Under "house arrest" and craving freedom

If someone ever decides to write a book on how to survive as a teacher in a third world country full of political unrest, let me know because that is one book I would buy.

After the big swine flu debacle during which we earned ourselves a wonderful 11 day vacation, we finally returned to school yesterday and resumed our classes. By the afternoon, several of my students had been pulled from my class (I didn't know why though because the woman who came around to pull them out did not speak English). Why can't I ever have all my students in one class at one time?

I continued teaching as normal, frantically trying to prepare my students for the rather large book quiz they would be having the next day. The day ended, I went home, and within minutes was alerted that ousted Honduran president Mel Zelaya was back in the country......not good news.

But wait, it gets better. Protesters were said to be filling the streets around the Brazilian Embassy where Zelaya is currently staying. A curfew was instated between the hours of 4 p.m. and 7 a.m., forcing all of us to stay in our houses under the threat of being arrested and thrown in jail if we were caught outside. After only having one day of school, we were informed that due to the curfew, school would be either postponed in the morning or cancelled. We quickly got our answer concerning the status of school when the curfew was extended from the original 7 a.m. time to 6 p.m. that night = no school.

We are now 22 hours into our 26 hour lock-down and already I'm tired of being in my house. The streets have been freakishly quiet today since the vendors and cars are not streaming past our house making their usual ruckus. My roommate and I have been passing the time by grading assignments and watching Gilmore Girls, but patience is wearing thin as we experience what it must be like to be under house arrest.

We have been trying to keep tabs on the situation through the news, but news from the U.S. is so far from the truth it is almost comical. On a side note though, our Honduran friend was quoted in an article from BBC, which was exciting to see (what can I say, I only hang out with famous people - and the fact that he is going to read this blog post is pretty funny).

It is unclear when we will be allowed to return to school as we are waiting for things to die down and return to "normal" (since moving to this country, I don't believe I've yet experienced normalcy and I'm slowly losing grasp on the definition of the word).

So recap: Zelaya's back, school is closed, the U.S. view on the situation is a little skewed, and I think I'm going to go ahead and write that book myself....