Moving Home

The stories keep coming. This past weekend my host parents went to the town of San Jose Comayagua to pick up my eldest host sister, who has been living out there for the past year or so. She had been calling everyday for the last month, asking when they were coming to bring here back home to San Pedro. This weekend was supposed to be when they were to get her. But as usual, in Honduras, nothing seems to go as planned. The plan was to leave on Saturday at 2 pm, but my host dad got back from work around 4 pm. The plan was to drive the truck to be able to bring back her stuff, but the truck was getting repaired.

So my host parents took off around 5 in the afternoon, traveling by public transportation, to San Jose. I was confused why they went because they couldn't bring a house full of stuff back on public transportation. Also my host sister could have just ridden public transportation back by herself. They had planned to be back by Sunday afternoon, but when they were still not back by evening I went to church by myself. I had just gotten home and changed out of my church clothes when I saw a giant truck backing up to the house. It stopped and out came the family, and it was full with the stuff from the San Jose house.

We spent the next hour and a half unloading and filling all the nooks, in and around the house, with boxes, bags, beds, tables, and suitcases. So we now have the task of figuring out how to fit two houses worth of stuff in one. I have a feeling the house will be a little cramped for a while. If there is a Spanish version of the show Hoarders, I think it would be funny to call them out to the house...

As of today, I have only 10 more days left in Honduras. Then after a re-entry retreat, in Akron with the rest of the SALTers who served around the world, home to Reedley. One thing that's been on my mind that I'll miss, is being packed in on the public bus, with blaring upbeat reggae music, and zooming through gaps in traffic (that probably didn't exist until we were in them). Dad, you probably shouldn't let me drive home from the airport.

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Free Time

I've been spending a lot of time hanging out with some of the younger kids in the neighborhood. Normally I get home from work, put on my mud caked pair of shoes (only for playing soccer) and grab my soccer ball. All I have to do is step outside and start kicking the ball around, and Tui (neighbor kid about 6 years old) will show up. He has a sixth sense and always seems to know when I have a soccer ball and will come running yelling "let's play, let's play." Soon other neighborhood kids show up, all about in the 6-11 age range. When we play an actual game, we use rocks for goals and play with two person teams because the road in narrow. We have a rotation system where the scoring team stays and the team rotates off. Often though, we will play some form of keep away or just pass the ball around a circle. I'm teaching them how to juggle the ball. Tui will sometimes keep the ball in the air past three kicks and then get so excited he forgets to keep going.

Another cool thing I've been up to, is teaching these kids how to through a Frisbee. About a week ago I went to the store and found a cheap Frisbee. I went and bought a cheap one because I had a hunch it might land on someone's roof on the first or second throw. So I brought it out one evening and showed a couple kids how to throw it, and we passed it around for a while. And then sure enough one of the kids decides he wants to throw it high and it goes straight onto the neighbor's roof. I figured that was the end of that, since I've noticed that things tend to stay up on the roofs. But then the other day a two of the kids were up on that roof, I think they were after coconuts in the nearby tree, and they retrieved the lost Frisbee. We have now played a couple of evenings without losing it to any more roofs, progress. Another interesting thing is that some of the girls that are usually too intimidated (or uninterested) to play soccer will come over and throw the Frisbee with us. I would love to teach these kids ultimate but that might be a bit too advanced, we'll see.

This evening I was tired and took a nap in the early evening. My host mom later told me that a couple of the kids came asking for me and she told them that I had left for the US already. She then told me that their eyes got big and they asked when I was coming back. So she told them that I was just visiting my family and would be back later that same evening. While my host mom was just joking around with the kids their reaction reminded me that I'm not the only one who will go through a transition when I depart.

This week I climbed way up in our mango tree to get one of the last mangoes on the tree, maybe it is time to start thinking about coming home.

Also in case you have muddy shoes in need of cleaning, playing soccer in the rain doesn't work quite as well as you might think it would.






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Where did the kitchen go?

I've talked about my host family rearranging things around the house before. Here's a post from back in October in case you missed it. I spent last Sunday doing something similar.

This story starts with a needing to move a couch. The couch is in a room that has been used as storage since I've been living here, but is now going to be turned back into a pulperia (a corner store). But first the floor needs to be re-cemented. So this couch needs to find another place in the not-so-big house. Since the living room is quite small and full as it was, the logical thing to do is to move the living room to a bigger room. Continuing on this train of thought, the plan ended up being that the living room would move to the kitchen, the kitchen packed up and relocated to the parents bedroom, and the parents settling into what was the living room. Basically rearranging the whole house.

I woke up on the warm Sunday morning, to the sounds of hammers pounding outside my door. As an added bonus, the power was out all day which means no fans and also no running water. While eating breakfast I realized that all my host siblings conveniently had other stuff going on that took them away from the house. It was pretty fun to spend the morning with just the parents, joking around, and solving the puzzles of getting the front of the house moved to the back and vise versa. In this process I learned that they had switched the configuration of the house about a month prior to my arrival and we were now moving rooms back to their original locations. In that move they had moved doors around, switching one with a window and the other they bricked up. And this move means that those doors changes will have to be undone... Learning of this earlier change up cleared up some things for me, like why the light switch to the porch was located behind the fridge.

When we finished for the day, we had the 3 rooms rotated. We hadn't started punching out holes to move the doors yet, so for now the front door leads into the parent's bedroom. We must have tried 16 different configurations for the kitchen before deciding on the one we tried first. And I convinced my host sister, only for a second, that we had decided to move her room into the small storage room. A very Honduran style of approach to moving a couch, which looks like it still might not have a place to fit in the house.




