Christmas and New Year

So we´ve been pretty busy the past couple of weeks. Our internet in our house stopped working and since we share it with the other volunteers, and it is in Kendra´s name and she is not here, we have been using the internet cafes which are not so fun. Hopefully that will get remedied soon! We had a great Christmas and New Year! A few other volunteers came up to our place for Christmas and miracle of all miracles, Shannon actually cooked a Christmas dinner! She made a Honduran dinner the 24 complete with pupusas and baleadas and the boys set off lots of fireworks so they would fit in with the locals. Hondurans celebrate Christmas the 24 and they eat tamales and set off fireworks (among other things). At midnight it sounded like we were in the middle of a war zone there were so many fireworks! We also made a ton of Christmas cookies and shared them with our host family, they had never had Christmas cookies before. Most Hondurans do not really bake (besides bread) and our neighbors have been requesting Shannon´s help in baking. She taught one neighbor how to make apple crisp and the neighbor was just amazed that it is so easy to make good desserts. Shannon also taught her how to make salad and she was amazed at how easy that was...needless to say food is quite different here! On Christmas Shannon made greenbean casserole (very different when you do not have cans of condensed soup), mashed potatoes, stuffing, rolls, sweet potato casserole, Kev made chicken, and we found some cans of cranberry sauce (the spanish word for cranberry is ¨sour, red blueberry¨). Our dinner was really good and the best part was that it was made entirely in 2 toaster ovens because our oven does not work and we cannot find anyone to fix it! It was definitely interesting and took a lot more time but it was well worth it. We spent New Years at the only lake in Honduras. About 20 volunteers from our group went and we had a great time, it was really good to see everyone that we have not seen since training and to hear their stories about what they have been doing in their sites. We also went to a brewery that is owned by an American that we had gone to during training and had blueberry pancakes! Since we have yet to find blueberries here that was a nice treat! We hope that everyone had a great Christmas and New Year and we want to thank everyone for the Christmas packages you sent! We are enjoying all the food and reading material!