Belize and Guatemala Part 2, Thanksgiving, and Elections

Alright, this is going to be a long one so hang in there! To pick up where we left off, after Tikal in Guatemala we headed across the border to Belize. It was weird because right as we crossed the border everything switched to English and miles. Most of the people close to the border still spoke Spanish but on the first bus we took, Shannon automatically talked to the bus ayudante in Spanish and he said “Solo hablo inglés” which was weird since we have never taken a bus in English. We stayed two nights in San Ignacio, not too far from the border. About an hour from San Ignacio is this really awesome cave called the ATM Cave. It was the site of Mayan ceremonies and it quite an experience. We were not going to go at first because it is quite expensive but everyone told us it was the thing to do so we did. We had a really small group, just us and a Canadian guy so that made the experience even better. The trip started out with a drive to the jungle. Then we walked about a mile (crossing a river numerous times) to the entrance of the cave. It was beautiful and we had to swim to enter the cave. We wore helmets with headlamps on them and had to hike/swim about a half a mile through the cave. Our guide was awesome and really went the extra mile. At one point he had us turn our lights off and he told us the story of the Mayan underworld…it had seven levels and it all started with darkness and the sound of water. We then put our hands on the shoulder of the person in front of us and walked for about 10 minutes in the dark, sometimes up to our waists in water. It was such an awesome experience and all we could see was darkness and hear the sound of water. We ended up in a couple of giant rooms full of Mayan artifacts and bones, 90-some percent of which have never been moved. We were able to walk right up to the artifacts and a clumsy person (luckily Shannon was in an unusually un-clumsy mood) could have fallen and smashed them. It was such an amazing experience that we would never have been able to have in the U.S. where there would have been walls and fences around everything!

From San Ignacio we headed to Placencia which is a beautiful white sand beach. We spent the day swimming and eating delicious food (they had gelato!). We planned to stay another night and spend a day snorkeling around the cays but it rained all morning the next day so our trip got cancelled and we decided to press on. We did, randomly, run into a girl on the beach that was in Shannon’s dorm freshman year of college. It had been years since we had seen her, what a small world! Belize was extremely beautiful and we were sad that we were not able to spend more time there. It did not seem like Central America, more like the Caribbean. The food was totally different without tortillas (thank goodness) and more seafood and coconut flavors. It was a nice change of pace and we hope to go back since we were not able to meet up with Shannon’s friend from when she studied abroad.

We took a boat across the ocean from Punta Gorda in the south of Belize back to Guatemala. On the boat we met this really nice girl who happened to live in the city we were going to. She invited us to stay at her house which overlooked the bay. We had a nice, relaxing night in Livingston which is one of the few Garifuna communities in Guatemala. Most of the people there are black and the food is different, more fish and things cooked with coconut. They also have an alligator pit in the central park…a little different for sure!
From Livingston we took a boat down the Rio Dulce. It was a nice trip and we stopped at a traditional village where they sold crafts and also at a hot spring. We then headed to an area where there are a lot of Stelas (really tall Mayan statues) and spent an hour or so looking at them. It is really amazing how tall and intricate they are! Then we headed to the border town of Esquipulas where the famous “Black Jesus” is housed in the Cathedral there. We got in late and got ripped off on the worst room in the history of the world. It was so tiny that the bed barely fit, no towels or toilet paper (we didn’t even know that was possible), no toilet seats in the shared bathroom, and not even a sink, just a pila. It was definitely the worst hotel we have ever stayed in! We saw the Black Jesus in the morning and it was an interesting experience. As the church service was going on, there was a line of people in the front of the church waiting to see Jesus. We probably waited in line for about half an hour. Everyone would walk up and kneel down to pray or take pictures and then walk backwards out of the area until the Jesus was out of sight. It was definitely something that we had never experienced before.

We crossed the border on Kevin’s birthday and then spent the entire day traveling. We stayed at our friend Hillary’s and she saved Kev’s birthday by making him dinner and a little cake complete with candles! We then headed back to Catacamas the next day and finally arrived around 5:00 PM. It was a lot of traveling and we were exhausted when we got back but it was a good trip. We were surprised that we were actually happy to get back.

The week after we got back we both had our one year site visits with our bosses from Peace Corps. They talked to our counterparts and people in the community to see how we are doing and they both went really well. Shannon did almost her entire visit in Spanish and was told that her Spanish has really improved so that was nice (Kevin did not talk much in Spanish in his so he couldn’t get complimented but his Spanish has improved too).

Last week we celebrated Thanksgiving at our house with about 20 people. Shannon spent the entire day in the kitchen and now feels that if she can make a Thanksgiving dinner for that many people in Honduras, it will be a piece of cake in the U.S.! Kevin made the turkey and everyone really enjoyed all of the food. We had enough to feed an army and everyone had leftovers the next day. All in all, it was a huge success and a lot of fun!

Sunday, were the elections for president and all of the mayors of the different municipalities. There were no problems and a new president was elected. Pretty much all departments elected someone from the National Party and the president is from that party as well. It seems that everyone wanted a change. That means that everyone in our mayor’s office will be out in January and an entire new crew will come in. This will be weird for Shannon as two of her counterparts work for the municipality. It should be interesting. The new president takes office January 27, 2010 (Shannon’s birthday) and we are hopeful that it will be a smooth transition.

Guatemala trip

So we’ve been gone for awhile and it was great! We started out with Halloween in Copan in the West of Honduras. It is kind of a Peace Corps Volunteer tradition to have a big party in Copan every Halloween. There was a costume parade and contest and there were some great homemade costumes! Kevin was a basketball player (last minute ropa Americana) and Shannon was going to be a bottle of “D’Olancho” chile but she left her costume (that she spent hours making) on the bus. Needless to say, she was pretty mad, but one of her friends saved the day and helped her to create a “forest fairy” costume. It was not the best costume but not too bad on a couple of hours notice.

After Halloween we headed off with four of our friends to Guatemala. We first went to Antigua which is a very quaint town with cobble stone streets and brightly colored buildings. It is also very touristy and there seemed to be more gringos than Guatemalans. We hiked up an active volcano near Antigua and got to walk right up to the lava! It was a very unique experience. Kevin rented a stick that we were able to stick into the lava and make flame balls. It was so hot next to the lava that you could only stay a few seconds before your skin started to hurt. On our way down, the volcano became more active and huge flaming rocks started tumbling down. Everyone had to leave quickly and in the commotion our friend Elizabeth stepped on a loose rock and slipped and fell. Lava rock is extremely sharp and she ended up cutting herself up pretty badly with blood running down her leg. Luckily she was ok and Shannon, surprisingly, was able to clean her wounds for her.

We left Antigua and headed for El Lago de Atitlan and the community of Santiago de Atitlan. It is a pretty big lake with three volcanoes surrounding it. Santiago de Atitlan is a quaint little Mayan community on a hill overlooking the lake. We took a little boat across the lake and toured the city. We met a young boy (he wasn’t sure if he was 10 or 12 so he settled on 11) and for a small fee (about 75 US cents each) he showed us all the places of interest in the town. Spanish was his second language that he had only learned in school so it was really interesting to talk to him because he had an accent and made the same types of mistakes that we make. He was hilarious and took us to see Maximon (pronounced Mashimon by the locals) who is a Mayan God that is housed in a different house each year. He is a small wooden statue that is covered in silk scarves and ties and people have to pay 2 Quetzales (about 25 cents) to see Maximon and 10 more to take a picture of him. It is also recommended to give him gifts of guaro (really gross alcohol) or other alcohol and cigarettes. It was interesting to see and our little guide was hilarious!

From El Lago de Atitlan we went to Quetzaltano (Xela) which is the second largest city in Guatemala. It doesn’t seem that big as it is spread out. The architecture is very different from that in the rest of Guatemala as much of it was made by Germans and it has a more European style. There were a lot of columns and it really felt like we were in Europe. There was a really cool theater there that was all wooden inside and looked like something out of the Wild West. We had a great time walking around and seeing all of the interesting buildings. We also took a little trip to a nearby village to see the “craziest church in Central America”. It is brightly painted on the outside, orange, red, and yellow with designs, and even has some neon signs on the inside. It was quite interesting.

From Xela we took two buses (one overnight) to Flores to see the ruins of Tikal. Somewhere along the trip our friend Elizabeth’s bag, along with two others, “fell” off the bus. The bus driver kept changing his story and poor Elizabeth had to spend the entire day with the other two girls in the bus station. The bus company ended up giving them each $350 so that was much better than we expected. One of the girls was from Argentina and with her perfect Spanish and feistiness was able to argue well which probably helped. We spent that day exploring the little island of Flores which was pretty small and quaint.

The next day we headed off early (4:30 AM) to Tikal to see the awesome Mayan temples. Tikal is located in the middle of the jungle and is amazing! You are still able to climb to the top of most of the temples and from the tops of the tallest ones you can just see pure jungle with a few temple tops poking up. We spent six hours there and really could have spent an entire day. We also saw Coatis, a capybara, and white faced and howler monkeys. It was great and amazing to think that Mayans so many hundreds of years ago created these giant pyramids that are still standing today.

Ok, that is enough for one blog. Next week: Belize and Guatemala part 2!
Links to our pics from the trip:
http://www.facebook.com/p.php?i=1557094747&k=ZZ12YWS3QYTFY1LCXE4ZY5PQV3CC4U4F&oid=1279383752479
http://www.facebook.com/p.php?i=1557094747&k=ZZ12YWS3QYTFY1LCXE4ZY5PQV3CC4ZZM&oid=1263973129523
http://www.facebook.com/p.php?i=1557094747&k=ZZ12YWS3QYTFY1LCXE4ZY5PQV3CC4ZWB&oid=1305764123017
http://www.facebook.com/p.php?i=1557094747&k=ZZ12YWS3QYTFY1LCXE4ZY5PQV3CC4U2C&oid=1251308437021

Going to the bathroom in Honduras

Those of you that have traveled in developing countries such as Honduras (and we don’t mean only the tourist spots that are like extensions of the US) have probably noticed that bathrooms are not the same. First of all, finding a public bathroom can be hard or downright impossible. If you do find one, you might realize that you have to pay to use it or at least pay to get toilet paper.

