Shannon has been very busy lately. She is helping the drug and alcohol rehab center that she works at to create a library. They painted the room (lots of fun painting with oil-based paint and using gasoline to wash it off), and have begun creating an inventory of the books they already have as well as soliciting more. This will be the only lending library in all of Olancho so that is pretty exciting! There is currently one small library in Catacamas at the Cultural Center but they do not lend books as they have had problems with people stealing them in the past. Yesterday was the celebration of the 111th anniversary of Catacamas. There was a small parade and lots of activities throughout the day. A bunch of university students studying to be teachers came to display their didactic materials, it is very interesting because they have to make everything themselves. Unlike the U.S. where they have stores where you can buy charts and pictures, the teachers make all of that here. It was pretty impressive but seemed like a lot of work. Shannon helped run children's games at the celebration and it quickly got out of hand. There were at least 50 children and the woman in charge was not organized at all. The children began pushing and shoving and basically stampeding because they wanted candy. They were not able to do the pinatas because the children would not move back and it was too dangerous. The kids almost pulled a high school girl out of a tree who was throwing candy to them. The parents were no better and were pushing and shoving because they wanted candy too. To top it off, a drunk man threw a firework into the crowd of kids and it began exploding in the middle of them starting a stampede. A bunch of people kept asking Shannon where her parents were and if her mom was coming because they wanted to give her a letter. She kept explaining that her parents live in the U.S. and would not be coming. It turned out that they thought that she was the daughter of the President of Honduras. The daughter actually came a little later to help a little with the games and the confusion was solved.
Everyone who has ever used an ATM card at home knows how to use it. ATM machines are still relatively new here but you would think everyone who has a card would have used it by now and would be able to do their transactions quickly. Not so. We have yet to get in line at the ATM machine where the person using it doesn't take more than five minutes. We don't get it. It takes us 40 seconds and the machines are in Spanish.
We are both leaving today (Sunday) to head to our reconnect meetings this coming week where we meet with all the volunteers in Honduras in our project groups and discuss what's going on and learn some new stuff. This means we will be separated for Shannon's birthday on Tuesday. Well we will wake up together and then head out to our meetings early in the morning. Happy Birthday Shannon.

If you haven't noticed we have not been putting up recent pictures on the blog but there are two links to photos on Kevin's facebook site. We started using facebook as the pictures upload about 8 times faster. If the links ever stop working let us know.
In our last post, we omitted our kayaking adventure. On New Year's Day, 6 of us rented kayaks to paddle around the lake. Shannon and Kevin were in one kayak, there was another double kayak that went their own way and two singles with us. After paddling about 2/3 of the way across the lake we decided to stop and relax to enjoy the peaceful scenery. After we started heading back, the wind picked up a little blowing against us and making the water a little choppy. Sarah, in one of the single kayaks, started yelling that her kayak was filling with water and, in fact, it was as the cover had not been on the hole in the kayak to keep water from filling the inside of it. As the water was smooth on the way out there had not been a problem. So, she climbed on the front of our kayak and we tied her sinking kayak to the back of Sara W’s boat. The three of us struggled rowing our overweight kayak back to shore where Kevin and Ellie then returned to help Sara W with her sinking kayak tied to her boat who had managed to make it about half way back. Once we finally got the kayaks back we could barely get it out of the water it was so heavy. It was a fun experience that I’m sure looked quite funny to the people watching us from the shore.
Our friend Elizabeth (from youth development) came to visit us two weekends ago. We made a lot of good, normal American food and watched movies in English and played games. It was a lot of fun. Visitors are welcome. Shannon has remained busy with a couple of her counterparts while Kevin has not been doing so much lately. We did go visit a former volunteer who came to visit his former counterpart that Kevin is now going to be working with so it was good to talk to him and get some ideas on how to do some things. We are continuing to talk English with a few Honduras twice weekly. We also met with the local tourism board here in Catacamas that was set up by a German volunteer. Hopefully Kevin can work with them in the future with ecotourism projects. We had a couple of visitors again this past Saturday night. We made some chili and cornbread without cornmeal, not real cornbread but tastes pretty darn close. It was good. The weather had been fairly nice the last couple of weeks. It got warm a couple of days and we thought the summer season had arrived but lately it has rained a little almost every day and been partly cloudy keeping the heat away. We are trying to enjoy it while we can. We still have three cats, two kittens and the mother. Once kitten peed on the bed last night at 2:30 in the morning, so that was very nice of him and Kevin got to clean the sheets and mattress this morning, by hand. We have gotten used to washing clothes by hand and is now normal but big things like sheets are still not fun to wash because the are so big and cumbersome. More to come later. If anybody has anything specific they want to hear about, leave a comment and let us know and we will address it. We hope to have some more pictures of our city soon as well. Take care.

Christmas and New Year

So we´ve been pretty busy the past couple of weeks. Our internet in our house stopped working and since we share it with the other volunteers, and it is in Kendra´s name and she is not here, we have been using the internet cafes which are not so fun. Hopefully that will get remedied soon! We had a great Christmas and New Year! A few other volunteers came up to our place for Christmas and miracle of all miracles, Shannon actually cooked a Christmas dinner! She made a Honduran dinner the 24 complete with pupusas and baleadas and the boys set off lots of fireworks so they would fit in with the locals. Hondurans celebrate Christmas the 24 and they eat tamales and set off fireworks (among other things). At midnight it sounded like we were in the middle of a war zone there were so many fireworks! We also made a ton of Christmas cookies and shared them with our host family, they had never had Christmas cookies before. Most Hondurans do not really bake (besides bread) and our neighbors have been requesting Shannon´s help in baking. She taught one neighbor how to make apple crisp and the neighbor was just amazed that it is so easy to make good desserts. Shannon also taught her how to make salad and she was amazed at how easy that was...needless to say food is quite different here! On Christmas Shannon made greenbean casserole (very different when you do not have cans of condensed soup), mashed potatoes, stuffing, rolls, sweet potato casserole, Kev made chicken, and we found some cans of cranberry sauce (the spanish word for cranberry is ¨sour, red blueberry¨). Our dinner was really good and the best part was that it was made entirely in 2 toaster ovens because our oven does not work and we cannot find anyone to fix it! It was definitely interesting and took a lot more time but it was well worth it. We spent New Years at the only lake in Honduras. About 20 volunteers from our group went and we had a great time, it was really good to see everyone that we have not seen since training and to hear their stories about what they have been doing in their sites. We also went to a brewery that is owned by an American that we had gone to during training and had blueberry pancakes! Since we have yet to find blueberries here that was a nice treat! We hope that everyone had a great Christmas and New Year and we want to thank everyone for the Christmas packages you sent! We are enjoying all the food and reading material!