Goodbye 2009, Hello 2010

I am looking forward to this upcoming year.  Although 2009 was my only full year in Honduras (2008 was just a month short), I am happy to leave behind the stresses of still being somewhat new, the political instability as a result of the June coup, and the frustrations of unsuccessful projects.  I have my last few months of Peace Corps to look forward to that will be followed by a trip through Central and South America and adjusting back to life in the US.  Things are looking up.

 

My last couple weeks of 2009 were great.  My parents came to visit me again and we were able to spend a couple days in Guatemala and spend time with my friends around Ocotepeque.  The girls in my Yo Merezco group made them a fancy lunch that was followed by some dancing in the library specially decorated for the occasion.  They were able to visit the health center and finally got to meet the doctor I work with, but we were all disappointed not to make it to Polcho to distribute more toothpaste.  It had been pouring for 24 hours and we were unable to make the trip due to the mud and growth of the rivers.

 

After the trip, instead of saying goodbye at the airport, I got to go home with them!  I spent eight days in Davis seeing friends and spending Christmas time with my family followed by a couple more days visiting the boyfriend in Henderson, just outside of Las Vegas.  I can’t believe I’m going to be done with Peace Corps in just a couple months but am looking forward to being back.

 

There are some pictures from Lago Atitlan in Guatemala, the lunch in Ocotepeque, and hiking in Nevada.  Happy 2010 everyone!! 

Election Day and Then Some

Sunday was election day, a day much anticipated across the world.  There was potential to end the political crisis as well as for possible violence amid protests.  I was preparing myself for all possibilities on Saturday evening before going to bed, but when I woke up on Sunday morning, I found that I had not anticipated what actually happened.  It was dead silent.  There was no one on the streets and it was as quiet as Christmas morning when everyone is sleeping in after staying up until 1am the night before with firecrackers exploding everywhere.  I went down to my neighbor’s house and spent several hours there chatting with them and watching the news.

Elections here are normally accompanied with wild celebration, more firecrackers, and a lot of noise.  None of that was present last night, even after they finally announced the winner around 11:00.  People in general just want to move past this situation and are looking forward to the future.  I am hopeful that things will finally get back to normal, as normal as they ever are here, and that everyone can move on.

Since the school year ended early, I have been doing a lot more activities with the girls in my Yo Merezco group.  We made and sold bread to fund an excursion we want to take to the nearby cloud forest to go hiking and we also hiked to hot springs in the mountains a few weeks ago.  It was about an hour hike each way, but the uphill on the way was not so easy as we were all carrying food for lunch and I had a watermelon in my backpack that one of the girls couldn’t carry anymore, which we are eating in the first picture I posted.
We spent a wonderful afternoon swimming at the hot spring in both the hot and cold pools and I have posted some pictures of this activity and of making the bread.  The third picture shows the oven we used to cook the bread, and it is a traditional oven that has to be heated with wood, leña,before the bread could be cooked and in the last picture the girls are greasing the pans before we put in the batter.  Enjoy the pictures!

My 25th Birthday

I’ve now had two birthdays in Honduras.  The Halloween tradition for volunteers here is to go to the Copan Ruins, which is a cute town by Mayan ruins, to celebrate together.  I went for the day before my birthday to see friends who I hadn’t seen in a while and to spend some time in a town where I can feel like I’m living a life of luxury (meaning running water, hot showers even though it was too humid to take them, and a couple restaurant options).

 

After spending some time with friends I took off before the actual Halloween festivities to attend a graduation ceremony.  School here is divided into kindergarten, 6 years of elementary school, and colegio, which encompasses both junior high and high school.  There is a graduation ceremony after kindergarten, elementary school, and high school.  Graduation from sixth grade, the ceremony I attended, is a big deal since some students cannot afford to go to colegio or are needed to help the family. 

After some speeches (fortunately not too many) the students are called up one by one to receive their diplomas.  To receive the diploma, they walk up with their families and padrinos. Padrinos, godparents, are usually family members and are chosen especially for this occasion.  I was asked by the mother of a family who is like my host family here, to be the madrina, godmother, for her daughter, Daritza.  The ceremony was going to be in December but since the school year ended early, it landed on my birthday.

I have posted two pictures: one of Daritza and I with her diploma and the other of the family, one of the kindest and committed families I know here.   It was a really big honor to be asked and it meant a lot to Daritza and her family.  It was a great way to spend my birthday.  

Getting Back to Work...Again

The last couple weeks have been pretty crazy.  (Ex?)President Zelaya snuck back into the country at the end of September and has been holed up in the Brazilian Embassy since.  As a result the entire country was placed on a 24hr per day curfew that lasted three days.  It was awful.  No one left their houses and some of my neighbors who actually did leave to go to the emergency clinic were stopped by the police and only let go after explaining their health situation.  The airports and borders were closed for a couple days but I was finally able to leave for my vacation after my flight being cancelled three times.

