Well, I´ll start with my very last day in Santa Barbara. I lazily got up in the morning, showered, made myself a stack of pancakes, and mozied over to my AFS contact´s house. We called AFS to confirm plans on meeting in Tegus the next day, and she sent me on my way with a new hat and a small container of little corn husk dolls. I dropped them off at my house, and left for el centro to use the internet and print off my confirmation receipt for my flight from Miami to Minneapolis. Planning on being at least 20 minutes late for my 11:30 goodbye lunch with my friends, I was shocked when at 11:15 Faby called me and told me to come to her house right away so we could go to the restaurant. I left, met Faby and Maru, we left and picked up Olga. Two other friends were supposed to go too but they never showed up. We went to the restaurant Cebolla´s, and I ate my very last baleada in Honduras for lunch. I also drank Pepsi, which I´m sure everyone is very interested in. Coca-Cola and Pepsi are super popular there (whoa, I can no longer say ¨here¨ when I´m talking about Honduras can I?). Soda is drank at like every lunch, dinner, etc. It´s a social thing. I started off my exchange no at all liking Coca and ended up voluntarily ordering it. Wow. I have changed, now haven´t I?
We finished eating, my friends split the bill and wouldn´t let me pay a fourth, and we left for the artesania store. They wanted to get me some goodbye presents. After looking around at various things, they chose the gifts that they would get me, and had the wooden ones personalized with various messages. They also bought me a Honduran flag. After they paid we went to the bodega that belongs to part of Olga´s family and wrote all over that flag. It sounded really bad when we told Olga´s family that we were going to manchar the flag. They wrote the names of all the members of the Crazy Family, and I promised to hang it up on my wall.
I hung out the rest of the afternoon in Faby´s house playing computer games with her, and while I was there Maru dropped back by with coffee from her family´s farm and MORE gifts for me, and Olga´s mom dropped by with a ton of coffee from their farm and a little thing as a memory from Olga´s quinceañera. At 5:30 I went back to my house and did my very final packing. As in, finding space for all that coffee and other gifts I magically accumulated. I weighed my bags, my big one coming in at 48 pounds and my duffer coming in at 38. I weighed myself too, and AFS definitely stands for Another Fat Student. Minnesota got 15 pounds more of Kirsten to freeze off this winter.
That evening we had another going away party for me, with my family, Anik´s family, and my AFS contact and her husband. Anik wasn´t there because she left for a trip to Roatan (the bay islands, sooo jealous). We ate, danced, talked, and finally everyone left. Mamá and I cleaned up a bit, and she went to bed. Sindy hung out in my room until 1:30 in the morning until I kicked her out to sleep. I couldn´t fall asleep very quickly, and I woke up at 4:30 am to get ready for the trip to the Tegus airport, so I probably slept something like 2.5 hours that night.
In the morning we left veeery early for Tegus. We didn´t know how the roads were going to be, and it´s a 4 hour drive if all goes well. We stopped in Comayagua because one of my goals here in Honduras was to see the church there. It has the oldest working clock in all of the Americas, one of the oldest in all of the world (my host mom was saying second oldest in the world that still works). We explored the church a bit, took lots of (non flash) pictures, and got back on the road.
We got to the airport early, and hung out until AFS arrived at 12:45. I checked my two bags (both free, jejeje), AFS paid the airport tax, I said my last goodbyes to my family and started tearing up for the fourth time in a 12 hour period, and I met up with the other two Us folks returning. We had trouble getting to security, and had to go to Immigration to get our passports checked again, and then we made it through. After the easiest and quickest security experience I´ve ever had in an airport, we made it to the gate... and waited 45 minutes extra because the plane was late. After a final carry-on bag check, I got on the plane. I got one of the emergency exit row seat, and looots of leg room. At the end of the flight I talked with the guys next to me (in Spanish, of course). They thought being an exchange student sounded great, and said that I knew more parts of Honduras than they did. Jeje. I did a lot of travelling, didn´t I?
We left the plane, went through customs (I had to declare the bananas, beans, coffee, and Christmas cookies I brought back. All they did was x ray my bags another time). We all overnighted it in the Miami airport hotel (AFS paid, bu we had to buy meals). I paid $10 for a personal pizza for dinner, and realized that I no longer have any money sense. I have to translate things to lempiras half the time now.
Maggie and I shared a room, got up in the morning and went on a Dunkin Donuts run (their gingerbread muffins are really good, not too sweet). My dad called and told me that my flight to Minneapolis was canceled, and now I´d have a layover in Atlanta. What a pain. Once again through security, waiting in the airport flipping through magazines with Maggie, and I got the very last seat on the plane to Atlanta. 33F. We arrived late in the airport, and I ruched from Concourse b to Concourse A. Which sounds like they´re close but it´s a long walk to get to the escalator, then a long walk (or train ride) to the next escalator, then another walk to get to the right gate. I got to the gate, and talked to the lady at the desk, telling her that I didn´t have a ticket but that I should be on the flight. I got the last open seat on the plane (40F), and there was a long standby list. I think I lucked out, because much later and I wouldn´t have gotten on the flight. A loong plane ride later I finally got to MN, and waited until practically everyone else was off the plane before I could retrieve my viola. A flight attendant stowed it behind my seat with the oxygen tanks to make room for other carry-on bags. when leaving the plane I talked with a super nice lady and we went down towards the baggage claim area together. As soon st I left the double doors.... I was assaulted by a hug from a smiling mother of mine!! After rounds of hugs, me almost cheek kissing my sister and then showing my mom what a cheek kiss is (isn´t it self explanatory?), and baggage claiming, we walked towards the car (my dad brought me a coat) and I entered Frozen Minnesota Winterland.
I suppose this ends my blog. It´s the end of my exchange, the final chapter of Honduras (for now, definitely planning a summer trip after my high school graduation!), and the beginning of the rest of junior year. It´s definitely not the end of my AFS experience. My ¨experience¨ is going to continue for a while as I go through culture shock... again. And another round of stomach aches after eating like I did my first week in Honduras. And intense cravings for beans and tortillas. Good handmade corn tortillas, not those store bought fakers. Looking back, I never really left home back in August. I left A home, but found two more in Honduras. I had two families (admittedly the first one didn´t work out, but they were still good people), friends, school, and now I´m homesick again. For my Honduran home.
Friday, January 7, 2011
Monday, January 3, 2011
Semana numero 20
Here it is, my last bit of time in Honduras. Week #20. El fin. Tomorrow is my last day in my little town of Santa Barbara (population 29,272 according to the welcoming signs), and on Wednesday I go with my family to Tegus to the airport. This week has been a blast.
On the 30th I began to pack up my belongings. I got my big suitcase to 50 pounds and half-filled my second bag, leaving out various articles of clothing and other things I would use in the week ahead. I went to the post office and mailed my last three postcards (no one left on my to-write list! Finally!) and still no sign of those last minute letters that were sent to me. In the afternoon I went to Trinidad and Ilama with my family (little towns nearby). Trinidad is really cute! The streets are very clean, the park is well-designed, and it seemed like a nice quiet town to pass the afternoon. Ilama is a bit more run down. They don´t have as much money, their Catholic church is crumbly, and they lack a central park. Most of Santa Barbara is coffee based for income. In Ilama it´s pepper. We ate dinner in a little comedor and it was GOOD. In Honduras you are always given a plate that has your food already on it. In restaraunts, at home, everywhere. For some odd reason that night it was family style. We had bowls of food in the middle of the table and were given clean plates. It was shocking. And I drank some really good juice. Cantaloupe. YUM.
We drove by a REALLY old bridge too. busses used to go over it, but now it´s used for food traffic, bicycles, and the mini red taxis that aren´t cars. The floor is of oooooold metal that's falling apart in areas. But, the bridge has a magnificent view. We took lots of pictures.
That night we made more COOKIES! The recipe from the magazine I bought in Tegus wasn't right and we ended up adding a ton more flour. We started our grand cookie bakeathon at 7 and finished just after midnight. But we now have mountains of cinnamon-orange star cookies (We made 6-pointed star shaped Christmas cookies for New Years'. Say what??).
Of course, AÑO NUEVO! The 24th and the 31st of December are big party nights here in Honduras. On the 31st in the morning Anik came over and we did some shopping in el centro. I bought some candy to bring back to the US (I can hear you guys cheering already) and Anik bought a new swimsuit and foodstuffs for her trip to Roatan. We returned to the house, played cards, and I wrote her a message on one of my little American flags and gave it to her along with some markers and other things I´m not bringing back with me. In the afternoon Mamá returned from work (turns out she did have to work the 31st after all) and the rest of the family got to work making their turkey. Sindy attempted to make me help her, but there was no way I was going to help them get that poor little guy into the oven.
For dinner I ate lasagna, they ate turkey, and we started off with risengrod. When I finished making the risengrod, I had my little cousins put the bowls on the table so no one would accuse me of cheating. Nonetheless before we began eating it and after I explained the game, everyone was already accusing me of cheating. I recorded the great Almond Unveiling at the end, and Papá got this year's almond. I told him that while he got to open the box of chocolates, next year he had to bring the chocolate. He said that was fine, but that I had to be here next time too. Aww man, I wish I could come back next Christmas/New Years.
On the first of January, we began our loong journey to Olancho. We left at 11:30 (after Papá said we had to leave at 8 or 9 and I jokingly said that would mean that we would leave at 10:30). Gerson Chiquito (Claudia, the exchange student here before me, named Gerson "Gerson Chiquito" because Gerson is Papá's name as well. I shortened it to just Chiquito, and that's what I've been calling him the last month or so. Mamá thinks it's so funny that I call him Chiquito) is attending a university there (the national university of agriculture) and it's a good 8 hours away. On really bad roads.
A magazine a few years old that I read says that Honduras has a well-maintained highway system. But after the golpe de estado, roads have fallen into disrepair. road projects were halted, and there's no money to fix all the roads that need it. Local men fill the huge potholes with gravel, and while cars pass as they work they hold out hands in the hopes of getting a few lempiras for their efforts. Some of the roads are great (From Santa Barbara to Comayagua there are some of the finest roads I've seen in Honduras in the mountains), but the road from Tegus to Olancho is absolutely terrible. As in, major pothole dodging, lots of grunts of pain when you hit a pothole (and Honduran drivers are talented at avoiding them), and the horrifying reminder that you have four more hours of this type of road to look forward to.
