Greetings from Cantarranas!! (Well, actually a few towns over in Valle de Angeles, where there is actually internet.) The pic to the left has been our new home the last 2 weeks. If you follow the long road on the far right of the picture, you'll see a white building at the top of the road. This building is the entrance to the town cemetary, and we live very close, just a few houses away.

Our new family is a young grandmother, her grandson who is 4 years old, and her daughter who is home only on the weekends. (She goes to a university in Tegucigalpa during the week.) They are a sweet family and their home definitely has a cheerier and more welcoming atmosphere. Its not that our Santa Lucia family wasn’t nice, but they have had aspirantes (trainees) stay with them several times a year for the past several years. With this family, the experience still has the novelty factor. We have a small room (maybe a 1/3 of the size in Santa Lucia) and although we’ve been cursing having a lot of luggage at the moment, we know we’ll be thankful when that wonderful day comes that we get our own house.

The grandmother (her name is Belinda) is a sweetheart. She treats us fantastically!!! She is a great cook and will very patiently tell us anything we ask about Honduras, as well as patiently listen to our (okay my) broken Spanish. Her grandson, Eric, is wild about Javi and can't wait for him to get home from training everyday. He doesn't have any male role models around so his favorite thing is to play fight with Javi or have gun fights. He has a small speech impediment and has troubles saying his ¨r's,¨ so he calls me ¨sayita.¨

Cantarranas is a very tranquillo town. There are palm trees and colorful buildings, with a beautiful white and yellow catholic church in the middle of town. The people are friendly and it definitely has the feel of a community. Chickens run around free, as do many street dogs, and there are donkeys, horses, ox, and occassionally a fat pig in the unpaved streets. Some of the kids in town have learned our names so they will shout them out at us as we pass by. Eric has recently just gotten three baby chicks. The first day we got them I got very excited and wanted to hold them all the time. Right after this particular picture with the pollito was taken, it pooped in my hands. Nice.

In addition to the language training and normal business sessions we have on weekdays, we've been doing a few activities in the local schools as well. As an advanced Spanish speaker, they've placed Javi in the local high school to teach a series of 7 clases about goal setting and professionalism. (Javi speaking now -->) There are 22 students in my class ranging from 16 to 25 years old. Many kids go to school for a while drop out to work and help the family and then sometimes go back to school again. I have done four classes to date and some have gone well and then others not as much. We have covered how to resumes, cover letters, and different interpersonal skills that could help them professionally. It has been a great experience getting up in front of the students and trying to relate with them.

(Sara again) As an intermediate speaker, the Spanish teachers had us give a 30 minute presentation to a class in elementary school. My grade was 5th grade. I survived as far as my Spanish goes, and I think they had fun. We played 2 games and then talked about the cultural differences between Honduras and the US. I felt like a movie star in there. They wanted me to say things in English, just so they could hear someone speaking a different language, and they would jump and clap. They were surrounding me before and after class asking me a million different questions and lavishing me with compliments. Like I said, movie star!!!

I know this is getting long, but I've got one more topic I wanted to write about. We don't get to post that much right now so I want to make it good.

Cantarranas has problems with water – basically that it comes infrequently and randomly with it not coming at all sometimes. When I say infrequent and random, I mean every few days; when I say not-at-all, I mean after the usual few days have passed and water still has not come. We have not yet experience the not-at-all, but I figure that will eventually happen while we are here since we will be here a little over 5 weeks in all. To deal with water coming every few days, Hondurans use something called the “pila.” I have not yet explained the pila phenomenon. We had one back in Santa Lucia too but our host family had back-up tanks so that you didn’t notice your water use as much. The tanks provided running water, showers and flushing toilets. The pila is where you store your water if you do not have running water all the time. It is a big cement box that comes up to about the waste level. It’s open at the top, with a cement scrubbing surface to the side. You wash your dishes here with this water, you wash your clothes, you wash your hands, you fill your pot of water to cook with, you flush the toilet with this water (with buckets), and you heat this water to take a shower (also with buckets).

