Last week we had our yearly meeting with everyone in our project groups. Shannon's was in Valle de Angeles, close to where we had training while Kevin's was in Siguatepeque. It was a chance to meet all the volunteers in Honduras who are doing similar work and discuss and learn new things. Overall, we both had good experiences and gained a lot from the meetings. Since Shannon's birthday was last Tuesday, we were not able to be together for it. We did celebrate the day before with a few other volunteers in Tegucigalpa by eating some McDonald's french fries and going to dinner at Ruby Tuesday's. That was nice to get a taste of home after eating beans and rice for so long. It's not really that bad now that we cook our own food, we can create a variety of foods but beans and rice are still very common in our meals. We both starting to work with a private school that really wants to help improve the students' lives and has teachers and a principal who really want to work with us. Kevin is going to help them try to become a green school as well as build interpretive trails in the area to show and educate people about what species of flora and fauna live in the area and what they do, for example, medicinal plants. Shannon is going to be working on drug and alcohol prevention, something she did not want to do coming in to Honduras but has so far presented the best opportunities to work here. On Sunday, we did manage to watch the Super Bowl at a friend's apartment in Juticalpa, about an hour away, on a projection screen/wall. That was fun, although the Steelers won the game. We do not get an English feed here so the game was all in Spanish and we did not get to see any of the commercials this year. So sad but we did make some guacamole and brownies and of course eat some Baleadas so it was almost like home...

Shannon has been very busy lately. She is helping the drug and alcohol rehab center that she works at to create a library. They painted the room (lots of fun painting with oil-based paint and using gasoline to wash it off), and have begun creating an inventory of the books they already have as well as soliciting more. This will be the only lending library in all of Olancho so that is pretty exciting! There is currently one small library in Catacamas at the Cultural Center but they do not lend books as they have had problems with people stealing them in the past. Yesterday was the celebration of the 111th anniversary of Catacamas. There was a small parade and lots of activities throughout the day. A bunch of university students studying to be teachers came to display their didactic materials, it is very interesting because they have to make everything themselves. Unlike the U.S. where they have stores where you can buy charts and pictures, the teachers make all of that here. It was pretty impressive but seemed like a lot of work. Shannon helped run children's games at the celebration and it quickly got out of hand. There were at least 50 children and the woman in charge was not organized at all. The children began pushing and shoving and basically stampeding because they wanted candy. They were not able to do the pinatas because the children would not move back and it was too dangerous. The kids almost pulled a high school girl out of a tree who was throwing candy to them. The parents were no better and were pushing and shoving because they wanted candy too. To top it off, a drunk man threw a firework into the crowd of kids and it began exploding in the middle of them starting a stampede. A bunch of people kept asking Shannon where her parents were and if her mom was coming because they wanted to give her a letter. She kept explaining that her parents live in the U.S. and would not be coming. It turned out that they thought that she was the daughter of the President of Honduras. The daughter actually came a little later to help a little with the games and the confusion was solved.
Everyone who has ever used an ATM card at home knows how to use it. ATM machines are still relatively new here but you would think everyone who has a card would have used it by now and would be able to do their transactions quickly. Not so. We have yet to get in line at the ATM machine where the person using it doesn't take more than five minutes. We don't get it. It takes us 40 seconds and the machines are in Spanish.
We are both leaving today (Sunday) to head to our reconnect meetings this coming week where we meet with all the volunteers in Honduras in our project groups and discuss what's going on and learn some new stuff. This means we will be separated for Shannon's birthday on Tuesday. Well we will wake up together and then head out to our meetings early in the morning. Happy Birthday Shannon.