Anyhow, we spent the first night in a hotel in Juticalpa and left in the morning to Catacamas. We did some last minute shopping for Chiquito and left to the University (aka "La U"). We spent LOTS of time in line, bought Chiquito his uniform, went to a parents seminar, and got him settled in his dorm (7 roommates, the girls only have to have 2 or 3 roommates). We spent the night in another hotel (which had HOT WATER!!!), visited him in the morning (all the guys had to have their heads shaved as part of the uniform.... he looks different now), and set back off to Santa Barbara.
In the car the three of us (Papa, Mama and me) talked about politics (hmm, we seem to do that a lot). Obama isn't the most popular here in Honduras because of his policies and inadequate international handeling of the golde de estado back in 2009. Because of this a lot of Hondurans are thinking McCain would have been better (aww man, you guys!! Hondurans do not know enough about American politics if they're thinking Republicans would have handeled things any better! They have a long bloody history in the cold war of "helping" Latin America). Luckily my host parents are not of this mindset. We awknowledged that no matter what governments screw you over some how, and that the US meddles too much in the affairs of other countries when it's not wanted. We finally got back to Santa Barbara at 4:30. There was going to be a party with my friends but it was canceled. Instead tomorrow I'll be getting together with them at lunch in a restaurant. Olga set it up and is calling everyone. I'm assuming there's vegetarian food there, as I've never eaten at Cebollas.
There's a few wrap up notes that I want to make regarding the Spanish language.
1) Instead of using tú we use vos. On occassion my host parents use tú, and people will understand you, but normal people in Honduras use vos.
2) One thing that we gringos will probably never understand properly is usted, the formal form of you. Learn it, love it, use it. Unless you're talking to your child or a close friend, you use usted. Teachers, salespeople, friends' parents, and bank guards that have large guns (It kills me every time Anik uses vos with the bank guards), should all be addressed as usted. I bend the rule and use vos with my host parents and with other family members that I feel comfortable with, and various kind-of friends. Parents do use usted with their children, not always vos. In parts of Honduras, according to a couple of German exchange students, you ONLY use usted.
3) Gringos! I'm one, you're one, anyone with light skin, hair, blue eyes, or looks vaguely European in one. In my first two months here I was called gringa a total of five times (that I heard), after that the number soared as piropos including "gringita" climbed to an all time high. And my new host mom began to affectionatly call me "mi gringita."
4) Accents, sigh. Alas, I have not mastered a good Honduran accent. I am decidedly norteamericana. I have a 50-50 shot of rolling my r's, up 50% since before my exchange. And I am incredibly bothered by those darn accents from Spain. They sound REALLY good in songs (Alex Ubago :D :D :D), but in voiced-over movies the lisping just gets to me.
5) One thing that I just recently noticed is the use of "hay que" as in "hay que lavar los platos." I'd never heard this before, but ever since I first noticed it and asked my host mom about it, I've been hearing it all over-- on the streets, on tv, etc. It's like the same as saying "tienes que hacer algo" but without saying that a specific person has to do it, simply that the action has to be done by somebody.
Things that I will miss
1) host family and friends
2) cheek kissing
3) the funky sidewalks of Santa Barbara that are at all different heights and so definietely not handicapped friendly
4) speaking Spanish with everyone, and being UNDERSTOOD and being able to UNDERSTAND! (Por fin!)
5) no curfew (my host mom told me that I can stay out until whatever hour I want, as long as I can get home safely. Of course, such freedom makes me come back before midnight as I don't want to abuse her trust)
6) Honduran food. Tortillas. Beans. Platanos.
7) El parque
8) The wonderful custom of saying "buen provecho" when someone's eating, even if it's sometone you've never met before on the street.
9) Soo much more that I'll probably realize later on. Juanes is completely right. You don't know what you have until you have lost it. I forget which song of his that's in. Possibly Dia Normal.
Since I hit it, my Spanish improvement. I still get vaguely giddy when I realize I'm using subjunctive. I can now use orders quickly, unlike at the start of my exchagne when I had all that hesitation between requests and orders. It's all the same in Spanish, really. If you feel awkward ordering someone, order them in usted to soften it a bit. I never realized until now just how much people order others around. In English it's the same, but in Spanish orders are decidedly different. When someone calls the house phone for my host mom, I order them to wait "espere por favor" as I go to find her.
Hmm. English is harder. Back in October I accidentally told an Italian exchange student who was trying to think of a word that the word she wanted was productful. I'm not sure if that was because of my sleep-deprived state or because my English has gotten super crappy. When I write in English I will use con instead of with and only realize it on my proofread. The other day when I was trying to think of the work "ceremonial" in English I kept thinking sacrificial? No, that isn't right. How do you spell it? With an s? Or a c?. Where the word "that" is optional in English and required in Spanish for the most part I've been sticking it in English as well. English just looks so naked without the appropriate spaces for the word "que" marked by something. I've ended up teaching bits and pieces of English to my host family, though it usually takes me a bit to remember a grammatical piece, or to think up a reason why English is the way it is. We worked on Chiquito's accent a bit. He can't make the v sound in "give." That sound doesn't really exist in Spanish. The pronounciation of v's and b's are exactly the same. Which leads to lots and lots of misspellings amongst the youth here. I find myself correcting their spelling and grammar in their own language. I think I'm a bit too picky.
I love Spanish. It's a language that's really like a lot of different languages that are called the same thing. It's different in every Spanish speaking country (just as the food and cultures are different). Apparently in Cuba "papaya" is a bad word. Just about any innocent thing you say can somehow be related to sex and thus set everyone off giggling. "Pan de mujer", round bread rolls handmade by women, has a double meaning that sends Honduran minds down the toilet. My Spanish has been infiltrated by random Honduran slang words (pisto=dinero, cipote=muchacho). I'm going to miss everyone here so much. My family. My friends. My teachers. My tadpoles. The little dearies haven't even sprouted legs yet.
I think I'll probably do one last post, either in Miami or when I arrive in Minneapolis. And some major photo uploading (I have 11 full CDs of pictures and my two camera memories as well). But for now, good night. I have a long day tomorrow that will feel all too short.
On the 30th I began to pack up my belongings. I got my big suitcase to 50 pounds and half-filled my second bag, leaving out various articles of clothing and other things I would use in the week ahead. I went to the post office and mailed my last three postcards (no one left on my to-write list! Finally!) and still no sign of those last minute letters that were sent to me. In the afternoon I went to Trinidad and Ilama with my family (little towns nearby). Trinidad is really cute! The streets are very clean, the park is well-designed, and it seemed like a nice quiet town to pass the afternoon. Ilama is a bit more run down. They don´t have as much money, their Catholic church is crumbly, and they lack a central park. Most of Santa Barbara is coffee based for income. In Ilama it´s pepper. We ate dinner in a little comedor and it was GOOD. In Honduras you are always given a plate that has your food already on it. In restaraunts, at home, everywhere. For some odd reason that night it was family style. We had bowls of food in the middle of the table and were given clean plates. It was shocking. And I drank some really good juice. Cantaloupe. YUM.
We drove by a REALLY old bridge too. busses used to go over it, but now it´s used for food traffic, bicycles, and the mini red taxis that aren´t cars. The floor is of oooooold metal that's falling apart in areas. But, the bridge has a magnificent view. We took lots of pictures.
That night we made more COOKIES! The recipe from the magazine I bought in Tegus wasn't right and we ended up adding a ton more flour. We started our grand cookie bakeathon at 7 and finished just after midnight. But we now have mountains of cinnamon-orange star cookies (We made 6-pointed star shaped Christmas cookies for New Years'. Say what??).
Of course, AÑO NUEVO! The 24th and the 31st of December are big party nights here in Honduras. On the 31st in the morning Anik came over and we did some shopping in el centro. I bought some candy to bring back to the US (I can hear you guys cheering already) and Anik bought a new swimsuit and foodstuffs for her trip to Roatan. We returned to the house, played cards, and I wrote her a message on one of my little American flags and gave it to her along with some markers and other things I´m not bringing back with me. In the afternoon Mamá returned from work (turns out she did have to work the 31st after all) and the rest of the family got to work making their turkey. Sindy attempted to make me help her, but there was no way I was going to help them get that poor little guy into the oven.
For dinner I ate lasagna, they ate turkey, and we started off with risengrod. When I finished making the risengrod, I had my little cousins put the bowls on the table so no one would accuse me of cheating. Nonetheless before we began eating it and after I explained the game, everyone was already accusing me of cheating. I recorded the great Almond Unveiling at the end, and Papá got this year's almond. I told him that while he got to open the box of chocolates, next year he had to bring the chocolate. He said that was fine, but that I had to be here next time too. Aww man, I wish I could come back next Christmas/New Years.
On the first of January, we began our loong journey to Olancho. We left at 11:30 (after Papá said we had to leave at 8 or 9 and I jokingly said that would mean that we would leave at 10:30). Gerson Chiquito (Claudia, the exchange student here before me, named Gerson "Gerson Chiquito" because Gerson is Papá's name as well. I shortened it to just Chiquito, and that's what I've been calling him the last month or so. Mamá thinks it's so funny that I call him Chiquito) is attending a university there (the national university of agriculture) and it's a good 8 hours away. On really bad roads.
A magazine a few years old that I read says that Honduras has a well-maintained highway system. But after the golpe de estado, roads have fallen into disrepair. road projects were halted, and there's no money to fix all the roads that need it. Local men fill the huge potholes with gravel, and while cars pass as they work they hold out hands in the hopes of getting a few lempiras for their efforts. Some of the roads are great (From Santa Barbara to Comayagua there are some of the finest roads I've seen in Honduras in the mountains), but the road from Tegus to Olancho is absolutely terrible. As in, major pothole dodging, lots of grunts of pain when you hit a pothole (and Honduran drivers are talented at avoiding them), and the horrifying reminder that you have four more hours of this type of road to look forward to.
