Mary in Honduras

Pictures from Central America

2009-03-01T10:47:00.000-08:00

Below is the link to view all of my pictures of the Hogar and Central America.

http://picasaweb.google.com/memulkey

Panama City, the Journey Home, and Thank Yous.

2009-03-01T09:19:00.001-08:00

My last week in Central America was really nice. After Bocas del Toro, Panama, I headed to Boquete, Panama. It was rated one of the top destinations in the world to retire to in a magazine published in 2001. There are a lot of non-Panamanian residents there and all of the locals are very surprised when they meet a Gringo that can speak Spanish. But it is a beautiful little town set at the base of a volcano, Volcan Baru, which is the largest point in Panama. There is always mist from the Mountains, but it is also always sunny, so daily there are rainbows hovering over the town. Here too, you can find delicious and inexpensive food.

I stayed at a hostel, that was my favorite hostel thus far. It was small, intimate, comfortable beds, kitchen for use, tv with tape player, and right on a river. It was perfect! Also, the guests were all guests also traveling alone, so it made it easy to meet people to go on day trips with. I met a girl from Germany and we went on a hike to a strawberry plantation where we had fresh strawberries and cream, and then we hiked to the other end of town where we went and visited and animal refuge. The next day we woke up early and geared up to do the Volcan Baru hike in one day. Most people hike up to the base of the summit and spend the night and hike down the next day. But we were motivated so we woke up at 6 am and began the hike. It was the hardest hike of my life and I am still unsure if I would say it was worth it. The view at the top is nice, but it is a really challenging hike, at the top there are tons of cable tv towers, and it is really cloudy and hard to get a quality panoramic view. We began hiking around 6:30 am and didn't get back into Boquete until about 6:30pm! And we hadn't planned ahead very well and had only grabbed peanut butter and bananas to snack on the way. But it was a great workout and ended up being pretty rewarding sitting on the top of the summit where there is a huge cross, knowing that we were sitting at the highest point in Panama.

Carnival was nonexistent in Boquete. It is a small, sleepy, mountain town. I headed to Panama City to end my trip and that is where Carnival was really going on. I met some people at my hostel in Panama City and we headed to the location downtown where Carnival takes place. About 7 blocks of the city were blocked off and to enter you had to show a passport and then get frisked by the guards. WE entered and it is basically chaos inside, but fun chaos. There are food stands lining the streets serving kabobs, hot dogs, grilled meats, smoothies, cotton candy, tons of alcohol, and more. There are also designated areas where there are fire trucks spraying water on all of the people (it was about 90 degrees in Panama City so the water felt amazing). There were kids running all over with silly string, confetti, and water guns, spraying people and throwing confetti on people left and right. We would be walking down the road and kids would run up and dump buckets of water on us, or spray us with silly string, or both and then finish us off by throwing confetti on us. We were told the parade began at 11 am so we arrived at 10. We walked around and every hour asked when the parade started. First it was 10 then 11 then 12 then 1 then 2 then 3 then 3:15... We walked around until 5:30 and it still had not began. This is typical in Central America and you have to be ready to just go with the flow. We did get to see the parade and all of the floats and miss Panama and it was a good time.

My second day in Panama City I went to view the Panama Canal which is amazing! There is a viewing area where you can sit and watch them open the locks, allow ships to come in, close the locks, and then either raise the level of the water or lower the level of the water depending on which way the ships are going, and then open the locks and let the ships continue their journey. There is a full museum at the locks location and it is really interesting. The French began construction of the canal but went bankrupt and could not finish the job so the U.S. signed an agreement and continued construction. The canal was completed in 1914 and the U.S. held the rights to the canal until in 1977 a treaty was signed that would give the canal back to Panama in 1999. In 1999 the canal was given back to Panama and now they control the canal which they are currently expanding and should have completed by 2015. The minimum fee to pass through the canal is $500 and the most costly charge for a ship to pass through was $359,000.00 paid by a cruise ship. The majority of the users are the U.S., China, and England. It is amazing the complexity and massiveness of the canal, the rivers and the lakes, that are all man made to allow ships to travel between coasts. Also, there were around 22,000 people that gave their lives making the canal that died either due to disease or hardships... None of this was mentioned at the canal. Many of the men did die from Yellow Fever and there was a little snip-it about the Cuban man that determined the cause of yellow fever and came up with suggestions on how to eliminate it. But nothing about the millions of lives that were lost due to yellow fever and the construction of the canal. I found this really interesting. Also, the treaty to give the canal back to Panama was signed in 1977 as a result of U.S. troops gunning down 9 innocent students. In the video the museum shows, it claims that 9 students were detained and their detainment ended sadly... I found the canal impressive but the museum a bit sketchy. It was really catering to U.S. tourists and not wanting to make them feel guilty about the impact their country has had on innocent lives.

After the canal I headed to the local mall to get some last minute items. The mall in Panama is the largest mall I have ever been to in my life! It was insane. In the food court there was every American fast food restaurant you could think of! Pizza Hut, McDonalds, Popeyes, Dunkin Donuts, Burger King, Subway, Quiznos, Taco Bell, Baskin and Robbins, Panda Express, and I think that is it. I did not see one Burgerville in all of Central America nor did I see one Starbucks which was actually really refreshing. But this mall was crazy huge! And lovely inside and I am not much of a mall person.

Then it was time for my trip home. I loaded all of my stuff into my backpack and got all prepared for my 10 am flight. I had asked the locals the cheapest way to get to the airport was taking a bus from Plaza Cinco de Mayo which was about a 20 minute walk from my hostel. The other option being taking a cab which costs $25. I jumped on the bus which was $0.75 for a 1 hour ride and arrived at the Panama City Airport which is also large and really nice. Panama City is said to be the Miami of the South and that is really what it looks like. Huge sky rise building along the water. I was really surprised with how modern and "city like" it looked. Ok back to the flight home, was going through security and had to get escorted into a private room for interrogation. I had kept mace in a secret pocket in my day bag that I carried everywhere for protection. On all of my hikes and bike rides, etc. I always carried the mace in a secret pocket. Also, I had snagged a little butter knife to use for spreading peanut butter on rolls and bananas and had stuck it in the same pocket. The knife had cut a hole int he material of my back and the knife and mace has slipped through the material into a secret little compartment. SO the night prior when I was packing up my stuff I didn't see the knife or mace and had forgotten about them. So I found myself in a room with 5 security guards going through my bag just saying, no fly, no fly... Eventually they gave me my bag and told me to find the knife which I had been denying that I had. It hit me that I did have mace and a knife as I grabbed onto them both through the hole. I pulled them out and all of the guys looked at each other saying, no fly, no fly. I had to explain where I had been in Central America and why and why I had a knife and mace in a secret compartment of my bag, and why I had denied having them. It was an ordeal and also the last interesting experience I would have in Central America. In the end they let me on my flight and I arrived home safe and sound to a warm welcome at the airport.

I would like to thank everyone for reading my blog for the past 8 months. It was really fun and therapeutic to be able to write down my experiences and then see your comments. I would also like to thank all of you for your support while I was away. It really meant a lot to me and it is all of you that made the desire to return home greater than my desire to stay in Central America:). I would also like to thank all of those that made donations to the orphanage whether it was money or materials. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Mary

oh and i forgot about the lobster!

2009-02-19T10:20:00.000-08:00

I have had a lobster meal once in my life when I was seven and went to Mexico my family and another family. It was amazing and I have always wanted to have lobster again but whenever I go out to eat it is always so spendy so I get the cheaper meal, usually being the grilled fish which is also delicious. In Honduras about 20 minutes from the orphanage there was a fish house that sold lobster for $7 a plate. I always told myself before leaving I was going to get lobster... It never happened. Then I went to Nicaragua and ate on this beautiful beach and looked at the menu. It also had lobster for $7 a plate. I got the shrimp in garlic and butter instead because it was cheaper (by about $1.50). After that I was kicking myself! I went again to eat in Cahuita, Costa Rica on the coast and ordered the veggie pasta, again because it was the cheapest thing on the menu. I arrived in Bocas del Toro and told myself I was not leaving until I got my lobster dinner! And 2 nights ago I got it and it was amazing! I spent $7 for a meal eating at a restaurant over the water, watching the sun set. My plate was loaded with lobster, rice, beans, potatoes and veggies. It was delicious! I promised myself I would budget and cook breakfast the next day. So I bought an onion, tomato, green bell pepper and 2 eggs for $1.80 and made huevos rancheros using a little community salt, oil, and the hot sauce that I am now traveling with for circumstances such as this. It was delicious! I would use my favorite term amazing but that may be a bit extreme to use as a matter of opinion for my own cooking. None the less, it was good and I was very happy waking up this rainy morning, unable to do my hike to a nearby beach, knowing I was going to be able to cook and each huevos rancheros!

Tomorrow I am off to Boquete for Carnival and then to finish my trip I am headed South to Panama City to enjoy the end of Carnival and see the canal.

Panama, 7 day countdown!!!

2009-02-18T16:22:00.000-08:00

I said goodbye to Greg at the airport in Costa Rica and had my first jolt of how I was going to feel back in the States, culture shock wise. I had to leave the airport in a rush because I started feeling nauseous. It is hard to explain, well easy to explain, but I do not want to offend anyone. I headed from the airport to Cahuita, Costa Rica. It is a small town on the Southern Caribbean coast of Costa Rica. While I was waiting for the bus I befriended a man who was very interesting. He was the first person I have met while traveling this time around, that I have wanted to stay in contact with and wanted to spend the evening with. We talked for 5 hours on the bus (he was going to the same small town I was). He walked me to my hostel chatting and then I helped him carry his gear to his hotel while chatting and then we decided to go and get dinner and drinks. It was a blast and we talked for about 10 hours. He lives in Boseman, Montana and has traveled to 54 countries and all but 3 of the States in the U.S. He is a hard core outdoors man and does mountain climbing, mountain biking, skiing, cross country skiing, rafting, fishing, and much more. He was telling me story after story about his journeys around the world and his near death experiences. At one point I asked him if he had ever read the book three cups of tea and mentioned that he reminded me... Just then he cut me off and said that Greg Mortenson is his neighbor and racquetball partner! So then we began talking about Greg Mortenson. It was a crazy coincidence. I told him how much I enjoyed the book and how much respect I have for Greg Mortenson. We exchanged email addresses and he is going to set Greg and I up when we take our road trip to visit the national parks in the U.S. It made my evening.

After Cahuita, which was surprisingly lovely, I headed South to cross the boarder. I do not dislike the Caribbean, but I do prefer the the non-Caribbean parts to central America. Mostly because I enjoy practicing my Spanish. But Cahuita was lovely and the people were extremely nice. Especially Jose, the 70 year old man that ran the hostel that I stayed at. I went to pay and had to wait for about 5 minutes while he peed in a bucket right in front of my room. My room was right near the beach and it was all wooded up. With the window shut there was absolutely no light. I shut the window before going to bed and I woke up in the pitch black and I had no idea where I was. I mean no idea what so ever! I couldn´t even figure out what Country i was in. I had to go back and re-trace my steps. I remembered saying bye to Greg at the airport in Costa Rica, I remembered the bus and talking to John Rose, I remembered arriving in Cahuita, then I knew where I was but it took a good five minutes to orient myself. And then back off to sleep I went. I appreciated the two nights of sleep Greg and I got in a cheap hotel in Alajuela, Costa Rica, but not enough. One morning I said that I was surprised there was no noise at night nor in the morning at the hotel. No cars, no chickens, no roosters, no dogs, no people. But I didn´t appreciate it enough. First thing in the morning around 4:30 am in Cahuita I woke up to roosters crowing. It is making me slightly reconsider wanting to get farm animals when I get home...

Back to the boarder crossing. I crossed the boarder between Costa Rica and Panama easily and then took a bus, another bus and a small boat to Isla Colon of Bocas del Toro. I checked into a cheap hostel there and was in serious culture shock, about as bad as the airport in Costa Rica. I ended up in a hostel room with 7 other people that were from all over the world and they were all getting showered, dressed up, hair dried, putting on make-up, walking around in their undies (boys and girls) to get ready to go next door to drink. That is when I realized I have changed on this trip. Normally a good night out wouldn´t bother me, even when I was at the orphanage I enjoyed a handful of nights out. But seeing all of these people and hearing their conversations was way too much for me at that moment. I grabbed my book and headed down the road and found a quiet little bar with a local man playing his guitar where I sat and listened and read for about 3 hours until around 11:30pm, which for me is late! I walked back to my hostel and everyone was still up and being noisy and I headed to bed. The next morning I made my pancakes and checked out and took a boat to another island where there are much less people and tourists. Had I came to Panama for a week wanting a spring break atmosphere this hostel would have been perfect. So I am not knocking the hostel. But for me right now it was just not a good fit at all. But where I currently am on Isla Bastimentos, I love it here. I took a boat to a nearby beach where I spent the day yesterday reading and relaxing and today I took a boat back to the main island where I rented a bike and road across the island which was amazing! The vegetation was gorgeous. Some of the most beautiful plants and sights I have seen in a while. And tons of wildlife! Wild horses, cows, goats, pigs, all just walking around grazing, sleeping and bathing. Mark Wahlberg would be in heaven!

My trip planning has been great thus far, if I may say so myself... But yesterday I realized I was going to be traveling through Panama during their biggest Holiday week of the year, Carnival! I chatted with some people today that said buses, planes, hotels, etc are going to be impossible. So today I booked a room for my last 3 nights in Panama City and an old hostel that looks awesome and I am trying to make my plans for Boquete where I will be from Friday through Sunday. Hopefully it all works out. People are nice enough here though, I am sure if I couldn´t find a room a local would set me up. Hopefully it won´t come to that but just in case...

I am trying to think if there is anything else... I am alive and safe and enjoying life. It is amazing here, not just here, but in Central America. Beautiful. But I do absolutely love Portland and tell everyone how much I love it whenever I am asked about my home. I am and will continue to take tons of pictures and upload them when I return.

Stay warm, take care and be safe. I miss you all.

Quick Update and Happy Valentine's Day

2009-02-14T14:07:00.001-08:00

Happy Valentine's Day!

I am currently in Alajuela, Costa Rica. I ended up really enjoying my time in Nicaragua. I really enjoyed Leon, Nicaragua and doing the hike as well as visiting the beach that is close by on the Pacific side. After Leon, I headed to Granada, Nicaragua where I stayed for about 3 nights doing one day trip to Masaya before meeting Greg at the airport in Managua. We hiked to Lago de Apoyo which most people get to by bus, but we were lucky enough to meet up with some fellow HHK volunteers that drew us a map and directions to get to the lagoon and we were able to hike about 2 hours to it. It was lovely and we were on a side of the lagoon that was completely isolated. The next day we got up and made our way to Isla de Ometepe. Isla de Ometepe is a large island created by 2 joined volcanoes in the middle of a lake off of the shore of Granada. It was a trek to get there we took 3 buses and a ferry but it was well worth it. We stayed on the southwestern side of the island which is only accessible by a bumpy dirt and gravel road. The sunsets from where we were staying were amazing as well as the food and the people. We rented bikes one day and road all the way around the volcano Maderas. It was a 6 hour bike ride on old school bikes with no shocks using a dirt and gravel road that was insanely hilly. Initially I wanted to bike around the entire island, but the man renting us the bikes said that we should just try doing the nearest volcano. I am so glad he did because it was exhausting! It was extremely hot and really rough terrain. It was beautiful though and the people on the southeastern side of the island are pretty isolated because buses cannot make it to that side of the island because there is not a decent enough road. There is only one paved road which runs half way around the northern volcano. The people on the southeastern side of the island do not get to see many tourists and they were all very eager to chat with us and meet us. Each time we would stop to take a drink or shade break kids would run up to us wanting to chat. It was good times. To really enjoy the island though you cannot be pressured for time and have to be more or less up for anything and wanting to relax. The bus schedules are pretty inconsistent and sometimes only running twice a day and the ferries run weather depending. We met quite a few people that thought that the island would be much more tourist friendly and easier to travel around than it was. We had a blast though. On our third day there we did a waterfall hike which was also really nice. We were going to go to the summit of the smaller volcano, but after the bike ride I just could not do it.

From Isla de Ometepe we headed to San Juan Del Sur for 2 days and a night. It was nice but really touristy and got bad marks on my list because there were hardly any places where you could find sweet bread (pan dulce) which I am hooked on! But luckily we were only there for 2 days and then we made our way across the boarder and into Costa Rica. We first went to Liberia a small cowboy ranch town. We got a really decent and cheap place to stay with a T.V.. It was my first T.V. in a LONG time! We also were able to find plenty of bakeries and little diners or "sodas" with delicious food! Upon arriving in Liberia we hadn't eaten a decent meal in over a day and had been traveling for about 7 hours. We had been walking around looking for a cheap place to stay for about an hour and finally found a good room where we dropped off our stuff. We then walked around looking for a good place to eat. We found a place named Soda Ines' which looked welcoming, and it was. It was an awesome little diner with the most amazing food. It could have been because I was so hungry but it was delicious! I got the casado con pollo which was a huge plate with white rice, black beans, roasted chicken, a salad made of eggs, potatoes and beets as well as a zucchini salad which was amazing. Oh and a place of fresh corn tortillas. It was amazing. We visited a volcano our first full day in town and did more hiking. The National Park that we went to is described as the Yellow Stone of Central America. It was really pretty and we saw some really interesting and smelly sights. After Liberia we made our way south to Alajuela which is right near the airport. It is a really nice town with bakeries everywhere! For Valentines Day Greg and I are going to go to 3 bakeries and get 1 thing from each. There are so many delicious choices! We went to one bakery twice yesterday and it takes us forever to make our way through town because I have to stop in every bakery just to see what they have. My mouth is watering thinking about it... Today we went to another volcano, Volcan Poas. It was a bit of a let down because both the lagoon and crater were covered in mist and fog and it was raining. Although the rain was actually nice. I was cold for the first time in a while.

Greg heads back home tomorrow while I make my way first east to the Caribbean side of Costa Rica for a couple of nights and then I will cross my final border into Panama. In Panama I plan on spending about 5 days in Bocas Del Toro, 2 or 3 in Boquete and then my final days in Panama City checking out the canal before catching my flight home. I will update probably one more time with my adventures in Panama. If any of you are curious if I miss the kids, the answer is yes, terribly! Greg came at a good time because after Bethany left to go back to the orphanage I found myself looking through all of my old pictures and reading all of the cards wrote me and just crying. I found myself sitting on buses alone not wanting to talk to anyone but just thinking about the kids and my eyes would well up. But once Greg got her and I had a traveling buddy again it helped take my mind off of the kids. Which after tomorrow, once Greg leaves, I am sure the feelings will come back up again. I am really hoping to go back for New Years with my 2 Hogar roommates and actually maybe all 3 could make it.

I hope everyone is staying warm. I hear that you guys in Portland got some more snow! I will see you all soon.

El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras

2009-02-01T15:42:00.000-08:00

I just arrived in Leon, Nicaragua. Bethany and I left Antigua and headed for the boarder of El Salvador and Guatemala. We crossed without any problems and made our way across the country to San Miguel, El Salvador. One thing I knew before entering the country but nonetheless found interesting was that they use U.S. currency. It just seemed extremely strange seeing everyone walking around carrying dollars, especially since it has been 7 months since I have used dollars and now the first place using my own currency again being in El Salvador. We both loved El Salvador! Although our bus dropped us off in the middle of the city, San Miguel, in a sketchy part of town, every Salvadoran that we met was extremely generous. The people acted as if they had never seen a tourist before in San Miguel, but neither did we (we did not see any other tourists our entire time in El Salvador). We used only local buses which were an adventure! The 3 hour bus we took from the Capital to San Miguel was playing an 80´s MTV music video DVD, all in English. I had never seen so many 80s´s videos! We were both cracking up! Also, I think I failed to mention that I got my haircut one night in La Ceiba with Stacy and Bethany because it had been over 6 months and my hair was hating me. I received a $4 haircut from a salon in La Ceiba and I came out looking like an 80´s male rock star. I had been joking with Bethany about my haircut and how I felt like I looked like a rock star from the 80´s but it didn´t come together until we were on a bus in El Salvador and the Van Halen video for Jump came on. I look like David Lee Roth from Van Halen! We were both cracking up! I think everyone on the bus thought that we were crazy! The buses in El Salvador are great! They are cheap, the perfect temperature and even the cheap local ones have flat screen tv´s. All of the music that we heard playing in restaurants, on buses and in hotels was in English and from the 80´s. We were both having childhood flashbacks.