Here in Honduras, it is the same. When you go to a mall or nice shopping center in the big cities, you will find nice public bathrooms, and you can usually use them for free (and they may even have toilet paper). Outside of those and chain restaurants like McDonalds, bathroom quality tends to deteriorate at a fast rate. For example, the bus station we use to go to and from Tegucigalpa and Catacamas. It is considered a nice bus here in Honduras and is a direct bus with one stop in between (the buses do not have bathrooms either). But use the bathroom in the bus station and you will find that it is pretty gross compared to our standards in the US. There are toilets and a big urinal for the guys but no running water. You flush the toilet by pouring a bucket of water down it which you retrieve from a giant barrel located in the bathroom. If you have never done this, it actually works quite well but the cleanliness of the bathroom is pretty bad, even though they seem to be mopping it nonstop. Oh, and bring your own toilet paper, chances are that the bathroom will not have any but don’t worry, they usually sell some nearby if you get desperate.

We don’t have any numbers on this but less than half the population in Honduras probably has a flush toilet with running water. The next step is having a normal toilet that you pour a bucket of water down after using it, in or outside your house. One step lower and you have the standard latrine with a hole in the ground and a hole up above to do your thing in, an outhouse basically. After that, there are fields, streets, parks, and wherever else you need to relieve yourself. There are many poor subsistence farmers and families that either don’t have toilets or don’t have somewhere to go in the fields so people just go wherever and whenever nature calls. Well, that and cow dung are two of the main problems with water quality here in Honduras. In a country with a lot of rain, all that excrement just washes into the rivers that towns get their water from. Sounds enticing, doesn’t it? But we will save that for another day and continue on.

The first time you see someone peeing in the street in broad daylight is somewhat shocking. Then after the fourth of fifth time you get used to it. It is not uncommon at all to see a car pulled over to the side of the road with a guy just peeing out in the open by his car, some people go behind on the tire or are a little more discreet but they don’t have rest stops here so you go wherever you need to. When Kevin went with the University students on a trip, the bus just pulled over and all the guys got out and basically lined up and peed on the side of the road. That is completely normal here. If a cop saw someone do that in the States, you could very well be cited and even charged as a sex offender, not good (you don’t want to end up on that website that tracks where sex offenders live just for peeing in public, do you?). This happens in the city too, not just in the country. The workers that come to get stuff from next to our house for the hardware store pee on the truck tires on the street in front of our house and we live in the middle of the city.

Now, peeing on the street in the open for guys isn’t a big thing. It’s not too often that you see a woman doing it. One way to avoid using the bathroom is to avoid drinking (Shannon does this every time we take a long trip). Hondurans, in general, don’t drink a lot of water. Most think gringos are weird for drinking so much water. We don’t know why, maybe because drinking water costs money or maybe its because there aren’t bathrooms to use but even people who are well off and can afford all the water they could possible want don’t drink very much water even though water is cheap. Our five gallon jug is just 65 cents. A liter bag of water is only 10-15 cents.

So far we have only talked about peeing in public. Other volunteers have told us about seeing people pooping in public but so far we had been able to avoid seeing that. That is until this morning. We went on our usual Monday morning run in the multi-sports complex/park, aka a giant grass field that we run around. On one of our laps around the field we could see a guy squatting just to the side of our path. It sure looked like his pants were down and as we got closer, sure enough, he was taking a dump on the ground about ten feet away from us. He didn’t seem worried about it and he didn’t seem to be drunk or on drugs either, just answering nature’s call in front of anybody who happened to walk by. I mean, couldn’t he have at least gone behind a tree or something or in a hole in the ground? The weirdest part might be how we reacted to that after living here a year. True, it was something we had not witnessed before but it almost seemed normal anyway. We just ran on by like normal and laughed and talked about how that was the first time we had seen that here. Hey, it all comes down to this: whey you gotta go, you gotta go.

On a side note, we are off to the Copan Ruins this weekend for Halloween, then to Guatemala and Belize for two weeks for some much needed vacation! Updates coming soon!

Post world cup qualifying comments by Kevin

If you have ever been outside the US and really soaked in the culture of another country, you probably learned that soccer is a huge sport. It is, after all, the most popular sport in the world. Living in the US, soccer is fourth, fifth or even sixth place among the most popular team sports (depending on who you ask). Ask a random person on the street to tell you the name of a player on the US men’s soccer team and they probably couldn’t. Ask them if the US men's team has qualified for the world cup and chances are they wont be able to tell you that either. Well, not so in other countries and Honduras is no exception. Soccer is huge here. It is easy to play and all you need is a ball to kick around. Any ball will do. Most kids use plastic balls on the street. Soccer balls like we are used to seeing in the states are rare here but you don’t need one of those to hone your skills as a youngster. Proof: Honduras with a population of 8 million people has a national team that is almost as good as the United States’ team, who has a population of over 300 million people (that is almost 40 times the population of Honduras!).
So, for anyone paying attention to the world cup qualifying currently going on, the United States and Honduras are in the same qualifying pool that covers all countries in the western hemisphere from Panama north and the Caribbean. Six teams were left in the last qualifying round with the top three automatically qualifying for the World Cup. With two games left to play Honduras was sitting in third position with a home game against the US that was played last Saturday (unfortunately we were unable to attend this game due to US embassy rules). The US ended up winning an exciting game 3-2, while Honduras missed a potentially game-tying penalty shot (had this been a Mexican player, he might have had a 50/50 chance of getting shot after the game). With this win, the US qualified for the world cup and the loss allowed Costa Rica to jump ahead of Honduras into third place with their win over Trinidad and Tobago. This put Honduras in a tough position to qualify as their last game was a road game in El Salvador and Costa Rica traveled to the US to play a team that had already qualified. Honduras needed to win the game and needed the US to win or at least tie Costa Rica.
So, Wednesday night, about 99.9% of the people in Honduras (including myself) were watching either the US/Costa Rica game or the Honduras/El Salvador game or both as they were played at the same time. Watching the US game seemed disappointing as Costa Rica took a 2-0 lead at halftime. Things weren’t looking good for Honduras. Honduras was tied 0-0 at the half and took the go ahead goal in the 63rd minute. The US finally scored a goal in the 72nd minute, sparking some hope for the Honduran faithful. Honduras hung on to the one goal lead to end the game beating El Salvador 1-0 as the US game was still being played in stoppage time. The US was still trailing 2-1. Things were looking pretty grim for Honduras with only stoppage time to remaining. At the end, all hopes rested on a final corner kick in the final seconds of stoppage time for the US. Chances looked slim. After the kick, coming out of nowhere was a wide open Jonathon Bornstein to head the ball past the Costa Rican goalkeeper for the game tying goal, essentially ending the game and allowing Honduras to automatically qualify for the world cup. Hondurans went ecstatic. (Costa Rica will play a two game playoff with Uruguay in which the winner will qualify for the World Cup and the loser stays home.)
Honduras has not qualified for the World Cup since 1982. Obviously, to a small country (it is about the size of Tennesee) that loves soccer this is a huge deal and to qualify for the World Cup again after 28 years was cause for celebration. (It was also nice for the people of Honduras to unite and celebrate for a good cause after all the political turmoil that has taken place in the last four months.)
I was watching the game at a new pizza restaurant in Catacamas with my fellow gringo Peace Corps Volunteer Jarryd (Shannon was in Tegus) when everyone heard (or saw) the US tie Costa Rica and everyone in the city started screaming and within a couple of minutes there was a parade of cars driving down the main streets of Catacamas. There were so many cars that when we tried to cross the street we had to wait a couple of minutes before we were able to run across the one lane, one-way street without getting hit by a car or motorcycle. Eventually it got so backed up that the cars (mostly trucks full of people in the backs) were barely moving, if at all. Everyone was honking their horns, screaming and yelling and more and more people kept coming out to celebrate. People were riding around on top of truck cabs, buses, anywhere they could fit. Hondurans would see Jarryd and I and start chanting USA-USA…, shaking our hands, giving us high fives and saying things like - thank you (in English), we love USA, hermanos para siempre, etc., etc. Everyone in Catacamas was our friend that night. One random guy gave me a full on hug. Everywhere we went people started screaming at us, girls were blowing us kisses, people were buying us beers. It was as if Jarryd and I ourselves were responsible for making Honduras qualify for the World Cup and we were seen as the town, if not national, heroes. At one point we even jumped in the back of one of the pickups with some random people and rode around for a few minutes celebrating with them. It was such an awesome and fun night, the most fun I have had in Catacamas since I have been here and I doubt that anything will top it. For at least one night, everyone’s problems seemed to disappear and everyone was celebrating together. It was a special night indeed. Crazy, but special.


Article title from the Honduran newspaper La Prensa the next day:

"I love you so much Jonathan Bornstein"

To hear the Honduran broadcasters at the end of the game listen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjOv0rJYyF8
Just keep in mind how important that goal was as you listen. He is saying that the US game is not over yet when they realize the US scored and you can understand the goal part. Then he says Honduras is in the World Cup…

Latest things that are happening

We have been pretty busy the last few weeks. Last weekend we went to Lake Yojoa for a going away party for one of our good friends who decided to head back to the US a year early. It was our first good friend who had early terminated and it was sad to see him go. We’ve lost a couple of people from our training group in the past month. It’s always sad to see them go but we’re happy that they are doing what’s right for them. It was nice to relax at the lake for the weekend and spend time with friends that we hadn’t seen in awhile. Then Kevin went on to Tegucigalpa for his mid-service medical exams. He went to the dentist where he was told that he didn’t have any cavities but they did not even take x-rays so who knows… He was given a clean bill of health so that’s good. He came back the night of our anniversary and Shannon made a nice dinner. We have now been married three years!