Anyhow, we spent the first night in a hotel in Juticalpa and left in the morning to Catacamas. We did some last minute shopping for Chiquito and left to the University (aka "La U"). We spent LOTS of time in line, bought Chiquito his uniform, went to a parents seminar, and got him settled in his dorm (7 roommates, the girls only have to have 2 or 3 roommates). We spent the night in another hotel (which had HOT WATER!!!), visited him in the morning (all the guys had to have their heads shaved as part of the uniform.... he looks different now), and set back off to Santa Barbara.
In the car the three of us (Papa, Mama and me) talked about politics (hmm, we seem to do that a lot). Obama isn't the most popular here in Honduras because of his policies and inadequate international handeling of the golde de estado back in 2009. Because of this a lot of Hondurans are thinking McCain would have been better (aww man, you guys!! Hondurans do not know enough about American politics if they're thinking Republicans would have handeled things any better! They have a long bloody history in the cold war of "helping" Latin America). Luckily my host parents are not of this mindset. We awknowledged that no matter what governments screw you over some how, and that the US meddles too much in the affairs of other countries when it's not wanted. We finally got back to Santa Barbara at 4:30. There was going to be a party with my friends but it was canceled. Instead tomorrow I'll be getting together with them at lunch in a restaurant. Olga set it up and is calling everyone. I'm assuming there's vegetarian food there, as I've never eaten at Cebollas.
There's a few wrap up notes that I want to make regarding the Spanish language.
1) Instead of using tú we use vos. On occassion my host parents use tú, and people will understand you, but normal people in Honduras use vos.
2) One thing that we gringos will probably never understand properly is usted, the formal form of you. Learn it, love it, use it. Unless you're talking to your child or a close friend, you use usted. Teachers, salespeople, friends' parents, and bank guards that have large guns (It kills me every time Anik uses vos with the bank guards), should all be addressed as usted. I bend the rule and use vos with my host parents and with other family members that I feel comfortable with, and various kind-of friends. Parents do use usted with their children, not always vos. In parts of Honduras, according to a couple of German exchange students, you ONLY use usted.
3) Gringos! I'm one, you're one, anyone with light skin, hair, blue eyes, or looks vaguely European in one. In my first two months here I was called gringa a total of five times (that I heard), after that the number soared as piropos including "gringita" climbed to an all time high. And my new host mom began to affectionatly call me "mi gringita."
4) Accents, sigh. Alas, I have not mastered a good Honduran accent. I am decidedly norteamericana. I have a 50-50 shot of rolling my r's, up 50% since before my exchange. And I am incredibly bothered by those darn accents from Spain. They sound REALLY good in songs (Alex Ubago :D :D :D), but in voiced-over movies the lisping just gets to me.
5) One thing that I just recently noticed is the use of "hay que" as in "hay que lavar los platos." I'd never heard this before, but ever since I first noticed it and asked my host mom about it, I've been hearing it all over-- on the streets, on tv, etc. It's like the same as saying "tienes que hacer algo" but without saying that a specific person has to do it, simply that the action has to be done by somebody.
Things that I will miss
1) host family and friends
2) cheek kissing
3) the funky sidewalks of Santa Barbara that are at all different heights and so definietely not handicapped friendly
4) speaking Spanish with everyone, and being UNDERSTOOD and being able to UNDERSTAND! (Por fin!)
5) no curfew (my host mom told me that I can stay out until whatever hour I want, as long as I can get home safely. Of course, such freedom makes me come back before midnight as I don't want to abuse her trust)
6) Honduran food. Tortillas. Beans. Platanos.
7) El parque
8) The wonderful custom of saying "buen provecho" when someone's eating, even if it's sometone you've never met before on the street.
9) Soo much more that I'll probably realize later on. Juanes is completely right. You don't know what you have until you have lost it. I forget which song of his that's in. Possibly Dia Normal.
Since I hit it, my Spanish improvement. I still get vaguely giddy when I realize I'm using subjunctive. I can now use orders quickly, unlike at the start of my exchagne when I had all that hesitation between requests and orders. It's all the same in Spanish, really. If you feel awkward ordering someone, order them in usted to soften it a bit. I never realized until now just how much people order others around. In English it's the same, but in Spanish orders are decidedly different. When someone calls the house phone for my host mom, I order them to wait "espere por favor" as I go to find her.
Hmm. English is harder. Back in October I accidentally told an Italian exchange student who was trying to think of a word that the word she wanted was productful. I'm not sure if that was because of my sleep-deprived state or because my English has gotten super crappy. When I write in English I will use con instead of with and only realize it on my proofread. The other day when I was trying to think of the work "ceremonial" in English I kept thinking sacrificial? No, that isn't right. How do you spell it? With an s? Or a c?. Where the word "that" is optional in English and required in Spanish for the most part I've been sticking it in English as well. English just looks so naked without the appropriate spaces for the word "que" marked by something. I've ended up teaching bits and pieces of English to my host family, though it usually takes me a bit to remember a grammatical piece, or to think up a reason why English is the way it is. We worked on Chiquito's accent a bit. He can't make the v sound in "give." That sound doesn't really exist in Spanish. The pronounciation of v's and b's are exactly the same. Which leads to lots and lots of misspellings amongst the youth here. I find myself correcting their spelling and grammar in their own language. I think I'm a bit too picky.
I love Spanish. It's a language that's really like a lot of different languages that are called the same thing. It's different in every Spanish speaking country (just as the food and cultures are different). Apparently in Cuba "papaya" is a bad word. Just about any innocent thing you say can somehow be related to sex and thus set everyone off giggling. "Pan de mujer", round bread rolls handmade by women, has a double meaning that sends Honduran minds down the toilet. My Spanish has been infiltrated by random Honduran slang words (pisto=dinero, cipote=muchacho). I'm going to miss everyone here so much. My family. My friends. My teachers. My tadpoles. The little dearies haven't even sprouted legs yet.
I think I'll probably do one last post, either in Miami or when I arrive in Minneapolis. And some major photo uploading (I have 11 full CDs of pictures and my two camera memories as well). But for now, good night. I have a long day tomorrow that will feel all too short.
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Navidad y Tela
Once again, a ton has happened in the past week! We´ll start with Christmas! Christmas in Honduras is celebrated on the 24th. When I got up in the morning my host mom had already gotten everything together to make tamales. She showed me how to make them, and I got started on making vegetarian ones for me. I made 7 tamales with a little bit of trouble with my last one falling apart while I was wrapping it in a banana leaf (which we bought pre-cooked). Tamales are a traditional food here for Christmas. So is meat. EVERYONE was asking each other what type of meat their family was going to have for Christmas. My family cooked a huge pig leg thing. It had been bumming around in the kitchen for a couple days while my mom marinated it and all. We had a late lunch of our tamales.
In the afternoon we played lots of cards. My host dad really likes playing solitario. I think we played together for like an hour, occassionally with Sindy´s help too, before we finally won a game. Also in the afternoon Sindy and I left to do our last-minute Christmas shopping. We were at a loss of what to get Mamá when she had the spectacular idea of getting her an electric beater. NOW WE CAN MAKE LOTS AND LOTS OF COOKIES! We also did last minute Christmas shopping for Sindy´s little sisters and her mom, whom all came over for dinner. Dinner was rice, salad (Mamá attempted to recreate the salad that was at Olga´s quinceañera), and for everyone but me the giant pig. After dinner we walked around Santa Barbara on the lookout for nacimientos. Instead of a Christmas tree, many families have a nacimiento instead, complete with baby Jesus, virgin Mary, the three wise men, barnyard animals, and a town sprawled out around them. Some of the nacimientos we saw were really big and really intricate, including amusement parks, airports and racecars in the surrounding town.
As the night dragged on we had trouble thinking of something to do, so Sindy put in a movie: La Sirenita (The Little Mermaid). Ariel´s voice in Spanish is just plain scary. All I could do the entire movie was obssess over the characters´ voices. My host aunt and Sindy told me that the accent was from Argentina but it sounded like lispy Spanish-Spanish to me. Whatever country, I definitely prefer Honduran accents!!
Towards the end of the movie, fireworks started going off outside. It was midnight! We all rushed outside to see. There were fireworks going off all over-- down the street, up the hill, hidden behind our neighbors´ roofs, etc. It was REALLY loud, but quite cool. After the fireworks ended we all went inside and opened presents (the reason we were staying up so late, you have to open presents at midnight!). Mamá gave me a pretty bracelet and Papá and Gerson Chiquito gave me a Honduras tshirt. I gave my frisbee to my little cousins.
After presents we watched The Little Mermaid 2 (which never should have been made), and at 2:00 I gave up on trying to stay up later and dragged myself to bed.
On the 25th (not Christmas here, but rather the day that families leave on their holioday trips), Sindy and I woke up late. The first thing I did after my morning routine was call my family in the US. We talked for 38 minutes, and I only used about 22 lempiras on the call (it would appear to be cheaper to call the US with my cellphone than to call other phones in Honduras). Mamá made food, and shortly afterwards left to work in the hospital. That day it was her turn to be on-call, which means that she usually spends some tiome in the house, but end up getting called away for part of the afternoon, and usually at 2:00 AM as well.
Sindy and I wanted to watch movies, but there weren´t any good ones in the house so we left to go to el centro to buy some. It was the weirdest trip to el centro I´ve ever had. Usually stores are open, there are street vendors and pickup trucks filled with cheap things to buy, and a bunch of crippled people beggin for money. On the 24th el centro was SUPER busy as everyone was doing their Christmas shopping. And on the 25th? Barely anyone. There were two guys selling cotton candy, the newstand was there, and everything was closed. EVERYTHING. The only thing that there was an unusually high number of were drunks sleeping on sidewalks. It was really weird to see Santa Barbara that empty.
Sindy and I ended up borrowing movies from her little sisters and hung out with Papá in the afternoon watching movies. I ate lots of bread. People usually give my host mom a lot of gifts-- eggs, beans, et cetera. And since it was Christmas, we had a TON of gifted bread hanging around the house. It´s traditional to eat bread for Christmas here, and we had several bags of bread all calling my name. Yum.