The locals, El Salvadorans, are amazing. The men catcall, the same as the men in Honduras, but the men in El Salvador are so much more sincere. It did not feel creepy, but rather flattering. I guess it is kind of hard to explain but after being in Honduras for 7 months and experiencing different forms of catcalling we felt we could definitely decipher a Honduran catcall from an El Salvadoran catcall. For example in Honduras we experienced a lot of men saying, hey baby I love you, in a broken accent. In El Salvador it was more, Oh my gosh, beautiful ladies (both in English and in Spanish) in a really sincere, surprised voice. Obviously this totally depends on where you are in Honduras and in El Salvador. But we really enjoyed all of the people we came into contact with in El Salvador and never felt uncomfortable.

Power Outage... I realize now, that with the few and far between power outages at the Hogar we were lucky. Since traveling in Tegucigalpa we lost power twice and I just got to Leon and the power just went out. But I am back after 1 hour in the dark.

Ok back to El Salvador, I loved it. We spent the day in a small hillside village, Alegria. There we met up with a group of people that work for the daily newspaper. They write weekly articles on tourism in El Salvador. We got to be their models in a coffee shop in exchange they let us ride around town with them and their tour guide. They were all very nice and we got to hitch a ride with them to the local laguna, lagoon. Alegria sits on top of a volcano. It erupted some years ago and the crater filled with water, sulfuric water, and is now a green lagoon. It was beautiful. We went to a local bakery and bought a piece of higo pie that was amazing and reminded me of a peach pie my grandma makes. Higo is a local fruit that is like a kiwi.

While we were waiting for the bus in Alegria 2 men pulled up and offered us a ride to the closest town Santiago de Maria where we could then get a direct bus to San Miguel, our home base. We jumped in the car (after analyzing how safe we felt) and chatted with the two men up front. They had just spent the day in Alegria trying to get a group to help them build a donated soccer field for the local community kids. After talking to the men, we learned that the driver is a teacher/director at a local Catholic school in a beautiful small town called Santiago de Maria. While waiting for our forwarding bus he bought us some water and took us to the new community church that he is helping paint and to the school he works at. He said that the students at the school are all very interested in learning English and asked if we could help him with suggestions on how to get volunteers to come and teach English for 6 months to a year. We suggested he make a web page and offered to help translate the page into English and provided him with our email addresses. If anyone is interested in teaching English in El Salvador please email me. Mauricio, the director of the school, said that the volunteer would live in a spare house with the room free. The volunteer would only have to pay for their flight and food which in El Salvador is super cheap. The town is darling and you can find pretty much everything you need. It is about 1.5 hours East and a bit South of the Capital. You would not have to be Catholic in order to work at the school and all that you would be responsible for teaching is English. In San Miguel, where we were staying we were paying $4 a night for a hotel with a private bathroom, a fan, and cable tv. We payed $1.15 for dinners which included a drink down the road at a comedor. For breakfast we lived on wheat rolls and peanut butter and for lunch we just bought street food, same as dinner. The pupusas were awesome and ranging from $0.15 - $0.35. Pupusas are a corn based flour with either cheese, beans and cheese, veggies and cheese, veggies and beans, cheese and meat, basically with whatever you want inside. Imagine a pancake, stuffed with beans and cheese with the pancake dough made of corn flour and then doused with shredded cabbage and hot sauce. Mmm...

We left El Salvador and headed to Tegucigalpa which we had heard was the ugliest part of Honduras. I loved it! I thought it was a very nice city surrounded by mountains with a perfect climate. Sunny, with a good cool breeze, and rainy at night. I really enjoyed Tegucigalpa. The people there were also very friendly and helped show us around and get the right buses when we were downtown and lost. We stayed with a past volunteers grandparents in Tegucigalpa and got to eat delicious homemade, local food and really practice our Spanish, oh and get a warm shower. We spent the day on Saturday in Valla de Angeles, which is a small town in the hills of Tegucigalpa. It was a very nice and relaxing day. This morning Bethany and I parted ways (sad day, now traveling alone). I will miss Bethany, we share the same appetite for good local street foods and sweets. She headed back for the Hogar and I headed South to Managua, Nicaragua where I caught a bus to Leon, Nicaragua. I am going on a day hike tomorrow with a non-profit, volunteer run, organization called Quetzaltrekkers to a nearby volcano. After a couple of days here I am heading back to Grananda, then to Managua, then to Isla Ometepe, then to Costa Rica making sure I save a good 10 days to spend in Panama.

I hope that everyone is doing well. I miss you all and cannot wait to hear what has changed in your lives when I get back home (SOON)!

sad goodbyes and another adventure begins...

2009-01-27T15:44:00.000-08:00

sad goodbyes and another adventure begins...

Thursday was to be my last day with the kids. We were going to have class in the morning, play soccer after lunch, go running to Jutiapa and get licuados, have dinner / huevos rancheros / and then I was going to talk with all of the kids and say my goodbyes. Oh and I was going to do laundry and pack my 7 months worth of life into my travel backpack. The director had a different plan which wasn't communicated very well so it ended up being a very late night for Bethany and I but I still got to say my goodbyes and get soccer and a run in. I played soccer with the kids and a couple of other volunteers for about 2 hours after lunch and then we, Bethany and I, took Gerson, Reina, Francisco and Moises running to Jutiapa. We bought them strawberry licuados and caught the bus back to the Hogar. Bethany and I split a watermelon licuado (my new favorite flavor!). Marlen, one of the cooks, made a special plate of huevos rancheros just for me and said goodbye. Saying goodbye to the cooks was equally as hard for me as saying goodbye to the kids. Orbelina, the other cook, was taking her time off (10 days) and relaxing at her house. I had seen her son earlier and asked if she was going to be there all evening so that I could make sure to say goodbye to her before I left. I walked over to her house and she introduced me to her husband and grabbed a chair for me and a glass of coke. She lives with her family, her daughter, 2 sons and husband in a one room straw and thatch roofed house with a mud and clay stove for cooking right in front under a champa. I had tears in my eyes when I said goodbye to her and gave her a hug and walked away back to the Hogar. She is a lovely woman with a great heart and I already miss her!

My amazing friends Angela and Della sent down tons crafts for making necklaces. With all of the supplies I was able to make each child their own necklace with their names on them and used their favorite colors. I was also able to sit with each kid and allow them to make their own piece of jewelry being able to pick from everything that was sent down. The kids loved it and it allowed me to spend some quality one on one time with each kid right before I left. There were a ton of crafts leftover to make bundles of jewelry. I packed it all up and gave it to Orbelina when I said goodbye, letting her know she could use it as she chose. I told her I thought it would be nice if she wanted to make jewelry with the women in the community to sell it, or that she could put it to good use with her church. I felt very good about doing this and hope that it is truly put to good use. Our cook and other kids that attend our school live about 150 yards from the Hogar on the other side of the fenced wall and it is a totally different life! They live in houses without electricity, with mud and clay stoves and thatched roofs all having to work nonstop for their food and money, the kids included. And then there is the Hogar which is almost like a mansion compared to how the locals in the village are living and the kids have toys, books, 3 hot meals a day, clothes, shoes, beds, toilets, running water, etc. It is just so crazy. I realized walking away from Oreblina's house after saying goodbye and giving her the beads that my biggest regret wasn't going to be not cuddling more with the kids at the Hogar, or not reading to them more, or not tucking them in every night, but rather not spending more time with the real community trying to help with the locals that really have nothing... But that is an entirely different entry.

Ok back to the last day. We ate really quickly, showered and then headed into La Ceiba to watch the local Circus. That's right, a circus came to La Ceiba. They had a tent all set up like Cirque de Soleil but about 1/5th the size. The kids were so excited! We went to the 7pm showing and it was so interesting! This culture is so sexual. I didn't think you could make a circus rated R but this one was! The kids got to see elephants, tigers, a zebra, a pony, and camels. The elephants danced to Daddy Yankee, while the human acts stripped to Stayin' Alive! It was insane! I never thought a circus, which is obviously targeting kids, would incorporate the kinds of acts that this circus incorporated. And I feel that I am an open and liberal person...

We got back to the Hogar late and Bethany and I got to packing and doing our laundry. I woke up to a thumping on the door around 7 am which was/is normal at the Hogar. I went to the door and when I opened it all of the kids were at my door holding a cake. My eyes welled up and I was bombarded with hugs from each of the kids and given cards by all of them. Then Bethany snuck off and came back with a Honduran flag with all of the kids hand prints on it. Bethany had pulled each of the kids one by one into a side room to make me the best going away present/souvenir of my time at the Hogar and in Honduras I could have asked for. I then went in room by room to say goodbye to the kids and give them their necklaces and pawn off the accessories that I was leaving behind. Conditioner and deodorant were the most popular amongst the girls. Running on 4 hours of sleep Bethany and I then headed to La Ceiba to catch a bus on to San Pedro Sula where we would begin our journey.

It is now Tuesday and I have been away from the kids for only 5 days and it feels like weeks. I was sad to leave but happy to begin traveling and I really feel that I will be back. It is a pity the organization isn't in better hands. If it operated properly I would highly recommend it because the kids are great... But I wouldn't. I don't regret my time their but I do have lots of recommendations for people interested in volunteering abroad and would not suggest this project. I do plan to return someday soon to check up on the kids as I really grew fond of them. I will miss my door being knocked on first thing in the morning by a child wanting a toothbrush, I will miss being able to walk out of my door to get a hug whenever I want, I will miss eating with Francisco and having someone with me that shares my passion for food, I will miss the cooks and hearing them laugh at me whenever I showed how excited I was about the meals, I will miss Ruth and her crazy laugh, I will miss Moises and his millions of questions, I will miss Gerson and his excitement towards soccer, I will miss running with Reina and Daniel, I will miss hearing Carolina speak English, I will miss Joel and his eyes and smile, I will miss so many things. I will miss many things but there are only a few things that I will not miss, I will not miss the bugs, the cold showers, or the pounds of vegetable oil cooked into every meal. Oh and I will not miss Maynor's scream! The two things that made this experience were the kids, the amazing, totally unique and loving kids, and the amazing people that I have met from volunteers to cooks to hitches. Overall this was an amazing experience that I will never ever forget and has forever changed me. Seeing how people live happy lives with so little...

I am now on my journey to Panama. I talked Bethany into traveling with me for a bit so we went from San Pedro Sula, to Copan, Honduras on Friday and spent the night in Copan. We then went from Copan, Honduras to Antigua, Guatemala where I did the volcano hike again which I did with my brother back in September. This time it didn't rain on us! We then left early Sunday morning to go to Chichicastenago for the Sunday market which is amazing! From there we headed to Lago Atitlan which is a huge lake surrounded by 3 volcanoes and is breathtaking! We are now back in Antigua gearing up for a full day of travel tomorrow to El Salvador where we will spend a couple of days. From there we are going to Tegucigalpa to spend the weekend with the grandparents of a past volunteer and from there we will part ways. Bethany will head back to the Hogar and I will head on to Nicaragua. I have to say Guatemala is AMAZING. I am in love! I cannot think of a person that I know that would not enjoy it here. I know my mother would LOVE it and I keep trying to think of a person whom I think would not find it beautiful and ideal and I just cannot. I don't want to leave but I am extremely excited to see what the rest of Central America has to offer.

My time is done at the Hogar so I will just write a couple of more entries while I travel to let everyone know that I am safe and having fun! Thank you all for reading my blog and to those of you whom responded. It let me know people were really reading it and that I wasn't wasting my time writing it. I hope that everyone is doing well and that you are all staying warm, dry and safe and spending lots ofquality time with people that you love.

Take care.

OH! Also, I will post all of my pictures when I get home. It takes way too long on the computers here in Central America. But there are some amazing pictures that I guarantee will convince people to come to Central America, especially Guatemala.

Soccer, Movie Nights, Lice, Peter Pan, Running, Insects

2009-01-10T12:41:00.000-08:00

Alrighty, well I have lots to write about and not much time. I am leaving the orphanage in 2 weeks! Everyone keeps asking me how I feel... I am going to cry like a baby saying goodbye to the kids. I can already tell. Just the thought of saying goodbye chokes my up. I am going to try and get a good cry out the day before so I don't make a scene in front of the kids, but I know it is going to be extremely hard for me to leave. In my last 2 weeks I plan to take groups of kids running every day, I am making each child a necklace with their name on it and their favorite colors as my going away gift, and I plan to spend quality one on one time with each child. And as for me, I plan to go on my favorite hike and to my swimming hole one last time.

I will for sure be happy to leave the insects! We have spent 3 weeks doing some serious delousing on all of the kids. I have been living with the kids now for over 6 months and I only have 2 weeks left. Yesterday Bethany did a search on my head because I felt a little itchy and... dun dun dun... I have lice! I actually took it really well because I know I don't have it nearly as bad as the kids (although now some are lice free and the others just have a little bit). I just cannot believe that in my last 2 weeks I get lice! But at least I have time to do 2 treatments so that I come home lice free:). But seriously, feel like a piece of fried chicken for mosquitoes. They are everywhere and I get bit all over, now I have lice, we have rats in our kitchen that are the size of my cat, cockroaches and geckos are everywhere and our bathroom is the mosquito hang out! This is what I will not miss! I know I will not go home and open a drawer in my kitchen and feel let down that there are not fleeing cockroaches, ants and termites (i almost forgot)... Termites are everywhere in our room! My tampons and teaching notebook were both consumed by families of termites (thousands). The other day I opened a drawer in the kitchen to get a knife to cut a pineapple and there was a dead cockroach that had been smashed and killed in the drawer being consumed by hundreds of tiny ants! It isn't a "Honduran" thing. There are more insects in general here in Honduras, I do believe that, but the Hogar is so filthy and unsanitary that it doesn't help at all. Especially with 20 kids running around! Ok, enough about the creatures at the Hogar...

Out of all of the movies Greg so generously sent down for Christmas, the kids' favorite movie is Peter Pan!!! They LOVE it. We have Aladdin, The Little Mermaid, Madagascar, The Lion King, Fantasia, Tom and Jerry, The Incredibles, Cinderella (I thought they would love this one because it would remind them of me, the blond hair I mean), Beauty and the Beast, and other good ones... But the kids LOVE Peter Pan. All of them. We have both the 2003 version with real actors and the 1953 cartoon version and they love both! It cracks us volunteers up, the littlest boy, Joel, runs around yelling "Peter Pan, Peter Pan." They really enjoyed hearing that I love Peter Pan as well and that when I was a kid I would go to the theater to watch the Peter Pan play, drama, with my mom and brother. I didn't tell them this until after they had clearly expressed it was their favorite. We try to only let the kids watch movies on the weekends after dinner and once they have all bathed, brushed and complete their chores. On occasion they will watch movies during the week if we need a way to calm them down and have no other ideas or if they have all behaved well.

There are 3 boys from our town that come to our school but don´t live at the Hogar. They all love to play soccer and I told them the next time they play at the field down the road to invite me. They have come to invite me about 3 times now but I was always busy with the kids. This week they came again on Tuesday and I didn't have anything going on so I went over with them just "to watch." All of the kids from the neighborhood came out to play and I couldn't say no so we all played, barefoot and in our regular clothes. There are some kids, about 7-11 years old, that can play! It was a blast. Tons of little kids came to watch and a couple of the parents as well. I asked if they would want to play again the following day. They said that they would love to and told me to invite some of the kids from the Hogar. I got permission from the director to take some kids the following day to la cancha (the field) to play with kids from the village. We had captains and picked 2 teams. The mother of the 2 boys I teach came to play, the wife of our handyman, tons of kids from the village and I brought 5 of the boys from the Hogar that love to play soccer. We played for 2 hours in just under 90 degree heat from 2:30-4:30. It was one of my most memorable days here in Honduras. The 5 kids I brought behaved amazingly!!! Behavior is an issue usually with the kids from the Hogar when they are playing soccer. But everyone got along, I felt like the kids and I were really connecting with the village and it was the most exercise I had received in months! I thought I was going to pass out! The following day Bethany (my only roommate currently) decided to come so we took 7 kids, 4 boys and 3 girls. Even more people from the community came out to play and watch. We had 2 teams of about 13 each. The field was actual size so we didn't have subs considering the youngest kids playing were about 5 years old and didn't take up much space. It was a blast and again we played for about 2 hours! The kids from the orphanage need more exposure like this. The kids from the village are good solid players with really decent skills. The kids from the Hogar could be if they got to go play with the other kids from the community daily. It is just a matter of safety and having volunteers-people willing to take them.

I found out the following day that 2 of the boys that we were playing with were our cook's sons and that they live in the village. All of the houses in the village agua caliente are typical houses that you find in small villages in Honduras. They are small hut like houses built from mud, clay, sticks and leaves. When I was talking to Orbelina, our cook, about her boys, I asked if they had a TV in their house. She said no, so I told her that she should bring her kids to the Hogar to watch a movie that we could do Friday or Saturday movie nights and have the kids from the village come to watch movies with our kids. I checked with Stacy and Julio and got permission and told her that she should tell the kids in the village and they should all come around 7. It got to movie time and all of the kids were waiting very impatiently for Peter Pan to begin and there was no sign of Orbelina nor her kids. I walked up the road to check and she had fallen asleep right when she got home. After experiencing during Christmas what it is like to cook for 35 plus people 2 meals a day I understand why. I saw her this morning and she apologized but said that her kids and the other kids from the village would love to come have movie nights. I hope that this actually turns into something beneficial for our kids, the kids from the village and the community as a whole.

For a little background, the Hogar was robbed at knife-point by 3 men with machetes before I arrived. We currently have an armed guard, 2 actually, that rotate 24 hours shifts. Also, recently one of our girls who is 13 snuck out and slept with one of the men from the village who is suspected to have been one of the robbers. He is about 20 years old. The man has supposedly made threats towards the head Tio Julio (the Honduran man that lives at the Hogar) because he sees him as the father figure protecting the girl. One day the man was yelling at Julio from across the street and Julio grabbed the guards gun and in front of the kids walked up to the man on the other side of the gate and shot 2 rounds, one in the air and one in the ground, while yelling at the man. The other men from the village and the mans mother all got involved. I still don´t know what exactly was said but I know that it feels as if basically the kids are in a prison. They are in a fenced in enclosure and not allowed to leave, their is an armed guard that has the key to open the gate, at night we are all locked inside the building, the building doors are only open from 7am to 7pm (more or less). The kids cannot communicate with people from "the other side" of the fence unless it is school kids and even then the people that run the Hogar are cautious. Only the director of the organization that has a donated van which only he feels he is allowed to drive can take the kids places. He isn't even comfortable with us volunteers taking the kids places on the bus to get them exposed to life away from the Hogar. Inviting kids from the community to watch movies at the Hogar, playing soccer with the kids from the community, and taking the kids running, in my opinion, are amazing ways for our kids at the Hogar to socialize and get out. I understand that there is a safety issue, but I feel that the chances of us getting robbed again and feeling threatened will lesson if we make friends with the community and people appreciate and respect us.

None the less, I will continue to take the kids running. Yesterday, I took Daniel (a 10 year old boy with a beautiful smile who has the most potential to succeed, he is very smart) running to Jutiapa. We ran there and I bought him a licuado (smoothie). It was a really good time. We worked on money and doing the math of making a purchase. He is a really quick kid and picks things up really quickly. We were planning on walking back home but he asked if we could take the bus because he didn't want his smoothie to melt and he wanted to save the rest for his siblings. He is such a generous kid. When we got back to the Hogar he shared his smoothie with all of the kids. This morning Bethany and I were leaving to go running and Daniel came up to us and asked if we could take him. We agreed and then went and got Reina to see if she wanted to go. She jumped at the chance, finished her chores, changed her clothes and we were off. The four of us ran to Jutiapa, bought some water and apples and gave the kids another lesson on money and math. We returned to the Hogar walking. It was another good time.