When you see how much water you use, because you can see the water level going down every day in the pila, you realize how much fresh water people need to conduct their daily lives. And we are by no means big spenders of water in this house. Take for example the bucket showers I mentioned above. We take our showers outside in a brick bathroom that has an open ceiling. It’s actually nice (except for when it is a chilly morning) and kind of feels “natural.” There is bucket of stove-heated water in the shower with a smaller bucket next to it that you use to pour the water on your body. The larger bucket can’t hold more than 7 or 8 gallons of water, and this bucket is enough water for Javi and me both to take a shower. I was asking the other day to a friend in one of my Spanish classes how much water the average shower-taker in the States uses. He said 22 gallons. Also, according to him (Sean is his name), the average toilet flush uses 2.5 gallons, versus here I can’t see us using more than 1/2 - 1 gallon to flush with a bucket, unless someone has had a particularly nasty episode of diarrhea. Our outside toilet is the picture to the right and shower to the left. Its super clean because Belinda cleans the bathroom EVERY day, it just looks a little rougher because its not what we're used to back home.

Well thats it for now, kids. Thanks for your continued readership and we will post again when we get the chance.

Internet will definitely be iffy

Hey all. Just wanted to let you all know that posts may be far and few between for the next 5 weeks. Our next town for business training, Cantarranas (aka San Juan de Flores) is internet-less. Right now, as trainees they have us on travel restrictions which would make it hard to travel to the next town over for internet. Our project director is trying to work on lifting the travel ban so that we will be able to communicate with the outside world during our training, so I'm hopeful. My guess is that they'll let us, so check in on us in a week or two and I will definitely post if I have the opportunity.
Our lives there in Cantarranas will be a bit different from here. We've had a hot shower and washing machine here in Santa Lucia, and apparently we will have an outdoor latrine and cold shower (shared by 5) in our new host family's home. I've heard rumors about dirt floors and bucket showers, so I will let you know when we can if that is the case. Either way, we are excited for a change of routine from here in Santa Lucia.
More later.........

Quick Facts on Honduras:

Population of Honduras – 7 million

Real GDP of Honduras - $8 billion dollars

Annual Remittances from Honduran emigrants working in EEUU and Spain - $2.2 Billion

Emigrants in EEUU – One million

Percent of Hondurans under the age of 18 – 50%

Exchange Rate 19 Lempiras to one dollar

Minimum Wage – 1,300 Lempiras per month (40 hr work week)

Daily Salary of a waiter in Santa Lucia – 80 Lemps a day

Middle Class Income – 8,000-12,000 lempiras a month

Avg Mortgage Rate – 18% (2005 number quoted by US Embassy charla)

Average Education – 4.7 years

Some prices of items we have encountered so far (mostly in Santa Lucia):

Baleadas (Flour tortilla with beans, eggs, pico de gallo, and cheese) – 7 Lemps

Hamburger with fries – 50 Lemps

Fresh Fish Dinner – 130 Lemps

Cup of coffee – 5 Lemps

News Paper – 6 Lemps

Beers at bar – 15-20 Lemps

Bottle of Rum at Mini Market – 100 Lemps

Hour at internet café – 20 Lemps

3 hour bus ride from Tegucigalpa to Yojoa Lake – 90 Lemps

7 hour bus ride from Tegucigalpa to La Ceiba – 175 Lemps

Bus ride from Santa Lucia to Tegucigalpa (approx 30 mins) – 7 Lemps

Taxi fare in Tegucigalpa - 50 to 80 Lemps

Entry fee to Cataratas at Yohoa Lake – 30 Lemps

Guided Tour of waterfall – 25 Lemps

Night stay for 6 at Yohoa Lake – 750 Lemps

Call to the U.S. – 2 Lemps per minute

Stamp to send letter to U.S. – 25 Lemps

Loaf of freshly baked artisan bread – 25 Lemps

Lunch at a food stall on the street - 25 Lemps

Daily walk around allowance of PC trainee – 55 Lem

Here is another picture from training. This one was a business trip to a local farm here in Santa Lucia. This farmer grew lettuce, cabbage and corn, and we talked about problems and challenges he encountered. (This photo is courtesy of our friend Cliff).

