It's beginning to feel a little like Christmas

The biggest thing to happen since our last post didn’t even happen in Honduras. Shannon’s brother Robert and his girlfriend Erica got engaged Wednesday night so we would like to congratulate them on their engagement. We are really happy for them and this also gives us a reason to come home. It is still early but they are thinking of a May wedding so you all might get to see us sometime in May. We will keep you updated on our plans as they develop. Hopefully we will be able to get some fresh fruit while we are there since we missed out on most of the summer fruits from the valley last summer as well. Our house did get painted finally, so Shannon doesn’t have to worry about that anymore. We cleaned out and refilled our pila finally as well. The painters made a big mess in it and got yellow paint all over the newly green painted pila. You can still see some crayon marks through the paint but it looks a lot nicer now. The head painter told Kevin that the son-in-law of the owner was cheap and didn’t want to pay a lot for the house to get painted either. Yellow is not a good color to cover up dark crayon marks on the wall with only one coat. We think the son-in-law and daughter might have had to pay for the paint as their kids are the ones who destroyed the walls, we are not real sure on that. Things work-wise are still slow as all the schools are now out. We had our last English class on Monday and the students all brought food and we had karaoke which was fun. Later that night we went to have dinner with the director of the university Kevin works at and his girlfriend who is from the states. She made lasagna and salad and it was really good. We had a good time there and will probably have more dinners together in the future. Tuesday night we went to a Christmas dinner with one of Shannon’s counterparts. It was fun and they had fried shrimp for dinner along with rice and vegetables from the Chinese restaurant. Since we don’t really eat shrimp, others around us had plenty to take home. Shannon had also made sugar cookies to take that never even got opened so we had plenty of sugar cookies to eat when we got back. Last Friday we went to a lunch with Shannon’s counterpart CEREPA, the rehabilitation center here in Catacamas and heard a lot of former patient’s testimonials. We went to a little Christmas gathering last Sunday night next door at Katia’s apartment, a German who is working here in Catacamas. We had a lot of good food there as well and tried for the first time an avocado that has a hint of a licorice taste and some fried yucca paste stuff. We don’t remember what they were called but they were good. We broke down and decided to live like all of our neighbors and got cable Friday afternoon. We have been enjoying it and watched a nice Christmas movie last night, in English with Spanish subtitles of course so we still learn Spanish as we watch it. The cats we have adopted, for now, are doing well. They are all growing including the mother and now live in our kitchen. They have peed on the floor more than once which we do not like but have so managed to deal with. They do not sell litter here in Catacamas so Shannon made a box of dirt for them to use as the bathroom. We named the little orange kitten Basa as that is what our nephew Tristan apparently thought it should be named after seeing it in a photo. We now think they are both girls. Kevin is now going to work with another counterpart at least on a couple of projects. Since Derek was forced to leave the Peace Corps late last month and Kevin was going to be working with him on projects Kevin is now going to work with Derek’s counterpart on some projects that Derek had started. His counterpart is an awesome guy to work with. The two other volunteers who live her in Catacamas, Jarryd and Kendra, have not both left for the holiday season so it will be a little lonelier for a couple of weeks but people are coming to our place for Christmas so that will be nice and we are planning on making and eating a lot of good Christmas food. Friday night we made pupusas for the first time and they turned out really well. They are basically fat corn tortillas stuffed with cheese, and beans and or meat. They are not really that hard to make and are pretty good. Another volunteer, Matt, was in town the other day on his birthday and we made and ate some chocolate cake with him and Kendra. Our computer has developed horizontal lines along the screen so that is not good…we are hoping that it doesn’t get worse as we can still use it. Computers hate Honduras. Both of us are going to be working with a school to try to help make it go zero waste, an awesome opportunity here in Honduras. Shannon, and maybe Kevin too, is also going to give talks on HIV/safe sex, self esteem and other youth issues. The principal eventually wants to go zero waste and then show other schools in Honduras how to do the same. Shannon continued her bad luck with water bottles as she took Kevin’s this time to go play soccer one night and left it there. We went back later to try to find it and it was gone. Luckily Kendra had an extra that he now uses.