So, apparently we have not written a blog update in a couple of weeks. That either means we have been super busy or just don't care (pick the first one). Shannon has gone to lots of schools to talk about drug/alcohol prevention with 6th graders and everything is in place for it to begin with about 10 schools. She also gave a charla on drugs and alcohol to teachers at one of the private schools, the different types of drugs, signs and symptoms of use, and how to work with kids that you suspect are using. She has also begun a program through Colgate in which she will go to three different schools working with first, second, and third graders. She will help the teachers to organize weekly lessons on dental hygiene, how to avoid cavities, and similar topics. Colgate provides manuals, toothbrushes, toothpaste, and soap, and the children have to brush their teeth and wash their hands everyday after their snack for six months. After six months, they receive a new toothbrush to take home to continue their tooth brushing. This is really important as there are many children who have never used a toothbrush before and have rotten teeth. She is really excited and glad to have good counterparts that are also excited and willing to devote time to this project. Last weekend, Shannon and her friend Elizabeth went to visit their friend Hillary in Yaramela, La Paz, near the middle of Honduras. It was a girls only trip so Kevin was banned. It was great for her to see another site that is much smaller and less developed than Catacamas, as well as projects being done. They also went to Comayagua, which used to be the capital of Honduras, and has a giant cathedral. The town is smaller than the current capital, Tegucigalpa, but much cleaner and safer. The cathedral was beautiful and they also saw two other big churches (one of these three is supposedly the oldest church in Honduras but nobody seemed sure which one it was). They then went to Tegucigalpa for doctors appointments and ate lots of great American fast food that would not be nearly as appetizing in the U.S.. Shannon has since given up junkfood for Lent as she does every year. It is much harder here as junkfood, especially chips, cookies, and soda, is a staple for most people here. Kevin wasn't totally bored while Shannon was gone as he worked and visited The Las Cuevas de Talgua- The Cave of the Glowing Skulls. The tour takes you back 400 meters into the cave where there is a locked gate because they are still studying the human bones beyond it. But, there is a ladder that climbs 11 meters and then there is a room that comes back over where you walked in the cave where they discovered a calcified human burial ground from about 400 A.D. The cacified remains "glow" when you look at them with lights. It is crazy to think ancient people went back that far into a cave climbed up over thirty feet to another room to bury their dead there, and they didn't even have flashlights!
This weekend we were busy in the mountains. On Saturday, we went with four students and one teacher from the University up to the community, La Flor de Cafe, that Kevin works in to talk about the family gardens that the university students will help him create in the community. It was a good trip and lots of plans were made. There are about 30 families that want to participate and most of them came to the meeting. After the meeting we went to the house of one of the families to look at their existing garden and they gave us lots of plants to take home. Most of them were cuttings that they said to just stick in the ground so who knows if they will live but we have our fingers crossed. Today, we went up to another mountain community, La Florida, to talk to the community about a fogon project that has been in the works for years. Unfortunately, the other two volunteers who tried to work on this project were both sent home early and it never got completed. The project will be creating more efficient wood burning stoves that have chimneys so the smoke does not stay in the house and use much less wood. We had quite a hike up a steep mountain to reach the community but it was definitely worth it. The community is located in the middle of the forest. A lot of the area right around the town has been cleared for agriculture but it is gorgeous nonetheless and has breathtakingly beautiful views of the surrounding mountains and valleys. The people are extremely poor without electricity, or water in their houses, but very nice and generous (we ate so much food that we could barely walk back!). We had our first meal without silverware (tortillas work just as well as forks), and some really good lemongrass tea. It was a very long day but very rewarding. We also saw a rare species of toucan and several other bird species as well as Shannon's favorite animal - monkeys! White Faced Monkeys too be exact and later we heard Howler Monkeys off in the distance. It was an exciting, adventurous and eventful day and we look forward to having more like it.

Gardens and Baby Showers

We have been pretty busy for the past two weeks. Kevin has been going up to the mountains and compiling a list of the families that would like gardens. He has 31 families who stated interest and is now going to bring the university students with him to help plant gardens and teach the community members how to do it themselves. Lots of work. He went to the university-wide meeting last week which was held at their location in the biosphere. The entire university, students and faculty, attended and Kevin was introduced with the staff. Shannon is frustrated because there is a teacher's strike which means that school did not start last week like it was supposed to. The teachers are demanding that the Minister of Education step down and stating that they will not work until he does. She went to a school on the day that classes were supposed to start and although the teachers were surprisingly actually there, there was no teaching happening. They were hand-writing the same note to all parents because they do not have computers or copy machines, cleaning the rooms that were incredibly dirty, and getting things ready for the year. So very different than the first day of school in the U.S.. Shannon also went to the nearby caves with the drug and alcohol rehab center she works with. They took about 20 patients and toured the caves and had a picnic. It was a lot of fun and she got to meet the guides and get to know the patients more. Funny how she absolutely did not want to work with this agency to begin with and now it is her favorite counterpart. She prepared a charla on drug and alcohol addiction to give to the private school that we both are working with, but they were still preparing their schedules and were not ready so she is supposed to do it this coming week. She got to meet some of the students and was surprised at how well-behaved they were considering that most school-aged children do not listen to their teachers and run around crazy. They also were almost all interested in participating in sports and clubs after school so that was exciting. Kevin also met some of the kids and went on a short hike with them, played volleyball, and practiced English with them. Shannon went to her first Honduran baby shower and thought it was really interesting that they do not have a word in Spanish for "baby shower", they just say it in English. It was similar to a baby shower in the U.S., lots of good food, games, and gifts. The one major difference was that the mother-to-be does not open her presents until after everyone leaves. The mother is also headed to the U.S. next week so she can have her baby there so he will be a U.S. citizen. This is a surprisingly common practice here, and according to the women at the shower, is easy as long as you are not super pregnant when you leave.

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.