Sunday, July 26, 2009

quick update

So, in case it has made the international news, there has been a little more fun down here. PC HOnduras is really on top of investigating what is going on, and I have been talking to a lot of people letting them know how the situation is affecting the volunteers in this region. There has been a curfew for my town for the last 48 hours, and we don't know how long it will continue. They haven't enforced it today, so I have been able to get out a little bit, but no worries, all is very calm.

Jill

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

more pics- in reverse chronological order as always

Sara´s group, these are her kids and people throwing the balls.
My group, at the end of grounders, I set up an äround the world competition¨of throwing and catching. It got too heated in this group, so the troublemakers are siting down.

Other side of around the world. We were all very happy to see a lot of little girls come out to he try-outs. Women and girls tend to be excluded from a lot of athletic things here.


The batting station aka the popular station.



oops, loaded it twice




overview of some of my kids with the other two groups at once.





Getting ready. S and T are putting on the numbers. Not the greatest pics of S. The older gentleman in the back is a high school gym teacher who has already been priceless to us.

More numbers.


What do you do with that many kids at once?



Pic of aldea.


I love it when the clouds create a ceiling, it makes you think only that valley exists.





During the topo study.












long long long weekend

This past weekend, I went to S’s house for a taco dinner with her family. They are very nice, and her host Mom is very talkative which is awesome because it started quite the conversation in Spanish. I was so hungry though, while everyone else was cleaning up, I took the last tortilla to make a last minute taco.

The following days were full of a whole lot of nothing. I just sat back and relaxed a little.

Tuesday:

I went to a local tv station with the sitemates to do a little blurb about the baseball try-outs Saturday. I know, I know, I have said that the try-outs are two weeks away for a very long time, and finally they are actually going to happen Saturday. By the way, the date got changed on me, so part of the repetitive part is not my fault. Anyways, so we go, and S grabs a bunch of equipment to bring with us for props. We all thought we would go in there, say a few things, and then leave. No such luck.

We get set up (ok, this is a really small place, so the anchor guy is sitting in one room and we are in another) to talk, and instead of letting us say our speel and go, he starts doing this whole interview thing, which was interesting because he didn’t know much about baseball. Then he invites people to call in, and a few do, so we are answering questions from the general public at large.

We then went out to eat. Have you ever tried eating chop suey with a spoon? We then tried to iron-out the details of the try-outs.

Wednesday:

I was nervous for Wednesday because I had been told that engineers were coming to go over the topo study I had done. Hmm, my mind went straight to “what did I do wrong?” It turns out they just wanted a picture of the area to understand the data a little more. They told me they wanted to walk all the line which includes a lot of ups and very straight downs. I wasn’t looking forward to the walking. After we walked the area between the water source and where they tank will be, they weren’t interesting in walking more, especially when I pointed where we needed to walk, so we drove along the road which is where most of the main line will go. There wasn’t a whole lot of small talk, but I was talking about the project and what we had done without trouble, so that was something, maybe I am getting better at Spanish!

Later, I just kind of sat at home. I kind of wish I didn’t have tv because it is such a distraction, I don’t get much done because I watch tv all the time.

Thursday:

I went to an aldea called Quebrada Negra (Black Creek) to go over the topography that someone else had done and the engineers will be doing the design for. I felt good though, walking through the mountains. Later that day we visited my coworker’s property which is in the middle of nowhere, and this isn’t Massachusetts middle of nowhere, this is Honduras, where we had to walk a kilometer from the road to get there. From there we returned to town and went to Walter’s house for lunch. His daughter provided the entertainment. She is the one year old little girl in the photo a month and a half ago. She was happy and energetic, but didn’t go near anyone but her parents. She kind of just approached the rest of us, and then ran away. She was too cute with her toys though. If you grabbed a doll, and said “mine,” she would say no, and mine.

Friday:

This morning we went to find the field for Saturday, the baseball tryouts. This is a one time thing, apparently there is some problems in the neighborhood, so people don’t like to go there even though the field is pretty nice. A local gym teacher gave us a ride there since he knew where it was, and offered to let us use the field in the high school for practices so that we wouldn’t have to come back. That was nice of him, and later we got talking about the equipment we had, and what we needed, and he told us we can use the school’s stuff if needed (we got everything but bases for the Peace Corps). It’s good that we have someone who knows the game of baseball in Spanish, although a lot of the terms are actually in English.

Both my sitemates are sick right now. I am trying to stay healthy. I am covered in bites though, and am constantly itching. I try not to touch any of them, but there are so many spots that it is hard not to accidently hit one of them and send me into another fit of to itch or not to itch.

So, I just finished reading the book Escape which is about a woman who escapes from the polygamous FLDS cult. I was so angry at it, thinking how do people live like this, how don’t they just kill these abusers?! Anyways, it was good to read. It explains more of what the church was like before it went cultish and the battles of the cult and the court system. In case you are wondering, it boils down to money, the FLDS church is wealthy, and can put millions into a court battle, and most states don’t want to fight that.

The difference between this week’s entry and last week’s is my desire to write. Sometimes I am in a very social mood, I like to talk to everyone and I want to write down every detail, but then there are other times where I just keep to my room, doing work when it is there, and not writing a whole lot. So, some weeks you get a lot of detail and other weeks you don’t get a whole lot.

Saturday

What a day. It was the try-outs for the baseball team. The first kid showed up more than a half hour early, which kind of threw us off because Honduran time is half an hour to an hour late, not early! At time to leave, we had 30 with us, which was a good size crowd, but by time we started, we had 70 kids. Not joking, 70. It was really hard to get them not to be running everywhere and get organized to start. They all just wanted to play with all of the equipment. We had made numbers to pin onto each kid, so we could take notes on them, so we had to get them through the registration process and that took time, and during that time, the balls and bats were going all over the place.

We started by having them do two laps around the soccer field (we don’t have a baseball field, so you make due). Then we did some stretching, which I somehow managed to get myself in the middle leading the stretches, but I was trying to come up with some really basic things which they could see and do (I’m fairly certain the stretches were brand new to them) and trying to balance how much we should do. All this time, correcting the kids that are more interested in joking around. I have a feeling that sometimes my job will consist of being the enforcer, I don’t see T or S doing that, meanwhile I march right up to kids and intimidate them. I like that part.

After stretching we talked a little about what we are looking for, and some of the activities we would be doing that day. We explained that since it was a try-out, and this sport is brand new to most people a lot of what we would be looking for was attitude and the effort that they put forth. At the end of that we separated into three groups, and we accomplished this by putting the kids in one long line and have them count off by threes, with the kids saying their number (1-3) and then immediately running to that group. I was having such a problem with this one group of boys, they were more interested in watching everyone else than getting in line, so I had to sit there for a while directing them in a line, and by time I needed to collect the first few people who were in my group, they finally were standing there nicely.

My group did grounders. I explained what a grounder was, how to move to get a grounder, and a few other important items and then started rolling balls to them. I think my plan worked out pretty well, I put the kids in two lines, and rolled the ball to them, they had to throw it back, and then go to the back of the line. No one ever got too bored in line, because it was moving quickly enough. In this exercise I was looking for how well they were paying attention, if they went to their ready stance, if they moved to the ball, if they got the ball in the glove, if they used the second hand to cover the glove, and how well they threw the ball back to me. Now, like I said, baseball was entirely new to a lot of these kids, in fact there were many times when I had to correct a child because they put the glove on the wrong hand. My first group was interesting because I had a lefty. Now, we actually do have a lefty glove, but trying to explain that it was for her, and that everyone else needed to use the other two gloves was interesting. Eventually it worked out.

