The Zoo

Lately I feel like I live in a zoo. We have more animals in our yard and near our house than I would have thought possible. We have ants all over almost everywhere. In the kitchen, on the floor, in my bed sometimes. But they're not that bad. We have dogs and cats. Lately, we've had chickens and chicks, and even a rooster in our yard. I don't know how the chickens can get through our gate. . .

We've always had geckos (little lizards) which I like. We've always had toukays (bigger lizards - maybe 10 inches long?). One night I came downstairs to pee in the middle of the night. There was a big toukay on the wall in our living room. I was a little surprised!

It is rainy season now, which is GREAT! I love the rain! But it's also (I think) bringing frogs and toads to our house. They're always by our gate, so when I go at night to lock the gate, I can't see them until they start hopping. Yuck. Thankfully we don't have any big gross bugs - like cockroaches.

We still have the cats and dogs. And kittens which are actually a little cute.

I think tomorrow I'm going to the Lao Zoo! I've wanted to go for a while. It's about 2 hours away from Vientiane.

Speaking of animals, I hope this doesn't bother anyone too much. I went to my friend's house the other day. When I arrived, her nephew shoved a long stick with a small lizard hanging on the end by a string in my face. The string was tied around his neck, and I thought he was dead. But then the nephew tried to make the lizard walk on the ground and climb the tree, which it could actually do, so it was still alive. I asked my friend, and she said when she was young she always used to tie lizards to the end of strings to play with them for a couple of hours. Kinda mean, but the little boy was sure having fun!

Almost Finished! :(

So, these are just three random old pictures cuz we haven't gone anywhere lately for me to write about. The first one is in La Ceiba, waiting to get on the ferry for Roatan. We are laughing super hard because the chair is breaking since we're all sitting on it.

Jess and Pam are helping with the food that we have every Wednesday at Kurt and JoAnn's house after our time with our companeros and our book discussion. Wednesdays are so fun, and the food is yummy too!

And this is me milking the cow in Guacoca.

So, we leave next week Tuesday night, in like 10 days. Super sad when I think of leaving, but also super excited to see everyone at home! These last two weeks we have just had class. We have learned about tourism, water sanitation/toilets, and how there are so many more kids that die every day of diarrhea, cholera, and other easily preventable diseases that are caused from drinking gross water. And it should be so easy to prevent! We also learned about child sponsorship programs, short term missions, and the role of gringos in other countries, and have had a few visits. We've also been doing lots of research for our final projects. Richard and I are doing immigration. We didn't have class today, I don't really know why... maybe to work on our projects? That's about it. Sorry it isn't anything too exciting.

pictures of Guacoca

me, my grandma, my great-grandma, elise, my brother, and my mom. (she's only 36 even though she looks much older!)

the coffee and corn grinder. when we got there they were grinding fresh coffee that they had picked. it was DELICIOUS!!

more cute kids from the community.

elise and kirzzia

cows that we milked

the CUTEST girl (maybe even in the world!)

my brother, Edgardo, on the left, and his friend, Josue, in the green, making funny faces!

So the pictures are uploading in weird places again... so hopefully the captions make sense, but I'm sure you can figure them out!!

my grandma cooking over our wood burning stove. This is her making tortillas, but Elise and I did help.

cows and chickens eating dinner by the house

my great-grandma, she was 89!! filling water jugs for something from our sink.

sorry i know these didn't go on very nicely, but i dont feel like fixing them.

Family & Guacoca

My family was here this past week. They came up to Nueva Suyapa with us to learn about microcredit and to see our companeros and book discussion and supper on Wednesday. Thursday morning we took a bus uptown and then headed to Tela, again! Our hotel was WONDERFUL compared to what I've stayed in since I've been here, but not quite what my family was expecting when we still had 2 cockroaches in our room. But it was good, the owners were really sweet! Friday morning we rode bikes to Lantecilla Gardens again and then just the beach. Saturday we went to Punta Sal, a national park. We went on a little jungle hike and saw some monkeys and crabs and such. Then we went snorkeling, but the water was not very clear, so we saw maybe 2 fish. That was kind of disappointing, but the beach was still fun! Sunday morning their bus left at 10:30 to go to the Copan Ruins. And I headed home to Teguc. It was kind of a short visit, but so good to see them again, and we had lots of fun together! Also fun to show them what I'm learning, as they had lots of good questions.

