Deyra turns 19!

Deyra has lived with us for a month now! It’s been a really fun time for the most part. We did have one incident where she was an hour late when my sister picked her up from school… I kept calling her and telling her to go “right now” and she kept telling me that she was on her way (she was really hanging out with her friends). Needless to say, I was angry and sternly told her that she better never do that again. She almost cried and Kevin made me apologize (even though I didn’t really do anything wrong) and it was all better. She is always very prompt now!

A couple of weeks ago, we took Deyra and one of her friends to a water park for the day. Her friend is a second year student in the same program who is from a town very close to Deyra’s hometown. Neither of them had ever been to a water park before. The night before Deyra had refused to get on a large trampoline because she was scared, but she went down almost all of the slides! I thought that the girls were going to have heart attacks a couple of times but they said that they had a good time. Deyra told us that she never imagined that there could be places like that, not even in her dreams!

Last Friday was Deyra’s birthday and we threw her a party and invited her fellow classmates. I sent an e-mail to the host parents assuming that this would be the best method for getting RSVPs…wrong! Ten RSVPed, seven of those came, and eleven others showed up! Luckily we had tons of food so it didn’t matter. They ate, danced, sang birthday songs, and Deyra got more presents than she ever has in her life! (I may have gone a little overboard…) She got a lot of warm clothes since she does not have any, calling cards, and lots of sweets. We had forgotten how dressed up people in Honduras got for parties, and these kids were the same. It looked like they were going to the prom (my sister said that she could tell which students had already been here a year because they were not as dressed up) and I think they really enjoyed the chance to get dressed up and spend time together outside of school!

The day after the party, Kevin and I went to San Francisco to a Fresno State game and left Deyra at home. Before we left she said that she wanted to do laundry and I had her show me that she knew how to use everything. She called during the game saying that her clothes did not wash and I referred her to my sister who lives next door to us. Laurie fixed the problem for the time being but the breaker blew at some point leaving the clothes in a washer full of water. Deyra had no idea what to do so she just took them out and put them in the dryer. The blown breaker caused the dryer to spin but without heat. When we returned at 1:00 AM, the dryer was still running because it was set to detect dampness, not time! It had probably been running for at least four hours! And her fancy party dress was in there tinted blue because she washed it with dark jeans because she didn’t want to do two loads with a small amount of clothes. It’s amazing the things and knowledge of them that we take for granted!

I was talking to Deyra last week and I asked her what she was told to her about the U.S.: food, culture, what to expect before she arrived. She told me that the coordinators in Nicaragua told her that the U.S. was pretty and the people were nice. They told her nothing about the culture, food, or what to expect. I cannot imagine how scary that must have been for her leaving home for the first time and going to a country that she knew nothing about where she did not speak the language. She is a very brave girl.

Deyra told me that she never imagined that there would be so much stuff. Buildings, roads, food, stores, etc. She’s handling it all very well and is learning English at a rapid pace. Last night I helped her with her homework and she had written two paragraphs in English that I corrected for her. I was impressed at how well she spelled words (I have trouble spelling without spell-check!), and at her vocabulary. Because she knows that we speak Spanish, she tends to talk to us mostly in Spanish so I cannot gage how much she knows. I now know that she knows a lot!









Next up: Deyra goes to the “big trees”, has a car wash, and spends the weekend alone!

We're parents!

Due to popular request, we have decided to restart our blog. As many of you know, we recently became host parents to an 18-year-old girl from Nicaragua. She came here with a group of students in a program through Georgetown University called the SEED program. My project in Peace Corps actually worked with high schools in Honduras to try to find students to apply for these scholarships. I never actually did anything with it because I did not work with high school students but I had friends who did. The students come for two years and attend a community college. They spend the first nine months living with a host family and the remainder of the time living in the dorms. They study English extensively as well as general education requirements, and here, agriculture. At the end of the program the students all return to their countries of origin where they are supposed to do a project that they devised in school to better the community.

We talked to the last group of SEED students about ways in which they could work with Peace Corps volunteers upon returning home while we were back home visiting from Honduras. The director of the program contacted us for this cycle to see if we would like to be host parents. After much thought on the matter (9 months is a long time), we decided to give it a try.

