What I never expected I would get used to:

1. The ants being all over everything. Now I just brush them off--clothes, myself, my toothbrush (though I also thoroughly clean that!), even my food.
2. The sidewalks. They are so uneven, random and dirty. I used to think I would spend my entire ten months here staring at the ground to keep from tripping. Now I don't even have to think about it.
3. Spanish. I wish I could say I've learned a ton. I think that would be stretching the truth. I have grown much more comfortable speaking Spanish, and I understand a lot more. I can sit in church and understand the gist of the sermon. I can get around. 
4. Whistles, kisses, shouts, and terms of endearment. Latino culture is typically romantic, and men appreciate beauty. In Honduras, they are very vocal and obvious about that appreciation. I used to get angry and annoyed by all of the unwanted attention, but now I've learned to be polite about it (with a few exceptions). One of my Honduran friends told me that when guys don't say things to her when she goes out, she wonders if she is getting old! Haha. Just another part of the culture.
5. Not carrying a purse. Now I feel annoyed when I do have to carry one. It's such a bother. Most of the time I have my backpack with me, and it has everything I need. When I don't have my backpack, well--I have just learned to need less.
6. Not drinking the water from the facet. I used to be scared every time I brushed my teeth or took a shower. Now I don't even think about it.
7. The heat. I love my fan. And frozen smoothies. And water. The A/C in the classrooms in nice most of the time. However, when I am in a bus or boat with full A/C everywhere--I am absolutely freezing all the time! It's awful.
8. Not being able to talk to Steven. Now this isn't something I've liked getting used to, but I know it has strengthened our relationship and helped us grow as individuals. Also, few things are quite as beautiful as love letters in my opinion. This being said, I think he will be on Majuro sometime towards the end of May, and I am SO excited! 
9. The loud teachers I work with. Let's face it, sometimes the teacher room just gets a little rowdy when I'd rather have peace and quiet. But now I really like all the teachers I work with, loud personalities included :).
10. Not having a car or cell phone. To be honest, I love walking (except when I have tons of groceries) and I don't miss my cell phone.
11. Being surrounded by different cultures. I live in Honduras, my roommates are Jamaican, and one is British too. It was quite the bombardment of different cultures at first, but now they have become normal.
12. Being mostly vegan. I remember when I first found out Kadian was vegan. I remember before she came even thinking, "Oh man, let's hope she's not vegan or something else like that!" lol. I've been mostly vegan this year, and I don't even miss dairy anymore. I only eat it when it's there; I don't crave it.
13. Oxen walking by our front door. On a regular basis.
14. Baking with a oven that doesn't have labeled heat settings. I've determined that it only gets about 375 F on full heat. Oh, and I also never use a timer and often forget to look at the clock.
15. The fact that I'm living in Honduras. And now--my house here in Comayagua feels like home.

The Lucky Ones

I was at the Hogar yesterday. Whenever I am there, reality checks hit me. Yesterday, the kids had mangoes for afternoon snack. One of my students, Yenssy, made sure that I got one too. Several of the kids sat around me as we enjoyed the mangoes. I had never eaten one, not one of the big ones anyway, without cutting it. But they were all eating them like apples. So worries of stickiness aside, I soon had mango juice running down my hands and all over my face. My student kept sneaking little glances my way and grinning, probably over what a mess I was :).

In the midst of my mango mess, I heard a little girl crying. I asked what happened and then quickly got up to make sure she was alright. Pamela, one of my pre-k students, had fallen down. She cried openly, bracing herself against the stone wall. She was not looking for arms to run into, she was not asking anyone for help. She just cried, alone. I quickly ran to rinse my hands of mango, and squatted down to hug her and see how she was doing. Then she walked into the crowded room she shares with nine other small children to the bathroom. Here was this three year old, upset, yet still so independent. She seemed used to dealing with her own tears. She struggled to turn on the facet and splashed her face with cold water, still crying.

I have eight students that live at the Hogar. Seven of them (all but the boy) share the same room. The beds for the older ones are lined so close that you can't even walk between them. I sat down on one. You can feel every wire through the thin mattress. I feel guilty for even thinking that my bed here was hard. The little ones are still in large cribs. They have to wake up at 4am to all be ready and to school by 7am. They have two "aunties" that help them get ready in the morning. Sometimes my students get too tired to stay awake in class, but I cannot bring myself to wake them up. I'm not sure about all their laundry, but when I was there yesterday my pre-k students were washing their own clothes BY hand.

All of this takes a while to sink it, but that's not the hard part. The hard part is realizing that these kids, these orphans--they are the lucky ones. And sadder still, for many of them this orphanage, this hogar--is a better place than "home" ever was.

Broke.

In case being hit on by a creepy old man isn't bad enough...I just paid more than a jar of peanut butter to mail two letters and two postcards.

I've already withdrawn money from my US account twice this month. I think I officially have like 60 lempiras cash left to my name. For those of you not in Honduras, that's like $3. And I am supposed to pay this month's membership at the gym. Ha. Pay day, please come soon. I'm broke.

Finishing the Carpets & The Procession

The outer parts of the carpet went much faster.

Texture picture.

It was so good to see the progress.

Laugh so you don't cry. Haha. We were so exhausted and borderline miserable in the morning hours. Plus the smell of fried plantains was drifting our way...

Putting the finishing touches down.

We were finished with everything we could help with! By 8:30am, all that was left to do was stencil in the flower on the bottom as you can see the lady behind us doing.

They misted the carpets to keep them looking nice and holding together.

This carpet was much different--made with large wood chips, seeds, pine cones, and more sand.

