Up and over the mountain

Looking out from the castle in Gracias over the rest of Lempira

Looking from the castle out over the town

From the castle up towards the Celaque cordillera

A really beautiful farm on our walk up the mountain

So we now have just a couple of weeks until we leave Honduras. Already a lot of the mixed feelings that we’ve expected have started flowing in. We’re both really excited about next year, knowing where we’ll be and that we both have great opportunities awaiting us. At the same time it is hard to imagine leaving our life here. We have so many great things that are a big part of us and it is going to be really hard to just cut all of the strings that connect us to the people here and this beautiful place. Our neighbors have watched out for us so much this year, dropping whatever they are doing and helping us whenever we have the smallest problem.

For the last couple of months one of the communities near Gracias has been digging trenches for supplying water and are building a little dam in the river near our house to catch the water. They bring up lots of loads of gravel and stuff in these big trucks that can barely turn around. One day we were walking home from school and just as we were getting to our house we saw one of the big trucks coming down. We breathed a sigh of relief, glad that it was gone for the day but once we got right to our house we realized that it had ripped the power line from our house. I think this is a good opportunity to use the word flabbergasted and that we were. We just had no idea where to begin solving the problem. I like trying to fix things but I’m pretty scared of messing with anything electrical. We didn’t know who was driving the truck, who they worked for or anything. We don’t know any electricians, there isn’t really a power company so we thought we might be out of power for an extended time. We were just standing outside our house looking dumbfounded. Our neighbor who works on the water system came walking down the mountain as we were standing in the middle of the road and after looking at our faces asked what was up. We told him our plight and he was like, oh I have a friend who is an electrician and I’ll call him and get him to come up. With Honduran standard time measurement being on the slow side of things and everything we kind of just assumed that he might stop by in the next week some time and went inside getting all of our candles ready for the night. 15 minutes later a guy comes up to our house in a motortaxi and we thought he was picking up some tourists but nope it was the electrician friend. He and three of our neighbors proceeded to take apart the power line and the meter that used to be attached to our house and spent an hour getting everything reattached. We were worried that it was going to cost a lot of money and we might have to try going through the process of recouping it. So when we asked the electrician how much we could pay him and he said 100 lempiras ($5), we were amazed again at how helpful everyone is here. So far our experience here has been extremely positive as far as interactions go with everyone. Even more so than in the states my first reaction is to trust people and that makes every day that much less stressful and communications more open even with the language barrier.

Some of our kids making recycled castles for Earth Day

Dani's birthday in my class

Leaving the kids is going to be so hard but the actual job we have here will not be that hard to leave. We work with a lot of really great people but this week we were reminded strongly of how little we entirely understand this culture especially at school. The last couple of months there has been construction on a new basketball court at school. They just finished it this week and it looks awesome!!

The first rule was that the kids can’t play on it for another week. The reason for this is that there was going to be an official dedication ceremony with some of the donors who gave money for the project and I guess they don’t want the court to be dirty. For the dedication ceremony two high school teams were bussed in from the other side of the country to play while the parents watched. The teachers played both the teams and surprisingly we won. It was sad that the younger kids weren’t allowed to come and watch the ceremony or the game. The 6^th, 7^th, and 8^th graders came but none of the younger kids could come. The principle told my class they couldn't come because they would be noisy and annoying. I was sad to hear the principal say that to my students and really sad that they didn't get to go to the ceremony for the basketball court, something that they are so excited about. There was another weird sports related event at school too. During one of Melanie’s classes the principal interrupted her class to ask her if she would play in the girls soccer game this weekend. The older girls at the school have been practicing a lot the last couple of months and have gotten pretty good but apparently this weekend they are playing a really good team and there is some rule loophole where people up to age 28 can play on the team. There are a lot of girls on the team already who don’t get to play much and it seems really strange to ask one of the teachers who isn’t part of the team to play and take playing time from the people who the team is meant for.

A few weeks ago we had a really nice time visiting the country estate/ farm of the founder of our organization. We caught a ride to La Union and had a tour of the school and some of the development things the organization is doing there. They really have made a big difference in that community and are starting to make big changes in the challenges that poor people in rural areas face. The only awkward part was when they wanted to show us the houses of a couple of the scholarship students at the school. We understand how poor people are here and it was a little strange going to people’s houses just to see how they live in poverty.

The leaders of Vida Abundante are such thoughtful and genuinely nice people and they have made a positive impact in Honduras. At the farm Eunice, the school superintendent, cooked us three or four 4 star meals and her dad, the pastor and leader of the whole organization, took us for walks around his property showing us what La Union is like.

Coffee plants in bloom in La Union

Some of the new classrooms they're building at school. The bricks are made from the dirt they used to level the land so the building cost is close to zero.

We’ve been so lucky this year to have so many friends come visit us. In the beginning of May our friends Klaus and Mimi came and visited us and they did an amazing job navigating the travel challenges the big H can pack. Mimi is in vet school at NC State and was doing a veterinary mission in Central Honduras and they stopped by Gracias before heading over there. All of our other visitors had rented a car or spoke some Spanish. They made it all the way from San Pedro (a cab ride and two buses) to Gracias speaking no Spanish. We met them in Santa Rosa and got to share the bus ride back to Gracias with some good 80’s tunes cranking on the stereo. They came in on Wednesday and after a good dinner at Guancascos we had a fully loaded down moto-taxi ride up the continually worsening road to our house. The tuktuks are only supposed to have a driver and two passengers but we were barely able to squeeze the four of us, the bags they brought, and our shopping for the week. After this and our other experiences I’m beginning to think Moto-taxi Diaries would be a great sequel to the motorcycle version. On Thursday they went up to the park and had a good meal and fun communicating with Dona Alejandrina. They did a really good job piecing together Spanish phrases and came back with some bags of her awesome coffee. Thursday evening we just relaxed around the house and made some pizza and then Friday they came to school with us. It is always so great having extra hands in the classroom and they were a really big help in my math class and with reading groups. Friday after school we hit up the hot springs with our neighbor Mauricio and waited forever for some tacos to tie us over until dinner. There aren’t many souvenirs in Gracias but Klaus found some gems at the hot springs, some polo shirts with pictures of the pools. The other funny part of their visit came on Saturday morning when we were taking them to their bus to get to Siguatepeque. We had heard that there was a 5:30 direct bus to La Esperanza which would save a bus transfer and got down there 15 minutes early and started looking for it. We found the type of bus that usually makes the trip and asked them if it was the direct bus. They said no, and so we asked when the direct bus was coming. The driver then sort of laughed and said there aren’t any direct buses and so we got their bags up on top of the bus. Just as about we were about to leave another bus pulled up that was the direct bus. The two drivers were apparently good friends and they probably chatted everyday at the same time. I guess the first driver was just trying to get the Lempiras. We were glad that there actually was a direct bus and got their bags on the right bus and said goodbye. It sounds like their vet trip was successful too. I think they dewormed something like 4,000 animals and Klaus went around to public schools doing a presentation on public health. Talking to Klaus afterwards I feel like he made a pretty astute observation about Honduras. He was talking about how isolated most of the country is. Almost the entire country is rural but more importantly 90% of it is really isolated. This isolation comes from the fact that infrastructure and basic services don’t make it very far at all outside of towns and cities. There are so few paved roads, water systems, and medical and educational services so that even if you live ten miles away from a town or city it might as well be 100 miles away.

The kindergarteners practicing their dance for gradutation.

A picture of a strange sky phenomenon we've had a couple of times called a Sun Dog. It's a big cloudy circle around the sun with a rainbow on the edge that looks like it is a spaceship coming to land.

Bug Update

Whenever you ask someone when some weather event such as seasons you get a vague unique answer from everyone you ask. The one thing that is more certain than the seasons is the selection of bugs and insects that visit us. It seems like we have become premium members of the Bug-of-the-Month Club. When we first arrived our main battles were against 2 or 3 different varieties of ants. Throughout the year they’ve progressed, sort of like video game levels, and I’m hoping we don’t have to face the boss insect soon. Back in May the cicadas came out, really loud and really made the summer here seem authentic. The dry whistling of cicadas is probably the sound that is most tied to summer in my mind. The interesting part was everyone knew that the cicadas would be here for three weeks. Apparently the cicadas are brought to life by the first torrential downpour that breaks the dry season and then killed 3 weeks later by the next torrential rain. The late May bug was quite a doozy, a ¾ inch flying ant that all woke up out of the ground one rainy night and swarmed the light emanating from our house. All the kids at school had been talking about them and how they like to fly in your ears and burrow so for a couple of days the kids were walking around with paper stuffed in their ears to protect them from the bugs. When we saw them outside our windows we thought, “Great. Well at least we have screens on our windows.” We thought we were all good. The next day we were cleaning up the kitchen and we noticed all these half-inch worm type things crawling around. We assumed at first that they’d gotten into our food and it took about ten minutes to figure out these were the same flying ants from the night before that had shed their wings and after looking found there more than 100 around our house. They were creepy and crawly and easy to kill but there was an added challenge in that our power was out so we had to add headlamps to the flipflops we were using as weapons, bent over walking around the house squashing the bugs. Our latest bugs are no-see-ums that come at night and bite you as you try to sleep. I usually have zero problem sleeping but getting bitten and then wondering about when you are going to be bitten next makes falling asleep a little tougher. The solution we have for getting rid of them is lighting one of those bug coils, but then our bedroom is a little lucky. We’ll have to wait and see what the bugs have in store for us these last couple weeks.

Our classes have been doing well though. We've both been trying to do some fun educational things to tie up the year. Melanie's class has been doing a morning news show with weather and announcements and a couple of her kids are desperate about being able to use their video cameras (aka arms with a hand "turning" the reel) to tape it. In my class we just finished up a Boxcar Children movie. We had a competition to see who could write the best Boxcar Children story and then we made it into a screenplay. There was a lot of drama about who got what part but it turned out pretty good.

As you can tell from the picture a couple of the scenes were darker than the original books.

We hiked up another trail on the mountain a while ago. The trail went along the ridge for a long time and on one side the mountain was completely scorched from the forest fire, but on the other side it was the dense green we are used to.

Melanie's class after winning the mass soccer game

So two more weeks and we’re on a plane back to the states for a full and crazy summer. We’re going to have tons packed into these last couple of weeks so I’m sure there will be one or two more blogs. We can’t wait to see everybody soon!

Must Be (Semana) Santa

Finally!  Semana Santa is here!  That’s Holy Week in Spanish, and it’s a really big deal down here.  We have the first days off (besides the ones we’ve taken to spend with our visitors) since Christmas, and the restlessness and heightened daily drama with our kids were a sure sign that everyone needed a break.  After our Landmark friends left, we had just a few days until my parents came in the following Sunday.  In those days in between, we walked into town twice for faculty-student soccer games after school.  The first one was for the boys’ team, so only male faculty played on the staff team.  The kids may have been faster, but the teachers won pretty easily, and Aaron scored two of their goals.  Not surprising, if you’ve seen him play soccer or at least seen how he pretty much always wins at everything. (You’d think could get annoying, but it just makes it all the more satisfying if you DO beat him!)  Anyway, this is a little more of a surprise:  I also scored two goals in the girls v. female faculty game a couple days later!  We practiced once, and it was a lot of fun, but our odds didn’t look so good since the people who actually had soccer skills were pretty out-of-shape, and the people who could run had no soccer skills or experience!  It all worked out, though, because it was just on a small cement field, 5 on 5, and it turned out that the girls still need a lot of practice.  And we were a lot bigger than them, and they were in 6^th-8^th grade.  So, maybe not the biggest accomplishment around, but it was really fun and I had never felt like a key player in a game before!  Guess I just have to play at the middle school/middle-aged level more often!