I think that is all of the news I have for now. My last 2 weeks are going to be very sad. I can already tell. If I felt that these kids were getting the love and nurturing that they deserve I don't think I would be so sad to leave. Maybe I would... Who knows. I hope all is well with everyone from home. I will be home in about a month and a half. I cannot believe it. My plans for when I leave are to travel to Guatemala for a couple of days, then El Salvador, then back to Honduras to go to Tegucigalpa and stay with a past volunteers family and go to a market, then off to Nicaragua to meet up with some past volunteers then to Costa Rica and to finish my journey in Panama. I am happy that I am traveling after leaving the Hogar. I will have that to look forward to and after 5 weeks of traveling I think I will be ready to come home as opposed to going home directly from the orphanage and La Ceiba.

Take care!

Happy New Years!!! 2009 is Here.

2009-01-03T12:48:00.000-08:00

New Years at the Hogar was much more relaxing than Christmas. We watched movies and danced all evening until midnight. Again, the dancing here is insane. The girls, whether they are 4 yearls old or 40, dance like crazy, crazy dance! I cannot even explian it. At midnight we lit sparkles and then sat down together to dine on homemade lasagna, fried shrimp, garlic bread, and tres leches cake. The dinner was amazing and the majority of the kids were still awake to eat and enjoy it. The volunteers then got January 1st off which was lovely because I was still needing to catch up on sleep and recover from Christmas. So we were able to sleep in until around 9 and head to one of the hotels on the beach in Sambo Creek (a Garifuna village about 20 minutes away) where we spent the day by the pool. It was lovely!

I am running late for meeting the other volunteers and have to go. I will write more the next chance I get.

I hope everyone had a lovely and safe New Years.

Happy 27th Birthday Angela (January 5th)!!! I love you!

48 hours of Christmas at the Hogar

2008-12-28T08:51:00.000-08:00

Ahhh... Christmas has come and gone and all of the volunteers survived, and kids for that matter. We began the morning of the 24th. All of the kids were riled up wondering what exactly to expect. We had all of the gifts layed out in one of the private rooms all sorted out. The kids each received a stocking and were able to decorate them that morning with the volunteers. I had to run into town to try and buy some last minute groceries because the number of people we were expecting to feed had grown by 6. So I headed into town to pick up some more broccoli, ice cream, and shrimp. I only had enough money to buy more broccoli and ice cream but the hitch I received back home donated 200 lemps towards the Christmas meal for the kids. (Again the people I have met here hitching are SO nice). This donation we used to purchase 2 more pounds of shrimp. The cooks cooked 350 tamales outside over a fire to last us for 3-4 days and the kids ate the tamales for breakfast the morning of the 24th. For lunch the cooks made rice and beans and then cleaned their portion of the kitchen and left for their Holiday as did the rest of the employees. This left us volunteers to run the show. Each child received a new outfit that Bethany and I picked out amongst the new donated clothes. Each kid received a top and bottom, 3 pairs of underwear and 3 sets of socks. Supposedly it is tradition for each child to receive a new outfit on the 24th to wear for the Christmas celebration. All of the kids put on their clothes straight away and looked adorable. We did have a couple of kids upset because their clothes either didn´t fit or they didn´t like them, which I helped them dig up something that they did like in exchange. But the majority of the kids were overjoyed with what they received.

We gave the kids a tamale snack around 6 pm and some cake and ice cream as well to tide them over until our midnight dinner. The kids played games and as it got later we then turned on some music and let the kids dance for hours. These kids absolutely LOVE to dance. 3 of us volunteers headed to the kitchen to begin cooking our Christmas Eve supper. We made shrimp with garlic and butter, penne pasta with mushroom sauce, and avocado and tomato salad with chili and lime.

We were hoping to tell the kids it was midnight but begin eating around 11 pm but none of us had ever cooked for 35 people and didn´t have any idea how long it would take. By the time we got the tables set, all of the food dished up and our dresses on to serve, it was midnight. We had the kids sit and wait at the tables, while Bethany, Yessenia and I served all of the food in our matching Christmas dresses. Their reactions were hilarious. All of the kids were still awake except for the 2 youngest boys. This meal the kids enjoyed but not nearly as much as the volunteers. I think it had something to do with the fact that they were exhausted. This made us a bit nervous about how they would feel about the next 2 meals we would be preparing. The volunteers then did all of the cleaning up after the kids and we then all watched Disney´s Little Mermaid together in Spanish. Also, just before the meal we gave the kids a portion of their gifts. Each child received their own blanket with their name embroidered on it and a pair of pajamas. All of the kids cuddled around the tv in their new pjs with their new blankets. The movie wrapped up around 3 am and we told the kids it was time to go to bed. Some of the kids wanted to stay up longer so we just told them that Santa wouldn´t be coming if they were still awake and this sent the kids straight to bed.

We then grabbed all of the stockings and took them into the room where all of the gifts were and began wrapping. We wrapped all of the presents and stuffed all of the stockings and set everything out under the tree. The Christmas tree was in our dinning hall so we decided rather than us sleeping in their we would lock the door so that the kids would not be able to get into the gifts if they woke up before us. We headed to bed and around 4:30 am is when I finally got to lay down. I woke up to kids banging on a door and jumped out of bed and ran to our dinning hall to see 3 boys making a run for the tree, they had basically broken the lock on the door to get inside the dinning hall. I got into the room just in time to tell them that they couldn´t touch anything! I put on a movie and sat with them and told them that once everyone was up, showered, and had brushed their teeth we would then open gifts. I looked at my watch and it was only 6:15 am! So I had received about 1.5 hours of sleep. A couple more volunteers woke up but around 9 am all of the kids were anxious to open the gifts and some volunteers were still in bed. I went in and woke all of the volunteers up and we sat in a circle and began the gift opening process. We first let each kid dump out their stockings at the same time and they were ecstatic! It was adorable to see their reactions. Angelo received some marbles and his reaction was priceless. I wish I had a video on my camera, but I will never forget his reaction. We then one by one let the kids open their gifts. Each child had to grab a gift with a name on it from under the tree and hand it to the child who´s name was on the gift. Then that child would be next to pick the next gift. So each kid was handing a gift to another child and everyone was opening gifts one by one in front of everyone. The volunteers even had gifts under the tree to unwrap so the kids could see our reactions as well.

I was in tears for the entire process of the gift unwrapping. I have never felt so rewarded after Christmas shopping. Every kid loved their gifts. Every child was happy and smiling with what they received. Also, seeing who each child chose to hand a gift to made me want to cry. One of the older, tougher girls chose Ruth who is one of the younger, mentally behind kids, that is kind of treated as an outcast. This shocked and me and brought tears to my eyes. One of the younger boys that is 6 gave the youngest boy his gift and said, "here my brother" although they are not related. It was so much more emotional than I thought it would be seeing these kids open their gifts. The kids then were running around like crazy playing and showing off their new gifts. We put on Beauty and the Beast and a couple of volunteers headed back to the room for a nap while 3 of us began cooking breakfast. We made french toast, bacon and fruit salad with pineapple, grapes, bananas, and apples. We served the kids again while they sat and waited for everyone to be served. This meal the kids LOVED. They loved everything, the syrup, bacon, fruit and french toast. As did the volunteers. I hadn´t had french toast in over 6 months nor syrup for that matter and it was amazing.

After breakfast (which we ended up eating around 2pm) we let the kids play with their gifts while watching movies all day. around 5 pm we went into the kitchen to start thinking about cooking dinner and the power went out. We ended up being without power on Christmas day for about 5 hours with a limited number of candles. The kids were running around like crazy all hyped up from the food, lack of sleep, lack of light, etc. We decided not to cook our last meal and just served tamales, root beer floats and popcorn (cooked on the gas stove and amazing). The meal worked out perfectly but all of the excitement got to Wilmer and he had one of his episodes. I don´t know if I have mentioned him before but he is a 13 year old boy with fetal alcohol syndrome that is on medication. He sometimes has episodes where he loses it and becomes extremely violent towards the kids and volunteers and we have had to lock him outside before multiple times. This night without the power he was messing around with the candles and lit one of the volunteers hair on fire. Bethany and I had to pin him down and grab him by the arms and legs and haul him outside where we locked him out until he calmed down. I know this sounds terrible, but it is seriously the only way we can ensure he won´t harm any of the kids. All of the volunteers agree he shouldn´t be at the Hogar, that he is a hazard to the rest of the kids and volunteers but everyone within HHK assures us there is nowhere else for him to go. That in Honduras there are not homes like their are in the states for disabled kids and he would basically be in a prison if he were to leave the Hogar.

After about an hour he calmed down, as did the rest of the kids and we bathed them by flashlight and took turns shuttling the kids to the bathroom. We got all of the kids in bed and fell asleep ourselves around 10 pm. The next morning we told the cooks they could work a half day and we would cook dinner if they cooked rice. We met with the kids in the morning to read a story and discuss Christmas. All of the kids talked about how it was their best Christmas, how they loved their gifts and most of all how much they appreciated the food that we cooked. Bethany and I began cooking the last supper around 4 pm and finished up around 7pm. We made 2 huge casserole dished full of chicken devon with rice. The kids LOVED it! WE gave each child seconds and still had enough food to serve it for dinner again last night. It was hilarious! All of the kids sat around saying, "ahh, mi tia Mary y mi tia Bethany pueden cocinar" , "ahh, my aunt Mary and my aunt Bethany can really cook." They were adorable. We also cut up some limes to squeeze on top of the casserole which made it all the more enjoyable for us and the kids.

And that was that. The end of our exhausting yet amazing Christmas. It was by far my most memorable and most rewarding Christmas ever. Francisco came up to me and asked if I was going to be coming back for Christmas next year because he had such a wonderful one with me here this year. I wanted to just say yes and mean it but I just said that I would love to but I didn´t think I would be able to make it. I then tried to talk my two roommates into agreeing to come back next year for Christmas to celebrate it again at the Hogar with the kids. They said no to Christmas but sounded very optimistic about the prospect of us coming back for about a week right after Christmas to celebrate New Years with the kids. Hopefully we will all stick to this agreement and do it. After being her this long, I know feel that I would really love to come back and check up on the kids after about a year. I will miss them terribly and after seeing volunteers come and go and being present at their going away parties I am nervous for mine which is only about a month away. I will need to try and get a good cry out the day before or i will end up crying like a baby in front of all of the kids... ugh, I don´t want to think about that anymore.

I hope that everyone back home enjoyed their Christmas and made it around safely through all of the snow. I miss you all and I will be home soon.

Take care.

PS I cannot post pictures at this internet cafe but I have a ton of good ones that I will post this week.

One of my favorite days here in Honduras...

2008-12-24T09:55:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite days here in Honduras... There is a 13 year old girl named Reina at the Hogar who was severely malnourished and came to the Hogar with her 2 younger sisters about a year after it had opened so she and her sisters are the "new kids." She has burns all over her right arm and neck and was abused pretty badly by her father and brother sexually before arriving at the Hogar. She gets teased a lot by the other kids and it not treated as one of the oldest girls although she is the 2nd oldest that we have. She is very loving and maternal towards the younger kids and very affectionate towards the volunteers. She is also a very hard worker. Yesterday I was going to run to the town nearest to us, Jutiapa, which is about 3.5 miles away. I needed to get some Christmas gifts for the cooks. The volunteer that was going to run with me backed out at the last minute so I thought to ask Reina. She is the best runner out of all of the kids. She absolutely LOVES to go running and she has never had to stop and rest or take a break in all of the times I have taken her. She was ecstatic and got her stuff on in about 30 seconds.

We jogged to Jutiapa and she never had to stop and just had a grin on her face the entire time. I took her to the licuado stand (smoothie store) and let her pick out a flavor. She picked out strawberry and we split the smoothie. She was adorable and you could tell just loved it. We then went and picked out the gifts for the cooks and headed to the internet cafe. I was checking my email real quick while she sat with me patiently. Greg and sent me a link to some pictures the had taken to fill me in on the record breaking snowfall in Portland. I was able to show her my house, my cat, my dog, and all of the snow! She was amazed as were all of the other ladies in the internet cafe that ran over to see the pictures "ay, que bonito" is what all of the ladies were saying. We left the cafe and headed to the bus stop and I asked her if she wanted anything before we left. She said an apple so we went and got an apple which she was willing to give me a bite of. WE jumped on the bus and headed back to the Hogar. She was glowing the entire evening and told me to thank me she was going to paint my nails today for Christmas. It was one of those feel good days. We had a lovely time together just the two of us and I know it meant a lot to her and it meant a lot to me as well. These kids, as much as they act out and drive me crazy at times, just want attention. At the Hogar, their home, it is hard to give meaningful one on one attention. But to take them away from that environment and spend time with them one on one is amazing and that is when they open up and talk about their lives, families, hopes, wishes. She wants to go to finish school and take care of kids in need when she gets older. Reina is also the one child that asked for clothes for Christmas. I picked out her outfit last Saturday and I am SOOO excited for her to open it! When we were running I asked her if she could get one gift what would it be. And she told me a pair of sandals and that is all. We have 2 nice tops for her, a pair of matching capri´s, a pair of matching sandals, 3 pairs of underwear, 3 sets of socks, and a bra plus stockings stuffers (nail polish, candy, jewelry, etc. I so cannot wait for tomorrow morning to see her expression. Being here has really helped me learn that giving is so much more rewarding than receiving which is just about the best thing I could have learned this Christmas and while being here.

Hondurans

2008-12-21T13:05:00.001-08:00

I must say real quick, the people here are so generous. I know you find kind and cruel people all over the world, but I have met many more kind people here and I cannot recall meeting any cruel people in my time here. Just this morning I got a hitch with a man, Jose Efrain Ramirez, who lived in New Orleans for about 10 years and is 50 years old. He showed me his University of New Orleans college ID card and his High School diploma from the local New Orleans High School. His daughter that is 32 was Miss Honduras and they traveled to Japan together for Miss Universe. He got my phone number so that he could call me because I told him I wanted to meet his daughter. All of his kids are bilingual. He owns a cattle ranch near where I live and also owns a meet shop. He took myself and Nathan (volunteer I was hitching with) to show us where his meat shop was and told us he would give us a deal if we ever needed meat. He took us directly to the store we were going to start our shopping at and thanked us for coming to Honduras and volunteering. About an hour before that I was walking to the village a little over a mile away where the other volunteers live. A man on a bike pulled over and asked me where I was going. I told him Cacao and he offered me a lift on his bike. I said I weighed a lot and he said (all in Spanish) if I wasn´t comfortable getting a ride on his bike that was ok, but that I wasn´t too heavy. So I jumped on the biked and he peddled while I steered and we chatted about the village where we both currently live. He told me where his house was so that I could visit and dropped me off right at the house I was heading to. His name is Elder and he is about 35 I would guess. I just cannot get over how many generous people I have encountered in my time here in Honduras.

Christmas!

2008-12-21T12:30:00.000-08:00

I decided to stay longer for the kids and also because I didn´t really want to have to deal with being home around Christmas time... This weekend I am alone at the Hogar because my current roommates are traveling. I spent yesterday from 9 am to 9 pm and 5 hours this morning in town walking around shopping for 20 kids, 2 cooks, our cleaning lady and her son, and our main tia and her son. This is the most shopping I have ever done for Christmas! I had to take the bus back yesterday with 5 huge bags full of gifts for the kids! It was crazy but also SO much fun! I asked each kid what they wanted for Christmas one morning in our circle group and wrote it down. Basically all of the boys wanted remote control cars or marbles and all of the girls wanted dolls and a couple of them wanted make-up.

Luckily I have been here long enough to know where some of the deals are. There is a outlet store downtown near the central market and I went there yesterday and spent about 3 hours in this store. Thanks to money donated we were able to get each kid the gift that they requested as well as stocking-stuffers. I am going to take SO many pictures of the kids opening their gifts and on Christmas I cannot wait! I got to hand pick outfits, shoes, sandals, dolls, cars, jewelry, etc. And since I have lived with these kids for so long I have a decent idea of what they like.

This organization is seriously dysfunctional but the kids have made it a worth it experience. The 5 volunteers that live at the Hogar will be running Christmas. The head couple that lives there are taking the week off, leaving Monday and returning hopefully next Friday. So us volunteers will be doing everything. Bethany and I made the grocery list and picked out the menu and we will be doing the cooking for all 35 people. We are so excited. We found some really funky Christmas dresses that we are going to wear and braid our hair and do a little Christmas dance for the kids. We are going to make sure the kids sit in their chairs and we will serve their food rather than just ringing a bell and having them run and get their food like usual. We are going to have popcorn, root beer floats, Disney movies in Spanish (that the kids have never seen-the little mermaid, cinderella, the lion king, peter pan and beauty and the beast). We are going to dance and stay up all night. In Honduras Christmas is celebrated at midnight. That is when you open gifts and eat dinner so it will be a late night.

Our Menu:
24th
Lunch-tomales with help from the cooks on the 23rd
Dinner-shrimp with garlic and butter, pasta with mushroom sauce and garlic, salad-tomatoes and avocado with lime, chile and salt.

25th
Breakfast-french toast with real syrup, fruit salad-pineapple, apples, grapes and banana and bacon.
Dinner-chicken with broccoli, cheese, rice and gravy aka chicken devon

We will also have popcorn, root beer floats and be baking cookies all day on the 25th! And the kids will get to have real milk with breakfast on the 25th. This is huge. All they ever have is hot powdered milk with tons of added sugar.

Reina, the girl that I de-loused, wanted clothes for Christmas so I got to pick out a nice outfit for her with some matching sandals. Ruth broke her only sandals so I got her a pair or orange crcok-like sandals (orange is her favorite color). I got 5 pairs of sandals-shoes for kids and got up early this morning to trace their feet so I could get the right size. I got the oldest girls real hairbrushes so they wouldn´t have to use lice combs. I cannot wait for Christmas!!!

I still have to get stuff for the kitchen-cooks and figure out where I can buy wrapping paper... I have not found wrapping paper in any store. I may have to just find a newspaper stand and get tons of news paper. The stores will wrap gifts if you pay but don´t sell rolls of wrapping paper. It makes me almost want to cry thinking of how happy hopefully the kids will be on Christmas. Sometimes when they get gifts they are not very appreciative. For this I talked with the other volunteers and suggested the idea that we each wrap something and open it in front of the kids so they could see how we react when getting gifts. I wanted to do a name draw with a $5 limit but I got outvoted. Instead each volunteer is to wrap something they currently own, or buy themselves a gift and wrap it to open in front of everyone and the gifts are to be from the other volunteers. I bought myself the earrings I have been eyeing since my first week. I am so excited to wear them. I may also get myself a pair of pajamas if I have time. That is my Christmas tradition at home, getting new pjs every year from my Grandma. Ugh, I am going to be sad to leave... I know on my last day I will cry. Just thinking about it makes me want to cry. I have been watching volunteers come and go and I get teary eyed for their last day so I cannot imagine how I will be at mine. I have about 4 weeks left before I leave and start traveling down to Panama!

Sorry these posts are all over the place. It is chaotic here with volunteer transitions, Christmas, the organization, etc.

I hope that everyone back home is well and staying safe and warm through the Winter Storm 2008!!! Is that what the news is saying? I can only imagine.

All of the Christmas gifts were made possible by donations from churches, volunteers, family/friends of volunteers-Greg and Diane Dunbar, THANK YOU!

I miss everyone and hope that you all have a happy and safe Christmas. Sunday I plan on posting all of the pictures from Christmas and updating the blog to let you all know how it turns out!!!

Lice!

2008-12-21T12:21:00.000-08:00

I am starting to feel offended that lice have not chosen to inhabit my scalp. We planned a huge de-lousing with all of the current volunteers on Thursday. We managed to get 2 men to take on 5 boys each, while each of the female volunteers took on one girl each. I had Reina who is a 13 year old girl that loves to run and read. Her hair is just below her ears. I sat in a chair from 9 am Thursday morning until 5:30 pm Thursday night and then finished her head around noon on Friday. Friday I started working on Enises head and still have not finished. It is INSANE how much lice these kids have and how long it takes to pull out the nits! The girls all have dark brown-black hair and the nits are fairly easy to see and appear as either light brown or whitish looking eggs. So when you look closely at these grils´heads you see tons of white eggs all over their heads.

