No Soy Como Shakira

    Lately, I feel comfortable. I have enough friends that I'm usually not lack for things to do, my spanish is a lot better, and I feel like I pretty much have got the hang of how things work around here. I go home in three weeks, but it's bittersweet because now I know I'll miss my home here so much when I go back.
    My vacation week was chill but really great. I went to Cesia's house on thursday, and we hung out in her Pulperia again with her sister. Her taxi driver/buddy Aldo showed up, and we hung out with him too. We just talked and watched Tela Novelas. I always laugh at the dramatic parts of Tela Novelas because they're so ridiculous, and nobody understands why. I try to suppress it, but I just can't. The music gets to me every time.
    The conversation turned to my lack of dance skills, and Cesia decided to take up what is now basically a town-wide endeavor-- teaching me how to dance. We turned up some music in her living room, and I became the entertainment for the evening (Cesia's sister sat on the couch laughing and taking pictures-- those will probably be floating around somewhere on the internet for all of eternity, heaven help me). We started out with Punta, which is traditional Honduran dancing. It involves a lot of butt-shaking whilst spinning around in circles. It looks really cool when Cesia does it, but I'm fairly certain I looked like a retarded duck. After that, we tried Vachata and then Reggueton. Cesia kept yelling "Muda la cadera! Lacaderalacaderalacadera! SEXI KAITI SEXI! Circulos sexis! Como Shakira!"
    "Pero no soy como Shakira" I protested, all the same trying to emulate the impossible ways she was permeating her body. "How do you do that?" I kept asking, which resulted in more lacaderalacaderalacadera.
    At the end of our lesson Cesia swore I had made progress. She screamed with delight and declared that I had learned "circulos sexis". I'm not so sure, but oh well. At least I got a good work out!
   On saturday I got to go to Kora's quincenera! Kora is Nicole's little sister. It was exciting because I'd never been to one before. It was really impressive: like a wedding. We had a very fancy sit-down meal and the whole place was decorated with red and white. Kora wore a puffy floor length red dress and performed dances with her friends, who were all wearing white and red dresses and tuxes. I actually missed the dancing because I left early-- Rosa had a stomach ache.
    On sunday we went to Rosa's grandparents farm. We ate lots of mi abuelita catracha's fantastic food and watched soccer and chilled. I'm actually kind of getting into watching soccer, which is funny because I am not sporty in any way, shape, or form. I have an unfortunate habit of laughing inappropriately when the players fall down and make funny faces, so I'm sure my family thinks I'm a psycho. What is even more entertaining than the game itself is watching everyone else get really into it-- my host mama gets excited and does a little dance when her team scores, it's really cute.
   We stayed until monday, and on tuesday it was back to school. I went to Kenia's house again after school to make banana milkshakes and watch TV. It was fun!
    I wish I had more pictures, but my camera broke. The lens won't open. It's really a bummer because this is the best month to take pictures-- it's my last month here and I've made a lot of plans with friends. Next week I turn 17 and my friends are throwing me a surprise birthday party! Well, it's not a surprise anymore because they whispered about it in front of me, not knowing I could understand. But I will act very surprised :)

Tela!

    Last weekend was fun, but this weekend was fantastic. I initially didn't know any of the AFSers I was going on the Tela trip with, and I knew that they all knew each other and that they were mostly Italians and Germans, and so I was worried that they would just speak Italian and German and I would be the odd one out. But I was completely blown away by how friendly and welcoming everyone was! Everyone was so fun and open, and everybody spoke Spanish and English so we could all understand. After the first day, I felt like I'd known everyone for years.

    On the bus I hit it off with one of the Belgian girls, Lore. We talked for most of the bus ride to Tela and then ended up in the same room. When we got to Tela, we ate lunch and then headed for the beach! It was so wonderful to talk to people while wading in the cool clear waves and watching the sunset. I thought I was the only American, but there was actually another one! He was a volunteer; not a student. I should have been able to tell right away by his accent and the way he laughed at my jokes, but I hadn't been expecting to meet any so I was surprised when CJ told me he was from Chicago. It was great to talk to a fellow American, I think being abroad for a while has really made me aware of my culture and what traits I have that are uniquely American. Fun fact: Hondurans hate it when we refer to ourselves as "American", because technically they're Americans too. But since we're too lazy to refer to ourselves as "We That Come From The United States of America", we're sticking to "Americans"...at least when talking to each other.