We had our annual regional meeting last week where all of the volunteers from Olancho meet with the safety and security director of Peace Corps Honduras, the country director, and a nurse. It was an all day event and we both had to do presentations of what projects we have been doing. It was a long day but good to see everyone and we got to meet the two new volunteers in our area. It is the annual feria (fair) of Catacamas right now so we all went there after our regional meeting. It is pretty big with lots of booths, games, food, venders, and of course, rides. Last year we were afraid to go on the rides but this year we braved them. They are all just set atop wooden blocks and some have hand cranks to make them move, definitely not safe. The ferris wheel was actually scary…we thought they were supposed to be relaxing! It went really fast and was rickety and creaky but we survived it.

The political situation continues to be complicated as the ousted president is still in the Brazilian Embassy. Representatives of the two presidents have been meeting for “dialogue” but nothing has changed. The teachers found out last week that school is ending this coming Friday, the 16th. School is supposed to end at the end of November but since this is an election year it was well known that classes would end a little early like mid-November. Apparently they are ending a month earlier because the classrooms are needed for the elections. Nobody seems to understand why since the elections aren’t for another month and a half and they are on a Sunday… The teachers were also told that all kids have to pass which means that there are going to be a lot of kids next year who are behind. It is also a little crazy because this coming Monday is a holiday and Catacamas never has classes on Thursdays or Fridays so that leaves two days of classes for them to finish everything up. It also means that Shannon will, once again, not have anything to do.

On a happier note, the U.S. and Honduras played soccer against each other last night and the U.S. won! We had originally planned to go to the game but a week before the game the U.S. Embassy decided that it may not be safe for U.S. citizens to attend and prohibited any U.S. citizens who were affiliated with the “U.S. mission in Honduras” from attending. We were sad but had a few people over here instead and watched it on a projector on our wall. It was a good game and the U.S. is now qualified for the world cup! The downside is that Honduras will now have a hard time qualifying but they will at least be in the playoff spot to play the fifth place team from South America in a two game playoff to determine which one will qualify for the World Cup.

Shannon heads to Tegucigalpa this coming week for her mid-service medical exams and pretty soon we will head to Copan for Halloween and then on to Guatemala and Belize where we will explore Mayan ruins, climb active volcanoes and explore some Belizean beaches. Let the fun begin!

One year left

Today marks the day that we have one year left of service here in Honduras.

Testicles and the Return of Mel

So things have gotten a little crazy here in the past couple of days… Before we talk about that, we’re going to talk about the things we have done in the past couple of weeks. Kevin finally finished his English class at the University. The majority of the kids even passed, although Shannon did have to take a test from a boy who was cheating and give him a zero. Kevin will not be teaching next semester but will be helping the new teacher out.

Our friend Calixto took us and our site-mate Elisabeth and her boyfriend to an awesome waterfall and the hike there was quite an adventure. To get there, we had to scale up three or four smaller waterfalls using rope (Calixto, of course, climbed without rope in order to tie the rope for us). At one point, Calixto put Elisabeth’s feet on top of his to help her scale down…he is quite amazing! It was a great experience and we were definitely sore the next day. The waterfall was beautiful as was the hike. We hiked rather high into the mountains where the water was fresh and pure (supposedly) and we drank straight from the creek. We haven’t gotten sick yet so the water must have been clean!

Kevin created a Peace Corps Honduras fantasy football league and at the last minute one of the guys had to drop out. Shannon and Elisabeth took his spot and have won both of their games so far. All of the guys are mad because Shannon and Elisabeth drafted players based on looks. The hot guys just seem to play better! This keeps us occupied during the weekends as we often have small parties to watch football and eat junk-food. Shannon has been cooking and baking a lot lately and made cinnamon rolls last weekend to eat while we watched the games. Kevin has also ventured into making homemade soda. He started by making a honey ginger ale from a recipe he found on the internet. It seemed a little watery with a very strong ginger aftertaste but it actually tastes good mixed with some lemonade (well, Shannon doesn’t really like it but others do). Next up, homemade cream soda. He plans on experimenting with many different flavors and recipes until he gets them just right.

A week and a half ago, we finally took our two male cats in to get neutered. Most male animals here in Honduras (and Latin America in general) do not get neutered. Many people believe that the animals get sad and/or lose their “manhood” when they get castrated but there are vets around that do the procedure. Plus, most animals here are not seen as pets like in the United States. They usually serve a purpose such as to catch mice or other unwanted animals and the majority of people do not buy packaged animal food for their animals. If they feed their animals, the feed them table scraps or they are left to scrounge through the garbage on the street. Here in the city, you can find packaged animal food, ours eat it, but it is still not super common. The vet did not put the cats to sleep, instead she gave them something to make them groggy and then used a local anesthesia. Shannon got to help by holding the cats in the air while the vet gave them the shots to drug them. After she was done with the surgery, she showed us their testicles and Baza’s were much larger even though he is the smaller cat (3 pounds versus Caramelo’s 4).

Things were just starting to get more normal around here. School had been sporadic for awhile as there was always some holiday, Dia del niño, dia del maestro, Independence Day…always some reason to miss class. Catacamas did not celebrate Independence Day which was kind of nice (very quiet without drums or fireworks) but very weird and sad at the same time since it is usually a big day filled with parades and activities, but they still cancelled classes for most of the week. This week classes were in session again and Shannon was happy to be working on Monday when Mel Zelaya, the ousted president, decided to come back and everything stopped. He is stationed inside the Brazilian embassy and troops are surrounding it and a van is supposedly parked out front playing the Honduran national anthem 24 hours a day. We are in the midst of a 50 hour curfew (nobody is supposed to leave their houses) which, according to the news, most people in Tegucigalpa seem to be obeying. Here, a lot of businesses and most schools are closed but people are still out and about. Needless to say, we are kind of bored. We were supposed to go to Tegucigalpa yesterday to talk to the married couples in training, but that got cancelled of course. This is the second time it has gotten cancelled due to political-related issues and it sucks. Hopefully things will get resolved soon but at least all is calm here in Catacamas.

Response to the comment from "Rob" after our previous post

First of, thanks for the comments and we will be looking forward to the postcards from the Great Smoky Mountains. Second, we are going to go ahead and leave the comment from “Rob” on here if you would like to read it and we are going to clarify a few things while we are at it. Also, we are not forcing anyone to read this so if you don’t like it, don’t read it.
The COLORS group is a biannual voluntary event that we can get up to 20 dollars per person reimbursed for travel, food and hotel costs. Twenty dollars may go much farther here than in the United States but that does not nearly cover our costs to go to the meeting. So, everyone who is there is doing it because they want to go. The idea of COLORS is to talk about and teach cultural awareness with a class of Honduran elementary school students. Rob makes a good point. Yes, some terms used in Spanish are considered endearing while the English translation would never be used in the United States. Blacky (negrita) was the example used in the blog post. No one we know would yell, “Hi Blacky” to a black person walking past them on the street in the U.S. Here, it is different. You can say negrita here but that doesn’t mean that all people to whom you say it appreciate it. In fact, a Honduran official just got removed from office for calling Obama “negrito”. I guess the Honduran government didn’t think the term was very endearing. In the class we talked to, we used the example gordito (fat). One kid said in front of us and the class that his family calls him gordito and that he does not like it. It might be an endearing term to his family but it was not to the boy in the class that was being called gordito. Another common thing here is calling all Asian people chino/china (Chinese). The locals have no problem with it but a Japanese person constantly being called chino, by acquaintances and strangers alike, might. Those are the issues we talk about, being aware of other cultures and some things that might be offensive to people of those other cultures. We are not trying to change them or “Americanize” them, just help them be aware of other cultures and their differences and we don’t think anything we have written in the blog has been racist or belittling against Hondurans in any way whatsoever.
The Religions Equality Meeting (REF) is a meeting solely for volunteers to get together and talk about their different beliefs in an open, friendly, and neutral environment completely amongst themselves. It is a fact that nearly 100% of the Honduran population consider themselves either Catholic or Evangelical and are in general much more religious than the average person from the United States. We ARE NOT religious missionaries and we ARE NOT here to promote our religious beliefs. But for many volunteers who have beliefs different from Catholics or Evangelicals (i.e. Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist or atheist to name a few) it can be hard not to feel pressured to attend one of those churches by community members you live with. It can also be hard and awkward to freely express your own religious views when asked about them, something you have to experience to completely understand. So REF is here for volunteers to talk to other volunteers and more than anything it was an experience for all volunteers involved to learn about other religions and beliefs themselves.
Everything we put in this blog is fact of things we have seen, heard, or experienced here in Honduras. Of course everyone’s experience is different so what you read in our blog is what we have experienced. We do not put our religious or political views in this blog. We are not sure how saying the upcoming election is going to be interesting implies that we are anti-democratic; far from it. We have talked about the situation enough in the past and didn’t need to repeat ourselves again by adding more than the word interesting.
“Your ideology is diseased, and you don't have the intellectual curiosity or the will to heal the tremendous damage that your economic system and culture have created.” Rob, feel free to leave some advice or better yet send us some literature that you think we should read, our address is on the blogsite. Yes, the Peace Corps is funded by the US government but it is all free aid, mostly in the form of teaching and training that the local communities are seeking and have asked for a volunteer to live in their community. We are not forcing them to adopt North American ways and are not providing them loans that they will never be able to pay off. If you want to point fingers, look somewhere else to place blame. Also, you mention my economic system and culture. Why don’t you tell us what economic system and culture you live in instead of trashing other peoples who you don’t even know.
“And, please, as one of the most racist groups of humans on earth today, understand your own deeply internalized racism before you look down on darker-skinned Hondurans as coming up wanting in that area. Your comments are vile and lack insight” This just doesn’t make sense. Why would we volunteer two years of our life to go somewhere where we look down on the people? You seem to be generalizing and stereotyping here which is exactly what we talk about in the COLORS meeting. Maybe what we have written is not the most eloquent but you have taken what we have written and totally misconstrued what was said. And our comments are “vile and lack insight”? Keep in mind, this blog has no agenda, despite what you may think. This is a blog for our friends and family to keep up to date on what is going on in our lives. So, sorry if it lacks insight for you, Rob. It was left on public view for anyone who might care to read it. Of course questions/comments are always welcome.