Our new daughter (that’s right, we’re parents now!), Deyra, arrived with a group of 18 other students from Central America, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic. She does not speak more than a few words of English and came from a very poor area of Nicaragua. Deyra has been amazing so far! I’m sure it must have been so scary for her to come to a country where everything is totally different from what she knows and she does not speak the language at all. She has six brothers and sisters and lived in a tiny house in the campo without electricity. Prior to the application process for this program, which required her to travel to the capital; she had never left her house for more than a day trip.

So far it has been really awesome getting to watch her adapt and witness so many entirely new things. She had never heard of a microwave, internet, McDonald’s, so many types of food, and numerous other things. She did not know how to open the car door! She’s handled everything really well and stays very calm. We took her to Walmart and she was blown away but all she said was, “Es muy grande y hay de todo.” (It’s really big and they have everything.). She is super sweet and wants to help as much as she can. I was working in the yard Saturday and she came out, got on her hands and knees, and started raking leaves with her hand because “it would look better if the leaves were raked”. Needless to say, I gave her a rake!

Deyra’s been a trooper at trying new foods. I asked her what she normally eats and she said rice, beans, tortillas, and cheese. Needless to say, we don’t eat very many of those things, especially in ways that she is accustomed to. She tried pizza for the first time, pancakes, English muffins, blueberries, and countless other things. One of the most common dishes in Nicaragua is Gallo Pinto which is rice and beans mixed together with some onion and pepper. We had eaten it before in Costa Rica and Nicaragua and loved it. I asked Deyra if she would teach me how to make and it she said of course and got really excited. We went shopping and picked out all the ingredients and made it last night. It was fun and I think it helped her to feel a little more at home. She was impressed at how quickly beans cook on a stove versus a fire, and very surprised that we don’t use lard, or even really oil to cook many things. She had never heard of cooking rice just by boiling it (I had this argument with one of my English classes in Honduras and one man told me it was impossible to cook rice without frying it first), and is surprised that we rarely eat tortillas, instead eating lots of bread!

We have found out that after eight months, our Spanish is getting a little rusty but we had lots of practice over the weekend! One of the goals of the program is for the students to learn English so we will be speaking to Deyra in English but right now there is not really a point as she would not understand anything. She is anxious to learn and we bought her a white board and she tells us words and phrases in Spanish that she wants to learn and we write them in English. She has been learning really quickly and loves to practice. Names have been hard for her, especially Shannon, but she’s doing better than most people in Honduras did with my name! She asked me to write our names, the cats’ names, and the names of my sister and her boyfriend so she could practice them and she did not want to come to dinner until she had learned them!



The entire SEED group Ciclo 2011



Deyra's room



Shannon, Kate, and Deyra drying tomatoes



Up next: Deyra gets in trouble, goes to a water park, and has a birthday party.

Machu Picchu

We got really lucky in Cusco and found a trip to Machu Picchu the first afternoon, yay for low season. We did a four day, three night ¨jungle trek¨. The first day we were driven to the top of a mountain at about 4,300 meters nestled in the fog. We then put on helmets and gloves and mounted our not so great mountain bikes. We rode down a steep mountain road and it was really fun! Shannon, much to our surprise, loved riding super fast down the mountain and kept leaving Kevin behind (until she crashed that is). The first 45 kilometers were paved and nice, not too much traffic. The worst parts were the water that ran over the road which we had to ride through numerous times. We stopped and ate lunch and then continued on a really crappy road. They were doing road construction and it was one lane dirt, gravel, and rocks. We were riding along when a car came behind us and started honking to pass. Shannon tried to get over to the side and rode into some rocks. In slow motion, her bike pitched forward and she hung suspended in the air for what seemed like an eternity before flying over the handle bars, not letting go until the bike crashed on top of her. Needless to say she was quite cut up and bleeding all over. We had to wait for the guide and then the van that was following us to clean her up. All that they had was alcohol which the guide poured over her wounds. Someone else had baby wipes so she was able to clean herself up and stop the bleeding. She ripped her shorts and was covered in cuts and bruises on her left side but luckily nothing more serious happened. The whole bike ride was 65 kilometers but we probably only went about 60 and then rode the last few kms in the car as Shannon was in no shape to bike more. We then drove to the ever so exciting town of Santa María which was dusty and ugly. We stayed there and ate dinner and rested our weary bones.

