It's beginning to feel a little like Christmas

The biggest thing to happen since our last post didn’t even happen in Honduras. Shannon’s brother Robert and his girlfriend Erica got engaged Wednesday night so we would like to congratulate them on their engagement. We are really happy for them and this also gives us a reason to come home. It is still early but they are thinking of a May wedding so you all might get to see us sometime in May. We will keep you updated on our plans as they develop. Hopefully we will be able to get some fresh fruit while we are there since we missed out on most of the summer fruits from the valley last summer as well. Our house did get painted finally, so Shannon doesn’t have to worry about that anymore. We cleaned out and refilled our pila finally as well. The painters made a big mess in it and got yellow paint all over the newly green painted pila. You can still see some crayon marks through the paint but it looks a lot nicer now. The head painter told Kevin that the son-in-law of the owner was cheap and didn’t want to pay a lot for the house to get painted either. Yellow is not a good color to cover up dark crayon marks on the wall with only one coat. We think the son-in-law and daughter might have had to pay for the paint as their kids are the ones who destroyed the walls, we are not real sure on that. Things work-wise are still slow as all the schools are now out. We had our last English class on Monday and the students all brought food and we had karaoke which was fun. Later that night we went to have dinner with the director of the university Kevin works at and his girlfriend who is from the states. She made lasagna and salad and it was really good. We had a good time there and will probably have more dinners together in the future. Tuesday night we went to a Christmas dinner with one of Shannon’s counterparts. It was fun and they had fried shrimp for dinner along with rice and vegetables from the Chinese restaurant. Since we don’t really eat shrimp, others around us had plenty to take home. Shannon had also made sugar cookies to take that never even got opened so we had plenty of sugar cookies to eat when we got back. Last Friday we went to a lunch with Shannon’s counterpart CEREPA, the rehabilitation center here in Catacamas and heard a lot of former patient’s testimonials. We went to a little Christmas gathering last Sunday night next door at Katia’s apartment, a German who is working here in Catacamas. We had a lot of good food there as well and tried for the first time an avocado that has a hint of a licorice taste and some fried yucca paste stuff. We don’t remember what they were called but they were good. We broke down and decided to live like all of our neighbors and got cable Friday afternoon. We have been enjoying it and watched a nice Christmas movie last night, in English with Spanish subtitles of course so we still learn Spanish as we watch it. The cats we have adopted, for now, are doing well. They are all growing including the mother and now live in our kitchen. They have peed on the floor more than once which we do not like but have so managed to deal with. They do not sell litter here in Catacamas so Shannon made a box of dirt for them to use as the bathroom. We named the little orange kitten Basa as that is what our nephew Tristan apparently thought it should be named after seeing it in a photo. We now think they are both girls. Kevin is now going to work with another counterpart at least on a couple of projects. Since Derek was forced to leave the Peace Corps late last month and Kevin was going to be working with him on projects Kevin is now going to work with Derek’s counterpart on some projects that Derek had started. His counterpart is an awesome guy to work with. The two other volunteers who live her in Catacamas, Jarryd and Kendra, have not both left for the holiday season so it will be a little lonelier for a couple of weeks but people are coming to our place for Christmas so that will be nice and we are planning on making and eating a lot of good Christmas food. Friday night we made pupusas for the first time and they turned out really well. They are basically fat corn tortillas stuffed with cheese, and beans and or meat. They are not really that hard to make and are pretty good. Another volunteer, Matt, was in town the other day on his birthday and we made and ate some chocolate cake with him and Kendra. Our computer has developed horizontal lines along the screen so that is not good…we are hoping that it doesn’t get worse as we can still use it. Computers hate Honduras. Both of us are going to be working with a school to try to help make it go zero waste, an awesome opportunity here in Honduras. Shannon, and maybe Kevin too, is also going to give talks on HIV/safe sex, self esteem and other youth issues. The principal eventually wants to go zero waste and then show other schools in Honduras how to do the same. Shannon continued her bad luck with water bottles as she took Kevin’s this time to go play soccer one night and left it there. We went back later to try to find it and it was gone. Luckily Kendra had an extra that he now uses.