Now, the interesting part was that we had the people come from the local news channels. Now, don’t picture your local news van, picture one guy with a mic and another with a small hand-held video recorder. So, we are going through doing the activity, and I hear “Hey you,” (sometimes Hondurans know just enough English to piss me off- how rude is hey you) and “habla espanol?” I said more or less, but that I was busy with my group, yeah well, they didn’t take no and we did a short interview anyways, then they went to pester everyone else.

By the third group that came to my station, I realized they were not doing the shuffle motion to get a grounder, so this time before we started, I had everyone do it. It was actually a lot of fun. So, there are these two lines of about ten kids each, shuffling from left to right, and then I add in the touch, so that they pretend to touch the ground. So there I am in front of them saying “to the right… touch. To the left… touch.” I am pretty sure one of the news people caught this too.

At the end of the try-out, everyone was tired, and most of us kind of cranky. In the end we lost five out of our eleven baseballs. The first practice will consist of a long lecture on how we only have the bare minimum to practice with and that there is no more, so we can’t play if we don’t have all of the equipment. During the last group I lost my cool with a few of our “volunteers,” they had been helping S a little, but by this point they had given up on that and we trying to see how hard they could hit the baseballs, assuming they could make contact with the bat. I just turned around and yelled at them. Later, S told me she was very happy to hear me do that, she was trying to very nicely tell them they shouldn’t be playing with the equipment, I just told them no and they needed to return it to its place, and I was going to be very angry if we lost anything. See, my Spanish is improving to the point where I can yell at people.

Anyways, you figure that was enough for a day. Nope, not even half was through. I was going to visit a friend in a town relatively close by, but because of the bus schedule, I went home, threw a couple of buckets of cold water over me, changed, packed a bag, and was at the bus stop in twenty minutes. It was kind of crazy. At this point, it is 1:30pm, and I haven’t had lunch after being in the sun and working all morning. I make the bus to the larger city, but got in with only five minutes to spare, before my next bus left. From there we take that bus from the city to the road’s turn-off, where there is another bus waiting to take people to my friend’s town. A friend who lives in the city waited for me, and so we rode in together. We get to town, and had called M for directions, and she said get off at the local cooperative, and then had directions for after that, but we didn’t see the signs for the cooperative, so we ask the bus driver and his wife who works collecting the money while he drives, where it was. They gave us two answers and finally just asked where we were going. We tried saying we had directions from the cooperative, and then they were just like, where is your final destination, and that’s when we did it, we told them we were going to the gringa’s house. This works by the way. In two minutes we were off the bus and in the right direction. We even got input from the back of the bus. See, M lives in a small town, and everyone knows where she lives, or in what area of town at least.

First order of business was to eat. I was hungry, and it was almost dinner time. We went out as the gringo parade (at this point there are 4 of us). That night we went out with some of M’s friends. In all it was good.

You figure the next morning I would have been tired enough to sleep in, but there was enough sunlight coming through that I was up by 6:30am. At 7am, we were all up and looking for food. We finally found one place that was open and went in to eat. By 9am those of us visiting were on buses headed out of town. This is where I saw my first kid throwing up in the bus, the first of many I am sure. Then, on my bus to my site, we got pulled over by the police. Ok, that sounds bad. They have these areas where the police normally are, and most of the time they just motion for you to slow down. Occasionally, they motion for someone to pull off to the side of the road and they check the driver’s license. This time they did it with the bus. One police officer came on board and said all women and children stay on, the men get off, and everyone needed to break out their IDs. The woman police officer on the bus apparently didn’t see me when she made the announcement, so she goes to work, with the first two women not having their IDs (wasn’t a problem) and then took a double take when seeing me. The whole process was over in five minutes, and we continued on to town.

I got off the bus thinking, I needed to shower and nap, and hear “Hola Julie,” as I am walking, and decide to turn around on the off chance this is for me (my name is Julie here, it is just a lot easier). It was two of the kids from the baseball try-outs, and I was like, hey, this is good, someone said hi to me on the street. I was also confused on when the try-out was because Saturday was long enough in my head to be like three days in one, so when I realized it was only 24 hours later, I as like, wow. Then, on the street I saw two more people I know, this time through work, and I felt that I am finally starting to integrate into the community. Later that afternoon I tried to nap, but every time I actually fell asleep someone would inadvertently wake me up.

Then I met up with T and S as we tried to make our list of who made the team. We just kind of went through on who was really good at our stations, and we eventually made our list of 25. This part actually went a lot smoother than expected. It stinks to have to make a limit, but 70 is far too many and we don’t have the time or the equipment to try and do three teams. It stinks, but that’s just the way it is.

Monday:

Man did I not want to work on Monday. It was funny though, because on Thursday my coworker told me he didn’t think I would be doing the topo study on Monday, so it would probably be Tuesday. At this point, I didn’t know, so I called him to see if I was being dropped off or no, and I got a confusing answer, but the point was I needed to go to the office on time. At that point I was in my pajamas and hoping that I didn’t have to get dressed and could go back to sleep.

As it turns out, I didn’t do a topo study, we went into a small town to do a survey type thing. Before leaving though, Walter told me what we were doing, but I didn’t know the word, so I started thinking about it as I dropped my topo equipment at my house, and all I got was secuestro, but that couldn’t be it (secuestro=kidnapping), and because I wasn’t sure what letter was first, I couldn’t look it up in the dictionary. We get out to the aldea, and we split into groups. I was with someone from work, K, and she did the first study, which was good because I could follow along and understand the survey as we went. By the end of the day I had done more than half of the surveys. It was good to have a Honduran with me though, because some people just see a gringa and think they will never understand me, so she could say it, or clarify something for them. There were a few questions I didn’t understand, so if they told me they didn’t understand, I was like, well, I don’t even know what this question is, so she popped in at the same two questions every time. It was good to be able to kind of see and meet so many people in the community though.

That night we called all the kids who made the team. T has a land-line at her house so we used that to call the other land lines and save minutes on cell phones. It got interesting, sometimes when you called and asked for the kid, you had to repeat yourself several times, and then just say you wanted to speak to the kid that went to baseball. T, S and I took turns calling the kids. It was funny though because for one reason or another, the other two people in the room would be laughing while you are on the phone (which is also known as the test for your Spanish) so you have to try to ignore them and still get your point across. At one point it got really funny though, S called a little boy, and told him he made the team, and he asked “what about my brother?” She was stuck, and at that point said well, only you made the team, and S is a sweetheart so saying that was really hard for here. So, she gets off the phone, and tells us this and the first question was, was he one of the twins? Sure enough, we had picked one twin. We then make the decision that we couldn’t separate 9 year old twins, so she calls back, asks for the other twin, and tells him she was joking before and just wanted to make sure he got his own phone call. Then he blurts out, “what about my cousin?” This time we had to make a hard line and say no. I remember when we were going through, we made a point of saying that the one was a twin so we needed to accept the two or none, but apparently we didn’t look over our list well enough at the end.

Tuesday:

This time I knew what was going on, so I understood what we were doing in the aldeas, and was very glad that I live almost next door to my office. This is because instead of me doing to the office at 8am and waiting until everyone was ready, someone came and knocked on my door to let me know it was time to go. Much more efficient for me.