On the 26th we left on a trip, meant to be a good-bye trip for me, our Christmas trip, and also a fun trip for Gerson Chiquite as he´s going off to college soon. The original idea had been to go to La Ceiba, but it was too far for a one-night trip, so my host parents secretly picked a new location as a surprise for me and Sindy. And we went to... Tela! It´s a small town on the Carribean that´s known for great beaches, warm weather, and lots of tourists. When we were there, the weather was not so great. Gray skies and chilly water. Nonetheless we swam in the ocean. We called it quits when we realized that the tide was dragging us out to sea, and we had a bit of a struggle getting back to the beach. We ate dinner in a different hotel than we stayed in, and after we ordered we realized that it was a gringo hangout. Lots of blond heads and terrible accents in Spanish. We walked around Tela´s central park and returned to our hotel. Gerson Chiquito, Sindy and I bought soda and chips with the idea of watching a movie on cable. Let´s just say that plans got changed and that the drinking age here definitely isn´t enforced and I was up late barring the door to stop someone from tipsily leaving the room.
In the morning we left Tela and headed home, stopping in El Progreso first to look at local art. I bought some postcards. We continued on our way home, passing La Lima (AFS students live there!), and arriving in San Pedro Sula. We did some shopping for Gerson Chiquito because he needed a bunch of stuff to go off to college. We went to a ¨superstore¨ (like Target), a supermarket (HUGE!!!!! You really can find anything in San Pedro Sula. I found ground ginger and colves, which just about made my day. We also bought a huge bag of almonds, cheeses to make lasagna, and a bunch of other food), and another store which was like the Honduran version of Sams Club but without he membership. We ate dinner at Pizza Hut, and I looked in a bookstore for Harry Potter books in Spanish. They only had the books in English. I´m in Honduras. Why is buying a Harry Potter book in Spanish here so hard??? We finished up in San Pedro and headed home for Santa Barbara. When we got home I put away all the food and my host parents went to bed while we watched a movie.
And that brings us to today! Sindy and I went on our buying movie search, and we bought a few DVDs. Hopefully they´ll work properly. You can only buy copied movies here, refilmed in a movie theater or in someone´s living room. And because of this, a lot of the time the sound quality is bad, or they just don´t work. in el mercado I also bought a duffel bag for 190 lempiras (que barato!). With this bag and my big suitcase I should be able to get all of the junk I´ve accumulated home.
Ahh, and one more fun experience that I´ve forgotten to mention. On the 23rd I made tortillas with my host mom. She wanted to make sure that I could make tortillas all by myself, so she had me work on my timing for when they´re done cooking on the stove. Papá had the handy tip of when the tortilla starts to make smoke it should be flipped over. I carefully flipped, removed, and stacked tortillas, using a knife to help me. Mamá does it with her fingers, but I get burned trying to do that.
Also on a random note the timestamp on the post before this is messed up by several days. Weird.
In the afternoon we played lots of cards. My host dad really likes playing solitario. I think we played together for like an hour, occassionally with Sindy´s help too, before we finally won a game. Also in the afternoon Sindy and I left to do our last-minute Christmas shopping. We were at a loss of what to get Mamá when she had the spectacular idea of getting her an electric beater. NOW WE CAN MAKE LOTS AND LOTS OF COOKIES! We also did last minute Christmas shopping for Sindy´s little sisters and her mom, whom all came over for dinner. Dinner was rice, salad (Mamá attempted to recreate the salad that was at Olga´s quinceañera), and for everyone but me the giant pig. After dinner we walked around Santa Barbara on the lookout for nacimientos. Instead of a Christmas tree, many families have a nacimiento instead, complete with baby Jesus, virgin Mary, the three wise men, barnyard animals, and a town sprawled out around them. Some of the nacimientos we saw were really big and really intricate, including amusement parks, airports and racecars in the surrounding town.
As the night dragged on we had trouble thinking of something to do, so Sindy put in a movie: La Sirenita (The Little Mermaid). Ariel´s voice in Spanish is just plain scary. All I could do the entire movie was obssess over the characters´ voices. My host aunt and Sindy told me that the accent was from Argentina but it sounded like lispy Spanish-Spanish to me. Whatever country, I definitely prefer Honduran accents!!
Towards the end of the movie, fireworks started going off outside. It was midnight! We all rushed outside to see. There were fireworks going off all over-- down the street, up the hill, hidden behind our neighbors´ roofs, etc. It was REALLY loud, but quite cool. After the fireworks ended we all went inside and opened presents (the reason we were staying up so late, you have to open presents at midnight!). Mamá gave me a pretty bracelet and Papá and Gerson Chiquito gave me a Honduras tshirt. I gave my frisbee to my little cousins.
After presents we watched The Little Mermaid 2 (which never should have been made), and at 2:00 I gave up on trying to stay up later and dragged myself to bed.
On the 25th (not Christmas here, but rather the day that families leave on their holioday trips), Sindy and I woke up late. The first thing I did after my morning routine was call my family in the US. We talked for 38 minutes, and I only used about 22 lempiras on the call (it would appear to be cheaper to call the US with my cellphone than to call other phones in Honduras). Mamá made food, and shortly afterwards left to work in the hospital. That day it was her turn to be on-call, which means that she usually spends some tiome in the house, but end up getting called away for part of the afternoon, and usually at 2:00 AM as well.
Sindy and I wanted to watch movies, but there weren´t any good ones in the house so we left to go to el centro to buy some. It was the weirdest trip to el centro I´ve ever had. Usually stores are open, there are street vendors and pickup trucks filled with cheap things to buy, and a bunch of crippled people beggin for money. On the 24th el centro was SUPER busy as everyone was doing their Christmas shopping. And on the 25th? Barely anyone. There were two guys selling cotton candy, the newstand was there, and everything was closed. EVERYTHING. The only thing that there was an unusually high number of were drunks sleeping on sidewalks. It was really weird to see Santa Barbara that empty.
Sindy and I ended up borrowing movies from her little sisters and hung out with Papá in the afternoon watching movies. I ate lots of bread. People usually give my host mom a lot of gifts-- eggs, beans, et cetera. And since it was Christmas, we had a TON of gifted bread hanging around the house. It´s traditional to eat bread for Christmas here, and we had several bags of bread all calling my name. Yum.
On the 26th we left on a trip, meant to be a good-bye trip for me, our Christmas trip, and also a fun trip for Gerson Chiquite as he´s going off to college soon. The original idea had been to go to La Ceiba, but it was too far for a one-night trip, so my host parents secretly picked a new location as a surprise for me and Sindy. And we went to... Tela! It´s a small town on the Carribean that´s known for great beaches, warm weather, and lots of tourists. When we were there, the weather was not so great. Gray skies and chilly water. Nonetheless we swam in the ocean. We called it quits when we realized that the tide was dragging us out to sea, and we had a bit of a struggle getting back to the beach. We ate dinner in a different hotel than we stayed in, and after we ordered we realized that it was a gringo hangout. Lots of blond heads and terrible accents in Spanish. We walked around Tela´s central park and returned to our hotel. Gerson Chiquito, Sindy and I bought soda and chips with the idea of watching a movie on cable. Let´s just say that plans got changed and that the drinking age here definitely isn´t enforced and I was up late barring the door to stop someone from tipsily leaving the room.
In the morning we left Tela and headed home, stopping in El Progreso first to look at local art. I bought some postcards. We continued on our way home, passing La Lima (AFS students live there!), and arriving in San Pedro Sula. We did some shopping for Gerson Chiquito because he needed a bunch of stuff to go off to college. We went to a ¨superstore¨ (like Target), a supermarket (HUGE!!!!! You really can find anything in San Pedro Sula. I found ground ginger and colves, which just about made my day. We also bought a huge bag of almonds, cheeses to make lasagna, and a bunch of other food), and another store which was like the Honduran version of Sams Club but without he membership. We ate dinner at Pizza Hut, and I looked in a bookstore for Harry Potter books in Spanish. They only had the books in English. I´m in Honduras. Why is buying a Harry Potter book in Spanish here so hard??? We finished up in San Pedro and headed home for Santa Barbara. When we got home I put away all the food and my host parents went to bed while we watched a movie.
And that brings us to today! Sindy and I went on our buying movie search, and we bought a few DVDs. Hopefully they´ll work properly. You can only buy copied movies here, refilmed in a movie theater or in someone´s living room. And because of this, a lot of the time the sound quality is bad, or they just don´t work. in el mercado I also bought a duffel bag for 190 lempiras (que barato!). With this bag and my big suitcase I should be able to get all of the junk I´ve accumulated home.
Ahh, and one more fun experience that I´ve forgotten to mention. On the 23rd I made tortillas with my host mom. She wanted to make sure that I could make tortillas all by myself, so she had me work on my timing for when they´re done cooking on the stove. Papá had the handy tip of when the tortilla starts to make smoke it should be flipped over. I carefully flipped, removed, and stacked tortillas, using a knife to help me. Mamá does it with her fingers, but I get burned trying to do that.
Also on a random note the timestamp on the post before this is messed up by several days. Weird.
Monday, December 13, 2010
This Week... and a Half
Sorry I haven´t posted in a while! I have a pretty good excuse: I´ve been sick. I thought this was going to be my first ever October-November-December run without getting sick, but of course I would get sick right at the end of December. Yesterday I slept in until noon, ate lunch, and then took a four hour nap. My throat´s sore and I don´t feel up to doing much. I could easily blame my cold on the chilly nights, but I´m pretty sure it was actually Anik showing up to my house and us hanging out on Friday when SHE was sick.
What have I not blogged about? Ahh, yes. Last Friday I got a haircut. The lady in the sala de belleza had some ideas about what I should do with my hair so I just let her do her thing. She chopped off something like four inches and theoretically gave me layers. Afterwards she asked me ¨secar o planchear?¨ and as my hair was still wet, I asked her to dry it (secar). She must have spent half an hour slowly drying parts at a time. When she was finished, my hair was straightened with little curly ruffles at the bottom. Sindy and Diana were awestruck, telling me that I look soo much better now. Anik also got her hair trimmed.