There were a couple of volunteers that finished within about 5 hours and I went back through their kids heads and easily found 3-5 nits right away still in their heads. Out of the volunteers the 4 that I currently live with all have lice. I am the only Hogar volunteer that is currently lice free. Now we are going to have to continue our delousing for about a week doing the volunteers as well. How sad would it be to make all of the kids lice free and then have one of the volunteers give it back to them...? The girls were SO patient. They sat in chairs reading while we picked nits out of their heads ALL day Thursday and Friday. I still have to finish 2 girls tomorrow. We are wanting to have a lice-free Christmas. The one plus is that I am now very prepared for when-if my kids get lice.

Francisco and the Tooth Fairy

2008-12-21T11:57:00.000-08:00

I know that I have talked about Francisco before in the past... He is the boy who is about 10 years old and is as pationate about food as I am. He is adorable and is always the first one to greet me with a morning hug and always the last one to hug me before bed. He lost a tooth on Thursday and mentioned this to another Tia. He woke up the next morning with no money. He then came and told me he hadn´t received any money from the tooth fairy (ada madrina). So we wrote a note to her so that she wouldn´t forget! The note that he wrote read: Dear Tooth Fairy, I want you to bring me money please. Because I do not want to have my tooth. Because I will lose my tooth. And I do not want to lose my tooth. My bed is the one with the colors on it. My bed is in the corner. I love you, Francisco.

Every time he write a card to the Ada Madrina or a volunteer leaving I want to cry because they and he are so cute! So I set my alarm for 3 am so that I could put his money (10 lemps=50 cents) under his pillow. I woke up and went into the boys room and he was laying there wide awake and asked me what I was doing! I said I was doing my shift and we each took shifts during the night to check on the kids... I stayed awake until 4 am to check again and he was still awake! So I went to bed and woke up the next morning to him pounding on my door wanting me to call the tooth fairies boss. I told him I made the call and that over a thousand kids had lost their teeth that week and that she was really busy but would get to it this weekend. I was in town ALL DAY yesterday until about 9:30pm Christmas shopping (another post) and when I got back the boys had all just gone to bed. I snuck in his room and made the exchange. While I was brushing my teeth today at 7 am he came pounding on the bathroom door to show me his money and ask me if I could guard it. He is adorable and the kid that I think I will for sure miss the most. He loves to sing and dance and is so curious. He was sweeping the kitchen when I left yesterday but he ran with his broom in hand to follow me to the gate to ask me, where I was going, when I would be back, what I was going to eat, if I was going to go swimming, and more.

Pictures!!!

2008-12-08T10:47:00.000-08:00

Below is a link to view all of the pictures that I have taken thus far in Honduras!!! here.

Here's a sample picture

From School

Vacation Care

2008-12-05T06:59:00.000-08:00

The school year has ended in Honduras and what we in the states consider "summer break" is now what the kids at the Hogar are on. They have 3 months off of school from mid November to mid February. What this means for us volunteers is that we have to plan a lot more but also we get to interact with all of the kids on a daily basis as opposed to just the kids in our grade that we taught. Our current schedule is: wake up around 6:30, get the kids up and going and bathed, eat a quick breakfast (usually hot powdered milk and cornflakes), gather the kids together in our large dining hall and then teach, play games, do crafts, work on the computers, etc. from 8:30-12:30. We then eat lunch and the little kids rest, while the other kids do their chores. After about 2pm we either do a sport in the afternoon or work with the kids that are struggling or didn't pass their grade one on one. After that usually us volunteers go for a run with some of the kids and return just before dark and just in time for dinner around 5:30pm. After dinner again it is chores, bathing, and then a bit of reading just before bed. The kids are usually in bed hopefully by 8:30 and then us volunteers shower, plan for the next day, read and hopefully have the lights out by about 10pm.

I really enjoy the new schedule because I really like interacting with all of the kids. The only downside is you have to be prepared to teach and work with the kids on anything. The kids absolutely love coloring so the crafts table is usually the most enjoyable. I cannot believe how much these kids love to color in coloring books. Especially coloring books of Disney princesses. Both the boys and girls love coloring in pictures of Disney princesses. If we need to get all of the kids into one room in a hurry in case of any type of issue or emergency we are having, we just have one volunteers grab a couple of coloring books and the bag of colored pencils and head into our dining hall yelling, "ok kids, who wants to color" and all of the kids sprint in to the dining hall. It is hilarious. We really did have to use this strategy when we were having an emergency with one of the oldest boys. He was having a little episode and acting out violently and we needed to separate him from the rest of the kids so that we could corner him and get him to take his medication. And it worked like a charm. Also, the kids love to play card games. I haven't taught them 31 (my families traditional card game) yet, come to think of it. But they love to play war, go fish, memory, and many other card games that I think the kids have just made up themselves. And as always Candy land is a huge favorite amongst these kids. I found a Bingo game in our room that had not been opened as of last week and got that out to try with the kids this past Tuesday and they loved it! It took a while to explain the game to them and for them to get the hang of it but after a couple of rounds they got it and loved it. We have been playing that saying all of the letters and numbers in English first and then if the kids still don't get it we will help them and say the letters and numbers in Spanish. We are also working on teaching the kids English during vacation care, and throughout the year, so Bingo is a fun way to help with learning the numbers.

As Christmas is approaching we are working on putting together a program for the kids to do for the other projects. This has been a challenge, trying to get the kids to agree on something they want to do. We are trying to find some good Christmas music in Spanish to teach them a song and a dance to it but trying to get 20 kids to come together to rehearse when the kids' ages range from 3-16 is quite the struggle. But hopefully it will be a fun process and the end result will be good. I am really excited for Christmas and to spend it here with the kids. I have hundreds of pictures of the kids and for Christmas I am thinking about developing pictures for each kid and making little photo albums. In Honduras not many of the locals that I have met have cameras and hardly anyone has any photos printed. The kids at the Hogar that due have pictures that they were given when they were young, guard them with their life. It is sad to think that most kids get their pictures taken with their families often throughout their childhood and their parents keep the pictures so that they can all look back upon them. Here at the orphanage some of the kids have a couple of pictures that were given to them before they came and that is the only tangible memory they have of their life before the Hogar and of their childhood. It should be a really nice Christmas for the kids this year. And hopefully the program is a success. If it is I will post it on youtube:)

Trujillo

2008-11-29T13:25:00.001-08:00

I managed to get some more time on the internet so I will finish about our Trujillo adventure. After spending 2 weeks straight at the orphanage just the 4 of us volunteers we decided we deserved to take a weekend away so we could actually sleep in, hopefully get a warm shower and if we were really lucky, get a room with a T.V.! We decided to hitch to Trujillo a small town about 3 hours east of La Ceiba. Trujillo is where Christopher Columbus first touched the mainland in Central America on his final voyage to the America´s. Alison, one of my roommates, had been wanting to go to Trujillo before she left which was this past Friday and had not been able to make it. Bethany, Yessenia, Alison and I packed our stuff and decided to leave early Saturday morning and hitch to Trujillo for a nice evening away and hitch back Sunday. We woke up to pouring down rain and decided to wait it out. We waited until about 10:30 when the rain eased up a bit and headed out for our journey. We got our first hitch in a nice truck with an Islander from the island Guanaja. The other girls made me sit in the front. I got in the truck and sat down and looked at the emergency brake where he had a huge gun. I don´t know anything about guns but this one was a big silver gun that he referred to as his 45. He told us that he carried it for protection because in his words, "in Honduras, killing a man is like drinking a glass of water." He was a very nice man who was really interested in talking world politics. He took us to a small village along the way where he stopped to donate so money to a family there. He gave us his number and told us if we needed any help to call him. He took us about half way and we got another hitch with a group of 3 men, driving 2 trucks, working on the cell phone towers along the way. We got to visit one of the cell phone towers with them which was a roller coaster truck ride across a river and up the steepest muddy road I have ever seen in my life. We learned while with them that the bridges were out to get to Trujillo and we would have to take a 3 hour detour. One of the men offered to drive us because he still had to visit a cell tower in Trujillo and didn´t want to drive home and back out Monday. Pablo drove us to Trujillo and what was said to be a 3 hour detour took no longer than 1.5 hours (he thinks they meant 3 hours by horse). We checked into an awesome hostel on the beach for $6-night that had hot water, t.v. and an all you can eat breakfast cooked by the German owner. Unfortunately the electricity was out so we headed out for a walk on the beach and to find some food. We got to a restaurant on the beach all lit up with candles because the electricity was out in the entire town and sat down to eat a nice meal. Each of us was served an amazing seafood meal which we all took the time to savor as opposed to how we eat with the kids, like it is the last meal we will ever eat. We invited Pablo to meet up with us so we could buy him a meal or some drinks to repay him for the ride. He offered to give us a ride home the next day and hang out in town until we were ready but we told him we would find our own way so he wouldn´t have to hang out in town longer than he wanted. We finished our meals and headed back to the hostel while Pablo headed out to check out the night seen. We explained to him that since we life at an orphanage we are all exhausted by 9 pm and it was only about 7:30 while we were eating and we were all yawning.

We headed back to the hostel and our electricity was back on so we turned on the TV and all fell asleep watching My Best Friends Wedding. I was routing for Prison Break reruns but was outvoted. We got up the next day and walked around Trujillo and then decided we should head home. We got a hitch right away and it was the worst hitch ever! A white van pulled over for us and we check and the man was going all the way to Saba which is half way and where we got dropped off on our way out. So we jumped and the chance and got in not noticing the pictures of cows and pigs on the side of the truck. At least I didn´t notice. Inside the van was a huge cooler that we think was carrying a dead cow without any ice. The van smelt worse than anything I have ever smelt. It smelt like dead rotting carcass. I was lucky enough again to be in the front and I had a window, but it was pouring out so while I kept the window open to help get some fresh air, I was getting soaked at the same time. My poor roommates were in the back squished against the meat cooler that was leaking blood. We were SO happy to get out of that van. We thanked the man and offered him some money which he denied like every hitch I have encountered. We then jumped on a bus that took us about 20 minutes towards where we were headed. They dropped us off and didn´t charge us, I am thinking because they just wanted us to get off the bus since we stunk so bad.

After about 10 minutes we jumped in another hitch, myself up front again with a man who owns a hotel in Olanchito but lives in La Ceiba. He had a son my age and a daughter a couple of years younger. Whenever I feel the slightest bit nervous I begin talking to our hitches about their families. This man again had a huge gun resting on the emergency brake. He gave us a ride all the way to the Hogar and dropped us off and we were home safely but smelling like dead cow. Ohhh! I forgot to mention the awesome breakfast we got. Sunday morning the German man Gunther stuck to his word and made us a pancake breakfast that was amazing. We got all we could eat pancakes, toast, German sausage, and eggs. It was delicious. We even got strawberry jam to put on our pancakes which was perfect because the other option, the honey jar, was filled with ants. Guatemala has awesome honey that they sell here in Honduras and it is more common for pancakes, honey as opposed to syrup, but the honey jars are always filled with little ants. But we eat it anyway.

Other than the kids, my favorite thing about my time here has been getting to know the locals through hitching. We always share our stories about our hitches and all joke about how we should all start hitching journals. The meat van was by far the worst!

Thanksgiving, San Pedro & Trujillo

2008-11-29T11:44:00.000-08:00

Happy Thanksgiving! I hope that everyone had a happy Thanksgiving and was able to spend some quality time with family and friends and eat some good food. I missed my grandma's sweet potatoes, my mom's cranberries, spending the weekend at the beach with my family, meeting my cousins new baby and catching up with my family... Fortunately I was able to have a nice Thanksgiving here spending the evening with fellow volunteers. A man that owns a hotel teamed up with another volunteer to cater a dinner at a hotel on the beach where they invited all HHK volunteers to spend thanksgiving together. We were even fortunate enough to get some turkey and stove top stuffing! There was also rice, veggies, pasta dishes, mashed potatoes and gravy and some pies. I have found a new passion... Pecan Pie!!! I don't know if I have never tried it or if it was just that this pie the other night was more amazing than any piece I have ever tried, but it was excellent. My roommates and I each got a plate piled high with food and all we could think about was how the kids would all die to be eating what we were eating. So Bethany emptied her water bottle and we stuffed the rest of the food we had on our plates into her bottle so we could take it back to the kids. Francisco in particular because as we were leaving he followed us out asking what we were going to eat and if we would bring some back to him as he does every time we leave the Hogar. We do things like this often and just laugh, we know have a saying, "you know you have lived at an orphanage in Honduras too long when..." in this case "you stuff food into a nalgene water bottle to take back to the kids at the Hogar."

I wanted to go around the table and have everyone say what they were thankful for but everyone seemed a bit too eager to dig in but Cheyanne another volunteer after dinner asked me what I was thankful for. I thought about it and I usually always say my health and the health of my family which I am still very thankful for, but I thought about what I have experienced in the last 5 months and what I am thankful for is the people I have met in my time here. I have met so many people with such huge hearts that it really gives me confidence and hope that there are good hearted, amazing, selfless people out there in the world. I could write a book about our hitches alone and how generous and friendly the people have been that we have met. I will try not to drag this blog on too long so I will just cover a few of them...

Last week was the last game of the season for Honduras. They played in San Pedro Sula against Mexico, their biggest rival. Last time they played in August they lost 1-3. I really wanted to go and at the last minute 3 other volunteers said that they would hitch to San Pedro Sula with me and take the chance of getting last minute tickets. So we grabbed some clothes and headed off hitching our way south to San Pedro Sula which is about 3.5 hours away. Our first hitch was a man named Wilfredo who lived in Tacoa but had a house in San Pedro Sula right next to the Stadium. He really wanted to go to the game and said we could stay at his house and he would drive us there if he was going, but that he was just going into La Ceiba because he had a meeting. He was a middle aged man who has a niece in Miami, FL and 3 daughters in North Carolina. He dropped us off in La Ceiba and we waited for our next hitch which we got after about 15 minutes and we were cramped in the bed of a truck with a couple bags of oranges. I offered to give the two men driving us money when we pulled over at the gas station which they would not accept. After we pulled away from the gas station they pulled over and bought 3 bags of lyches which are a fruit here almost like a grape or cherry. They handed us two of the bags and said they had purchased them for us to eat. They took us all the way to Progresso which is about 2 hours from La Ceiba and dropped us off on the main road heading to San Pedro Sula. From there we got another hitch in a truck but I sat up front while the other 3 volunteers sat in the back. The man was a construction worker who lived about 15 minutes outside of La Ceiba. I chatted with him about what I was doing in Honduras, my family, his family, soccer, etc for about 45 minutes and he asked where we were headed. I just told him to drop us off wherever he was headed and we would walk or get a cab to where we were going. He insisted on driving us to the Stadium when he found out that was where we were headed and said it was on his way. When we pulled up to the Stadium we shook hands and I got money out to give him and before I could offer it he placed something in my hand and said he wanted me to take it to remember him by. I looked at my hand and he had given me a $20 bill. I was in shock and told him there was no way I could accept it and that I had money and I was going to offer him money for gas and the ride. He insisted that I buy something nice for myself to remember him by and placed the $20 back in my hand. This was by far my most shocking hitch experience... He dropped us off right in front of the stadium where we were able to buy last minute tickets to the biggest game of the year for half price ($5). The game was amazing! Honduras won 1-0 over Mexico advancing them to the next series beginning in February. The stadium was PACKED! I don't think they have a max capacity at this place because it was PACKED from the bottom level to the top, there aren't even seats, not a soul was sitting down. People were standing cramped in aisles, on stairs, everywhere. We watched the game, took pictures and videos, cheered with the locals and got soaked. It poured the entire time and once the game was over we were soaked along with all of our stuff. We got a cab to take us to a hotel after fighting our way out of the stadium and he was very nice, attempted to rip us off, but then after we confronted him about and maybe sobered up, he spent the entire evening with us. He drove around San Pedro Sula helping us try and find a hotel, but everything was booked. SO he then offered to take us to Progresso which was on our way but about 30 minutes away. He said he lived there and we could stay with him at his place and he wouldn't charge us. He droves us to Pregresso, took us to his favorite restaurant where we bought him dinner to thank him and then offered to take us to his favorite karaoke bar. At that point it was about 1 am and we were still soaked so we asked him to drop us off at a hotel. He drove us around Progresso trying to find a hotel that was still open and helped us wake up a manager so that we could check-in to a room. He gave us his number and told us he would show us around the next day if we had time. For all of this he charged us the same fee it would have been to head straight to Pregresso after the game without any stops or dinner.

The next day we got up in the rain and headed back. We got our first hitch in the back of an SUV with two very nice men that were visiting family in Honduras but currently living in San Diego. They dropped us off about half way and we got another hitch in the back of a truck with a couple driving. It started to pour out and they pulled over and gave us a tarp to use to cover ourselves (a common hitch technique when it is raining out). WE got back to the Hogar soaked again, but we all had a blast! And it was definitely worth it, even if just for the hitching experience alone.

I am running out of internet time so I have to go. I will add more about our hitch to Trujillo and the kids hopefully tomorrow. For now I want to say again Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!!!

Craziness at the Hogar & New Plans for Returning Home

2008-11-17T09:48:00.000-08:00

The past 15 days have been really crazy! The Honduran woman who runs the orphanage, whom is about 23, left with her boyfriend last Friday to go be with her family. Her one year old nephew was kidnapped at gunpoint for ransom last Friday. At first the men were asking for $1,000.00 within 24 hours, then they raised it to $15,000.00 by Thursday. The couple that runs the Hogar left last Friday and are scheduled to return today. The nephew was retrieved and the police do have 2 men in custody. There was an exchange of money for the boy before the men were apprehended but we do not know for how much. Also, the boy has a bad heart and takes medication which he didn´t receive for a full week putting him in intensive care. We do not know if it was the boys father whom planned the kidnapping or enemies of the boys father. We have heard lots of stories from multiple people but should be able to find out more information today when the couple returns to us. It seemed so distant from us, because we have never met the child, nor his family and it all happened so suddenly. We had heard that there had been 2 attempted kidnappings on the boy and that the mother wanted to come with her child and live at the Hogar... But assumed it wasn´t as critical as it was or the family really would have moved... It all seems a bit surreal.

With Stacy and Julio gone, the couple whom we live with, this left 3 volunteers and myself to run the Hogar 24/7. There is also one Honduran woman and her 1 year old son that lives with us as well to help out. She leaves her son completely unattended and she is just as immature as the kids we work with so I wouldn´t say she necessarily helped us. I thought we managed really well. We all took on different tasks each of us helping where we saw the needs. We were cleaning up after all of the kids, making sure they were brushing their teeth, bathing, one volunteer took it upon herself to change all of the sheets each night when the kids wet their bed, while another cleaned the bedroom of Stacy and Julio which contains 23 cats and a dog! We were all up by 6 am, sometimes sooner and all passed out by about 9pm. We weren´t able to get time to leave and run into town unless we staggered shifts. We managed to take the kids to the river 3 times which was lots of fun. And organized a baseball game with the daycare down the road. Julio runs P.E. every Friday which I was able to run this past Friday. We played soccer of course, and it was a blast. The only downside is these kids resort to violence whenever they are upset. And while playing soccer with all of them I find myself yelling at kids trying to break up fights more so that enjoying actually playing with them. But I do get to take out lots of pent up aggression while playing which is nice. Also, the kids are pretty tough so I don´t have to hold back much. They never cry when I pelt them in the head with the ball.

It was our last week of school this past week which was also exhausting. The kids had their final exams. Ruth failed and won´t be going on to second grade. The head teacher wants her to go to a special school because of her condition. I really think she has potential and could learn if she wanted to. I think she is capable but she just doesn´t understand why there would be a need to work and learn how to read. I have a hilarious video of her just being herself at the river. She is screaming which she does often, then laughing, screaming again, then flexing her muscles. It just sums up what this kid is like. It cracks me up every time I watch it. Angelo did really well, but the teacher doesn´t think he is quite ready and I agree. After next year he will be at the right age and place to move on. Jorge came in not being able to write any letters or numbers and just him being able to write his name on his test and complete it made me happy, but he won´t be moving on to second grade either. Desmand, the little devil child, will be moving on which is great. He will hopefully work harder and be more disciplined in the second grade.

