Earthquakes and Donkey Polo

Well, apparently there was a very large earthquake just off the coast of Honduras that many people have asked us about. This happened May 28, 2:24 a.m. local time and was centered about 150 miles north of where we live. The quake registered at 7.1 on the Richter scale (although the USGS website has 7.3 listed). Unbelievably, this size of a quake only killed 6 people in a third world country. Luckily the epicenter was in the ocean and did not cause a tsunami as was feared at first. It did destroy some homes and a major bridge along the north coast outside of San Pedro Sula. Many people here in Catacamas woke up but neither of us felt it. Maybe the Northridge and Loma Prieta quakes desensitized us to large quakes or we have just been working so hard lately that we were exhausted. It supposedly shook the ground for over a minute. Many other Peace Corps volunteers felt it, especially those along the north coast, and for many of them it was their first earthquake. It was the biggest in Honduras recorded history and the last big one they had was in 1999 registering at 6.7. There have been 4 aftershocks of at least 4.5 magnitude since Thursday including one just on the Olancho border. We did not feel any of those either.
In other news, last week was natural resources week at the university and we attended a concert and a Bar-B-Que there. It was fun and a good cultural experience. It was also the 21st anniversary of CEREPA, the drug and alcohol center where Shannon works and the week was filled with activities. She participated in a peaceful march against drunk driving which was very interesting. We went to the quaint city of Yuscaran this past weekend to participate in the 13th annual donkey polo event during their feria del mango. This annual event pits Volunteers against the locals riding donkeys and trying to hit a plastic soccer ball with a stick into a small goal. The hardest part is trying to get the donkey to move, as Shannon found out early on in the game. Kevin's moved much easier but never wanted to turn to the right. We also didn't have saddles or even blankets to sit on and their backbones were not the most comfortable thing to sit on in the world. The locals fared much better as they basically had a professional donkey polo rider on their team. They ended up winning by a lot but we at least scored one goal (yay Haley!). It was fun but somewhat chaotic and we don't think the donkeys enjoyed it much. The local kids insisted on hitting and kicking the donkeys if they didn't move and it was terrible. At one point Shannon threatened to hit one of the kids (really good for a youth development volunteer)and they finally left her donkey alone! Shannon is now pretty sick (we're not sure why) so we are taking it easy this week.

Amapala, the United States, and return to poverty

May 18, 2009
Part I
It has been about a month since we last wrote but hey, we were in the US seeing many of you in person for more than half of that time so give us a break. We made it home finally, after a grueling day of flying and then spending the night in the cold, cold LA airport only a 50 minute flight away from home. It was a nice day, not humid or hot and we enjoyed relaxing and eating US food after a long time without it. To make a long story short, we saw a lot of people, ate a lot of food (I mean a lot of food), and most importantly of all we got to see Robert and Erika get married. Congrats to the newlyweds and thanks for taking us to the airport on our way out of town. The wedding was beautiful and a lot of fun.

Part II
Before we went home we went to Isla del Tigre, an island that is part of Honduras in the Gulf of Fonseca in the Pacific Ocean, with other married couples in PC Honduras. We spent our last weekend in Honduras there before going home so that was lots of fun. It is a nice little place with nice sandy beaches and warm water to swim in. We also hiked to the top of the dormant volcano where we could see Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua. It was beautiful and we saw some amazing sunsets while staying there. (See photos). To get to and from the island you have to take a boat, which was fun. Apparently on weekends they have a swim to the island but sadly no one in our group participated in this. As a side note, the island is also featured on the back of the 2 Lempira Note here in Honduras.

Part III
We have been back in Catacamas now for 4 full days, getting back into the swing of things. The first night back, Shannon found a GIANT Wolf spider on our kitchen wall and made Kevin come kill it. The thing was huge, bigger than the palm of Kevin’s hand! Kevin wanted to take a picture of it but was afraid it would escape and Shannon would never forgive him for that (besides the fact that she probably wouldn’t have slept at all that night, fearing the spider would come get her in her sleep because what else would spiders do?). It has rained every night we have been home and the power has gone out every day since we have been home, including right now as we write this. Of course we started when the power was on but it left, tried to come back on, and left again. Now the air is still with no fan to blow the air around. When we left three weeks ago, everything was dead and the fields were being burned off for the planting of the new crops for when the rains come. Now, things are as green as they possibly could be and apparently it rained A LOT while we were gone, a month or so ahead of normal. It is nice when it rains because it cools things off but then it gets humid and sometimes the air gets really still and we don't like that. Work is coming along here. Shannon is continuing where she left of and Kevin starts his English class at the university on Thursday where he will teach Thursday and Friday mornings and they just started a new trimester so he will also be busier helping some other teachers with field activities. We also received a new volunteer here in Catacamas, a female business volunteer from California so that is exciting. We received 4 new volunteers in Olancho, all females, taking our total females here in Olancho from 2 to 5. Shannon was happy about that, and frankly so were some male volunteers in the area. That about sums it up for now as life continues on in the third world.