We get to the aldeas and this time I pair up with one of the high school girls. Now, I am not sure exactly what the whole situation is, but what I understand is that they are kind of in the business track at school, and therefore are observing a business. I thought this was for a day the first time I met them, but that was at least two weeks ago. Because we are doing surveys, having extra bodies helps. I pair up with one that I have gotten along very well with in the past. I learned that once you learn logic in one language, it transfers over. These girls had received a small training session with the survey to understand it and know what they should be asking and how they should be asking the question. When I went out yesterday, the other woman and I didn’t have this, so figured it out on our own. So, we start today and I am helping this girl through the questions and asking myself how she did this yesterday. Then later it was funny, she mixed up interview and interviewee so Walter told me I should teach her Spanish. It was funny.

Earlier in the day I was joking with Eduard who is around my age, and made the unfortunate decision to make a comment about women drivers. Yes, that myth exists here too. So, in all, there was a lot of joking around today.

Ok, not sure if I wrote this or not, but here it goes: If anyone has any old baseball equipment that they are not using (mostly gloves and balls) please feel free to send them on down. Having 25 kids on your team but only 9 gloves is a challenge, and those of you who now have grown children but might have old kid gloves, you can just send them this way. We have enough bats, so gloves shouldn´t be too expensive to ship.

Saturday, July 11, 2009

Tales from the road

I spent three days in the aldeas last week and the following was originally written in my notebook.

I did not want to wake up Wednesday morning due to all night nightmares. I was leaving for Buena Vista (an aldea) at 7:00am, and had to drag myself up. It was funny because the day before Walter and I kind of argued about the time we should leave, and I lost, so the time was set for 7am, but don’t you know he shows up at 7:30am, the time I wanted! I should just learn to not be ready on time, because it is very rare for things to start on time here.

Anyways, we drive to the community with Walter’s brother who provides non-stop commentary on world politics. Ok, so American newspapers normally have a political stance, but are normally at least kind of subtle about it; Honduran newspapers are not subtle at all. So how do you call yourself an expert when that is all you have to go on? Maybe its just that I don’t like know-it-alls.

So, the interesting thing about the ride was the fact that we gave a few teachers a jalon (ride) to their schools. These women live in my town and every morning they have to hitch-hike to get to work. Needless to say, their classes don’t always start on time because they don’t have reliable transportation. Later we picked up more teachers trying to get to work. One got a 20 minute ride and then had to walk an additional hour to get to the school. Welcome to life in the aldeas! Another thing, I saw a well-groomed dog today. Very, very rarely you might see one in town or in a city like that, but in an aldea, I didn’t know it was possible!

We get to town, and start talking to the community contacts, and then Walter and his brother leave. At one point I yawned and wiped my eyes because I was still tired, and he asked me if I was going to cry because I was being dropped off in the aldeas by myself. I felt like reminding him that I live in Honduras right now, and my family in the states. Comparatively, this is easy. I then walked some of the distribution system and realize that whatever has been bugging my stomach lately does not like climbing hills, as I almost threw up. We walk for a while, and well before the end I told them that was enough, I had an idea what kind of terrain we were going to pass. This system already exists, but they have some problems so I am going to try to give them a design to improve the system.

So, I return back to the house that will be my home for the next few days, and was falling asleep in my plastic chair. I felt really bad because I could see the Grandma and daughter or daughter-in-law were making fish, and I told them I don’t like fish. Hey, I am willing to eat pieces of fish, but whole fried fish, scales included, no thank you. She then makes me a huge amount of spaghetti. Now, the thing about the Honduran spaghetti, is that is a mixture of ketchup and Crisco. Not joking, if you want to know the pain I was experiencing trying to eat that, well, just mix yourself up a batch of that. I did try to eat as much as possible, although to be honest I ate more of the rice under the spaghetti than the spaghetti itself.

I feel the need to explain rural Honduran stoves. They are wood stoves, without chimneys which traps most of the smoke in the house. This house is actually rather nicely set-up as it has two large “windows” that are right above the stove. But if the wind blows in the wrong direction, it all goes back into the house. I am sitting here writing this in my notebook and every once in a while I get a huge puff of smoke in my face. This is a large health concern in rural areas. The smoke is awful and tends to affect women more than men because they are the ones that spend more time over the stoves. The stoves are also very inefficient. Watching the stove today, I could see that part of the fire was escaping from under the stove to the side, which is not heating anything, and is a waste of energy. This stove also has 2 or 3 large holes on top to set pots and pans in. When you are not using one hole it is just a giant escape vent for the heat energy. These people have to forage for wood to use and then end up wasting a lot of it through inefficiency. You may remember me talking about making stoves during training, those stoves had several advantages: better insulation to prevent loss of heat through the sides and bottom, a small/more closed off area to put wood in (which eliminated the fire coming back out that way)and one large piece of metal to pots and pans on, versus empty holes when not being used. The most important part of those stoves was probably the chimney though, which forces almost all of the smoke out of the house, and since it escapes over the roof, very little would be blown back into the house. I just don’t know if I am willing to bring up the subject and have to organize everything, even if they like the idea of building new stoves. I doubt that they would like the idea of destroying their working stove just to make another one. It would be funny though if someone brought up the subject of heat transfer which would be the disadvantage of the stoves we made in training.

Wednesday afternoon I had to take a nap I was so exhausted. I woke up and felt like I was in an oven, with hot air not moving at all, even with an open window just over my head. I sat there debating what to do for a while, I could get up and be social outside with the people that I could hear there (not my specialty) or I could get up and read. I did try to be social, but it didn’t work so well, and I read. Now, the house confused me for a while because it was wired for electricity, but I had yet to see one on. This meant that I was trying to read by the little light that was left, and had to go search for areas that were in the right angle with the setting sun to still have light, but the rain overhead made this difficult.

Dinner. However did I skip dinner? So, the Grandma asked me if I like some food (didn’t know what it was), and I said yes I did. Then she asked me if I liked eggs, and again I said yes. Keep in mind here that I went on a 15 year period that I didn’t eat eggs, which ended a year ago. So, later I was called into the kitchen to eat, not knowing what was on the menu. Eggs and beans, and had the portion been a lot smaller, I would have been happy. I start eating, and find out the tortillas were pretty gross, how do you mess up a tortilla? After eating half the beans, I start the eggs, and my first thought was what is this? Well, it was salt, a lot of it, but covered with oil which had to be licked off before you got to the salt, and that funness wrapped in a bad tortilla. I was so happy that I brought gum with me to cancel out the bad taste in my mouth.

When I was done with dinner, and writing the above in my notebook, the grandma told me I could go to bed if I wanted to. Now, although I don’t know the exact time this happened, I estimate it was between 5 and 6pm, because it was still light out and the sun goes down pretty early around these parts (my cell phone was missing in the darkness of the house at that point). At that point, even if I was able to go to sleep, I would have woken up in the middle of the night with nothing to do. I haven’t been able to fall asleep before 11pm for the past few weeks, so that was kind of out of the question, although I didn’t know what else to do in the continuously fading light.

Like I said, the house was wired for electricity and even had a tv and dvd player, but for the longest time there was no electricity, which confused me. They then threw on the one light over the pulperia (very small convenience store) and I read in there for a while. Then they threw on the generator (didn’t see that before) to prep to watch to Hondurans vs USA soccer match. I then force my way in, because hey, it was something to do, and I was the only woman in there with between 15 and 20 guys trying to scramble for a chair or a good wall-leaning space. My highlights of the game: The US had a lot of chances, and going into half-time the teams were tied at 0. I was starting to get mad thinking, “how many chances do you need before you score?! And how about a little teamwork, this is not an individual sport!” Then, in a marvelous act of teamwork, four US players worked together to score. I wanted to celebrate, but kept it in because I was way outnumbered by Hondurans who weren’t looking too pleased. One thing you may not know is that Spanish fútbol announcers normally scream “GOOOOOOLLLLL” for about 60 second after a goal. This time though, they had managed to get out “the united states scored,” before I realized the ball had gone in the net.

