Random adventures

The last two weeks have been kind of slow at work, but full of social events.  One morning last week, I went into Santa Barbara with Leti when she had a meeting with some classmates in her colegio.  They have a big final project to do before graduation in December, and I have been helping Leti type up everything since she does not have a computer.  I met her classmates and then we wandered around the city for a little bit.  I realized after attending their meeting that it is not just my offices that barely get any work done in a day, it is Honduras.  Everyone here is tranquil and takes their time doing things and going places, and no one worries if things do not get finished.  The largest part of all meetings is chatting and drinking coffee.  I don't know why I'm still surprised by this because it is normal for all ages and all types of work.

A little man-made waterfall in Santa Barbara.

A big mural, this is the church of Santa Barbara, and these people exist in real life.  They are known for their various businesses.

This man plays in the park every night.

This woman makes and sells hats from palm.

All of the mountains of Honduras are full of coffee bean fields.

This is what a typical neighborhood street looks like in Santa Barbara.  Some are dirtier, and most have more shops.

There were also a few more birthdays last week.  My host-mom's brother's wife, Maira, had a birthday and invited us all out to dinner in Santa Barbara.  She had made a reservation, but as sometimes happens in Honduras, they did not keep her reservation so we had to find somewhere else to go.  We ended up at a taco stand (probably as sketchy as you're imagining) outside of someone's house that only made and served taco's with pig meat.  Well my host-brothers as well as Maira's mother do not like pig meat, and I can't eat that meat  for health reasons, so four of us ended up having to drive around and find a different taco stand.  By the time we got back, the others were done eating.  Then it started to rain.  But the point was to have family together for Maira, so everyone was still happy.  And of course after dinner, we went back to the house and had birthday cake.  Two days later, we went to a birthday party for the daughter of close family friends.  Once again, the focus seemed to be food, but there were also games for the little kids as well as two pinatas.

Leti holding Maira's two month old baby!

Singing for Maira

Everyone but her helps to blow out the candles...

Manuel breaking the pinata.

The children all rushing to grab candy as kids are still swinging sticks around their heads.... not super safe.

My host-dad Omar and brother David

On Friday night, my host-brother David drove me, Leti, and my host-grandmother into Santa Barbara to the carnaval.  This is not an American carnival, but a carnaval with a band who plays while people dance in the street.  This carnaval was just in one neighborhood of Santa Barbara, but there are more every weekend of November because beginning December 1 is the feria of Santa Barbara.  Every town in Honduras has its own feria, which is a celebration of a Saint or a Virgin, that lasts for a week or two.  We went to this particular carnaval because the band playing was New Combo '75.  Combo '75 was the band my host-mom's dad started back in 1975, and New Combo '75 is the band my host-mom's two brothers re-formed.  Both of my host-uncle's are very musically talented and can play just about any instrument as well as sing.  There are a few other members who sing and play instruments, but the "lead" singer, Luis, is only 21 and lives in an extra room at my host-grandparent's house because his family is from another town.  They live too far for him to stay at home if he wants to be a part of the band, and he really has incredible talent so my uncles always say they are lucky he wants to be a part of the band!

I wanted a picture of the band, but this bolo (drunk man) danced into my photo.

Surprised, or not surprised

Since I have lived in San Vicente, my host-mom has been talking about and planning a huge surprise party for her dad's 67th birthday which was this past Sunday.  She is very creative and hand-made all 150 invitations (as well as hand-delivered them all two days before the party), and she also made all of the decorations.  I have spent the past few weeks helping Leti paint and clean the house and yard in preparation.  On Sunday morning we just had to wait for Orlando, my host-grandfather, to leave for the day so we could start setting up tables and food and decorations.  Every morning he takes his daily walk around town to say hello to neighbors and family. When he stopped at our house I noticed that he was incredibly happy and later I found out it was because he was going to meet a long-lost sister for the first time that day.  For years he has been tracking down a sister that he knew existed somewhere in Honduras, and when he recently found her, my host-mom planned to have a family friend drive him there on the date of the party, which was a good excuse to get him out of the house while we set up the surprise.  So around 9:30am I was at my grandparent's house with Leti, when we hear a big commotion from inside and Dilia, my host-grandmother, comes out on the porch followed by Orlando.  Dilia is holding a folded up invitation to the surprise party and Orlando is angrily trying to take it from her, insisting that he saw his picture on it.  Apparently Orlando does not like parties and surprises and when he accidentally found the invitation to his surprise party at his brother's house, he got very upset and nervous.  He still left for the day to go meet his sister, and we all continued setting up as planned, but with a little less excitement.

