La Playa!

Weirdest Honduran Phrases I've Heard:

1. "Vayapues"-

Sounds like "go so" but in Honduras it means "OK"

2. "Tengo hueva"-

Sounds like "I have egg" but it means "I feel lazy"

3. "No hay pedo"

Technically means "There is no fart", but here they say it to mean "No problem". Oooookay.

I'm feeling pretty good today. As of yesterday, I've been here a month, and I'm finally feeling adjusted. I have to admit, I hit a low point my second week here, and spent the week feeling a bit sulky, asking myself "What am I doing in this strange country?!" and wanting to throw every plate of Honduran food I saw out a window, but I definitely don't feel that way anymore.

I get so much attention for being a gringa! I have to admit it, most of the time, I love it. Mostly people just stare, and I don't blame them, because even I stare when I see gringos in Comayagua. The other day I was loitering outside a Pulperia with some classmates after school and a group of sunburnt shorts-wearing tourists came wandering up the street, and I stared and giggled with the rest of my peers at how out of place they looked...and then I remembered that I'm a gringa, too, which despite my bad spanish and habit of looking in mirrors daily, I have still managed to forget after a month of living here. The other day a little boy at church ran up to me during worship, kissed me, and stood on a chair, pointed to me, and screamed "La blanca!" Yeah, I'm white. Pretty cool, I guess. Apparently school children have yelled compliments to me when I'm waiting for my bus, too, but I had no idea I was being addressed...and men call out to me "hermosa!" and allegedly some things it's better I don't understand. That would be the sort of attention I'm not particularly pleased about.

This weekend I got my first glimpse of the beautiful Honduran coast. I had to wake up at 3:00am on Saturday because the trip to the coast takes 5 hours-- yikes! I can't imagine how long it would have taken in a country with speed limits! My host mom, Juan Carlos, Sandra, and Sandra's kids and I went to the church where we met up with other people from church and piled into a big bus and headed for the beach. Rosa couldn't come because she had too much homework. Once at the beach I spent the day swimming, sleeping under palm trees, and eating coconut bread, fried things, and fresh coconuts, and drinking delicious red (hibiscus?) juice sold by some ladies from the church. It was lovely! Unfortunately I also accidentally fell asleep under the extra-hot coast sun, which rendered me quite burnt despite my SPF60, and got me some interesting nicknames, like"Fresita Rosita" (little pink strawberry/Strawberry Shortcake) and "Tomato".

Whilst relaxing under palm trees some little local boys approached us and sang us a song whilst banging on bucket-drums and dancing. It was so adorable! I tried to upload a video but blogspot is being stupid.

On sunday I went to Nicol's house and played Uno and watched Inception and hung out with her and Kevin. Despite this being my third time watching Inception, and my third time having a guy try to explain it to me, I still don't really get it, and I don't really understand why when these people can build any world they want their adventures are taking place in hotel lobbies and snowy mountains, because personally, I would be permanently residing in a magical unicorn land with candy falling from the sky if Inception were real. Still, it's a good movie.

Apparantly there's a dance party at school on Friday (I can't dance, so that'll be interesting) and my classmates invited me on some sort of roadtrip this Saturday for eating, swimming, and "convivencing"-- spanglish is so adorable :). It sounds so fun! I'm really excited for this weekend!

Baleadas are magic.

Top Three Things I hear People Saying About Me In Spanish:

1. "How cute! Where's she from?"

2. "She doesn't speak any spanish...no, none at all..."

3. "Does she like beans/rice/plantains?"

I'm slowly getting used to the region's spanish. My first impression of honduran spanish was that it sounds almost muffled; soft. I've come to notice that Hondurans don't like to pronounce consanants and have an irritating habit of skipping s's completely. They also don't like to pronounce more than one vowel in a row. "Quieres" is "queres" and "tienes" is "tenes". There is no "mas o menos" only "ma o meno" Also, there is no "tu", there is only "vos", which is like the spanish equivalent of "ya'all" so it feels really strange. Even if I speak with "perfect" grammar and pronunciation, often people gape at me as if I had just mumbled "HVJBEAWBBAKBKS" (or laugh hysterically) and somebody who's been around me long enough to understand my version of the spanish language has to translate it into the Honduran style of not using consonants. Sigh. Luckily I am incapable of embarrassment, or I would have stopped talking a long time ago.

