Playing Futbol with Bertito and Gretchen

So I made a point of it to watch the Euro Cup Finals so I could be in the loop and try and make friends with the 13 year old boy Bertito that I am living with. Bertha is all proud that I play Futbol and coach in the States. She must tell everyone. She doesn't think of me as a lady but she makes these funny gestures like I am a tuff, not to be messed with, woman. It is quite amusing to her and the rest of the family. Nonetheless, I watched the finals with Bertito and told him I had a ball in my room and we could play after the game. He began opening up to me as we watched the game. He said he liked Futbol but I had never seen him playing, which only means in the past 5 days...

After the game I pumped up one of the balls that Emily Harper's father Wynn sent me with to take to the orphanage. I got Bertito to play with me one on one. At first he was laughing but after I took my first shot on him and hurt his hand he gained a bit of respect for me. He doesn't have a father living in the house and actually there are no men living in the house that are role model figures or interact with the kids. He had a BLAST! We got his friend to play and his sister Gretchen. The entire family seemed so thrilled someone was entertaining the kids while they sat around and drank and chatted. The little girls on the other hand danced while we played. On occasion they would come over and jump in a play for a few minutes. There were even two plants, one with red pedals and one with yellow pedals that we gave to the girls to be officials in case someone needed to get a card, either yellow or red. Gretchen fouled her older brother and got a red card at the end of the night and that is when we stopped. We played for about 6 hours on and off, mostly on, and by the days end I was exhausted and DRENCHED in sweat. Just sitting you sweat so after hours of Futbol... It was nasty but totally worth it. Also it rained for about 45 minutes during one of our games. The kids totally want to set-up a big game at the campo, field, a couple of blocks from the house. Also, it was hilarious today my professor, Oscar, saw my Nike watch and asked if I ran. I said yes and also that I played soccer. So my entire class today in Spanish was explaining to Oscar how you train for a marathon. Which he loved because I had to use the past tenses which are what I need to work on... But he claims he is training for the marathon in May of next year in La Ceiba. He also told me there are about 5 men in his church that play soccer and they would flip out if he brought me to the church to play with them. It amused him for about 4 hours talking about me playing soccer against the men in his church!Ok off to write another post about food and then I am heading home to eat dinner!

PS Emily, please thank your father VERY much for sending the soccer balls with me! I can already tell the kids are going to LOVE them! I told Bertito I may leave the ball with him if his team beats me in the big game we are going to have. But the rest are all going to the orphans!

PSS Greg! I know you say I should always let kids beat me when I am playing with them... But, I need to tell you I think it was very humbling for the Honduran boys to lose to a blonde girl from the States. They have been talking so much trash before and during the game that I couldn't let them win. Plus it was nice to see Gretchen, Bertito's younger sister, beat him as well.

Host Family Adventures

I got moved in with my host family late the night I arrived. I was a bit nervous, I must admit, going to bed in a house where I didn't know anyone, I had no idea where I was, in relation to the City I was going to be living, and I was going to only get about 5 hours of sleep before I had to get up for my first day of class. The journey here took over 24 hours; it normally should only be about 7 hours in the air. I heard once I arrived that the Tegucigalpa airport had stopped allowing international planes to land because there was a crash a couple of weeks ago. So all flights are now going through San Pedro Sula, international flights that is... So that was supposed to explain the 9 hour layover I had there and why a group of 4 people from Mississippi landed with me in La Ceiba, our destination, without their luggage. The airport staff told them there wasn't enough room on the plane... I am not sure how much truth there is to this though, I mean about the crash in Tegucigalpa.

Nonetheless, I am here in La Ceiba. My host family consists of Senora Bertha, the abuela, or grandmother and her 5 kids. Her husband was a pilot and he passed away when he was 35, about 20 years ago. Bertha has 2 sons and 3 daughters. The 2 sons each have their own apartment room with a bathroom. One brother lives in his with his girlfriend and the other brother works on a cargo boat and lives in his room when he is in town. He is currently at sea so I am in his room. They have an extra room to house other students which is vacant as of this morning because Laura, a student from Finland just left to do some traveling. Then there are the 3 daughters. Jenny is the oldest and she works in a hospital as an office translator. She has the most adorable daughter named Valentina, she is almost 4 years old and they share one of the bedrooms. The father is in New Jersey supposedly. They don't speak about him much. Next is Marlen and she has 3 kids, Humberto who they call Betito and he is 13, Gretchen and she is 11 and Alexandra and she is 7. Humberto and Gretchen are of the same father, a German man and Alexandra has a different father. Again, neither of the men are around or spoken of. The mother and her 3 kids share a bedroom. Heidi is the youngest daughter and she is a teacher at the CASS school in Utila. Utila is an Island off of the coast of La Ceiba.

Basically the main house has 1 living room, 2 bedrooms, a very small bathroom and an even smaller kitchen. Bertha, the grandmother who owns the house and does all of the cooking sleeps on the couch while her daughters and their kids get the bedrooms and the sons get the apartments. The kids rarely thank her or comment on how the cooking is... What I find insane about the living situation is that the neighborhood we are in, el sauce, is a very rich part of La Ceiba. They house the students there because it is relatively safer. But I have never met anyone in the States that lives like this family... They have SUCH a simple life it insane. The house is made up of stone and there is no washer, everything is hand washed and dried outside, there is one mini TV that the family watches tela novelas on, Oh and the Euro Cup Finals! No one asks for more food than they are given, and no one thanks Bertha for her cooking. The family is fairly close, it seems they would do anything for each other, but the fathers of the kids are not discussed and never around... The showers are a pvc pipe running through a concrete wall. I don't know where the water comes from, but I know it brings in cockroaches. Especially when it rains! Oh and there is no warm water, which is fine with me because it is SO hot I wouldn't want to take a warm shower anyway.I am going on a tour of La Ceiba with some other students. When I return I will write about the food and about playing soccer with the kids yesterday.