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.