A house of our own

We hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving last week. A lot has happened since our last post. Kevin went with the second year university students from the department he works with, there are only 15 right now, out to Las Marañones (the cashews), a small city just inside the Rio Platano Biosphere. They went out there Wednesday morning and returned Thursday night. He had a lot of fun and practiced Spanish a lot as only one student can speak English. They made a lot of good food and Kevin was on the breakfast crew and squeezed oranges by hand, no juicer whatsoever, until there was enough for everyone and then fried some plantains. His hands were tired after that. The trip out there was on a university bus about two hours on a dirt, very dusty road. The university co-owns a facility with the Honduran Forest Service there that can sleep about 25 people, with a kitchen and solar panels that they built with the help of a grant from an organization in the US. There are no power lines that go that far out. Most of the residents there are descendents of native Pech Indians. Last week, we said goodbye to two more volunteers from our class, both in Kevin’s project. We wish them the best in whatever they end up doing. Kevin is particularly sad as he was going to be working a lot with one of them as he only lived a few kilometers away. While Kevin was with the students on Thanksgiving, Shannon had a nice Thanksgiving meal with other gringos in Catacamas. She at least brought back some apple crisp for him to eat. Saturday, we went to Juticalpa, about an hour bus ride away to have a Thanksgiving dinner with about 25 other people there. We had Turkey, green beans, mashed potatoes, fruit salad, regular salad, rolls, chili, gravy and then we had desert with pumpkin pie, sweet potato pie, apple pie, apple crisp and pumpkin cheesecake. It was a great meal and we all made sure to overeat. Sunday was the primary elections here in Honduras. One of the people running had apparently been disqualified from running, we don’t really know why but they put another name on the ballot that the people knew if you voted for him, you were really voting for the other guy, who ended up winning. Really weird, and we don’t know why or how this works. Now we have another year of obnoxious billboards, commercials and our least favorite, cars driving around with speakers promoting the candidates (usually at 5:30 AM). And for some bigger news, we moved into our own house Monday night and have been staying there since. On Friday we had bought a mattress and stove with our move in allowance form Peace Corps and paid for it, expecting to have it delivered on Monday. Then we find out that the people who were living there are leaving the stove and refrigerator for us to use. We went back to the store and could not get a refund so we were forced to buy a tv and dvd player and some other things we needed like a fan and some plastic stools to sit on. We also had previously bought a slightly used refrigerator too which we are going to try to sell to another volunteer. The previous tenants also left some chairs, an entertainment center to put our tv on, some shelves and place to put our clothes but right now there is a broken pipe and no running water. That is supposed to get fixed by tomorrow, keep your fingers crossed. We do have running water outside and in our pila, the traditional way to store water here, but we have been spoiled the last two months with warm, running water in our shower and to revert back to cold bucket baths is not fun. At first we thought we had rats in the space between the roof and ceiling but now we hear at least one kitten crying and there is a cat that hangs around our house, so apparently we have cats in our attic. Shannon wants a kitten now. This Thursday we are going to have dinner with a couple of people from Peace Corps Headquarters in Washington D.C. who are coming to visit Honduras and they are sending them out to our part of the country as they have never visited this part before. The second in command of Peace Corps, the Deputy Director, and the Special Assistant to the Chief of Staff are coming so that should be an interesting dinner.