ANYWAYS, it's monday and I spent most of the weekend hanging out with Nicol. She came over friday with the notion that she would help me with my studies, but we ended up just watching movies and hanging out. Sandra also made Baleadas for the first time, which changed my life.

Baleadas are a uniquely Honduran food consisting of a wheat tortilla, with beans, cheese, and mantequilla*, and often other ingredients as well. You're probably thinking, oh, like a burrito! But NO. Yes, Baleadas consist of similar ingredients as your average taco bar/enchilada/generic central-american dish, but what you don't know is that Hondurans not only put beans, cheese, and mantequilla in their Baleadas but they also put MAGIC. Or pixie dust. Or crack.

I would love to learn how to make Baleadas, but according to Rosa, I have about as much of a chance of creating a successful tortilla as I do of discovering the cure to cancer or building a rocketship with recycled cans and flying to the moon out of my backyard. I guess Sandra is the only one in our home we can do it because her hands are...magic. Or something.

On Saturday I went to school. Yes, really. There was a Tallier project there's not enough time in the week to do, so this week, I had school on Saturday. But it started at eight, so I got to sleep in. Ha! I never thought I would thing of eight as sleeping in, but school normally starts at six forty, so eight is practically like the middle of the day for me now. I was supposed to take apart a computer, clean all the parts, and put it back together, but all I really did was stand around and try to look like I knew what I was doing, and somehow I managed to not break anything.

After Tallier was over, Nicol and some classmates and I went to "La Princesita" to eat breakfast-- more baleadas! I was faced with another how-will-I-eat-this crisis because my 20-lempira baleada was twice the size of my face and overflowing with content, and hondurans don't believe in eating utensils, but it was SO WORTH IT because it tasted like heaven on a tortilla. Angels actually sang as I ate it.

If you're going to Honduras and you're worried about spicy food, don't. I have yet to meet a Honduran who even likes spicy food. My classmates all stared at me in awe as I piled the entire tables portions of rejected chiles (jalepenos?) on my Baleada, and the end result was still well below my spice-threshold. "Wowwww," they all whispered. "She likes chiles!"

After hanging out at school some more, Kevin, Nicol's boyfriend, and I went to her house because my host mom told Nicol to have me over. I'm not quite sure why that happened, but whatever, it was still fun. We all listened to music and talked and ate popcorn, and Kevin and I had mini-debates about drugs and alcohol and religion.

On sunday we just went to church (I understood 95% of the message this time! Yippee!) and then went home and chilled. We ate pizza hut and fried chicken for lunch, which is pretty popular here. I have eaten innumerable plates of fried chicken here, which is perfectly OK with me because fried chicken is amazing.

Another thing I eat a lot here is a plate of eggs, beans, mantequilla and toast, and sometimes avocado or platanos, which is all eaten together on the toast. I really like it; I just can not get enough of the beans here.

*Mantequilla, or crema, as pictured above, is what Hondurans think of as butter but it's more like a cross between butter and sour cream. It is eaten with essentially every meal.

Tortillas are also eaten with pretty much every meal, and I'm never really sure what to do with them. If I'm eating beans or something I use them as eating utensils, but if it's spaghetti or fried chicken or rice, I just get confused. I try to observe what other people or doing, but the piles of tortillas just seem to mystically disappear when my back is turned, so I still don't really know what Hondurans are doing with them. They're good, though, so I'm not complaining.

I've been here almost a month, and I still don't have a tan, which is disappointing to me. I do have a sunburn-- ick! but people keep walking up to me and going, "You're gotten pink! Que linda!" so I guess Hondurans think sunburns are cute? Weirdos.