 

My parents came in on Sunday evening, and we took them to Guancascos for dinner since it’s close and it’s got the best view of Gracias.  We went home up the bumpy dirt road, and their car had no problems since we learned from Aaron’s parents’ experience and had them rent a pickup truck.  My mom handled the truck well on the Honduran roads, and didn’t hit  any horses or cows or fruitstands.  They unpacked all sorts of goodies from Trader Joes and things for our kids, and I think we must have the most well-stocked kitchen in Honduras at this point…hopefully it’ll last through June!  We gave the tutorial on the electro-shower and the other nuances of our house, and then they were all settled. 

 

The next morning, we went to school, and my parents lounged around the hammock and carport/porch outside awhile and then walked around and went up into the park to Dona Alejendrina’s comedor for lunch.  Neither of them speak any Spanish, but my mom was proud of the little things she was able to communicate, like “casa pollo” = chicken house, and lots of show-and-tell with pictures of the dogs on her camera, pictures of our wedding, etc.  Dona Alejendrina loves visitors, so I’m sure she enjoyed having my parents there.  She gave them a little coffee demo, stuffed them with tortillas and eggs, and my parents made it home with a couple pounds of newly-acquired coffee and some full bellies just in time to meet us coming home from school.  My mom and I walked over to the little hot springs before dinner, and I was impressed how fast she made it up the longer hills on the way home, especially considering she probably walked about 10 miles that day.  The dry season doesn’t seem to affect the level of the water in the hot springs, I guess because it just comes directly out of the ground.  The river has gotten really low, though, and is just a trickle compared to what it was during the rainy season.  Only a month or month and a half until we can expect to say goodbye to all the dust that seems to just saturate the air and blow everywhere in the wind.

 

The next day, my parents went to La Campa, but didn’t find too much there except the pottery museum and a lot of places closed because of a town meeting going on.  On the way there, though, they stopped some people on the road to confirm that they were headed in the right direction.  Here, though, when you yell out a destination as a question, people assume that you are offering them a ride to that place.  So, when my parents yelled, "La Campa?" out the window, a bunch of people yelled back, "Si!" and climbed into the back of the truck.  So, my parents unintentionally picked up some hitchhikers, and got the full Honduran experience.  They helped us with our after school classes that day, too, which was a welcome change of pace for both the kids and us.  Whenever there are visitors at school helping, the kids who get stuck in my group always kind of groan because they want the new and exciting people.  Oh well…luckily, I don’t take it personally!  Later that night, we made pizza at the neighbor’s house, since one has been asking for me to teach her.  Aaron made his famous banana pudding, and I made some guacamole, too.  The pizza seemed to be a hit, and it was nice for my parents to spend a little time getting to know our neighbors, even if they couldn’t talk too much.  We actually went over there again the next night so that my mom and I could paint “Comedor Melgar”—the name of their new restaurant—on their wall outside.  Now the tourists that walk by on their way up the mountain will know that they can stop there for food.  It got dark a little faster than we had anticipated, but with the help of some headlamps and flashlights, we finished the job and the neighbors fed us some fried chicken, beans, and tortillas.  We watched a little of the Honduras-Mexico soccer game on TV afterward, and I’m pretty sure that the wiry little neighbor man we watched with, Luis, only sits down to watch soccer and to eat.  He had gone up to the top of the mountain and back with a tourist hiker in just 9 hours the day before…and he’s in his 60s at least.

 

At school, my mom was immediately a big hit with the kids with her hula hoop skills and the beautiful mural that she made for them to fill in with bits of colored paper.  

The mural, which is two 9 ft panels, one for each of our classes:

When it’s done, I’ll post pictures…it’s going to look great, though, and it’s huge!  And it’s perfect for the kids to work on when they finish something early and have a few minutes to kill.  My dad was a hit, too, and was first pick for reading groups in my class, even though he was dubbed “Mr. Lazy” when he was resting his head on the ledge outside the classroom and one kid said “he don’t want to do nothing!”  It was nice showing my parents the school, but it was also really nice to leave after school Thursday with them and know that we had a long break ahead!

 

Aaron got us to Copan in just 2 hours driving true Honduran-style, passing trucks and busses and bikes and all sorts of contraptions that they wouldn’t allow on the highway in the States.  Our hotel had a beautiful view of the mountains, and included breakfast the next morning, which I was really excited about.  We did get a little bad news when we arrived, though.  The main ruins site was going to be closed the next day due to protest from some of the indigenous people.  I’m not sure exactly why they were protesting, but I’m guessing that they don’t see a lot of the money that the government makes off of their heritage.  Even though we didn’t go to the main site, we saw some lesser-known ruins of the residential, middle-class part of the Mayan city at Copan, and a knowledgeable guy jumped right on us and became our guide as soon as we pulled up to park there.  

Unfortunately, this is the only picture I took at the ruins or with my parents because my mom has them all on her camera, but they were here!

We spent the morning there and the afternoons at the bird park with the parrots and macaws and such, ate lunch, took a dip in the river there, and then headed back to town for souvenirs and such good smoothies—like liquid fruit without anything else added.  We had a little dinner at a place with a courtyard, and we were the only people being served.  After dinner we walked around the plaza, people-watched  and tried not to let the breathy, loud flute music and desperate CD sales get to us.  Then it was back to the hotel, and my parents left early the next morning.  It was so good to have them here, and my mom recently emailed me to say that she’s going to try to do volunteer adult ESL literacy tutoring a couple of times a week.  For my dad, being at school here was not a huge change from being at school all day back home (he’s a middle school principal), but for my mom, going to school here and helping us with reading groups made an impact on her and she’s realized that helping people learn to read is something she’d like to do.  She’s a natural teacher and so good at communicating with an enjoying all kinds of people, so I hope it works out for her.

 

Since we were staying at this comfortable hotel with a free, huge, scrumptious breakfast (and we found out it was waffle morning, even), we opted for a noon shuttle to Guatemala rather than the early one.  We had a relaxed morning full of food and reading and lazily watching the hotel cat that reminded us of our Hela back home, and then we packed up and met our shuttle, a minibus/van that was not surprisingly packed full of other tourists.  Our plan was to get off at Guatemala City around 4 and then catch a bus to Xela, our first Guatemalan destination.  Well, many unnecessary stops later, including van changes (why not just change the drivers?), 20-30 minute bathroom breaks, food and drink stops, and traffic jams, we finally reached Guatemala City around 7, and after much debate and frustration between the two of us, we both agreed to just go on to Antigua and find a place to spend the night there instead of catching a 5 or 6 hour ride to Xela.  We thought it might be hard to find a place to stay in Antigua since it’s notoriously booked up and crowded all through Semana Santa, but as soon as we walked near the park with our backpacks, we just followed the first guy who yelled, “hotel??” at us.  He took us to a pupuseria (place where they make stuffed tortillas), and a lady took us to a back room with a bed, set us up with a TV for Aaron to watch basketball, and gave us the key to the room.  Not the most luxurious or spacious place (more like a large closet with a bathroom attached, and no windows), but hey, it was cheap, and it was just one night.  We found a place to eat some delicious and artfully served soup (it had been awhile since we had been somewhere where presentation mattered), and strangely enough, mojitos were the cheapest drink on the menu—cheaper than water or coke or tea or anything else, so we had a little happy hour. 

 

We got up early on Monday so that we could get to Xela with enough time to explore the city a little bit in the afternoon.  At the bus station in Antigua, we bought the most delicious sandwiches on fresh crusty bread, with beans and egg, lettuce, avocado, and Aaron’s had chicken.  Yum.  We needed our energy, too, because we had to stand for a good hour or so in the bus aisle since there weren’t enough seats.  The bus attendant brought Aaron a bucket to sit down on, eventually, which was nice of him, and on top of that, he was gracious enough to give up his cushion taped to the floor at the front of the bus for me.  It was actually probably the nicest place I’ve sat on a bus here, because the windows up front are so big that it’s like touring the countryside in a big bumpy bubble with nothing blocking the view, nobody screaming into their cell phone, and out of earshot of the people getting on the bus to sell things or preach about Jesus, the evils of saturated fat, or missing limbs.

 

That was a fast bus ride, and it dropped us off on the highway outside of Xela in about half the time we were expecting—you just never know.  I wish I could have taken a picture of our taxi without being completely rude; it really looked like it had been to the junkyard and back again at least a few times, and the driver had to hold two wires together to start it.  Xela was the first place we’ve ever tried “couch surfing,” but it worked out really well.  If you don’t know what that is, it’s an online network of people that agree to host out-of-town visitors.  It’s kind of a social networking thing, where you can just say you will meet someone for coffee, show them around, let them stay with you, etc.  You contact the people you want to stay with beforehand, and then they respond and let you know if they can host you.  We put our house up on the site, and we’ve gotten a few requests, but they’ve all been for times that we’re gone or we already have visitors.  We’ll see if anything works out before we leave, but I think it’d be fun just to meet some different people while we’re here and have plenty of free time to spend.  Anyway, I’m sure it could have its awkward situations, but it’s free, it’s easy, and you can get a feel for the people on the website just through communication and their profile and seeing what others have said about them, so I’d recommend it if you’re looking for cheap travel. 

 

So the place that the taxi brought us to was this guy’s house on the edge of the city.  His name is Juan, and he’s young (I’d say 20-22), but he owns a café and a language school, so he keeps busy and he’s really used to foreigners.  He drove us downtown, and we walked around a food festival and took advantage of free samples, got some falafal sandwiches, some cold chocolate drinks, and kind of drooled over some of the chocolate blocks for sale, but didn’t buy any because they were too expensive.  I only say this because it is important later.  We walked around the plaza, scoped out the colorful markets, the church, and the people making bouquets out of palms or grasses and all sorts of beautiful flowers.  

These Easter-bouquet ladies were everywhere arranging flowers to sell:

There were people everywhere, but the women in their traditional dress just made the whole scene alive.  Everywhere we went in Guatemala, with the exception of Antigua, the majority of women still wear traditional clothes—a long patterned skirt, a flowered embroidered blouse, ribbons in their hair, and all of it different colors and slightly unique from the others.  The fabric was for sale in all the markets, but it was pretty expensive, so I guess that most women and girls just have one or two sets of clothes.  Not many of the men had traditional dress, but in some other areas we passed through, they had loose pants made of the same kind of fabric the women’s skirts were made of, a decorated linen or cotton shirt, and a wrap going around their waists.

Here's some older girls in traditional skirts watching bumper-cars...interesting contrast, I think:

We walked around Xela a long time, took our time getting back to Juan’s house, and then went out again to find dinner.  Aaron gave into a Wendy’s burger, and I had a salad made with actual non-iceberg lettuce and apples.  Neither was very Guatemalan, but it was so good to have different options outside of our normal food in Honduras.  We thought we were going to meet up with Juan and his girlfriend later, but it turned out they changed plans and wouldn’t be home until much later (the down side of couch surfing, if the host doesn’t give you a key), so we walked around a bit more and then couldn’t resist another dinner at an Indian restaurant.  We tried to keep our second dinner small, but small by our standards when it comes to Indian food is still pretty hefty portions, so we were stuffed.  We waited around in the plaza after dinner, then grabbed a taxi back to Juan’s house (thankfully, not the same taxi we caught before).