I had my first taste of being homesick this week. I don´t know if it was because it was the most exhausting week I have had since I have been here or if it is because the Holidays are upon us. Here the weather has been getting better. We had a bit of a hot spell last week and it was lovely. Of course we manage to get our first day off today and it is pouring! But I was missing just being home, laying on clean carpet floors, running with my dog, talking to my friends, eating thai food, visiting with my family, not being surrounded by insects of all shapes and sizes all of the time! Seriously we have cockroaches all over the kitchen at night, huge rats in our bodega (food storage area), mosquitoes that lately are horrible, ants, biting and non biting, salamanders, millipedes, and then about 100 more species of insects that just are everywhere day and night! We are going to get all of the volunteers together to go eat Thanksgiving dinner at a hotel down the way so that will be nice to be able to celebrate with friends here. There was even a bit of a blow out between volunteers here last week because of all of the stress and pressure... Everything seems a bit mellowed out now, but things were tense. We got stuff to make rice-krispy treats with-for the kids which we will hopefully get around to doing this week. Also, I am still, knock on wood, the only volunteer that is lice free. I have gone through each volunteers head for lice and now they all said I am exempt from having to go through any more heads until I get it myself. That is on the to do list today... I heard from a woman I got a hitch from that the municipal building will issue a card that you then take to a public hospital and they will go to the orphanage and do a lice extermination for free paid for by the government. I am not sure how long it would take to get this done or if it is legit but another volunteer and I are headed to the municipal building today to check in on it.

Also, I have changed my plans as far as when I plan on returning home... One night I was sitting with Ruth and Francisco (the boy who loves food as much as I do) and we were talking about Christmas. Well we were talking about Christmas after they had told me all of the tragedies of their life and why they ended up at the orphanage. They asked me to explain what Christmas was like at my home, which I did. Then they both looked up to me and asked me why Santa never came to visit them. After first hearing about their lives my eyes were already a bit moist, but when Francisco said this to me my eyes welled up and I just felt it wouldn´t be right to leave them right before Christmas and not spend it here. Also, I think trying to adapt back to life in the States will be somewhat of a challenge but especially during the Holiday season. This will be my first Christmas not spent with my family but I couldn´t imagine being anywhere but here. So, I have changed my plans and just finalized them today. I will be staying at the Hogar through January 22nd. I will be here through the Holidays, help see some programs get implemented, and help with volunteer transition and then head South on January 22nd. I will then be off on my own on a journey through Central America. I will be flying home out of Panama City on February 26th. This will give me a solid 5 weeks to travel and I plan on visiting all 4 countries south of Honduras: El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama, ending with seeing the Panama Canal. I will be doing most of it on my own, Greg will come visit for a portion, so if there is anyone who is wanting a break from work and to come meet me in a country or two feel free! I would love the company:)

I hope all is well. I miss you all. Happy late Birthday to Kim Dunbar. Also, I forgot to thank my bestest friends Angela and Della for all the goodies that they sent me! They sent down enough beads that the two of them donated so that each child will be able to make a necklace for themselves and also for another child at another project for Christmas!

Joel and New Socks and Shoes

2008-11-05T13:39:00.000-08:00

Attached is a picture of Joel, the youngest boy, trying on his new favorite socks and shoes. This boy used to NEVER wear shoes let alone socks. Now first thing in the morning when I see him up and running around at 6 am he has both socks and shoes on his feet! He is quite a personality as well. He is amazing at puzzles, which is a great activity for him because any kind of game he plays with others he claims they are cheating. Even if he is winning he will start crying, saying his opponent is cheating. Even when he is playing with one of the volunteers. I taught the kids how to play dodge ball today which was great fun. Another volunteer and I were able to take out some pent up aggression on the kid by pegging them with the nerf balls. The kids had a blast and little Joel played well more or less. When ever he was hit with a ball he would never fess up to it, but he had fun.

Hygiene & Thank You

2008-11-05T13:23:00.000-08:00

Hygiene is a huge issue at the Hogar. The kids don't have a consistent "parent" that makes sure that they bathe properly and have the necessary tools to keep up with proper hygiene. This is one problem with the Hogar that I have a huge issue with. I talked to the volunteer coordinator about heading up a hygiene program with the kids and she gave me the ok to head up the program. I will be in charge of creating a medical/hygiene facility within the Hogar. I will make sure each kid daily has toothpaste, a toothbrush, soap, shampoo and a comb. I have decided that I will use a system where I will check out hygiene bags to the kids twice a day in the morning and before bed containing all of the tools they need to bath properly and brush their teeth. The oldest kids I will trust to keep their bags and just come to me when they need supplies replenished and the youngest kids I will assist daily with their tasks. I have been working in the afternoon this week on getting the room up and running and we are just needing to make copy of the keys to the room so that I can have access to it daily and make a schedule and we will be up and running with the new hygiene program that will get passed on to the next volunteers. The 4 youngest kids will get assistance with their daily tasks of brushing their teeth and bathing while the rest will be shown properly how to bath and brush their teeth and hopefully will be able to go from their but if not, it will be my job to help them. Flossing teeth is one thing we will eventually want to work on once they get the basics down. I have moved everything in the organizations possession into the hygiene/medical room and we have a bit of everything except for shampoo! I did not find ANY shampoo. I will be chatting with the director this week to make sure we are able to get some money to purchase some shampoo.

Luckily we will be able to start the hygiene program with the shampoo that was donated. We have one hygiene bag for each child along with combs, soap, toothpaste, toothbrushes and shampoo to get things going. Each kit is comprised of donated goods.

The hygiene bags were donated by NW Eye Associates. The Additional products, the shampoo, toothpaste, toothbrushes and combs were donated by a group of ladies with whom I would like to thank. Thank you to Lottie, Mitzi, Norma, Barbara Jones, and my grandma Dorothy Nelson for all of the goods that you ladies were able to donate. The kids will appreciate it immensely but I can assure you the volunteers will appreciate it even more when we are able to pick up and hug a child that actually smells good! Thank you for all of your donations!

Thank You!

2008-11-05T13:05:00.000-08:00

When my mom, aunt Gloria and Greg were in town last week they brought a bundle of donated goods and money to buy all of the kids shoes. On Sunday I handed out to the kids gift boxes filled with shoes they picked out, soccer socks which were donated, bubbles for the boys which were donated, hair gadgets for the girls which were donated, and also soccer jerseys which were donated. I would like to thank everyone that contributed to the gifts the kids received.

First I would like to thank my mom and aunt Gloria for taking all of the kids in La Ceiba and donating their time and money to buying each kid a new pair of shoes. Also, the Kopca's and Mark Peterson whom also donated funds for which we were able to buy the kids new shoes.

Also thank you to Deby Martin who donated a bag full of hair gadgets for the girls. They loved them and wear them daily!

Also to Oregon City Sports for donating soccer jerseys for each of the kids. They all put them on right away and ran around the Hogar with their soccer socks and new shoes. Even the girls, whom are really into style, loved wearing matching soccer jerseys.

Thank you to Dr. Karen Stark for donating a pair of soccer socks for each child. Joel, the 3 year old boy, wears his everyday! Even though they were filthy he wouldn't take them off! I had to promise to wash them with my laundry and return them to him the same day and I also had to give him another pair to wear in the meantime. The kids love the socks!

Attached are some pictures. The kids were running around like crazy in their new gear so this is the best we could do as far as a "team picture" goes.

Thank you again to everyone that was able to send a donation down. The running shoes have been wonderful for taking the kids running. We took a group yesterday and they all had on their new tennis shoes. Today we are taking another group and they are all excited about testing out their new kicks.

Guatemala

2008-11-05T12:58:00.000-08:00

Here are a couple more pics from the trip to Guatemala with Ryan... One is of Lago de Atitlan. It is the lake in Central Guatemala that is surrounded by 3 volcanoes. They are working on getting it on the list of the 7 wonders of the world. Apparently it is currently ranked around number 31. It was really amazing. We were able to kayak for a couple of hours before having to head back to Antigua. Also, here is a picture of the volcanoe we hiked up where you are able to see some live flowing lava. It was awesome but you couldn't stand in the same spot for very long or your shoes would melt. This is where the little kids were selling walking sticks before you began the hike and then collecting them again at the end when you finished. They were adorable and each had their own sticks which they sold and collected again at the end.

Carrots!

2008-11-05T12:55:00.000-08:00

When my brother Ryan and I traveled to Guatemala and had to ditch all of the fruits and vegetables when we arrived in Belize... Remember this story from a while back? Well I found the picture of the carrots that we inhaled. They were huge and amazingly flavorful!

Ruth

2008-11-05T12:34:00.001-08:00

Here is a picture of Ruth, my favorite little first grader. She forgave me for putting her in a timeout, Jeanie. She only stayed mad for a couple of hours. She is a difficult one to get through to, and very tough, but she loves me and I love her. The other volunteers make fun of me because when she does something bad and I have to discipline her, if she seems upset I cannot even look her in the eyes I feel so bad... So they all tease me that I am a softy. If she is crying, my eyes get all watery as well. This is a picture of her and her 3 brothers, Gerson, Moises and Francisco.

Rain & Travel

2008-11-02T11:11:00.000-08:00

The rainy season here is worse than the rainy season in Portland! Parts of Honduras are on red alert for floods and landslides. It rains hard, nonstop, all day and all night. It isn´t cold like it is at home, last night was actually the first time I have been cold here in La Ceiba and it was mostly because I took a shower (cold water of course) and got into bed around 1 am with wet hair. Also, I failed to pack any sweat pants... Bummer.

My mom, aunt Gloria and Greg all just left yesterday morning. I met them in San Pedro Sula last Saturday and we spent a week away traveling. They wanted to give me a week of rest and relaxation away from the Hogar which they did and it was amazing! We spent the first 3 nights in Copan and visited the ruins, a bird sanctuary and a coffee plantation. We stayed in the most beautiful hillside Hacienda that had the most amazing food I think I have ever eaten. The huevos rancheros were about 100 times better than the ones at the orphanage (which I like as well), the coffee was fresh, local organic coffee, the chicken was the most tender chicken I have ever tasted. Also, to conserve energy and add to the atmosphere the Hacienda is fully lit by candles. There are about 15 candles in each room and all of the grounds are covered with candles, the dinning area, kitchen, etc. It was so peaceful and just gorgeous. Also I was able to take hot showers which were amazing! Especially now that it is a bit colder here. We were able to shop around Copan and get the lay of the land, we even got to pile in and take some rides in the tuk-tuk cabs.

From Copan we took the bus back up to San Pedro and then caught a flight to Roatan (one of the Islands off of the Caribbean coast of Honduras). Roatan was a blast as well. A storm had just passed through before we arrived so it seemed as if we were the only ones on the island. Well us and plenty of the armed security guards. We had one day of beautiful weather on Roatan and we were all able to lay out and read, swim and kayak in the Caribbean ocean, and walk up and down the beach while Gloria lagged behind digging for her seashells. What was surprising to me about Roatan were the prices... The prices were just the same as they are in the States for food, drinks, hotels, etc. The other Island, Utila is much cheaper and a bit smaller. We chatted with our hotel bartender, Tim, who explained that the cruise ships have driven up the prices. He also explained that many Hondurans from the mainland have been moving over to Roatan to find work because they pay higher wages on the Island. Tim mentioned that this has increased the violence on the Island as well, and that the mainlander Hondurans have been bringing weapons, guns and knives over to the Island. Because of this in the next couple of years the government will be passing a law that Hondurans cannot move to Roatan freely, they will have to apply for the proper paperwork so that the jobs on the Island can be reserved for "locals," the people born on the Island. Tim talked about how this will cause a lot of controversy because the 3 Caribbean Islands are all considered Honduras as well as the mainland, so not allowing people to move freely within their own Country...? I found this very interesting. Also, if you think about the root cause of all of this... Tourism and cruise ships. It is tourism and the cruise ships and the people that are moving to Roatan from Europe and the States that are driving the prices up and now as a result there is a greater desire to move to the Island which will eventually cause a greater segregation between the mainlander's and Islanders...

OK back to the vacation... Roatan was amazing! The kayaking was awesome, again pretty good food, and the people were very nice. We met about 5 people or couples who were from somewhere in Oregon. It is a small world.

While were were on the plane as well as the buses we took we were able to see a great deal of the damage that had been caused by the rain. From the plane we could see how high all of the rivers were and all of the lands that were flooded. From the buses we were able to see how the roads had been affected and washed out in many places.

From Roatan we took a ferry to La Ceiba and then made a trip out to the orphanage so the kids could meet my mom and aunt. I had mentioned they would meet my mom about 2 weeks ago and from then on anytime a woman showed up, regardless of her age, race, etc, they would run up to the woman and ask if she was my mom. So it was nice for them to finally meet her and Gloria. Also, they had been bugging me about when Greg would come visit again so they got to see him as well. We took all of the kids, with the help of 3 volunteers, into La Ceiba to the mall shoes shopping so that each one would have a pair of proper tennis shoes for running and wearing around. My mom, aunt Gloria, our family friends the Kopca`s and a friend of my aunts were nice enough to donate the money to buy all of the kids a pair of shoes. The kids were adorable picking out their shoes. We took them in groups of about 5 into the store and they were able to select the shoes they liked, try them on and make the decision of which pair they wanted. The kids and the shoes went back to the orphanage while we stayed in La Ceiba. I was up late last night getting all of the shoes ready to give to the kids and matching them all up with a jersey and a pair of socks, both also donated. When I get back today I will be giving the kids each their boxes of goodies and I will snag some pics to put up later this week. I cannot wait to see their faces, it is going to be adorable.
Funniest moment on the trip: We were on a bus from Copan to San Pedro Sula and I needed to go to the bathroom. The bus stopped to let me off and I ran up to a little construction site where they were currently working on constructing a building and had just completed part of the bathroom. I ran in and 2 guys put up some wood slats to cover the gap where eventually they would put a door. My aunt Gloria also had to go so when I was finished she walked in and I covered the gap and stood at the door. About 30 seconds later I hear her yelling for me to let her out. She runs out saying she almost peed herself but couldn´t use the toilet because of the huge frog. I was thinking I would walk in and see this little, maybe fist sized frog... I peeked in the bathroom and there was this HUGE toad sitting in the middle of the room. It was about the size of a standard size 5 soccer ball. It was huge! We ran to the bus cracking up.

Favorite meal: Hands down the breakfast at the Hacienda San Lucas in Copan-fried eggs with the most amazing salsa with fresh veggies and homemade corn tortillas, fresh made beans, and amazing coffee! Also the dinner, grilled chicken with a rich adobo sauce, with amazing sauteed veggies, rice, beans and tortillas... Mmm...

Best victory: I beat my mom and Greg in a kayak race from a buoy in the Caribbean ocean to the gate of our bungalow. I was so far ahead that I still won despite the fact that a wave knocked me over as I was approaching the shore.

Best drink: the bananarama-fresh strawberries, banana, pineapple juice and rum.

I was even able to vote this week! Greg brought me my ballot and I was able to fill it out in time to send it back with him. A couple of volunteers and I are talking about spending Tuesday night in Ceiba to watch the elections... I don´t know whether it will happen but we shall see.

I hope everyone is doing well. I am sure everyone is getting into the Holiday mood. I am trying to talk some of the volunteers into going to Copan with me for Thanksgiving to eat at the Hacienda... Mmm.

Take care.
Also, I promise pics this week!

Cheesecake!

2008-10-16T14:33:00.001-07:00

Honduras played Canada last Saturday so a group of us headed to Ceiba to watch. The game was a home game played in San Pedro Sula, the second largest City in Honduras. Honduras played awesome and won 3-1 so there was a huge celebration in Ceiba and as usual it was very eventful. They played Jamaica last night (we didn´t go into town because it was a school night) and lost 0-1. Honduras now needs to either beat or tie Mexico in November to be in the running for the 2010 World Cup. They play at home, here in Honduras in San Pedro Sula, and I and some other volunteers are for sure going to go and watch it! The Honduran couple I live with are already SO emotional just thinking about the game and trying to plan everything so that we can all go.

School and the kids are doing well. We have the most volunteers now that we have had since I have lived at the Hogar. There are 4 (including myself) living at the Hogar and 3 that live at the volunteer house a mile away that come for the mornings. We had a meeting yesterday and we are going to start doing English classes and computer classes in the afternoons. It is so nice having more volunteers to help share the load and it is nice for the kids so that they are all getting more attention. The board members for the organization are coming into town this next week and we will be having a party on Saturday followed by volunteer meetings next week. I am personally very excited to be able to talk with the board about all of my concerns with the organization and how the orphanage is ran. Hopefully we will be able to make a lot of improvements while they are in town.

As for the kids... They are doing well. I was doing exercises last night while the kids ate so I got my dinner late and went into the dinning room and everyone was done eating and Moises was cleaning. i told him I would help him with his chores if he sat with me while I ate. He came over and sat down with me and we talked our normal conversation. He asked me everyone´s name in my family and all there ages. After finishing my meal I asked him what he wanted me to do. He grinned and said I had to mop. So I mopped the dinning room which now gives me more respect for the kids and the chore they have to do. It is a large room, and a large mop, and by the time I was done I was exhausted!

Ruth, my favorite little girl who is in first grade punched another boy for teasing her and so I put her into time out for 5 minutes. I have never punished her, mostly because I have such a soft spot for her, but also because she usually behaves. Tears started rolling down her eyes and she gave me this look I cannot get out of my head, like someone killed her puppy. She hasn´t talked to my since this happened. This just happened this morning so hopefully when I get back she will be fine, but I still cannot stop thinking about the sad face she gave me for getting upset with her. I am going to be such a pushover as a mother!

I hope all is well. I miss everyone! I really really miss Frank´s cheesecakes! I am going to head back to make sure Ruth isn´t still mad at me!

Runaway and Tooth Fairy

2008-10-10T13:09:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow night Honduras and Canada play so I am heading to La Ceiba with a couple of other volunteers to go watch the game. It will be nice to spend a bit of time away from the orphanage. Although things had been going really well the oldest girl who is 16 years old tried to runaway on Wednesday. They found her with her boyfriend trying to get onto a bus to head to another village. Unfortunately they think that one of the live in Tias helped the couple plan their escape. I do not know all of the details yet but possibly the girl and her 2 sisters may have to go back into government custody. A couple of the other volunteers and I are going to try and get a better understanding of what exactly is going on and if the organization has a say in what happens to the girl or if it is just in government hands now. I think this really goes to show that the kids need to be in a public school in the city as opposed to a private school on the property of the orphanage. I think what would be best for the kids is to be interacting with other kids in a more social environment. The girl slept in the volunteer room when she was returned and I sat with her trying to talk to her as best as I could to understand how she was feeling. She just said she loved the orphanage, the kids, the people, the food, but didn't feel that she had enough freedom. I think every 16 year old girl can understand this, but also, most 16 year old girls have mothers they can go home and talk to and who are always there for them. This 16 year old girl sat on a bed in a room with 2 volunteers from foreign countries who weren't speaking their native language who have families they will eventually go home to, trying to console her. Thinking about this I knew there wasn't really anything I could say to her. I have no say in what happens to her and even if I sympathized with what she did it was still wrong and something out of my hands will still happen to her. I just knew if it was me and I was feeling as she was, the comfort of my mom would make all of the pain go away and she does not have that same luxury. Instead she has always been the tough one that her two younger sisters have depended on. I just held her while she cried until she told me she was ready to go to bed. I crawled into my bed and laid there listening to her cry herself to sleep. This happened Wednesday evening. Today is Friday and she is still at the orphanage and hasn't been sent away yet. There are still waiting to hear back from the government organization as to if/when she and her sisters will be leaving... It will be interesting to see what happens and how long it takes to happen. This girl had just aced her English test a week ago today, last Friday, and as a present I made her a necklace. Also, she eagerly ran with me Sunday in her sandals due to her infected ingrown toenail...

On another note, talking about moms... I want to thank my mom. I am the designated tooth fairy and living with 20 kids it seems I find myself having to stay up late every other night to put money under pillows! I usually get up around 5:30 am and I am in bed around 9:30 pm. The other day a boy came to my door and said he and another boy had lost their teeth 3 days prior and hadn't received any money yet. I hadn't been notified that they had lost their teeth so I said we should write a note to the tooth fairy. We wrote a note to put under the pillow with the 2 teeth. They boys asked me what would happen if the tooth fairy still didn't come even with a note... I said that I would call her manager if she still didn't come. All the kids loved this, knowing that I had the tooth fairies manager's telephone number! Needless to say that night a very tired tooth fairy arrived and left money under the pillows. I had to wait until all of the boys were asleep which wasn't until 11:30!