Day two was the best day (besides Machu Picchu of course) and we hiked 22 kms through the mountains. It rained the first half but we walked through beautiful scenery with breathtaking views of the valley below. We walked on parts of the Inka Trail and actually climbed pretty high. Much of the trail was right along the side of a cliff and our guide acutually fell off, luckily not too far but it was a little scary. We stopped at a hotspring pool towards the end of the day and relaxed for a little while before the uphill climb to the town of Santa Teresa. The town is really growing due to the influx of tourism and most of the streets were paved or in the process of being paved and a lot of things were being built. The town itself was in a beautiful setting with snowcapped peaks on one side and a valley and more awesome mountains on the other. We spent the night there in a small hostal.

Day three started with a terrible hike along a dirt road in the hot sun surrounded by nothing but dust and rocks. We walked passed two impressive waterfalls (impressive until we found out they were manmade) to hidroelectrica where they are still working on a giant hydroelectric plant (hence the waterfalls). From there we walked along train tracks to the town of Aguas Calientes. The trail was surrounded by lush forest and stunning mountains so it was a nicer walk. After about 18 kms of walking, we arrived in Aguas Calientes which is a town built entirely for tourism as it is at the base of Machu Picchu and the only place to stay. It was actually pretty nice but all restuarants and hotels. We stayed the night there before our climb to Machu Picchu.

Day four started at 4:00 AM with a walk to the bridge at the base of the stairs to Machu Picchu. We then climbed over 3,000 stairs to get to the actual ruins. Only one person beat us up and we made it in about 35 minutes so we were pretty happy with ourselves (we did knock a few people off the mountain in our rush up but not too many). We had a tour of the ruins and then climbed Waynapicchu (more stairs) above the ruins. We would have had a great view if it hadn´t been so cloudy. A couple of times the clouds parted and we caught glimpes of the ruins. It was a pretty steep climb and at parts it seemed inevitable that we would fall down the steep, narrow stairs and be lost forever. We also walked up to the ¨sun gate¨ where we had a magnificent view of the ruins below us. It is really impressive how big (area wise) they are and how well made they are. Walking through them is impressive but seeing the whole thing from above is just incredible. The actual site is also amazing as it is on a fairly high mountain (2,400 meters) surrounded by even higher jagged mountains. It was incredibly beautiful. We then decided to walk back down the stairs as we decided taking a bus was for weanies. We had a few hours to kill before our train so we met up with some of the people in our group for some much needed food after hours of hiking.

We had a million problems with our guide which put a little bit of a damper on the trip. Needless to say, there are tons of tourist agencies and as a result quality begins to suffer. Our guide was knowledgeable but not very friendly and never explained anything to us (like the plans for the day) unless we specifically asked him. By the end of the trip everyone was pretty unhappy with him and ready to mutiny. We also had problems with the tour agency not sending our tickets for Machu Picchu or the train back. We finally got our tickets around 9:00 P.M. the night before we went up (of course we wanted to go to bed by 8:00 to get up at 3:30). This happened to most of the people in our group and we had all gone through different agencies (even one recommended by lonely planet). We never actually got our train tickets. Our guide told us to meet him the afternoon when we got back from the ruins to get them. They still were not there and he told us to come back later and worse case scenario we would go to the train station with our passports and they could look them up. What he did not tell us was that he was leaving in half an hour back to Cusco so he wasn´t there when we went back and nobody could help us. Luckily they were very helpful at the train station but it just made us resent our guide even more. He also decided to take only a third of our group on the tour of the actual ruins and sent the rest of us with another guide and even more people and our group ended up having 15 and his 5...we really loved him by the end.

All in all it was a good trip. We had a really good group to make up for our guide and we had a lot of fun. Machu Picchu is so amazing and definitely worth the trip!