Last Saturday was Olga´s QUINCEAÑERA!! It was a blast. Mamá lent me a necklace that matched my dress. The invitation said it began at 6. I arrived at 6:20 and was the very first person there. Gulp. Once folks finally started arriving, we toasted Olga with some white wine (it tasted quite good), there was the Father-Daughter dance, which the rest of her family slowly joined, and then we ate. When the plates were served, Olga worriedly asked me if it was okay. I think when she was planning her party she remembered that she has a vegetarian exchange student friend. I ate rice, potato, and a really good lettuce-apple-grape salad, leaving the meat on my plate (possibly the best salad I´ve had in all time, and that´s saying something as I am not a salad person). All the others at my table ate like a third of the food, none of them touching The Best Salad Ever. What is with teenage girls not eating anything at parties?
After dinner was dancing. Julia dragged me from my chair and made me dance. Oh, Julia. How I love you so. We danced quite a bit, and then went outside towards the pool (the party was held at a hotel) for pictures, and then went inside for even more dancing. I have never been much for dancing, but I had a great time. My friends stayed until 1:00 am but I couldn´t get a ride back with one of them, so Mamá picked me up at 11.
This past week we also decorated the house for Christmas. We got the tree up and decorated, lights in the kitchen, etc. I decorated the pine tree we have outside, and also strung a line of white lines in my room (Sindy was practically yelling at me for putting lights in my room saying that no one does it here and it´s horribly ugly... I had asked permission from Mamá in advance, and everyone else told me it looked lovely so we´ll forget about her opinion for now).
This week I also hung out with Anik several times, played cards with my host family, and my little host cousins begged me to play Frisbee with them. WOW! I never thought I´d be begged to play Frisbee before. Usually I have to bribe or bother people to play with me. One evening I walked in on my host mom and two of my host aunts playing Kings Corners. My host mom REALLY likes that card game. It´s become a favorite of my host cousins too.
Sunday the 12th was the last day of the Santa Barbara fair (otherwise known as la feria or carnaval). Goodbye to late nights wandering around el parque with groups of friends. The two week long celebration in honor of the town´s patron saint wound up with the crowing of the Ugly King.
This Friday was Rotary International´s Christmas party. ¨Club Rotario¨ is an important thing to families here. Anik and two of her host sisters came over and we all made a big salad to bring to the party. A BIG salad. It was this day which I´m pretty sure Anik gave me her illness.
We arrived to the party at 8:00 and it was a ton of fun! We ate (a lot), and Mamá tried some of the cranberry juice I poured for myself. She didn´t like it at all. I guess she´s more of a sweet person (they honey-on-fruit salad thing a few weeks back clued me into that). We ate, danced, and I hung out with the kids group (aka Anik was the only person approximately my age there so we hung out with the twelve-year-olds). Sindy and I hadn´t been getting along too well for a few days and apparently she told everyone else that I´m a mentirosa y cínica. They didn´t believe her, and after she left the table I was quickly told be everyone that they don´t think I´m a liar and ¨te quiero.¨ We stayed at the party until 1:30 am, and it was still going with drunken karaoke by the dads. On Saturday Sindy and I got things patched back up again, so we´re not fighting anymore.
Now, cooking details! I made lasagna for my host family, and they LOVED IT! Sindy has this habit of trying to eat what I´m making while I´m still making it, so there were fingers dipped in tomato sauce and bags of cheese while I was layering everything. Sindy really likes mozzarella cheese. I used mozzarella, Swiss and parmesan cheeses and canned Hunts tomato sauce that I cooked down a bit so it wouldn´t be so liquidy. And as we ran out of cheese for the very top, I put bread pieces tossed in olive oil on top, so it was basically lasagna with croutons on top. YUM!
On Saturday I made Russian teacakes (aka snowball cookies). I chopped the almonds myself, and for once had everything that the recipe called for without making major substitutions. But... the cookies still didn´t turn out perfectly. They spread in the oven a bit, and then they didn´t stick properly to the powdered sugar despite three attempts to roll them in it. But they still taste great! At first everyone thought that they had coconut (nope, almond bits), and one of my host aunts thought that they had sweetened condensed milk (no to that too!). To get to the point, no one had ever had anything like them before. Christmas cookies aren´t a Honduran thing.
This week (if I ever feel up to par again), I´ll be going on little mini trips to the little pueblitos around Santa Barbara with my host family. My host mom thinks it´s a great idea because this way she´ll get to go along. She doesn´t get Christmas vacations-- just the 24th and 31st off. Nothing in between.
I only have something like two weeks left in Honduras! Where did all that time go?
What have I not blogged about? Ahh, yes. Last Friday I got a haircut. The lady in the sala de belleza had some ideas about what I should do with my hair so I just let her do her thing. She chopped off something like four inches and theoretically gave me layers. Afterwards she asked me ¨secar o planchear?¨ and as my hair was still wet, I asked her to dry it (secar). She must have spent half an hour slowly drying parts at a time. When she was finished, my hair was straightened with little curly ruffles at the bottom. Sindy and Diana were awestruck, telling me that I look soo much better now. Anik also got her hair trimmed.
Last Saturday was Olga´s QUINCEAÑERA!! It was a blast. Mamá lent me a necklace that matched my dress. The invitation said it began at 6. I arrived at 6:20 and was the very first person there. Gulp. Once folks finally started arriving, we toasted Olga with some white wine (it tasted quite good), there was the Father-Daughter dance, which the rest of her family slowly joined, and then we ate. When the plates were served, Olga worriedly asked me if it was okay. I think when she was planning her party she remembered that she has a vegetarian exchange student friend. I ate rice, potato, and a really good lettuce-apple-grape salad, leaving the meat on my plate (possibly the best salad I´ve had in all time, and that´s saying something as I am not a salad person). All the others at my table ate like a third of the food, none of them touching The Best Salad Ever. What is with teenage girls not eating anything at parties?
After dinner was dancing. Julia dragged me from my chair and made me dance. Oh, Julia. How I love you so. We danced quite a bit, and then went outside towards the pool (the party was held at a hotel) for pictures, and then went inside for even more dancing. I have never been much for dancing, but I had a great time. My friends stayed until 1:00 am but I couldn´t get a ride back with one of them, so Mamá picked me up at 11.
This past week we also decorated the house for Christmas. We got the tree up and decorated, lights in the kitchen, etc. I decorated the pine tree we have outside, and also strung a line of white lines in my room (Sindy was practically yelling at me for putting lights in my room saying that no one does it here and it´s horribly ugly... I had asked permission from Mamá in advance, and everyone else told me it looked lovely so we´ll forget about her opinion for now).
This week I also hung out with Anik several times, played cards with my host family, and my little host cousins begged me to play Frisbee with them. WOW! I never thought I´d be begged to play Frisbee before. Usually I have to bribe or bother people to play with me. One evening I walked in on my host mom and two of my host aunts playing Kings Corners. My host mom REALLY likes that card game. It´s become a favorite of my host cousins too.
Sunday the 12th was the last day of the Santa Barbara fair (otherwise known as la feria or carnaval). Goodbye to late nights wandering around el parque with groups of friends. The two week long celebration in honor of the town´s patron saint wound up with the crowing of the Ugly King.
This Friday was Rotary International´s Christmas party. ¨Club Rotario¨ is an important thing to families here. Anik and two of her host sisters came over and we all made a big salad to bring to the party. A BIG salad. It was this day which I´m pretty sure Anik gave me her illness.
We arrived to the party at 8:00 and it was a ton of fun! We ate (a lot), and Mamá tried some of the cranberry juice I poured for myself. She didn´t like it at all. I guess she´s more of a sweet person (they honey-on-fruit salad thing a few weeks back clued me into that). We ate, danced, and I hung out with the kids group (aka Anik was the only person approximately my age there so we hung out with the twelve-year-olds). Sindy and I hadn´t been getting along too well for a few days and apparently she told everyone else that I´m a mentirosa y cínica. They didn´t believe her, and after she left the table I was quickly told be everyone that they don´t think I´m a liar and ¨te quiero.¨ We stayed at the party until 1:30 am, and it was still going with drunken karaoke by the dads. On Saturday Sindy and I got things patched back up again, so we´re not fighting anymore.
Now, cooking details! I made lasagna for my host family, and they LOVED IT! Sindy has this habit of trying to eat what I´m making while I´m still making it, so there were fingers dipped in tomato sauce and bags of cheese while I was layering everything. Sindy really likes mozzarella cheese. I used mozzarella, Swiss and parmesan cheeses and canned Hunts tomato sauce that I cooked down a bit so it wouldn´t be so liquidy. And as we ran out of cheese for the very top, I put bread pieces tossed in olive oil on top, so it was basically lasagna with croutons on top. YUM!
On Saturday I made Russian teacakes (aka snowball cookies). I chopped the almonds myself, and for once had everything that the recipe called for without making major substitutions. But... the cookies still didn´t turn out perfectly. They spread in the oven a bit, and then they didn´t stick properly to the powdered sugar despite three attempts to roll them in it. But they still taste great! At first everyone thought that they had coconut (nope, almond bits), and one of my host aunts thought that they had sweetened condensed milk (no to that too!). To get to the point, no one had ever had anything like them before. Christmas cookies aren´t a Honduran thing.
This week (if I ever feel up to par again), I´ll be going on little mini trips to the little pueblitos around Santa Barbara with my host family. My host mom thinks it´s a great idea because this way she´ll get to go along. She doesn´t get Christmas vacations-- just the 24th and 31st off. Nothing in between.
I only have something like two weeks left in Honduras! Where did all that time go?
Thursday, December 9, 2010
Día de acción de gracias y el viaje a Amapala con AFS!
This post is going to be long because sooo much has happened in the last week! First, THANKSGIVING!
At 11:30 last Thursday Anik and Sindy came over and at noon we left to do the last minute grocery shopping. I was super happy to get apples for just 10 lempiras each, and disappointed because I couldn't find cornstarch, ground ginger, ground cloves, etc. Anik helped me prepare the apples and we ended up having extra so we made her an apple pie as well. There are no pre-made pie crusts here so we made pie crust and smooshed it into rectangular baking pans that my host mom had with our fingers. I kind of messed up making the crumbly top to put on the pie, so instead the pies had a drizzled brown sugary topping. Oh well. It tasted really good!