We Ain't in Kansas Anymore, Toto

Things I'd Rather do With my Uniform Skirt Than Wear it Daily:

1. Donate it to the homeless to use as a tent

2. Use it as kindling for a bonfire

3. Feed it to Simba, the dog (he thinks my shoes are delicious, so it's not a far stretch)

4. Send it back on a time machine to the 60s, where it should rest in peace forever.

5. Hack it to pieces with a battle axe.

True story: while I was trying to upload this picture, my computer spazzed out and I had to restart it four times. Even electronic equippment can't handle the ugly.

Horrid uniform and crazy classes aside, I'm adjusting pretty well. Some other things I'm getting used to:

1. Food. The food here's great, but it's just so different from what I'm used to at home. I've found myself dying to taste something familiar...at a low point last week I walked to the convenience store in hopes to find a snickers bar or something American, but the only chocolate I could find was this random arabic cookie, which I passive-aggressively shoved down my face. So not the same. Globalization, where are you when I need you?!

Upon a trip to Wendy's, I was thrilled to find that, although the menu looks nothing like its american counterpart (no chili!) they have Ceasar salad. Yes! Something familiar! So I ordered it, but when it came, I was disappointed to find that there was no actual ceasar dressing included in the ceasar salad. Instead I got "Avocado Ranch". Well, at least there was good old Parmesan cheese, right? Nope. It was The Honduran Cheese. At least it was a salad.

At school for breakfast we have all-honduran options-- tacos, popusas, churros, and soda. I ordered Popusas last week, and the lady handed me a bag with my popusas drowning in three different types of salsa and...no fork. Or napkin. I turned to Nicol and said, "How do I eat it?" She cracked up and said, "With your hands, silly!" Uh, really?

So I went to the store with this idea in my head that I would purchase American sandwich ingredients to bring to school. So I went to look for cheese. But all they had was The Honduran Cheese and this frightening-looking limp yellow stuff that was being marketed as "American Cheese". So I went to get some deli meat, hoping I would find turkey or something. No such luck...all they had was ham, chicken, and ham AND chicken-- gross! I finally settled with PB&J, which thankfully they had the ingredients for. I do love trying new foods here, though, more on that later.

2. Bugs. As I started to write this, there was a bug crawling across my shoulder, which I pinched off and discarded. A few weeks ago I may have been more phased by this, but there are so many here that I've gotten pretty used to them. I've gotten countless mosquito bites, there are these tiny black crawlers everywhere, and cockroaches half the size of my fist scuttle across the living room floor. Luckily I've never been that scared of bugs, so it doesn't bother me too much, but it's something worth mentioning.

3. PDA. Personal space is not as much of a concept here in Honduras. It's hard for me to follow who's dating who at school, because everybody is touching everybody all the time. Boys I've never seen before in my life will kiss my cheek, hug me, put their arm around my shoulders, or grab my waist or hips (and, oddly, are more comfortable doing so than actually talking to me). The first week I was like, BACK OFF, MY FRIEND, I HAVE PEPPER SPRAY! but I'm used to it now. Typical scenario:

I am walking with so-and-so, and so-and-so stops to greet her boyfriend. Boyfriend kisses so-and-so's cheek, then hugs her, then boyfriend kisses MY cheek and hugs me. Why, hello. Nice to meet you too.

