Last days in Honduras

We will be flying out Monday morning from the capital of Honduras, Tegucigapla. We will go there by bus Saturday or Sunday.

The picture of Jordon and I with coconuts is from the coast which we visited this last weekend. It is great being able to go anywhere by bus very cheaply. It was great to explore another little city and it was also nice becuase we stayed with a couple that our host paretns know. The one downside to the trip was that I didn't apply sunscreen regularly enough and am still suffereing the consequences! On the coast many of the people are from another people group, Garfunas with much darker skin and most speak another language which apparently is more related to English than Spanish (not that I could understand it). We had the chance to talk to a few people in Tela (the coastal city) and it was nice to hear about the goings-on in that community. (For example oen guy we talked to kept talking abotu this one guy who never showers and everyone avoids.)

The second picture is me with a group of children from a school i volunteered at today. It is an after school program for low income students. Jordon cut some of the boys hair while I played games and generally entertained different groups, I also helped some with their homework.

Vultures on tin roofs

Last night and the night before there have been these banging sounds on our roof at random hours, reallly loud. It is a tin roof so rain makes alot of nose but these were thuds, hardly the pitter patter of rain. Finally this morning i realized that it is vultures. When a dog dies around here the vultures set in and a dog died near our house a few days ago and vultures were landing on our roof en route to the carcass, which by the way smells bad rotting outside our house.

It is weird at the beginning of this internship I felt like it would be forever (5 weeks! I thought what an interminably long period of time) but with less than 1 week left it seems like there is not much time remaining at all. After only 4 weeks i can feel connected to a place, when I go out and about it is not uncommon to see someone from work or church excited to see me and say hi (after all I am not hard to spot in a crowd). With most of the internship done I feel as though I will be actually a little sad to move on with our travels, at the smae time excited to move on to new adventures and will be gratefull to settle down in Argentina for 4 months and not have to think about moving about.

Today at lunch I went to the corner little store to buy hot sauce cause my food didn't taste right without it. I also talked to this new lady at work who was telling me how she had been laid off from her bank job and how (even with her family here) if she hadn't not gotten this job she was going to go to the US to enter illegally. It feels like every single person i talk to has a relative in the US (someone told me that while talking to a class they asked how many people had relatives in the US and eveyr child rose their hand).

Third week in Honduras

Good morning! It is Saturday morning and we have just finished our third week in Honduras. As far as the internship goes we are assembling a report regarding the donations Proyecto Aldea Global has received and where different medical materials have gone. Practically at this time it means typing up lists of items and quantities. It feels good to be assigned a report to complete and not just data entry (even though the actual work is similar).

Yesterday Jordon and I went to the town Minas de Oro with our coworkers bcause they had to do some interviews there for potentional employees. We got up at 4:30 AM! It was about a four hour drive away mainly on pretty rough dirt roads, which made sleeping in the car impossible. Good to see another little town. we didn't really help with the interviews they kinda just said "go explore and come back for lunch" so that was cool. I talked to a teacher in town who thoguht I was with the Peace Corps (Cuerpo de Paz) that made me happy but I told him i was with Aldea Global and we talked for a bit. The only disappointing part was that although the town name means "Gold mines" i did not find any gold there, I did not even see any gold mines because it turns out the closest mines are 2 hours away. The pictures here are both from Minas de Oro. The one with the sign is me with a sign describing a water project that Aldea Global does, it was exciting for me because that is one of the projects I have entered lots of data and forms about in the office, it is good to be reminded that our work is going towards a good cause. the second picture is from a hill that Jordon and I hiked up by Minas de Oro and I went ahead and took a picture of the town, as you can see no gold mines in sight!

When we got back there was this family at our house (they are staying with our host family for a little, i think something happened to their dad or something?) Anyway they have the cutest little daughter who i became very good friends with and everyone thoguht it was pretty funny as we played catch and kitchen etc... She was pretty nice and didn't seem that concerned that my Spanish was a little different! After that we went to dinner last night with the church youth group (or 10 or so other young people from the church...i don't know if it was an 'event' or just something we got invited to) it was fun but i was tired from getting up so early and that makes it hard to speak spanish but i did alright. It is always nice to interact with people similar in age in Spanish.

Thank you all for your support and messages!

Copan Ruinas

This weekend Jordon and I took a series of buses to Copan Ruins. The ruins of an ancient Mayan city. Our weekend was very fun and tiring. We explored the ruins, went horseback riding, and ziplining. It was incredible to see such a large area of an civilization that no longer exists. The temples were impressive but Copan is best known for its 'ball court' where a 'game' was played with a ball and usually ended with at least one player being sacrificed. Which brings up another interesting thing, alot of the archeticture was in altars for sacrifice with places for blood to drain out and other such pleasantries.

Here is a video of me zipling, it was filmed by our guide on one of the 15 ziplines. It was pretty exciting and also cool to look out while ziplining and see Mayan ruins (not in this video).

Second Week of Internship

Last weekend our plans to go to the national park with our coworkers were changed and we ended up going with Devin and Mario (from work) to another town close by. We left Saturday morning and met up with our friends and after running a few errands caught a bus over some hills for a couple hours. We visited Paola (a lady we work with) who served as lunch (Jordon, Mario, and Devin are pictured having lunch here), I 'helped' make tortillas with her. My tortillas were not always shaped in the perfect circles like hers but it was fun. After that we went with our coworkers to a pool/river and went swimming. I share this story because it was definately a highlight to go out and spend time with friends. It was great because Mario and Devin are studying in a beginning English class so we were able to help each other with language things (although we communicate in Spanish). We returned in the back of a pick up truck (similar to the picture i put up, this is probably the most common form of transportation we use... other than walking. It is legal here but only for four people in the back of the pick up.). After we got back to Siguatepeque we went to a burger place called 'Queen Burger' and ate probably the biggest burger of my life with two giant patties, double cheese, and fried eggs all in these giant buns. Devin had wanted us to try this place and it was definately worth it. At about $3.50 it was a more expensive dinner but they justified it because the burgers are just so huge. Hanging out with Mario and Devin made me more excited for Argentina because I realized that it is fun to spend time with peers and do things they like even if there is a language barrer. Sunday we went to a beautiful lake with our host parents, it was relaxing and refreshing.

Work this week has been similar to last week with alot of data entry. Basically the field officers collect data on the health of communities, sell medecines, and conduct prenatal seminars. In doing all these things they fill out various forms, which we input into the computer after they turn them in.

Last night we went to a prayer service at the house of a family from our hosts church. There are these meetings every Tuesday, it was good to chat with people and I look forward to getting to know people in this community more.