Thursday, August 26, 2010

Photos!

A little after sunrise, day 1.
The group (minus 1) getting ready to go snorkeling.
This island is for sale! Any takers?
Pelicans. They are looking at a guy cleaning fish. He cleans out the insides and throws them anything he takes out.
After the big class 4 drop, the one in the background. It looked more impressive in real life.
Me, jumping from the large rock. Mom, please note the life jacket and helmet.

Travelling

I’m not sure the last time that I updated my blog, or what I wrote on that update, so this may be very out of date.

Two weekends ago: I went to Comayagua to Peace Corps Olympics! I shared a hotel room with several friends and friends of friends (which is how you meet everyone in PC). I was kind of disappointed because we didn’t have hot water.

The Saturday began and we all go to the soccer field, which because of all the rain lately has been named the mud bowl. We play soccer, in three games. My team won! Not that I assisted in that. I was out there, but my skills at soccer stopped at basic passing the ball. I had a lot of fun. It was so hard to stop while playing, and people were sliding and falling into the mud all over the place. At one point I passed the ball to a teammate, and saw three other players from the opposing team start running for the ball and thought, “Oh no, they are going to get it;” but in the end they all slid too far and the ball went right to whom it was meant for. Go me.

After soccer, we had sack races, three legged races and a water balloon toss.

The final activity was ultimate Frisbee. Now, this is not my game. I tried, I really did, but just couldn’t get it. Every time that I tried to cover my person, I wouldn’t have a clue where the Frisbee went to, and if I watched the Frisbee for a second, I lost the person. In the end, I didn’t end up playing too much, just cheering on my team.

Afterwards we all went dirty and tired to eat lunch. We had the events at a real city, with all kinds of restaurants, Honduran and American. Then back to the hotel to rest for the night, and Peace Corps prom.

Now, I am not going to lie, I was disappointed in prom. Really it was a dress-up party. I went in a strapless dress (reuse of bridesmaid dress!) and had quite the sun tan/burn lines. I applied sunscreen twice in 6 hours, apparently not enough, even for an overcast day. Most of the women were in a similar position.

The next day I went home, and worked for the week.

Until Friday, when I took off for vacation. Now, before the vacation started I was flipping out because our paychecks were very late. For two months we had been paid at the middle of the month, and it was already the 20th and we hadn’t been paid. I didn’t have enough without that month’s pay, and the vacation needed to be paid for in cash. In the end a friend had to up front me a lot of money.

That first day I went up to the coast, picking up some friends on the way. We stayed in a cottage on the beach. Early the next morning we took off for some islands which are only a few miles off the North Coast of Honduras. After stopping at the conservation center, we went to where we would be staying. There is a Garifuna community there (refer back to old blogs if you don’t remember them). They fed us and let us sleep in one of the cabins for the night.

We did a bit of snorkeling that first day. Now, I was wearing a sundress over my bathing suit most of the day and thought to myself, “I need to but on more sunscreen before going out without the dress.” Yeah, people had already left, so I just went in. While in the water I realized that I hadn’t applied sunscreen, and yep, I burned. One hour in the sun, and skin not used to seeing daylight= strong burn. For those of you who haven’t already figured out where I burned, I burned my butt. There is a strong red outline around the bottom bathing suit half. So, burned butt cheeks and upper thighs = fun time sitting. I have never been more happy that I sleep on my stomach and therefore wouldn’t be in pain all night. The next day I applied much sunscreen the my bottom.

The next day did have a bunch more snorkeling, and we saw an island for sale. Very sweet set-up. We then ate more lunch (fresh fish again) and headed back to the mainland. Half of the group had to go back to work, and the rest of us went up into the mountains. We went to a lodge and ate before going to bed. Sounds boring, but all that sun and time on the water wore us out.

The next morning we went out white water rafting. It really felt like only a few minutes, but it was three hours, well, almost three hours. The stinky part is that the hard part is right in the beginning, and then it is much easier. So, the first few minutes I was still a little unsure and a little nervous, but later when I was like “whooahh,” it was only baby stuff. Not the fault of the company, but still a little stinky.

Yeah, and then we started heading home. Good times had by all.

I get home and there was an inauguration of a park and community center that my friend and fellow volunteer designed and found funding for. I went to that; it was very preachy since a reverend was the master of ceremony. Still, I had a good time.

Now, I am home, at least for a few days, and working. I am really excited for going and staying out in the aldeas in two weeks. I really like being out there.

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Off the cuff

So, first let me say that I am writing this at the internet cafe instead of at home, and this keyboard is very sticky, so please excuse typing errors because going back and correcting everything has already become tedious.

Last weekend I took a minivacation. M sitemate, S, and I went to the south of Honduras. Now, for us, it is easier to travel through Nicaragua, than to go through Tegucigalpa. We managed to get permission from Peace Corps to do this (normally we would have to apply for vacation in advance ) but this time we did it. IT was a great trip.

Before even getting on the first bus it was a good trip. We go to our bus terminal and there is some gatorade promotion going on and the first thing the guy says after we walk over there to see what was going on was ¨la chica mas bonita que he visto en verde¨which translates to the most beautiful girl i have ever seen in green, i was wearing green that day. Then we heard the vocal styling of a few bolos in town. bolos are drunks that really can´t even have a productive life they drink so much.

we finally get going and it takes forever to pass the first border, we were stopped and had to present passports 4 times, no joking. now, once we passed the border i was travelling further south than i had ever been in my life. Nicaragua by the way surprised me because just looking at the infrastructure, the development of roads and towns and bus terminals, etc, you would think it was a richer country but the people are actually poorer than hondurans.

THe greatest part about going is that neither S nor I looked up how to get where we were going. So, we had to ask the border agent how to get there. he looked at me like ÿou are going to get so lost¨while I was repeating hte names of the towns where we had to change buses. We got stuck in town 2 for 2 hours because the bus didn´t leave in a convenient time frame. We finally mak it to border number 2 - crossing back into honduras- and find a friend there, so her family gave us a ride into town. that was nice, because we had already been on four buses and there wasn´t a bus waiting.

The town was amazing, lots of money there. now my town is pretty nice, but pales in comparison. the fair was going on, we we walked around after getting to the house to put our stuff down. there were stands of food, games, carnival rides... a fair. That night was a big old dance. they close off the center of town and put up bands and djs all over the place. luckily our friend lives in the closed off zone, so we got in there before they closed everything and thus didn´t have to pay to enter. we danced until like 2:30am. good times!

I will say this though, the guys there are not as brave as the guys here. We were dancing for a long time there without anyone asking to dance with us. This would NEVER happen in my town, here you literally have to shove them off you.

Now, I must have written about piropos or cat calls at one point or another. Now, one thing about cat calls, well the appropriate ones anyway, they feed your selfesteem. When we went dancing in that other town and no one wanted to dance with us, it was kind of a blow to the ego. We have decided that 1:those guys aren´t as brave as the onse around here and 2: they didn´t want to break into a group of 4 women. note: that would not deter anyone in my town, they come into groups of 8.

Yeah, i am not feeling all that descriptive today. for anyone who wants it, my number changed to 9525-5525.

Take care

Jill