Xela looks really colonial, especially around the plaza.  It felt more like Europe than Latin America at times:

 

The next day, we went on a mission to rent bikes and ride out to a nearby town.  After shopping around, we found a great bookstore that rented well-cared-for bikes and even had a good map to use to get to where we wanted to go.  This was fortunate, because without the map showing the back dirt roads, we would have had to take the highway.  The ride was really tough in some spots because with the lack of rain, the dust was about 6 inches deep in a few places, but we made it to a glass blower’s shop, and the then a town called Zunil with a vibrant market where we grabbed some version of street tacos and a bag of sliced mango.

The market in Zunil:

After the market, we rode up a 5 mile hill to some hot springs.  The ride was exhausting, but the mountains covered with little lush gardens and vegetable farms were beautiful.  The uphill was definitely in the right direction, too, because after a soak at the hot springs, we just had to coast down the long hill, wait at the highway intersection for a bus, and then the bus guy pulled our bikes up on top as if they were nothing, and away we went back to Xela.  We thought they might give us trouble about the bike cargo, but it was only 20 cents extra for the two bikes…well worth it. 

A nice pit stop in the highlands:

The volcanic soil must make this area perfect for flowers, vegetables, and developing impressive leg muscles while tending to them:

 

After the ride, when we climbed into the taxi to get back to the house we were staying at, I just happened to feel a plastic bag left in the back seat next to me, and there was something hard inside, kind of like a couple of big blocks.  I was intrigued, because I figured it was probably some souvenir or grocery item left by a tourist.  Aaron figured out that it was chocolate blocks from the very same shop whose chocolate we had sampled at the food festival a couple of days earlier!  It was too bad for whoever left it, but there was no way they were going to find it again, so we didn’t feel too bad taking it and splitting the spoils of the cab ride with our host.  He made us some shrimp for dinner, and that ended our time in Xela.

 

After several bus rides the next morning, some better than others, and most unbelievably packed full of people with various items in tow, we arrived in Panajachel by Lake Atitlan.  Besides good food, the town didn’t have a whole lot to offer, but luckily, that’s not where we stayed while we were at the lake.  We took a short boat ride to Santa Cruz, and got settled into our room at a pretty hotel by the lake.  Our room was more like a little cabin, but it was cute and cozy and you sure couldn’t beat the view.  The town was up on a steep hill, and the few hotels were along the lakefront, but it wasn’t trashy by any means.  Each hotel offered a 3-course reallllly good family-style dinner each night, so we found the least expensive and just went there every night.  The food was delicious, healthy, and there was a ton of it, and it was great just to go and meet other travelers and talk to people that we would otherwise not have met.  We talked with another couple teaching in Honduras, a lady in her 50s in the Peace Corps in Belize, some nice British girls, and it was so interesting hearing all of their stories.  After dinner, we’d walk along the lake a little bit (it was nearly a full moon while we were there), sit out on a dock awhile, and just take in the view of the lake and volcanoes. 

 

We did a lot of walking during the day, too.  There was another little village just about 40 minutes away along the lakeshore, and we went there several times to go to this little café full of old hippies for a cheap internet connection and for Aaron to do a couple phone interviews with schools.  

A mind-bogglingly long snake of a cactus along the path:

Just a friend we met along the lakefront path:

One day while Aaron was interviewing, I went up into town and found a little “art gallery” that a family had set up.  They explained that they were just getting started and didn’t have a lot yet, but the mother was weaving some really beautiful scarves, one of the daughters made jewelry, and the son painted.  I chatted with them for awhile, and then bought a scarf.  It’s amazing to me how unaffected that little town has been by the development of tourism.  I think that by putting the hotels all down below by the lake, they have been able to keep their town separate and relatively unvisited by tourists (well, except especially pesky ones like me).  They speak a combination of 2 different Mayan languages, and most speak Spanish too, so it’d be a really interesting linguistic study to spend some time there. 

The town of Santa Cruz, nestled in the hills:

Little kids doing manual labor, women and girls in traditional dress, and people carrying bundles of sticks for their cookstoves are all really common sights:

Not a bad view from Santa Cruz:

One morning, we rented a kayak for a few hours and went along the shore until the wind kicked up.   It was nice, but it made me miss our boats back home…a big plastic double is just no comparison to paddling in ours.  Anyway, at least we got out while the water was pretty calm, unlike the next couple of people that went out!  I did yoga a couple of times with a group class near the water in the mornings, too, which was a great way to start a relaxing day.  Our last day there, we did an all-day hike up into the hills behind the lake, past a mini-volcano, through lots of steep cornfields, a windy mountain road (which was VERY scary coming back down with the loose gravel and the sharp drop-offs without guard rails winding down to the lake along cliffs), and finally, to a town called Solola.  

The road back from Solola was almost as much an adventure as the path up the mini-volcano:

Solola seemed dead quiet at first, but we soon found out that everyone was in the center of town at market day.  We were the only tourists there, and again, being immersed in the colors and smells and busy atmosphere of the market was an experience in itself.  At one corner of the plaza, we saw a crowd gathered together and wondered what was going on.  Looking over the heads of people (yes, I was actually taller than most of the people of Mayan descent, and I loved it!), we could see some gambling going on in the center.  One guy would throw this big cow bone, and depending on how it landed, people would make money off of their bets.  So, they were literally “throwing bones,” and it kind of reminded us of the game “Pass the Pigs” if you’ve ever played that.  We lingered an hour or so around the market before heading back to Santa Cruz and our 3-course curry dinner with soup (with the most amazing croutons that they make from homemade bread every night) and orange cake.  I’m so glad that we got to stay at the lake more than one or two days…four days was about perfect. 

 

On Saturday of Semana Santa, we caught a bus back to Antigua, where we had unexpectedly spent that first night of our vacation.  This time, since we had planned on being there, we stayed with another couch surfing host.  Her name is Margaret, she’s in her 50s or so, she’s from Connecticut but she’s married to a Guatemalan police officer, and she has 4 cats and a dalmation.  She was such a lovely person to stay with; we went walking with her up to a park overlooking the city, and we even took her dog out for a walk on our own one afternoon.

The park had a great view:

Even Sasha, Margaret's dog, stopped to take in the scenery:

Margaret and Sasha also took us to the good places to see the Easter processions and the carpets that decorated the streets.  The processions had been going on all week, but the ones we saw that night had a lot of kids swinging smoky lanterns around, a lot of smaller floats carried by people in black robes (after Good Friday, everyone wears black), and one big float with a statue of Jesus on it.  These larger floats can weigh thousands of pounds, and in order to carry them, people pay to sign up at different locations throughout the city according to their shoulder height, and then they go to that place at a certain time to get ready for their rotation to begin.  The carpets that people make out in the streets are made of flowers, pine needles, fruits, colored sawdust, or whatever else people want to use.  The processions last for 12 hours or more sometimes, and there is at least one or two every day leading up to Easter.  Suprisingly, Easter Sunday is really not much of a celebration, though.  Good Friday and the crucifixion are really the big points of the week.

A close-up of  carpet made with sawdust and flowers:

The people that make theirs out of sawdust usually use stencils:

This one is pine needles, palm bits, and flowers:

And the actual processions that trample the carpets:

And here's one of the giant floats, carried by a ton of people and followed by people carrying the generator for the lights:

Since things were quiet on Sunday in town, we took a short bus ride out to a macadamia nut farm.  They have a project going there where they give trees to poor farmers so that they can have a good source of income, and they’ve helped a lot of people out through their work.  I didn’t even know that Honduras was a big producer of macadamia nuts, but apparently it’s up there after Hawaii and Australia, and maybe South Africa.  

Cats are cats everywhere...there must be something theraputic about sleeping on a macademia nut-drying table:

We saw how they are grown, shelled, classified, and we got to taste some chocolate and have a facial and neck massage all as part of the free tour.  We ate some blueberry pie and just had a little hammock time in the shade for awhile, and then went back to town and walked down to buy a special treat:  bagels!!  We went with Margaret to bring her husband some pizza for dinner at the police station.  Being in the police force is different there because most of them work an obscene amount of hours and basically live and sleep in the police station.  If they have families, their house with them is just for the rare vacation days or occasional nights off. 

 

Antigua was great, but the next morning was a stressful one.  We both woke up at 3:30 to catch our 4 am shuttles to different places—Aaron to the airport, and me to Copan as the first step in getting back home to Honduras.  Neither of the shuttles was at the house by 4:20, and after wandering the neighborhood in the dark, we found Aaron’s airport bus.  We asked if they could call the agency or someone to try to contact the Copan shuttle, since no one seemed to be able to find the address we were at, and I didn’t want to stand out alone on the streets of a city I didn’t know at 4:30 am.  The driver said he didn’t have any minutes on his phone, but he agreed to at least take me to the agency where I could wait for the shuttle to come back for me.  At the agency, he opened the door and talked to a woman, and then just closed the door and told me to wait outside, and I watched him (and Aaron, and about 15 other tourists) drive away in the minibus.  Great.  So no one had communicated to me if my shuttle was coming, and no one answered the door when I knocked over and over.  I waited out on the dark street for a good half an hour, until 5:00.  Finally, another traveler showed up to wait for the 5:00 shuttle.  I thought all hope for the early shuttle to Copan was lost, and I’d have to wait for the noon, but then it pulled up and picked me up—an hour late, and in a different location.  At least I was on.

 

Our bus went along fine for about an hour, but then in Guatemala City, it broke down.  We all piled out, some people lied down on the sidewalks and went back to sleep, but I just waited in the bus to see what would happen.  Another shuttle came along (the now-empty airport shuttle Aaron had been on), and we transferred our luggage and the weary passed-out people that belonged on the shuttle, and then we made it the rest of the way with no major problems.  From Copan, I took three more buses that day to get to Gracias and a mototaxi up to Villa Verde around 8, for a total of 15 hours of travel.  Having a selective understanding of Spanish helped me out a lot with unwanted male attention, and the only noteworthy occurrence was when, after hearing clucking sounds for awhile, I noticed that there was a chicken under the arm of the little girl sitting right next to me.

 

This week was a little lonely and boring up on the mountain by myself, but the neighbors checked in on me a lot, and I didn’t feel unsafe at all.  One neighbor, an older man, was concerned that I might not be able to fall asleep without Aaron there, so he picked some really tall grasses (in the lemongrass family, he said) that would make a nice, relaxing tea that could double as relief for toothaches, if that was ever a problem.  He also told me some passages to read in Psalms, and that the angels would be with me.  Another neighbor, who is really more of a friend at this point, came up a couple of times with her son just to chat and bring me some tortillas and beans (can’t have dinner without those!).  It’s great to feel so much a part of the community there, and I think we know our neighbors here better than we did in Beverly, and there we lived in the same building as our neighbors, and we worked at the same school as them!  I hope that whatever we are next year, we get to know the people in our neighborhood.

 

Aaron can write his own blog about his trip back to North Carolina for job interviews, but after three lucky interviews, he got a job offer from his top choice school in Durham!!!  It’s called Central Park School, and he’s going to be teaching 4^th grade again!  So now we both have plans to look forward to when we get back—UNC at Chapel Hill SLP program for me, and teaching at a school that’s a great fit for Aaron.  We’re excited that everything has worked out so well so far, and now all we need is a place to live!  I wish I could be closer to my family, but I’m glad we get to be near Aaron’s parents, and we both have good friends in the area from college.  The only change of plans we have to make is our date of return.  We had planned on traveling a little after school gets out in June, but Aaron’s new school has a year-round schedule, so we have to be back in the States by July 6^th for him to start. 

 

That means we only have just over 2 more months…it will go by very fast.  It’ll be hard to say goodbye here, but we’re looking forward to being closer to everyone again.  Even for those who far from NC, you will be a lot closer for us to visit than you were this year! 

Springtime, summer or fall

Guess who is late again with their blog entry. This is about a month overdue and a lot of the credit, especially photos, goes to Brett, Mike and Rach.