Adventures in the West

So it’s been awhile since we’ve written and a lot has happened in the past month. There are four support groups in Peace Corps Honduras and we have been to the meetings for three of them in the past month! First we went to COLORS which is to promote racial equality and understanding. For this meeting we did a talk at a local school which went really well as the people here don’t really know much about racial equality and often call people “negrito” (blacky) and other racial slurs that most people do not appreciate. We then spent the night at our friend Ellie’s site which is where we did the talk. She lives right on the outskirts of a large protected area and her site is beautiful! We swam in her lagoon and enjoyed the coolness. Then Shannon went to a VOS (Volunteers Offering Support) meeting near Tegucigalpa in the protected area of La Tigra while Kevin went on home. People were chosen for these positions and trained to take calls from volunteers in need of support. She was also voted the communications officer for this group and is now in charge of a monthly newsletter as well as various other duties. It was a great training in the cool mountains and she felt refreshed and ready to tackle another year in Honduras. The next weekend we visited some volunteers in Olancho so Shannon could do her Emergency Zone visits and went to a cave north of where we live.

Two weeks ago we went to the town of Gracias in the department of Lempira way out on the west side of Honduras for the REF (Religious Equality Forum) meeting. It was very interesting to learn about everyone’s different religious beliefs as well as the pressures from Hondurans to attend their churches and adopt their religions. Most Hondurans are either Catholic or Evangelical and are not very understanding or accepting of other religions which can be frustrating for many volunteers. Next, we climbed Celaque, the tallest mountain in Honduras at 2,849 meters. It was not a very long hike but VERY steep and strenuous. At parts we had to hold on to roots to pull ourselves up. It was a fabulous hike and very interesting to see all of the different plants and changing ecosystems as we climbed in elevation. On the way up we took a different trail and climbed another mountain (we did not realize this ahead of time) that was about 2,300 meters! It was an awesome hike but we were a little sad when we realized that we were going down instead of up and that there loomed another mountain in front of us! But we did see our first Honduran deer, Honduras’ national symbol of their fauna, since we have been here. People always tell us there are deer in Honduras but for the most part they have been hunted to near extinction now we finally believe that they exist! We camped a little below the top at a basic campsite that had a little covered space for a tent and a primitive latrine. There was a tarantula but Shannon is getting much better and only freaked out a little. It was really cold at night and we nearly froze to death! It was much too wet to start a fire so we went to bed at 6:30! The next day we hiked the hour and a half to the top. The view was not great as there were lots of trees and clouds but it was worthwhile.

After conquering Celaque, we went to the quaint town of Santa Rosa de Copan. It is probably the nicest town we have been to in Honduras. The central park looked like it could be in the U.S. and we ate at a great Mexican restaurant and had delicious margaritas! It was nice to feel like we were back in civilization for a little while. Then we went a couple of hours farther to our friend Justin’s site. He used to live close to us in Olancho but was moved for security reasons. His site is tiny with less than 200 people and you have to hike up a mountain from the road to get there. It was very relaxing. We went from there about 30 minutes away to another site where the volunteer has done a bee project. Kevin is interested in starting one here so we looked at the hives and talked to the owner about the steps needed to start such a project. It was very interesting and the honey was delicious! It was nice and cool in the mountains and nice to be in smaller sites for a change.

We then went back to Gracias for the MARV (Married Volunteers) meeting. We are in charge of this group so we had set everything up. It was good to meet the new married couples and talk about things that affect us that other volunteers do not deal with. We went to the quaint little town of La Campa about an hour away where they make a lot of Lencan (an Indian tribe) pottery common to the region. We also took advantage of the hot springs in Gracias and enjoyed a night there. It was a nice vacation/break from the unbearable heat and humidity of Catacamas. It left us feeling refreshed and ready to get back to work.

Things are relatively back to normal here in Catacamas. The university where Kevin works started back up about two weeks ago and the schools now have classes three days a week which is better than none. Thursdays and Fridays are still reserved for strikes and marches. A couple of days before we left on our trek a march passed by our house at about 8:00 PM. It was peaceful, pro-Mel with lots of motorcycles, cars honking, and people carrying candles. It lasted about 20 minutes and we were invited numerous times to join in (we of course said no). The schools in all of Honduras usually have large parades to celebrate Independence Day but this year none of the public schools in Catacamas are going to participate because they do not believe that they have independence right now. This is a big deal because Independence Day is huge here and the students spend months before preparing and practicing.

Campaigning for the upcoming elections began last Sunday and there are now trucks driving around playing Shannon’s least favorite song “El Chofer” with the words changed to the appropriate party (“viva el partido liberal/nacional/etc”). It’s quite annoying and we have two and a half months to enjoy it. The elections should be interesting as people are still upset about the coup. It will be an experience!

Will Things Ever Return to Normal? No Creemos

So things are still very boring around here. We are now allowed to travel as long as we don't go through Tegucigalpa, the capital. Too bad we have to pass through there to go almost anywhere... Our friend Elizabeth lives on our side of Tegucugalpa and was able to visit us last week! We had a great time watching lots of movies and eating lots of junk food.

In the past five weeks there have been five days of classes at the public schools here and even less at the university. This is extremely frustrating as we both have little work to do and the kids are missing out on so many days of class which will not be made up. It's very discouraging. Most other places have resumed classes but since we live in the ousted president's hometown the strikes continue. Shannon's English classes have resumed, but many of the teachers from her level one class stopped coming in the four weeks that the schools were locked. Her class started at 30 people and now has about 10! There are still marches and roadblocks but they are getting less common. Zelaya, the ousted president, came into Honduras for about 20 minutes two weeks ago. He then went back to Nicaragua where he proceeded to camp out for a week or so. Needless to say, nothing came of it and he is supposedly going to resume talks. We really don't follow the news of the coup anymore because nothing happens. The new group of volunteers was finally able to make it here after three weeks in the Dominican Republic (lucky) and a week stuck in Miami (even luckier).

Some good news for Shannon, one of the German volunteers talked to our next door neighbor and convinced him to stop harassing Shannon every time she walked by. He apologized and said (in English) "friends?". This makes her life a lot better as she walks by his house numerous times each day and no longer has to hear, "Hello baby, No soy su bebe (mocking her because that is what she said to him)" and the other annoying comments he would always make. Now he says good morning which is much better.

We are hoping work picks up or we may go insane. Shannon has started doing crafts to pass the time and we both read a lot (Shannon read seven books in July!) and of course watch T.V.! Who knew that a coup d'etat could be so boring?

Kevin's trip to La Moskitia

On Friday, July 17 I left with the 3rd year natural resources students, some faculty and guides in pipantes (large canoes made of one solid piece of wood) on a six day trip on the Patuca River down to the community of Wampusirpi and back upriver. The Patuca River forms one edge of the Rio Platano Biosphere Reserve and is in the middle of what is called La Moskitia, the largest preserved primary forest in Central America. Basically we went to the middle of the jungle. A huge plus of going with the students was that all expenses were paid by the university and an NGO named Proyecto Corazon.
The first day involved leaving the house at 5:40 in the morning and meeting everyone at the university. Then we drove for 3-4 hours on dirt/mud roads to our departing point on Rio Cuyamel. We loaded up two pipantes with six days of food and tents and sleeping bags and the personal things of 19 people going on the trip. The first day involved a lot of getting in and out of the boats to walk around the rapids so we wouldn't tip over. It involved a lot of walking on land and through the water, often waist high or sometimes deeper. It started pouring that afternoon while we were in the boats and we all had ponchos but as we were so we already, no one even used them. We spent the first night at one of the boat conductors house at the junction with Rio Patuca. We unloaded both boats and in the morning we loaded everything into one much larger boat as Rio Patuca is a much larger river that can handle bigger boats. We spent a few hours in the boat going down river until we arrived at the small community of Krausirpi, where native Tawahkas live. There are several very small communities strung out along the river the entire way. That evening we went upriver to a small community to where some students from Tegucigalpa are conducting studies on local animals including Jaguars, fish, rats, and bats. That night we set up a bat catching net so see how it was done and caught two types of bat, one a vampire bat. Krausirpi had a gas generator that powered several houses with power for a few hours each night. Day three we went on downriver to Wampusirpi where, amazingly, they have a giant cell tower for Digicel, one of the cell phone companies here, and they even had internet. We walked around the town and talked to some local people and learned about the chocolate processing they did as the area's income relies a heavily on the large amounts of chocolate farms in the area as well as some ecotourism. We all stayed at a convent that night and headed back to Krausirpi the next afternoon were we stayed one more night. The fifth day we headed back to the junction of Rio Patuca and Rio Cuyamel again and camped on the beach this time. I also talked to some people who were panning for gold and even had gas powered machines to help them. The gold only comes in small flakes and never in nuggets and our boat driver pays for everything with gold. A boat comes by his place twice a month to deliver what he had requested the time before. There is no cell coverage there. In fact, about an hour drive out of Catacamas we lost cell coverage for the entire trip except for Wampusirpi. They also find very small rubies in the river, but too small to be worth anything. That night it poured and poured and we sat and talked and played volleyball in the river as we were already soaked anyway. I only listened as they were speaking Spanish of course. The river was warmer than the air and rain at that point and we finally got out and went to bed sometime well after dark. We had cup soup and tortillas with packets of refried beans to eat for dinner. The next morning we headed back up Rio Cuyamel and the river had dropped since we had come down and was about 70% of normal flow, which meant more rocks and hazards and slower going upriver. It took several hours and then several more to drive back to Catacamas and we finally made it back at about 8:30 when we stopped at the Texaco to have some fried chicken and french fries for dinner and, of course, Coke.
The trip was an awesome experience to go traveling by boat, the only form of transportation in the area until Wampusirpi which has a small airstrip, into the middle of the jungle. We saw Coati, monkeys, iguanas, crocodiles, wild makaws and other birds, frogs, insects and various types of trees and plants. I got to practice my spanish A LOT as everyone of course spoke Spanish. One facutly member speaks good English so he was able to help me out a lot when I needed it. In the communities we visited, many people speak 3 languages, Spanish which is taught in schools, Miskito and Tawahka, both native languages in the region. It was interesting to see how the people lived there and also to see how the outside world has drastically influenced the area. A giant cell tower in the middle of nowhere with internet. Coke, Pepsi, Tropical, Mirinda and other sodas. Wampusirpi had Schlitz Malt Liquor, I don't even see that in Catacamas, not that I want to. All types of chips and other normal Honduran snacks as well. Now I can only sit and wait until my next adventure begins.