May 23, 2009
So, we have had problems with internet and have been too busy to get this darn blog post posted. It has continued to rain every night, except Thursday where it only rained in the afternoon and evening. A couple of nights it rained really hard and we found we have three leaks in our roof when it rains hard, leaving a puddle on the kitchen floor. When it rains that hard our street also turns into a river, a pretty awesome sight actually. Our back patio also floods and we have to sweep it off. Things are pretty much back to normal here. It was really hard to adjust at first and Shannon especially, was not very happy. We are getting used to living in a third world country again but still miss the U.S. We have been showing the new volunteer around and it is interesting to see her reactions as we were there 6 months ago. We have both been told that we look fatter which is true since we both gained about 5 pounds at home! The new kittens have grown a lot and we are looking for homes for them and hopefully getting the older ones fixed now that we have found a vet who performs that surgery. Today on the bus back from Juticalpa, a car passed us and we heard what sounded like gun shots. People on the bus said that they were shooting at cows but who knows…oh Olancho.

Cuevas, cuevas y mas cuevas

Last Friday, we went to visit a cave that Kevin already had visited but had not really explored the inside of. The cave does not have trails or lights inside it which made it a lot more fun to explore with our headlamps. There were three big rooms and one short tunnel in which Shannon supposedly saw a spider and got scared and ran away. She did continue to explore in the cave, just not in any small spaces. There were lots of sparkly rocks and some cool formations. It was the first time that either of us had explored a cave on our own without a guide, and it was awesome! After exploring the cave, we went out and swung on vines Tarzan style. It was really fun and we highly recommend it. We ended up going back the next day because more people wanted to see the cave and it was still awesome. We also had to retrieve the camera case that the cave stole from us. Luckily we got it back, without much of a struggle. This week we have been meeting with a Fullbright Specialist in linguistics who is helping us become great English teachers. This is especially helpful to Kevin as he will be teaching English at the university next semester. Kevin also went on another tour of the University (he learns something new every time) and milked a cow for the first time in his life and tried the fruit of the cashew tree as well as some juice. Not bad. Today, for the second time in 10 days we have enough water pressure to take a shower, without a bucket. Because it has been so dry, there isn't enough water and some days we only have it in the sinks and other days not at all. It is also the season to burn off the dead fields and we could barely see the mountains (that are really, really close)yesterday and today. It is kind of like being back at home but worse. It is also really hot here now and Shannon wants to die 500 times a day. Friday we are going to Isla Del Tigre and Amapala to hang out with other married couples in Peace Corps Honduras. Then to the glorious United States, we can hardly wait to see everyone!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Semana Santa

Well, once again it has been a while since we have last written on our blog. Almost three weeks this time. We have both done some traveling, together and separately, for work and for fun and we have done many things since the last post. There are four new links to photos at the top of the blog from this last week we spent traveling for Semana Santa (Holy Week) but first we will start where we left off. Shannon went to a week long workshop called Joven a Joven in Valle de Angeles, close to where we had our training. The workshop was for youth development volunteers and a community partner that they brought with them and focused on teaching youth skills to find a job such as interviewing and also how to choose a career that they like. During that time, Kevin stayed home and continued going to the university and he met up with Shannon in Tegucigalpa on the following Saturday where we spent two nights together there before Shannon left to Siguatepeque where she had a two day training meeting for the new emergency phone coordinators. Honduras is split up into E-zones where two people in each zone have special phones and receive important messages and relay them to the rest of the volunteers in their zone. This really would come into play for emergencies but we get messages about big road closures and things of that sort so we know where to avoid if we are traveling. As a result she has a new phone number 011-504-9965-4039, call her lots;). While Shannon was doing that, Kevin went to an exchange with the guides of the children's hands-on science museum located in Tegucigalpa. They mostly talked about environmental education stuff but it was a good cross cultural experience as well and it was nice to see such a nice museum where kids can learn in a such a poor country. We were planning on going to the Honduras/Mexico World Cup Qualifying game in San Pedro Sula that Wednesday but decided not too as it would be expensive and Honduras had not played very well their last two games but ended up winning (and dominating Mexico) 3-1. Go Honduras! Honduras now sits in third position just above Mexico. We came home that Wednesday and the university Kevin is working with hosted several professors from North Carlina State University's ag department so Kevin went with them Thursday up to the mountains where they talked to some local farmers and leaders and ate a home cooked meal and drank horchata made from scratch. They went on a walk to a large cave and then swung on vines like Tarzan (pictures coming soon). Friday, we both went with the NCSU people on a tour of Catacamas and then went to the university to have lunch and a meeting about how the two universities could cooperate together more in the future. Saturday we both went with many university workers and the NCSU peope to a nice lunch at a Tilapia place just outside of town. It was interesting to hear their views on Honduras and the university and students.
This past week was Semana Santa and we spent Monday at the beach of the coastal town of El Porvenir, near La Ceiba on the Caribbean Coast. It was a miserable trip up, we decided to go the "shorter, cheaper" way on a dirt road that was not really short or cheap. The bus we wanted never came so we took another that went approximately 20 miles per hour (if even that fast), was super crowded (at one point the two of us were sharing a seat big enough for only one person with a little girl who nobody would let sit down), so hot and dusty. We left our house at 4:30 AM and did not arrive in El Porvenir until 7:30 PM after 3 buses and and a rear-ending accident caused by a cow! We stayed with a volunteer who works there and had a lot of fun. Four of us went and watched UNC trounce MSU in the NCAA basketball final that night. Tuesday we went into La Ceiba and had a nice lunch and then tried to watch a movie but the theaters didn't open until night. Then came the rain, and boy did it pour. We left to Comayagua Wednesday morning while it was still raining. We got to Comayagua, ate at Wendy`s and then went to another volunteers site to spend the night about 30 minutes away. It was hot there. Thursday we returned to Comayagua and toured the religious museum and the bell tower of the cool looking cathedral (see pictures) and went through the Casa de Cultura. That night was when they started building the alfombras. They start between 9:00 and midnight and work all night to have them completed by 10:00 AM the next morning. Generally a family or an organization pays for the materials and friends and family make the alfombra.
Most of the alfombras are made of colored sawdust imported from Guatemala or El Salvador but some use other materials such as egg shells, rocks, glass, seeds, etc. in their designs. There were probably close to 50 alfombras this year. At around 10:00 Friday morning the small procession starts with children dressed as Jesus carrying crosses with crowns of thorns and fake blood, men wearing what look like KKK hoods, and people singing, and a band goes around the whole circuit of carpets, slowly destroying them one by one. So sad. All that hard work gone in a matter of minutes. But, it was beautiful to see and we highly recommend it to anyone in the area during Semana Santa. They do some amazing work. We finally returned home last Saturday and enjoyed a very low key Easter dinner on Sunday. It was nice to relax in our own home.
Next up: The Isla Del Tigre and the city of Amapala in the Pacific and then our trip back to California. Our Spanish will suffer.