It’s hard to believe it’s almost May here. It is now actually summer and it is really hot during the day, but at night we still have nice cool weather. The last couple days have been crazy windy and the wind has kicked up all the dust that has been around since it hasn’t rained in a month. In March we had some friends visit from Boston and we had an awesome time showing them around here and then heading out to the coast. It was so nice having them here, as close friends and family are the only two big things we feel are missing from our life here. We were with them for five days and it went by like a flash.

 

They came in on Wednesday the 18^th and by the time they got here they had already had a travel adventure. We went down to town after school to meet them (at a hot gas station on the highway) and Melanie checked email and found out their flight was delayed for four hours. This meant they got to do almost all of the drive to Gracias in the dark. They got into Gracias a little after 9, and then we had a quick dinner before piling six people and six people’s things into the car. Our neighbor was out of town for a while and so we were able to use his house for a couple people to sleep in, which made things much more doable with just four in our little place. We woke up the next day, headed to school, and left them to discover Villa Verde on their own. They had a great time at the restaurant up in the park and stayed long enough that she was ready to serve them the next meal. 

Dona Alejandrina roasting some coffee.
Some of Dona's tortillas:

They took a little trip to La Campa, but I don’t think that other people are as taken with it as we are.  After a dinner at the house, we hit up the hot springs which were popular with everyone.

Melanie with Irma, one of her smartest and most needy kids.

Friday the whole gang came to school and helped out with classes and made quite a splash with the kids. It’s amazing how much smoother everything can go with more than one teacher in the class.  Rachel and Brian were awesome helping with our first research project and Mike helped out a lot with adding some volume to the songs we were singing and showing off some crazy Frisbee throws. Brett did a guest reading of the spelling words and made quick friends with one of my students who drew a picture of a baseball game for him before we left. The school also made a hard pitch for all of them to come back to teach next year.

Melanie's class, the way they usually are

As soon as school was finished we made a mad dash for the coast in the jam-packed Mitsubishi Nativa. Mike was a natural Honduran driver, dodging potholes and gunning it past tractor trailers. We made it to San Pedro, grabbed a little food at the mostly-closed bus station and then went on to Ceiba. It was a fun ride with all sorts of good discussion and as the night went on, more and more Disney sing a longs. It’s really interesting to me that that is one of the common bonds of our generation, whereas for the current generation I’m guessing it will be High School Musical that they crank out 15 years down the road. After going through Ceiba, we turned off on a dirt road to head up to the “Jungle River Lodge” which would be our base for white water rafting and ziplining. The road wasn’t that bad but it was a single lane road with no railing 50-75 feet above the river, and we were glad when we finally saw the kayak that the lodge used as a sign. We got settled in our camp cabin-like accommodations and had a tarantula sighting and a few classic card games before we all climbed into our bunks.

Mike's shades definitely give him the edge in this pic

We woke up the next morning excited for rafting, grabbed a quick breakfast and got all our gear and headed up the river. Melanie and I were the most “experienced” rafters and had been telling the others how we were going to be floating down the river with a little bit of paddling now and then on the 3-4 rapids. We found out very quickly that this was not the case. Probably half of the rafting trip was what I would call a river adventure. First, our guide casually explained that we were supposed to swim across the river and meet him on the other side. It’s not a crazy request in words but think about it, this was a whitewater river, usually things go down it not across it. So we had to swim straight up the river really hard and let the current carry us across. About half of us made it across without needing the rescue rope, and by now, we were already exhausted at 8:30 in the morning. We continued to walk and swim upriver for the next half hour until we got to an impassable waterfall and I think we all had a bad feeling about what might be asked of us next.  The guide jumped off of a 20 ft rock into a rushing whirlpool, across to the other side, and then scaled a 40-50 ft inverted rock face and then proceeded to do a flip off the cliff back into the whirlpool. He survived, luckily, but none of us wanted to challenge fate or the failure of our muscles. We were still having a hard time wrapping our minds around jumping off the 20 ft rock. The rock wasn’t a straight cliff but a gentle slope so you had to run for a good 20 ft before you came to the point where you could jump off so besides the drop there was the real chance you could fall on the slick rock, break some body part and fall limply into the rushing whirlpool. We all made it across with a lot of cheering and relief and then started back down the river. I thought this was going to be the scariest part, floating back down over rapids, but it actually wasn’t as bad as I had thought. The water shoots your body right over the rapids and besides being shoved under every now and then by the falling water it was a pleasant ride down. When we made it back down to where we had started, we finally got into the rafts and headed down the river with no explanation or instruction. The rapids were awesome, lots of class 4s and a couple 4.5s that were pretty much just 7-8 ft waterfalls that we went over in our boat. Melanie and I, the “experienced” ones, were the only ones who got dumped in the river and our guide would be getting a group high five going while I was floundering to get back into the boat. Our guide was really good though, and we stopped a couple times along the river for him to show us things like a plant that was a natural soap and some big iguanas sunning on some rocks. Although we weren’t really prepared for the first part of the trip it was an amazing rafting trip and surpassed all of our expectations.

 Rach on the first zipline heading across the Rio Cangrejal

When we finished rafting we went back to the lodge and they had a huge fruit buffet and we gorged ourselves on fresh cantalope, watermelon, pineapple, and bananas. After a little more formal lunch, we lounged on the rocks next to the river and waited for the second half of our adventure day. Our guide picked us up and we got geared up for riding the wires. We had a brief introduction to ziplining with basic safety tips and a short practice wire to get our “form” right. I kept on thinking that sometime I was going to accidentally put my hands in front of the pulley and get them chopped off. Like the rafting trip, there was a lot of bonus material on top of just riding the wires. After our first big wire across the river, we walked a little while through the jungle checking out different kinds of medicinal and poisonous plants, endangered trees and the highlight of the trip probably, a big termite nest. Our guide showed us the nest and told us that if you get lost in the jungle with no food that termites make a great source of protein. We all thought “Oh interesting” and then he proceeded to share that they tasted just like carrots. At this point I think we were all a little skeptical but then he plunged he hand into the nest and pulled out a handful of live crawling termites.  He chomped a few, and sure enough, we could smell some carrots. After a lot of prodding and peer pressure, we all put some live termites in our mouth, chomped down, and sure enough, they were a high-protein carroty treat. The wires were really cool too, ranging from short ones from one platform to another to flying through the branches of trees in the jungle. The last wire was breathtaking, almost 600 feet across a river at a pretty steep angle. You started out in the woods and then came flying out across the river. There was a little bit of miscommunication with the guide though. He was talking to us beforehand and we took it to mean, “This is a long wire and you can take your brake hand off because you will have time to put it back on.” What he really said as we later found out was, “Don’t take your brake hand off the wire because you won’t be able to put it back on and you will crash into a tree.” This we found out through direct experience. It was pretty exhilarating flying across the river spinning around but pretty frightening when I realized that I wasn’t going to be able to stop and came into the platform at 20 mph. 

Chilling on the rocks next to the river:

Big Bad Brian focused on the wire

We all made it pretty much unscathed and partook of the fruit buffet one more time before we packed up and headed towards Tela. On our way we made a couple pitstops in La Ceiba to enjoy the outposts of American fast food. At Dunkin Donuts we got a dozen donuts and one of my favorite moments of the entire trip. One of the dozen that we got happened to be a Boston Crème and Brett, trying to be friendly, told the cashier “Soy de Boston” or “I’m from Boston” and she gave him one of the best “Like I care” looks I have ever seen.

 

After getting a good laugh out of that we made it to Tela and drove around looking for the hotel we were going to stay at. After getting some good yelling at for driving down one ways the wrong way, we made it to the Maya Vista, a beautiful hotel way up on a hill looking over Tela Bay. We took all our stuff inside and were going to head to our room when I found out that I had made a huge travel planning mistake. Because of some early planning and changing plans I had booked the hotel for the wrong nights, and after we didn’t show up the first night, they had taken our deposit and given the room to someone else. I felt so stupid and was just tired from traveling and rafting and ziplining, but eventually the owner helped us find another place that he said was good. He did find us another place, but we soon found out that it wasn’t “good.” There were six of us and we wanted a place we could all stay together, and after looking at the possible rooms, we chose the one that didn’t smell like they had used enough air freshener to cover up a dead body. Was it a good choice? Hard to tell. As soon as we sat down in our new room we saw a huge roach crawl out of the sofa and head towards our Dunkin Donuts. Our first reaction to this was, “Crap, he’s going to try and eat our donuts” and so we had to keep the donuts in the car. Mike tried to hit another roach with his shoe, and although we all swore that he hit it, when he lifted his shoe it wasn’t there, adding to the mystique of these superintelligent disappearing creatures. 

Ahh, roach motel

After calming down a little bit we headed out for some dinner and found a really nice place with good Caribbean rice and beans and some fried fish that came entero with their eyes looking right at you. Mike did a good Big Mouth Billy Bass impression. We also had a traveling mariachi (I think) band come by and play a few songs and their first one was really good, but when we tried a request (it ended up being La Bamba) they flopped.

Honduran Caribbean Typical Food:

Mike with his old disappearing fish trick. As you can tell Rach is thoroughly "impressed."

After making it through the night in the literal roach motel we were glad to pack up and move back to the hotel we had originally wanted to stay. In the morning we went and explored the Tela market. In my mind it wasn’t quite as good as the Gracias market, but they did have a lot more fish. We found some good snacks like quesadillas with a piece of fried chicken in it, and then some fresh squeezed orange juice. 

Tela is home to the second largest tropical botanical gardens in the world, so we thought that would be a good way to spend the morning. The gardens used to be private gardens of one of the banana barons but now it is public. There were lots of nice paths to walk on, and the first part of the walk was through the densest bamboo tunnel I had ever seen. Although there wasn’t too much information about the individual plants, it was educational to see several different types of one family of plants growing together. There were probably 10 different kinds of palm trees and some really beautiful giant eucalyptus trees. 

Never would have even thought of it but yes, there are red pineapples.

Some of the bamboo

They also had an exhibit on the first man:

Our afternoon goal was to make it to Miami, a Garifuna beach a little smaller than its American counterpart. We had seen some pictures of it and it looked like it was just a big barrier sandbar with palm trees and a few huts on it. Although it was only 5 or 6 miles away, we soon discovered that we probably weren’t going to make it, since the road was even worse than our road up the mountain. Although the beach we settled for may not have been quite as idyllic as Miami, it had clean sand and warm water and that was all we wanted. We went to the beach at this beach club that we assumed would just kick us out, but we swam, lounged on the beach, and had some fierce volleyball games and they didn’t seem to mind at all. At this point, Melanie and I were getting a little jealous that everybody else was going to get to stay and hang out at the beach and we had to go to work the next day. We headed back towards Tela, got settled at our hotel and had a nice dinner looking out at the ocean.

 

We had seen that there was a fair in town, and although we had seen the less than splendid fairs in Gracias, this one looked like it might have more to offer. After walking through all the fried chicken vendors to get there, we were pleasantly surprised to find out there was no entrance fee, you just buy tickets for the games or food at will. The first thing that caught our attention were the bumper cars. I’m a huge fan of bumper cars and was really excited to get in on the action, but I couldn’t figure out how the system worked. I could tell you had to buy a ticket, but I had no idea what you were supposed to do next. There was no line, no one collecting tickets, but after a while we sort of figured out what was going on. The ticket you bought was actually a plastic token; when a buzzer went off all the cars stopped everyone started running around like crazy. This is because although all the cars stopped at the same time everyone was trying to run from the side to one of the cars before someone who had lots of tokens put another in their car and started aiming for knocking peoples’ knees off. It added a whole other degree of difficulty to everything. After feeling like we had conquered the bumper car circuit, we headed over to the spider arm spinny thing. This is another classic, with a little more stomach churning and although it was the exact same ride they have in the States, it lasted at least twice as long. Mike and Rach were lucky and got the crazy car that was spinning a couple of times a second and somehow they both kept their supper in. 

