Shools and Snakes

It’s been awhile since we have written but we have been busy! We went to California for Christmas and although it was a short trip (only one week), we had a great time and got to see a lot of people and eat a lot of great food! We got to play in the snow with our nephew and, of course, see our cat Spike. We brought back so much food with us to Honduras that the guys in customs laughed at us! We were only back for one night and then we headed up to the North Coast to spend New Years there with a few friends. We stayed in Tela right on the beach and rang the New Year in watching fireworks on the roof of our hotel. It was very tranquilo and nice. We also went to a nearby Garífuna village. Garífuna are an ethnic group in Honduras and they are predominantly black and live along the North Coast. They have preserved their native language although many speak Spanish and even English as well. It was nice to be in such a cultural location and to eat some of their traditional food like riceandbeans (made with coconut milk) and pan de coco. We stayed right on the beach and had a nice relaxing time.



There are still no classes at the public schools and the University has been out for Christmas break but we have still managed to keep busy. We took a trip up the mountain to a small village where we are trying to help build a school. They had raised money and spent a month building a school but then (we have heard various versions) someone took off with the money and the rains came and destroyed the structure that was made of dirt blocks. One of the new volunteers lives close to this village so he organized this meeting (we had one months ago where we made a budget) and about 20 people came. This village, La Florida, is nestled pretty far up in the mountains (there is only one village higher up). To get there we took a bus for an hour, walked a half hour to our friend’s house, and then hiked 1.5 hours (fast) uphill. There are no cars, not even a road. The other volunteer had the great idea of building the school out of compacted dirt which is much cheaper and supposed to be much stronger. Needless to say, the community members were very skeptical of building a school out of dirt. After a long discussion where we brought up topics of cost (a traditional building will cost about $3,500 versus maybe $1000 for the dirt one) and availability of workers (anyone can work on the dirt school whereas a specialist is needed for the traditional) we finally came to an agreement. They were worried about earthquakes and floods and how a dirt school would hold up in such disasters. We finally agreed to build a small structure first so they can see how it works and if they like it, go on to build the school. Right now it is still coffee season and pretty much everyone in this town is cutting coffee so we plan to wait until mid-February to begin when they will be done and have more time. We had to meet on a Sunday at 4 PM (of course it didn’t start until closer to 5) and then hike back down in the dark because it was the only time they weren’t working. Hopefully this will all work out and a school will be built out of compacted dirt and the community could then continue to build structures in this manner and save money and have safe buildings that will last a long time!



We also helped one of the volunteers in Juticalpa, about an hour away, with training for the bilingual school he helped create. We talked about safety and security, dealing with unwanted attention, and working in schools. It was really interesting to meet these people who had only been here a few days and hear their perspectives on Honduras. It reminded us of our own training so very long ago!



A couple of nights ago, one of our cats brought a present for us into the house. Normally this means a cockroach, maybe a gecko, and at first glance Shannon figuredt it was a cockroach. When she looked at it a little better she realized it was a young snake. It seemed to be dead but we weren’t sure if it was venomous or not. It was red with black on it and seemed similar to what could be a young coral snake. When Kevin took pictures of it the yellow really stood out on it as well. Once we got the cats away and Kevin tried to pick it up it moved and we were then sure it was alive. Not knowing if it was poisonous or not, Shannon wanted Kevin to kill it but Kevin, being the snake lover that he is, did not want to kill an innocent snake so he collected it in a bag and took it to an empty lot and let it go. It will probably be caught and killed by someone or run over by a car anyway but he did his part to save it. When he went to the university he looked up the snake and found out it was a Platanera/Viboro de Sangre (Red Woodsnake or Red Coffeesnake in English) and is definitely not poisonous and is perhaps the most common snake around the area but living in the city we don’t see too many snakes.



The weather is a lot cooler (sometimes even cold especially in the mornings and nights) and we are loving it. It is supposedly due to a cold front but we hope that it will stay and make things a little more bearable. Up next: Trujillo and the MARV meeting.

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.