Conviviencia

Here's what I ate for lunch today. This trip has been a lot of firsts for me. Today was my first time making eye contact with my food whilst eating it! Haha! It was really good though.
The convivencia was really fun. When I got to school, I went to my classroom and then my class and a few other classes met up and started walking down the street towards the building where we were going to have the convivencia. I was wrong earlier about it being the whole school, it was just my grade, about 60 people or so. We walked for 15 minutes or so until we got to a large building where we all got out fold-up chairs and sat to pray and watch a bunch of random christian videos, including one about a guy with no arms who learned to play worship songs on the guitar with his feet. Impressive. And then the principal said something and then everybody started hugging each other-- this has happened a few times this week, actually, they really like hugs here. So after I hugged pretty much my entire grade, we headed outside and divided into groups where we prepared presentations and posters about God and Catholicism and stuff. Actually, I shouldn't say we, because all I did was sit and look clueless. Then all the groups gave presentations with their posters and I'm not really sure what they said. And then we had break, and a few girls I had been talking to asked me if I wanted to eat with them, and I said yes, excited at the prospect of making new friends. Unfortunately, I believe I also unwittingly caused some drama, because people kept telling me that Nicol was upset that I told her I wasn't going to eat with her and her friends. Oops! Later I told her that I was sorry if I had been rude, though, so I think we're cool now. I like Nicol and I hadn't been trying to ditch her, I just want to get to know as many people as I possibly can! Note to self: figure out how to navigate these scenarios.

After break we played a bunch of really entertaining games and then we walked back to the school. My new friends invited me to come hang out with them at one of their houses, and of course I wanted to, but I told them no because I didn't know how I was going to get home if I missed my schoolbus. Hopefully I'll figure something out for getting around in the future, because I want to be able to hang out with people! One of the girls I met said she lives really close to me, so maybe I'll be able to hang out with her if she lives within walking distance. She wants me to come over because she is dead set on helping me understand programming because it's her favorite class...well I don't know how much hope there is for me, but I'll take all the help I can get!

First impressions

I have officially been here for over a week! This weekend was cool. On Saturday Rosa and Giovanni, her boyfriend (isn’t that a great name? Giovanni!) and I went to the beautiful central park. Scroll down to my second post to see what it looks like, because I forgot to take a picture. We went to a teensy museum where they had a model of Comayagua and some Semana Santa masks. Everyone’s been talking about Semana Santa, and I’m pretty excited about it’s coming up and from what I hear, it’s going to be pretty cool. Apparently I’m going to get a whole week off school and there are going to be parades and stuff. And then we went to this massively impressive church (as shown in picture) where we stumbled upon this old man who happily shared the church’s history with us in passionate detail. He kept asking Rosa to translate details for me-- “Tell her that sculpture’s painted with real gold! Tell her the church took 500 years to build! Tell her there are priests buried in all the holy walls!” and then he tried to get me to give the church money, to which I politely declined. Then we met up with my host mama who bought me some chocolate ice cream, which was much appreciated because, in this climate, I am eternally too-hot. I chose to wore knee-length shorts on my outing, which made me feel quite out of place because nobody in Comayagua really wears shorts. I was warned beforehand that dressing here is more conservative than in the States, but from what I’ve seen it’s not really more conservative-- just a bit different. Shorts aren’t common-place, but you’ll see people wearing really short skirts-- denim mini skirts seem especially popular, but not nearly as popular as pants. Not so much skin is shown, but everything is tight, tight,, tight, regardless of age, size, or gender! The most typical outfit for Hondurans anywhere between five and thirty I’ve seen is skinny jeans and a fitted Hollister/American Eagle/Aeropostale T-shirt. I’m not sure if they actually sell those brands here or if they’re all fake, because I’ve seen a ton of stores selling fake American brands as such. Girls here dress a bit more effeminate then in Bellingham, heels, pink, etc., which I like. I stick out no matter what I wear because I packed relatively-lose fitting jeans and t-shirts and A-line skirts-- I can’t imagine trying to squeeze into tight clothes in this climate!

After that we went to find me a cell phone-- yay! I bought a cheap little green one that I can add minutes onto as I go. And we went to the super market and then Rosa and I went to church. It was a lot like my church-- it was held in a pretty plain building with fold-up chairs, we sung worship songs led by a worship team of guitarists and a drummer, and then we had a sermon. What I understood of the message was pretty good. It was about King Solomon and the importance of giving your all to God and not being caught up in the things of this world. The service was a bit longer than I’m used to-- three hours! But the highlight for me was when a man got up with a trumpet before the service and led us in some traditional worship songs performed rather untraditionally-- with a mixture of mariachi-esque music and trumpet! Haha! I loved that I already knew some of the songs because they were Spanish versions of songs I know in English, so I was able to sing along.