Do they put a mix of owl and dog in these delicacies?

This is before the Puk-0-matic 3000 gets going
You might say I'm a little competitive with the bumper cars

We walked around the fair a little while longer and skipped some of the scarier rides. I think the scariest looking ride of all was the Ferris wheel. I’ve always thought of the Ferris wheel as this kind of leisurely “let’s admire the view” kind of ride, but in Honduras they have a different take on it. The huge wheel probably does a revolution every three seconds with everyone on it shrieking and then after 30 seconds or so they brake it and spin it the other way. For anyone who has read Devil in the White City that’s sort of how I imagine people felt when they rode the first Ferris wheel at in 1893. We were looking for some good carnival food but couldn’t find anything other than the normal fried chicken and French fries. We headed back to the hotel and got all packed up to head back towards Gracias the next day.

The next morning we all woke up, got some good fruit at the market, and partook of the great coastal baleadas one last time. We went out to the highway and said our goodbyes, really sad to leave everyone, and not exactly excited about our full day bus trip back. We feel so lucky to have such good friends and even luckier that they would come to Honduras and see our world here. If they’re reading: Thanks guys for being such a great group to travel with and hopefully we can do it again soon!

A-wandering along the mountain path

So much for the hot season so far.  It’s summer here now, but I was dreading oppressive heat and dust, and the weather really hasn’t been too bad.  A lot of mornings start out rainy or cloudy, and then by mid-morning, the sky is clear and it does start heating up.  I recently planted some herbs and flowers in front of the house, so maybe this will be good weather to give it a better start than the other garden out back.  In that one, we have a few renegade tomato plants growing from the compost we mixed into the soil, but besides that, just some bean plants and a couple of tiny watermelon plants have really grown much.  Apparently, we put our garden on the wrong side of the house to begin with.  That side of the house was excavated to make the adobe bricks to build the house, and the other side has a little less damage, so it would have been better…ah, hindsight.

 

A couple of weekends ago, we finally packed up our backpacks with camping gear and food and headed up the mountain—all the way up.  The hike started in the familiar territory of the park, up to the visitor’s center, across the river twice, up the steep switchbacks to the fork with the waterfall-bound path, and then we crossed into the unknown (for us…lots of other people have been, obviously).  The trail meandered up and down and in different directions as it hugged smaller mountainsides and crossed several little creeks/waterfalls where we filled up our water bottles.  The water was really clear and straight from the ground, but we dropped in the nasty iodine pills just to be kind to our digestive systems.  Around this part of the hike, we saw a lot of GIANT ferns that looked more like small trees than ground cover.  Here is a baby fern all curled up:

We stopped for lunch at the first “campsite,” which was just an old building site littered with garbage and a pit toilet.  That made me a little worried about the second campsite, which we were planning to stay at for the night.  Still, it was a nice lunch in the sun, and everything tastes better when you’re hiking.

 Campsite that I'm glad we didn't stay long at:

We went on from there, and the climb got a lot steeper.  We followed a ridge for awhile, so the view was fantastic sometimes, and we also saw a little animal—our only real wildlife spotting of the trip.  It looked like a raccoon/monkey/weasel, and was about the size of a large housecat.  It had a long, striped tail, and just looked at us a little while, stood up on its legs like a prairie dog, and kept on climbing and exploring, like we weren’t even there.  The vegetation changed many times, and the plants were amazing as we went on.  Besides the giant ferns, we saw beautiful flowers, vines, bromeliads, really knotty old trees, interesting fungi…it was the jungle, and it didn’t disappoint.  Once we reached the cloud forest, though, it felt like we had entered a different world.  The canopy is so thick that it’s pretty dark, but the sunlight that does come through creates a green halo around all of the trees because of the thick moss covering them.  We heard lots of birds, but we couldn’t spot them because everything up there was so thick and full of green life. 

Here's us up in the cloud forest:

And an attempt to capture the canopy...it definitely doesn't do it justice, though:

 

We were going to call it quits for the day when we got to the second camp, but we got there around 3, and we figured we still had at least 3 hours of daylight, so we would either pass the time playing cards and looking for monkeys in the trees (a fruitless endeavor, unfortunately), or we could push on to the top and then come back to camp and just have to wake up and hike down the next day.  We opted for option 2, and it was a good choice.  The top was just another 1.5 hours, and it was all through cloud forest.  The summit itself was mostly wooded, even though it was at about 9500 ft, so there was just one place where you could look out at the green mountains surrounding us.  That little window was an incredible view, and it just felt good to finally have made it up the mountain that we spend most of our time at the base of.  

At the sign...

And another of us (maybe a little to up-close):

Here's the view from where you could see out at the top.  We were lucky that we got a view at all, since the top is often covered in clouds that cling to the mountain.

We headed back to the campsite, which turned out to be wayyyy better than the first campsite we ate lunch at, put up the tent, ate some leftover lentil soup out of peanut butter jars (we didn’t have the energy to make a fire or cook), and crawled into our sleeping bags around 7, just after dark.  It was amazing up there, but a lot colder, too.  We could see our breath, and it was a COLD night in the tent!  I also woke up several times thinking that Aaron breathing was actually some kind of animal lurking around outside planning its attack on our tent.

 

Morning came, we made it back down in just a few hours, and then we showered, snacked, and napped for awhile.  Sleeping in a tent in a freezing forest with jeans for a pillow makes you appreciate your own bed soooo much.  We really enjoyed the whole experience, though…surprisingly, although it’s the main tourist attraction in Gracias (not that there are many), a lot of people that live here have never hiked to the top, but I wouldn’t miss it. 

 

Our neighbors, on the other hand, who are guides in the park, go up there all the time, and say that they get slightly annoyed by the tourists because they have to stop and rest so much.  Their family has been so generous and friendly toward us this whole time we’ve been here, though.  They’ve taught me how to make pupusas, tamales (which is VERY labor-intensive, the way they do it down here), and I’m going to make tortillas with them sometime after school when I don’t completely wiped.  I’m happy that Sonia, the woman that I mainly cook with and talk to, wants to learn how to make pizza, so we can at least have a little exchange going on. 

 

We went over to their house for Paola’s birthday this weekend.  Paola is in my class, and she’s one of the sweetest kids I have.  She knows everybody’s business all the time, and calls me out on every contradiction I make, but she is always giving out stickers, lending her school supplies to friends (which is a big deal here), and her arm is probably really strong from being practically constantly raised in class.  She comes over to my house a lot just to say hello, play around with sticks or chalk or her cousins, or to get homework help.  She has a lot of friends at school, but they couldn’t really make it up to her house for the party, since it’s not too conveniently located to town, so the party was just her family and us.  We had beef, beans, tortillas, and cake.  There was a minor catastrophe when her little cousin locked herself in a bedroom, but another relative was able to crawl between the roof and the wall to unlock the door before she had even stopped being entertained by jumping on the bed and having people talk to her through the window.  We played with the kids, sang Happy Birthday, and just hung out a little while.  I hope it was a good birthday for Paola…I think it was; she’s easy to please, and she got 3 whole packs of new stickers.

 

At school, our classes are doing pretty well.  Their English is coming along, and I’ve noticed some really great breakthrough moments with some of my struggling kids, lately.  I’ve been able to switch up the help class roster, my lowest reader can now read multi-syllable words and identify most letter sounds (although short and long vowels are still tricky for everyone since they don’t have that in Spanish).  One of my lowest kids at the beginning of the year is now one of my highest level kids, and has done a lot of fake dramatic fainting onto the floor lately upon receiving his test grades back.  Not everything has been rosy, but things like that are really encouraging.  Both of our classes have had a lot more drama and crying lately…I think they just need a few days off to play and recharge.  Some of the girls in my class are getting into a boy-crush phase, too, which has upped the drama and gossip level lately, too.  Today, a couple of them even gave letters to the 8^th graders that they like, telling them up front that they are their “secret love.”  A little out of their league, but they’re just having fun teasing each other and having secrets with their friends.  Still, I don’t remember a lot of that going on when I was in third grade.

 

My class finished our animal unit awhile ago, and we made clay animals, shoebox habitats, and collected information about them for a classroom zoo.  The kids had a lot of fun with that, and I wish that I had taken pictures.  Aaron’s kids came to look at the exhibits and hear the presentations, and they did a good job keeping their more critical thoughts to themselves, except for one girl who tattled by saying:  “Carlos say that Deyssi’s elephant looks like—como se dice (how do you say)—bleehhhh (with vomit sound and motion).”  This week, we had a cricket jumping contest, and graphed the cricket jump distances vs. the jumps the kids did.  They had so much fun running around and catching insects, and I loved helping them and just kicking back and exploring with them outside the classroom.

 

Aaron’s class has been busy, too.  They’re studying birds right now, and he had them cut out life-size wings of different species, measure their own wingspans, and right now, they’ve been playing a migration game he made up.  It involves two big cardboard dice, a big chalk map of the Americas, and the kids having to try to make the trip without losing members of their flock.  Sounds a little reminiscent of Oregon Trail for birds, but without the wagon to caulk or Jimmy getting a snakebite.

Here's Marcos, one of Aaron's kids, in the nest he made.  Both of our classes actually did this activity...pretty entertaining way to spend a Science class!

 

Tomorrow afternoon, some friends from Landmark will be in Gracias to visit for a week!  This weekend, we’re going to the coast for some rafting and relaxing at the beach with them.  It’s so great to have visitors to look forward to and spend time with!  Hopefully, we’ll have better luck with the rental car this time.  We’ll be better about taking pictures while people are here, so look forward to some good ones on the next post!  If you read this, thanks…it means a lot to us.

We get by with a little help (from family and strangers)

A big cloud trying to make it over the mountain


So, someone (aka me) should have written a blog entry about a month ago. There is a lot to catch up on. While its been winter in North, we’ve had some great weather here the last six weeks. January and especially February are supposed to be hot dry months but most of the days have been in the 70’s with a little shower every once in a while. Wherever we end up next year it will be hard getting used to the idea of experiencing winter again.

The last weeks of January were a little tough. We found out that the other three teachers from the United States at our school were going to be leaving. One of the teachers had to leave because her mother is sick and the other two teachers decided to leave because they didn’t like living and working here. They were all our friends, and it was really sad seeing them leave. It was an emotionally draining time, just thinking about them all leaving and wondering how many more classes we would have to be covering. It is a hard job and not always the easiest lifestyle, but is hard for us to imagine leaving the kids and the community. It was a stressful time but once the teachers left it turned out it wasn’t as bad as we thought. Although our schedules have changed we really haven’t had to take on too many more classes, since I think the school is scared that we will leave.

The first weekend of February we had a nice visit with a friend of ours from college. Amy and her cousin were spending a couple of weeks traveling through Central America and they were nice enough to make a detour and come visit us. We hadn’t seen Amy in 5 years and it was great catching up with her and hearing about her experience in the JET program, in Mongolia and all the other cool places she’s been. It was so unexpected to have this person we haven’t seen in five years show up at the bus station in Gracias, but it was a really nice break in routine for us.