The invitation said the party would start at 5pm and Orlando would return home at 6pm, but in Honduras everyone is late.  People started to arrive around 5:30 and throughout the night, even at the same time that Orlando arrived.  He was not very surprised since he had seen the invitation, but he could not guess to what scale this party would be so he was still a little overwhelmed with the size of the party.  There was a lot of food, of course, and a lot of speeches, and a band came to play.  Back in 1975 Orlando and some friends started a band, Combo '75, with traditional instruments like the marimba.  They eventually broke up as they got older, but recently Orlando's two sons along with some friends started the band back up and call it New Combo '75.  They are quite famous here and play all traditional music of Honduras.  They could not play at the party of course, because all of the band members were guests, so they hired another modern band from a different town to come and play their music.  So later on in the night there was dancing.

This entire party was a new experience for me, and I will never quite experience anything in the true Honduran fashion since I am American.  What I mean by that is people are always fascinated with me, where ever I go. If anyone has any connection whatsoever to the United States, they want to talk about it all night long.  If anyone knows a single word in English, they want me to teach them English all night long.  And then other people just stare and follow me around because possibly they have never seen blue eyes before, and some people have never even seen a white person before.  Also, the vast majority of Honduran males are picaflores, literal translation being hummingbird.  This is because they shamelessly jump around from woman to woman whether they have a wife and children or not.  We were actually given lessons about this in Peace Corps Training because it is such a common problem, having to deal with these men who think they are the best men on Earth and who are truly stunned when American women do not fall at their feet.  Clearly I'm disgusted with this behavior and having to fight it off all night long at what should be a safe family event is very tiresome.  The problem is, Honduran girls and women enjoy getting piropos (cat calls) because it essentially means they are pretty enough to look at.  So they respond, which just encourages the men, and then the men get frustrated when American women don't respond and they try harder.  They aren't harmful though, just annoying.  This is just a little example of the cultural differences.  Other than having to awkwardly turn down dances, the night was good because it was a new experience.

Helping serve the appetizers.

The moment of surprise.  

My host-cousin Roger playing a song for our grandfather.

Thanking everyone after the speeches.

The band marching in as a surprise.

Me and my host-grandmother.

My aunt, grandmother, and Leti

My little baby cousin!

Me and Leti :)

Me and Omar, my host-dad

A view of the band from the porch, with a full moon in the sky!

Dilia and Orlando dancing :)

Orlando singing one his original songs

Helping cut the 4 cakes.

Playing his new accordion, which was a really special present.  And yes, that is frosting on his face because tradition is to shove the person's face into the cake. 

Leti and my brother Manuel

No more school!

The last day of school was last Thursday so the teachers had a big teacher party on Friday to celebrate.  Apparently they celebrate every year, which I find funny because all of the decorations said things in Spanish like, "We made it another year!"  Not many people here are very motivated to teach because unlike in America, they get paid a lot to teach and usually do it for the money.  The party was at a balneario which is basically like a town pool.  They are privately owned and the owners usually live and work on the land, and they always have a pool, an eating place/restaurant, and fields for playing soccer.  Balneario Aguagua also has two huge fish ponds, an illegal pet monkey, and they sell dogs for illegal dog-fighting.  This party started at 10 and didn't have an end time in the afternoon.  My host-dad's sister is a teacher at the school so I rode with her family and my 12 year old host-brother came along for the fun.