Early Monday morning, we all left for Guacoca, a small rural town in Olancho, which is the North Dakota/Texas of Honduras. They are all farmers and have big guns and pretty machismo and not as developed. The best way to describe it is like living with Laura Ingalls Wilder with TV and lights. Oh, first we visited Alice, a girl who works with Peace Corps in a different small town. She's been there for a year and a half, and it was interresting to see her work, as Peace Corps, or something similar, is something most of us are interrested in.

There is a Christian Reformed church in Guacoca, and the women of the church welcomed us into their homes. Elise and I stayed with our mom, grandma, and great-grandma who was 89! Our mom was married and they had an 12 year old son. We also had 3 hired hands who lived in our house. We visited the community to do research and just to see what life is like for many Hondurans. The whole community was super loving and welcoming. Elise and I helped (or at least tried to) make corn tortillas every morning. We also milked cows, made cheese, drank yummy coffee, and sat on the porch talking and spending lots of time with family and friends. Everything was very "tranquillo" much slower paced and more relaxed. We ate beans, rice, tortillas, eggs and cheese at almost every meal - not much variety, but it was good. We took bucket showers because they didn't have running water very often; so sometimes they had to go to the well or river to get water. Our pigs, chickens, dogs, cats and sheep lived in our yard and on our porch. We had to use an outhouse. Our 12 year old brother drove us in the pick-up to see other towns. The community just got electricity one year ago. Now, everyone has a TV, fridge and lights. I can't imagine how much their lives have changed in the last year! But other than those 3 things, they really still live very simply. I loved how everyone just visited eachother after they were done cooking and cleaning and working for the day. We spent so much time just sitting and visiting and talking and laughing together. It was very slow-paced and would be hard to get used to living like that all the time, since we're used to living much faster, but they really live in community with eachother. They were all so loving and welcoming and warm to us all too! So, it was lots of fun for a week, but I'm glad to be back at my house with my modern conveniences. We just got back this afternoon, and I forgot my camera in Elise's bag, so I'll have to put up pictures some other time.

more pictures

I couldn't get more pictures to upload on my other one, but this didn't work the best either... oh well.

On the volcano. Our guide roasting marshmallows over the lava.

this is a rug made of colored sawdust. this shows more details.

a big church and the guys carrying the float.

Spring Break

These pictures are not going where I want them.

This if of the men carrying the float. The flowered one is a close up of the big rug with Sarah and Elise. the rugs were very detailed!

Happy Easter!

Last week Thursday, three of us left for Tela. The rest of the group came on Friday afternoon. It was pretty busy for Semana Santa, so we couldn't make hotel reservations. We all had a place to sleep, they were just not the cleaniest. Friday and Saturday, we just went to the beach and such. Sunday morning four of us rode bikes to Lancetilla Botanical Gardens. We saw lots of cool trees and plants. It was fun to ride bike even though it was super hot!

Monday, four of us left for Guatemala City. We met Elise who was visiting her host family from last summer in Guatemala City. Tuesday morning, we all took a bus to Lake Atitlan and Panajachel. The lake is beautiful and clear blue. It is also cooler in Guatemala because it is higher up in the mountains, so that was a welcome break from the heat in Teguc for a while. Panajachel was pretty touristy, so we didn't do much else. Wednesday we took a boat to Santa Catarina and stopped at some tiny hot springs on the way. Guatemala has a large indigenous Mayan population (I think almot 90%). Many women still wear tradition clothing. Especially around Lake Atitlan and in the rural areas, but even in the cities.

