School tomorrow!!!

In Honduras, everything is hot. The days are hot, the nights are hot, the food is hot, the coffee is hot, the people are hot. But the showers are consistently, inexplicably freezing COLD! At orientation they warned me that I probably wouldn't have hot water, but luckily, the water here is room-temperature, at best, warmer than it was at the hotel. The days here are so hot that I don't mind too much, but it's just another thing to get used to.

Yesterday I tried my hand at using the Pila for the first time. The Pila is a rather brilliant clothes-washing contraption designed to use the smalled amount of soap, energy, and water as possible. Since the plumbing in Central America is inconsistent, the basin stores clean water and it has a bumpy board you can scrub your clothes on, and drainage around the sides. You pour water on to your clothes, scrub some soap on, and then as soon as you pour more water on it washes all the soap and dirt off of the board and you can squeeze it dry and hang it on the line. As I washed my clothes, I tried to think Honduran thoughts and not be bothered by the fact that a turtle lives in my source of clean water and my delicates will be hanging on a clothesline, flapping in the wind for all the world to see. I felt very cool and eco-friendly, and I'm started to think that those hemp-wearing, can-recycling, dreadlock-rocking hippies in Bellingham are all hypocrites and they should move to Honduras and see what green really looks like.

When Sra Ortega came home we had a dinner of cheese-filled tortillas and what appeared to be pickled onions and peppers and cabbage or something, and it was really good. I think they were called Popusas? Something like that. I also found out that I will, indeed, be attending Instituto Marista La Immaculada, and today my host mama was kind enough to take some time off of work to take me to the bank, and to coffee, and to buy some things that I need for my uniform. I had been kind of excited to get a uniform, because it saves me from having to decide what to wear, but my uniform is absolutely heinous. All of the uniforms that I have seen around town have been pretty cute: blue or beige pleated knee-length skirts, high socks, mary-janes, but mine consists of a below-the-knee brown skirt, a white blouse, white ankle socks, and black pleather oxfords. For PE I have to wear a white t-shirt and long brown shorts made out of the same material as the skirt. Blech. I got two skirts, two shirts, two blouses, two undershirts, two pairs of socks, a pair of shorts, and shoes for under $1300 lempiras, which is less than $65US, so yeah, stuff here is cheap. I'm still glad I have a uniform and everybody at the school will be dressed in the same horrible outfit I'll be dressed in, so I suppose it's a silly thing to be vain about.

Tomorrow I start school! I'll be wearing jeans for the first week or so until my skirt is done being made, but maybe I'll put up a picture of my uniform when I have it. Maybe.

I'm home :)