I hope all is well! Sorry this is short we are headed to get some licuados!

Running!

2008-10-06T13:34:00.001-07:00

I was leaving to go running Saturday morning alone and two of the boys, Daniel who is 10 and Francisco who is 11 asked me if they could go with me. I wasn't really in the mood to run alone so I went and asked Julio the onsite head Tio to see if it would be ok. Julio looked at Daniel and Francisco who were already dressed in their best attempted running gear and said yes, that we could run to the next village, Cacao and back (about 1 mile away). The boys were so excited to be able to leave the orphanage grounds! They were so well behaved and cute it was a blast, much better than running alone and they were both actually able to run the entire time! We ran to Cacao to the volunteer house and got them a glass of water and I let them lay in the hammock there and then we returned. When we got back I was bombarded with kids that wanted to go running. I told them I would take 2 kids a day. I got harassed by the kids all day with different kids wanting to go so Sunday I made 4 trips and took 8 kids running to Cacao and back! I took 2 boys, 2 girls, 2 boys, then 2 girls! I was dead! Even the younger kids want to go. Angelo who is 6 almost started crying when I told him I thought he was a bit too young to go, although he is one of the better soccer players. I will probably give in today and take Angelo running.

The one bummer is the kids don't have running shoes. Well some of them do. Francisco wore his black school shoes, and a couple of the kids wore their soccer shoes. I am going to head to town and see how much it would be to get the kids some decent tennis shoes becuase they are now really eager to run but I know they cannot be as comfortable as they claim they are. But Sunday was a really good day! Although I was exhausted (it was also our first day without rain in weeks and it was hot) it was defintaley worth it! None of the kids complained! They all ran with huge smiles!

It has been a while, but all is well.

2008-10-03T13:49:00.000-07:00

The past 2 weeks have been awesome!!! For some reason when I got back from Guatemala it seems everything just has kind of fallen into place and improved. When I got back from Guatemala I was once again the only volunteer living at the orphanage. I decided to adjust some of the rules. I decided to store all of the toothbrushes and toothpaste in my room for the 10 youngest kids. So now every morning and evening they come in and I give them their tooth brush and toothpaste and can keep better track of who is/isn't brushing their teeth. Also, the four youngest kids, I help them brush their teeth. Also, after dinner I decided not to let any of the kids play with ANY of the toys from the volunteer room unless they had all bathed. While I was away the showers for the kids and volunteers were fixed which has made this much easier. I was able to get into the storage room and get some soap which I keep in my room to make sure if the kids don't have soap I can provide them with some. This has really helped the hygiene issue immensely!

Last weekend on Saturday the director of the program took the kids on a field trip to a lagoon which is a nearby animal refuge. Another volunteer and myself went along as chaperons and had a blast. He and I had more fun than the kids. We drove about 30 minutes outside of La Ceiba, took a small train about 30 minutes and then boarded on these little boats, 12 people in each and floated around a lagoon. We got to see manatees, crocodiles, monkeys, snakes, etc. It was super fun! I got eaten alive by mosquitoes (we left at 5:30 am so I didn't take the time to grab mine) but it was still a very nice day away. The kids crack me up though. I thought they would have loved the animals and the boat but the majority of them slept on the boat. Surprisingly, well I guess it isn't surprising, but what the kids found the most excited was an exotic fruit that the guide found and picked for the kids. They all attacked the guide trying to get more, claiming he hadn't given them any. The kids are hilarious about food! He stopped twice to pick them some fruit and both times they showed SO much enthusiasm all fighting to try and get more than everyone else and then putting the fruits into their pockets andcounting them over and over... I got about 4 from the kids who were kind enough to share. After the lagoon we walked about 15 minutes to swim in the ocean before heading back to the Hogar. Even the youngest boy who is 3 can swim like a little fish!

I had talked to the director about a week prior asking if I could take kids one or two at a time into town to spend some time with them away from the Hogar. He said it had never been done before and asked me about my intentions. I explained that the kids act much differently when they are away from the orphanage and when they are one on one, and that I would like to treat each one of them to a meal and either a soccer game, a movie, clothes, or a little something extra. He said he thought it was a good idea but would have to check with the board... I knew it would take about a month before I got an answer so Saturday I sat with him on the way too and from the lagoon to talk to him about it. By the end of the day he gave me the ok to take 2 kids into town the following day. I talked another volunteer into going into town with us to help alleviate any issues/stress that may arise amongst the board. WE took Ruth who is one of my students in the first grade (crazy little 8 year old girl who I have come to really love) and Carolina, the youngest girl who is 4 years old. I asked the girls first thing Sunday morning what they wanted to do. Both said that they wanted to go to Pizza Hut and get ice cream. So off we went on the bus to La Ceiba. We took them to Pizza Hut which was hilarious! It was my first Honduran Pizza Hut experience and it was actually really fun. The girl right off the bat dumped a ton of the Parmesan cheese onto their plates and licked their plates clean about 5 times before the pizza arrived. Then each of the girls ate about 4 pieces of peperoni pizza. Both girls wanted to save a piece to take back to the orphanage to share with their siblings. We told them it was their day and that we would take their siblings as well... This made them feel less guilt so they were able to eat the last of the pizza. I asked them what they wanted to do next and they wanted to go play at Wendy's on the jungle gym. Again my first Wendy's experience in Honduras we went over to Wendy's and let the girls romp around for about an hour! I had never seen either of the girls laugh so hard in my life. It was too adorable! After Wendy's we went to the mall and bought both of the girls a banana dipped in chocolate. Both girls again wanted to save their last bite to take back to their siblings at the orphanage. We let them play on a couple of little rides at the mall and then with good intentions took them inside one of the shops to buy them an article of clothing. The girls ran around like crazy saying they wanted EVERYTHING. I don't know if this is all kids or just these kids but they could not decide on anything and it got to the point where we were going to miss the last Sunday bus. My brother, Ryan, knows about the Sunday buses, they are VERY unreliable. We told the girls to give us some ideas of what they liked, which they had given us about 100 ideas by that time, and that we would come back and get them something and surprise them. On the way home we asked the girls if they had fun. They looked up at me and just kind of shrugged, this is actually what I expected, but I knew to wait until we got home before feeling any bit of offense. As soon as we got to the orphanage the girls ran up to the other kids explaining what they did and how much fun they had. All of the other kids ran up to us to see when it would be there turn. I had so much fun spending both days Saturday and Sunday with the kids. I went to bed Sunday almost in tears, it had been a really good week.

Monday we got a new volunteer at the Hogar and she, another volunteer and I totally rearranged the volunteer room (now housing myself and the new volunteer) and totally cleaned up all of the kids toys. I didn't want to leave my room all week because it looks SO much nicer! Currently there is a volunteer from England and myself living at the Hogar and then all of the other volunteers (there are 3 that come help) live in a house about a mile away, a volunteer house. The project just hired a new live in Tia who brought her 1 year old son. She has been living with us only about 4 days and has been doing a great job helping out with the kids! Also, another woman is sleeping and working at the project with her 2 kids Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays which is really helping as well. Both of these women are Honduran and can communicate with the kids better than any of the volunteers and thus far have been helping out immensely!

Overall things have been going really really well. For that reason I haven't had much of a need/desire to come into town. Today we didn't have class because of a Holiday so I was able to sneak away. I have even found a couple of volunteers I was able to talk into running with me which has been going really well also. Although the run yesterday made me feel really old! I was running with a new volunteer from a different project that I had just met. She was asking me my age and she said, "Gees for being 26 you are in good shape. I am only 18 and I cannot run as far as you." I know that she meant for this to be a compliment but it just made me feel really, really old! The only downside is that rainy season is upon us which means it rained everyday this week! Today is the nicest day it has been about about 11 days. I feel like I am back at home with the rain, although it is a constant 80-85 degrees here, even with the rain.

I am trying to think if there is anything else that I should update people on... I really miss Guatemala and cannot wait to go back someday. It was amazing! I hope everyone is doing well. I am currently about 3\4 of the way finished with the book Three Cups of Tea and I really recommend it! I hope everyone is doing well. I miss you all. I really miss ice cream as well. And my grandma's cooking! Oh also, I have still been helping the cooks out as much as I can which I love! They are hilarious and love to teach me new little tricks which I cannot wait to hopefully use when I get home. The two new Tias we have made got up at 4:30 am on Wednesday to make homemade donuts which were amazing as well! I told them I wanted to learn and they said I would have to get up at 4:30 the next time they made them... So I may sit the donut lesson out.

Take care,
Mary

PS I have tons of pictures that I will try and put up soon. When I put up my last set of pictures I somehow manage to delete every picture I had taken! But I promise I will put more up soon.

Guatemala

2008-09-20T15:43:00.000-07:00

Guatemala, what can I say about Guatemala. First of all it is amazingly beautiful. I met up with my brother in EL Remate, Guatemala and we took the 6 am bus up to Tikal where we spent the morning hiking up the ruins which were amazing! It is such a lush, green Country. And the people are so welcoming... We headed to Flores from Tikal which is a little Island next to Santa Elena where we spent the evening in a funky hostel that we loved. We roamed the Island looking for an ATM since Monday, Sept 15th was Independence Day in Central America so all banks were closed and it was a witch hunt to find an ATM machine on Tuesday that still had money in it... But we managed to do so and booked our bus out of Flores headed for Antigua, Guatemala at 9 pm on Tuesday the 16th. We spent the day resting and shopping and jumped on our 11 hour bus that dropped us off in Antigua on Wednesday Sept 17th. Antigua is a darling little cobblestone village with plenty of stores, restaurants and Spanish schools. We were staying in a hostel ran by a woman named Irma who acted like a grandmother, which was a good thing making sure she kept Ryan in line and got him up on time for the buses. She actually only had to hurry him along once. We took a bus to one of the active volcanoes called Volcan Pacaya near Antigua and we were able to hike up to the lava and get so close your shoes began to melt. It was pretty impressive. Unlike anything I have ever seen. It was about a 6 hour trip so when we were coming back down the mountain it was getting dark and looking back up you just saw this bright yellowish red stream coming down the side. It was really impressive. We jumped out of bed the next morning to catch a 7 am bus headed for Chichicastenago which is a small village about 3 hours away that is known for its markets on Sundays and Thursdays. We hit it just right and were able to spend about 4 hours there on Thursday. It was amazing! The colors and crafts were so beautiful. There were all kinds of traditional masks both Mayan and also masks used for carnival, there were rugs, blankets and tablecloths made with the most radiant colors ever, and plenty of beaded and coral jewelry. It was the most amazing market i have ever been to.

From Chichi we headed South to Lago Atitlan which is a huge lake surrounded by 3 volcanoes and we spent the night in a small village on the water called San Marcos which was beautiful. We ate an amazing $2 meal at a local little restaurant where we got attacked by cats and then headed to bed in our little hippie hostel which was amazing. The next morning we feasted on fresh fruit, granola, homemade yogurt, oatmeal, bananas, and raisins. It was incredible. We then headed to another little village, bigger than San Marcos called San Pedro where we rented kayaks for a couple of hours. It was again breathtaking! From there we headed back to Antigua slept at Irma's place one more night before getting on a 4 am bus to Copan, Honduras which is where we are now. WE just visited the ruins and I am about to go take a nap. It was been an awesome week away and Guatemala has been amazing. The people have been lovely, the sights breathtaking, the food delicious... I have absolutely no complaints! I have missed the kids and I cannot wait for Ryan to meet them tomorrow so he can put some faces to names. Also, I did take tons of pictures and I will put them up a bit later when I am on a cheaper, faster computer.

After a rough week, I am off to renew my visa!

2008-09-14T12:47:00.000-07:00

Well, I have been in Honduras just shy of my 90 day limit so I am off to renew my visa. And it could not have came at a better time! Last week was very exhausting and challenging. Mondays are always rough in school and class with all the kids, but this last Monday was really rough. Around 3pm, after school, lunch and chores-rest time, I went to wake up the littlest kids to see if they wanted to color with me and another volunteer. When I went into their room there were 2 of the little boys sleeping on a shared mattress and one of the little girls sleeping on a table. The room was covered in poop. Poop was smeared all over the floor, beds and walls. I am thinking it was human and dog poop. It was everywhere and they were all sleeping in the middle of it and the room stunk! I got one other volunteer and we woke the kids up and asked what happened and of course they all had different stories. One of the kids said that he and I made the mess together! We took all the beds outside and cleaned them, mopped the floor and began to clean the walls. The walls weren´t just covered with poop, but also filth that had been building up for over a year. I thought it would be a good idea to just paint the room and have the kids do some little decorations to brighten up the room. All the volunteers agreed so early the next morning I headed into town with another volunteer to purchase some paint brushes and supplies. We began painting around 9 am and finished around 4pm. The only color we had a decent supply of was white so we painted 3 coats of white paint over the filthy blue that the kids had been living with. We didn´t have time to let the kids paint that evening so either the other volunteers will do that while I am away or once I get back we will have that be phase 2. Wednesday was kids day, which here is like Christmas. The kids get to take the day off of school and play games all day and every kid gets a present. It was really fun to see all of the kids so happy. We had a huge BBQ and the meat was amazing! Actually all of the food that day was amazing! We even got a huge cake and a pinata! It was good times, but also very tiring.

Thursday we had class as normal and then I headed to La Ceiba to meet up with my brother and his friend, Jon. They have been traveling Central America for about a month and we had plans to meet up and travel to renew my visa. We went out Thursday night in La Ceiba to La Casona (the local disco) since it was ladies night and women get in for free. Running on 4 hours of sleep we woke up about 6 am Friday to begin our journey which has been non-stop since Friday morning. We took a bus to San Pedro Sula, from there took a minibus to Puerto Cortes, a port we were told we could catch a boat everyday to Belize. Once we got to Puerto Cortes we had a cab take us to the dock where there were no boats. The boats only run to Belize on Mondays from Puerto Cortes. Our taxi driver told us that they run every hour from Puerto Barrios, Guatemala so he drove us to the Guatemalan border where we crossed over and jumped on another mini-bus to head to Puerto Barrios. The power was out when we crossed the border so immigration didn´t check us in. We got to Puerto Barrios around 6 pm after about 8 hours all together on buses, minibuses and cabs. Our hotel attendant told us that the boats from Puerto Barrios, Guatemala to Punta Gorda, Belize run every 30 minutes beginning at 6:30 am. We woke up and got to the dock at 6 am and were told that the ferry doesn´t run until 10 am. We met a local who lived in New York for 23 years and he offered to show us around. He showed us all the local sites in Puerto Barrios which was really fun. He took us to their central market where we bought tons of fresh fruit for about $5. We bought huge carrots, apples, 3 lbs of strawberries, peaches and more. After debating taking a direct cab to Belize City we decided to take the 10 am ferry. We jumped on the ferry and headed to Punta Gorda, Belize. When we arrived they wouldn´t let us through with all of our fruit. But they let us sit on the dock for about 10 minutes so that we could try and inhale as much fruit as possible! Weeach downed about 3 bananas, 1 lbs of strawberries, a couple of peaches, and some apples. Oh and Ryan and I each made little dents in our huge carrots! From there were got on an old school bus painted in Jamaican colors headed for Belize City, an 8 hour bus ride. Oh, our friend from New York told us we were going to have to pay about $100 because customs didn´t stamp our passports when we entered Guatemala. We explained the power was out and he called a friend of his to help us get through without paying. We gave him a generous tip for showing us around and helping us avoid getting ripped off, but the immigration people were very nice.

We arrived in Belize City around 7pm and went out to get some dinner and then passed out in our hostel on the water. That was yesterday, Saturday. Today, Sunday we woke up and Ryan, having some last minute plans, thought it would be best if he headed North with his friend Jon to help him cross the border while I headed West to a small town near Tikal, Guatemala called El Remate. We split up around 7 am today and I headed to the border between Guatemala and Belize. It was about a 4 hour bus ride (in Belize all of the buses are old school buses painted in yellow, red and green) to the border followed by a 1.5 hour minibus ride on the Guatemalan side to El Remate which is where I am now. It is a small hippie town surrounding a huge lake and it is about 30 minutes from the ruins of Tikal. My brother Ryan should be meeting up with me here tonight and then we will be headed to Tikal tomorrow and celebrating Central America´s Independence day, which is tomorrow September 15th, either here or in Flores, Guatemala. From here we are headed South to a couple of small towns before entering Antigua, Guatemala. From there we are heading East to Copan, Honduras and then back North to La Ceiba so I can be back for the school day Monday.

It has been quite an adventure thus far! The food has been amazing and super cheap! Belize reminded me of New Orleans invaded by Jamaicans! The road we took from Southern Belize to Belize City was amazing! We were surrounded by beautiful jungle! I do miss the kids a bit, but I was for sure ready for a break, to see a familiar face, and do some sightseeing-traveling! I plan on heading South in December once I am done at the Hogar so that I will have spent a bit of time in each Country in Central America. If anyone is interested shoot me an email. I hope everyone is well! Also, I would proofread this email if this cafe wasn´t so expensive so I apologies for all of the errors.

Off to renew my Visa

2008-09-10T14:53:00.000-07:00

After this week I am totally ready for a break! I walked into the bedroom of the youngest kids, who I feel are totally neglected, to see if they wanted to draw with me. When I walked in I almost threw up because three of them were laying on the floor sleeping and there was poop smeared all over the beds, the floor, and the walls. It was the most disgusting thing I have ever seen in my life. Ruth, one of the younger girls sleeping in the room, woke up and her eyes were swollen shut. I assumed it was because she had touched the poop and then rubbed her eyes. I took her and bathed her and let her rest in the volunteer room while I got the other volunteers to check out the room. We all spent about 2 hours cleaning the beds, the floor and the walls. We decided that the best thing to do would be to paint the little kids room. So we talked to the teacher and skipped teaching the next day and went into the nearest town to buy paint brushes and rollers and we painted the entire room with some leftover white paint. We are going to try and pool together or get some donations to get some colored paint to help spruce it up a bit and paint some neat designs and let the kids do some hand prints as well. Also, today is kids day here which is basically like Christmas. So we had a huge BBQ, all the kids got a gift, we are having cake tonight, it has been quite a week! But tomorrow after class I am headed to La Ceiba to meet up with my brother in a hostel and we are traveling until next Sunday, about 10 days. We will hopefully be able to make it to El Salvador, Guatemala and Belize. To renew a visa you must either go to Belize or Costa Rica. Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala have an agreement and won't renew visas. So we are off to Belize! I will try and update the blog with some interesting travel stories while I am away.

Honduras vs Canada!

2008-09-07T15:51:00.000-07:00

Honduras played Canada last night so Stacy and Julio (the Honduran couple that I live with), Alison, Tyler (2 other volunteers) and I all headed to Ceiba to watch the game. Alison and Tyler are from Canada so it made for an interesting evening. Alison even brought her Canadian flag. Canada scored first but the locals didn´t seem to get too upset. Then Honduras came back to score 2 goals in the second half and win 2-1. The bar went nuts, Stacy and Julio included. The poor Canadians took it well. We headed to Julio´s favorite baleada stand, la linea, to eat a late night dinner and then we went out dancing. It was a blast! The older girls at the orphanage had give Alison and I a lesson on how to dance punta so we were trying to whip out our new skills.

Last weekend when we went to Cayos Cochinos, after dinner the local got their drums out and started playing music and singing. Everyone on the island came and joined and people of all ages were singing and dancing. They dance a style called punta and it involves moving your hips really fast while not moving your upper body. They pulled all of us one at a time up to dance in the middle of the circle. It was a blast!!! But I was terrible so when we got back to the Hogar I asked all the girls if they could dance punta and if they could teach me. So Friday I got my first lesson with Alison from the 3 older girls.