If you haven't noticed we have not been putting up recent pictures on the blog but there are two links to photos on Kevin's facebook site. We started using facebook as the pictures upload about 8 times faster. If the links ever stop working let us know.
In our last post, we omitted our kayaking adventure. On New Year's Day, 6 of us rented kayaks to paddle around the lake. Shannon and Kevin were in one kayak, there was another double kayak that went their own way and two singles with us. After paddling about 2/3 of the way across the lake we decided to stop and relax to enjoy the peaceful scenery. After we started heading back, the wind picked up a little blowing against us and making the water a little choppy. Sarah, in one of the single kayaks, started yelling that her kayak was filling with water and, in fact, it was as the cover had not been on the hole in the kayak to keep water from filling the inside of it. As the water was smooth on the way out there had not been a problem. So, she climbed on the front of our kayak and we tied her sinking kayak to the back of Sara W’s boat. The three of us struggled rowing our overweight kayak back to shore where Kevin and Ellie then returned to help Sara W with her sinking kayak tied to her boat who had managed to make it about half way back. Once we finally got the kayaks back we could barely get it out of the water it was so heavy. It was a fun experience that I’m sure looked quite funny to the people watching us from the shore.
Our friend Elizabeth (from youth development) came to visit us two weekends ago. We made a lot of good, normal American food and watched movies in English and played games. It was a lot of fun. Visitors are welcome. Shannon has remained busy with a couple of her counterparts while Kevin has not been doing so much lately. We did go visit a former volunteer who came to visit his former counterpart that Kevin is now going to be working with so it was good to talk to him and get some ideas on how to do some things. We are continuing to talk English with a few Honduras twice weekly. We also met with the local tourism board here in Catacamas that was set up by a German volunteer. Hopefully Kevin can work with them in the future with ecotourism projects. We had a couple of visitors again this past Saturday night. We made some chili and cornbread without cornmeal, not real cornbread but tastes pretty darn close. It was good. The weather had been fairly nice the last couple of weeks. It got warm a couple of days and we thought the summer season had arrived but lately it has rained a little almost every day and been partly cloudy keeping the heat away. We are trying to enjoy it while we can. We still have three cats, two kittens and the mother. Once kitten peed on the bed last night at 2:30 in the morning, so that was very nice of him and Kevin got to clean the sheets and mattress this morning, by hand. We have gotten used to washing clothes by hand and is now normal but big things like sheets are still not fun to wash because the are so big and cumbersome. More to come later. If anybody has anything specific they want to hear about, leave a comment and let us know and we will address it. We hope to have some more pictures of our city soon as well. Take care.

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!

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.

Free food, lies, and a new way to meet your neighbors

Last Thursday we had dinner with the Deputy Director of the Peace Corps and several other volunteers here in Catacamas. She was nice and we talked about a lot of good stuff. We also really enjoyed the free dinner. We finally got our water fixed this past Saturday so it is nice not to have to bring water into the house by buckets. We do not have hot water in the shower and Shannon does not like that but we may get that problem resolved soon. The shower head is also really clogged and hardly any water comes out of it and shoots all over the place but for now it is stuck and can’t be cleaned out until someone comes to fix it. During the time we were using bucket water, Shannon accidentally drank some tadpole water thinking it was a glass of clean water. It actually did have tadpoles swimming around in it, not in the glass but in the bucket. She didn’t get sick, yet. We have been cleaning the house a lot (mainly Shannon, she has spent entire days cleaning) and someday it may actually get painted. Shannon has been frustrated with how slow things have been getting done with the house. The painters were going to come Monday, it is now Wednesday and they came by to look at it today and said they will come tomorrow to start. Shannon got frustrated yesterday when they didn’t come and went and hunted down the owner of the house to talk to him. He said “Hondurans are liars. They say they are going to do things and they don’t do them. You need to have patience because you are not in the US anymore and things don’t work the same here.” That statement coming from a Honduran pretty much sums up the way things work here. And they wonder why the country is not developing. On that note, Kevin was supposed to go on a topographical study for a water system for a small community up in the mountains about a 3 hour mule ride away this morning with two other volunteers. They caught their six o’clock bus out of town and arrived ready to mount their mules only to find out that the people weren’t ready yet. This is the second and maybe last time they have gone through this exact same thing with the same exact community. Only the last time they waited around for 4 hours before someone told them that the community wasn’t ready. We still have cats here. The momma cat had moved one kitten down out of the attic and then back up to a different part but never moved the other one that we could here crying. Kevin finally found a way to get it down on Monday. The mom didn’t want anything to do with it at first so Shannon fed it milk through a dropper and slept with it all night. It is a lot smaller that the other one. The next day the mom took it and put it with its sibling and they both seem to be doing fine now. Tuesday night, Kevin found out a good way to meet neighbors – let one of their dogs bite your leg. While walking back home from dinner and the grocery store with three other volunteers, the dog that lives two houses down from our house started barking at us as we walked by. This seemed normal to Kevin as he has walked by this dog many times before and he didn’t bother trying to move farther away from the dog. The dog then jumped out and bit at him biting his upper leg and putting a hole in his jeans. It wasn’t too bad really and is more like a scratch than a tooth puncture wound but it wasn’t fun and now he has to take antibiotics. Shannon talked to the owners while Kevin was washing his wound out after talking to the Peace Corps medical staff and the dog is up to date on its rabies shots. Plus, as Peace Corps volunteers we all received pre-exposure rabies shots in Honduras and all is hopefully well.

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.