decorate: (v) to furnish or adorn with something ornamental or becoming.
Technically this was my first full week of work, a warm up week if you will. We reported to school at 8 am every school day in half uniform, jeans and a white polo, and worked until 3 pm. Monday we began with a welcome meeting, introductions and brief overview of school policies, again all in Spanish. But for the most part we spent the week decorating our classrooms.
I was not told to bring classroom decorations from the states, even after asking I was told that everything would be provided for me. Perhaps I should have asked what "everything" meant. To say resources here in La Union are limited would be an understatement. While other teachers had decorations they purchased over the summer or in years past from bigger cities such as Tegucigalpa or San Pedro Sula, I had construction paper and scissors. I was given a list of requirements as to what needed to be up on my walls and started cutting. Requirements: A bible verse (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18); "Welcome"; a birthday calendar of sorts; monthly calendar; class schedule; name tags on the desks; cursive letters; "Honduras Heroes" (pictures of important national figures such as presidents, national tree, etc.); classroom rules (speak English, respect others, listen carefully, ask permission); borders for my whiteboard. Pink, orange and yellow were my colors of choice, of course. Bryony and Holly, the Project Trust volunteers from England who also live with Andrea and I, saved my life. They must have cut out hundreds of traced letters for my walls. I literally could not have done it without them. The entire week was a blur of cutting, pasting and taping. None of us really thought it would take more than a few days to cover the walls, how wrong we were. We finished up on Friday just in time for parent orientation. "I think you have the happiest classroom in the whole world," Holly said as we stood proudly looking around the 5th grade classroom.
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