Murders and Strikes

So things are still not back to normal here. School was supposed to start this week and did in some places, just not here. Kids actually went to school Monday but the teachers refused to have classes. The university students at the university where Kevin works went on strike because they were afraid that the university was not going to have enough money to finish the school year (which is supposedly true). Then all but the external classes were canceled so the students could go to the marches in support of Zelaya. On Thursday we both went to Kevin's English class and it turned out to be the only class in the entire school that day because all the teachers went to the march. The students were mad but we decided that they needed to learn since they are the worst class ever. At least it gave us something to do! Shannon did an HIV/AIDS training last week at one of the private high schools since they still have classes. She was happy to be able to work and the training went really well. The kids gave great feedback, participated, and really seemed to enjoy it as well as learned something (their post-test scores were significantly higher than their pre-test scores).

On Monday Shannon had quite a disturbing experience that broke the monotony. She went to CEREPA thinking that she would be able to do her dental hygiene program because there were supposed to be classes, only to find out that a patient had come in Friday and died of a heart-attack early Sunday morning. It was decided that personnel from CEREPA should attend the funeral and Shannon was chosen as one of the people to go. She went with four of her co-workers and they had only been there for about five minutes when she heard a gunshot. This is pretty normal here and nobody really paid attention. She noticed that it seemed louder than normal so she looked and saw a man in a cowboy hat with a pistol walking behind another man. He shot the man two times in the back while she watched! She saw two blood spots begin to form on the man's chest and he started to fall. Chaos ensued and everyone started running and screaming. Her co-workers yelled "corra Shannon, corra" and she ran like the wind. They ran to a little store and took shelter. The police and ambulance came quickly but only stayed a few minutes as the shooter had fled the scene. The driver from CEREPA picked them up and the rest of the day was uneventful. The murderer was supposedly drunk and killed the other man over "cosas personales". He has since been arrested and sent to jail. Now the talk at CEREPA is how fast Shannon runs, how she witnessed a murder like in a "Hollywood movie", and how scared one of her co-workers was. She is surprisingly unaffected; we chalk it up to hearing about things like this all the time so it seems commonplace. She hopes to never witness a murder again!

Kevin got the opportunity to go with the university on a canoe trip through La Moskitia, a biological reserve. He left yesterday and will return Wednesday. It was all very last minute as the trip had been canceled and rescheduled very quickly. He was almost not able to go as all trips through this area require pre-approval from Peace Corps. Luckily our country director and the director of safety and security worked with him to get everything done last night. There is only one cell company that gets reception out there and his trip hinged on getting a chip from them for his phone. Shannon, like the good wife that she is, had to run around at 6:00 PM last night in the rain searching for a place that was still open that sold Digicel chips. Kevin was at a meeting at the university and was unable to do it himself. She had given up hope when she ran into some very nice men who called all their friends until they found a place. The trip was saved! She's just jealous that she couldn't go too!

Shannon's Reflections on One Year in Honduras

So today is our one-year anniversary of arriving in Honduras and we usually write these things together, but I thought I would write my own today as I reflect on my year in Honduras.

I have had so many experiences that I could never have fathomed before coming such as learning to share my house (although not happily) with so many bugs and even spiders; not freaking out every time I see a spider (only if it is really big); washing my dishes and my body in dirty water after a rain and thinking that it is better than not having any water; getting used to the electricity and water disappearing, sometimes for days at a time; washing all of my clothes by hand; cooking; walking everywhere in the heat and humidity; getting harassed by EVERY man I walk past; eating my body weight in beans and realizing that I really like them (rice, however, I could do without); seeing children running around half-dressed, half-fed, and usually sans shoes and not thinking anything of it; talking about bowl movements all the time including at dinner; becoming accustomed to the smell of burning trash; liking beets; and eating whole fish with the fins and eyeballs (I didn't eat those parts but they were there looking at me).

I have also learned a lot of things in my year here. I now no longer take so many things for granted... good food (cheese), friends and family, being able to go places at night, being able to run alone, safety, having a decent/non-corrupt government, freedom of expression, all of the material things that we think are so important in the U.S. (washing machines, furniture, air conditioners, etc), and people who tell the truth to name a few.

I have also learned to get satisfaction in the small things in life: children yelling, "Hola Profe" and hugging me when I come to a school, an e-mail from home is great, a letter/postcard awesome, and a package the highlight of the month, home-cooked flour tortillas and beans made by a friend who knows that I love them, someone making me beans because they know that I don't eat meat, teaching a child something new, newly bathed cats meeting me at the door after a long day, the construction worker in my back yard who yelled at another construction worker for catcalling me, the freshness of newly mopped floors, spending time in the campo away from all the madness of the city, visiting other volunteers and catching up, and most importantly a phone call home.

Top 10 things I have learned here:
1. Do not judge a book by it's cover. There are so many people that I have met here that I never thought I would be friends with simply by the way they dressed or something that they said, who have turned out to be some of my best friends...now if only I can remember this when I get back to the U.S.
2. Speaking Spanish is exhausting and much harder than I had thought it would be!
3. Mantequilla (aka crema in the rest of the Spanish speaking world) is always bad no matter how many times I try it.
4. Washing clothes by had really isn't that bad...
5. No matter how much people complain about schools in the U.S., they could be much worse...
6. Putting birth control in the water may not be that bad of an idea...
7. Putting "fijase que" at the beginning of an excuse works every time! Also by saying "si Dios quiere" you can get out of any future situation. I mean, what if Dios didn't want me to go to that meeting?
8. I now understand why people of the same race/that speak the same language tend to hang out together. It's just so much easier to spend time with people with whom you can easily communicate without problems and share the same basic values.
9. Dinámicas (icebreakers) really make everything better.
10. ANY television program in English is usually better than one in Spanish.

It's so hard to believe that a year has passed. Overall that experience so far has been great, I have learned so many things and continue to learn new things everyday! So many of my expectations were wrong (I never thought that we would live in a city twice as big as Reedley, have electricity, let alone cable and internet in our house!) but I have learned to be a bit more flexible. We still have one year, two months, and fifteen days left (not that I'm counting down or anything) and these, too, will hopefully fly by and before you know it we'll be home! I'm sure I'll learn a lot more in our remaining time, hopefully improve my Spanish a lot, and have many more experiences that I will carry with me forever!

Fourth of July and More Updates

President Zelaya was unable to land today as the army blocked all of the runways at the international airports. His plane circled over the airport in Tegucigalpa but finally went to El Salvador instead. There are now a ton (the Venezuelan news station said 200,00 but we don't know if that is true) of pro-Zelaya supporters in Tegucigalpa at the airport. The news reported that the army opened gunfire on the protesters and that two were killed and various others wounded. We now have a curfew starting at 6:30 P.M. which was not announced until about 6:00 P.M. today. Needless to say, there are still a ton of people outside. Things are still calm here in Catacamas. Schools are supposed to resume tomorrow so hopefully life will return to kind of normal again. We are tired of doing nothing. Yesterday we had a Fourth of July party at our house and it was really fun. A ton of people came and we ate some good food, played some beer pong, and hung out. There were no fireworks but it was good to be with other people as we have been cooped up all week.