Interesting thing about half-time, the room was invaded by the women, who were all pushing to watch the novellas (soap-operas). Then they left when the game was turned back on. One little girl stayed for a bit and somehow was sitting in an adult chair while adult men were sitting on kid chairs. When she left it took a few minutes for someone to take her seat, which was in prime location in front of the tv. This would not have happened in my house. First of all, the girl would have been forced into a kid seat (because adults would not have been balancing on kid seats) or been sitting on someone;s lap; then when she got up (assuming she did land the adult seat), it would have been a flat out race to get to the seat from everyone else in the room.

After the game, the power went back out, and I finally went to bed. What I didn’t know was that it gets cold in the mountains at night. In my house in town I sleep in a tank top and shorts almost all the time, with only a sheet over me if anything; in the mountains I was in the lonely long sleeve shirt I had there, which was only packed as an emergency measure, and under a fake fleece blanket. I don’t think all of me was warm at one time that night.

I woke up and had no idea what time it was, but could hear other people up outside, and still went back to bed. Eventually I did get up and there were a ton of people outside (I have no idea how many people live here, there is always a lot of people around), and they were all ready to go. I was still up, fed, and ready to go at 7am. That’s quite a feat for me; I miss the days when I was a morning person.

We started at the water tank, and I felt much better than I had the day before. I kind of felt bad though because Walter told them I need to of the same size barras, which can mean planks of wood, or just sticks. So, two people brought up these ten foot 2X4s. and then I had to be like, nope, I need branches cut to my eye level. They actually came out perfectly sized too, I was impressed. How the abney level works is you put the level over the stick, look through it to the top of the other stick (which is the same height as your stick) and then take the reading of the degree change between the two, so there would be a lot of bending down uncomfortably if they were too small. I later learned though that they used a very dense wood and therefore the guys were carrying around a very heavy sticks all day.

I then proceeded to get all confused very quickly. I was told how the branches worked the first day, and then got a completely different story the next day. The guys all learned their jobs quickly though, which helped a lot.

One of my first few days here, S told me that the people at the JAM would probably treat me like a princess, because they had always been so helpful to her whenever she went by. Well, they have been outdone with the people in this community. Some guy carried around my backpack all day; when it was time to leave, I grabbed my bag and they all seemed bewildered that I was planning on carrying it, so before I had even left the house-area, the backpack was gone. This did lead to some funny times though, like a relay race of people trying to get my cell phone to me before it stopped ringing. Other times they would make the easiest route between point a and point b very clear for me. I wonder if Walter told them I have a slight tendency to slide and fall down. There were times where they pointed me around the barbed wire fences, which was a pain because I have a barbed wire fences crossings count going on. I wonder what their reaction would be to knowing that I have that count going, I think they would just be surprised that someone would do something so stupid, they do it all the time.

Back on track, sometimes I get mad at this whole Princess thing, I have always been more the tom-boy than the princess-type. But, hey, I am lazy and have developed a penchant for slipping and sliding. The feminist side does come out every once in a while, but not often and only when it’s assumed I can’t do something.

About food, the women here somehow thinks I am a six foot tall, 250 pound guy. Finally, before dinner, I told her I can’t eat that much. She is also keyed in on my love of cola drinks. Like I said, they have a small store, which includes Pepsi. Go me! I’m surprised though, it’s been two days without chocolate and I am not going into withdrawal.

There are several dogs around here, and while before I thought that they were cute, they have just lost that title. Before: these dogs seemed mild-mannered, and spend most of the time trying to get into the kitchen. One puppy has even tried to start fights with the chickens, which is very cute. Sitting here writing this, the dogs just went nuts when these two horses (2 horses, 0 humans) came walking down the street. If you are wondering why horses would just walk down the street, you obviously don’t know Honduras. Anyways, the dogs just went nuts. I wanted the horses to kick them, but they just ran back to where they came from.

Talking to T and S, it has been noticed that the people right on the edge of town seem poorer than those in the aldeas. Here is my thinking: looking around, I have seen pigs and chickens (=food), and you can walk in the hills and find all kinds of fruits. Firewood is also easier to come by, and you don’t buy coffee, you just reserve enough for yourself when you pick it each year. Theoretically, medical access is easier closer to town, as is education. Side note: Aldeas have Centros Basicos which are schools from first grade to sixth. Depending on the size, they may only have one room with one teacher for everybody. The high schools are in larger towns only. There is also another program though, it is a government radio show, where you listen in to learn, and eventually take the test to get your diploma.

Potty mouth: Ok, so interesting subject about doing topo studies: using the bathroom. In all seriousness, this is something you need to consider. While it is great to drink all kinds of water, and be well hydrated, this has a consequence; you have to use the bathroom. Sometimes you pass by houses where you can ask to use their latrines, and sometimes there is nothing there. I was never adverse to going in the woods in the States, but all those hiking trips didn’t come with guys serenading you and telling you that they love you, and so I was worried I was going to have an audience.

It feels good to be tired after a hard day’s work. To be honest, my eyes are very tired. All day long of looking through the abney level and reading it’s tiny little numbers. I normally wear a hat and sunglasses a lot because I don’t like to squint, so doing it all day hurt my eyes, then coming home the smoke of the stove in my eyes isn’t helping mattes. That’s why I let us stop at 4pm. Yeah right! I’m not sure that they would have continued. Hey, don’t call me lazy, we started at 7am and had a ten minute lunch break from walking all day long.

Dental work: A lot of people here don’t have all their teeth. I’ve met some people without any teeth. In Pespire, a kid asked a friend of mine if we all had our teeth replaced with real looking ones, because he didn’t understand we still have our original teeth. In the house now, the grandmother has quite a lot of gold in her mouth, even gold stars on her front teeth. I know that in the states, you can get that kind of thing done to have more bling, but is there a real purpose for this, because she doesn’t run in the same crowd as those people.

The church has started. Music can be heard, although all I hear is hallelujah a lot. Later it changed to what I would call ho-down music.

So the thing about bathing was that I didn’t want a million people to know that I would be in the shower (stall outside the house), so I waited until most people had left. This also meant the sun was almost completely down, and there wasn’t a lot of light in the stall. Cold bucket baths are so much fun. True story: a while ago, I read an article in Backpacker magazine with tips from a woman who has done a lot of mountaineering and crossed one of the poles, and she said the best way to stay warm is to take a bath every night to rinse off the sweat and grime, even if it is only a handful of water. It works wonders. I was much warmer afterwards, even though I had used cold water. I just wanted to pass on that wisdom.

I stayed warm well into the movie. What movie you ask? One of the Rambo movies. Not joking. Kind of funny how many people cleared out after a little while, although to be honest they also had to contend with subtitles which ruins all but the best of movies. When it became time for bed I found out I wasn’t going to be sleeping in the same bed as the night before, which was fine, I am flexible. The Grandma made it sound like I would be sharing a bed with her and her husband, which would not be acceptable. A little while later a spare mattress comes along and I sleep in the living room.

The next morning was a little harder, and we got off to a 7:30am start because I was slower. With only one returning guy from the day before, I was worried how long it would take us to get in the groove. I didn’t have any problems though, although the guy who offered to hold my notebook while I wrote wasn’t there, so I felt kind of overworked (not). At one point pretty early on it starts to rain, so I get my raincoat out and put it over the notebook, which left me high and wet. No one else had rain coats, so we were freezing together. I had to pass over the notebook and raincoat as a package deal, which was interesting, because it always managed to get wrapped around itself and I had to fight to get to the notebook.