In other news, I’ve started playing on the neighborhood soccer team. Luckily, I’m far from the best player and definitely not the worst, so it’s a good opportunity to get a little more exercise. We play a couple times a week on the field at school and then every once in a while, probably once a month, we have a real game against a team from another community. I thought that the soccer style would be a lot different here. The last time I really played competitive soccer was in high school, and even then the main strategy (not of the better teams) was to kick the ball as hard as possible down the field. When we’re just playing around here they guys show a lot of foot skills and touch but as soon as we got into the game it was the same old boot it as far as you can strategy. Here is a picture of one of the fields we play on taken by Dad. I don’t know if you can tell too well from the picture, but it is a steep grade with lots of rocks, more often a description for a road than a soccer pitch.


At school we’ve started having afterschool help classes twice a week. Melanie I and have been pushing for it for a long time (as well as a lot of parents) and while it is a good chance to give some students some extra attention it can be pretty exhausting. The kids seem to have more energy after 3:00 but I’m exhausted. It's also hard because while it is a smaller group than our class, it is still kids and I try to balance one on one time with group activities. The kids and the parents both see it as a desirable thing to have help class, so at least they aren’t griping about having to stay after. Both of us are really beginning to be able to notice progress in our classes too, so hopefully we can keep that ball rolling.

The biggest thing that has happened since the last blog entry was having my parents visit for a week. They flew from Raleigh to San Pedro, rented a car and drove the four hours to Gracias. They don’t speak any Spanish and they did a great job navigating the roads and potholes to get out here to the mountains, even with the clutch of the rental forcing them to drive in 4th gear for the last part of the trip. Dad did a quick fix on the car once they got to Gracias and we drove up to Guancascos where we had a nice dinner looking out over the town. After dinner we began our drive up the mountain to our house and quickly realized that the car was pretty unsuited for the road, scraping on rocks the entire way up. We finally made it up, gave them the thirty second house tour, and turned in for the night. The next day we headed to school and let them have a day to relax and explore around our house. They ended up doing quite a hefty hike up the mountain, getting to see the river and a little bit of wildlife. We just relaxed Thursday night and then Friday my Mom and Dad came to school with us. For our morning devotional Dad taught the kids a song and sign language to go with it and then Mom told a story I remember hearing a lot growing up about doing your chores. It was so nice having them at school, both so they could see it and to have the extra help. It was amazing how much more you can get done when there are three teachers in the room. They also were very helpful harvesting the radishes from the 4th grade garden. The students were foaming at the mouth to pull them out of the ground and having three people made things a lot calmer.
Mom keeping the washing of the radishes under control:


Juli with the biggest radish:


Dad overseeing the picking operation:



A happy gang

We’ve harvested about 150 radishes from the garden and the first day we picked them with my parents we made a radish salad that the kids are still talking about.
Here is Dani working on the salad:


And David and Claudia adding some finishing touches:


Friday after school I played a little soccer and then we headed down the mountain with our neighbor Mark to go to the hot springs. The hot springs here are nice, really big and deep with a couple different pools, but there are a couple of things that make the environment very Honduran. One of these is the music; you sit in the pools trying to relax and there is this thumping loud music playing, the equivalent of the music they used to play at roller skating rinks. The other nice touch that adds to the atmosphere are the armed guards. While it is a little strange having a couple of guys walking around with sawed off shotguns it does make me feel a little better about not having people rifle through our belongings. We had a nice soak in the hot springs and got into the car to head back up the mountain. By this time, it was about 10:30 and we were all looking forward to bed. We made it about a kilometer down the dirt road and then the tire went flat. After already having a little trouble making it down the mountain this just added to the annoyance and the stress level of everyone but we thought it would be a quick fix. We got the spare on, started off again and in about 100 yards it was flat. As you can guess, by this time we were all a little beyond the state of being annoyed with the car. I thought I would just call a friend in Gracias and see if they could come pick us up so we might get the tire fixed, but when I tried calling the phone went dead. So with this perfect storm of events we all realized we were going to be in for a long night. Mark and I walked back to the hot springs to see if we could find anyone who would give us a ride. Luckily there were still some people there that Mark had been talking to earlier and they agreed to give all five of us a ride. We got back to the car where everyone else was waiting and decided what to do, as it was now getting close to 11:30. The people who were giving us a ride were sooooo helpful; they offered to let us use their spare tire to get our car back to town. Then it turned out that the originial spare for our car was stuck, and it took a good fifteen minutes of hitting it with a basketball sized rock to get it off. Finally, we got the new spare on and drove back to Gracias with our new friends following us to help us look for a tire place that might be open at 11:30. We found one tire place on the highway but when we went over to try and rouse the owners there were five of the meanest dogs I’ve ever seen, ready to take a nice bite out of us. We gave up on getting the tire fixed that night and offered to bring their spare back to them a couple days later when we were passing through their town. It turns out the guy who’s spare it was happened to be driving to Mexico the next day so we had to give him back the spare that night. We decided to drive the car to Guancascos where it would be safe, leave it there for the night and then get it fixed the next morning. This still left the problem of getting home, and since we didn’t really have many options we all started the march up the mountain to our house a little after midnight. It was a long dark walk, but my parents did an amazing job and were really good about all the adventures we had that night. The two things that will stick in my mind from that night are the crappiness of the car and how amazingly kind and helpful the strangers were at midnight when they still had to drive an hour to get home.

We were supposed to spend most of the next day making tamales with our neighbors but after the late night we nixed that and slept a good while and then walked back down to Gracias. It was a nice walk down, introducing Mom and Dad to all the acquaintances we’ve made doing this walk every week. We made it to town and Melanie and I took the tire in a mototaxi to one of the tire places in town. The good thing about places like that is that even in a foreign country there is really only one reason you would show up at tire place with a tire in hand. It made our job easy. We just sat their while they fixed the tire. It cost $1.50 to patch the tire and we did have to buy another tire for the spare rim but that was $25 well spent for a little peace of mind.


A picture of the house and the car, the Chevy Headache

After getting the tire fixed I showed Mom and Dad around town, the market, square, church, and of course the popsicle lady. We got a little lunch and then headed across the countryside to La Campa, our favorite nearby town. It's usually utterly tranquil and serene, but this weekend was the town festival, one of the biggest in the region. The ride over there was still really pretty, but there was tons of traffic and we got stuck behind a truck full of metal poles that weren’t secured to the truck at all so we had to stay pretty far back for security purposes. The festival was a lot like fairs and festivals in other countries with a bigger concentration of used clothes and hair gel products. We wandered around looking at and sampling some of the food, buying a little pottery and unfortunately finding a foosball tent where Melanie beat me, an event I won’t be allowed to forget for a long time. Here is some unfortunate proof:


A portable version of the wood cookstoves (fogon) everyone has in their house here:


Sunday morning we packed up a little to get ready to head to Copan and then went to our neighbors house to make pupusas, kind of a stuffed fat tortilla.


Mom and Melanie getting the cheese ready for the pupusas


Pupusa sounds like baby indian but man do they taste good.

It was supposed to be a women only thing but dad and I peeked our heads in the kitchen and got permission to give it a go. While the women finished up, I brought down the banjo that Dad brought down and let our neighbor, the church piano player have a go at it. He was playing tunes in 2 minutes. There probably aren’t too many banjo players in Honduras and he might already have the title as best in the country over me. After the good lunch of pupusas we hit the road for Copan about 3 hours away. It was a pretty easy drive and we made to the cobblestone town and to the hostel Iguana Azul where we had stayed before. We walked all around getting some pizza, people watching, and just sitting on the patio at the hostel talking, a really nice evening. The next morning we grabbed some breakfast and walked over to the ruins where we had a nice walk around looking at the pyramids and sculptures from 1500 years ago.
Mom and dad in front of some ancient dressing rooms:


Here is Dad checking out the pyramids from above:


The ruins are really interesting and its also a kind of spellbindingly beautiful place that you just want to walk around slowly and take it in with giant trees and cool moss covered stones everywhere. We got some lunch before we headed back towards Gracias and made it as far as Santa Rosa before the car had another flat tire. Melanie and I were in the big grocery store there stocking up while Dad walked over to a tire place and got them to fill it up. It didn’t fix it, though, and as soon as he put it on it started going flat again so we had to drive over as quick as we could. The rim was bent on the tire making it so there was never a good seal and they couldn’t really fix it, so after an hour and a half we put the spare on and drove back. The drive back to Gracias was fine except for the fact that the headlights of the car and everyone we passed flashed us because they thought we had our brights on. Mom and Dad just relaxed the next day to recover from a little stomach bug we all had caught. They did a really good job with their Spanish and went up in the park to a little restaurant there to buy some coffee. When we got home from school, we walked over to the natural hot springs near our house and had a soak. It was a little weird because when we got there, there was already someone in the pool and I didn’t really know the correct etiquette so we just waited for him to get out. After soaking we walked back in the dark which was pretty tough. We made it back to house, had some soothing potato soup and helped load Mom and Dad up with stuff to take back with them. We called it a night and woke up early to say goodbye. It was so nice having them here, to help us out, to talk to, to show them around our world here. It's been really hard being so far away from our families and friends this year and having them here made it not seem so far away at all. We're having a great time but we can't wait to see everybody this summer or even sooner if you happen to be heading down this way.

So many homes

Not a bad place to come back to...every sunset and sunrise (yes, I am awake for all of those as well) is beautiful.




Christmas break seems like a long time ago, but since that’s where our last entry left off, I’ll travel back in time for a minute. Stepping off the plane in one degree Chicago weather was a little rough after being on a tropical island the day before, but my mom and sisters brought some old winter coats to meet us at the airport, and from there, we just got used to the climate change. It was so great to be home and see everyone in so many places. We spent the first 3 days in Wheaton with my family, did 3 Christmases there—one on Christmas Eve, Christmas morning, and Christmas night in Wisconsin.

Here's Christmas Eve...my sisters, Caitlin and Rachel, and my cousins, Chelsea and Olivia:




...and Mimi and Aaron:



...and my parents:



In Wisconsin, we got to enjoy the snow a little more, and even cleared off an ice rink on the lake to play a little hockey. We just spent a couple of days, and then we headed back to Wheaton. A note on Hela, our cat: she is enjoying her year-long vacation with her dog cousins, and has learned to play with the border collie. They wrestle around and chase each other, and when they are tired, the dog lies on her back and the cat sits on the dog’s face. Very weird. Hela has also gotten pretty fat because she eats dog food all day. She doesn’t look like she’s been missing us too badly.

Here's the little fatty on Christmas:




Everywhere we went, the food tasted amazing, but going from mostly fruits and veggies to American-style holiday food was a rude awakening for our digestive systems. I don’t think either of us felt hungry the whole time we were back home, but we still pigged out as per tradition and felt happy and comfortable and loved the whole two weeks we spent visiting.

Here's one of the richer indulgences of 2009: Oreo Cheesecake! (With my mom and brother, Brad):



I thought we might experience a little more reverse culture shock, but once we were back, everything just seemed normal, like we had never left. When we got back to Honduras, again, it just seemed as if we had never left. It was a relief to be back here and not have to get used to things all over again like we did in August when we first arrived.

After Wheaton and Wisconsin, we met Aaron’s brother and sister-in-law (well, basically), and drove down to Virginia to spend a few days with Aaron’s family. It was a Christmas miracle that all of our stuff fit in the tiny Yaris along with four of us and a dog, but it all worked out. It was still nothing compared to some of the bus experiences we’ve had! There was a serious lack of bags of crops and grains, and there were no kids sitting on top of the seats hanging out the windows.

Virginia was a little warmer than up North, so we got a little walking and biking in…biking on a paved road was amazing. It was really nice to spend time with all of Aaron’s family at once, because they are so spread out that it doesn’t happen often. We had a little photo shoot out back on the mountain...