So it's been awhile since we've written, I guess we've been busy! Shannon has been busy with a prevention program for sixth graders that focuses on self-esteem, plans for their futures, and learning about the harms of drugs and alcohol. She has been enjoying meeting lots of kids, but disappointed with the school system in general and the teachers. So far, all of the teachers have left when she and her counterpart arrive and they do not help out at all, and sometimes cannot be found at the end of the talk to come back to their classes. The kids also seem to spend more time at snack and recess than they do in the classroom. They wander in and out of the classroom as they like, generally not asking permission. Sometimes kids from other classes wander in. The classes are also huge, some as big as 50 kids! Last week she went to a class and during their snack, a group led by this girl in the shortest skirt ever, started practicing a dance routine that they were going to perform the following day at their father's day celebration. The dance involved lots of gyrating and grinding and was very scandalous, but just a normal dance here! Shannon is also busy with a dental hygiene program. Colgate donated the toothbrushes and toothpaste and she is working with three schools in first through third grade. She does the program in very poor areas and the children were so excited to receive their toothbrushes! It was almost like Christmas. She gives a talk about dental hygiene with the teacher each week and the kids have to brush their teeth everyday after their snack in school. This goes on for six months and they then receive another toothbrush to take home to continue their tooth brushing. It is a really great program and so important since many of the children do not have tooth brushes nor do they know anything about dental hygiene. Shannon also started her English classes. She has two classes of fourth, fifth, and sixth grade teachers. There was almost a riot on her first day of class because 40 teachers showed up and she told them that she could only have 30 in the class. It turned out that there was a group from Juticalpa which is a half an hour away and she told them that they were not allowed to be in the class since they live too far away for her to do the two required observations of them teaching English. They were not too happy but after a call to her boss and a promise that they can request a youth volunteer for their town, they calmed down and class resumed. Shannon has also been doing self-esteem talks in two classes at a private school. These are Fridays during the last two periods of the day so it is a bit tricky since the kids have pretty much checked out...she has been doing learning activities since they respond better to these, but that can still be hard in a class of 50 high school kids! She also started helping our site-mate with a pregnant teenager class that she will be taking over when Kendra leaves. It is basically a group for women under the age of 20 who are pregnant. It meets once a month and a nurse talks about a health-related topic and we she talks about a topic such as self esteem or drugs. Kevin has been busy too! He and a group of university students went to the mountain community in which he works and taught the community members how to plant a family garden. This was quite a process organizing the community and making the garden. While he was there he held a baby monkey, most likely captured out of the jungle, and Shannon was very jealous! Kevin was also on a safety and security panel for the group of new Peace Corps trainees. He talked about our robbery and how to stay safe in Honduras. He also went to a town about 3 hours away called Nueva Palestina because a church from North Carolina is helping them to make sand water filters and other environmentally friendly things and the university is thinking about becoming involved as well. He met a lot of people including a blind man who is an incredible guitar player. Last week three of the new trainees came to visit our site-mates to see what volunteers actually do in their sites. It was interesting to talk to the new trainees and be able to offer some advice to ease their worries. We (well everyone but Shannon since she had to work), went to the nearby caves and walked around in the park, nice and relaxing. This weekend we had some more visitors and ate a lot of good food and relaxed...it will be nice to be visitor-free for a little while!

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.