Political Situation Update

We are still fine. We have received many inquiries into our safety and well being and we are not in any immediate danger. Peace Corps keeps us updated (especially Shannon since she is Emergency Zone Coordinator and responsible for passing on messages to the other volunteers) and does not feel that there is any need to evacuate us. Peace Corps has gone through much worse things than this and we are confident that they have our best interests in mind. Things are pretty calm here. We are far away from the chaos and protests. There was a pro-Zelaya (the ousted president) protest here Monday and then the protesters took 10 buses to Tegucigalpa to join the protests there. On the way they were stopped at a military checkpoint and the tires of the buses were shot out so they were not able to continue. (http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/07/03/honduras.video/index.html?eref=rss_mostpopular#cnnSTCVideo) A couple of days ago protesters threw molotov cocktails at the antennas at the Radio America station as it is not a pro-Zelaya station. We don't think that anything really came of it and we aren't even sure where that station is located. We were not able to work all week as all public schools and the university were closed. It is kind of like a vacation only we are not really allowed to travel. We did have our first couch surfers, a french couple who are now living in Mexico but left due to the swine flu. They arrived here Wednesday and left early this morning hoping to go to Nicaragua if the borders are open. They were very nice and it was good for us to practice our Spanish as they spoke Spanish better than English. We took them to the caves and they made us a great french meal! We also finally got rid of the mother cat, Cornflake (Cornflay as they say here). We took her to Calixto, a man that Kevin works with in the mountains who wanted a cat to get rid of the mice. She behaved very well on the hour long bus ride there but ran away as soon as they let her out at their house. Hopefully she came back. Now we only have two cats and that is much better than the six we had at one time. Otherwise things are pretty quiet around here. We are glad to have internet as the news on T.V. here is very biased as many stations are not allowed to transmit and the ones that do are partially owned by the current president. We really only see pro-Micheletti protests on T.V. now. We are allowed to travel in our departments today for Fourth of July so we are having an Olancho party at our house and making lots of desserts, chili, and who knows what else. It should be a great time, especially since most of the volunteers have been cooped up in their small sites with nothing to do for the past week. We will continue to post updates as the political situation unravels. Zelaya says he will return to Honduras tomorrow (Sunday) but we will see what happens.

Political Situation

Most of you have probably heard about the current political situation in Honduras. If not, go to any news website and you can read lots about it. We are fine here in Catacamas. Basically, the military surrounded the president's house early yesterday morning and forcefully took him to Costa Rica where he was let go. There was no power in most of Honduras until noon yesterday and most radio and television communications were cut off. This happened right before his constitutional referendum vote was supposed to take place. The ballots were then collected by the army and the president of congress was sworn in as the new president of Honduras. This of course did not make many people happy, especially the president of Venezuela. Right now pretty much all political leaders outside of Honduras (and many people here) are refusing to recognize anyone but the old president as president of Honduras. We have no idea what will happen. A national curfew was imposed for last night and tonight and nobody is supposed to be outside from 9:00 PM to 6:00 AM. It was actually kind of nice last night because everything was closed up and quiet for the first time ever. It was kind of bizarre. It did anger Shannon because it meant that she could not go running since she goes at 5:30. There is a march supporting Mel (the ousted president) in Catacamas today which we will be staying away from. He is from Catacamas and has a house here so it is likely that he has a lot of supporters here. Peace Corps has kept us fairly well informed and be assured that if anything violent happens we will most likely be evacuated. Hopefully things will calm down soon and we can go back to normal life. Right now we are still not allowed to travel or leave our sites. Good thing we have everything we need here! We will keep you posted about the situation here.

Ropa Americana Parties and Possible Chaos

Things have sure been interesting lately and probably will continue to get more interesting in the next several weeks/months. First off, we had a welcome party at our house last weekend for all of the volunteers in Olancho to get to know each other since we have four new volunteers in Olancho. It was a lot of fun and Shannon, of all people, was on the winning team of the beer pong tournament. She and Erick were unstoppable. It was pretty impressive since she had never played before. The Thursday before the party, we come home from a long day of work and tried to turn on the TV to get our daily dose of The O.C. and the outlet didn’t work. Weird. Then every time the refrigerator would kick on it would make some really weird sounds. Our electroducha also stopped working and later that night, so did the fridge. When we tried to plug in our fan that night to stay cool, it spun about 3 times as fast as normal and started to smell like smoke. We unplugged it. We contacted our landlord about the problem and they said someone would come out to fix it but no one came all day Friday so we had a clean out the freezer/fridge dinner party which was very nice. We were expecting about 15 people the next night for the welcome party and were getting nervous that we wouldn’t have a fridge to use. Saturday morning an electrician came out, after a call to the landlord again, and a wire coming into the house had burned in two making all of our outlets 220V instead of 110V like they should have been. Don’t ask me how that works but that’s what happened. The electrician fixed it and surprisingly everything worked after that except the voltage regulator that Shannon had been using with the computer with that got fried. Good thing she was using it or else the computer probably would have been fried. That would not have been cool. The party went well, all except one of the Olancho volunteers came and he was in the U.S. The theme was ropa Americana (think stores that sell clothes that the thrift stores in the U.S. couldn’t get rid of) and there were some great outfits! We have a pretty good group out here in the wild wild east!
Kevin tried making and ant trap out of yeast and honey with the idea being that the honey attracts them and the yeast explodes them. For three weeks we had trails of ants going to the “traps” in the kitchen but not really anywhere else in the house. He finally got rid of the traps and now there are still trails of ants in our kitchen and ants in the rest of the house too! Shannon doesn’t think that the traps worked but Kevin insists that there are less ants…if anyone knows a better remedy to kill ants let us know!
This week, we got a message from Peace Corps telling us we are on Stage two of a five stage alert system which means we are not allowed to leave our site this weekend. The message arrived with no explanation whatsoever. Interesting. Thanks for the info., we would like to know what is going on. (we did receive an email late Thursday night) Basically there is a struggle for power in Honduras and the president is trying to remain president after his term is up, blah blah blah, and they are having an illegal vote this weekend to see if the people want to vote on the November ballot to change the Constitution. Read this link if you want to know more: http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/06/25/honduras.general/
So we heard a bunch of rumors that the Salvadoran army is going to come help our president because the Honduran army won’t support him and people going to the airport to burn the voting equipment that is being flown in from Venezuela, people getting shot at demonstrations and people buying tons of food and water at the stores and not leaving their houses for 3-4 days because they are afraid to go outside. Most of these are untrue but we are pretty sure people have been shot but that is normal anyway. So far, everything here in the hometown of the president is normal but we will see what happens come Sunday. We are planning a movie marathon and watching the US play Brazil in the Confederations Cup Championship game Sunday at 12:20 Mountain Time, that is assuming we have electricity as there are rumors of strikes and protests of workers including those running the electrical plants, not that the electricity is reliable anyway. We shall see and keep you informed (if we can).

Baseball, Chicken Coops, and Schools

Well, since the big earthquake a little over two weeks ago, we have had several aftershocks including the latest one registering 5.4 last Monday. We still have not felt any of them, however, but other people have. Almost all of them happened in the middle of the night though so I guess that would explain most of it. We have not heard of any damage caused by the aftershocks.
Last week Kevin helped build two chicken coops as examples for the rest of the community to use to build their own in the future. A former Peace Corps volunteer came back with some of his family to participate in this project and it was a lot of fun and hopefully will last a long time to keep the chickens safe and more productive at laying eggs. During that time Shannon went to visit our friend Elizabeth in Minas de Oro. It is a small community located in the mountains, very different from Catacamas! It was much cooler up there and she had a great time. Elizabeth still lives with her host family so it was good Spanish practice. They basically have a Honduran mansion and it was a nice vacation! Shannon also went to Tegucigalpa for a rural baseball tournament sponsored by Peace Corps. Elizabeth’s team participated but lost in the first two rounds. The team from Tegucigalpa won but many thought it was not fair that they were invited since they are not rural and have many more resources and get to practice more. It was an interesting experience as baseball is not very big here. Hardly anyone came to watch, including the parents. The bus station was fuller than she had ever seen it before on her way back and she had to wait three and a half hours just for the bus to come then another four hours to Catacamas! Good thing she met a nice Honduran to pass the time with. While Shannon was gone, apparently the mosquitoes had nothing else to feed on and attacked Kevin’s feet something wicked. He’d never had bites that looked and itched like that before.
Today we went to talk to some community leaders about helping them get funding to build a new building for their school. We made a budget with a list of materials and costs plus a time line for getting the school built. We still need to check on prices of materials but we now have a rough estimate of what it will cost. The town is located a two hour walk from the end of the road and right now they have one room for all school kids, 60 total. They actually started building a new building last year when they ran into problems like someone leaving with a bunch of money and never returning to do the work and the project sort of fell apart from there and ended up basically washing away during the rains so now they must start all over again. We are hoping to help them secure some funds to finally get this thing built so the kids have some space to breathe while learning.

Earthquakes and Donkey Polo

Well, apparently there was a very large earthquake just off the coast of Honduras that many people have asked us about. This happened May 28, 2:24 a.m. local time and was centered about 150 miles north of where we live. The quake registered at 7.1 on the Richter scale (although the USGS website has 7.3 listed). Unbelievably, this size of a quake only killed 6 people in a third world country. Luckily the epicenter was in the ocean and did not cause a tsunami as was feared at first. It did destroy some homes and a major bridge along the north coast outside of San Pedro Sula. Many people here in Catacamas woke up but neither of us felt it. Maybe the Northridge and Loma Prieta quakes desensitized us to large quakes or we have just been working so hard lately that we were exhausted. It supposedly shook the ground for over a minute. Many other Peace Corps volunteers felt it, especially those along the north coast, and for many of them it was their first earthquake. It was the biggest in Honduras recorded history and the last big one they had was in 1999 registering at 6.7. There have been 4 aftershocks of at least 4.5 magnitude since Thursday including one just on the Olancho border. We did not feel any of those either.
In other news, last week was natural resources week at the university and we attended a concert and a Bar-B-Que there. It was fun and a good cultural experience. It was also the 21st anniversary of CEREPA, the drug and alcohol center where Shannon works and the week was filled with activities. She participated in a peaceful march against drunk driving which was very interesting. We went to the quaint city of Yuscaran this past weekend to participate in the 13th annual donkey polo event during their feria del mango. This annual event pits Volunteers against the locals riding donkeys and trying to hit a plastic soccer ball with a stick into a small goal. The hardest part is trying to get the donkey to move, as Shannon found out early on in the game. Kevin's moved much easier but never wanted to turn to the right. We also didn't have saddles or even blankets to sit on and their backbones were not the most comfortable thing to sit on in the world. The locals fared much better as they basically had a professional donkey polo rider on their team. They ended up winning by a lot but we at least scored one goal (yay Haley!). It was fun but somewhat chaotic and we don't think the donkeys enjoyed it much. The local kids insisted on hitting and kicking the donkeys if they didn't move and it was terrible. At one point Shannon threatened to hit one of the kids (really good for a youth development volunteer)and they finally left her donkey alone! Shannon is now pretty sick (we're not sure why) so we are taking it easy this week.