Thursday morning we took another bus from Panajachel to Antigua, the old colonial capital of Central America. So it still has many old buildings from the 1500s and lots of Spanish influence. It has huge Catholic celebrations and processions for Semana Santa. People make beautiful rugs out of saw dust and flowers on the streets for the processions to walk over. There are big floats of scenes from Holy Week that maybe 40 men carry on their shoulders through the streets. Good Friday is also celebrated much more through the Catholic church than Easter is. So Friday, there were lots of parades. Friday afternoon, we climbed Volcano Pacaya. It is still active, and often people see flowing lava. We only saw a little red lava under lava rocks. We could definitely feel the heat from the lava. Our guide even roasted marshmallows over the lava for us. Saturday we left at 4 AM to head home to Teguc. And my family comes on Tuesday!!!

an old church and float that the men are carrying. they all wear purple cloak things, and I think they are wealthy families who belong to the Catholic church. it's an honor to carry the floats and wear the purple.

Richard, Sarah, Carly and Elise in Antigua

three beautiful Guatemalan girls in traditional clothes. the style is always the same, with the skirt and shirt, but the colors are very different!

Sarah and Elise in front of the prettiest flower rug in the city

Lake Atitlan the volcanoes around the lake are water volcanoes

Roatan

Last week we visited the airport in Teguc and talked with an organization that works with Hondurans after they get deported back to the Honduras from the US. There are about 140 Hondurans that get sent back to Honduras every day from the US. Many of the guys had been living in the US for 5 years or more. When they get "caught" or whatever they get sent to a detention center thing for a month or two, while they figure out all of the paper work. Then they get sent back to Honduras. They are only allowed to take a small plastic grocery bag of their belongings. They usually leave lots of their stuff in the States, because if they've been living there for 5 years, they most likely have a few posessions, and not much fits in a small grocery bag. Heard more of how they get to the US through Mexico. And then once they get deported back to Honduras, they have to find their families or whatever else. A number of them will try to return to the US.

We also visited a jail. Learned a little about gangs, drugs and violence. The jails are super laid back. Not much supervision by the jailers. They only get rice and beans for meals, so most of them have to work in the jail if they ever want to eat meat. They also have to buy their bedrooms and sheets and pay for their laundry and pretty much anything else they want. So most of them have a job making hammocks or making things out of wood. So its good that they stay busy and aren't sitting around all day. Only 10% of all the guys in jail actually had their case go to trial. They usually get arrested for something, like stealing or whatever, and then go to jail without a sentencing. So there are some innocent guys in jail. There's also lots of gang activity that goes on in the jail. They can have friends visit them and bring them drugs or whatever, and it's actually usually easier for the gang leaders to plan things in jail, because they are safer in jail than out of jail. And since they have lots of money or friends who have money, their living conditions are really nice.

Organized crime is a pretty big problem in Honduras, with the drug trafficking. Honduras is right in the middle between Colombia and the US, so its a good place to transfer the drugs. The eastern part of Honduras is the Mosquita, which is jungle and has no roads leading to it. Lots of drugs go through there.

Friday, we left for Roatan, an island on the north of Honduras. It's the best place in Central America to snorkel. The water on West End was crystal clear! It was exactly like the perfect snorkeling you think of when you see people snorkeling on TV or whatever. It was maybe 30 feet deep and super clear to the bottom! And I wasn't even scared (after a little practice)! Some people saw turtles and squid, but I just saw tons of beautifuly bright colored fish and coral! The beach was also beautiful white sand and blue water. It was kinda chilly and rainy on Saturday and Sunday, but Monday was perfect!! We just swam and snorkeled all weekend and came home on Tuesday.

Thursday, we went to Choluteca, a city in the south on the beach to visit a shrimp farm. It was HUGE! and the shrimp look pretty gross when they're alive! and the south is super hot and humid! Glad we live in Teguc in the mountains where it's nice weather! Came home from Choluteca last night. Today we went to Agua Splash, a water park, with our companeros from Nueva Suyapa. Thursday we are leaving for Guatemala for spring break.

ferry we took from La Ceiba to Roatan


clear blue turquoise water!


more beach

Sarah and I all ready to snorkel!