    That night, as well as the following morning, we had orientation-activities, it was all basically the same stuff I had done the former week in Copan. We talked about our feelings, the "positives and negatives" or our experience, etc., etc.

    On saturday, after our orientation activities were finished, we were free to do as we wanted. I started out by going on a little boat tour with a few of the other students, and it was really nice. We took off from the beach in a little motor boat and entered into a quiet little lake not far from the shore. I didn't understand a lot of what our tour guide was saying, but it was beautiful.

                                     

    After that, CJ and I and two other girls, Anja and Berenice, and I decided to go and find "Pastelitos", beacuse he had been raving about how much he loved Pastelitos and I had never tried them. Even though "Pastelitos" sounds like "little cakes" they were, in fact, nothing like cake, but rather a kind of bready fried thing with chicken inside. He said they usually had a kind of relish inside as well, but these ones just had chicken. They were really good, but did not replace the special love in my heart for Baleadas as promised. 

CJ and his Pastelito

                                     

    After that, Anja and Berenice and CJ and one other Italian girl-- I forget her name already but she was really fun-- and I took a long walk on the beach and talked. When we came back, I hung out with CJ and Lukas, a boy from Germany, and we sat on the beach and talked some more. We talked about our experiences as foreigners and had some really great conversations/debates about controversial issues such as religion and abortion, which was wonderful because I really love good debates and I haven't had one in a really long time.

Lukas

     That evening we had dinner and walked through town. We winded up going to a discotec, which was fun although we had a curfew of 11pm, so we were pretty much the only ones at the discotec. Nobody goes to discotecs before midnight! The discotec had an interesting theme that night, and there were all these guys dressed like monsters. 

I danced with one of these guys.

    Our curfew ended up being a good thing because we had so much fun hanging out outside the hotel afterwards. We engaged in quite the bit of silliness-- somehow we ended up with a pineapple that we all wanted to eat, but we didn't have a knife. So this happened:

Lore and Amarilda doing the honors

    And then more 2am silliness ensued.

    We left first thing the next morning for home. Why so early? I was sad to go because I probably won't see any of my new friends again.
    Monday I had to leave school early because I had a stomach ache and felt horrible. It's wednesday, and I'm still sick, although better than I was yesterday. yesterday I was throwing up and couldn't keep food or liquids in my stomach. I've been sick before, but I think what really worried my family was that I wouldn't eat, so they took me to the doctor. She gave me a bunch of medicine and told me to eat soft foods, I think I might have gotten food poisoning or something. Despite having been here three months, I feel like my body's still not adjusted to Honduras. I've gotten several headcolds and stomach malfunctions and viruses. I hope I get better quick, because it would be terrible to miss out on the class trip to Copan this weekend!

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.