We finished early that day (before noon) and we headed back to the house. I was a little confused on how I was getting back to town, and I was given an expression that was new to me as an answer, so I sat around for a while and wrote a lot of the above.

In the street (think dirt logging road) a bunch of girls are playing, ones that are like ring around the rosey and London bridge is falling down. Oh, now we have switched to tug-of-war. The little girls won, but were rewarded by falling down when the older girls let go. It’s such a Peace Corps moment, you can see the little girls are the same as little girls anywhere, but in a different atmosphere. I wish I brought my camera.

Wasn’t that a nice ending statement?! The adventure continues. I was summoned into the kitchen, apparently what I thought was my lunch turned out to be my mid-morning snack and I got fed again. She asked me if I like milk. I said yes (when will I learn) and got a huge glass of piping hot milk. I also got some really good pancakes. They had a lot of butter in them, and after the milk and them, I couldn’t handle anything sweet, I would have even turned down chocolate.

Let me talk a little more about one of the kids here. He is about 1.5 years old. I guess this because he is bigger than Walter’s daughter, but still only has Mama in his vocabulary. Most of the time someone is walking this boy around my his armpits, and most of the time it is one of the little girls who really aren’t much bigger (he is a chubby little one). He always has a bunch of food in his tiny little hands. He is really cute, and really confused by me. Adults understand that there are differences in people, but he is too young to get how someone can be so different and still be human. Its cute. Ok, bathing process just started, and he is squirming to dive into the water while his mother is trying to get his clothes off, and now he is trying to eat the soap.

Back in town:

I ended up getting my ride home and was in town by 4pm. I was tired, but knew that I should wait to sleep. I slept for 12 hours, and have been tired all day. I am hoping for another 12 hours tonight. I haven’t done much today, a lot of time has been devoted to writing this.

Take care,

Jill

Monday, July 6, 2009

Don´t try to read all at once

This is a long one people!

Food:
Whoa, so I may have made mention to the fact that I do put a decent amount of sugar in my oatmeal in the morning, and I have since been proven wrong. I am still WAY short of using enough to be called “Honduran level.” This evening as I was preparing my dinner, our housekeeper (more to come later on this) made an oatmeal drink for my host mom. Well, while I put a little less than a tablespoon of sugar in my bowl of oatmeal, she put two heaping tablespoons in a glass. Seriously, it was almost a 2:1 ratio oatmeal to sugar, even my Mom commented on how much sugar there was. From now on I won’t feel bad about adding sugar to my oatmeal.

Also, when I was in Las Barrancas, I got a bag full of oranges one day (they grow on trees, and like mangoes and bananas are cheap here) from one of the people with me. He just had some kid he knew cut down a bunch. So, when I got home I put the bag on the counter and left to do something, and later that night, the bag was gone. A small search of the fridge did not yield my oranges. Then today I found the bag under other fruits and veggies. So, after asking Maria (housekeeper) how one makes orange juice from oranges, not joking I asked, I enjoyed a nice glass of fresh squeezed OJ. And, since I have the bag and can now make it myself, I will be enjoying great natural juices the next few days! Beat that.

Baseball:

In two weeks we will be having the baseball tryouts. Should be interesting, because the three of us all know the basics of baseball, but that’s about it. Also, we have no idea how many kids may show up, anywhere from 20 to 150. It’s just going to be crazy with all the kids going around. Every year there is a national tournament with all the kids from PC run teams, which is in March, so we have a few months to prepare for that. If anyone has any suggestions on how to entertain kids during baseball practice, feel free to pass this information along. We are planning on being a little strict on the kids (translates to very strict here in Honduras but very relaxed in the States) because part of this is to teach them responsibility. Strictness is usually not something you see here, so we’ll see how it goes.

Mosquitos:

The other day I was in the office and I squashed a mosquito on my arm. Luckily enough I killed it before it bit me, but it was so dirty that I had a perfect impression of the bug in dust on my arm. Weird. Just now I killed another on (rainy season = mosquitos) and was unlucky enough to see my blood coming out of it when it died. Oh well, but I still consider it a just act because it’s the principle.

Spanish:

Now, if you want to learn Spanish, don’t rely on this blog, but here are a few more cultural words you might find useful: (I just scanned through the old blogs and didn’t see where I typed some words before, so bare with me if I repeat some)
Monton (moun-TON): adj. a lot. Examples: You have a monton of dirty laundry.
Barbaribad (bar-bar-E-bad)- really only used in the phrase “Que (K) barbaribad!” Basically, how awful, that’s a shame, or what bad luck; something along those lines.
Bien (bee-N)- now, those of you who have studied Spanish are thinking “this is easy, it means good.” Well, you are only half right. It also means very (muy is not commonly heard around these parts). Example- that food is bien tasty.
Más o menos- more or less.
Jalon- (ha-lone) verb and noun, meaning hitch-hike/ride.
Buen provecho (ba-wayne pro-va-cho)- ok, it is the greeting you give someone when they are eating. It is also the trademark slogan for Wendy’s down here.
Bastante- enough. But also, hmm, how to explain. For instance, I will tell people that I speak Spanish, or bastante espanol. You can also tell people to knock it off by that’s bastante.
Ya- already. But it is used much more frequently than in English, for example: Ya voy- I am going or I am already going, Ya lo tengo- I have it (I already have it).

Observations:

Right now I am watching the Tampa Bay Devil Rays versus the Toronto Blue Jays (baseball) on TV to augment my Spanish baseball vocabulary. Well, I have seen a lot of highlights in a commercial (one commercial played many times) of a Twins player who jumped in front of his teammate to catch a ball. Now, it was very dramatic because they both had to jump again the back wall to get it, but doesn’t that show a complete lack of teamwork. Did he not trust his teammate, or was it he wanted the pride and glory for himself? I didn’t see the whole scene, but I see a lack of communication at the very least going on.

Second, so the game is in Spanish, but the technical terms are más o menos in English. This does not help my goal too much. I have noticed this with tennis as well. I know there are more terms in Spanish, because a brief mention of the match on another news channel used Spanish terms. So, I hope I don’t embarrass myself too much in front of the kids.

When every group leaves, they fill out what is called an end of service survey. Mostly this is for fun, and has categories like: best bus ride, worst bus ride, best Honduran fashion (my vote goes to women with low waist pants and high waist undies), etc. It also has biggest irony. Now, irony is one of the most commonly misused words, and I believe my example is a misuse too, but I don’t care. So far my biggest irony is that I text message more now that I am in Peace Corps than I ever did in the states. Actually, cell phones are just as common here as in the states, and I have a better price for text messages, including that after I send 10 in one day, I don’t pay for anymore that day. Think about that. So, after I hit 10 on any one day (doesn’t happen all that often, but occasionally I make the mark), I just start texting everyone I know because it doesn’t cost me a thing. One of my friends the other day hit his 10 at 8am, and had all day long of free texts. Your first few are fairly cheap too, not like the crap I was getting charged in the states.

Morning:

Now, I remember when I was a morning person, and it was a good thing. This has since changed. This morning I wanted to get up early to watch some Wimbledon action (ESPN has decided that they shouldn’t replay it at night which was a bad decision if you ask me), and it was so hard to get up. I hit the snooze three times, and considering that my alarm clock is across the room, I had to get up out of bed, hit the snooze button and then go back to sleep. Then I am in the shower and the water goes off. Here is how my water situation works: we normally have water until 7:30am, but we have a cistern, which holds water so we can use it and have running water when we are not receiving water, you just have to turn on the generator type thing to pump the water from the tank to the showerhead. Well, I had noticed the sound of the generator when I got in the shower, but whoever was using it didn’t notice the sound of my shower when they turned it off, so I got to rinse the conditioner and soap off with cold bucket water. It was a great beginning to the day.