I have finally made it: I am with my host family! Yesterday a Comayagua volunteer came to pick me up from the AFS office in Tegus and took me to a Burger King in Comayagua where my host sister and her boyfriend picked me up. When we got to the house a lot of the family was there, lots of cousins and such. They served me a delicious lunch of sausage, some other kind of meat, pico de gallo, guacamole, and tortillas and then my host sister and her boyfriend and I began to walk around the neighborhood. I was uncharacteristically frozen with nerves for the first hour upon meeting my host family, but I have since then relaxed. Rosa showed me the gigantic neighborhood swimming pool, and then we met up with her cousin (I think she's her cousin) Gracia and hung around the tennis court for a bit. Gracia and I sat down on the bleachers and talked for a while. She, as well as Rosa and every other kid I've met around my age, speaks perfect english (dang it!) but I enticed her to speak a little bit of spanish with me as well. Gracia and I talked about books and school and we have a lot in common. She likes a lot of the same books I like! We played a bit of Uno in the corner of the tennis court with some other girls from the neighborhood and then we walked back to the house and she showed me the pets-- two dogs and a turtle who lives in the sink in the backyard.
Then Gracia and her family left and Rosa and I hung out and watched narnia for a bit and she made eggs and chicken nuggets, and we talked a little bit.
I really like my host sister. I won't be going to school with her because she goes to a private school where all the classes are conducted in English. She takes fourteen classes at the same time!!! I thought I had it rough one year when I had to take eight. She says I'll probably be taking at least ten, even in public school. Her school also requires that she volunteer after school so she doesn't get home until four because she teaches (or helps teach?) English classes for kids after school. She says she doesn't have time to do much but homework (no kidding!) and go to youth group and church and see her boyfriend, who lives in Tegus, on the weekends. She is a Christian, probably a bit more conservative than me judging by some things she's said. For example, she thinks Harry Potter (and most fantasy in general) is demonic. That's a pretty popular view among Christians even in my church, but I definitely don't feel that way. I'm so glad she loves God, and I'm really excited to see what her church is like.
We all went to pizza hut for dinner. I had a slice of pizza and a glass of Horchata...mmmm....horchata. Horchata! How I love thee! I could write sonnets about my love for thee! But I won't. Horchata is a highly pleasing beverage consisting of rice, cinnamon, and vanilla, and for some bizarre and inexplicable reason, it is rarely available in the states. I plan to consume as much Horchata as physically possible during my stay here.
After dinner we went home and went to bed. When I woke up, everyone was gone except the help, Sandra. She is really nice and she makes delicious food. For breakfast, she made me a sandwich and a glass of juice out of some sort of fruit I've never seen before-- it's green on the outside and yellow on the inside. And for lunch she made me fried chicken and french fries and cantalope juice. Mmmm. Juice. I really enjoy juice. She also did some of my laundry...I wanted to do it myself, but she insisted. It's really weird for me having people do things for me on a day-to-day basis, but I guess it's pretty normal here.
I don't know how long I'll be lazing around the house like this because they still haven't picked a school for me. I was accepted into Instituto Marista La Immaculada, which is a catholic school, but for some reason AFS would rather I go to a different one. Today I just took a walk, watched "Monk" and put my clothes away. I asked Sra Ortega if I could walk around, and she said I could walk around in the neighborhood but not outside of it. If I don't have school tomorrow, I will go swimming...this will probably be my only chance to have that whole big pool to myself!

I'm in Honduras!

Wow, so, I’m here. In Honduras! I got here yesterday afternoon and was greeted in the airport by AFS volunteers and the other exchange students. Only two of the others are actually students, Luisa, who is from Germany and Juri, who is from Japan. The others are all from Germany or Belgium and they’re here for community service. We’re staying at a hotel just outside of Tegucigalpa-- when we got here the volunteer laughed and said “This is not a luxury hotel…this is a Honduran hotel,” but actually the hotel is quite nice. It’s spacious and there’s a huge pool and good food. Definitely nicer than some of the ones I’ve stayed at in the US! The only thing is that a hotel in the US would never allow the noise this place allows. The bar (or our neighbors?) were partying well into the AM…there was literally music blasting through the main area of the hotel! It was really hard to sleep.

The drive here was mesmerizing. People here sure don’t drive like they do in the US! Slamming horns and brakes, nearly killing pedestrians, and going ungodly speeds in completely the norm here. I found it sort of exciting, like a roller coaster ride. I can’t get enough of the architecture and design tastes here. The buildings are yellow, orange, blue, green, pink, purple, or all of the above! There are murals! Cobblestones! Every city should look like this! Oh yeah, and the dirt is pink. It’s weird.

I get to my host family tomorrow morning which is really great because I must admit I’m getting pretty bored here. There’s no one really to talk to…Juri and Luisa don’t speak much English and are pretty shy, and the rest speak fluent English but mostly just use German. At least when I get to my host family I won’t be jetlagged!

Off I go

I am writing this post on my word processor because I don’t have internet in the airport. I don’t know when I’ll be able to post it-- I fly to Tegucigalpa in two hours. I’ve been going, going, going since Wednesday when my family and I drove down to Seattle to stay at a hotel so we could catch my 5:00am flight on time. It didn’t really hit me until I got on the plane that I’m actually doing this. I know it sounds silly but it just didn’t feel real until I left. I kept repeating to myself on the plane, “I am doing this. This is actually happening. I’m going to be an exchange student!!” Even if I had wanted to sleep on that flight, I was too wired about everything to relax. I don’t think I’ve slept more than ten hours in these past three days. Even now, I’m weirdly wide awake. When I arrived in Miami, I immediately made my way to the AFS orientation. Or at least that was the plan. The orientation started at 4:00, but my flight didn’t land until 4:10. And when I got off the plane my baggage was literally the last on the baggage claim. *The* last. That would happen to me!

