It's Great... But It's a Grind... But It's Great

It’s the end of Thursday, July 2, 2009. I am very thankful for electricity. Yesterday from 3:00 – 8:00 p.m. we had no electricity, and again for two hours this afternoon. Our host mom still made us amazing baleadas (cooking on a gas camping type stove outside) and we enjoyed sitting outside where the breeze was keeping us cool. The family we live with has a telescope and the moon and stars were very bright last night. As we could tell, other parts of the city had electricity, just not our street. Many shouts of joy were given on the street when the power came back on, but many people continued sitting outside enjoying the night air. The road we live along is quite narrow and extremely BUSY!!!! Buses, taxis, cars, trucks, bicycles, motos and walkers all doing their thing. Also people are always stopping in and visiting our host family, or our family is next door (probably to get away from the noise of 5 extra people). ☺

We continue to enjoy our Spanish classes, though they’re getting more difficult as we keep plowing new territory. Some of us have switched teachers this week. It gives a new perspective and has been a positive change for all of us as we’ve found some teachers are more effective than others. My teacher now is the director’s wife and she speaks hardly any English, but is such a good teacher that I could follow her teaching so well today! The reality, of course, is that 3 weeks has us only skimming the surface, but it has deepened a love of the language for us. Katrina has become the most advanced since she had one year of Spanish in school. Our schedule each day is quite on time …breakfast around 7:00, off to school at 7:45, class begins at 8:00, break at 10:00 and classes are over promptly at noon. We have about 10 min. to check email during our break and send out the blogs, so it’s not much time. We eat our main meal at around 12:15, and then the afternoon/evening is free. We often take a nap (as it’s HOT and four hours of thinking in another language is exhausting) or read, play games, TV, go the beach, go to the market or supermarket. Our plans to volunteer to do volunteer work has changed a bit as the schools and day-cares have been closed due to the political unrest. We can go anywhere we need to in the city with a taxi, as they are everywhere. It costs 20 limps (around $1.00/person/ride). Sometimes our host mom or dad will take us on little trips.

Funny, I’m sitting at the kitchen table and the TV is on and I looked up and recognized the news anchor. Here he was our S.S. teacher the first Sunday we were in La Ceiba at the Mennonite church. Interesting!

Today after lunch, the school director picked us up and took us to a daycare center where they often send volunteers. They take care of children that are from single parent homes where the father was abusive. They were waking up from their nap when we arrived. We shared punch balls/balloons and little stuffed animals and toys. Even though our Spanish was limited we had fun with them. Our last stop today was at a local store that had many souvenirs and the store was air-conditioned. Wow, that was a foreign feeling, but wonderful. We plan to go to the Rio Cangrejal river and Pico Bonito Nat’l Park tomorrow for an overnight trip when our school-week is over.
~Rochelle


While we have had numerous restrictions on some of our activities, and we wonder if the unusual and prolonged power outages have had anything to do with the political situation, for the most part life is going on as normal for most everyone here no matter what you may be seeing on CNN. It’s been interesting being on the inside of a developing international story, when we’ve generally only heard the U.S. media’s slant on such things in the past. Though we have struggled to keep up fully understanding the details of the situation, I do sense that the perspective of the Hondurans that we are among is much different than what we read when we get on the internet and hear what other OAS heads of state and news outlets have to say. Rather than a coup de tat, I’d say Hondurans see Zelaya’s removal as having been a quick no-nonsense “impeachment” and they wish everybody would mind their own business. From what I’ve seen and heard here, I doubt international pressure will get them to change their minds about any of what’s been done, but we’ll have to wait and see.

Well, it’s bed-time and my Spanish homework’s not done, so ‘til later…
~Carl