Las Vegas and the Waterfall

Javi and I returned from our volunteer visit yesterday afternoon (Sunday, the 11^th). Our trip to visit the couple in La Ceiba on the north coast was cancelled last minute due to rain and weather complications (i.e. washed out bridges) so we were sent to Las Vegas, Santa Barbara instead. This turned out to be a great visit and we really enjoyed ourselves. Although the couple works in youth development, it was nice to see their house, talk about their daily lives and get some advice. Seeing their set up brought out my longing for our own place again but we know the host family stay is part of the deal so we are trying to roll with it. We just found out today that our total family time will be only 5 months instead of 6 (woo-hoo!) but that is still 4 months and 1 week away. Anyway, after the visit with the couple in Las Vegas, we met up with some other volunteers and aspirantes (volunteers-in-training) and did a few cosas turisticas. With the aide of experienced volunteer “jaloners”, we hitched a ride north from the Las Vegas area to the biggest waterfall in Honduras, Pulhapanzak Falls. (Moms, don’t worry about the hitching. Catching a “jalon” is a perfectly legitimate means of transportation in rural Honduras, and with 8 touristy-looking gringos, we definitely had safety in numbers.)

The waterfall was an incredible experience. Guides hang out around the falls, and for 25 lmps a person (~$1.25) we were taken down a path that led to a spot where we could stand right behind the cascade. I cannot explain how exhilarating it was to first of all get to that spot, and then look up, completely soaked, at water rushing down just in front of you from 43 meters (140 ft) up. The picture above is of our friend Kyle jumping into some water pools after we had gone behind the falls. After the waterfall, we stayed at a decaying (but still charming) hotel on the lake called Agua Azul. This place is famous for bird watching, and I had a chance to walk around Sunday morning to check out some birds. Without a good camera lens, binoculars, a bird book or any knowledge about birds, I wasn’t too sophisticated out there, but I enjoyed it. We had fun on Saturday night talking with other volunteers from the Lago de Yojoa area, listening to the “chisme” (gossip) and generally having a good time. We feel like we picked up a few good pointers from those guys.

So now we are back in Santa Lucia for our last weekend in training as a big group. On Sunday morning we will be heading off to Cantarranas (with no internet access, bummer) for our field based training which is business specific. This will be for 5 weeks and involves, of course, moving in with another family. Maybe we’ll get less Manteca? Probably not…our host mom right now is actually pretty good with that so it might get worse. By the way, the diarrhea has calmed down again. However, according to some volunteers, a poorly chosen diet of street food and other no-no’s can lead to two years of diarrhea. Yikes!

On a side note having nothing to do with the above, Javi and I decided to compile a list having to do with the subject of travel. This is just random stuff we’ve noticed which is slightly interesting:

• Many buses in Honduras are actually old US school buses. Some of them still have the school district painted on the side. One aspirante summed it up beautifully. He sad “Central America is littered with the school buses of my childhood.”
• Speaking of buses and litter – apparently the kosher thing to do with trash on the bus is to toss it out the window. This is unfortunate since the roads are littered with churro (chip) bags and various and sundry bus food items. In Tegus, the capital, there are MOUNTAINS of trash – in the river and every which place.
• Nursing two year olds on the micro-bus, with many aspirantes standing right over, is apparently not looked down upon.
• From our experiences to date, there are no real bus stations, even in the capital. It is random parking lots or spots on the side of the road.
• There is no such thing as dotted lines or passing lanes. Buses, trucks and cars pass each other in a literal free for all, with blind curves on the nation’s most popular highway being a favorite with the bus drivers.

Well, that’s all for now. We will have to figure out something with the internet situation in Cantarranas, but we will figure it out and post an update as soon as we can.

diarrhea and other things of importance

Hi there! Just a few things to update you on. First of all (these are not in any particular order) the "no problems with the stomach" issue no longer holds true. There is definitely some activity going on and lets just say, things are loosening up. Is that too much information? Hey - you guys asked for it, so we just tell it how it is! Our mama has been feeding us a lot of beans lately with a whole lot of manteca (lard) in it, so that adds to the problem. Good thing is, we are learning more and more about our mama, and she is a very sweet lady. She knows that we like liquados (drinks with fruit and milk) and she has been making them for us at every meal.
Second thing of interest is we found out today where our "volunteer visit" will be. This is a Peace Corps tradition where they send volunteers out to spend a few days with a current volunteer to aide in our "learning of the ways" here in Honduras. We get to go to La Ceiba, which is Honduras's biggest city on the beach! Woo-hoo, el Caribe! Its not all glamorous though, since La Ceiba is poor and has some rough areas. Not to worry though, we will be taken care of by and staying with another PC couple who has been living there the past few years. We hear they are a fun couple. We go next Thursday - Sunday.
This coming Saturday morning, the business group is going for a hike in a nearby protected area. Javi and I are excited for that and we'll definitely take some photos for the blog.
Thats all for now.
HASTA LUEGO!