Nueva Suyapa

This weekend was very interesting. The whole group went to visit Nueva Suyapa, which is a town about 25 minutes from the university. This town is much poor than where I live now, yet is the norm for the majority of Honduras. We arrived in Nueva Suyapa around 4:00. This town is where two of our professors live with their family. We went first to the church of our professors, where the families met us. There were two students with every family. I was with Amanda. The papá brought us back to his house, which was not too far from the church. We met his two sons, who were 8 and 3 years old. We had dinner; rice, refried beans, cheese, and tortillas, which is about as Honduran as you can get. We passed the evening playing with the children. The cousins lived next door. The children asked a lot of questions, like how old are you, where do you live, what is your favorite color… One of the little boys sat down very seriously and asked us “what are the customs of the US?” We asked him, “customs for what exactly?” He just wanted to know in general our customs; a broad-hard question to answer. The kids had a book of English vocabulary. They all know a little English from school. They would say, “The sky is blue,” and we would tell them the sentence back in Spanish. We did this a lot. Amanda and my room was in the basement. There was a musty smell and lots of insects. I did not sleep well for two nights. Saturday morning we went to one of the school, where our professor’s kids attend. There was a climbing wall there. It was so hard, but very fun. We played soccer with the kids. We then spent the afternoon at our houses. The kids took us to visit their family who all lived nearby; uncles, cousins, aunts, grandpas…. Saturday night there was a church service at the church. It was interesting, but I had a bad headache throughout the whole service. Afterwards we returned home in a storm. I went to bed right away because I was so tried and had a headache. We ate breakfast Sunday morning and then took a bus home. The first thing I did was took a shower when I got home. I then took a long nap. I defiantly learned a lot. The people who live in these types of areas do not have much, and yet are very content with their lives. The children do not have many toys, but find ways of entertaining themselves with what they have.

Nueva Suyapa

I do not have time to write about this past weekend right not but here are some pictures. I am not sure what order they are going to come up in, but here is what the pictures are:

The kitchen and bath room...you can see the table..then there is the area for washing dishes on the left, and to the right is the bathroom stale, and in the middle the shower...i did not shower this weekend.

Me on the climbing wall at the school in the town.

Me with the kids.

Typical street in the part of town- only dirt and garbage.

Our room in the basement...lets just say i did not sleep well for two nights.

Another Week

Monday, I had classes like usual. Afterwards I met with my conversation partner. We talked for about an hour, half the time in Spanish and the other half in English. We talked about basic things like family, hobbies, and traditions. It is fun to be on the other side of learning a language. Most of the time I am the one speaking the different language, but when we are speaking English, the roles reverse. Afterwards Katie and I decided to take our computers to use the internet, and for lunch. Majority of fast food restaurants have free internet.

Tuesday I only had one class. I used the afternoon to work on homework, which I have a lot of. Wednesday was interesting. For my culture class we went to a maquila, a factory where they make clothes. Some may call them sweatshops, but I think that is a strong word for what this was. We were given a tour. The fabric is sent from the US to the factory. There are then different stages of the process, most done with machines controlled by workers. There is also an area where they do custom shirts, like for someone extra large, or someone who wants a very specialized shirt. Before going when I thought of a maquila, I thought of a dark, dusty, hot factory with a whole bunch of poor people working, but that was not the case. It was a little warm, but very clean. All the workers looked like normal Hondurans. The conditions seemed fine. One problem that people often have is the wages the workers receive. This factory had a minimum wage of 16 Limpieras, which is like 75 cents. However, the factory managers said that not many workers were working for minimum wage. The pay is low, but cost of living here is completely different than it is in the States, and also it is a job, which is better than no job. There are many varying opinions over maquilas; it’s hard to know what is right.

Thursday was exciting, because of a storm we had. After classes Katie and I went to the mall. It was already raining, and was only becoming worse. While at the mall, the mall lost power for about 5 minutes. Because it was raining so hard, and the roof of the mall is not that great, there were defiantly a lot of leaks. Some of the girls said the food court was really bad. Katie and I decided to take a taxi home. When we got to my house, we saw that further down the road, between my house and Katie’s, it was flooded. There were cars that had water up to the windows. The draining systems here are not good, especially when it is raining hard, and when there is a lot of garbage is the drains. Katie stayed at my house until it stopped raining, and the streets cleared. We had no power for a good part of the afternoon. Mi mama told me that flash flooding is a big problem here.