The End of Ecuador

So we´ve done a lot since we last wrote. We went to the not so exciting town of Latacunga where we met our friends Dan and Emily and celebrated Kev´s birthday with some pizza and beer. After perusing the impressive (and really cheap) Saturday market, we headed to the tiny indigenous village of Quilotoa. It is located at the top of an extinct volcano and there is a beautiful green lake in the crater. The elevation is approximately 4,000 meters and it was super cold. So cold that we had to have a fire in the little stove in our room in order to not freeze to death! It was nice to be cold after two years of summer. We stayed at a little family owned hostal that was run by a Quichua family. It was interesting talking to them and learning a little about their customs. Spanish is their second language which sometimes made communicating difficult as we spoke better Spanish than some of the people. We hiked part-way around the lake with Dan and Emily and went to the even tinier village of Ponce where they live. We met a lot of people and they were all so nice and polite. The little kids all shook our hands, something we never saw in Honduras. It was nice to see a totally different kind of Ecuador and get some nice hiking in.

From Quilotoa we went to Baños, a town in southern Ecuador. It is a very touristy town with the main attractions being hotsprings and outdoor adventures like rafting, bike riding, and hiking. We rented bikes and rode down ¨la ruta de las cascadas¨. It was mostly downhill much to Shannon´s delight since every uphill almost killed her. We rode about 12 miles past lots of waterfalls and even took a cable car across a canyon and over a waterfall. We ended our ride in Río Verde at Cascada Pailón del Diablo. We hiked down to the impressive waterfall which we could view from a series of balconies built into the cliff. We were close enough to get wet and were able to walk behind it after climbing/crawling through a crack in the cliff. It was pretty cool.

We then headed to the colonial city of Cuenca where we checked out all the old churches and buildings. At this point we have been to so many colonial towns that they all start to look the same so we didn´t spend much time in Cuenca. One of the best parts was the bus ride to Cuenca. We rode right through the middle of the Andes and it was beautiful! The mountains were so tall and the valleys so deep. Everything was very green and the mountains were covered with farms that made them look like patchwork quilts. It was a breathtaking journey and we even saw a beautiful sunset over the mountains.

After Cuenca, we headed to Perú. It took us a day and countless buses and cabs just to get to the border. It was one of the most complicated borders as we had to get off the bus about 4 kilometers outside of town and the actual border to go through customs. The bus driver forgot to let us off and we ended up having to go back once we got to town (after Shannon yelled at him he let us go back for free). We then had to take a taxi to the border and another to the Peruvian customs located 4 kms on the other side. It was ridiculous. We actually ended up getting so frustrated at slow, not so friendly people that we got out of a bus refusing to pay because the driver was so slow and wouldn´t tell us how much it cost or whether we would make it to the next town in time to catch our next bus. Shannon kind of lost it and yelled at him too (Latin America is wearing on us). We finally made it to our bus right before it left and spent 21 hours on it to get to Lima. We then spent another 21 hours on a bus to Cusco. It was a really long three days but at least the buses were comfortable and we made it in one piece! The drive through all of northwestern Perú was desert, desert, and more desert. We went through lots of mountains from Lima to Cusco but they were not nearly as green and beautiful as the ones in Ecuador.

