Ok, so a few days have passed since I touched down on American soil. Now, its kind of surreal, because things are so familiar because I grew up in this culture, in this area, but some things have been a little weird.
first what?!- Ok, so in Honduras, you don't flush toilet paper down the toilet. The sanitary waste system (where one exists) cannot handle the paper, so there is always a small trash can to collect it. Odd situation when one first arrives in Honduras, but as of now it is the norm. So, I am in the airport in Atlanta, and very confused when there is no trash can. I felt really guilty for flushing it. Still do. Its an odd situation.
Food: I am sure when I get back to Honduras I will be craving frijolitos and platino. As of now I am enjoying the food here. Eating whatever junk I can get my hands on. Lets be honest, I have a lot of fresh fruits in my town, so I can eat very healthy in Honduras. Its always good climate for growing veggies and fruits, so fresh stuff is easy to find. My parents love me, so they are indulging me and I love it.
Now, I live with a host family. I feel very comfortable with them, but its not the same. Also, I am wrapped in very soft warm clothing as I am writing this. Well, its not cold enough in Honduras to enjoy the feeling of layers.
I bet a few of you are wondering what my reaction was to the Maine weather. Before I even left Honduras I had a minor situation. I had gone hiking the weekend before, and my sneakers were really, really dirty. Well, I thought I could wash them before coming home and with two days in the sun, they should dry. It then rained for two days, so I was without shoes. Let me explain this, I only have two pairs of closed toed shoes in Honduras, my sneakers and my boots. Well, I didn't want to travel in my boots, so I went out and bought closed toed dress shoes.
These shoes ended up destroying my feet. I had to walk about a kilometer between dropping off my dog at her sitter's and getting to the bus station. My heels were literally bleeding from the effort, so the rest of the time I folded over the back of the shoe to prevent more damage (although I later got blisters too) and made a phone call home to request my winter boots being brought to the airport to pick me up. Its kind of funny though because the only time I wore my fleece in the trip home was in Tegucigapla, in the airport, and was freezing because the air conditioner was on too strong. The few places that have air conditioning only use it enough to make it less hot, not to make the place cool.
So, getting off the plane in Maine, I was trying to run up the walkway, but my feet hurt too bad to run. I was brought a coat and boots to the airport, and I was prepared in my mind for the cold, so it wasn't too bad. On the other hand, the next day I wasn't prepared for the cold, so when I went outside I really felt it. It feels so nice to sleep underneath heavy blankets, the most I have in Honduras is maybe one thin blanket.
Ok, thats all for now.
Jill
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
overdue update
Whoa, its been a long time
The workload is not just too much to update, its just very rarely going to the internet café again. Let’s see, what has been up in Jill’s world?
My friend Ryan came down to visit me. He is in my training class and is also in Water and Sanitation. We hung out a bit, I got to show off how cool my site is. We talked about work projects and did some scavenger hunt like activities in the local city. Ok, where can you find a chimney for a wood stove, and a metal worker willing to do some work for you? After that came the easy stuff, find ice cream, street food, and cigars. There was a small fair sponsored by the Catholic church, and there was a lot of food stands and we even managed to buy cigars. Now, the area I am in is kind of famous for cigars but they are hard to find because they export them and only occasionally sell them in the factories, but there is one guy trying to change all that and make cigars available to all- which roughly translates to tourists.
T has decided to leave us. We had a going away party for her/ birthday party for T and myself. If was a really relaxed affair which was nice. At one point there was some charades which was actually really fun. And, sorry M, but anyone who puts Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown as a charade deserves to lose. I get my piece of paper and see that on there, I had to sit there for a second and count how many words it was. Nuts.
Puppy stories. Well, so my dog doesn’t normally set foot in the office even though she lives there because she doesn’t like the people there and if I am not in there, there is no incentive for her. I decided to work INSIDE the building the other day and so she came in with me. I brought her rope toy in for her to chew but she still somehow got her mouth on the phone line cord. Oops. Next step, build her a little fenced in area that she can be in when I am working inside so that we don’t have to worry about her eating all the cords in the building. Oh, so my little ray of sunshine decided to pee inside the office this morning. Here is how this went down: I walk into the gate and greet her, then go straight to her water bowl and see she needs water so I walk inside and start getting water. No joke as I am filling the bowl she decides to pee inside the kitchen. She was outside ALL night, and pees inside for the 3 minutes I am inside.
Baseball. We have decided to take a little break from baseball. The kids are not showing up during their summer vacation (what else do they have to do, there is no summer rec here) so we decided to have a break while we return to the US for the holidays. This way we are all excited to be there in February. The good thing about the last practice was that I found out how to exhaust my puppy. She ran with me and later was just pooped out. It looks like she will be a good running practice.
Christmas caroling: S had a friend come visit. He was very nice, and the two of them took my pup hiking which is a good thing because this was right after the phone cord incident. They invited me over when they made Christmas cookies. Well, we first tried to make gingerbread cookies, but something went wrong. They were this dull grey color and kind of cardboard like. Later peanut butter cookies worked out a lot better. We decided we should go out caroling (only to people we know). At night we stopped by several houses and sang. Now, this is not a Honduran tradition, so almost all were a little confused, but enjoyed it. One really funny point was that it took us to house 6 or 7 to finally get the words right to Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.
Now, because I am not feeling really inspired on writing a play by play account of my activites, here is a segment on general Honduran life.