What else... I realized the other day that I have totally turned into one of the kids. The first time I ate with them I almost lost my appetite. They eat with their hands, grabbing food off of other plates, eating off of the dirty table and the floor with food everywhere! Also, they hide food in the kitchen in random different places. I used to eat with the kids just watching them in shock now I will be eating not even noticing how the other kids are eating but then all of the sudden realize in am eating refried beans with my fingers from one hand and eating scrambled eggs with my fingers from the other hand! Also I just recovered last week from getting really sick at Cayos Cochinos. The first real meal I could eat was on Wednesday and we had pastelitos with chimol. Chimol is the stuff I made with my home stay that I love! It is diced green bell peppers, onion, tomato, and cucumbers mixed together with vinegar and a bit of salt. I was stoked about the chimol and the cooks know it is my favorite so they gave me 2 extra scoops of it. We got to the table and I couldn´t eat all the food on my plate because it was the first real meal I had eaten in about 5 days. I used to just give my food to the nearest kid when I couldn´t finish a plate. But this time I found myself thinking about where I could hide the food left on my plate where no one would find it so I could eat it later. I told the other volunteers I was eating with this and they started cracking up, teasing me that I am totally turning into one of the kids!

sunset

2008-09-04T13:10:00.000-07:00

my favorite view

2008-09-04T13:09:00.000-07:00

the island we spent the weekend, cannot remember the name...

2008-09-04T13:08:00.001-07:00

more of cayos cochinos

2008-09-04T13:07:00.001-07:00

more of cayos cochinos

2008-09-04T13:06:00.001-07:00

cayos cochinos, beautiful islands off of the coast of honduras

2008-09-04T13:05:00.001-07:00

here was our first visited island

typical beach soccer field, sambo creek

2008-09-04T13:04:00.000-07:00

My favorite little angel, Angelo

2008-09-04T13:01:00.000-07:00

Angelo is 6 years old and he is in first grade so I am lucky enough to be his teacher. He is adorable! He is insanely small for his age which we assume is a result of malnutrition. He has a 4 year old brother at the Hogar, Maynor, and they are almost the same height. He is learning now to read and his numbers along with basic math.

and the girls win!!!

2008-09-04T12:59:00.001-07:00

We play soccer every Friday for P.E. at the Hogar and sometimes we split boys and girls but sometimes we just mix teams. Last Friday we played for a good 2 hours and the girls won! Final score was 6-2! The girls were thrilled, although you cannot really tell by the picture... But here is a picture of my new teammates. They don't compare to my teammates back home, but they have big hearts!

Apple Crisp at the Hogar and Francisco

2008-09-04T12:51:00.002-07:00

While Greg was at the Hogar, he stayed Sunday - Thursday night, we made apple crisp with the kids. I tried to explain to Greg how it works before he got here... You cannot just say, oh I am going to run into town and get some eggs and milk and I will be home in about an hour... Because all volunteers are at the mercy of the unreliable buses or hitches we can never really say when we will arrive or return. But Greg and I decided to head to town to try and get all the ingredients to make the kids an apple crisp. They do have apples here but they are spendy (abut $5 for 25 apples). We bought apples, oats, brown sugar and ice cream. We ran to the road and caught a hitch that made a couple little quick detours but we returned to the Hogar before the ice cream melted in the back of a truck. The Hogar already had flour and primavera (which is basically crisco and they use it to cook everything and call it margarine). We made apple crisp with about 5 kids in the kitchen hanging on us and watching until it was finally ready. It seemed a bit rich for the kids but they loved it. They seemed to almost love watching us make it more than eating it though. But it was tons of fun! Here is a picture of Francisco (the kid with the biggest appetite at the Hogar) and I and our plate of apple crisp, minus the ice cream!

the indiana jone's bridge, just before the swimming hole

2008-09-04T12:51:00.001-07:00

my swimming hole

2008-09-04T12:50:00.001-07:00

same hike, more beautiful sites

2008-09-04T12:48:00.000-07:00

beautiful honduras on my favorite hike

2008-09-04T12:29:00.000-07:00

2008-08-29T21:06:00.001-07:00

Recap

2008-08-26T14:35:00.000-07:00

It has been a while since I have had time to make it into town and write... So I will just summarize a couple of the events which I felt were the most interesting.

Lice: I know pretty much all of the kids have lice at the orphanage and that a couple of them have ringworms. I am thankfully the only volunteer at this point who does not yet have lice. I use tea tree oil in my conditioner and I wear a scarf around my hair about half of the time. Last week one of the volunteers who work with the kinder kids decided to go through the youngest girl’s hair. She asked me if I wanted to help so I pulled over a chair. Just in picking up one chunk of her hair there were about 50 nits in one little corner. It was one of the more disgusting things I have seen and also very sad. The little girl, Carolina, just sat there while we went through her hair pulling out hundreds of nits without even having to look. I am becoming quite the lice expert, well compared to what I knew before arriving at the orphanage. I went through one of the other volunteer’s hair pulling out some nits a couple of weeks ago and she had only about 30 in her entire head of hair. So comparing her 30 nits, which she thought were a lot, to Carolina’s head is pretty insane. Once more volunteers arrive we plan on having a huge delousing party. But I am currently the only volunteer living at the Hogar for the next 5 weeks so I won’t be able to do anything effective until we get some more volunteers.

First Grade-Soccer Game: The first graders were terrible last week! Wednesday I swear they all agreed before class that they were going to be on their worse behaviour ever! Luckily, Wednesday night was the big game between Honduras and Mexico. Mexico is Honduras’ biggest rival so I am told. The 2 other volunteers and I headed into Ceiba with the local couple we live with to watch the game at a bar. We were told 95 % of the country would be watching this game and that the last time they played Honduras won 2-1 but this game was being played in Mexico so it was huge for Honduras. For the entire week leading up to the game they were selling flags and shirts on the streets and there was just an eager and excited aura in the air. The game was very intense and super exciting to watch but unfortunately Honduras lost 1-2. They were up 1-0 but then Mexico scored 2 back to back goals within 2 minutes of each other. Needless to say the people here were VERY depressed. The man we were with cried, actually shedding tears. We got in the car and he was all chocked up and couldn’t even talk. He took us to another bar to drink away his sorrows and explained that he knows there is corruption in his country, he knows there are bad people and that the government is very corrupt, but he said the one thing that unites Honduras, the one time where all people come together and unite is over futbol (soccer) and that this game was huge for the country. Everyone seemed fine the next day, but everyone did watch the game and was talking about it.

My Home stay: I went to visit my home stay before the game and mentioned I would be in town Friday night because I was catching a bus at 5:15 am to go to San Pedro Sula (the 2nd largest city about 3 hours away). Dona Bertha, my home stay grandma, said I had to come over for dinner and that I could sleep at there house, she insisted. So Friday I showed up around 6 pm and hung out with the family catching up. Dona Bertha made me the most amazing dinner, vegetables simmered in butter, picante sauce she made, chicken broth and salt with white rice and an egg with onion. It was amazing! At about 11 pm she threw 3 mattresses on the floor for all 9 of us to sleep on. It was Dona Bertha, the 58 year old grandma, her 2 daughters, and their 5 kids and me. We all squeezed on the mattresses on the floor and slumbered until I woke up about 4 am to get ready to catch my bus. The night prior my home stay grandma had told me she would drive me to the station since it would still be dark and too dangerous. I was all ready to go, but she wasn’t there and my shoes were gone. I sat around until about 5 am and called her. She said she was on her way and would be there in a minute. I sat around until 6 am (having missed my bus) until she arrived around 6:20am. I would have walked to the bus station or taken a cab but I didn’t have any shoes. She ran into the house with my shoes on apologizing for being late. She gave me my shoes and hurried me into the car and drove me to another station where the chicken buses run (for 1/5 the price!). I jumped on and got to San Pedro Sula on time to welcome Greg. I was unable to get a refund for my ticket but they said I can use if for the next 6 months. My home stay family is great and very accommodating but this is the kind of thing you encounter here on a regular basis. Everything gets put off, nothing is 100%, you have to be able to go with the flow and not expect anything to go perfectly. But it all worked out in the end.

Solo Volunteer: The two other volunteers that were living with me left last week. There are 2 new ones but they are living in the volunteer house about a mile away with other volunteers from another project. Currently I am the only volunteer living at the Hogar. I was actually dreading this but I am enjoying it more than I thought. It gives me more time to interact with the kids and puts more pressure on me to speak Spanish. The next volunteers arrive the first of September so hopefully I will be able to last 5 weeks... I think I will. I get to look forward to renewing my visa in September!!! My plan at this point is to travel with my brother to Belize (you cannot renew a visa in El Salvador, Nicaragua, or Guatemala. You must either go to Belize or Costa Rica. So my plan is to head to Belize with him, stopping in El Salvador and Guatemala on the way and taking a week off. I cannot wait!

I hope all is well with everyone back home.

PS Happy late Birthday Cousin Aaron and Bruce!!!

Hogar Update

2008-08-13T13:58:00.000-07:00

I have been at the Hogar now for a little over 3 weeks... What I have learned is that the kids LOVE puzzles, Candyland, and books. My first graders beg me to let them play Candyland (tierra dulce) at the end of class everyday if they all behave (which is rare that they all behave but I usually let them play it anyway). Every night our door, to the volunteer room, gets knocked on about 25 times with kids asking for books and puzzles. It is adorable. There are 20 kids, 10 girls and 10 boys. The oldest girl is 16 while the youngest girl is 6 (but looks and acts 3), the oldest boys are 13 and the youngest boy is 3. The older girls are the hardest to connect with because they are the ones that can remember the abuse whether physical, sexual, mental, and are more reluctant to open up and trust. Many of the kids do not look or act there age due to extreme malnutrition and many of the kids don´t actually know their birthday. There are many siblings, one family of 5 kids and another of 4. Some of the siblings all claim to have the same birthday because they were born in the jungle and then taken on the same day (years later) to the hospital, and given the same birth date.

I do not mean to offend anyone with this next paragraph but if I do please email me and I will try and explain myself a bit more thoroughly... It appears that only the wealthy Hondurans have the luxury of education and the luxury to purchase what an American would consider a necessity. When I first arrived at the Hogar I was appalled with the lack of sanitation and the kids´hygiene. After having been around more Honduran families and seeing more here I am beginning to learn that it isn´t just that the organization is poorly ran, but also there are dramatic cultural differences. The Hogar would be considered a mansion to many Hondurans. It is a very large, one level, modern building. It has a small open courtyard, where the kids bathe and do the dishes, there is a kitchen, 2 bedrooms for the girls, 2 bedrooms for the boys, a bedroom for the couple that lives on site and runs the orphanage (2 Hondurans Julio is 25 and Stacy is 23), a large room for the volunteers, a dinning room, a computer room (not functioning yet, that will be Greg´s job in a couple of weeks), a bathroom for the boys, a bathroom for the girls, 2 bathrooms for the volunteers (only one has a functioning shower), a laundry room, and about 3 poorly ran storage rooms. The building is painted decently, all concrete, with tiled floors. The windows all have screens which is amazing but still makes no sense to me how many bugs make it inside! The last 3 nights I have dreamt about giants bugs crawling through my hair. But thankfully I am the only volunteer at this point whose head has not been infected with lice. Overall after the past couple of weeks I have come to feel lucky for where the kids and I are living. The dogs are still a disgusting issue... But that I will just have to get used to. As far as the kids hygiene it seems to be more of a miscommunication within the Hogar and the organization, everyone says someone else is supposed to be responsible amongst the people who are living on site with paid positions. Two nights ago I told the kids they couldn´t have books or puzzles until they bathed and let me smell them. They each came to me saying they had bathed which of course I didn´t believe because you could see the rings of dirt around their neck. I smelt each one and made told them they couldn´t have a book or puzzle unless they bathed with soap (I found that we do have soap it was just in a locked room that only the director has access to). Last night instead I bathed the 4 youngest boys with soap and put deodorant on each of them. They were clean for about 5 minutes, but that is probably the cleanest they have been in a while. I talked to the other volunteers and we are just going to take turns making sure we get all the little ones bathed properly each night. Oh and we have been brushing their teeth as well. There is a 4 year old whose front teeth are completely rotten brown, luckily it is just his baby teeth... But back to what I was first saying... There is not the education here that there is in the States about hygiene and health. People cannot afford spoons, forks, knives and napkins and as a result people eat with their hands and it is messy. What we consider necessities like cleaning products, soap, shampoo, conditioner, etc are all luxuries to most here. Just having a shower and especially a running toilet here is a luxury. So I will not complain at all about the conditions of the site from now on... There are just some changes that definitely need to be made which should hopefully considering all volunteers, whether they have been on site for 1 week or one year are all in agreement.

Also, it is unfortunate but the people here don´t have the means to become educated on health. Most of the cooked meals have something fried in them with 100% vegetable oil and no one is conscious about working out. The men play soccer, but I haven´t seen one female workout in my almost 2 months here. Also, the wealthier people that can afford food eat lots of it and are largely overweight, while there are many that slave in fields all day and cannot afford food and are at the opposite end of the spectrum. Many families can just afford rice beans and some can afford meat. But fruits and vegetables which are very hard to come by. It is really sad considering the Dole plantations are just about 15 miles away from the Hogar where there are fields of fresh pineapple, but unfortunately most are getting shipped to the U.S. and the locals without money cannot afford them. Also, because you cannot really drink the water here, the majority of people all prefer to spend their money on a beverage with calories considering they are trying to intake as many as possible so they drink coke. With a lack of dentist in the area and with many families here that cannot afford toothbrushes and toothpaste there is another huge issue.

Overall the people here that I have came into contact with have been amazing. A man that works at the gas station saw my friend Bethany and I hitching the other day and offered to help us get a hitch so that we could wait in the shade. We waited with him for about 15 minutes as trucks passed and said that we would go back into the sun. He said he didn´t want us to wait in the sun (it was insanely hot that day) so he took out his wallet and offered to pay for our bus fare. Another family a grandmother and her daughter offered to make me lunch and then take a cab with me insisting they pay. My first time hiking up to my favorite swimming hole with my home stays family, they bought me pan dulce, sweet bread, and wouldn´t let me pay for it. Also, they let Bethany and I stay at their house without charging us for the room. Pretty much every hitch we have had has ended up in us becoming friends with the driver and learning something new about the area and offered to show us around. I have found all this hospitality amazing considering I am unemployed at the moment but feel wealthier than even the richest people I have come into contact with here.

Sorry this is so random. Nothing really interesting has happened in the past 2 weeks, just a lot of hanging out with the kids, trying to make progress with the first graders, helping the cooks in the kitchen, playing soccer with the kids, spending time with the other volunteers, talking with the guards, etc. This weekend we are going to try and cook a meal for the kids or take them somewhere (the other 2 volunteers and I) and go hiking again to my favorite swimming hole.

I hope everyone is doing well.

Honduras and 2 Weeks at The Hogar

2008-08-03T14:26:00.000-07:00

I do not know if I have mentioned it already, but it is beautiful here! La Ceiba is nicknamed La Novia de Honduras, which translates to the girlfriend of Honduras. Everyday regardless of the weather or how I am feeling I can just walk outside and look at the amazing mountains and see the ocean and instantly feel better knowing I am in a natural paradise. The beach is about five miles from the base of the mountains, if that, and then it is an endless jungle. The jungle here is amazing, filled with these lovely red and yellow flowers and all kids of different lush trees. There are multiple rivers running through the jungle but my favorite spot is hiking up this dirt road for about 2 hours to a place called Las Mangas where there is a little swimming hole. It is priceless. There are huge white rocks to lay on and jump off of into the river, a little swimming hole with a little natural rock water slide that is about 3 feet. My home stay family showed it to me and I went back yesterday with my two roommates which turned out to be an interesting night... Mom, don´t read beyond this point. We got to the base of the mountain around 5 and started trying to catch a hitch back to the Hogar. We finally caught one and they had to make a stop that lasted about 10 minutes and we were on our way. They were not going all the way to our village but we thought it would be better than nothing. They dropped us off around 6:30 at their stop which was about 4 miles from our village. We tried hitching while walking but it was dusk and no cars were stopping. The sun dropped within 10 minutes and we ended up walking the four miles in the dark to our village. It was the first time I had been outside of the orphanage at night, unless in Ceiba in a group. It was lovely. The stars were amazing and there are fireflies everywhere here! We all lived and ended up having a great day and walking all together about 10 miles which we felt allowed us the privilege of coming to town today for some ice cream which was delicious! Mom, again do not read on... Also, the other night we were in our room, my 2 roommates and I and we were watching a movie on the Hogar´s TV and we heard gunshots right outside of our window. I didn´t think anything of it and I looked down and all of my roommates were laying on the floor. I asked if those were real gunshots and they said yes. So I got on the floor as well. We turned off all of our lights and looked outside. Our armed guard was out of site and we couldn´t get his attention yelling out our window. We walked to get the head Tio and Tia to see if they knew what was going on... They opened there bedroom door and told us that the two shots were warning rounds to scare off potential robbers in the neighborhood. They told us that they wanted to let everyone in the village know we did in fact have an armed guard and that it was a planned drill. They apologized for not telling us. We went back to our room and laughed for about 15 minutes at the fact that we are warned about fire drills in the states and here we hadn´t been warned about our armed guard letting off a couple of rounds right outside of our window.

OK mom, now you can read on...
Life at the Hogar has either gotten better or I have just been lowering my standards and been adjusting... I love my four students. They are all adorable in their own way, but Angelo is my little angel. Another volunteer loves him as well so she keeps telling me I am going to have to fight her for him. He lost his tooth last night so she put 10 lempiras under his pillow. He woke up so happy about it and within 2 hours one of the other kids had taken the money. That is one of the things that is hard here at the orphanage. The kids have no respect for each other or the volunteers. They do respect their head tio and tia, the couple that is in charge. But other than that they don`t show much respect for their possessions or the other kids and they are inconsistent in the respect they show for the volunteers. They don´t have to work for anything and because of that they haven´t learned what it is like to work hard, earn money, and purchase something that you need to keep in good condition. They are given all of their clothes and all of their possessions and just trash them. We have to control all of the books they read, all of the puzzles they use, and toys they borrow. This means they knock on our door at all hours asking, tia, yo quiero rompecabeza, tia yo quiero un libro. This is something we have been talking about to try and work on so that they have an idea what it is like to work or create something and earn something in return.

I went swimming with all of the kids Friday after class and they acted totally different. None of them fought, they all got along, they were all happy, they were all excited to play and talk and everyone had a blast. It was a wonderful experience to see them away from the orphanage. I was talking to another volunteer about maybe trying to talk with all of the kids about something special they would like to do and rotate and take the kids in pairs or one at a time away from the orphanage to do something that would be memorable for them. It is hilarious though, I was asking the kids what their favorite meals were, and each of them said beans and flour tortillas. This is pretty much what we have to eat every single day at the orphanage. The food is decent, but I was thinking they would pick something they rarely get to have. The food at the orphanage doesn´t compare to the food from my home stay but it is pretty good and definitely edible. I helped the cooks our Friday because one cook got fired for stealing food so they are short handed. At first one of the cooks was a bit irritated because she gave me the job of manning the frying pan and I was spilling some of the oil while flipping the pastelitos. But I eventually I got the hang of it. After manning a frying pan in a kitchen in Honduras you lose about 5 pounds in water weight from sweating so much. I was soaked. But it was wroth it. I am learning some good cooking tips and the food is really good. Although at the orphanage there is a huge lack of fruits and vegetables. It is mostly beans, tortillas, means and rice. Oh and the sweetest coffee every which is really good and served to all of the kids which doesn´t help their already hyper behaviors.

I am trying to think of what else to update everyone on... We brought it up to the director that the kids need proper showers and we need to hire a plumber to fix the existing showers and we were told it was an issue with money because the organization is currently suffering. Oh, and I am going to a soccer game on Wednesday at the stadium in La Ceiba with the head tio and the other volunteers. I am so excited about that. It is Victoria, one of the Ceiba teams and Olympia, a team from San Pedro Sula. It is cheaper for women to go to the games, it is only $2.50. Hmmm... The weather is lovely. It rains maybe two or three days a week, but not for long. The rest of the time it is insanely humid, sunny, and perfect. After hiking all day Saturday and being gone all day I was so excited when we finally got back to the orphanage because I missed the kids, my students especially. I counted 35 bugbites on my body today when I was swimming and that is with wearing bug spray about half the time and sleeping with a mosquito net. Alright I need to head back to make some lesson plans for tomorrow.

Ok, I hope all is well with everyone back home. Take care, eat lots of raspberries for me and I will talk with you all later.