Here are Daniel (Aaron's brother) and Meghan (his fiancee), with their rarely-sitting-still-much-less-yawning-of-boredom dog:



And here are Jeremy (Aaron's brother), Meghna (his wife), and Alaina (our niece):




All four brothers:




And everybody:



Our Christmas tour had one more stop: Beverly, MA. We stayed there 3 days, did some much-enjoyed grocery shopping, saw lots of friends, and re-visited our favorite restaurants. It was hard to leave and fly back here at the end of the trip, but I think the part we were most dreading was just the long travel adventure we had before getting back to our house. We’re going to be so happy to be back with friends and family next year, though…our trip was way too short!

We left Boston at 4 pm, stopped in Ft. Lauderdale, took a 9 something flight to San Pedro Sula in Honduras, arrived at 1 am, and waited in the airport for several hours waiting for morning to come. Luckily, there was a little area to sit down in next to a closed Wendy’s booth (we were afraid that the whole place would shut down and we’d have to figure out somewhere to spend a few hours). Our bus didn’t leave until 6, so we killed some time just talking to another foreign teacher coming back to Honduras from the States, and then Aaron tried to use an ATM. There were two machines right next to each other, and they looked about the same. Aaron typed in the amount he wanted to withdraw (about $100), and the machine just shut down. He checked the balance of our account using the other ATM, and it turns out that the first machine had subtracted the amount from our account without giving us any cash! He asked a policeman about it, and the guy just laughed at him and said something along the lines of, “oh, you used THAT machine?! Everyone knows that machine doesn’t work!” So…not so helpful. After we found a ride to the bus station, took our two buses back to Gracias, and did some grocery shopping, we stopped off at the bank for a little chat about our ATM situation. This turned out to just be the first of three visits in order to get our lost money back, but eventually, it worked out. At one point, though, our account got down to about $15. Close call!

When we finally got up the mountain and home again, we got to unpack and relax for a day before school started. Our house was fine over break, and besides a missing rusted wheelbarrow and a sweater eaten by some animal, all was well when we got back. It didn’t take long to get used to wearing t-shirts again, and spending most of our time outside. No seasonal affect disorder here…there have been a couple of other cold fronts, but the rainy season is now over, and it’s just going to keep warming up from here on out. It’s really good that we live up on the mountain now, because it gets really hot and dusty in town without rain, and up here it gets hot during the day, but always cools down at night. One night during the cold front last week, we seriously considered moving the stove into our bedroom and baking bread to heat things up before we went to sleep, but in the end, it wasn’t worth the risk of something in the oven coming loose during the move. It’s easy to pick out the tourists during the cold weather, though…they are usually wearing shorts and a t-shirt, while everyone who lives here is wearing sweaters and hats. We did meet one really interesting couple from Quebec last weekend. They looked to be in their late 50s or so, and they had driven all the way down from Quebec! They had their yellow lab with them, and they were just road tripping for a couple of months before ending up in El Salvador to visit their son, who is doing some volunteer work/surfing down there for a year. They have an ecotourism business in Mexico and they do a lot of kayaking there, so who knows, we might meet them again sometime.

Our neighbors did a lot of work on their comedor (little restaurant in their house) while we were gone, and they stopped us and invited us in for some coffee and sweetbread one afternoon. We’re slowly getting to know them better—one of their kids is in my class, and she’s been walking to school with us every day. All the kids like coming up to our house to giggle and chat and play little games like “who can balance a stick on their head and walk across the road fastest” or “where is Abby’s stomach/nose/eyes/ears?” I don’t always rush out eagerly when I hear that “Oh Mrs. Seeeeeebens/Mrs. Melaaaaaaanie” coming through the gate outside, but they’re really sweet kids, and it’s fun to play with them…kids are so easy to please and so carefree. A couple of weekends ago, and probably tonight as well, we went to the neighborhood church. There are only about 10 or 15 people that go there, and it’s just a little one-room cinder-block building. It’s decorated inside with a sheet and letters cut out and glued on it, and there are a few simple benches and a table up front. One guy plays the keyboard, and they sing a lot of pretty long praise songs where everyone just sings and claps. While they sing and during the sermons/readings, which are also done by family members, the little kids just kinda run around and play with the odd broom or cup lying around, leave their bottles or toys on the table holding the keyboard up front, and just find ways to entertain themselves without anyone trying to make them sit down. We couldn’t understand all of the preaching, but from what I gathered, the message wasn’t fire and brimstone, but just more about acting out faith every day and not just at church. The atmosphere was so laid-back and simple, and my favorite moment was when the power went out for a minute or so during one of the songs. The keyboard didn’t work, but everyone just kept singing in the dark, and then eventually it and the lights came back on before the song was over. We’re probably going again today, not necessarily because we get a lot out of it in a religious sense, but just because it’s a good way to spend time with our neighbors and be able to share some experience with them. I wish we could go with them to pick coffee sometime or help them work in the field every once in a while, but we’re pretty booked every weekday with school.

We have a new neighbor now as well—another Gringo from the U.S. He’s just graduated from a Master’s program in Spanish, and he’s here staying at his friend’s house for a few months just to practice Spanish and figure out what he wants to do next. He doesn’t have electricity, screens on the windows, or any of the luxuries we have (like internet and a hot shower), so he’s roughing it a lot more than we are. He has more time to get to know the other neighbors, and he goes to town more often than we do. Mostly, though, I think he just reads a LOT of books. He’s had some helpful tips on our garden, though, so we’ve given that another shot. This time, the weather should be better, and we added a lot of manure from the road to the soil, so that should help fertilize. If all goes well, we should see some sprouts in a few days.

It was nice to see our kids at school again after break. Things in my class have been going really well, but I’m attributing at least part of that to the absence of my most high-maintenance student whose family is taking a vacation in Guatemala right now. He’s a nice kid, but he drains so much of my energy all day long, and it’s been nice to be able to put that energy into my other students and successfully carry out more creative lessons. The second quarter ends next week, so then we’ll officially be halfway through the year. The school just started 2 new classes, a younger one and an older one, for almost 40 new students. I’m not sure what that puts our total enrollment up to, but it’s a significant chunk of new kids. They are just learning English this Spring, and the plan is to have them integrated into the regular classes next fall. This means that there is no space for storage, library, or planning anymore, though. We just sit outside on the ground somewhere during free periods, and the teachers that have lots of free time (the music and art teachers) just kind of walk around and try to look somewhat busy by talking to the administrators or the cleaning ladies or texting on their phones. The new kids don’t have their uniforms yet, though, and one day last week I saw a girl wearing a white tank top over a t-shirt. The tank top said: “Buy me a shot…I’m tying the knot” in iron-on letters. I’m pretty sure she got that secondhand somewhere, and I’m also pretty sure that neither she nor any of the administrators knew what that meant.

At school, the administration has started doing teacher evaluations. This consists of pulling out two “random” students from class, checking their notebooks, and looking through their work-text books to see how much has been completed. Then, if you are a woman, they meet with you to tell you to use the books more or that you are doing a good job, or if you are a man, they just avoid confronting you and say nothing. Not the most effective evaluation, in my opinion, but I guess it’s just another one of those things that comes down to cultural differences in the workplace.

Aaron’s kids have been working on a garden in back of the school lately. They are really excited about it, and are getting pretty competitive about which garden bed will be best. Aaron asked them to bring in old clothes to work in, and some of them are pretty funny, too…for example, one girl just brought a pink dress to wear over her clothes. It’s funny to look out back of the school and see a bunch of kids doing manual labor, but they love it and it’s a great chance to get out of the classroom.

Here's Leonela in her pink work dress:



Jenny in the orange shirt and all the kids doing their manual labor/wandering:



David and Marquito hard at it:




My class took another river trip last week to catch tadpoles as part of our amphibians and reptiles unit. Again, there were some noteworthy outfits on display, like the girl who wore a ballerina leotard as a swimsuit, or the boy who just wore his boxers.

Jasson and Fausto, two of my favorites:




Kimberly catching tadpoles in her ballet outfit:




Maria Jose (Mary Joseph...actually a common name) in her swimsuit with the other kids:




Deyssi and Lorean, cold:




Fausto again, mid-action:




It’d be nice to think of more field trips to do, but it’s hard due to lack of transportation. I want to try to get my kids outside more in the second half of the year, though…they’re finally at the point where they can handle it and not just go completely nuts once we leave the classroom. One big exception to this statement: a couple of weeks ago, some students from the Abundant Life school in Tegucigalpa came to our school, half to do a mission presentation, and half to play soccer. We didn’t find out about this until a few minutes before the soccer game, but we were supposed to bring all of our students up to the field to watch. It had been raining a lot, so it was muddy and slippery, and most of the kids just made mudballs, slid down the hills on boards, climbed trees, collected seeds and flower petals, or found some way to entertain themselves besides watching the game. They were a bunch of monkeys, but it was a lot of fun to just let them go wild and sit back and take pictures and laugh.

A couple of kids "watching the soccer game":



And here's an average day in the lunch line:



This weekend, we did our usual town day, and then some friends came up and we grilled chicken and veggies on the fire and they stayed overnight on our spare mattress. We got sheets for them and everything, so now we’re all set for our visitors to come! Our first ones are my friend Amy from college and her cousin. They’ll be here in 2 weeks! After that, Aaron’s parents are coming for a week, some friends from Landmark are coming, my parents might come, a couple more friends are coming for a vet mission trip, and maybe a friend of mine from home will come, too! We can’t wait to have everybody and show them around our life here!

There isn’t a lot else to report, but life is good, and we’re happy to be missing out on winter! It’s hard not to think about next year, and we do think about it a lot, but we’re trying to just enjoy our time here and take advantage of everything we have.

December in Honduras

Its kind of strange to post to the blog now. I’m writing as we’re on a plane back to the States for Christmas, and there are lots of different thoughts swirling around but we’re both really excited to be going back to see everyone, we’re actually excited for cold weather and by the time January comes around I’ll think we’ll be plenty excited to get back to balmy Honduras.

