Dia De Madres!

                                   

    I had a fantastic weekend! Friday night we had a mother's day celebration at our school. All the parents came and we (the seniors!) provided food and entertainment. A few people sang, but mostly it was dancing! I knew Hondurans were good dancers, but I was blown away! I'm especially impressed because I know they started two weeks ago and only had like 5 practices. Everyone did an amazing job, although some of the dancing would have shocked an audience of American parents. By Honduran standards, it was totally PG. 

 My physics teacher, Merlin, and Gabi

Singin' songs about unity and peace and stuff

Merlin and I

    I was so hyper that night I had trouble sleeping, which was unfortunate, because I had to wake up at 4 am to be at the school for our trip to Tegus with Sr. Silva! Most of the students couldn't go because of Trabajo Social, but Merlin, Gabi, Oscar, and three of our professors had an awesome time anyway. To be honest, when I left, I didn't really know what we were doing. Sr. Silva, our religion teacher, is Portuguese and he's extra-hard to understand-- all I knew was that we were going on a trip, so I signed up. But I learned that we were going on a "run" (we didn't actually run much) with the organization Run 4 Unity to promote peace. I hadn't really worn running clothes, but that's fine, because in Honduras, nobody wears running clothes. If this had been in America, all the girls would be in yoga pants and jogging shoes, but Honduran chicks wear skinny jeans and ballet flats everywhere. Seriously, everywhere, even to go camping in a cow field. 

    When we got to Tegus, we met up on a sidewalk with a group of other kids and a lady who talked a little bit about the organization, and then we sang some fun songs and got started walking. We held a bunch of signs that said things like "Youth for peace!" and chanted and we had police escorts so that we could walk in street. Traffic was busy and a lot of people were annoyed at having to go around us. Blocking traffic for peace! Woot. 

    We stopped a few times along the way to meet up with little groups of other R4U people holding signs on sidewalks and to be interviewed by various cameramen. I think we were on TV, but I don't watch TV, so I don't know for sure. I ended up being glad it was so early in the morning because it was already so hot! We walked for about two hours and then we stopped at the university and gathered in one of the auditoriums. There was more singing and talking and some sexy dancing. (No event in Honduras is really complete without sexy dancing). We painted our hands crazy colors and put our handprints on a big poster and took lots of pictures. And then we ate lunch! All of us had brought Baleadas and Sr Silva had brought sandwiches and fruit to share and then we went to the mall "to eat lunch". Everyone made fun of me because I didn't want any of Sr. Silva's food and I didn't eat at the mall. "You don't eat much!" they said. But I had eaten three baleadas and a guava! I don't understand how my classmates are so skinny the way that they eat! 

    I was glad we went to the mall because it gave me a chance to buy a present for "mi mama hondureña". Bless Merlin for being patient with me when I was trying to pick out a card for my host mom! They all said things like "You are the best mother in the world"-- well, that's a little disloyal. Or, "you have always been there for me"-- well, that's not exactly true. Or, "you understand me more than anyone else"-- that would be difficult, considering we speak different languages! I finally found a fairly generic card and a bag of jelly beans with a cheesy little "Happy Mother's Day!" balloon. It's so difficult to communicate with my host mom but she is a sweet lady and I hope she knows how grateful I am to her for opening her home to me.

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    That was pretty much my saturday! Obviously I was tired that night, but I had trouble sleeping. At three AM I was awoken to the sound of Giovanni's signature "Maliña!" outside my window, and I was like, oh, Rosa and Giovanni are having a date in the front yard at three AM, that's cool. But then I heard a bunch of other voices and I realized that, in fact, half of the church was in my front yard! And they had all brought drums and guitars and started singing a mother's day song. Thank heavens I had worn pants that night, because in Honduras, you never know if some guy is going to stick his head inside your window at three AM and shout "LEVANTATE, KAITI! How ARE yooooou!" 

    That was a serenata, and apparently they're common here on mother's day. Mother's day is kind of a big deal here. I noticed when we were on our way to la casa de los abuelitos that morning that a lot of people were dressed up and carrying cake boxes and flowers. We brought presents and mocha cake and Gracia's dad played a bunch of Mother's day songs on his guitar before we ate it. It was a good day. I hung out with Gracia and talked about books and ate ridiculously good food, as per usual upon visits to the grandma's house. We hung out at the river and caught fish and Gracia yelled at a bunch of boys who were torturing wildlife. They tortured a turtle and threw rocks at the beautiful colorful birds in the trees until they fell down and beat them, laughing while they screamed. One of the birds they had thrown rocks at was entangled in one of the trees, crying and badly injured. We managed to get it down because Gracia's brother and I wanted to put it out of its misery, but Gracia wasn't sure so she just left it hidden in some of the grass by the river, hoping those horrible boys wouldn't find it again. Animal abuse is something that is sadly prevalent in Honduran culture.

Me, Nicole, Gabriela, and Jenny

    On monday I had something fun to do as well. It was my compañera Jenny's 18th birthday, so she had a little party at her house. Gabriela, Nicole, (Mirta?), and another girl who's name I forget and I hung out and ate pizzitas and nachos and cake for a while and then we went to the theatre to meet up with some more people from our class and see the Hunger Games, which I was ecstatic about. I've been bugging everyone about taking me to see the Hunger Games for the past month! Everyone has been warning me that the theatre in Comayagua is a joke, but it was much nicer than I expected. The chairs were plastic but a step above fold-ups, the screen was big, and the rows were slanted down so people's heads did not impede my viewing. And for a buck a ticket, I'm not complaining about anything. I would have paid that much just for the privilege of sitting in a well air-conditioned room for two hours! Haha! Maybe I'll pester people about seeing Avengers with me next. 
   I might be having another awesome weekend this week because I heard AFSers are doing a trip to Copan! I didn't go on the last trip and I sort of regretted it, but apparently everyone was robbed so I guess it was for the best. Hopefully that won't happen again! 