First Impressions

2008-07-25T15:21:00.000-07:00

First of all, I would like to say I am extremely happy I don´t have the internet at the orphange. I would have updated my blog the first day saying I was in hell... After a full week there now I have adjusted and adapted a bit. My move in was a bit rough. I was locked outside for about 3 hours because everyone had left for a day trip. Then I was let in to the actual orphanage but didn´t have keys to the room my luggage was stored and didn´t have keys to the room where I would be sleeping. Long story short, I was able to sleep on a spare couch after being woken up about 3 times by kids with bloody knees, lips, etc. Although I do still think the conditions should be much better for the kids considering it is a US funded project, I also know that these conditions are better than what they had before. I would like to visit some other projects just for comparison purproses. But I think the main thing that should be improved at this point in time is the medical conditions for the kids. They haven´t been seen by a Doctor in over a year and many of them have lice, ringworms and many other various infections.

My first impression of the orphanage was that it is a terribly ran project... But I am calming down a bit. The kids are filthy, they don´t really bathe, they rarely have soap, they rinse off with a faucet that sits in the dirt in a courtyard. There are 3 dogs at the orphanage allowed indoors that poop and pee everywhere which the kids then sit and walk in... There are insects everywhere. There is no sense of sanitization... I wouldn´t complain about these things if they weren´t possible to improve but the building is a modern building and has the definite potential to be clean as well as the kids...

On a positive note, I am teaching first grade. I have 4 students, Angelo, Ruth, Desmand and Sara. I want to kidnap Angelo. He is this little short, pudgy, roundfaced boy who can walk on his hands for about 5 minutes. He has these huge brown eyes and he loves to learn. He is too sweet for words. The other´s are definitely cute as well but can be very challenging. The other day I had them all coloring together and Angelo was sitting next to Sarah. He would bump into her, intentionally, and then proceed to say, que paso mi amor, in this little innocent voice. It was adorable.

Classes are from 7:30-12 then the kids eat and clean from about 12-2. After that is free time or time for English lessons. I have been playing soccer with the kids which is a blast. The only downside is you are totally drenched with sweat before you even begin to run around. And they don´t fully, actually don`t at all, understand out of bounds, offsides, or any rules of the sport really. Actaully the only thing I think they know is the color of the cards, red and yellow. But it is still a blast.

I hope everyone is well back home. Thanks for the update about the weather, Chris. I had been wondering how you guys were doing, sun, rain, etc.
Take care.

Graduation Day / Update

2008-07-18T11:11:00.000-07:00

Today I graduated from the CASS, Central American Spanish School! Every Friday the school has cake and hands out the diplomas to the students who will be moving on. A good majority of the other students are volunteers at various projects in Honduras as well. I was a bit late for my class this morning because I went out with my current roommate who is from Finland. It is her Birthday today, she is turning 21, and so we decided for her Birthday and my last Thursday in Ceiba we would go out. Thursday is ladies night here in Ceiba so all girls get into the club Casona for free and drinks are free as well. We had a blast dancing, the 5 of us white girls, and got home around 3. The club is awesome! There are 3 floors for dancing, it has open ventilation, plays great music and the downstairs is a karaoke bar, KIM!!! A cab ride is about $1, 20 lempiras, beer is about $1.50 or 30 lempiras... It was a really good time. Oh and on all the floors are about 5 guys standing with HUGE guns... All over Honduras actually... Are men with huge guns, armed guards.

This weekend I move to the orphanage. I am really excited about that, but I have become fond of my host family and with other students so I am also a bit sad. I went to the orphanage this past Wednesday to go over how the classes are ran, meet the kids, and plan schedules with the other volunteers. I will either be teaching 2nd grade or 1st grade. I am routing for first grade because the class size is smaller, and I don’t think my Spanish is ready for teaching 2nd grade yet... But we shall see.

Batman comes out here this weekend! There is a movie theatre in Ceiba and it is $2 or 40 lempiras. All the volunteers come into Ceiba on the weekends to watch movies and help pass time. I have seen Hancock and Walle, Hancock was in English with subtitles in Spanish and Walle was dubbed in Spanish.

Ok I am off to my home stay to eat lunch and take a nap. We were all going to head to the river, the 4 other girl volunteers and I, but it is raining today! I feel like I am back in Portland.

Once I am at the orphanage I will only be able to jump on a computer when I trek back to Ceiba so probably once or twice a week.

I hope all is well back home.

Interesting Week

2008-07-12T09:24:00.000-07:00

This week flew by! I got a really bad cold which I found odd considering I am in such a warm tropical climate (thank you brother for the reminder). I do have an explanation though... The host family I live with has a female dog, Huala. She is a little brown mut dog that is three years old. None of the dogs here are fixed and I know that there are no veterinarians around. When Huala is in heat, which happened to be this past week, every male dog within 3 miles comes to try and get through to the other side of the fence. ALL night long the dogs have been pawing at the fence right by my window! Dona Bertha has thrown hot water on the dogs and sprayed a couple of them with hairspray and every day we have put reinforcements up on the fence using scraps we find, wood panels, pvc pipe, etc. The two little girls cry terribly every time a dog gets on the other side of the fence thinking it is killing Huala. On Wednesday, when I was feeling my worst, I took a nap and woke up to the girls screaming bloody murder and yelling my name. I ran into the house thinking someone was in the house hurting them or that something had happened to one of the other kids. When I got in the house I saw that they were balling and they were trying to tell me a black dog was killing Huala. I opened the door to see this huge black dog with a huge tongue, glazed eyes, drooling all over, mounting their little brown dog. I tried to explain that the black dog wasn’t killing Huala but the girls wouldn’t stop crying so I took a broom and was able to get the black dog out of the fence, only for it to enter about an hour later followed by about 5 more times that night. So that is my weak explanation of how I got sick.

My school caught on fire Thursday evening. There was a rain storm and the power went out. When it came back on I guess it blew a circuit and caught some gas on fire... There hasn’t yet been a real explanation but that is how I best understand it. The entire upstairs is totalled, but the downstairs is still in decent shape. I watched it on the news with my host family Thursday night... The news people were saying, Americans, Germans, and Hondurans were all dead, they didn’t know how many, but they knew those nationalities. The next day we found out that NO ONE died, but that the 5 people living upstairs lost everything. The upstairs were apartments ran by the school director and it housed 3 orphans, and elderly woman, and a young girl the director was mentoring who works at the school. Friday school functioned as normal but in a house in the neighbourhood I live. After class Friday I went to the school to see if they needed help cleaning up and repairing the upstairs. Rafael, the director said that I wouldn’t be able to help until Monday because they need to first determine the exact cause. So instead I went to the hospital with my host family. One of the daughters who is a bilingual translator at the private hospital is La Ceiba broke her wrist about a month ago. Instead of putting casts on broken bones here they insert these huge needles! She had 5 huge metal needles, looking more like giant nails, about 2 inches apart which ran completely through her arm, in one side and out the other. She said it was constantly painful but that is what they do, no casts. Whether it is a broken collar bone, ankle, arm, etc. They use needles. The hospital was an interesting experience. It is the nicest hospital in Ceiba and there are still insects crawling all over, the elevator is an old shaft elevator, the ex ray machines look like they are from the 1970´s tat they must wheel around. The cafeteria is a little shack outside surrounded by chicken wire. It was interesting. I sat with the two little girls for about 3 hours while Jenny got her nails taken out... She said that the procedure went well.

This weekend I plan on going to the Pico Bonito Lodge to go on a canopy tour or white water rafting... I am still undecided. This will be my last week in Ceiba before heading to the orphanage. I had a meeting at the orphanage Thursday with all of the volunteers working with Helping Honduras Kids. There were about 30 volunteers from all over the world. It was pretty interesting. Also a social worker who is here to work with women’s groups on providing help to women who have been abused. It is insane how common child molestation is here. And the majority of the molestations are by family members... I have heard so many terribly awful stories it makes me sick to think about them...

Ok other than the school, my cold, and the dogs I don’t really have anything knew... I did take a couple more cooking classes from Dona Bertha. Those have been very exciting!

I hope everyone is doing well. I hear the weather has been warm there! I miss you all.

Mary

Cooking Class de Dona Bertha

2008-07-08T13:14:00.000-07:00

Last night was my most favorite night thus far in Honduras! I have been joking with my host family since I got here about wanting to take cooking classes from my host grandmother. When I got home last night the grandmother was yelling at the grandkids to clean the kitchen and living room. I thought it was strange since she has never made a fuss about them cleaning before... After about 15 minutes of the grandkids diligently cleaning the house she then yelled for me to come in the kitchen. I ran in and she said it was going to be my first cooking lesson and I was going to learn how to make baleadas. This is all in Spanish of course because Dona Bertha doesn't speak a lick of English. She had me make refried beans, fried eggs with butter and salt, and the handmade corn tortillas. It was a blast! The two little grandkids were jealous I was cooking in the kitchen with their grandmother so she gave them some dough to make their own tortillas. The grandmother wasn't helping me either. She was just yelling orders at me in Spanish while I ran around making sure the tortillas didn't burn, the eggs didn't burn and the beans as well. Also, today Dona Bertha told me that she cooks for her neighbors, a family of 10, everyday for lunch as a side job. Also a young man that works across the street pays to come over to eat lunch everyday. She is a really great cook and only 58 years old with 5 kids and 3 grandkids.

I now know how to make an authentic Honduran cuisine. It was really a great time. After cooking everyone ate at the same time complimenting me on my tortillas. Usually I always eat alone while the family sits around and then they eat once I have left the room. So this was much more enjoyable for me! The kids were playing with different ring tones on one of the cell phones and the Soldier Boy song came on and I got all excited... They were all looking at me funny so I got up and tried to teach the kids how to do the soldier boy dance. I failed miserably but the family had a great time laughing at me. Linda, the little girls would have loved having Curtis here to teach them the dance!

I hope all is well. Yes Greg now I will be able to cook baleadas for you when I get home.

Trip to Utila

2008-07-07T16:08:00.001-07:00

I went to Utila this past weekend to explore and help pass time. I went with a girl from Canada 20, a girl from London 26, and a guy from North Carolina 26. We had a blast. Although we are all from totally different walks of life with totally different views it was really fun! Utila is an Island off the coast of Ceiba. There are 3 main islands, Utila, Roatan and Guanaja. Roatan is the largest and the one cruise ships stop. The two islands Utila and Roatan are known for being some of the best and cheapest islands in the world to get your scuba certification ($250.00). It is a 4 day course so I didn’t do it this weekend but I plan on getting it before returning to the states. The boat takes a bit over an hour to get to the island and the drivers do not hold back in any way! They seriously gun it to get to the island. I don’t think they would even stop if someone fell off the boat. I was up in the front outside with the 3 people I was going with and we got seriously from head to toe soaked. Our bags were soaked and everything we had brought was completely soaked. Whose idea was it to sit in the front of the boat the entire time? We have no idea. We arrived on the island soaked and frustrated and knew we would never do that again! We found a hotel with 3 pools for $4 per night! It is nicer than my home stay room! The food was reasonable on the island with a variety of different restaurants. There were bikes and scooters everywhere! The guy we were with rented a scooter and took turns driving us around. We played by the pool and went out to a bar up in a tree house that was incredible. I guess all of the locals and tourists go to that bar and then head up to another bar up the road after midnight in the hills where they can blast music. That was incredible. If I have ever thought that I had any rhythm or could dance even somewhat decently… I now know I have absolutely NO rhythm and no idea how to dance. These Hondurans can DANCE! The women and even little girls here are amazing. I cannot begin to describe it… But that was a very fun night and I was able to get a baleada on the street at 2 am on the way back to the hotel. On the boat ride back to Ceiba we sat in the cabin which was a much better idea. Although we did see a couple of people throw up into the bags they provide on every ride. At least we were all dry and had tons of fun. Utila is a place where many people go to scuba dive and relax that never end up leaving. There are Hondurans from the mainland and all over Central America speaking Spanish, there are actual islanders that speak this slang English with a unique accent, and there are people from all over the world that have gone to visit and never left…

Honduran Food

2008-07-07T15:14:00.000-07:00

Everyone knows that I love to eat and that I love food. That is no different here in Honduras. I am SO happy I chose to live in a home stay for my 3 weeks in La Ceiba because all of my meals are authentic Honduran meals prepared (sometimes not timely) by the family. I have absolutely no complaints, actually one little one sometimes the meals can be a bit salty for my taste but I am adapting to it... For breakfast, desayuno, I have fresh fruit which tastes SO much better here in Honduras because they can actually wait until it is ripe to pick it. So I have fresh bananas, mangos, watermelon and my favorite here, pineapple. I also usually have an egg prepared slightly differently every meal. The eggs are always fried and salted and then my favorite is the fried egg rolled in a fresh (I mean handmade in the kitchen that morning) corn tortilla with a sliced avocado. I am already making myself hungry. For lunch, almuerzo, it totally varies. Always a sliced avocado, usually rice with some kind of meat and beans. Baleadas are a typical Honduran meal and that is my favorite for lunch! It is flour tortillas that are much better and a bit thicker than the ones back home. They are folded with homemade refried beans and then you can get an additional topping. Basic baleadas are the tortilla with beans and cheese. You can also get them with avocado, mantequilla (a rich sour cream), meat, eggs, and much more. The best one I had was the beans and eggs in the tortilla. It was awesome! Lunch also always includes a side salad which is a cut-up cucumber, tomato and onion soaked in a light vinegar with a seasoning sprinkled on top. It is delicious! For dinner, cena, it is always a meat, either bistec, chicken, or sausage. My absolute favorite was a pasta which is crazy I know considering this is Honduras. I asked if they made it thinking because I was American I liked spaghetti or if it was a typical Honduran meal, I had never mentioned that I love pasta. They said it was a typical Honduran meal. It was amazing! Spaghetti noodles, with hamburger cooked in a light cream sauce. It was delicious. Oh and last night for dinner it was homemade taquitos. The daughter rolled the dough by hand, stuffed the dough with hamburger and fried them on the stove, melting cheese and pouring a red sauce on top. AMAZING! I told the family I wanted to take cooking classes so tonight I have my first one. I cannot wait! To all those who thought I would lose weight on this trip... I seriously doubt it!

David A

2008-07-03T16:03:00.000-07:00

I met up with 3 girls that are currently volunteering at the Hogar de Amor in Agua Caliente. We hitched a ride from La Ceiba to the orphanage, which is just east of a small village that appears on maps called El Cacao. I had assumed that the villages would have little markets with a little main dirt or gravel road and houses or huts surrounding… Nope. Basically there is nothing in Agua Caliente except for the orphanage. I cannot wait to get there! The kids were all adorable! I was only able to stay there for a little over an hour because the last bus heads back to La Ceiba around 5:30 pm which puts you arriving in Ceiba at dusk. Which is cutting is fairly close.

Fortunately, I was able to catch a ride back with David Ashby who is the director of Helping Honduras Kids. On the ride back to Ceiba I told him about the wine tasting fundraiser and how much fun I had had organizing it and how everyone was so generous in their donations and I felt the money was going to go a long way. He was excited as well, but also seemed a bit preoccupied or stressed out. Although I had never met or communicated which him before in my life so he may always come across that way… But he began to tell me facts about Honduras to kind of bring me back down to the reality of what I would be dealing with and what the bigger issues are. This information is coming from a man who lived in Vancouver B.C. and the States and moved to Honduras 30 years ago to work for Dole. He has lived in La Ceiba for the past 30 years and is married to a Honduran woman. He runs the HHK projects and he spends time at all of them daily. He has invested his entire life into helping the kids of Honduras.

Interesting Facts:
- 50% of the Honduras population is 15 years old or younger
- 40-50% of the youth has been abused sexually or has been forced into a life of prostitution, males and females.
- 75% of birth certificates 3 years ago did not list a father’s name. Reasons being either the girl was forced into prostitution and didn’t know who the father was, or she was impregnated by a family member and could not declare it on the birth certificate
- The AVERAGE age of girls giving birth in Honduras is 14 YEARS OLD!

It was also interesting to hear that the prices for gas, electricity and food have gone up 30% in the past 2 months. This is coming from a country who’s daily earnings on average are 2-3$/day. Also, he mentioned that many of the non-profit organizations are REALLY struggling in Honduras because a majority of the monetary donations are from the United States. While the U.S. economy is currently doing poorly it is affecting the organizations throughout Honduras, and I am sure elsewhere in Central America, dramatically. People have stopped sponsoring the kids at the various Helping Honduras Kids sites. I found my meeting with David yesterday very interesting and thought it was worth sharing.

I hope everyone is doing well.

Oscar and CASS

2008-07-01T15:50:00.000-07:00

So my Professor Oscar... He is a very amusing guy. We were working out of our book today going over using the preterit, a form of past tense verbs in Spanish. He was asking me about my trip here and I was explaining to him that I sat at the airport for about 9 hours in San Pedro Sula. But I told him a young Honduran boy entertained me. There was a young buy about 7 years old that was playing on a little game boy and he must have been playing a game from the movie 300. 300 is the American movie about the Spartans for those who haven’t watched it or haven’t watched the South Park spoof. About every 5 minutes while he was playing he would run up to either his mom or dad and in English say, "THIS IS SPARTA"! I was dying because other than that he didn't seem to speak a spec of English. As soon as I told Oscar there was a 300 game for game boys and about the boy at the airport he flipped out and seriously acted out the entire movie! He was quoting all of the lines IN ENGLISH, which he is by no means fluent, and acting out all of the action scenes. Once I felt he was winding down to the end of the movie I told him I would give him five minutes and then he needed to teach me some Spanish. He said he ABSOLUTELY loves the movie and I guess quite of few of Hondurans do. He seriously knew EVERY scene of the movie and even the action moves to go along with it. He was using my pen as his sword and his book as his shield. I was dying laughing and told him I was going to bring my camera tomorrow to take a video of him. He then was totally embarrassed and said no... But it still was absolutely hilarious!

At this school there are a total variety of people, which I expected. And many of them are doing volunteer work. There is a family here from LA, CA who are having there kids take 6 weeks of classes, the morning classes, while volunteering in the afternoons. They are hoping that the kids will skip a year of Spanish in High School. The father is a Dr. from LA and he is here to volunteer at the local Hospital. The mother I believe will be volunteering as well. But they are all living in different home stays and just meeting up in the mornings. The father said he felt the need to come here because in LA the majority of his patients speak Spanish and are from Central America and he felt it would really help him to communicate by improving his Spanish. He also felt the need to bring his wife and kids here because he feels his entire family needs to learn that the world is so much bigger than LA and the US. Based on first impressions they are a very neat family and I cannot wait to get to know them better.

Also, I met up with 5 volunteers that are working at various sites for HHK yesterday. It was really great to meet all of them and I cannot wait to get there.

I hope everyone is doing well. Also, I am usually typing these in a rush at an internet café where I am watching the minutes add up. So please disregard all of my terrible grammar errors. Aside from being a terrible writer in the first place I am about 5 times worse when I am in a rush.

PS Andre thanks for the piping comment! Actually as I was walking here I was thinking about that in my head and knew I had typed it wrong! But at least I was close.

Roommates!

2008-07-01T15:38:00.000-07:00

So my bed is in the middle of a room which is about 7ft by 7 ft. To the left of my bed there are a toilet and a shower. Again the shower is a pvc pipe coming through the wall which only has running water about every other day. To the right of my bed are a large window and a door. I know have 2 sets of roommates sharing the room with me, which is why I slept terribly last night! I find at least 2 cockroaches roaming my bathroom daily. So usually I stick to the opposite side of my bed as far away as possible so that I can sleep without hearing them enter and without fearing they will crawl into my mouth while I am in a deep slumber. Last night I was on the far side of the bed and I heard this terribly loud sound which sounded like a velosa raptor! I jumped up and grabbed my flashlight and found 3 geckos about 4 inches long chasing each other around the ceiling and wall by the window. Now I know 4 inches is not large, but these things were making the loudest, most terrible sounds. As a result I did not sleep well at all. I laid in the middle of my bed between the cockroaches to my left and the shrieking geckos to my right. I am sure this is one of the things I am really going to miss about Honduras after 5 months of living with it... But at this point in time it is definitely not my favorite thing about my trip.

I got to school thinking I was alone in my critter adventure but a girl I have befriended from London told me when she arrived her room and bed were covered with ants! I think I would rather have the geckos...

Playing Futbol with Bertito and Gretchen

2008-06-30T14:36:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-30T12:38:00.000-07:00

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.