On Sunday we got up early to drive to the grandparents farm in Tegus, a two hour drive, to spend the day with the family. I had a lot of really good food that was practically all grown on the farm-- they even grow their own coffee!-- and I walked around the farm and the river with Rosa and Gracia and their adorable little cousin Emilie. I contributed to the meal by making the orange juice with Gracia by hand-squeezing a couple piles of (farm-grown) oranges. It was delicious and fun, but it was something I probably would never do at home because a) buying juice would probably be cheaper than buying fruit in the states and b) Americans are way too lazy to spend all that time making juice!

For breakfast we had these corn-things made in corn husks, and for lunch we had delicious meat and rice and what looks to me like pico-de-gallo, but that’s not actually what they call it. I was also served frozen chocolate milk in a Ziploc, which is genius. Why didn’t I ever think of that? And homemade coffee and cookies/biscuits. Overeating probably wasn’t the best thing for my acclimating stomach, because that night I was SICK. Oh well, I suppose it probably had to happen eventually. My host mom makes this magical tea that makes my stomach hurt less, too.

And then it was back to school. I have to admit, my enthusiasm about school is starting to wear off. The only classes that are even mildly comprehensible are sociology, history, philosophy, and math (precalc?). Basically all of my other classes revolve around computers and programming (all six of them!) and no matter what class I’m in, I never have any idea what the professor is saying. It’s frustrating and boring to sit in class with nothing to do. On Tuesday, I went and begged the principal to let me help out with English class some more like I did on Friday, because I got to talk to people and it’s the only time this whole week that I haven’t felt like an invalid. He said he didn’t want me to because I’m supposed to be here learning Spanish and being a student, but maybe I could go just on Fridays. It’s better than nothing, I guess.

Honestly, I’m getting a little moody about the prospects of months more of sitting in class like this, not really understanding, not really being expected or able to do anything, and then going home and not really having anything to do there either. I asked Nicol if the school has any extracurricular, because I really want something to do, something that will actually get me connected to people and help me make friends, but apparently there aren’t any extracurricular except soccer, and THAT’S not happening.

I’m excited because tomorrow, I don’t have classes, we have something called a “Convivencia” or something, and I don’t really know what that is exactly, but I guess we’re going to be doing some sort of games or something to compete against other grades. Whatever it is, I bet it will be fun.

First day of school!

Today was my first day of school! When I got there I was super nervous. My host mom introduced me to Nicol, a friend of the Ortega's, and she was really nice and she's in my grade so she showed me the way to my first class. I was cheerfully informed that she speaks english, and my only thought was noooooooo! At first Nicol only spoke english to me, but I told her I wanted to speak spanish, so thankfully, she started speaking some spanish. I almost feel weird about asking people who already speak english to speak spanish with me, because their english is usually much better than my spanish, so it takes a lot of patience on their part to try to communicate to me in spanish, but she was pretty cool about it.

Nicol showed me what my schedule would look like and I almost passed out from shock and horror. Everyone told me that school here would be really easy, but I'm thinking they were all wrong. My first class was diseno, or design. It was all a bunch of stuff about "data sources" and "dialog" and "input". The professor dictated the lesson and we all copied it down in our notebooks. Here this is a very typical classroom style because schools don't want to spend a lot of money on textbooks and materials. This is a nightmare for me because auditorily comprehending spanish is twice as difficult as reading it, but I was able to copy everything down with 95 percent accuracy, and then Nicol let me borrow her notes so I could copy the other 5 percent. However, I'll probably be spending a great deal of the afternoon trying to figure out what the heck any of it meant.