 

I had a great couple days in DC before getting sick and ended up having to stay two extra weeks until I got better.  While I was there five constitutional human rights were suspended in Honduras until after the November elections and when I got back to Honduras last week I found out that the rest of the school year had been cancelled as well.  School was supposed to end at the end of November and after already missing two or three months of class due to strikes, students started vacation last Friday.  Micheletti decided that every student across the entire nation would pass every class, whether or not they had been passing throughout the year.

 

This leaves a couple projects on hold until school starts again in February but I’m planning more events with my girls group so they aren’t as bored during vacation.  We’re also going to have some more meetings at the health center, which will be coming just in time since we have several pregnant girls, 14 and 15, in our pregnant women’s group.  Every time I try to get some new projects going, the political situation escalates so I’m just hopeful that after the elections everything will calm down and we can get back to our normal lives.

Brushing Teeth

Here finally is the video that I took a couple weeks ago in Polcho. All the kids are outside the classroom so they don't drool all over the floor and you can also see Cinthia, the nurse I work with, the mountains, the classroom, and teacher. Enjoy!!

A Day in the Life of the Gringita

Trying to get my life back together I am finally going each week to Polcho, the aldea where I am doing the hygiene project with the Colgate grant.  I absolutely love going and the 30 minute walk each way is beautiful…or so I thought until I got a different view of it today.   I went again with Cinthia, one of the nurses at the health center and a good friend, and we were chatting the entire way about different ideas for activities and charlas for these kids during the rest of the school year.  When we got there they were really excited to see us and it was obvious they have learned how to correctly brush their teeth since they now volunteer to demonstrate in front of the class and are not afraid of shouting out the next steps during the demonstrations.  They’re getting a lot better at actually brushing as well as evidenced by the significant decrease in toothpaste and drool on the ground and on their clothes.  I took a great video but have been having problems posting it, so hopefully it will be up soon.

 After they finished brushing, showing me their pearly 

whites, and playing a game, Cinthia and I finally headed out to go back to Antigua.  The kids really like to walk partway with us (and we like it too even though it turns into a battle of wills when it comes to how far they can go) and it took forever to get them to turn around to head back to school.  We tried everything until Cinthia saw some cows coming and hollered back to warn them and they finally took off running for the school.  That may be something we have to try again.  Anyway, as we were passing the man who was walking with the cows warned us that the path was not in a good state.  We thanked him but continued on since we didn’t want to head back to the original path because we were going to take a shortcut. 

 

About 50 feet later, we saw exactly why he was warning us.  The entire path had turned into grey mud that was mixed with cow poop and who knows what else.  We kept going and started to step on the rocks so we wouldn’t slip.  I was following Cinthia a little too closely so decided to step on a different rock than she had.  I have no idea what exactly what it was I saw, but it definitely wasn’t a rock.  My foot immediately fell a foot down into the goop and as I tried to hurry out, I tripped, my other foot and almost entire leg sank down into more mud, and my right shoe came off, stuck in the mud in the first place I stepped, still a foot down.  Having at least one free leg I reached dry land only to crash into a thorn bush.  Picking out the thorns and laughing, I tried to tell Cinthia that my shoe had fallen off, but she could barely even tell since my foot was now black, the same color of the shoe.  When she finally saw that I had lost it and saw where it was, she went back in the mud in her starch white nurses uniform to dig it out. 

 

Covered in mud while she only had a little on her, we slowly made it to another village on the way where her aunt gave me some water to clean myself off as all the school children were watching, mesmerized.  I don’t think they’ve seen many gringas walk into the school with mud and cow poop up to their knees as well as on their hands and arms.  After taking the long way back since after all that we completely missed the shortcut, we finally got back to Antigua to make a work plan for the rest of the school year but ended up putting it off until Thursday.  I had to get home to take a bucket bath.

Keeping Busy

It hasn't been easy to keep myself busy when the country is pretty much at a standstill and no teachers are working, so I finally did something this weekend that has been on my list for a long time...I learned how to make flour tortillas!  Most people here eat corn tortillas and although I can make those I really wanted to learn how to make flour tortillas from a family that has a baleada stand in the park and makes the best flour tortillas I've ever had.  I went to their house on Saturday and helped them prepare the masa (dough) from 40 pounds of flour that they were going to make into tortillas to sell at their stand that evening.  They thought teaching me was fun and took lots of pictures, some of which I have posted above.  I'm going to keep practicing and hopefully will still be making tortillas when I get home.