Más de mi casa

Other sister's bedroom, which is across the way from my room and the office which is to the right this sister's bedroom

Más fotografias

Our dinning room; sisiter's bedroom; and gate in from of our house


Thursday I had only one class in the morning, so I had a lot of free time in the afternoon. Katie came over to my house. We watched two movies and ordered pizza from Pizza Hut.

Friday was fun. We went to the museum of National Identity in the city. The museum was very pretty. One difference was that they did not have many artifacts or items, but rather mostly written posters and pictures of things. After the museum I went to a market in the downtown with Katie and Hope. Everyone tried to sell us their things. I ended up buying a purse that was very reasonable. I spent the rest of the evening relaxing.

Saturday was fun because I went to the house of my brother for the birthday party of mi mama. The house was smaller than mine, but was very nice. We had KFC for lunch. Afterwards they put in a movie for me so I had something to do, but it was funny because I was only able to watch ¾ of the movie. I do not know how Terminator 3 ends. I spent the evening talking with my parents and relaxing.

I went to church Sunday morning with my parents. Because of the rain we have had, the dirt roads were very ugly. Our car was not going to make it so we waited until another church member came by and gave us a ride. I actually understand the majority of sermon this morning. The speaker was very articulate and talked more slowly than others. Afterwards mi papá had a meeting so I ended up talking to one of the girls at the church. She is 21 and is a med student. She knew a little bit of English. I gave her my e-mail address and phone number, so that we can get together sometime. It rained most of the afternoon, which was perfect for napping. Sunday night I watched the Emmys, which was very fun.

My new favorite coffee drink

A Granita de Caramel, and its only a $1.70!

Mi casa

I have been asked to put some pictures of my house on the blog, so here some are. The outside of my two story house. The living room which is right as you walk in (i am taking the picture from the front door) and the kitchen which is right to the right of the living room.

Parade

Sunday I went to church with my parents. As I have mentioned before, the church is literally in the middle of now where. I think that it is funny that every time we go, mis padres argue about which dirt road to take to get there. It is never the same. Mi papá spoke, which was neat. Afterwards there was a church “social.” We were given food in a styrofoam box, and mi and mi padres sat in the corner and ate together. There was not much socializing going on. After church I took a nap and worked on homework. Because I knew that I would be getting up early the next day I went to bed early.

Monday was a very interesting day. Because it is Honduras’s Independence day we had off. Me and three other girls decided to go to the parade. I am glad I went, but I do not think I would go again. We left the university at 7:30 to be at the stadium by 8:00. There are numerous parades throughout the city that all end at the stadium, which means the stadium is the best place to go. As the morning went on, the stadium filled out, pretty much to maximum capacity. The majority of the parade was bands from high schools and colleges all over the country. One interesting thing was a political party walked into the stadium, and people began to boo. At the time we did not know anything about the political party. Here you buy water in bags, much like the milk sacks from kindergarten. These bags work much like water balloons; we found this out when people were throwing them at the political party. We stayed for three hours at the parade, but then decided to leave because it was so hot. We had to walk for almost an hour and a half to get away from the parade and crowd. I do not think that I have ever seen so many people. We ate at McDonalds for lunch, which is always delicious. We took a taxi back to the mall. Katie and I then took a taxi to our houses. Later that night I got a call from my friend Hope saying that our friend Krista had been robbed while she was walking home alone from the mall. They took her camera and her money. We are now all a little on edge.

Tuesday I only had one class. It was weird going to the university, because the students of the university had off, so there was no one there. Also there was no electricity, which meant no air conditioning. This classroom was very warm. I spent the rest of the day working on homework, because I had a lot to read for Wednesday.

Wednesdays are my long days. I have six and a half hours of class. By the time I return home I am very tired. Luckily, I do not have much work for Thursday, so I can go to bed early.

La Alemada

Today was our first Wednesday classes. It was a very long day. I started at 8:00 and was not done until 4:00. During our lunch break we met our conversation partners. These are people who are at about the same level of English that we are in Spanish. My girls name is Marilyn. She is 19 and wants to be an English teacher. She commutes on the bus an hour every day. Today we had our first Poverty and Faith class. It was very interesting. We started out with looking at statistics about the poverty of the world. The statement my teacher made was that it is amazing how much poverty there is among so much wealth in our world. Wednesday night was another Honduras soccer game against Jamaica. I watched it at home. Whenever they scored I could hear people yelling 20 houses away. There would be fireworks set off somewhere in the city. The game was not even in our city, and our city was going crazy. They are very passionate about their soccer.