This is all after my really weird dream. I went to Teguc with a friend (keep in mind that I am not currently allowed into Teguc) to do some shopping. She is going around and buying a lot of dresses and blouses (which is totally unlike her). After a few hours some friends join us in the mall, which is about the time that I remember we were explicitly told the mall was off-limits in an email (this is real). Wouldn’t you know a minute later the country director shows up, but she doesn’t see me or the first friend so we go running out, and decide to take a taxi to the bus stop and get back to our sites ASAP. Well, I decide I want ice cream, so the taxista (taxi driver) takes us to this ice cream shop. First, the prices listed have dollar signs and L for Lempiras, so I was like, how do you sell ice cream that expensive ($20). Turns out, it is in Lempiras, and I decide to get some ice cream, but it turns out to be the worst ice cream on the planet, actually I didn’t even try it in my dream because the making of the ice cream was such a weird process. It’s here that the alarm clock when of for the first time. So, as you can tell, I have just had an odd morning, which included making a giant bowl of oatmeal because I somehow misjudged how much I was adding, although I have noticed that oatmeal is not that filling, I might need another one.

What else have you done before 8am you are wondering? Well, I have also had to recheck a bunch of calculations I did last night. One of my first thoughts when I actually decided to get up this morning was that I did not properly think through the calcs I did last night, and therefore, they were wrong. This was quite the concept at so early an hour, and it took me a while before I realized how I could fix this, but I was impressed that thought came to me so early in the morning.

I did some work!!!!!!!! I know, the rest of you out there are begging for some time off and I am happy I did an hour’s worth of work. This is what happened. I went into the office this morning, secretly hoping that we would be taking off for the aldeas, and eventually found out that my coworker wanted me to redo the drawings I have of the Las Barrancas system into quadruled notebook paper. So, I went home and did this. It was something so simple, yet I was working. How nice. I also got presents (not really) from work. A regular notebook to take points in the topo studies, a quadruled notebook to do more accurate drawings, and a day planner. Now, day planners here are not the cheap plastic things I used to buy for myself in the college days, I have only seen really nice ones here, and that is what I got. Why? I have no idea. I don’t have that much on my plate that I need to organize at all really. But, I am in the mood to write today (as if you haven’t already noticed that), and so I was happy because I could put all kinds of random junk in there. I have already filled two pages of journal today as well. Maybe someone will be lucky enough to get a letter written to them. And to anyone who would like to receive a letter from your favorite Peace Corps volunteer, I’ll give you a little pearl of wisdom that I was once told: “You have to write a letter to get a letter.” It’s beautiful in its simplicity. Seriously though, it makes my day when I get a letter.

What else can I write about today, well how about the fact that Wimbledon is still on? Because it is! Leighton Hewitt and Andy Roddick are battling for a space in the semifinals of the most prestigious grand slam. They are extremely equal in the way they are playing today. Now, something you may or may not know about tennis, the guys play best of five sets, so whoever wins three sets first, wins the match. Now, each set has to be won by winning six games and winning by at least two games. Well, you are asking, what happens if they both have six games? Very smart question. Then they go into a tiebreak. In the tiebreaker for the second set, they went beyond the normal point range because they are that equal today. This is good news for me because it pretty much means this is going to be a LONG game, and I can watch tennis for a long time. Now that the little bit of work for today is done, I get to have free time, although I have already scheduled myself for some serious Spanish studying later in my handy dandy very slick looking day planner.

More on the spiffy day planner of mine. In the beginning it has all the government holidays of the countries in Latin America, and a listing of select hotels in the countries as well. Now, all the writing in the planner (called an agenda here, but imitate a cat’s hiss when you pronounce the g) is in Spanish, except for the map of the world in the back which is in English. Guess I won’t be learning my country names in Spanish that way.

So, the tennis match has gone to five sets. Now, as good as tennis is to watch, it is also good to fall asleep to. So, every once in a while, I open my eyes and get very confused as to whom I am cheering for because the players have switched sides. Now, in Wimbledon, it is customary to wear white. Both players have white shoes, white shorts, white shirts and white hats. Now, the biggest difference is the shirt, but even then the difference is how wide the black strip at the shoulder is. When they go to the whole court shot, in my tired state, I have no idea whom is whom. I have the same problem when I look up from the computer, the agenda which I love to stare at, or just come back from the bathroom (warning: there will probably be more about this later). Small break in writing while I go look for lunch.

Food:

Ahh, pb & j, it just makes the world better. That’s right; I shelled out the money for peanut butter and jelly. Delicious!

I was thinking about this when I was trying to think of what I was going to eat for lunch today. I don’t know why I haven’t really jumped on the tortilla band wagon. Really, it’s the historical Honduran equivalent to bread, and I ate a lot of bread in the states. Maybe it’s the fact that they eat them with cheese and montaquilla (picture mayo and sour cream mix- oh Erin, that just screamed out your name when I wrote that), and I have never been a big cheese or mayo fan. I do like them when I make mini fajitas with them, so maybe I just need to mix up the stuffing a little. I’ll try that. I’m glad we had a chance to chat about that.

My phone has been pretty weird today. This morning it gave me a message that it couldn’t accept text messages, and as I have gone into before, text messages are a big part of communication in my life right now. For instance, I didn’t get a message that the national curfew has been extended through Friday, and therefore got a kind of annoyed call wondering why I didn’t respond saying I got the message. Since we all the cell phones, this is the fastest way for messages to get from PC decision makers to us. I have only dropped the phone two or three times, so it shouldn’t be broken yet. And I didn’t drop it this morning which is the crazy thing, it just beeped to let me know that incoming messages couldn’t get through. Weird.

Speaking of text messages, I texted my host brother from my first house last night. After a few texts, he commented on how well my Spanish is because I can write a lot better. I had already laid down the ground rules with him that he can’t use abbreviations or code on his text messages like he does to his friends. Eventually I’ll ask for a list of common abbrevs to be really in to the Spanish texting world.

Andy Roddick just won 6-3, 6-7, 7-6, 4-6, and 6-4. So, they just showed a shot of Leighton’s girlfriend (my assumption) and she did the kind of reaction like you would give a five year old, it’s ok, you tried your best in kind of an airhead way. Again, this is all my own thought process, maybe I am getting a little annoyed with my phone and taking it out on hapless people on the tv screen.

In case some of you are wondering why on earth this entry is so long (and although I don’t know the final length, the fact that I am at 5 pages and still have several days before I will post it) I have decided to give you all something to do every day, just read a piece every day and you will have enough to get through your dull and boring weeks. For those of you who log in every few weeks, sorry, but if you want to read all of my exciting adventures (and random weirdness) you have lot to read at one time.

Ahh, our housekeeper is so nice. First off, she is always telling me just to tell her what I want and she will make it, and she washes my dishes if she is in the kitchen (I wash them if she is not there, she just wont let me wash them when she is there), and generally has been the one in charge of telling me how to do a bunch of things around the house, but today she surpassed herself. The other day I washed some clothes, but there wasn’t enough time for them to dry before the rains (down-pour) came, so she put them in my room before they got soaked because I was out of the house. Today though, she went in my room while I was at the office and put them back outside to dry while the sun was out. In case you are wondering, I don’t lock my bedroom door normally. At this point everyone who would try to rob me has already had the opportunity, and the fact that the bedsheets are stored in my room, so if she wants to change the ropa de cama (literally bed clothes, but means the sheets), she needs access. Ahh, dried clothes, what a wonderful life.

