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!