Thursday I met with my conversation partner for the same time. She introduced me to all our friends at the university. I talked mostly in English because they like to practice with a native, which for them is very rare. I do not mind because I speak Spanish the rest of the day with other people. Because we have no classes on Friday, Thursday was like our Friday night. I had two girls, Katie and Hope, come over to my house to watch a movie. I was still able to get to bed to catch up on my sleep.

Friday at noon, Katie and I took a taxi to the hotel that we were staying at for the weekend. It was very nice. We went out to McDonalds for lunch, which was delicious. We spent the afternoon at the pool. For dinner we went to a Chinese restaurant that was close to the hotel. It was kind of weird because we were the only people there. The food was good, but it was an interesting experience. I guess Chinese food is not popular in Honduras. We spent the rest of the night in our hotel room playing cards and talking. We stayed up till midnight, which for all of us, is now very nice. Sadly, one of the girls in our group, Sara, became sick in the middle of the night. She ended up sleeping by the bathroom door she was throwing up so much. We are all hoping no one else gets it. We had breakfast at the hotel on the patio by the pool. We only had two free breakfasts from the hotel, so we just ordered more food, and split the cost. It ended up only being two dollars apiece. I had French toast, fruit, toast, and orange juice. It was delicious. We spent the rest of the morning by the pool. The sun was so strong that we had to keep going in the water to cool down. We checked out at one and took taxis home. I was so tried that I took a nap.

Class start

Monday was the first day of our semester classes. I have 8:00 classes every day, Monday through Thursday, which means I have to get up at 6:30 and leave the house at 7:30. Katie only has 8:00 classes on two days, so two days a week I have to walk to school myself which is okay, because there are a lot of people out in the morning. I have my grammar class every Monday and Wednesday, which will be a lot of work, but not difficult. One interesting thing about the class is that during the class when we are talking, if we make an error the professor writes it on the board, and then at the end of the discussion she goes over everyone’s errors. While I understand the importance of learning our mistakes, it makes talking very intimidating. Luckily, there are only seven of us in the class, so we are all pretty close. I have a culture/history class every Monday and Wednesday. This class will be a lot of work. For Wed. I have to read roughly 80 pages in Spanish about prehistoric Spain. If it were in English it would take me roughly 2 hours, but in Spanish, it’s nearly impossible to finish. I spent most of Monday night working on homework.

I had my first literature class today. Every Tuesday and Thursday I have it at 8:00. This class will be a bit of work as well. I am already dreading our 6-8 page paper due at the end of the semester. This is the only class I have Tuesday, which means I can use the afternoon to be productive, and attempt to read a bit about prehistoric Spain. I do find it a bit ironic that I am taking a class to learn about Spain’s history, while studying in Central America. This weekend we are planning on renting a room at a hotel in the city that has a pool. We do not want to go far, but want to get out of our houses and spend some time relaxing. The details are stilling be planned, but is should be planned.

The picture is not great, but is the classroom i have all my classes.

Applebees never tasted so good

Thursday was fun, because we got to go to the US Embassy. We had a few people from different departments talk to us. To be honest I did not know much about what an embassy was responsible for, before visiting. There is a new ambassador on his way to Honduras now. We also got to talk a short waking tour through the consulate department. Everyone actually understood everything because the whole morning was in English. One thing that I found particularly interesting is that the security to get into the embassy was tedious, while the security to get into the Honduran congressional building was practically non-existent. The rest of the day was spent studying for my first exam on Friday.

So it finally happened on Friday; there was no water in all the bathrooms. I woke up to a knock on my door. My sister told me there was a bucket of hot water in the bathroom for me, because there was no water for a shower. We had a bit of a review session before taking our exam. We were done before 11:30, which left Friday afternoon free. We went to a girl’s house that lives near the school. We ordered pizza from Pizza Hut, which was delicious. We spent the rest of the afternoon hanging out. I got home around 4:30. The rest of the evening was spent relaxing.