Next was Honduran History, but I just doodled because they were doing an exam that I wasn't required to take and then we had programming class. Programming class. I copied down everything on the board, but obviously, I don't have one iota of background knowledge about programming, let alone programming in spanish. The professor walked up to me and asked if I knew anything about programming. Nothing? Really? And then he stood there for a minute thinking, and then he gave me a look that basically said "you're screwed", turned to Nicol, and said, "You teach her". Nicol laughed and did a faceplant on her desk, and then turned around.
"You don't know anything about programming?"
"Uh, no."
"Nothing? Really? Uhh..."
"Uhhh"
"Uhhhh....well, first you...you have to...I don't know where to start."

But then, thankfully, our next class started. Our next class was Computer Repair, which I also know nothing about. Nothing. Really. I just sort of stood around until the professor handed me a metal clippy thingy and a wire, and showed me how to twist them together and then I stood around some more until some girls grabbed this burning stick thing and showed me how to weld something onto the clippy thingy and then they told me I was supposed to wrap the wire thingy around the pencil, and I have no idea what I was doing or why, but apparantly I did it well because somehow I ended up with a wire thingy that everybody was really impressed with. Uh, okay.

After Computer Repair, we had break. I was starving but had left my money in my bag in the classroom, which apparently they lock during break, so Nicol bought me a bag of chips and a juice and introduced me to some of her friends. We did cheek kisses (that's the thing here, no hand-shaking) and sat down in a circle and at first, everyone was really quiet and sullen-looking. I was thinking, is something wrong? Do I smell funny? Do they hate me? But then Nicol said "They don't want to talk to you because they are shy and they don't want to practice their English...even though they should!"

"Oh!" I exclaimed. "No, no, no! Speak spanish, I need to learn!" and then I started talking to them in spanish and they all smiled and started to talk and were surprised that I spoke so much. Apparantly they were shy because they thought they had to talk to me in English! Haha!
After that, Nicol spoke to me mostly in Spanish and told people we met that I understood spanish, thank the Lord.

After break, we had the class Tutoria. To be honest, I'm still not really sure what Tutoria is, but I think it's some sort of economy class. I almost gave myself an aneurism trying to figure out what was going on. Attending class in spanish is really frustrating: I would say that I speak spanish, but when I am sitting in a chair and listening to someone talk sixty miles an hour about a subject I know nothing about, I really have no idea what's happening. Even if I know most of the vocabulary and I would be able to copy the lesson onto a piece of paper, sometimes I just can't put the words together, I don't know the rhythm; the phrases. It's hard to explain-- it's like trying to watch a movie when you're starting it towards the end and the volume is turned way down low. So I want to learn as fast as possible because I hate being that person who walks in on a movie and goes "so what's happening again?"

Our last class was Philosophy. Philosophy! Oh, thank you, sweet Lord! Rousseau, Thoreau, Locke, Aristotle...reading! Speculating! This is something I understand. And we even had a worksheet! Visual aid, yesss. Everybody I've met here in Honduras loves Math, Science, and Computers, but me? I'm from America! We don't have practical classes in High School! I'm used to living in a place where it's completely acceptable-- if not, normal-- to blow off math and to love choir and art and literature, and to have some fluffy plan for the future like studying Literature and writing novels or becoming an actress. (Apparantly they don't even have literature majors in Honduras!) Obviously, Philosophy is going to be my favorite class.

I was informed that they have fewer computer-related classes in the tenth grade, and I thought about asking to switch, but then I found out that seniors (11th graders are seniors here) don't have to take PE. Woohoo! So yeah, I'm staying in the 11th grade.

After school Nicol took me to a "Pulperia" accross the street with some of her friends, and one of the guys bought a 2 liter pepsi bottle to share, but we didn't have cups so we poured it into plastic bags and drank out of them with straws. Haha! I was also given "Churros", which are not, in fact, dough sticks covered in cinnamon and sugar, but a sort of savory chip. Nicol's friends made a few hilarious attempts at English conversation (what's uuuuuuuup?) and I was relieved to find that they are shy about speaking and/or don't speak very much English. Maybe I will learn spanish after all!