Melanie left off with some discussion of the devotion of school resources to the Christmas program and I will fill you in on how that adventure turned out. As Melanie was saying before, the two weeks before school ended we didn’t really have many classes and when we actually did have class there were 40 kids practicing a dance outside of our classroom. We weren't exactly open minded when we heard about it. We both had kind of a negative opinion of the program going into the 2 weeks of practice, it was just very different from the type of Christmas programs we both remembered participating in. The bulk of the program (The 12 Voices of Christmas) was monologues of the Christmas story, interspersed with praise and worship songs that the kids danced to. One of the main issues we had with the play was how little the students got to participate. Each grade or two had one song that they danced to and then for the rest of the show they just had to sit in the audience while students from Tegucigalpa lip-synched the monologues. So for the two weeks leading up to the performance each grade practiced their dance somewhere between 40-50 times. The way we practiced was to watch a DVD of the school in the Tegucigalpa doing the program and just copy it, so there was little creative input from us. It was hard to see what was going on in the DVD because of all the changing camera angles, but after 20 or so times we pretty much got the hang of it. The other twenty times were spent with kids in my grade reminding me I missed some move or teaching them at what angles they should hold their fake trumpets.
Here is one of the snacks of the kids at practice for the Christmas program, potted meat and a frosted flakes "granola bar":

Everyday it seemed like their was some casualty whether it be someone’s maraca getting broken, someone getting elbowed in the face when they went the wrong way in the dance, or some tears breaking forth because they didn’t win the audition for air guitar solo.
Four of my students in "the band" for our dance. The guitar solo was the envy of the entire elementary school:
It was also kind of crazy because the performance was at a church in town and so the three days before the performance we had to go to the church and practice. The entire school went and watched while each grade did their dance once on the stage and the rest of the time was crowd control. We had a dress rehearsal the day of the performance with the students from Tegucigalpa and this was directed by the drama director at their school. I personally was not a huge fan of the drama director. He showed up in really short shorts and running shirt (think gym teachers from the 80’s) and proceeded to give a little speech to our kids. The main gist of the speech was telling our students that even though they were from Gracias they could be just as good as the students from Tegucigalpa. I don’t think he meant it this way and I don’t think many of the students perceived it this way but to me it was very patronizing. I have experienced a lot of bias against people who live in rural areas and it seems like it is a pretty universal thing. The drama teacher did not think of our students as equals, he thought that if they tried really hard they could be at the same level of his students. That was just a little thorn in the side but he did a couple of other things that made me question the way he deals with people. Before my class went up on stage to dance I was going around to each of them telling them good luck and have fun and he came over to shoosh me. Later on during the performance I started to clap along with one of the other songs and he signaled to me from across the room very demonstratively to stop clapping. Now I’m not one for dressing up or a dress code but while all the other teachers were dressed up in their school uniforms, he showed up in a wind suit to the most important school event of the year. That all is a little cynical and slightly negative and I don’t want to give the idea that the program was this torturous thing that was a flop, because it actually went extremely well.
The 4th grade before the show:

We only got to practice the play one time with everyone, so I was a little nervous how it would go with so little practice and preparation. In Honduras there are lots of times when I think, sheesh there is no way that can work, its slipshod, no preparation, but then it turns out that it works great. In the States we have all the expectations and laws for how things have to be done but in Honduras as long as it works then its ok. So in line with that, the Christmas program went great.
Some of Melanie's kids before the show:
The kids all had a lot of fun, the parents were really happy seeing their kids perform and the kids did a great job. This also hit home another point for me. In the four months that we’ve been here I haven’t been open-minded about a lot of things. School is very different than schools I’ve been to or worked at before and too often if something is done in a different way I assume that it won’t work or respond to it in a negative way, and that is something that I really want to change.

There was also some great news the last day when we were practicing for the Christmas program. The administrators from Tegucigalpa were in Gracias to check out the program and they decided that we wouldn’t have class the next week, that the program would be the last day of school for the year. We weren’t flying back until the 22nd so that gave us more than a week to travel. Eunice (the school superintendent) also worked it out so that we could have a free place to stay in La Ceiba, the third biggest city in Honduras and a hoppin beach town. Melanie and I cobbled together some plans very quickly and arranged it so that we could take Spanish classes during that week. We had a lot to do before we left on Sunday especially considering that we were planning on having a Christmas party at our house on Saturday to use up our food. So Saturday we had to pack, clean, and get ready for the party and get our house ready to be closed for a few weeks. The party was also the maiden voyage of our “grill”. The grill was some sticks with nails spaced evenly and one of those camping grill baskets that you can move up and down on the nails over our fire pit. We had some burgers and dogs and some tandoori chicken skewers that Melanie made and the grill did quite well, although I think it will be better served for smaller scale operations. We had a huge table of desserts, more than we’d had the entire time we’d been in Honduras. There were cinnamon rolls, brownies, key lime pie, sugar cookies, cheesecake, and eggnog. We had another big stroke of luck at the party; Someone who came to the party was actually heading to San Pedro Sula the next day and offered to give us a ride, and he even came and picked us up at our house! We didn’t even know how we were going to make it down the mountain with all of our stuff and we were saved the 5 hour bus ride as well. This made it seem a lot more like vacation. When you have to be crammed on 3 buses constantly watching your stuff it isn’t exactly relaxing.

We caught a bus from San Pedro to La Ceiba where our host met us at the bus terminal. It was really nice of our administrator to find a place for us to stay and it was really nice of the people to host us (they were very friendly and hospitable), but it was also a little awkward because they moved their daughters out of their bedrooms so that we and the other couple could sleep in them. Their house was really nice, with a really funky swimming pool, but it was far out of town so we either had to ask them for rides or take taxis everywhere. The pool looked like something from a mini-golf course with really intricate concrete work and decoration; it even had a grotto that you could swim into with seats to relax in.

We started Spanish classes on Monday morning, both of us with a different personal tutor. I think it was really good for both us in different ways. We spent four hours each morning of the week studying and speaking with our tutor. I think it will make a huge difference in my Spanish when we come back. I’ve picked up a lot of Spanish words during our time here, but having never studied Spanish formally, I don’t really know any grammar. Even though we had to start back at square one grammar wise I think I’ll be able to synthesize grammar and vocabulary pretty quickly. Melanie seemed to get a lot out of her classes as well, but for her it was more a review of advanced subjunctive forms and an opportunity to spend a lot of time talking to someone whose job it is to correct you. Hopefully when we come back to Honduras we will both have more tools for our Spanish and a little more confidence to go with it.

La Ceiba itself was not a town that we would probably spend a lot of time in again, but since we were there for a week we got to enjoy lots of things that we’ve been missing up on the mountain. Within the first two days there, we had already gone to Pizza Hut twice, which is more times than both of us had been in the last ten years. The first time we went to Pizza Hut for the food but the second time was for the super high speed (for us) wireless internet. Restaurants like Pizza Hut, Burger King, and Wendys are really different here. The buildings are extremely big and modern looking and since the food is a little more expensive than it is in the states, it is really expensive here and only upper middle class and upper class people can afford to eat there. The whole week we were in La Ceiba we had to eat out so we had ample opportunities to sample the fast food fare the city had to offer, and those Whoppers and Frostys sure tasted pretty good after a few months of not having any beef or ice cream. Another feature that appealed to us was the fact that it had two movie theaters. It wasn’t like they had amazing movies or anything (we actually sat through all of Stepbrothers) but since we haven’t even watched TV just sitting there with the flashing images in front of us made us feel right at home and it also helped that it only cost a dollar.

Everyday after Spanish class we would either explore La Ceiba (finished that in one day), or other towns and areas around La Ceiba. There wasn’t too much to see in Ceiba itself, with the beaches being contaminated and night clubs not really being our thing, but the thing about Ceiba is that there are beautiful places just a couple of miles away. From Ceiba itself you can see Pico Bonito National Park which is several gravity defyingly steep peaks completely covered with jungle. Even though the peaks are only five miles from the entrance to the park, it takes at least a week to reach them, and those days apparently are spent hacking through the jungle and fending off mosquitoes and vipers. Whenever a group does decide to climb the mountain everyone follows it in the paper and on TV because either something bad happens or they make it out triumphantly.
We didn’t brave the snakes and climb the mountain but we did get to explore lots of other good places. One afternoon after class it was especially hot and we wanted to go to a beach where we could actually swim, so we caught a bus and headed ten miles down the coast to Sambo Creek. The beach at Sambo wasn’t pristine by any means but compared to Ceiba it was paradise island. We walked down the beach to a place where we could change and realized that we both had forgotten our swimsuits. Normally this would have been resolved by skinny dipping but because of recent flooding the water had so much debris in it, skinny dipping didn’t seem like a great option. The solution we came up with was to sit on the beach and relax which served our situation quite well.

We heard about a good swimming hole the next day that was freshwater and set out to find out about it. We rode the bus a couple miles down the road again and got off a little ways down the river from the swimming hole. There was a road/ path next to the river and we followed it for 20-30 minutes until we could hear the waterfall. All along the way there were houses with small farms situated along the river with huge trees shading the houses and water, very peaceful and picturesque. After walking for a little while the path headed uphill and we got a nice view of the land between us and the sea, full of banana plants and nice places to live.
Eventually we heard the loud water and plunged down through thick plants to the waterfall. The waterfall was probably 20 ft high and 20ft wide with a deep blue tennis court sized pool at the bottom, in other words exactly what we had been looking for.
The waterfall on the Rio Maria:
As soon as we got there some local kids showed up and started playing around on the waterfall. I’ve seen people jump off of waterfalls and stuff but these kids were sliding down the waterfall, which to me seemed really scary and like instant death (who knows what kinds of rocks are under the fall) but each time they emerged unscathed. We spent a couple of hours there swimming, jumping off lower rocks, lying on rocks, and just enjoying the cool air courtesy of the river. We didn’t really want to go back to Ceiba but we figured we probably should before it got dark. We spent another afternoon just figuring out bus service for getting to the airport and then on Friday we headed back to the Rio Maria waterfall for another dose of cool water relaxation. We finished up classes for the week and although we liked it a lot and got a lot out of it, I can’t imagine doing Spanish classes for a month. A week was a nice boost for us and hopefully we’ll be a little more motivated to practice.

One of the sailboats they use in the Cayos, with a sail made of trashbags

The crown jewel of our adventure in Ceiba though was our weekend trip to the Cayos Cochinos, a protected marine reserve of keys about 15 miles off the coast of Ceiba. There are two big keys which are used for marine research and most of the smaller keys are private and either are someone’s vacation home or uninhabited.
Some volcanic rock off one of the keys
We went out with a local tour operator and learned a little about the islands before doing some snorkeling. I didn’t know before we went but off the coast of Honduras is the second largest barrier reef in the world after Australia. We got on our gear and headed under to check it out and it was stunning, stretching for as far as you could see were probably ten different kinds of coral, some 20 feet high with 5 or 6 different kinds of fish swimming in and out. We snorkeled for an hour or so swimming in and out of the coral before getting back on the boats and heading to the one island in the keys that is inhabited called Chachahuate. Its pretty small, maybe a little bigger than a football field and somewhere between 50-75 people live on the island.

A view of the entire island of Chachahuate

Another perspective of the island
There is one restaurant on the island and we had the best fish I’ve had in years with really good red beans and rice. The rest of the tour group went back to Ceiba but we wanted to do something on our own so we decided to stay on the island in a little hostel/cabin thing they have. All of the people on the island are Garifuna which means they are a long way descended from shipwrecked slaves in the 1800s. Living on a tiny island with 75 people might seem like some kind of tortured reality show but after spending a day there we saw what they had going. We spent the rest of the afternoon snorkeling at a part of the reef just off the island and then when it got dark we just sat around and talked to the people who live there. There is sometimes electricity for a couple hours a day but most of the time it seems like people spend a lot more time relaxing and talking rather than watching TV and surfing the internet.
Here are two kids who had apparently gotten in the water and rolled around in the sand:
Everyone just seemed to enjoy living, talking to all their neighbors, going fishing for the day’s food, just going for a quick dip in the clear water whenever you feel like it. We were just sitting on the beach and half of the kids from the island went bodysurfing and a few of their moms came with them. I know this is probably idealistic and short sighted but it seemed like it was summer vacation all the time. We talked politics and soccer with the people for a couple of hours then called it a night but not after watching a rap battle and forced grinding/dancing content among the younger kids.
Some of the lobster traps they made to catch the clawless lobsters:
We woke up the next day, drank some coffee, did some more snorkeling and spent more time relaxing and just enjoying the island. The tour group for that day picked us up and we did a little more snorkeling before coming back to Chachahuate. We left with that tour group to go back and after a little seasick ride we made it back to Ceiba where we got some food and started to pack to come back. We went out to a restaurant to eat and made sure that they had the Panthers game on and unfortunately we got to see them lose along with a British and Canadian guy we’d met through the language school. We went back and finished packing in our kind of slummy hotel room, and tried to fall asleep despite being really excited about going back, two very loud mating geckos (it sounded like there were birds in our room), laying in an uncomfortable bed and being really hot. The next morning we woke up early to catch a bus and head back to the States and that’s where we are now. This is getting posted after the fact but the travels back went really smoothly and pretty soon you’ll get to read Melanie’s post about all the good times we had back in the States.