One last thing before I turn the computer off for a while, my handy dandy wonderful and spiffy agenda says that by time you read this, we will have passed the half way point of the year. When you think about it, it makes sense, but I didn’t think about before seeing it.

I lied, while I was writing that I saw a funny commercial if you can call it that. The characters of family guy are in costume for star wars and the old man is singing the theme song of dirty dancing. Too funny (que comico).

Book review:

I don’t have time (and you probably don’t have patience) for a book review of all the books I have read recently, but I thought I would give you a small glimpse at the book I am currently reading. Aquarius Mission by Martin Caidin is actually a very old book, copyright in 1978, but it is still good. The basic plot line goes like this: while in a mission to explore the depths of the ocean, two submarines are attacked by sea creatures (real ones), so they send out a new state of the art sub (think SeaQuest people) to explore. There they find an entire race of people who are humans, but humans who returned to the sea hundreds of thousands of years ago. It is sci-fi in a good way; I don’t like the books that you can’t pronounce anything or have things that are just too crazy. So while browsing through your local used book store (one of my favorite activities) if you see anything by this author, feel free to send it on down. (It’s now later and I finished it, good book, and the back has ads for buy our books with the most expensive book sold for $2.75)

Oh, I have a real treat for you, a tongue twister in Spanish. Let me know if you like it, I have a lot of them.

A cuesta le cuesta, subir la cuesta. En medio de la cuesta, cuesta se acuesta.

Principar principiando desde el principio quiero, para ver si principiando desde el principiando principar puedo.

And a little bit easier:
Pepe pecas. Pica Papas. Con un pico.
Con un pico. Pica papas. Pepe pacas.

During training we were given a bunch of tongue twisters to help us with pronunciation and with trying to speak faster in Spanish. Trust me, these are the easier ones. If someone reminds me, later I can put some of the harder ones up. My host sister in Pespire was amazing at them. Maybe I can get my family here sucked into doing them too, they are a little older, but seem to have a good sense of humor.

I just learned something about my computer though. It can magically switch to Spanish. I was wondering why the words of the tongue twisters (trabalenguas) were not underlined in read, but then I started writing in English again and all the English words were underlined. I didn’t know I had the option of switching to Spanish, but the knowledge definitely helps me out, now in the future when I want to write in Spanish, I can have the autocorrect helping me out.

I’m mad:

So, last night, I tried to go to bed early (10am) so that I could get up early and watch tennis on TV in the morning. Well, I was tossing and turning, and tossing and turning, and eventually decide that I am not sleeping so I might as well get up, this is at 1am. At this point I do some push ups, and other exercises to try to tire out my body, and flip on the TV for a little bit. This works, and I am sleeping by 2am. Alarm goes off at 6:30am. I get up, and tennis is not on, which it said it would be on (or I am just too confused in the fact that I have no idea who else is on the same time as we are). So, watching sportscenter waiting for the match to start, I do more exercises. Now, all the effort of getting up is wasted I could have slept for more time, now it better be replayed tonight as they are advertising or I am really going to be mad. To make it worse, the mosquitoes are crazy today. Not a good way to start your day.

Update: I go to work, and my counterpart, who also serves as chauffeur since I can’t drive in Honduras (PC rule) is not in. I am told he will swing by my house when he is ready. So, oh well, return home to the same episode of Sportscenter played again. Not joking, the same episode. At this point I know tennis is supposed to be on, someone made a mistake by playing the same episode twice, they obviously didn’t know how much I wanted to watch tennis today. I have all this free time this morning, and no tennis to watch. What a shame. I don’t want to start anything because I don’t know what time Walter is going to come, but what else am I supposed to do, I don’t want to watch sportscenter again. My luck, they will play it a third time and completely forget about tennis. In case you are wondering- they did play it a third time. My counterpart called me at 3:30pm to tell me we weren’t going into the aldeas today (no kidding?). All day I was sitting around waiting for a call, and finally got it late in the afternoon. I guess he didn’t call the community contact ahead of time and the guy was sick, but supposedly we are going tomorrow, but at this point I will believe it when I see it. He wants me to be there before 8am, so he had better be there on time.

So, you are all in luck, I will not be talking about my bowel movements as was hinted at above. This is an extremely common theme at PC get-togethers as someone is always having problems in that direction, it’s really almost inescapable. There are any number of bacteria and parasites that run amok here, and PC volunteers are very easy prey for them. I thought for a little while that I was going to have my own problems, but it seems I have escaped that fate for now.

Later I went running with T and S. The thing about running is that we get a LOT of piropos. It was actually funny to start with is that we had to change our normal route a little bit becauses S needed to avoid someone’s shop because she didn’t visit like she said she would and T wanted to avoid someone else’s shop. It was quite funny because they were both last minute announcements to change route and they were abrupt turns. The run went well, I ran a lot further than last time although I am definitely the least able to run. We had all been spending a lot of time a home lately and all needed a bit of exercise to clear the air and get rid of some energy. With all these push-ups, sit-ups and now running, I’ll be in great shape (until I give up in three days).

Bad day:

It started off so well. I finally got up early and didn’t fight it (although tennis wasn’t on again, no semi-finals for me). Walter arrived on time (más o menos). We also had four high school kids with us who had to observe a business. Little did they know what they were getting into. Then it got more interesting, the contact for the community wasn’t there, so we had to go find him. Then we had to find more help, normally I like 8 guys, it’s a good number, especially when you are going through coffee because you can’t cut it, you just push it out of the way. This requires a bunch of people. Only one other guy was found. I did find out that a women who lives near the road has 15 kids, the youngest is three days old. At this point it is sprinkling and we learn that these high school girls didn’t bring anything for the rain and are not wearing boots, but dress shoes. On our way down to the dam, three of them fall (no one got hurt). We get there, and no one has told my helpers about the estacas, they are wooden stakes to put in the ground and mark the points. So, while I was explaining to the girls what they would be doing, they started making them. Things are going relatively well on the explaining issue, and we start the first point.

Now, I am using an abney level. This is more advanced than the ones that we used in training as it had magnification. The problem here is that it doesn’t work so well when there is a lot of light, for instance when there is a large cloud cover and the point is beneath a wealth of branches and leaves that doesn’t allow much light in. So, with a white background of a notebook, I could see the point. Then, I come to find out that the level itself is not level, and I am getting bad results. Once I realize what is going on, after redoing the same things three times (and that means bashing my head against a log twice) I realize what is going on and make a plan to deal with this. Go to next point, take a massive fall on slippery rocks. No real damage done, but I will have a huge bruise tomorrow. Then, we go to do the back shot and I can’t see the point, it is too dark. Nothing makes it better. I then realize from that point on we were going to be in the coffee area, and we really needed more people, so I decided to call it done for the day.

No, it doesn’t stop here. We walk back up to the road. I try to call my coworker several times to get a ride but he doesn’t answer. So, after a while, I call my host mom who is working at her pharmacy, and have her call our housekeep who could walk to the office and tell them to call me. Walter then calls me (he has 2 cell phones and I only have the number of 1 followed to me) and I thought we were getting a ride. Half hour later he calls and says he on his way. At this point, it had already been two hours, and we were hoping that every car that passed would be him.

I get home, and go to the store to buy chocolate because I deserved it. When I get home my sitemate calls and says I have mail, so out I go again. This turns out to be a seven page letter from Erin, so this was definitely a good thing. At that point, I deserved something nice. And yes, I am very sore from the exercising. In fact, I managed to fall on the muscle that was sore from the lunges, which was quite talented of me, it required a very complicated angle of fall.