And... the pumpkin pie. My host mom happened to have a squash in the kitchen so we used that. She calls it calabaza, I call it a giant squash. Whatever it's really called, it's green. The pie crust for this pie was smooshed into a rectangular pan as well, so we had GREEN RECTANGULAR PUMPKIN PIE! It tasted like heaven-- exactly the way pumpkin pie should taste. And Anik hepled me smoosh the ginger and whole cloves we had with a rock, so this pie wasn't even missing ingredients like the apple pie was.
The corn pudding turned out great, and my host mom loved it. I knew she would. She's Honduran and it contains corn.
The baked potatoes didn't exactly get baked... though a couple of them did manage to catch fire in the oven. So instead we ate instant mashed potatoes.
And, the gravy! We used re-hydrated soy meat and I definitely improvised with some ingredients (no one knows what marjoram is here) but it turned out really good. My host mom enjoyed that too, and so did my host dad and Anik who stayed for dinner.
Of course in the true spirit of Thanksgiving everyone filled up before the two desserts so I ended up forcing pie on everyone "ustedes no pueden estar llenos!! Necesitan comer más!!" Anik was surprised by the flavor of the apple pie. She had seen the monstrous amounts of brown sugar I was using and had thought it was going to be too sweet, but it turned out spectacular.
My host mom was surprised by the amount of work I had done. I started cooking at 12:30 and finished at 7:00. She dropped by from time to time in the afternoon while Anik and I were working and washed the dirty dishes that piled up so we wouldn't have to. She told me that she likes washing dishes better than cooking. I like cooking better than washing dishes, so I think we form a pretty good kitchen team.
That Thanksgiving was one of the most fun I've ever had. It wasn't technically Thanksgiving Day, nor were we eating perfectly prepared food, and I wasn't technically spending it with blood family, but it was an amazing day. I was surrounded by people I love and who love me, and that's the most important thing.
Right now is the Santa Barbara Fair. We've had dismal weather (chilly, gray skies, lots of rain) so I haven't felt like going out to el parque much with friends at night. Who wants to go outside when it's raining? According to Mamá December weather is always like that here. I asked why the fair´s in decmeber then, and she said it´s because people have more money. Right now coffee´s coming in so there´s more money that families can spend. Despite the bad weather I did go out a couple nights with Sindy and we met some friends in el parque. There were fireworks (fuegos artificiales) and they were shot off right next to the fountain en el parque. some of the lower fireworks looked liike the sparks were going to light trees on fire, but they didn´t. Though my friends and I did get a light shower of ashes.
On Sunday at 2:00 I caught the bus headed for Tegus. There was an orientation that I´d been given a two day notice on. The first two hours of the ride I was standing because there were no seats. I finally got a seat for the last hour and a half. I arrived in Tegus and called AFS. They came to pick me up and we went to pick up another student who´d arrived by bus. The student was Maggie from Colorado (I had thought I was the only American left! She´s here on the community service program so we hadn´t met at the other orientations). Apparently she too plays Ultimate! I started complaining about how my team was cheated out of second place at State and she paused for a moment and asked me ¨Hopkins?¨ SHE KNOWS HOPKINS! APPARENTLY HER ULTIMATE TEAM IN COLORADO AND HOPKINS ARE FRIENDS AND HER TEAM PLAYS IN THE MADISON MUDBATH TOURNAMENT! WE PLAY THAT TOURNAMENT TOO!! We stayed in the same house in Tegus for the night and talked a bunch. She doesn´t really speak Spanish so I´m sorry to say that we talked in English. The best thing about the AFS trips is that they´re amazing opportunities to use Spanish.
Monday morning AFS picked up up and we went to the AFS national office for the last couple students. We were only 6 for this orientation. It was the end-of-stay orientation so all of the others that I went to Copan with weren´t there. Three of us from the US, one from Germany, one from Belgium, and one from Japan. We took a bus to Choluteca, and then from there a boat to the Isla del Tigre, to the town of Amapala (which is coincidentally on the 2 lempira note. I´ll practically have done a complete tour of the money here by January). Choluteca is always warm and sunny. Between the depressing weather in SB and in Tegus I had forgotten what a nearly cloudless sky looked like. When we got to the island a truck from the hotel drove us there. We spent the afternoon on the beach and after dinner got down to orientation business. We talked about the problems we´ve had, our best moments, what experiences we´ll be bringing back with us, etc. I am sooo cooking baleadas when I get back to the US. We wrote our bad experiences on paper and then threw then into a bonfire on the beach. Mine bounced off the wood four times and I kept having to go to retrieve it before it finally caught fire. The AFS staff thought it was quite amusing when on the fourth time it failed to burn I shouted MIERDA loudly. That night the girl from Japan, Kirara, and I stayed up late talking. She´s been here for a year and her Spanish is quite good.
On Tuesday we ate breakfast (somehow the hotel staff decided that beans and eggs weren´t vegetarian so I had a plate of fruit and tortillas for breakfast), and went to the beach again. I´ve collected a nice assortment of shells, coral pieces, and lava rocks. From the beach I also have darkened my tan (noticable because the white line under my watch is a starking contrast to the rest of my arms), and collected scrapes on my feet and fingers from rocks. In the water there were a ton of little crabs. I think they were dead because they weren´t really moving all that much, and got washed onto the beach and then taken back out to sea by the waves. After lunch we headed back for Tegus. We arrived at 5:00, after there were no busses back that day to Santa Barbara, so I stayed the night at Kirara´s house. We walked to Plaza Miraflores (a centro commercial, or mall) and saw the new Hary Potter movie. New movies here are either voiced over in Spanish or are in English with sanish subtitles. This theatre had it with subtitles. I had a few aha moments (oh! That´s what that verb means!) and after the movie promptly forgot all my newly learned verbs. After the movie we went to the supermarket (yes malls have pharmacies and supermarkets here) and I was aghast by how big it was. By US standards it was fairly small but by Santa Barbara standards it was the biggest store in the world.
We returned to Kirara´s house and talked to her sister for awhile. Kirara and I have decided that we want to go on an independent trip together to the north coast, and she wants to visit me in Santa Barbara.
The night was cold (Tegus is always cold. It´s consistently in the sixties there, colder at night). In the morning Kirara and I took the bus to Plaza Miraflores to meet AFS and we went to the supermarket again. I bought some more cheeses to make lasagna and gelatin-free marshmallows. I only had to go to Honduras to find some! AFS drove me to the bus to get back to Santa Barbara, and this time I actually got a seat. There were only 11 of us on the bus this time. The return took a lot longer than expected so I returned to Santa Barbara after scouts, missing the last meeting we had this year.
The AFS trip was predictably amazingly great. The best thing about AFS isn´t the country you choose, nor the family and friends that you´ll meet (I´m sure I would have gotten just as good a family with another exchange program) but rather the other exchange students that you meet from accross the world. The AFS orientation trips are such an amazing opportunity to learn about other cultures and make international friendships. Because of AFS I not only have Honduran friends but German friends, Italian friends, a Swiss friend, and now a Japanese friend (whom coincidentally all have offers to visit me in MN and I have offers to visit them in their respective countries).
At 11:30 last Thursday Anik and Sindy came over and at noon we left to do the last minute grocery shopping. I was super happy to get apples for just 10 lempiras each, and disappointed because I couldn't find cornstarch, ground ginger, ground cloves, etc. Anik helped me prepare the apples and we ended up having extra so we made her an apple pie as well. There are no pre-made pie crusts here so we made pie crust and smooshed it into rectangular baking pans that my host mom had with our fingers. I kind of messed up making the crumbly top to put on the pie, so instead the pies had a drizzled brown sugary topping. Oh well. It tasted really good!
And... the pumpkin pie. My host mom happened to have a squash in the kitchen so we used that. She calls it calabaza, I call it a giant squash. Whatever it's really called, it's green. The pie crust for this pie was smooshed into a rectangular pan as well, so we had GREEN RECTANGULAR PUMPKIN PIE! It tasted like heaven-- exactly the way pumpkin pie should taste. And Anik hepled me smoosh the ginger and whole cloves we had with a rock, so this pie wasn't even missing ingredients like the apple pie was.
The corn pudding turned out great, and my host mom loved it. I knew she would. She's Honduran and it contains corn.
The baked potatoes didn't exactly get baked... though a couple of them did manage to catch fire in the oven. So instead we ate instant mashed potatoes.
And, the gravy! We used re-hydrated soy meat and I definitely improvised with some ingredients (no one knows what marjoram is here) but it turned out really good. My host mom enjoyed that too, and so did my host dad and Anik who stayed for dinner.
Of course in the true spirit of Thanksgiving everyone filled up before the two desserts so I ended up forcing pie on everyone "ustedes no pueden estar llenos!! Necesitan comer más!!" Anik was surprised by the flavor of the apple pie. She had seen the monstrous amounts of brown sugar I was using and had thought it was going to be too sweet, but it turned out spectacular.
My host mom was surprised by the amount of work I had done. I started cooking at 12:30 and finished at 7:00. She dropped by from time to time in the afternoon while Anik and I were working and washed the dirty dishes that piled up so we wouldn't have to. She told me that she likes washing dishes better than cooking. I like cooking better than washing dishes, so I think we form a pretty good kitchen team.
That Thanksgiving was one of the most fun I've ever had. It wasn't technically Thanksgiving Day, nor were we eating perfectly prepared food, and I wasn't technically spending it with blood family, but it was an amazing day. I was surrounded by people I love and who love me, and that's the most important thing.
Right now is the Santa Barbara Fair. We've had dismal weather (chilly, gray skies, lots of rain) so I haven't felt like going out to el parque much with friends at night. Who wants to go outside when it's raining? According to Mamá December weather is always like that here. I asked why the fair´s in decmeber then, and she said it´s because people have more money. Right now coffee´s coming in so there´s more money that families can spend. Despite the bad weather I did go out a couple nights with Sindy and we met some friends in el parque. There were fireworks (fuegos artificiales) and they were shot off right next to the fountain en el parque. some of the lower fireworks looked liike the sparks were going to light trees on fire, but they didn´t. Though my friends and I did get a light shower of ashes.