Amapala, the United States, and return to poverty

May 18, 2009
Part I
It has been about a month since we last wrote but hey, we were in the US seeing many of you in person for more than half of that time so give us a break. We made it home finally, after a grueling day of flying and then spending the night in the cold, cold LA airport only a 50 minute flight away from home. It was a nice day, not humid or hot and we enjoyed relaxing and eating US food after a long time without it. To make a long story short, we saw a lot of people, ate a lot of food (I mean a lot of food), and most importantly of all we got to see Robert and Erika get married. Congrats to the newlyweds and thanks for taking us to the airport on our way out of town. The wedding was beautiful and a lot of fun.

Part II
Before we went home we went to Isla del Tigre, an island that is part of Honduras in the Gulf of Fonseca in the Pacific Ocean, with other married couples in PC Honduras. We spent our last weekend in Honduras there before going home so that was lots of fun. It is a nice little place with nice sandy beaches and warm water to swim in. We also hiked to the top of the dormant volcano where we could see Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua. It was beautiful and we saw some amazing sunsets while staying there. (See photos). To get to and from the island you have to take a boat, which was fun. Apparently on weekends they have a swim to the island but sadly no one in our group participated in this. As a side note, the island is also featured on the back of the 2 Lempira Note here in Honduras.

Part III
We have been back in Catacamas now for 4 full days, getting back into the swing of things. The first night back, Shannon found a GIANT Wolf spider on our kitchen wall and made Kevin come kill it. The thing was huge, bigger than the palm of Kevin’s hand! Kevin wanted to take a picture of it but was afraid it would escape and Shannon would never forgive him for that (besides the fact that she probably wouldn’t have slept at all that night, fearing the spider would come get her in her sleep because what else would spiders do?). It has rained every night we have been home and the power has gone out every day since we have been home, including right now as we write this. Of course we started when the power was on but it left, tried to come back on, and left again. Now the air is still with no fan to blow the air around. When we left three weeks ago, everything was dead and the fields were being burned off for the planting of the new crops for when the rains come. Now, things are as green as they possibly could be and apparently it rained A LOT while we were gone, a month or so ahead of normal. It is nice when it rains because it cools things off but then it gets humid and sometimes the air gets really still and we don't like that. Work is coming along here. Shannon is continuing where she left of and Kevin starts his English class at the university on Thursday where he will teach Thursday and Friday mornings and they just started a new trimester so he will also be busier helping some other teachers with field activities. We also received a new volunteer here in Catacamas, a female business volunteer from California so that is exciting. We received 4 new volunteers in Olancho, all females, taking our total females here in Olancho from 2 to 5. Shannon was happy about that, and frankly so were some male volunteers in the area. That about sums it up for now as life continues on in the third world.

May 23, 2009
So, we have had problems with internet and have been too busy to get this darn blog post posted. It has continued to rain every night, except Thursday where it only rained in the afternoon and evening. A couple of nights it rained really hard and we found we have three leaks in our roof when it rains hard, leaving a puddle on the kitchen floor. When it rains that hard our street also turns into a river, a pretty awesome sight actually. Our back patio also floods and we have to sweep it off. Things are pretty much back to normal here. It was really hard to adjust at first and Shannon especially, was not very happy. We are getting used to living in a third world country again but still miss the U.S. We have been showing the new volunteer around and it is interesting to see her reactions as we were there 6 months ago. We have both been told that we look fatter which is true since we both gained about 5 pounds at home! The new kittens have grown a lot and we are looking for homes for them and hopefully getting the older ones fixed now that we have found a vet who performs that surgery. Today on the bus back from Juticalpa, a car passed us and we heard what sounded like gun shots. People on the bus said that they were shooting at cows but who knows…oh Olancho.

Cuevas, cuevas y mas cuevas

Last Friday, we went to visit a cave that Kevin already had visited but had not really explored the inside of. The cave does not have trails or lights inside it which made it a lot more fun to explore with our headlamps. There were three big rooms and one short tunnel in which Shannon supposedly saw a spider and got scared and ran away. She did continue to explore in the cave, just not in any small spaces. There were lots of sparkly rocks and some cool formations. It was the first time that either of us had explored a cave on our own without a guide, and it was awesome! After exploring the cave, we went out and swung on vines Tarzan style. It was really fun and we highly recommend it. We ended up going back the next day because more people wanted to see the cave and it was still awesome. We also had to retrieve the camera case that the cave stole from us. Luckily we got it back, without much of a struggle. This week we have been meeting with a Fullbright Specialist in linguistics who is helping us become great English teachers. This is especially helpful to Kevin as he will be teaching English at the university next semester. Kevin also went on another tour of the University (he learns something new every time) and milked a cow for the first time in his life and tried the fruit of the cashew tree as well as some juice. Not bad. Today, for the second time in 10 days we have enough water pressure to take a shower, without a bucket. Because it has been so dry, there isn't enough water and some days we only have it in the sinks and other days not at all. It is also the season to burn off the dead fields and we could barely see the mountains (that are really, really close)yesterday and today. It is kind of like being back at home but worse. It is also really hot here now and Shannon wants to die 500 times a day. Friday we are going to Isla Del Tigre and Amapala to hang out with other married couples in Peace Corps Honduras. Then to the glorious United States, we can hardly wait to see everyone!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Semana Santa

Well, once again it has been a while since we have last written on our blog. Almost three weeks this time. We have both done some traveling, together and separately, for work and for fun and we have done many things since the last post. There are four new links to photos at the top of the blog from this last week we spent traveling for Semana Santa (Holy Week) but first we will start where we left off. Shannon went to a week long workshop called Joven a Joven in Valle de Angeles, close to where we had our training. The workshop was for youth development volunteers and a community partner that they brought with them and focused on teaching youth skills to find a job such as interviewing and also how to choose a career that they like. During that time, Kevin stayed home and continued going to the university and he met up with Shannon in Tegucigalpa on the following Saturday where we spent two nights together there before Shannon left to Siguatepeque where she had a two day training meeting for the new emergency phone coordinators. Honduras is split up into E-zones where two people in each zone have special phones and receive important messages and relay them to the rest of the volunteers in their zone. This really would come into play for emergencies but we get messages about big road closures and things of that sort so we know where to avoid if we are traveling. As a result she has a new phone number 011-504-9965-4039, call her lots;). While Shannon was doing that, Kevin went to an exchange with the guides of the children's hands-on science museum located in Tegucigalpa. They mostly talked about environmental education stuff but it was a good cross cultural experience as well and it was nice to see such a nice museum where kids can learn in a such a poor country. We were planning on going to the Honduras/Mexico World Cup Qualifying game in San Pedro Sula that Wednesday but decided not too as it would be expensive and Honduras had not played very well their last two games but ended up winning (and dominating Mexico) 3-1. Go Honduras! Honduras now sits in third position just above Mexico. We came home that Wednesday and the university Kevin is working with hosted several professors from North Carlina State University's ag department so Kevin went with them Thursday up to the mountains where they talked to some local farmers and leaders and ate a home cooked meal and drank horchata made from scratch. They went on a walk to a large cave and then swung on vines like Tarzan (pictures coming soon). Friday, we both went with the NCSU people on a tour of Catacamas and then went to the university to have lunch and a meeting about how the two universities could cooperate together more in the future. Saturday we both went with many university workers and the NCSU peope to a nice lunch at a Tilapia place just outside of town. It was interesting to hear their views on Honduras and the university and students.
This past week was Semana Santa and we spent Monday at the beach of the coastal town of El Porvenir, near La Ceiba on the Caribbean Coast. It was a miserable trip up, we decided to go the "shorter, cheaper" way on a dirt road that was not really short or cheap. The bus we wanted never came so we took another that went approximately 20 miles per hour (if even that fast), was super crowded (at one point the two of us were sharing a seat big enough for only one person with a little girl who nobody would let sit down), so hot and dusty. We left our house at 4:30 AM and did not arrive in El Porvenir until 7:30 PM after 3 buses and and a rear-ending accident caused by a cow! We stayed with a volunteer who works there and had a lot of fun. Four of us went and watched UNC trounce MSU in the NCAA basketball final that night. Tuesday we went into La Ceiba and had a nice lunch and then tried to watch a movie but the theaters didn't open until night. Then came the rain, and boy did it pour. We left to Comayagua Wednesday morning while it was still raining. We got to Comayagua, ate at Wendy`s and then went to another volunteers site to spend the night about 30 minutes away. It was hot there. Thursday we returned to Comayagua and toured the religious museum and the bell tower of the cool looking cathedral (see pictures) and went through the Casa de Cultura. That night was when they started building the alfombras. They start between 9:00 and midnight and work all night to have them completed by 10:00 AM the next morning. Generally a family or an organization pays for the materials and friends and family make the alfombra.
Most of the alfombras are made of colored sawdust imported from Guatemala or El Salvador but some use other materials such as egg shells, rocks, glass, seeds, etc. in their designs. There were probably close to 50 alfombras this year. At around 10:00 Friday morning the small procession starts with children dressed as Jesus carrying crosses with crowns of thorns and fake blood, men wearing what look like KKK hoods, and people singing, and a band goes around the whole circuit of carpets, slowly destroying them one by one. So sad. All that hard work gone in a matter of minutes. But, it was beautiful to see and we highly recommend it to anyone in the area during Semana Santa. They do some amazing work. We finally returned home last Saturday and enjoyed a very low key Easter dinner on Sunday. It was nice to relax in our own home.
Next up: The Isla Del Tigre and the city of Amapala in the Pacific and then our trip back to California. Our Spanish will suffer.