Saturday was a ton of fun. I was able to sleep in, and Saturday we did have water, so I was able to shower. When I told my sister that I was going out Saturday afternoon she wanted to do my hair. I told her that with the humidity it hard for me to leave my hair down, and it never stays straight, but she did not seem to care. Katie and I walked to the school at 1:30 and met up with some other girls. We wanted to go to a large mall in the city. We knew the general location of the mall, but really did not know how to get there. We hopped on a bus which took us closer. It took a few times of asking people where the mall was before we actually found it. It was very large and very pretty inside. I was very impressed. We shopped for a while. I had read in a tourism book that there was an Applebees near the mall. We asked around to find out where it was, and it was actually a mile from the mall. We saw a Ruby Tuesday, so we decided to see how busy they were. That night there was a soccer game between Honduras and Canada, so any restaurant or bar that had a tv was packed. We sent one girl in to see how long the wait was. She came back out and said that there just was no room for a party so large, 7 people. She said they really tried to find room for us. We decided to keep walking to find the applebees. Once there we realized that they were very busy too. However, they wanted us to eat there so bad, that they set a table in their lobby/ waiting room. The restaurant was just like in the States, so imagine a group sitting on the benches with two random tables placed there. We are not sure if the fact that we were all gringas helped us. Luckily, a booth opened up, so we moved there. We felt a little bad because we were defiantly seated before other people who had been waiting. The menus were interesting because the names of the dishes were in English but the descriptions were in Spanish. I ordered my usual favorite, Crispy Orange Chicken Bowl. We were there for a good 2.5 hours watching the game on the tvs. It was crazy! Hondurans are very into their soccer. We were the only gringas in the restaurant, so we got a lot of attention. There was a group of people who wanted us to start the wave. It was very fun, because Honduras won. Getting home was really easy, because my sisters have a friend who is a taxi driver. They arranged to have him pick Katie and myself up at 8:00 right in front of Applebees. I felt a little bit bad leaving the other girls, but they could just take another taxi. It was nice to get out of the house and do something.

Sunday was very relaxing. I got up and showered with a bucket of hot water. I went to church with my parents. The rest of the afternoon I took a nap and watched tv. I chatted with my sister for a while. Hylde, the oldest is easy to talk to, because she knows how to talk to I understand her, and when I still cannot figure out what she is saying, she speaks in English.

El Congreso

Tuesday was very interesting. We got to go to the Congress building on downtown Tegus. It did not go as planned because of a protest that was going on. I am not completely sure what the protest was about, but this is what I understand: A while ago there was a hunger strike. The district attorneys were involved somehow. During the strike one of the attorneys was shot, but not killed. Now a group for justice was protesting that the criminal be tried and sent to jail for life. The court systems here are known for having a lot of problems. I met another district attorney who was at the protest. There were ropes and police men all around the protest. At first I thought it was to keep other protesters from coming, but I found out it was to protect the protesters. We were given a tour of the building. We went to the office of the president of Congress. The tour guide told us we could sit at his desk, so I was the first to jump at that opportunity. Then we went to the Congressional auditorium. In the front there were some evangelicals praying for I am not sure what. Some of the people there were members of Congress. While waiting for them to be done we were able to go down to the protest. There were tons of reporters and cameras. I am looking for myself in the newspapers here “Gringos come to protest at Congress.” No such luck yet. After, we met with one of the Congress members. Our professor told us that because she was so popular and involved with the protest, she would not be able to talk to us long. When she was done talking she took us down to the protest herself. A whole bunch of gringos with a popular congress woman defiantly made a scene. Afterwards we returned to the school, where we ate. The rest of the afternoon was a nonevent. Katie and I are defiantly in the habit of taking the bus home. For only 18 cents, it’s worth it. At the end of the day we are tired and do not want to walk up hill in the mid day sun.

Wednesday was rather uneventful. On our walk to school there was the stray dog that was following us. We have been more than warned to avoid animals. I am not dog lover, but I defiantly felt bad for this dog. There are a lot of wild dogs in Honduras. No surprise here, but I have found my addictive coffee drink here. I am not sure what the translation to English would be, but it’s from a coffee shop we have on campus, and other places, called Espresso Americano. Class was normal. We have our first exam Friday. I came home Wednesday and found my room cleaned again. Mi mama organizes my desk, remakes my bed, and cleans my bathroom every day. Also she gave me back some of my laundry today. I had a pair of blue pj pants that I had bought right before coming here, so they not had been washed yet..oops. The blue dyed some of my clothes. I did not ask, but I hope it did not dye any of theirs. Mi mama felt bad. She told me she did not know why that happened. Thursday should be fun because we are going to the US Embassy, where we get to talk English. To be honest, it is getting harder and harder to only speak English, especially after this past weekend where we all spoke a lot of English. It is just so much quicker to talk in English, and yet I know that it’s far more beneficial to speak Spanish. I have noticed that I understand more now, but I still nod my head and say sí a lot.