Prom shopping, mass, and awkward goldfish

Giovanni, Rosa, Emily and Me in Tegus

My little friend who lives in my closet

    This week has been sleepy. Last Saturday there was another Tallier project at school, but I didn't end up going because my family was going to Tegus to look for a prom dress for Rosa. My host mom, Rosa's Aunt, Rosa's little cousin Emily and Giovanni and I went to a few stores and Rosa picked out a beautiful pale green satin floor length gown. Here, if you want to buy clothes of even considerably good quality, you have to go to Tegucigalpa. I was coached to tell the shop owners that we're from Tegus if they ask because apparently if you tell them you're from outside they show you the worst dresses-- haha! Tegus really is like a whole different country. 
    Even though you can find good clothes in Tegus from American and European brands, the prices are outrageous. They charge at least twice as much for any given article of clothing, and they hang cheap fashion chain brands like Forever 21 and H&M in boutiques along with designer. I'm going to Rosa's Prom, too because it's not really a dance but more like a formal graduation party. I didn't realize until after our shopping trip that I'm supposed to buy a formal dress too-- I thought one I brought was nice enough, but I showed it to my host mom and she said it wasn't. Shoot. Item # 345,678 I really should have packed...hopefully we'll go to Tegus again sometime in the next three weeks because the thought of trying to buy a formal dress in Comayagua makes me shudder. This experience is really making me realize what a diva I am.
    Another event coming up is the mothers day celebration at our school...I'm a senior, and apparently we're the entertainment. We're all supposed to either sing or dance...everyone's dancing, but I'm white and I can't dance, so that's not happening. Everyone wants me to sing-- I don't really get stage fright singing in public, but the main problem is that I have no idea what to sing. It's so hard to find a song that's good for mother's day. Also, it's hard finding opportunities to practice since I feel self-conscious about the fact that the whole neighborhood can hear our household activity. Not that the neighbors don't deserve it for blasting their mariachi music late into the evening, but still. I could always play the Bewildered Exchange Student Card and get out of it. 
    Today I got to experience my very first Catholic mass, which was slightly more exciting than Lab class. We just sung and prayed and chanted things. I was scolded very publicly for not singing along, but I was like, "I don't know the words, dude, what you gonna do?" Actually I just smiled awkwardly like I didn't understand and the service went on. There was wine and bread present, like at protestant communions, but instead of everyone taking some like we do, only the priest drank the wine and ate the bread. Haha. Okay. 
    The only other abnormality in my week was having to talk in front of my class today. El director, Senor Carlos, decided that I should take a turn doing the morning chapel like everyone else, but he decided instead of having me talk about God he wanted me to give a speech about myself "to practice my spanish". My classmates Mirta, Kevin M, and Nicol teased me about it all week, saying "Remember, Kaiti, on friday you have tu momento religioso" with an evil glint in their eye, and then laughing like the voyeuristic fools they are when I squirmed with dread and discomfort. Awesome. I just babbled about my hometown, my family, and my school for a minute and I must have made a lot of mistakes because everyone kept laughing. Afterwards I asked if anyone had any questions, but they just stared at me like a bunch of awkward goldfish. Ugh. 
   I still haven't had my compañeras over to swim, because every time we plan something, a test or something comes up and they have to study. Most of the people I talk to are from the other class, Secretarios, and they have to study even more than my class does! Most of them rarely get more than 5 hours of sleep a night.
    Tomorrow I have another school project, my class is doing some sort of volunteer work. I'm not really excited about going to school on Saturday (again) at 7:30 in the morning, but at least it will be a much-needed opportunity to hang out with my classmates. 

Barriers

Juanca's birthday! He's so adorable.

Let's see, what have I been up to? I haven't been doing much, just going to school and church on the weekends. This weekend I also went to watch people from my church play futbol and Saturday...what did I even do Saturday? How can I not remember three days ago? I think I'm going senile.

Today AFS called me to ask if I wanted to switch grades or schools because I guess my host mama complained to them because my classes are impossibly hard (programming? calculus? computer repair?!) and I said no, just because I've already been where I am for six weeks and I don't want to start all over again, it's hard enough making friends as it is. I wish I had thought to talk to AFS about it a month ago, but I wasn't even aware that switching schools was an option. I'm really having a hard time seeing how I'm going to get any credit for all these classes I doubt I can pass, even though AFS is doing their best to see that I do, so it's looking like I might be stuck in high school a little longer than planned. Oh well, I guess the important thing is really that I'm making friends and learning spanish.

So about making friends...it's hard. Shocking, right? There are the obvious problems of the language and social barriers, and then there's that underlying barely-tangible cultural barrier. There's a disconnect between the way I think and behave as a result of my culture and the way Hondurans think and behave as a result of their culture, and sometimes that makes it feel impossible to communicate. I feel like there have been some times when I've accidentally offended or snubbed people simply because of a miscommunication. I have to be very conscious of appearing friendly because Hondurans are friendly in ways that Americans are not. For instance, in Honduras, it's impolite to walk past a person, stranger or friend, without saying "hola" or "adios" or "buenos". "Here we at least say Adios, Kaiti!" lectured Nicol when I responded to an "adios" with a smile and a wave. Also, Hondurans are really into cheek kissing-- everyone. Family, friends, strangers, teachers. I love cheek kissing but it's another one of those things that stresses me out because I don't really understand it.

