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.