos and the video. Miss Sumaya is standing next to Don Toño, the school guard, whose only role at the school seems to be to stand at the gate.  

After the children had eaten in my classroom, we played 'pass the bottle' and then went outside where Geobany's 'ghetto blaster' had been put to a useful purpose away from our house.  All the attending primary school children joined hands in a large circle and sort of danced.   

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlJE5TjubGE  If you go to this site you can see a video of the children and the clown dancing.  Sorry about the poor quality, I still have a lot to learn about videoing but hopefully it gives you more of an idea of the school and the children.    

                                    Miss Jimenez, Glenn and some of his students.

Seeing I had the camera at school, I got a shot of one of the teachers, Miss Jimenez who is dressed in a red top.   She is the Social Studies teacher and our next door neighbour.   Would you believe it took us 7 weeks to realize she was the same person?  She is very quiet!

Children's Day was a lovely day, low key and great fun for the children who were very well behaved and didn't expect too much.  The children  finished at 3 pm when the staff had a meeting for an hour to decide where they were going to have their staff luncheon.   Nothing was decided, but I had to listen to a lot of Spanish before I discovered that Glenn and I weren't even going to be in Tela on the day.   We were going to the island of Roatan, a much better option!

Just a little addition as I write.   I was sitting at the computer in the front room of the house.  It's 9.30pm and as we haven't any proper curtains the room is well lit up.  Glenn had just gone to bed and I heard these people calling out to me through the fence and rattling the front gate.   I looked out and could see their faces and was rather scared.   Were they going to try and break in if I didn't go to the gate?   Luckily Glenn hadn't gone to sleep and he opened the door to see what they wanted.   It was all completely harmless.  They'd been playing soccer in the field next door and the soccer ball had gone into our front garden.   They were only calling to me so that they could get their ball back!