I was warned, before I came here, that Hondurans are a very non-confrontational people. I thought that was a rather bizarre generalization, so I sort of blew it off, but it's true. If people want to say something to you...they don't just say it to you. I've noticed that in general, controversial issues aren't really addressed or discussed openly...people here are very religious, but often more so in appearance than in practice. I'm a very direct and open person, so that's another thing that's hard to get used to.

In some ways, though, Hondurans are less polite than Americans. I noticed that kids at school love to jokingly address each other as "Vo'Imbecil!" ("Yo imbecil?" "No, el otro imbecil!"..."Vo'Imbecil!") and "Maje!" Black kids are nearly always referred to as "Negro!" which sounds horribly offensive to my American ears but it's the norm here. Black kids are also teased about their skin ("Your skin's so dark, your mama must have left you in the oven when you were little!") which is hilarious because often the teasers are every bit as dark as the "black" kids. In fact, often I don't even know someone is "black" until I hear "Hey, Negro!" and see them turn their head. They're all pretty mixed.

People are just referred to by their physical attributes in general...kids with curly hair are called "curly", kids with pale skin are teased for being "gringo", kids with pimples are addressed as "pimples!". I've also heard hey gordo! Which is like, hey fat guy! That would not go down well in America.

Also, every Honduran's favorite English word is "fuck", which is hilariously incongruent with their politeness. Lost at Uno-- fuck! Stubbed my toe-- fuck! Dropped my pencil-- fuck! At school, no less-- I wince every time I hear it. They must not understand its poignancy in the English language. They love the n-word, too, which I can't even type.

Mainly I'm just trying to focus on making friends. I wouldn't have said I'm a shy person a month ago but it's amazing what being completely uprooted and replanted can do for what you think you know about yourself. I'm finding that I really have to take making friends into my own hands, if I sit around waiting for people to talk to me it is absolutely never going to happen. Mostly I find people are intimidated by my presence or just apathetic. Some comments have led me to think that people here are incredibly willing to believe that I consider myself superior to them because I am "gringa", which is of course completely not the case. I guess people are just shy sometimes. They do talk to me on facebook-- I've had a few people message me on facebook telling me I should talk to more people. One guy who was completely unresponsive to my attempts at real life conversation later FBed me to say he was sorry, and that he had been nervous. I said you're nervous, dude? I'm fresh off the plane living in a country full of people I don't know who speak a language I don't speak haha it's fine we'll talk tomorrow :) Haha. I guess highschool's the same everywhere. I've been trying more and more to make extra-extra-effort. I started out with inviting a few girls I eat lunch with over to come over and swim this weekend and I can't wait!

There are a lot of ways in which I really like the cultural differences here.

Hondurans are very friendly and generous. They love to share. Yesterday, for instance, my religion teacher invited me and a few of his other students into his office during recreo just to chat and share a giant omelette he had brought in foil wrap. Often you'll see people splitting tiny meals sixteen ways, pulling candies or cookies or entire plates of chicken fajitas out of their little purses, which I think is pretty sweet. Personal property isn't really a thing here, what you have, you share, even if it's not much.

Hondurans have very strong family values. They prioritize their families and they are always loyal. Divorce rates are very low. University students are likely to live at home with their parents, "on-campus housing" is not a thing. My host mom has a niece who regularly steals money and the most random household items from them-- clothes, sketchbooks, underwear-- haha! yet she is still welcome to stay whenever she wants because she is family. I guess that goes back to the personal property thing, too.

Some Hondurans have pointed out to me that Americans are obsessed with time. "What is it with Americans and lists?" asked Kevin. "You Americans are always making lists." I think Americans make lists because in general they are very goal-oriented and efficient-- Hondurans, not so much. Hondurans take their time doing whatever it is that they are doing, they relax and enjoy life and are often not concerned with huge accomplishments. Kevin and I arrived at the conclusion that sometimes making lists is bad because your goals can get in the way of other things that are more important.

AFS has a motto: "It's not good, it's not bad, it's just different". I'm finding in many ways that is true.

PS. Does anyone know how to disable that tag-autocorrect on blogspot that corrects all your tags to tags you used in former posts? It's making me want to scream.