Merry Christmas (and Happy Hanukkah)!

I hope the holiday season brings peace, love and snow (yes, I really miss it) for all my friends and family. Realizing that I have neglected my blog for the past two months, I will attempt to give an update, along with providing a general idea of what I do daily (at my mom´s request). School just ended for the year on November 30, and classes won´t start up again until February. I have been struggling with the textbook situation, as National Geographic now refuses to sell their textbooks outside of the U.S. After a lot of worrying, last year´s SALTer Kari and my parents came to my rescue, and I will be sending two separate orders to them and having them ship/bring them to Honduras. All is well, and ¨si Dios permite¨, we will have the books by the time school starts up again. That said, the school year ended with sixth grade graduation, a delicious dinner banquet, and fun game of Amigo secreto (Secret Santa).

The sixth grade girls during our day at the park

The family at Carol´s graduation

In my home life, I really feel a lot closer to my host-family. It is a bit frustrating that the 11-year-old does more household responsibility than I do (I am always told there is nothing for me to do), but I am allowed to do my own laundry and wash everyone´s dishes, so it´s getting better. There was a bit of a strain when 4 cousins came to stay with us for a couple of weeks, but things are considerably more tranquilo now. The cooking situation has worked itself out as well, as my host-mom has been home a lot and she cooks all the meals but lets me help her. One of my favorite developments is that I have joined a walking group. I get up every morning at 5:30 and walk 2 vueltas around town and then run home a few kilometers. My host family likes to point out that I am a looking a bit more gorda these days, so I am hoping the exercise will help. Unfortunately, I was sick for almost a month with a nasty sinus infection, so the exercise plan went on pause, but now it is back in full swing. I also think I have finally found a Spanish tutor. I went with a group of visiting gringos from Water Missions out to build a water purification machine just outside of town and met a very friendly 23-year-old guy from Tocoa who was looking to swap English lessons for Spanish lessons. We have only gotten together once, but it was really nice, as I still feel like I have very few Honduran friends outside of my family, and even fewer pure-intentioned male friends.

The cousins, after they corn-rowed my hair

Isieny and my host-dad

I have also been going to La Ceiba a fair amount to visit my host sister and the newest member to the MCC team, Callie. I just love walking along the beach and getting into a bigger city sometimes. Now that school is over for awhile, I have been filling my afternoons with siestas, reading (or watching movies in Spanish), hanging out with Isieny and Carol, and the occasional outing with friends or the internet cafe. On Saturday night, I go to the jovenes (youth group) church service, which, aside from the somewhat annoying cell phone activity from the high-schoolers, I thoroughly enjoy. Sunday is usually filled with church in the morning (9-12) and evening (6-8). I struggle a little more with these services, as it is louder and longer than what I am used to, but I really appreciate the community. In October, we had a sort of relief sale and I worked with the youth to make popsicles and doughnuts that we sold to other church members and in November, I witnessed a truly moving baptism ceremony in the river in the mountains above Tocoa. In December, I went to my first Honduran wedding for my 20-year-old friend, Mario.

Mario´s Wedding Recessional

My latest activity was a team meeting 2 hours southeast of San Pedro Sula in Cerro Azul Meambar National Park. It was a beautiful location and surprisingly cold. We took hikes into the cloud forest and played and sang hymns/Christmas carols (we all brought our musical instruments). It was really rejuvenating and exactly what I needed during this season.

Part of the MCC Honduras team on a hike

The National Park

At home in Tocoa...

