Independence Day While Honduras is full of holidays that celebrate the significant and the not so significant, we want to highlight some of the major events at the school. It makes sense to start with Independence Day as that is important in any country and generally happens to fall within the first two weeks of the school year. The tradition in Honduras is that the schools all march through their respective towns and cities and this is an issue of civic pride that draws everybody out to watch. Regardless of rain or sweltering heat, the students are amazingly happy and proud to wait for hours for their turn to march down the main cobblestone street of Santa Rosa. Given the newly formed band for the school, our pride level has risen a notch as we no longer need to "borrow" a band from one of the large public schools.

Dia de la Raza The next big day to come along is Día de la Raza -- or roughly translated into "Heritage Day". On this day the students dress up in traditional costumes and perform dances that have been stepped out for the past 500 years in our communities. Some of the girls costumes are exquisitly handpainted material that really should go into a museum rather than out in the dust and the rain with the students. Additionally, the kids chow down on traditional foods -- one day where the predominance of potato chips gratefully disappears.

Halloween OK, so Halloween doesn't rank in scale with Dia de la Raza, but it's still a fun day at HEM School. Clearly it is a day that is enjoyed by the younger students at the school and includes a competition for best costume. Given the popularity of pirate movies lately, there semed to be an abundance of swashbuckling sailors the past couple years.

Christmas Things go quiet for a while and the students focus on academics for a couple months.  Then, of course, comes a major event all around the world -- Christmas.  A special program is prepared and rehearsed until every student knows when and where they are to contribute their part to the great Christmas program.  Some of the classes do dramas, some sing traditional songs and as the picture to the left demonstrates -- some sing not so traditional songs.  The crowd of students, parents and staff all needed surgery to stitch up their stomachs after witnessing Jason's 5th grade class astonish everybody with the Hawaian Christmas Song.  We must admit, that this was the first time that we had ever seen a teacher on stage with dark sunglasses and a pineapple necklace.  After all the presentations are complete, a feast is held and then everybody disperses to enjoy 3 weeks of Christmas vacation.

Science Fair Unquestionably, the most preparation effort for any special event at HEM School is definitely invested in the annual science fair. For weeks beforehand the students spend hours and hours preparing their experiments and their presentations. Even the children in grade 1 must memorize their lines in both English and Spanish, since the judging for this event is strictly held in English. After the judges spend Thursday listening to all the presentations and selecting the winners in each category, the students then proudly open up the fair to the community and repeat their presentations time and again to family, friends and strangers that come by to see what new, interesting and sometimes bizarres wonders are to behold. While the focus of the effort comes from the science teachers, even the English teachers get involved in helping students to review the spelling and grammar of their presentation boards.

Talent Show

Unfortunately, we're caught without fotos of the annual talent show. As the name suggests, this is an evening that provides the students a chance to strut their stuff -- meaning show off their unbelievable talent, or in some cases, their willingness to have a lot of fun without necessarily having a lot of talent. Drama, singing, instrumental, dance... it's all there and the students just eat it up. It's a shame that Latin American Idol doesn't review our event as they would surely find a winner or two among the presentations.