And then I got slightly lost and went out the wrong exit. There are two exits, one on the top floor and one on the bottom floor, and I went out the one on the bottom floor and stood there dumbly for a few minutes, like, what’s up with all the taxis? Where are all the shuttles? So I wandered around until I found the right exit on the top floor and then, twenty minutes later my shuttle arrived and I got to the hotel after 5. I figured I could just tell AFS that my flight was late (because it was) but the lady at the AFS desk was all “Where ya been? There was a kid on your same flight and he’s been here awhile.” Oh…ok…um…idk…cool. Facepalm. So I tossed my bags in my room and busted into the last few minutes of the orientation session looking all frazzled and probably smelling like sweat and disgustingness to find a room full of irritatingly composed-looking teenagers looking up at me and took a seat. We began to participate in the last bit of an AFS trivia game, and then we walked down the hall and sat down to eat dinner in this fancy dining room where we had like three forks and butter balls shaped like ROSES. My whole table was really friendly and chatty and cool and we talked about how nervous and excited we were.

They were all girls-- 13 out of 16 of the kids at the orientation were girls, not shocking, and all of them were going to Costa Rica. All of the kids at the orientation were going to Costa Rica except me and two kids going to Panama. That’s right, ladies and gentlemen, I am the ONLY American AFSer going to Honduras this semester!!! Crazy. I feel sort of special but also kind of bummed, not because I’m not psyched about going to Honduras, but because I won’t see any of these girls at my Host country orientation and I won’t be flying with any of them. I think not a lot of people apply for Honduras just because they don’t know much about it, but honestly, that’s why I’m psyched to go there. I’m looking to have an experience in a Spanish-speaking country that is as foreign as possible, and I figure going to a country with relatively small-scale tourism is a good way to achieve that. When I tell people I’m going to Honduras often (if they even know where it is) they’re like “Um, WHY? Why aren’t you going to Argentina or Spain?” Seriously, they say that! Well, I applied late so I didn’t have the option to go many places, but even if I had I probably wouldn’t have picked Argentina and I definitely wouldn’t have picked Spain. So I smile and say “Why NOT?”

Anyway, after sleeping very poorly that night I woke at 6:30 am, actually sort of sprung out of bed without the help of the numerous alarms I had set and made my way to the airport. I got an early start on the latin experience in the Miami airport because there seemed to be more Hispanics than Americans! An Cuban AFS volunteer saw me to security, and in order to get me through the airport she was speaking rapid-fire Spanish with all of the authorities. She argued her way out of a check-in with a long line and although normally I’d have to pay for my baggage, after batting her eyelashes at an employee and exclaiming “Por favorrrrrr, por favorr!“ she turned to me and triumphantly declared that I didn’t have to pay. It was very impressive. I had a huge, delicious central-American-style breakfast of spicy potatoes, sausage, and a small, sweet sandwich (the buffet lady addressed me in Spanish-- haha! Am I still in America?) and now I’m sitting at the restaurant with some time to kill before my flight.

I feel so cool in my AFS t-shirt because people keep stopping by me, like, hey, what’s up with your t-shirt? What are you doing? And I tell them I’m going to be an exchange student and they’re all, “Cool!“ When I arrive in Honduras I’m going to be greeted by AFS volunteers, and I’m going to go to an orientation with other AFSers (I’ll be the only American!) and learn a little bit more about the program and the culture before I get to meet my host family on Sunday! I’m going to be in Honduras in a few hours!

Diez dias!!!!!!

10 days until I leave! I can't even believe it. I've composed an awkward email to my future host mom, but I haven't heard back yet. It was really hard to think of what to say since she's basically read my whole life story in my AFS essay, so I just said that I was grateful to be accepted into her home and excited to meet the family in my not-so-great but hopefully comprehensible spanish. I can't believe how soon I'm leaving! My emotions are bouncing back from supreme excitement to devastating nervousness. I still have so much to do! Gee, who's going to take care of my goldfish, Aucoin? I can't give him to my mom...I don't trust her because when I was little she flushed my fish Bubbles while I was at school and told me she "sent him to a happier place". Oh yeah, and I have to start thinking about packing. Ew.