I´ve finally settled in to my permanent home here in Tocoa, Colon (for some reason, every time I tell a Honduran I live in Tocoa, they say oh, Tocoa, Colon, as if there were another somewhere in Honduras). I really like my host family. I have a host sister who´s my age, Nancy, who is in college 2 hours away but comes home for the weekends, an older sister, Cynthia, with the cutest two-year-old you´ve ever seen, a 15-year-old brother, Kevin (who´s actually a cousin), and an 11-year-old sister, Carol. It´s strange to go from being an only child in a fairly quiet household to one of 6. Every morning, I wake up at 5:30 AM to the sounds of the radio and the whole family sweeping the house and doing laundry. Even though I don´t work until 12 noon, the productivity is so contagious that I feel I must get up and make breakfast for the family or sweep my room too. My host mom works as a nurse in a town an hour away, but she gets up at the crack of dawn to cook lunch for the family before she leaves. My host-dad is a high school English teacher. School is different here in that there are two shifts with totally different teachers and students, one from 7AM to 12PM and one from 12:30ish to 5:30. Cynthia works in the morning, and the kids and I watch her daughter, Isieny. Then she returns and we go to school. School is also a different experience in itself. One might describe it as a little more unstructured than in the states. There are a lot of holidays, and you can´t be certain when they are, and when teachers will actually be teacher. I am currently working with Maria, a 18-year-old volunteer from Ohio, with 20 or so students as the math/reading specialist and Special Ed. teacher. Yeah, I´m a little underqualified...Last week, I also served as a substitute fourth grade teacher for an afternoon with no plans left for me. It´s definitely been a learning experience so far. These next few weeks I´m working on making and giving evaluations for each student to prove to the parents that their children are learning English. I´ll also be figuring out how many textbooks are needed for next year and getting those ordered sometime in the next few months. I have moments when I just feel like things are so different here (such as when I attempt to cook for the family) and sometimes I feel like there are very few differences at all. It just depends on the day and the hour. Before I get off the computer, I will attempt to describe my cooking struggles. My host-mom has been away for the last two weeks, and it has been up to me and my older sister to cook for the family. I know very few recipes by heart, but I have attempted to make chili, fish tacos, flank steak and onions, pasta dishes, and banana bread. There are very few American ingredients that can be found at the supermarkets, so when asked to cook American food I struggle. I actually hand breaded and fried fish fillets for my fish tacos (instead of the fish sticks I rely on in the US), bought the only thing I could find labeled beef in the freezer for my flank steak, and found the only spicy sauce in the house to create my chili. Cheddar cheese (or really any cheese other than the Honduran mix between feta and mozzerella that is used for everything), mushrooms, sweet potatoes, and peanut butter have proved impossible to find in Tocoa. It is quite humbling to find that while I rely on a cookbook, measuring cups, and a variety of ingredients that can be purchased at King Soopers, my 15-year-old Honduran brother can make a better pancake than me from scratch.

My host sister, Carol, at the Independence Day parade

My first-graders dressed up for the parade

My house in Tocoa

The family at KFC in Ceiba
(Nancy, Paola (family friend), Isieny, Carol, my host dad, Cynthia)
Publicar entrada

Me and Nancy at the beach in Ceiba

Copan

I have been in Copan for language school for a week and a half now. Copan is really an interesting town. It is quite small and very well put together as a tourist town. I am living with a very large family, and my host-mother and her sisters (one of whom Adam is living with) were actually born in Copan. I have 4 host sisters about my age, an 18-year old host brother, another older host brother with the cutest 16-month old son, and 3 cousins who are in and out of the house daily. The family is also Evangelico and they go to church 4 times each week. I really feel like I am living dual lives in Copan. Half the time, I hang out with Adam and some other friends we've met here, speaking English and being tourists, and half the time I'm trying to be part of the Honduran family I live with. For instance, yesterday I went to the Mayan ruins in the morning with Adam, Brooke, and Mercy (friends from language school) and we went on an English tour with a few more Gringos. Afterwards, I went home for lunch, where my host mother talked to me in Spanish about her daughters in the U.S. and how she has never been able to visit them because it is nearly impossible to get a Visa to come to the U.S. from Honduras. After that, I played with Emilio, the cute child, and did my homework in my favorite cafe here. After dinner, I ran into Mercy and a couple of other guys from the tour and we ate ice cream in waffle cones and hung out. Around 9:30, the power went out all over town, and as I was contemplating how I was going to stumble back home in the dark, I ran into my host sister. She was on her way to church, as the father of one of the jovenes (youth group) had died and there was an all night memorial service and viewing. I went with her to the church and was once again immersed in the different culture. My host family had provided food for the service, and people wandered in and out of the church all night. It was quite moving, but different than any memorial service I had been to, as it seemed quite alright to smile and talk to people in the church...people were not as somber as at funerals I've been to in the U.S. In any case, It is hard to know whether I should be with the family all the time, trying to gain as much Honduran knowledge as possible early on, or whether I should take advantage of the last few days I have with Adam and English-speaking people my age. Trying to understand Spanish and the ways of the family all the time is frustrating, exhausting, and satisfying all at the same time.