Free food, lies, and a new way to meet your neighbors

Last Thursday we had dinner with the Deputy Director of the Peace Corps and several other volunteers here in Catacamas. She was nice and we talked about a lot of good stuff. We also really enjoyed the free dinner. We finally got our water fixed this past Saturday so it is nice not to have to bring water into the house by buckets. We do not have hot water in the shower and Shannon does not like that but we may get that problem resolved soon. The shower head is also really clogged and hardly any water comes out of it and shoots all over the place but for now it is stuck and can’t be cleaned out until someone comes to fix it. During the time we were using bucket water, Shannon accidentally drank some tadpole water thinking it was a glass of clean water. It actually did have tadpoles swimming around in it, not in the glass but in the bucket. She didn’t get sick, yet. We have been cleaning the house a lot (mainly Shannon, she has spent entire days cleaning) and someday it may actually get painted. Shannon has been frustrated with how slow things have been getting done with the house. The painters were going to come Monday, it is now Wednesday and they came by to look at it today and said they will come tomorrow to start. Shannon got frustrated yesterday when they didn’t come and went and hunted down the owner of the house to talk to him. He said “Hondurans are liars. They say they are going to do things and they don’t do them. You need to have patience because you are not in the US anymore and things don’t work the same here.” That statement coming from a Honduran pretty much sums up the way things work here. And they wonder why the country is not developing. On that note, Kevin was supposed to go on a topographical study for a water system for a small community up in the mountains about a 3 hour mule ride away this morning with two other volunteers. They caught their six o’clock bus out of town and arrived ready to mount their mules only to find out that the people weren’t ready yet. This is the second and maybe last time they have gone through this exact same thing with the same exact community. Only the last time they waited around for 4 hours before someone told them that the community wasn’t ready. We still have cats here. The momma cat had moved one kitten down out of the attic and then back up to a different part but never moved the other one that we could here crying. Kevin finally found a way to get it down on Monday. The mom didn’t want anything to do with it at first so Shannon fed it milk through a dropper and slept with it all night. It is a lot smaller that the other one. The next day the mom took it and put it with its sibling and they both seem to be doing fine now. Tuesday night, Kevin found out a good way to meet neighbors – let one of their dogs bite your leg. While walking back home from dinner and the grocery store with three other volunteers, the dog that lives two houses down from our house started barking at us as we walked by. This seemed normal to Kevin as he has walked by this dog many times before and he didn’t bother trying to move farther away from the dog. The dog then jumped out and bit at him biting his upper leg and putting a hole in his jeans. It wasn’t too bad really and is more like a scratch than a tooth puncture wound but it wasn’t fun and now he has to take antibiotics. Shannon talked to the owners while Kevin was washing his wound out after talking to the Peace Corps medical staff and the dog is up to date on its rabies shots. Plus, as Peace Corps volunteers we all received pre-exposure rabies shots in Honduras and all is hopefully well.

A house of our own

We hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving last week. A lot has happened since our last post. Kevin went with the second year university students from the department he works with, there are only 15 right now, out to Las Marañones (the cashews), a small city just inside the Rio Platano Biosphere. They went out there Wednesday morning and returned Thursday night. He had a lot of fun and practiced Spanish a lot as only one student can speak English. They made a lot of good food and Kevin was on the breakfast crew and squeezed oranges by hand, no juicer whatsoever, until there was enough for everyone and then fried some plantains. His hands were tired after that. The trip out there was on a university bus about two hours on a dirt, very dusty road. The university co-owns a facility with the Honduran Forest Service there that can sleep about 25 people, with a kitchen and solar panels that they built with the help of a grant from an organization in the US. There are no power lines that go that far out. Most of the residents there are descendents of native Pech Indians. Last week, we said goodbye to two more volunteers from our class, both in Kevin’s project. We wish them the best in whatever they end up doing. Kevin is particularly sad as he was going to be working a lot with one of them as he only lived a few kilometers away. While Kevin was with the students on Thanksgiving, Shannon had a nice Thanksgiving meal with other gringos in Catacamas. She at least brought back some apple crisp for him to eat. Saturday, we went to Juticalpa, about an hour bus ride away to have a Thanksgiving dinner with about 25 other people there. We had Turkey, green beans, mashed potatoes, fruit salad, regular salad, rolls, chili, gravy and then we had desert with pumpkin pie, sweet potato pie, apple pie, apple crisp and pumpkin cheesecake. It was a great meal and we all made sure to overeat. Sunday was the primary elections here in Honduras. One of the people running had apparently been disqualified from running, we don’t really know why but they put another name on the ballot that the people knew if you voted for him, you were really voting for the other guy, who ended up winning. Really weird, and we don’t know why or how this works. Now we have another year of obnoxious billboards, commercials and our least favorite, cars driving around with speakers promoting the candidates (usually at 5:30 AM). And for some bigger news, we moved into our own house Monday night and have been staying there since. On Friday we had bought a mattress and stove with our move in allowance form Peace Corps and paid for it, expecting to have it delivered on Monday. Then we find out that the people who were living there are leaving the stove and refrigerator for us to use. We went back to the store and could not get a refund so we were forced to buy a tv and dvd player and some other things we needed like a fan and some plastic stools to sit on. We also had previously bought a slightly used refrigerator too which we are going to try to sell to another volunteer. The previous tenants also left some chairs, an entertainment center to put our tv on, some shelves and place to put our clothes but right now there is a broken pipe and no running water. That is supposed to get fixed by tomorrow, keep your fingers crossed. We do have running water outside and in our pila, the traditional way to store water here, but we have been spoiled the last two months with warm, running water in our shower and to revert back to cold bucket baths is not fun. At first we thought we had rats in the space between the roof and ceiling but now we hear at least one kitten crying and there is a cat that hangs around our house, so apparently we have cats in our attic. Shannon wants a kitten now. This Thursday we are going to have dinner with a couple of people from Peace Corps Headquarters in Washington D.C. who are coming to visit Honduras and they are sending them out to our part of the country as they have never visited this part before. The second in command of Peace Corps, the Deputy Director, and the Special Assistant to the Chief of Staff are coming so that should be an interesting dinner.