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.

Last week we had our yearly meeting with everyone in our project groups. Shannon's was in Valle de Angeles, close to where we had training while Kevin's was in Siguatepeque. It was a chance to meet all the volunteers in Honduras who are doing similar work and discuss and learn new things. Overall, we both had good experiences and gained a lot from the meetings. Since Shannon's birthday was last Tuesday, we were not able to be together for it. We did celebrate the day before with a few other volunteers in Tegucigalpa by eating some McDonald's french fries and going to dinner at Ruby Tuesday's. That was nice to get a taste of home after eating beans and rice for so long. It's not really that bad now that we cook our own food, we can create a variety of foods but beans and rice are still very common in our meals. We both starting to work with a private school that really wants to help improve the students' lives and has teachers and a principal who really want to work with us. Kevin is going to help them try to become a green school as well as build interpretive trails in the area to show and educate people about what species of flora and fauna live in the area and what they do, for example, medicinal plants. Shannon is going to be working on drug and alcohol prevention, something she did not want to do coming in to Honduras but has so far presented the best opportunities to work here. On Sunday, we did manage to watch the Super Bowl at a friend's apartment in Juticalpa, about an hour away, on a projection screen/wall. That was fun, although the Steelers won the game. We do not get an English feed here so the game was all in Spanish and we did not get to see any of the commercials this year. So sad but we did make some guacamole and brownies and of course eat some Baleadas so it was almost like home...