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.