Water. In the water if you clean drinking water, you just turn on the tap. Here, not so much. Only the villages that chlorinate their water can drink the water from the tap. I do believe all cities are a no go on that. My little city is no different. To make up for this, everyone buys the water bubbler jugs. Guys come around at different points in the week. Different guys come on different days and do different parts of the city. Now, who you have is very important. There are some nice and caring souls that will come to your door and knock, and wait for you to answer to let you know they are there with the water. More common in the knock and run. A guy knocks, but the guy at the wheel keeps going. This means that by time you get to the door with your cash, they are several houses down and you have to go run to get their attention, and hope that one of the guys carries your water back for you (but good luck on actually getting that to happen). They don’t come at the same time, so its really a hit or miss on whether you will actually be home to hear the knock and dasher to begin with.
Glass bottles. You know those coca-cola glass bottles that you see in flea markets and whatnot, well, that’s what coca cola is in here. There are plastic bottles as well, but far more common is the glass. In as glass bottle is also cheaper. This is an excellent example of reusing (remember your three Rs of recycling). Its not only coca cola, but almost all brands of soda.
Tang. I will be honest, I was in high school before I learned what tang was. We were a kool-aid family. Anyways, even after high school I thought that Tang was an orange flavored sugary drink. Nope. Tang comes in many flavors, from orange to lime, to mango, to other tropical fruits. They come in add sugar and don’t add sugar varieties. I was shocked the first time I saw the variety.
ok, i am home now, with internet access so I will be putting more posts up, highlights include adjusting to the states again!
The workload is not just too much to update, its just very rarely going to the internet café again. Let’s see, what has been up in Jill’s world?
My friend Ryan came down to visit me. He is in my training class and is also in Water and Sanitation. We hung out a bit, I got to show off how cool my site is. We talked about work projects and did some scavenger hunt like activities in the local city. Ok, where can you find a chimney for a wood stove, and a metal worker willing to do some work for you? After that came the easy stuff, find ice cream, street food, and cigars. There was a small fair sponsored by the Catholic church, and there was a lot of food stands and we even managed to buy cigars. Now, the area I am in is kind of famous for cigars but they are hard to find because they export them and only occasionally sell them in the factories, but there is one guy trying to change all that and make cigars available to all- which roughly translates to tourists.
T has decided to leave us. We had a going away party for her/ birthday party for T and myself. If was a really relaxed affair which was nice. At one point there was some charades which was actually really fun. And, sorry M, but anyone who puts Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown as a charade deserves to lose. I get my piece of paper and see that on there, I had to sit there for a second and count how many words it was. Nuts.
Puppy stories. Well, so my dog doesn’t normally set foot in the office even though she lives there because she doesn’t like the people there and if I am not in there, there is no incentive for her. I decided to work INSIDE the building the other day and so she came in with me. I brought her rope toy in for her to chew but she still somehow got her mouth on the phone line cord. Oops. Next step, build her a little fenced in area that she can be in when I am working inside so that we don’t have to worry about her eating all the cords in the building. Oh, so my little ray of sunshine decided to pee inside the office this morning. Here is how this went down: I walk into the gate and greet her, then go straight to her water bowl and see she needs water so I walk inside and start getting water. No joke as I am filling the bowl she decides to pee inside the kitchen. She was outside ALL night, and pees inside for the 3 minutes I am inside.
Baseball. We have decided to take a little break from baseball. The kids are not showing up during their summer vacation (what else do they have to do, there is no summer rec here) so we decided to have a break while we return to the US for the holidays. This way we are all excited to be there in February. The good thing about the last practice was that I found out how to exhaust my puppy. She ran with me and later was just pooped out. It looks like she will be a good running practice.
Christmas caroling: S had a friend come visit. He was very nice, and the two of them took my pup hiking which is a good thing because this was right after the phone cord incident. They invited me over when they made Christmas cookies. Well, we first tried to make gingerbread cookies, but something went wrong. They were this dull grey color and kind of cardboard like. Later peanut butter cookies worked out a lot better. We decided we should go out caroling (only to people we know). At night we stopped by several houses and sang. Now, this is not a Honduran tradition, so almost all were a little confused, but enjoyed it. One really funny point was that it took us to house 6 or 7 to finally get the words right to Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.
Now, because I am not feeling really inspired on writing a play by play account of my activites, here is a segment on general Honduran life.
Water. In the water if you clean drinking water, you just turn on the tap. Here, not so much. Only the villages that chlorinate their water can drink the water from the tap. I do believe all cities are a no go on that. My little city is no different. To make up for this, everyone buys the water bubbler jugs. Guys come around at different points in the week. Different guys come on different days and do different parts of the city. Now, who you have is very important. There are some nice and caring souls that will come to your door and knock, and wait for you to answer to let you know they are there with the water. More common in the knock and run. A guy knocks, but the guy at the wheel keeps going. This means that by time you get to the door with your cash, they are several houses down and you have to go run to get their attention, and hope that one of the guys carries your water back for you (but good luck on actually getting that to happen). They don’t come at the same time, so its really a hit or miss on whether you will actually be home to hear the knock and dasher to begin with.
Glass bottles. You know those coca-cola glass bottles that you see in flea markets and whatnot, well, that’s what coca cola is in here. There are plastic bottles as well, but far more common is the glass. In as glass bottle is also cheaper. This is an excellent example of reusing (remember your three Rs of recycling). Its not only coca cola, but almost all brands of soda.
Tang. I will be honest, I was in high school before I learned what tang was. We were a kool-aid family. Anyways, even after high school I thought that Tang was an orange flavored sugary drink. Nope. Tang comes in many flavors, from orange to lime, to mango, to other tropical fruits. They come in add sugar and don’t add sugar varieties. I was shocked the first time I saw the variety.
ok, i am home now, with internet access so I will be putting more posts up, highlights include adjusting to the states again!
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