On Sunday at 2:00 I caught the bus headed for Tegus. There was an orientation that I´d been given a two day notice on. The first two hours of the ride I was standing because there were no seats. I finally got a seat for the last hour and a half. I arrived in Tegus and called AFS. They came to pick me up and we went to pick up another student who´d arrived by bus. The student was Maggie from Colorado (I had thought I was the only American left! She´s here on the community service program so we hadn´t met at the other orientations). Apparently she too plays Ultimate! I started complaining about how my team was cheated out of second place at State and she paused for a moment and asked me ¨Hopkins?¨ SHE KNOWS HOPKINS! APPARENTLY HER ULTIMATE TEAM IN COLORADO AND HOPKINS ARE FRIENDS AND HER TEAM PLAYS IN THE MADISON MUDBATH TOURNAMENT! WE PLAY THAT TOURNAMENT TOO!! We stayed in the same house in Tegus for the night and talked a bunch. She doesn´t really speak Spanish so I´m sorry to say that we talked in English. The best thing about the AFS trips is that they´re amazing opportunities to use Spanish.
Monday morning AFS picked up up and we went to the AFS national office for the last couple students. We were only 6 for this orientation. It was the end-of-stay orientation so all of the others that I went to Copan with weren´t there. Three of us from the US, one from Germany, one from Belgium, and one from Japan. We took a bus to Choluteca, and then from there a boat to the Isla del Tigre, to the town of Amapala (which is coincidentally on the 2 lempira note. I´ll practically have done a complete tour of the money here by January). Choluteca is always warm and sunny. Between the depressing weather in SB and in Tegus I had forgotten what a nearly cloudless sky looked like. When we got to the island a truck from the hotel drove us there. We spent the afternoon on the beach and after dinner got down to orientation business. We talked about the problems we´ve had, our best moments, what experiences we´ll be bringing back with us, etc. I am sooo cooking baleadas when I get back to the US. We wrote our bad experiences on paper and then threw then into a bonfire on the beach. Mine bounced off the wood four times and I kept having to go to retrieve it before it finally caught fire. The AFS staff thought it was quite amusing when on the fourth time it failed to burn I shouted MIERDA loudly. That night the girl from Japan, Kirara, and I stayed up late talking. She´s been here for a year and her Spanish is quite good.
On Tuesday we ate breakfast (somehow the hotel staff decided that beans and eggs weren´t vegetarian so I had a plate of fruit and tortillas for breakfast), and went to the beach again. I´ve collected a nice assortment of shells, coral pieces, and lava rocks. From the beach I also have darkened my tan (noticable because the white line under my watch is a starking contrast to the rest of my arms), and collected scrapes on my feet and fingers from rocks. In the water there were a ton of little crabs. I think they were dead because they weren´t really moving all that much, and got washed onto the beach and then taken back out to sea by the waves. After lunch we headed back for Tegus. We arrived at 5:00, after there were no busses back that day to Santa Barbara, so I stayed the night at Kirara´s house. We walked to Plaza Miraflores (a centro commercial, or mall) and saw the new Hary Potter movie. New movies here are either voiced over in Spanish or are in English with sanish subtitles. This theatre had it with subtitles. I had a few aha moments (oh! That´s what that verb means!) and after the movie promptly forgot all my newly learned verbs. After the movie we went to the supermarket (yes malls have pharmacies and supermarkets here) and I was aghast by how big it was. By US standards it was fairly small but by Santa Barbara standards it was the biggest store in the world.
We returned to Kirara´s house and talked to her sister for awhile. Kirara and I have decided that we want to go on an independent trip together to the north coast, and she wants to visit me in Santa Barbara.
The night was cold (Tegus is always cold. It´s consistently in the sixties there, colder at night). In the morning Kirara and I took the bus to Plaza Miraflores to meet AFS and we went to the supermarket again. I bought some more cheeses to make lasagna and gelatin-free marshmallows. I only had to go to Honduras to find some! AFS drove me to the bus to get back to Santa Barbara, and this time I actually got a seat. There were only 11 of us on the bus this time. The return took a lot longer than expected so I returned to Santa Barbara after scouts, missing the last meeting we had this year.
The AFS trip was predictably amazingly great. The best thing about AFS isn´t the country you choose, nor the family and friends that you´ll meet (I´m sure I would have gotten just as good a family with another exchange program) but rather the other exchange students that you meet from accross the world. The AFS orientation trips are such an amazing opportunity to learn about other cultures and make international friendships. Because of AFS I not only have Honduran friends but German friends, Italian friends, a Swiss friend, and now a Japanese friend (whom coincidentally all have offers to visit me in MN and I have offers to visit them in their respective countries).
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
El fin de noviembre
Well, here it is. December, my last full month in Honduras.
Last Sunday I went with my family into the mountains. We have a little house and farm just thirty minutes away. We picked oranges, or at least Papá did. He climbed into the prickly orange tree and started tossed oranges down to us to put in a sack. I was a pretty good orange catcher until one of them bent three of my fingers backwards. OUCH. After that I let Sindy and Mamá do the rest of the catching. I also saw some limon real trees. This type of lemon is HUGE. In Honduras there are small little green indian lemons that you buy in el mercado and huge yellow grapefruit-sized lemons that you get from the mountains. We also have coffee plants and banana trees.
After orange picking we walked through more of the farm and went to visit our three Brahman cows. We gave them a treat-- salt. They were licking and LICKING our hands, and after there was none left on my hands they went for my shoes for the fallen salt. One of them got so excited about the salt that he ate the plastic bag the salt had been in. Oh, moo cows.
We also walked down to the stream. We walked through a little field with new coffee plants with corn planted in between and banana trees to give the coffee shade. When we got to the stream, I was a bit worried-- what were all of those black beetles doing in the water? I asked Sindy and she said they were renacuajos, which I didn´t understand the word, but figured it out by asking if they would turn into frogs. So there were a TON of little tadpoles in the shallow water, and Sindy and I started to try catching them with our bare hands. They were so adorable!! I picked one out to keep and Sindy did as well. We brought them back to the house at lunchtime and I put them in a little cup.
For a late lunch Mamá made rice with veggies and sandwiches. After lunch we took a short walk to the balneario. The water in the pool was a suspicious murky brown and there were a lot of men around, so Mamá didn´t like the idea of Sindy and me swimming. So instead we drank sodas and ate churros and walked back to the house. On the way back we talked to our neighbors. I saw coffee being processed and and old wrinkly lady said I was very linda. In the rest of the afternoon Sindy and I bummed around the farm, and then we went home.
Monday I bought a plast container for my little renacuajos (named Wiggle and Waggle-- the big one´s Waggle). Sindy didn´t want hers and was going to kill it when I stepped in and adopted it with my own. They eat a tiny tiny bit of cooked lettuce and poop a lot.
On Monday I also bought a dress to go to Olga´s quinceañera on the 11th. It´s quite lovely, though now I need to find shoes. Ahh!!! I hope we don´t have to go to San Pedro to buy them.
Today I´m trying to get everything together for my cooking extravaganza tomorrow. I went on a search for canned pumpkin (which I had seen back in October) and couldn´t find it. I went to my AFS contact´s house to pick up my passport and her son went out to look for canned pumpkin for me. He returned an hour later after searching through all of the bodegas in el centro with no luck. There is no canned pumpkin here! So, I´ll be seeing if I can make squash pie instead. This is going to be one strange vegetarian-Honduran Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow...
Last Sunday I went with my family into the mountains. We have a little house and farm just thirty minutes away. We picked oranges, or at least Papá did. He climbed into the prickly orange tree and started tossed oranges down to us to put in a sack. I was a pretty good orange catcher until one of them bent three of my fingers backwards. OUCH. After that I let Sindy and Mamá do the rest of the catching. I also saw some limon real trees. This type of lemon is HUGE. In Honduras there are small little green indian lemons that you buy in el mercado and huge yellow grapefruit-sized lemons that you get from the mountains. We also have coffee plants and banana trees.
After orange picking we walked through more of the farm and went to visit our three Brahman cows. We gave them a treat-- salt. They were licking and LICKING our hands, and after there was none left on my hands they went for my shoes for the fallen salt. One of them got so excited about the salt that he ate the plastic bag the salt had been in. Oh, moo cows.
We also walked down to the stream. We walked through a little field with new coffee plants with corn planted in between and banana trees to give the coffee shade. When we got to the stream, I was a bit worried-- what were all of those black beetles doing in the water? I asked Sindy and she said they were renacuajos, which I didn´t understand the word, but figured it out by asking if they would turn into frogs. So there were a TON of little tadpoles in the shallow water, and Sindy and I started to try catching them with our bare hands. They were so adorable!! I picked one out to keep and Sindy did as well. We brought them back to the house at lunchtime and I put them in a little cup.
For a late lunch Mamá made rice with veggies and sandwiches. After lunch we took a short walk to the balneario. The water in the pool was a suspicious murky brown and there were a lot of men around, so Mamá didn´t like the idea of Sindy and me swimming. So instead we drank sodas and ate churros and walked back to the house. On the way back we talked to our neighbors. I saw coffee being processed and and old wrinkly lady said I was very linda. In the rest of the afternoon Sindy and I bummed around the farm, and then we went home.
Monday I bought a plast container for my little renacuajos (named Wiggle and Waggle-- the big one´s Waggle). Sindy didn´t want hers and was going to kill it when I stepped in and adopted it with my own. They eat a tiny tiny bit of cooked lettuce and poop a lot.
On Monday I also bought a dress to go to Olga´s quinceañera on the 11th. It´s quite lovely, though now I need to find shoes. Ahh!!! I hope we don´t have to go to San Pedro to buy them.
Today I´m trying to get everything together for my cooking extravaganza tomorrow. I went on a search for canned pumpkin (which I had seen back in October) and couldn´t find it. I went to my AFS contact´s house to pick up my passport and her son went out to look for canned pumpkin for me. He returned an hour later after searching through all of the bodegas in el centro with no luck. There is no canned pumpkin here! So, I´ll be seeing if I can make squash pie instead. This is going to be one strange vegetarian-Honduran Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow...
