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!

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.