A Honduran party consists of a lot of food and talking.  We didn't order food from the restaurant but made and brought everything ourselves.  Basically the most important part of any Honduran event is the food.  When we got there, the first thing everyone did was have a mug of hot arroz con leche (rice with milk) which I think is like porridge.  Then all of the men sat around while the kids played in the pool (even though it was cloudy and cool), and the women cooked lunch.  Around 12noon, we all sat down to a huge traditional lunch, after which they served cold beer and apples as dessert.  I skipped the beer completely, but the Japanese volunteer who lives in my town and helps teach math at the school took a beer, and by the time I left 3 hours later had taken 6 more.  I was really taken aback by this consumption of beer with teachers, but I guess the JICA program is not quite like the Peace Corps program.  So after a dessert of apples, the men went back to sitting around, the children went back to swimming, and the women cleaned up everything from lunch.  Then they got the coffee and cookies ready.  After the coffee and cookies, we hung the pinata and everyone started to munch on candy, and then they brought out the two huge cakes.  Thank goodness that is when my ride wanted to leave because I have never been so overwhelmed with food in my life.  And this is what it is like every day.  Breakfast, mid-morning snack, lunch, afternoon coffee, dinner, bedtime snack.

The pool with the crazy slides through the trees.

The beautiful view of the mountains from the top of the slides.

Our lunch area with Christmas decorations......

The monkey was determined to pull that banana through the cage.

One of the fish ponds.

My brother, Manuel, doing a flip into the pool.

The women serving the plates.  Do you see how much food is on each plate??

A few of the teachers.

Me and Risa, the JICA volunteer.

Me and my aunt Lilian.

Risa hitting the pinata.

Risa dancing with a teacher.

Some weeks are slow.

I don't have much to share about last week.  I had been fighting a cold for days and then apparently walking to the hot springs was a really bad idea.  Lety and I both had fevers the next morning.  Which meant that we were not allowed to go to the Wednesday night church service as usual because it was outside on this particular Wednesday.  They celebrate Day of the Dead on November 1 and 2 and held the church service in the cemetery.  It is chilly at night now, and usually raining, so that would not have been much fun to stand in anyway.

I went to the cemetery with Lety on Saturday though, as part of our weekend walk.  She wanted to visit her grandmother's grave and her aunt came with us because it is her mother as well.  The cemetery is relatively large and ugly.  There are no grass or trees, and there are not many flowers.  But Lety's aunt swept away the dirt from her mother's grave, which I guess is their idea of cleaning up.  On the way home, they showed me a giant rock with a Mayan carving on it.  Some people found it in the river years ago and the story is the rock really is from ancient Mayan times.  On Sunday, we did not go for another walk because we cleaned up the yard at my host-grandparent's house all day.  Yard work here is unlike anything most American's have ever done.  Mowing the grass is not with a lawn mower.  We are hunched over, whacking away with a machete for hours.  Trimming trees is not with clippers or any tool I have ever used, it is chopping with a machete or using your bare hands when there are not enough machetes to go around.  Thorns or no thorns.  The reason we did yard work from 8am to 5pm on Sunday is because the big surprise 67th birthday party for my host-mom's dad is this Sunday.  Xiomara (host-mom) has been planning this party and making elaborate decorations and invitations the entire time I've lived here, so I gather it is going to be a big party.  Now, I have never thrown a huge party, but I'm pretty sure that in America we would send the invitations out well in advance.  Here, Xiomara said she will send them out this Friday, two days before the party.  And everyone will come.  Because here, no one ever makes set plans in advance, just in case something better comes up, like a big party.  Which has been really difficult for me because it makes work extremely frustrating, and I really love being organized and having calendars.  That is impossible to do here.  For example, tomorrow the head of my entire Peace Corps Youth Development project is coming to visit with me and meet my counterparts and check on my progress.  Well when I first told the director about it, he said he had no plans so that should be fine.  But then he ended the conversation with "vamos a ver" which is "we'll see."  And I have tried to talk with the mayor every morning this week when he says he will be in the office, and he has not been in the office any of the times I have stopped by.  So I am just hoping that nothing better (more fun) comes along because this meeting is very important.  But then again, my boss is Honduran so I have hope that she will understand if they are traditionally late.  Vamos a ver.

Also, today being November 9....  HAPPY 5th BIRTHDAY CARTER!!!!!  :)

There were two little dogs chasing the chickens through the grass for fun.   And of course the mountains in the background.

The little brown horse was running around and around in circles.  I thought maybe he was playing a game by himself.

Just pretty.

Little piglets wandering in the road.

The view from the cemetery.

The cemetery.  There are graves all in this big, brown bramble mess.

The rock with the ancient Mayan carving.  I have not found anyone who can tell me what this symbol means.  They all say "it is an animal."