Mercy, Adam, and Brooke at the ruins

The beautiful Copan Ruinas

My house in Copan

Me and Luis, my Spanish teacher

My host family in Copan

The Globalizers

Right now, I am in language school, with lots more free time on my hands. I am reading this book called the Globalizers. I have really been thinking a lot about it. The book states that it is not corporations, such as McDonalds and KFC, that are globalizing ¨developing¨ countries such as Honduras. Instead, the book claims that it is the volunteer workers (mainly government programs, but also NGO´s) that are the true globalizer. The even harder thing to swallow, is that these organizations, according to the book, go to Honduras under the assumption that they are making an improvement in people´s lives and being generous by giving their time in energy. However, the authors state that any ¨work¨that is done, benefits the donor country, such as the United States, more than it will ever benefit the recipient country. I have really been struggling internally with this. It´s not as if I came to Honduras under the assumption I was ¨bettering the world¨ or making a difference in people´s lives, but it pains me to think that I´m making globalization worse. There are just tons of volunteers here, and while the book talks negatively about the volunteers who live in huge houses, drive luxury cars, and get paid almost the same salaries as they would in the U.S. with little accountability, I can´t help but feel bad about bringing an ipod and a digital camera with me, as it just contributes to the image of Americans being materialistic and rich. I was talking about it a lot with Adam last night, and he thinks that it´s God´s intention that we bring what we learn back to our home countries, not necessarily so that something can be done, but only to have a better understanding of Honduras and its relation to the U.S. It´s just so hard to get outside of my cultural reference point when I see hungry children with unclean drinking water and to not think, ¨what can be done to help them?¨ I guess I´ll just really concentrate on building relationships, as I still believe relationships are mutually beneficial, not as representatives of our culture, but because of the love one human can bring to another, in spite of how skewed the world seems sometimes.

I´m here!

Well, I´ve been in Honduras for exactly a week, though it has seemed a lot longer. When we arrived (Adam and I), we stayed in San Pedro Sula for a few days. San Pedro was probably the most shocking to me initially. There are tons of American fast food chains, such as Burger King, Popeye´s, KFC, Pizza Hut, and even Quizno´s, scattered around the city (Amazingly, Starbucks isn´t here). Looking around the mall food court, you really wouldn´t even know you weren´t in the US. Cell phones are also really popular here, and yet there isn´t hot water in almost any of the homes. I don´t know what I was expecting, but it wasn´t that. I stayed with a host family during my few days, and it was really nice to be a part of family life. The granddaughter of my host mom and I became fast friends and I spent a lot of time with her. It´s just so much easier to talk to kids, because they don´t really care that you can´t say much as long as you can play. After San Pedro, we went to Azacualpa, the town Adam will be in for the year. It was an interesting contrast, as it was much more of "quaint" town. The house Adam will be living in has a beautiful garden and lots of animals running around. He will be working up in the mountain towns doing ecotourism and education work. After Azacualpa, we went to my town, Tocoa. Tocoa is very different than both Azacualpa and San Pedro (and as it seems, hotter). I´m so excited to work in the school though, as Kari (the previous SALTer) has made a great library and space to work with kids. My host family also seems nice. They have a daughter my age, and I´m hoping we´ll become friends. Right now, I´m in Copan, waiting to go to language school. I´ll be out here for the next two weeks, living with a host family again. I have high hopes for language school, as I´ll do anything to improve my Spanish knowledge. It is pretty frustrating not knowing anything that is being said around you. Luckily, people here are very patient and generous. I spent most of my day lounging around reading. I think it´ll take some time to get used to the slower pace of life around here. I will write more about my thoughts later. It´s been a busy week...