This one had fresh flowers on it. The design was very pretty, but I would like to point out that they used stencils for the whole thing.

This one was by far the neatest carpet I saw! The outside may have been made using stencils, but they actually molded the inside with their hands to make 3D figures. Wow! They still had quite a bit of work to do.

This was the main float in the procession. The men looked so creepy! I guess it was especially bad since I associate the pointy hats with the KKK.

After the procession went over the carpet, kids would rush to collect the colorful sawdust for a souvenir.

It's a lot of hard work for such a brief moment..but it's a part of the big Catholic culture here. Definitely a ONCE in a lifetime experience for me.

Our finished carpets! What a lot of work. We got back to them before the procession came to trample them.

The streets were so crowded. After we got home, we showered and took nice long 5 hour naps. I think I'm still dealing with the after-effects of that sleepless night. Overall, we did it for the experience. I didn't realize what a big Catholic thing it was when we agreed to help. However, it was good to be able to help our friend Rosemari and it was neat to see such a rich cultural tradition first hand. I'm glad we did it, but I can't say if I'd want to do it again.

The Weekend Kelly & Nolvia Came to Town

Kelly has been working at an orphanage in Santa Barbara, Honduras since January. I found out she was there a month or two later when Union posted an article she had written about it for her hometown newspaper on their facebook. Ever since then, we had been trying to figure out when we could get together. It finally worked for her to come visit last Wednesday! She brought a girl from the orphanage, Nolvia (14 years old), that she has become close to. We had such a blast! Nolvia really liked the little tiny UNO cards Union sent to me.

Thursday I showed them around Comayagua. This is in front of the most famous cathedral located in the central park.

While I was showing them the different parks and cathedrals, we also stopped in a couple souvenir shops. It's so hard to shop for that stuff after you've been living here though!

Next we continued on with the grocery shopping and walked all the way to Mall Premier where the biggest grocery store is. This is at a little monument to mothers that is on the way.

Nolvia loves guava

For lunch we ate grilled cheese (although sadly the sliced cheese here doesn't really melt) with tomato soup and for supper we had lasagna, green beans, and garlic bread. We made a menu of lots of "home" food that Kelly had been missing after eating so much rice & beans at the hogar.

Thursday night was the night of the carpet making. At first it was pouring and Kelly and I were sort of hoping that it would be canceled. We were enjoying our night in, talking and hanging out. We tried to sleep for an hour before we had to leave, but then we ended up talking about our boyfriends instead. I didn't realize how much I've missed that! It was great. However, then we finally got a phone call around 12:30am. We got ready to leave, waited around for a taxi that was supposedly being sent, and then finally left on our own an hour later. We arrived around 2am. Some groups like the one above had already gotten pretty far.

Cia, Nelly, Kelly, and I waiting around to get started. After seeing the other groups and how much work it was going to be, the realization of "all night" began to set in for me.

Everybody jumped right in. They didn't really teach us, just told us to start. So there we were, padding down slightly damp dyed sawdust to a giant piece of paper in the middle of the street. Great. I was not happy to be there at first. I just kept thinking about how I really wanted to be in bed sleeping and that this was absolutely insane. However, a couple days later Kelly was reading through my notes from SM class and reminded me of something important--most other countries don't care about efficiency. They are relational. True indeed.

As we all got the hang of it and started making real progress it became a lot more fun. The time was passing so quickly, and we all wanted to finish in time for the procession.

As you can imagine, being hunched over, leaning, bending, straining, staring intently, stretching--all night--can really take it's toll. My shoulders got really sore!

Apart from sawdust, we also used other materials like sand, salt, and rocks.

By the time it was light out, we were all exhausted and really wanting to be done. We had to wait around for a while for the rocks to come.

See our dirty hands. We were a mess. Pictures can't truly capture it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Roatan!!!

This was the security for the "Galaxy Wave" yacht we took to Roatan. They scanned our bags and everything!

On the boat! Neither of us took the motion sickness medicine they hand out for free. I kind of regretted it later, but thankfully it didn't get worse than an upset stomach.

After grabbing a quick lunch, we went straight for the beach! We changed in the car. It was so relaxing. Sheena (Miss Myla's friend that we stayed with) brought floats. So Sheena, Kadian, Martika (Sheena's 21 year-old niece), and I all floated around and ate mangoes.

We thought that beach had been great, but the next day we went somewhere even prettier! Parrot Tree Plantation Resort lets people come in for free, and as long as you buy some food I think you can pretty much use whatever. The food was so expensive! Pretty normal priced for the US, but This is Honduras. Everything on the menu was even in dollars. We were hungry though, and it was good.

I meant to get in the water...but we were so sleepy! All of us girls napped on beach chairs while Marty (Sheena's 15 year-old son) and his friends went swimming in the pool.

This locations is known for the view.

See? They even have a restaurant :)

The next day we went to another tourist place that had a museum.

Let the turtles live!

And that night after going back to the best grocery store in Honduras (they had American food I haven't seen in 8 month, I got a little homesick), we went out for ice cream! Sheena and I both got chocolate & nut covered coconut ice cream, and Kadian enjoyed some grape sorbe.

This is the room we stayed in at Sheena's house.

Her house is so cute! And it's right by the ocean.

I spent a good lot of time in the hammock. I must get one to take home we me. A hammock = relaxation.

I loved taking naps out here.

This is us right before we left with Marty and their friend Rita that we just met that morning. We had such a fun and relaxing time on Roatan. Sheena was a wonderful hostess, and we felt right at home.