Monday, November 29, 2010
Tegucigalpa: The Ugliest Capital in Central America!
Or at least, that´s what Mamá says about Tegus.
On Wednesday at 3:50 AM my alarm clock went off and I slowly hauled myself out of bed, and got Mamá up as well. We had to get up EARLY to go to Tegucigalpa. The night before she had told me to get her up at 3:50, but I don´t think she was actually expecting me to because later on she commented to her friends how very punctual I am. Jeje.
We rode in a truck belonging to the hospital with three other doctors and the Santa Barbara ambulance driver Luis, who drove us. We arrived in Tegus at 10:30, after four hours in the car. We went immediately to the convention and stayed there until the noon lunch break, and then we went to check into our hotel. We were on the top floor. Which is both good and bad: a great view but a ton of steps because there was no elevator.
We returned to the convention and it went for 5 more hours. Five hours of OB/GYN speak that I didn´t understand too well except when the words uterus, hemorrhage and cesarean were thrown out. Needless to say it was dull, and I was quite glad when we finally wrapped up the day. For dinner we went out to Pizza Hut, which is pretty much the best pizza you´ll find in Honduras (however much it pains me to say ´Pizza Hut´ and ´best´ in the same sentence, it´s the truth).
Thursday we got up (the hotel had HOT WATER!!!), and went to breakfast. After desayuno, we went to the convention center by taxi (the others left in the hopstial´s truck without us. Hmph). We stayed until 11 and then skipped out on the rest for the day. Mamá and one of the other doctors had to go to a bunch of offices to get pension stuff straightened out, and I went with them. For lunch we ate pupusas in a little restaurant. Pupusas are basically tortillas with cheese or meat inside. Mine had cheese, and I also put some spicy onion salsa on top. Yum.
In the afternoon we went back to the convention center to get the other doctoras from Santa Barbara and went to el centro de Tegucigalpa. It´s AMAZING. El parque has a statue of Francisco Morazon (a Honduran hero), a bunch of plants and benches, and of course a Catholic church (all Honduran towns seem to have a Catholic church facing el parque). There´s a street full of shops that we walked down, and we went into a photo shop so Mamá and the others could get pictures taken for new hospital IDs. While waiting for the prints Mamá and the driver Luis took me on a mini-tour of Tegucigalpa´s centro. We went inside the church, saw the Correo Nacional building, the National Bank of Honduras building (which is also on the 50 lempira note), the old Casa Presidencial (which is on the 20 lempira note, I believe), and the outside of an art museum. It had closed for the day, so we couldn´t go inside. I carefully took pictures while Luis and Mamá kept their eyes out for camera thieves and stowed it away in my purse while we walked.
Later on in the day I noticed that my camera bag was gone. I don´t know if I somehow lost it at the convention center (doubtful) or it was stolen (likely). But, very luckily, with all the picture taking in Tegucigalpa´s centro I hadn´t put my camera back in it´s bag like I always do, so only the bag was stolen not my camera as well.
Friday was our last day in Tegus. We spent the morning doing more errands for their pension stuff and went to el centro again on a search for Harry Potter books. I found only the fourth, my least favorite, and didn´t buy it. Apparently we have to go to the mall to find a bookstore with a good selection of books. The RadioShack here was having a Black Friday sale as well. At 1:30 we ate lunch at a hamburger stand. They almost wouldn´t make me a bun with cheese and veggies because it wasn´t on the menu. At 2:00 we left for Santa Barbara, and hit a major traffic jam. There´s only one road out of Tegus in the direction of Santa Barbara, and it was under construction. One direction of cars would go, and once they were through, the other direction would go. But somehow both directions were going at the same time, and there were cars trying to pass as well. So, GRIDLOCK. A drive that´s supposed to take four hours max took seven.
I want to describe Tegucigalpa a bit more. Many of the roads are narrow (think MN in winter narrow, or even narrower) and there´s not a lot of space for cars. And there are a LOT of cars in Tegus. The police go to intersections when there´s a traffic jam and sort it out. In Honduras no one listens to those little red octagonal signs that say ALTO. They go, and if there´s any trouble getting out inch their car into the intersection until no one else can get through, and then go. The police walk between intersections sorting out tangled knots of traffic (and in all honesty the only thing I´ve ever seen the police here do is this and checking drivers licenses).
Power lines are UGLY. They cross above the streets in a zig zag and there are tons of them. Mamá said only a few power lines are buried so the bulk are above ground.
In June of 2009 there was a coup d´état. This golpe de estado has changed Honduras. There´s still graffiti all over Tegus from the golpe. Luis was telling me that when he was a teenager it was safe to go out at night, but now Honduran parents won´t let their children go out because it´s no longer safe.
Hondurans all call Tegucigalpa ugly. I honestly didn´t think it was that ugly, excluding the power lines and graffiti. I thoroughly enjoyed the trip. Though I didn´t understand much at the convention, it was GREAT. I had forgotten how nice it is to be in a city. Santa Barbara only has 30,000 residents, and is pretty small. Though small is good in Honduras-- less people means my host parents are fine with me being out later, as long as I have a ride home or someone escorts me home.
Yesterday on Sunday we went into the mountains which I will tell you all about in my next post. This one´s just about Tegucigalpa!
On Wednesday at 3:50 AM my alarm clock went off and I slowly hauled myself out of bed, and got Mamá up as well. We had to get up EARLY to go to Tegucigalpa. The night before she had told me to get her up at 3:50, but I don´t think she was actually expecting me to because later on she commented to her friends how very punctual I am. Jeje.
We rode in a truck belonging to the hospital with three other doctors and the Santa Barbara ambulance driver Luis, who drove us. We arrived in Tegus at 10:30, after four hours in the car. We went immediately to the convention and stayed there until the noon lunch break, and then we went to check into our hotel. We were on the top floor. Which is both good and bad: a great view but a ton of steps because there was no elevator.
We returned to the convention and it went for 5 more hours. Five hours of OB/GYN speak that I didn´t understand too well except when the words uterus, hemorrhage and cesarean were thrown out. Needless to say it was dull, and I was quite glad when we finally wrapped up the day. For dinner we went out to Pizza Hut, which is pretty much the best pizza you´ll find in Honduras (however much it pains me to say ´Pizza Hut´ and ´best´ in the same sentence, it´s the truth).
Thursday we got up (the hotel had HOT WATER!!!), and went to breakfast. After desayuno, we went to the convention center by taxi (the others left in the hopstial´s truck without us. Hmph). We stayed until 11 and then skipped out on the rest for the day. Mamá and one of the other doctors had to go to a bunch of offices to get pension stuff straightened out, and I went with them. For lunch we ate pupusas in a little restaurant. Pupusas are basically tortillas with cheese or meat inside. Mine had cheese, and I also put some spicy onion salsa on top. Yum.
In the afternoon we went back to the convention center to get the other doctoras from Santa Barbara and went to el centro de Tegucigalpa. It´s AMAZING. El parque has a statue of Francisco Morazon (a Honduran hero), a bunch of plants and benches, and of course a Catholic church (all Honduran towns seem to have a Catholic church facing el parque). There´s a street full of shops that we walked down, and we went into a photo shop so Mamá and the others could get pictures taken for new hospital IDs. While waiting for the prints Mamá and the driver Luis took me on a mini-tour of Tegucigalpa´s centro. We went inside the church, saw the Correo Nacional building, the National Bank of Honduras building (which is also on the 50 lempira note), the old Casa Presidencial (which is on the 20 lempira note, I believe), and the outside of an art museum. It had closed for the day, so we couldn´t go inside. I carefully took pictures while Luis and Mamá kept their eyes out for camera thieves and stowed it away in my purse while we walked.
Later on in the day I noticed that my camera bag was gone. I don´t know if I somehow lost it at the convention center (doubtful) or it was stolen (likely). But, very luckily, with all the picture taking in Tegucigalpa´s centro I hadn´t put my camera back in it´s bag like I always do, so only the bag was stolen not my camera as well.
Friday was our last day in Tegus. We spent the morning doing more errands for their pension stuff and went to el centro again on a search for Harry Potter books. I found only the fourth, my least favorite, and didn´t buy it. Apparently we have to go to the mall to find a bookstore with a good selection of books. The RadioShack here was having a Black Friday sale as well. At 1:30 we ate lunch at a hamburger stand. They almost wouldn´t make me a bun with cheese and veggies because it wasn´t on the menu. At 2:00 we left for Santa Barbara, and hit a major traffic jam. There´s only one road out of Tegus in the direction of Santa Barbara, and it was under construction. One direction of cars would go, and once they were through, the other direction would go. But somehow both directions were going at the same time, and there were cars trying to pass as well. So, GRIDLOCK. A drive that´s supposed to take four hours max took seven.
I want to describe Tegucigalpa a bit more. Many of the roads are narrow (think MN in winter narrow, or even narrower) and there´s not a lot of space for cars. And there are a LOT of cars in Tegus. The police go to intersections when there´s a traffic jam and sort it out. In Honduras no one listens to those little red octagonal signs that say ALTO. They go, and if there´s any trouble getting out inch their car into the intersection until no one else can get through, and then go. The police walk between intersections sorting out tangled knots of traffic (and in all honesty the only thing I´ve ever seen the police here do is this and checking drivers licenses).
Power lines are UGLY. They cross above the streets in a zig zag and there are tons of them. Mamá said only a few power lines are buried so the bulk are above ground.
In June of 2009 there was a coup d´état. This golpe de estado has changed Honduras. There´s still graffiti all over Tegus from the golpe. Luis was telling me that when he was a teenager it was safe to go out at night, but now Honduran parents won´t let their children go out because it´s no longer safe.
Hondurans all call Tegucigalpa ugly. I honestly didn´t think it was that ugly, excluding the power lines and graffiti. I thoroughly enjoyed the trip. Though I didn´t understand much at the convention, it was GREAT. I had forgotten how nice it is to be in a city. Santa Barbara only has 30,000 residents, and is pretty small. Though small is good in Honduras-- less people means my host parents are fine with me being out later, as long as I have a ride home or someone escorts me home.
Yesterday on Sunday we went into the mountains which I will tell you all about in my next post. This one´s just about Tegucigalpa!
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