La Tigra 3

On Saturday, Katie and I had to be at our bus stop at 7:30 to be picked up by our private bus to go to La Tigra, a national park. Katie forgot her sweater so we had to quickly go back to her house after she had already come to mine. We ended up getting to the stop at 7:26, which I thought meant we were on time, however we waited and waited. Eventually we got a call from Blanca, one of our coordinators. She asked if we were on the bus. When we told her we were still waiting for it, but she told us that the bus was already back at the university. There had somehow been a mix up with our bus driver and he was early to pick people up, so we had missed the bus. I did not want to walk to the school because I had two bags. Luckily Blanca told us that the bus would make another swing around the city to hopefully get everyone this time. Once on the bus, we had an hour drive to La Tigra. We got off the bus and put our things in a truck that was waiting for us. A Spanish speaking German man, who the coordinators know, took our things up the mountain to our “hotel.” We were left to walk, or really hike up the mountain to our hotel. We started on our way and became tired quickly. Because of the altitude it was harder to breath. My group had gone up about a mile, when the man in his truck came back down to offer our group a ride the rest of the way, which was a little more than a mile more. We of course accepted, but felt a little bad when we passed everyone else still hiking. I am glad we still did it because later that day we had to walk two hours to a waterfall. Blanca had told us we were just going to take a nice walk to a waterfall. It did not take long for all of us to figure out we were lied to. Most of the way was uphill on small paths through the forest. The waterfall was beautiful, but I am not sure it was worth all the work. The way back was easier, because it was mostly downhill. We spent the rest of the day relaxing. That night we had “sharing time” where we were able to speak in English and tell the group a little about ourselves. Because this weekend was about getting to know each other we were allowed to speak English for most of the weekend. We had asked the staff before if we could have a campfire after our meeting. During the meeting we heard the rain and just assumed that we were not going to have it. Afterwards we went outside and saw the fire. I was amazed that they started a fire in the rain. Some of the guys in our group made the workers smores, which were new to them. Me and my friend Alex ended up talking to one of the employees at this place. It was really interesting to hear his story. His name is Melvin. He is eight-teen and is from the city on the other side of the mountain. He went to school until sixth grade and then had to start working to help his family. He works for fifteen days and then goes home to see his family for three days. He would love to learn English but does not have the time or money to go to school. His life is all about earning money for his family who is very poor. He was very interested in our lives too.

On Sunday we got up at 7:45 to get ready for breakfast. We supposedly had hot water, but no one could figure how to get the heater to work. While I was taking my cold shower, the heater, which is a part of the shower head, began to spark. I still had conditioner in my hair, so I did not know what to do. I hurried up and got out a little scared. I am not sure what we did, but we broke the shower. Oops. After breakfast we walked to the German man’s house on the mountain. There him and his wife make jam using the fruit found on the mountain. I bought some for my family here, and some for my family in the States. We left La Tigra and went to a popular tourist town, Valle de Angeles. We did not have much time there but I was able to buy some cute things. We returned home. I was able to take a shower, eat dinner, and got to bed early. Monday, I had class at 8:30. It was a grammar day; nothing particularly exciting. We did have a panel of students who told us a little about their lives and the school. Katie and I returned home early and used the phone and internet at the place near our houses. I wish there was more to tell about the day, but it was pretty regular.

La Tigra 2

We were so high in the mountains that the clouds came over the tips of the mountains. It was beautifull. The other is a picture of our campfire that we had while it was raining. We had told the staff that we had wanted a fire to make smores. which were foreign to them, however when we heard the rain during out meeting before, we all thought we would not have the campfire. Despite the rain, the staff still made us a fire.

La Tigra

This is a picture of the waterfall that we had to hike two hours to see. I admit that its beautifull, but i am not sure it is worth the work. The other picture is the place we spent the night at. I will write more about the weekend later. It was alot of fun.