So it's been awhile since we've written, I guess we've been busy! Shannon has been busy with a prevention program for sixth graders that focuses on self-esteem, plans for their futures, and learning about the harms of drugs and alcohol. She has been enjoying meeting lots of kids, but disappointed with the school system in general and the teachers. So far, all of the teachers have left when she and her counterpart arrive and they do not help out at all, and sometimes cannot be found at the end of the talk to come back to their classes. The kids also seem to spend more time at snack and recess than they do in the classroom. They wander in and out of the classroom as they like, generally not asking permission. Sometimes kids from other classes wander in. The classes are also huge, some as big as 50 kids! Last week she went to a class and during their snack, a group led by this girl in the shortest skirt ever, started practicing a dance routine that they were going to perform the following day at their father's day celebration. The dance involved lots of gyrating and grinding and was very scandalous, but just a normal dance here! Shannon is also busy with a dental hygiene program. Colgate donated the toothbrushes and toothpaste and she is working with three schools in first through third grade. She does the program in very poor areas and the children were so excited to receive their toothbrushes! It was almost like Christmas. She gives a talk about dental hygiene with the teacher each week and the kids have to brush their teeth everyday after their snack in school. This goes on for six months and they then receive another toothbrush to take home to continue their tooth brushing. It is a really great program and so important since many of the children do not have tooth brushes nor do they know anything about dental hygiene. Shannon also started her English classes. She has two classes of fourth, fifth, and sixth grade teachers. There was almost a riot on her first day of class because 40 teachers showed up and she told them that she could only have 30 in the class. It turned out that there was a group from Juticalpa which is a half an hour away and she told them that they were not allowed to be in the class since they live too far away for her to do the two required observations of them teaching English. They were not too happy but after a call to her boss and a promise that they can request a youth volunteer for their town, they calmed down and class resumed. Shannon has also been doing self-esteem talks in two classes at a private school. These are Fridays during the last two periods of the day so it is a bit tricky since the kids have pretty much checked out...she has been doing learning activities since they respond better to these, but that can still be hard in a class of 50 high school kids! She also started helping our site-mate with a pregnant teenager class that she will be taking over when Kendra leaves. It is basically a group for women under the age of 20 who are pregnant. It meets once a month and a nurse talks about a health-related topic and we she talks about a topic such as self esteem or drugs. Kevin has been busy too! He and a group of university students went to the mountain community in which he works and taught the community members how to plant a family garden. This was quite a process organizing the community and making the garden. While he was there he held a baby monkey, most likely captured out of the jungle, and Shannon was very jealous! Kevin was also on a safety and security panel for the group of new Peace Corps trainees. He talked about our robbery and how to stay safe in Honduras. He also went to a town about 3 hours away called Nueva Palestina because a church from North Carolina is helping them to make sand water filters and other environmentally friendly things and the university is thinking about becoming involved as well. He met a lot of people including a blind man who is an incredible guitar player. Last week three of the new trainees came to visit our site-mates to see what volunteers actually do in their sites. It was interesting to talk to the new trainees and be able to offer some advice to ease their worries. We (well everyone but Shannon since she had to work), went to the nearby caves and walked around in the park, nice and relaxing. This weekend we had some more visitors and ate a lot of good food and relaxed...it will be nice to be visitor-free for a little while!

So, apparently we have not written a blog update in a couple of weeks. That either means we have been super busy or just don't care (pick the first one). Shannon has gone to lots of schools to talk about drug/alcohol prevention with 6th graders and everything is in place for it to begin with about 10 schools. She also gave a charla on drugs and alcohol to teachers at one of the private schools, the different types of drugs, signs and symptoms of use, and how to work with kids that you suspect are using. She has also begun a program through Colgate in which she will go to three different schools working with first, second, and third graders. She will help the teachers to organize weekly lessons on dental hygiene, how to avoid cavities, and similar topics. Colgate provides manuals, toothbrushes, toothpaste, and soap, and the children have to brush their teeth and wash their hands everyday after their snack for six months. After six months, they receive a new toothbrush to take home to continue their tooth brushing. This is really important as there are many children who have never used a toothbrush before and have rotten teeth. She is really excited and glad to have good counterparts that are also excited and willing to devote time to this project. Last weekend, Shannon and her friend Elizabeth went to visit their friend Hillary in Yaramela, La Paz, near the middle of Honduras. It was a girls only trip so Kevin was banned. It was great for her to see another site that is much smaller and less developed than Catacamas, as well as projects being done. They also went to Comayagua, which used to be the capital of Honduras, and has a giant cathedral. The town is smaller than the current capital, Tegucigalpa, but much cleaner and safer. The cathedral was beautiful and they also saw two other big churches (one of these three is supposedly the oldest church in Honduras but nobody seemed sure which one it was). They then went to Tegucigalpa for doctors appointments and ate lots of great American fast food that would not be nearly as appetizing in the U.S.. Shannon has since given up junkfood for Lent as she does every year. It is much harder here as junkfood, especially chips, cookies, and soda, is a staple for most people here. Kevin wasn't totally bored while Shannon was gone as he worked and visited The Las Cuevas de Talgua- The Cave of the Glowing Skulls. The tour takes you back 400 meters into the cave where there is a locked gate because they are still studying the human bones beyond it. But, there is a ladder that climbs 11 meters and then there is a room that comes back over where you walked in the cave where they discovered a calcified human burial ground from about 400 A.D. The cacified remains "glow" when you look at them with lights. It is crazy to think ancient people went back that far into a cave climbed up over thirty feet to another room to bury their dead there, and they didn't even have flashlights!
This weekend we were busy in the mountains. On Saturday, we went with four students and one teacher from the University up to the community, La Flor de Cafe, that Kevin works in to talk about the family gardens that the university students will help him create in the community. It was a good trip and lots of plans were made. There are about 30 families that want to participate and most of them came to the meeting. After the meeting we went to the house of one of the families to look at their existing garden and they gave us lots of plants to take home. Most of them were cuttings that they said to just stick in the ground so who knows if they will live but we have our fingers crossed. Today, we went up to another mountain community, La Florida, to talk to the community about a fogon project that has been in the works for years. Unfortunately, the other two volunteers who tried to work on this project were both sent home early and it never got completed. The project will be creating more efficient wood burning stoves that have chimneys so the smoke does not stay in the house and use much less wood. We had quite a hike up a steep mountain to reach the community but it was definitely worth it. The community is located in the middle of the forest. A lot of the area right around the town has been cleared for agriculture but it is gorgeous nonetheless and has breathtakingly beautiful views of the surrounding mountains and valleys. The people are extremely poor without electricity, or water in their houses, but very nice and generous (we ate so much food that we could barely walk back!). We had our first meal without silverware (tortillas work just as well as forks), and some really good lemongrass tea. It was a very long day but very rewarding. We also saw a rare species of toucan and several other bird species as well as Shannon's favorite animal - monkeys! White Faced Monkeys too be exact and later we heard Howler Monkeys off in the distance. It was an exciting, adventurous and eventful day and we look forward to having more like it.

Gardens and Baby Showers

We have been pretty busy for the past two weeks. Kevin has been going up to the mountains and compiling a list of the families that would like gardens. He has 31 families who stated interest and is now going to bring the university students with him to help plant gardens and teach the community members how to do it themselves. Lots of work. He went to the university-wide meeting last week which was held at their location in the biosphere. The entire university, students and faculty, attended and Kevin was introduced with the staff. Shannon is frustrated because there is a teacher's strike which means that school did not start last week like it was supposed to. The teachers are demanding that the Minister of Education step down and stating that they will not work until he does. She went to a school on the day that classes were supposed to start and although the teachers were surprisingly actually there, there was no teaching happening. They were hand-writing the same note to all parents because they do not have computers or copy machines, cleaning the rooms that were incredibly dirty, and getting things ready for the year. So very different than the first day of school in the U.S.. Shannon also went to the nearby caves with the drug and alcohol rehab center she works with. They took about 20 patients and toured the caves and had a picnic. It was a lot of fun and she got to meet the guides and get to know the patients more. Funny how she absolutely did not want to work with this agency to begin with and now it is her favorite counterpart. She prepared a charla on drug and alcohol addiction to give to the private school that we both are working with, but they were still preparing their schedules and were not ready so she is supposed to do it this coming week. She got to meet some of the students and was surprised at how well-behaved they were considering that most school-aged children do not listen to their teachers and run around crazy. They also were almost all interested in participating in sports and clubs after school so that was exciting. Kevin also met some of the kids and went on a short hike with them, played volleyball, and practiced English with them. Shannon went to her first Honduran baby shower and thought it was really interesting that they do not have a word in Spanish for "baby shower", they just say it in English. It was similar to a baby shower in the U.S., lots of good food, games, and gifts. The one major difference was that the mother-to-be does not open her presents until after everyone leaves. The mother is also headed to the U.S. next week so she can have her baby there so he will be a U.S. citizen. This is a surprisingly common practice here, and according to the women at the shower, is easy as long as you are not super pregnant when you leave.