Update:

I have two large eggs on my forehead from the log. Hopefully they will be gone by tomorrow, and no one will have seen them except for me. I can’t believe I did that twice. Lesson: Don’t wear your baseball cap in the woods, you can’t see what’s directly in front of you over your head, so when jumping up a foot and a half, you really just put that much extra force into slamming your head against a log. Now, the problem is I like wearing the baseball cap, it shades you when you get sunny, and it absorbs some of the sweat rolling off my forehead. A normal person would say to just be more observant, but I understand me better than that, and know that it won’t happen; hopefully I will just have more luck and not have a log in the exact wrong place next time.

The bruise on my leg isn’t that big, it has a three inch diameter, although I can feel that it is very deep. It is all kinds of colorful, and will turn nice shades of green and yellow before it finally disappears. At least the eggs on my forehead are gone.

Tennis:

I feel sorry for you non-tennis fans out there, but I can see tennis three times a year here, during each grand slam, so right now it takes a priority in my life, and hence my blog which is a reflection of my life. It is finally on which is something! I am watching Andy vs Andy and am cheering for Andy (Roddick) because I just don’t like Murray. He is way too hmm, how can I say this delicately, just doesn’t have a control over himself and is demonstrative. I like Roger Federer because he is a class act, and Murray to me is the John MacEnroe of his generation (Hewitt has chilled out a bit and handed this title to Murray in my opinion). This opinion probably wouldn’t fly with real tennis analysts, but too bad, I don’t listen to anyone else anyway. So far, the match seems very even.

Observation:

In case you are wondering, yes, I am trying to make this as long as possible. I want to surpass my last longest entry and believe I will do this before the blog gets posted.

I am feeling quite proud of myself right now, I just fixed some pants. My very loving Mother sent me some linen pants after I complained about only having jeans and the hot as all get out Pespire, but unbeknownst to her, one of the pants was labeled with the wrong size. So, earlier I was literally folding the top over to get them to stay put. But I don’t have to do that anymore, I just sewed them, taking in both sides so that now they fit just fine. This did give me pause though, because I was thinking about sewing my own Halloween costume (there is a Peace Corps volunteer party every year, Halloween is not celebrated here), but I will not be doing this by hand. S’s host Mom has a sewing machine, so if I do think of an awesome enough idea, I can ask her to use the machine, as doing it by hand really isn’t an option.

Back to tennis:

So, one thing you may or may not know about me is that I am a very superstitious person, especially when it comes to sports. In college when I played tennis, if I lost a match wearing a hat, I wouldn’t wear it the next game, etc. Well, I even do this with sports on TV. Case in point, back to the Andy vs Andy game. Roddick had won the first set while I wasn’t watching (ESPN does not put real start times on their commercials, it would be too simple), and when I started watching, he lost the second set. So, I have been busy (hence the pants) only paying minimum attention to the match because he was doing better without me watching. And he won the third set. Yes, I know that my obvious support for him vs subtle does not make a difference, especially at several thousand miles distance, but I do it anyway. To be honest, I do this on non-live games too because it is too ingrained to stop.

Music:

Music is a big part of most cultures, and I finally realized how comforting music can be. During training I didn’t listen to the music on my computer until like the second to last week, and I didn’t realize how much I missed music I know. I like the music here, I actually really like reggaeton which is not something that most people would guess about me, but to hear something that you have known for years, there is just something so comforting about it. Maybe it’s the fact that I understand every word, but I hear way too much rap music which I understand, so I don’t know it that is it. Its not that I don’t hear American music here, 70s and 80s music is very common here. Today, I was walking along the street and heard songs from Grease. Sometimes the weirdest things happen here, you have to take advantage of them and save the little memories as you go.

Tennis:

He did it! Roddick is going to the finals! I like to think that I helped with my superstitions. He He! Superstitions or no, I will be watching the entire match Sunday when he plays Federer. Hey, ESPN just mentioned the doubles finals, do you think that means they will actually play some doubles, because that would be great.

Miscellaneous:

For quite a while now, uh, since I moved to my town, I have not been able to open the program that downloads the GPS points from the GPS. See, I knew it could be opened because I had let a friend use my computer when she taught GIS/GPS to the ADEPES people, but had no idea why it wasn’t working. I have tried uninstalling and then installing it three times, and every time it would say the program was open, but I couldn’t see anything. Well, a minute ago I was bored, and was playing around with setting my desktop to two screens, and the program magically opens like that. To be truthful, I was shocked that it actually opened, I didn’t realize what was on my screen for a minute. I have no idea why, but it doesn’t matter, I can finally use the GPS data, well, if I have a project that I need to use it, I can.

Bad day continues:

I thought the badness of the day was over, after getting the letter, talking to her on the phone, and eating lots of chocolate. Well, apparently it wasn’t over. I again tried to go to bed around 10pm because the women’s final was scheduled to be on early in the morning. This didn’t work out so well. I got up, did three sets of lunges, arm exercises and sit-ups. Still didn’t work. I got out a Spanish textbook and worked on that for an hour; was kind of tired afterwards. Finally I fell asleep after lying in bed for a while.

Morning:

Too many short nights in a row = Jill does not want to wake up early. I really thought I was going to fall asleep during the match. Williams vs Williams, Serena won, although I thought it was a lack-luster match. Afterwards I tried to get T to go running, but didn’t get a response (cell phone is still not working right so maybe that was the problem). I then decided to wash my clothes, including the mud-coated pants from the bad day. I think those took 20 minutes themselves, there was so much mud everywhere, and I wont know until they dry if they are really clean because its harder to see the dirt when they are wet. I showered afterwards, and here I am writing. Big plans for today though!

Awkwardness:

Just to give you a feel for what life can be like here, this is how my morning went after the above paragraph. My host brother (he’s like 50 with kids my age) came over and invited me for a short trip to his coffee finca (farm). This sounded nice, I like the mountains and have been trying to be more social, so I agreed. With a catch, I told him I had to be back by 1pm because I was going to XXXXX with my friends for the afternoon. He said that was easy enough, and would call when he was on his way to pick me up. Well, 11am comes and goes, and then at 11:30am I get a call. He says, “Ya paso.” Well, this could mean I am on my way, I already left, have you left, or a few more things. I was confused. At noon he comes over and asks if I am ready, but there is no way I could go and be back in time to leave, so I explained the situation again. He kind of seemed, well, not upset but not happy. Then I mentioned I would be returning to town today, and so now tomorrow we will be going. Actually this might be a problem, he said early, and men’s championship match is on tomorrow morning, so hopefully he pulls a Honduran thing and shows up late.

Now, while this is going on, I am trying to figure out what I will be doing for lunch. Maria is making food, but sometimes I am told to come eat and sometimes no, so I have no idea. Then at some point I go into the kitchen to make myself 2 pb & j’s, and she comes in and asks why I am not eating with the family. Little weird here, so I explained I didn’t know if there was enough for me. I then put my stuff away and wait for lunch. This is just how life goes here. There is a constant, what is going on, what am I supposed to be doing now question in my head.

Tennis (for the last time)

The men’s championship match is amazing. I woke up late and didn’t see the beginning, but I have seen enough to be impressed. Its got to be hard for Roddick to have lost after a battle like that.

Other:

I didn’t actually end up doing much over Saturday. So much for my 4th of July plans. Our Independence Day here is in September, so keep tuned for that information. So far nothing more has happened with the political situation although we are always wondering what is next. As always, the Peace Corps is keeping an eye on everything and we all remain safe.