Galápagos

We spent nine days in Las Islas Galápagos and it was amazing. Words really cannot describe all we saw and did. We went to nine different islands and a couple of islets and saw almost all of the animals that are there at this time. It was surprisingly cold (really windy) and the water was freezing (20 degrees C, think California water). We spent seven days on a sailboat and two days on the main island, Santa Cruz. The animals are not at all afraid of people and we could walk right up to them and they would either ignore us or just look at us. Baby sea lions would come up to us and try to touch us. We saw many different types of birds including frigates with their red pouches puffed up, blue footed boobies doing mating dances, baby albatrosses that are super fat and fluffy, giant pelicans, and so many others. Many of the birds had eggs and babies and they didn´t even blink an eye as we walked right up to them. It was awesome! We did a lot of snorkeling (Shannon had to wear two wetsuits and was still freezing) and got to swim with sea lions! They are so playful and would swim so close to us they almost touched us. They imitated our movements and did flips and jumps. Kevin really enjoyed this and spent extra time swimming with them (until the guide made him get out because a large male was swiftly approaching). The sea lions liked Kevin so much that they followed him out of the water wanting to play more! We also saw tons of green sea turtles (the highlight was when a sea lion swam behind one pushing it around), lots of white-tipped reef sharks (and Shannon didn´t even freak out), starfish, penguins, many types of rays, and even some bombs that the U.S. army left behind. We saw all the different types of island habitats ranging from lava to forest to desert. It was the dry season so many of the islands looked dead as the trees and plants were dormant. It never rained on us so we had good luck! We also went to the highlands and saw the giant Galapagos tortoises. They are so big and gentle. They just eat, sleep, and lay in pools of water. We even saw some dolphins that followed our boat putting on a fabulous show complete with jumps and flips. Our last day we spent scuba diving at Gordon Rocks, the premier place to see hammerhead sharks. We were not supposed to go there as Shannon is terrified of sharks and did not want to swim with hammerheads but we had some trouble with the law and plans changed. Apparently there are only three diving agencies in Galapagos that have licenses to dive, they got these licenses by taking a course, the last of which was offered in 2002. The other agencies have business permits and usually there is no problem but sometimes the park authorities decide that only the three agencies with licenses can go out. This just happened to be one of those days. We left at 5:00 AM to try to avoid problems but got stopped at the park checkpoint and were told that we could not go and had to go back. We spent about three hours trying to get around this and finally took a bus which was not checked. The rangers were not smart and let the car with all the equipment through so we just met them at the boat and headed out. We had to go to a different location though. It was an amazing two dives! The visibility was pretty good and we saw tons of fish including huge schools of barracuda, mullets, yellow fin tuna, and of course hammerheads among other things. Shannon was so scared to see the sharks that she cried but after the first time was not quite as scared and even swam towards them (keeping plenty of other people in between her and the sharks of course). Kevin was really excited to see hammerheads and glad that he got to see lots of them. It was definitely a great experience and very different than any of the other dives we had done. All in all, it was an awesome trip and the highlight of our travels so far! Now off to see our friends Dan and Emily who were in Peace Corps with us and now live in Ecuador.

Cali

At first glance, Cali seemed like a big ugly city but once we explored a little it got better! We walked all around the first day and saw all the churches and old buildings. We also went to a giant mall to people watch. Supposedly the most beautiful women and the plastic surgery capital are in Cali but we saw neither. We did eat some yummy vegetarian food (there were a ton of vegetarian restaurants which made Shannon happy) and went to a zoo. The Cali zoo is supposedly the largest zoo in South America and it was cool. We saw a lot of different animals including a bird that kept landing on Kevin´s head and bit Shannon when she tried to get it off! We also took some salsa classes at our hotel. The first day was a little hard but the second day was definitely better and we learned a bit and had fun! We were sad that we didn´t get to meet up with our friend from Cali but she was busy with a project so next time. After Cali, we went to Pasto, a town near the Ecuador border. It was a lot larger and more modern than we had thought it would be. We walked around and saw the really cool churches and the next day headed to Túquerres to hike to Laguna Verde, a green lagoon in the crater of a volcano. Everyone in Pasto told us it was very easy to get to but those were lies, and we ended up hiring a very expensive taxi (even after Shannon´s mad bargaining skills) to take us up the mountain to the trail. The hike was a bit hard mainly because of the altitude. The highest point was about 4,000 meters (the highest Shannon had ever been). The walk back up from the laguna involved about a million stairs and a steep climb that nearly killed Shannon! The laguna was really pretty though, super green with lots of bubbles. We originally thought the volcano was extinct but it turned out to be active. It smelled strongly of sulfer and some of the bubbles going into the lake heated the water to a nice temperature. On our way down after walking forever, we finally caught a ride with a SUV going down. We stood on the back bumper and held on to the luggage racks...quite a ride! We then headed to Las Lajas to see the Santuario de Las Lajas. It is a church built into the side of a gorge with a river running under it. It is an amazing sight, just for the location alone and the church is impressive as well. We are pretty sure that we were the only ones staying in the entire town and finding dinner was hard since everything was closed! The next day we headed into Ecuador and had the easiest border crossing ever! We went to Otavalo, a small town about three hours from the border known for its Saturday market. We happened to arrive on a Saturday and we treated to the best/most impressive market we have ever seen! There were beautiful fruits and vegetables including real blackberries which we haven´t seen for two years! They also had tons of crafts and of course clothes and scarves made from Alpaca. It was really a sight especially with all the local people dressed in their traditional outfits! We are now in Quito and have been all over admiring the buildings and churches in the old town. Quito is a huge city and the highest capital in the western hemisphere with an elevation of 2,850 meters. Right now they are having a three day holiday so the city is rather dead. Tomorrow we head to Galápagos to see amazing animals!

