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.
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