Trabajo Social

 

  I had a great weekend. The volunteer work turned out to be really fun. We started out our day by piling into very Honduran-styled transportation-- the back of a giant truck.  If I thought riding in a car with a seatbelt in a country with no speed limits, no regard for traffic rules, and an incredibly low amount of actual roads was scary, this was terrifying. But it was a fun kind of terrifying, with everybody screaming and laughing and falling over each other, and it was a pretty good way to get woken up. I tried to avoid doing the math about the statistic probability of my earthly termination.
    We rode to a little town outside of Comayagua, and we went to a school where we were expected to take down the stone wall surrounding the school. I got the feeling I wasn’t expected to do much--they didn’t even put me in a group! But I was excited about having something to work hard at for once. I am a hard worker and I wanted to prove that just because I am a “rubia” gringa who doesn’t understand Spanish or anything at school doesn’t mean that I am a lazy useless blob! So I surprised everyone by working my very hardest. Some people actually got mad at me because I made them look lazy, so people kept taking my shovel and forcing me to take breaks. They kept complaining that I was making them work even though I never said anything! “Tranquila, Kaiti!” they whined.  “Descansase.”
    At lunch I reunited with Kenia, Sonia, Merlin, and Prins, the girls I had hung out with at the Convivencia. I love them so much! They’re all really silly and they make me laugh so hard. We got on the topic of dancing, and I told them that they need to teach me because I am a gringa and I absolutely cannot dance. I showed them “gringa dancing” which was like a really bad imitation of snookie-meets-lady gaga, and they got a kick out of it. Then Merlin stood up and tried to show me how to dance, but Jorge, one of the boys from the other class, took over. He told me to imitate what his feet did, so I did, and everyone told me that I did good but I needed to move my butt more. So I moved my butt and everyone was like “perfect!” Wow, um, that’s it? There were cameras present, so there is probably photographic evidence of this experience somewhere on the internet. Great.
    So I rode in the back of a truck, worked all day, and danced during lunch break-- it was a very Honduran day! I’m still sore (and it’s Tuesday!) but it was a great day and it was definitely worth it.
    On Sunday we went to church and to Giovanni’s house to watch movies. We watched Rango and Puss in Boots and went to his Aunt’s house for dinner. In retrospect I probably seemed grumpy because I was so tired that I didn’t really talk all day, but it was a good day. I love Giovanni’s family, they’re nice and they make me feel at home. Monday I went to school and I had today off for some sort of holiday. I’ve just been relaxing and I went to lunch with Sra Ortega, Rosa, Giovanni, and Rosa’s uncle. We were going to go to a Tilapia restaurant but we had a kind of funny experience there. Everyone there was hammered and singing Karaoke really loudly. My host mom asked the waitress for a menu, and she was like “we don’t have one”. She asked, well, what do you have then? And the waitress said “Tilapia”…and then she left and didn’t take our order. What, was she waiting for us to decide? Haha. So we ended up going to Carne Asada.

Oh yeah, and this is the menu at "Wendy's". Funny.

Semana Santa has begun

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It is officially Semana Santa! No school this week, YES! It's amazing what a relief that is to me considering I don't really do anything at school anyway. I think I'm going to get another vacation week in a few months for something called "student's week", whatever that is. They like vacations here! Woohoo!

One of the things I like about it being Semana Santa week is that everyone's so happy. At school on Friday the mood was palpably joyful, and Rosa has been giggly all weekend. It makes sense because they are all students who have been working really hard.

On Saturday Rosa and Giovanni and I went on a little road trip to La Paz, a little little town outside of this little town. We met up with some of Rosa's friends and somehow managed to cram eight people inside of one five-seater car, but that's completely normal here. (You should see my school "bus"! It's actually a van but at times there are twice as many people as seats). We drove around a bit, went to one of the girl's house who had lots of pets and literally dozens of birds, and we went to the park and ate ice cream and drank soda and acted silly. I didn't do much but watch and giggle at all of them because they were all so fun. Then Rosa and Giovanni and I went home and went to church.

On Sunday we went to church again, and then we went to Giovanni's huge house to swim in his pool. And then we got dressed and went on an adventure looking for Guajada cheese. Rosa has been telling me about Guajada cheese-- it's her favorite thing ever. She told me it's softer than The Honduran Cheese and it tastes better. So we drove to somebody's house and Giovanni asked them if they had Guajada, but they didn't, so we drove to Giovanni's grandparents house, and behold, they had a huge tub of it! We stood in the kitchen while the lady finished making it and then they gave us a baggie of it. We went back to Giovanni's and had a dinner of Guajada, beans, rice, and tortillas. Mmm! I didn't like the Guajada better than Honduran Cheese, but then again, I didn't love The Honduran Cheese when I first tried it and now I do, so I guess it's just one of those types of things you have to get used to.

Then Giovanni and Rosa started a movie, but I fell asleep before the opening credits, so I sorta missed out on that.

And today is monday! I just ate pancakes (which are here what we'd call crepes) and watched the last half of Finding Nemo and now I guess we'll probably spend the day doing mostly nothing. Tomorrow we're going on a camping trip with the church youth, so I'm excited for that!

My pictures have been pretty lame so I'm going to be trying to take more and better ones. I always feel like such a tourist pulling out my camera, but I essentially am a tourist so I don't know why this bothers me. I know I'll regret it later if I don't take enough!

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!

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!