Salenta, Valle de Cocora, Bogota

After leaving lovely Medellín we headed to the small coffee and trout farming (we had trout for the first time, kinda like salmon) town of Salento. The town itself is pretty nice but most foreign tourists come here to take a hike in the Valle de Cocora to see the famous wax palms of the area, the largest palm trees in the world that grow up to 60 meters tall (almost 200 feet). We had to take a jeep to the town of Cocora and then started hiking up the valley through mostly cattle ranches. We could see some wax palms growing up the sides of the narrow valley. We evntually walked into the national park up the steep muddy trail to about 2900 meters through cloud forest and then proceeded to walk back to Cocora along a dirt road that meandered through the wax palms themselves and was actually the highlight of the walk. The jeep ride back got crowded and Kevin ended up standing on the back bumper with six other people holding on underneath a tarp becuase it was raining. It was a little crowded back there and his arm was very tired from holding on to the jeep on all of the curves after we made it back. We left Salento the next day and took a nine hour bus trip to Bogotá, the capital of Colombia with 8.5 million inhabitants, one of which we knew from Peace Corps Honduras. We stayed in or around Bogota for five nights, leaving on the sixth. Bogotá is a huge sprawling city that reminded us of LA except it was in a valley. We rode up to Monserrate, a hill on the valley wall, to see the massive expanse of Bogotá. The views are pretty good, unfortunately one of the many rainstorms started forming just before we went so part of the city was obscured by clouds and rain. We walked around La Candelaría, the colonial barrio of Bogotá, to see the old churches, museums and the giant Plaza de Bolívar that is home to hundreds of pigeons. The gold museum in the city center is pretty impressive as well. We also went to La Casa de Moneda which houses a few museums, one on the printing of money and one on Fernando Botero, Shannon´s new favorite artist, who draws and sculpts funny looking fat things from animals to people. Over the weekend we made a side trip to the salt cathedral of Zipaquirá, Villa de Leyva and Tunja. The salt cathedral was an impressive cathedral (the second one built as the first one is now closed) carved underground in the salt mines that produce 95% of the salt consumed in the country. Cathedral might be a little misleading as there is no actual cathedral but the inside of the mine is carved with carvings depicting the stations of the cross, and they even hold mass inside of it. It was something totally different than anything we have seen before. After the salt cathedral we went to Villa de Leyva, one of the most bautiful colonial villages in Colombia. It was a very quaint, very colonial town that also had one of the largest plazas in South America. We also had some very tasty passionfruit cheesecake there, the best cheesecake we have had in a very long time. We really liked Villa de Leyva with its colonial style houses and cobblestone streets. The next morning we went to the regional capital of Boyacá, Tunja. Tunja is known for its colonial architecture, elegant mansions adorned with some of the most unique artwork in South America, and mudejar art in its churches. One of the churches was very impressive with all of the designs and art on the walls and ceilings and was hard to imagine all of the work that went into its intricate details. We also took a tour of the mansion that had belonged to the founder of Tunja. It was built in the mid 16th century and shortly after was painted with scenes from floor all the way to cover the ceiling. After the owner died, his wife remarried and the new man had the house painted over and no one even knew of the paintings until recently when a roof collapsed and exposed ceiling paintings. Since then, they have carefully uncovered many of the original wall and ceiling paintings. Impressive! Our last night in Bogotá we went to one of the nicest parts of town with our friend John and his girlfriend and went to a microbrewery and Kevin got to have some good beer, even a dark one! He was happy about that. Then we back to John´s place where we stayed the whole time and ate some pasta and left at about 10 p.m. to take a 13 hour bus to Cali.