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1st Soccer National Championship of the Year

Only a couple of months left in Honduras. MCC is beginning to encourage us to start to think about how we plan to wrap up and say goodbyes. It’s probably healthy, but it’s strange to think about planning goodbyes and leaving. Throughout my time here I continually keep achieving new levels of comfort. For example when I learned my first bus route, it was a small accomplishment but brought a lot of freedom. I feel like something similar has happened in my ability to make connections with youth. I don’t know if it is a language improvement but I’m feeling less like “the foreigner who lives down the street.” Everyone said that a year is about enough time to get comfortable, and then it’s to go back home.

The weather is helping me not get too comfortable. The rainy season has kicked in again and we have been getting regular rain about twice a day.  I generally like rain but living with mud roads is the price. The rain tries to help cool the temperature down, but I think it really just makes it mad. It cools off when it rains, but about 5 minutes after it stops the heat comes back stronger but with high humidity.

This last weekend was the Super Bowl of Honduras, meaning the national soccer championship. Marathon from San Pedro Sula played Olimpia from Tegucigalpa. I adopted Marathon as my team since Christmas when I was given a jersey as a present. My host sister, Bessy, is a big Olimpia fan. I gave her a hard time, about how sad she would be when Marathon won, in the days prior to the big game. Now, Olimpia is like the New York Yankees of Honduras soccer, they’re the team with money advantage. I tried to reason with Bessy to get her to switch and root for the “good guys.” At half time she decided to become a Marathon fan, if they became champs. But then Olimpia slipped in a lucky goal in the second half and ruined all my hard work…

Work is interesting because I’m having fun with the more difficult classes and having more difficulty with the easy ones. I have a class of beginning kids and I have to keep reminding that they are starting from scratch and that I need to explain everything down to how to use the mouse. I have also been performing surgery on computers. Sometimes if you add three dead computers together, you get a descent working one.




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Learning Tour

So I've been busy having fun again. Two weeks ago we had an MCC Learning tour visit Honduras. They were in the country for about 10 days, and had people representing Kansas and Texas. I got to catch up with a good friend from college, Caley Ortman who was the group leader. I was able to travel with the group to Ceiba which is a north coast city. We spent a couple days in Ceiba which included a presentation on the history of Mennonites in Honduras, stubed our toes playing frisbee (ok, maybe just me), and getting to hear from some local organizations that are working in Ceiba. One of the days was spent visiting a community that is located right up against the city's dump. It's amazing to be comfortable living in a poorer community for the last 8 months, and then to still be shocked by poverty living situations. We were shown around this community by a guy who had lived and worked in this community. He was able to point out challenges and signs of hope he saw in the community.

The last day in Ceiba was spent at a wild life reserve named Cuero Y Salado. We took a guided boat tour up a river to see birds, monkeys, Mangrove trees, bats, crocodiles, and a possible manatee sighting. After, we took a quick swim in the Caribbean and brought out the frisbee once more before heading back to San Pedro. The following day the group came out to 6 de Mayo and I got to show them where I work and explain what I do. We had a piñata for almost 100 hyper kids, It was out of control.  Picutres

I've got my final round of classes going, which will keep me busy up until I leave Honduras. The classes are going well and having lots of repeat students is helpful. Speaking of, I should probably get some lesson planning done before my classes tomorrow... Also, looking forward to a team retreat coming up later this week in the Tegucigalpa area.



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Clausura

This year has not been all fun and games, but you might not get that impression from this post.

I just recently wrapped up the second round of computer classes. So it was time again for a graduation party for my students. Last Friday afternoon I had 13 students graduate and celebrated with a short program and cake. There has to be cake. Most of the kids signed up again for the next level of classes. One kid’s father joked that I should just stay and get my girlfriend to move down here. I posted some pictures of the event.

Then on Saturday I got to check something off my list of things to do in Honduras. I was invited to go to a professional soccer game. A rivalry game no less, between Marathon from San Pedro Sula and Motagua from Tegucigalpa. It was awesome to be in a stadium full of people who are really into the game, something I hadn’t experienced in the States before. We sat next to the Marathon section that was constantly singing team songs, chanting, or just making noise. Unfortunately Marathon lost. Hope to get a chance to go again.

This week I will be registering students for my final trimester. Plus working on the seemingly never ending list of computer problems to solve.


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Semana Santa

I got to play tour guide for my family who just left to return to California. Mom and Dad brought Tyler down to Honduras for a week. We fit a lot of things into a week so I'll share some of the highlights.

For people who are interested in a map of where we traveled, I'll put one here.

Their plane came in after dark on Saturday March 31. The airport was packed with people picking up visitors who were arriving for the Holly Week break. The next morning we went to pick up the rental car that Dad reserved for the week. The first challenge was to navigate San Pedro since I mostly just know bus routes. But we made it out to my house and introduced my Honduras family to my American family. I showed my parents where I teach, go to church, play soccer, the important stuff. Then mid-afternoon we headed out for Tela.

Tela is a town on the north coast.We stayed in a tall hotel on a hill with an awesome view of the town and ocean. We spent 2 full days at the coast. The first day we explored the town and found a good spot along the beach to throw a Frisbee, jump in the warm Caribbean water, and drink some coconut. The second day we went on an adventure and took a tour of Punta Sal. Punta Sal is a peninsula of protected land and about  45 min by boat from Tela. On this trip we got soaked, hiked, saw monkeys, tried to avoid poisonous spiders, swam through a tunnel that connects 2 bays, snorkeled, and ate a traditional lunch. Intense day and was exhausting but a lot of fun. Then that night an unseasonal storm passed through (we're in the dry season) and cooled and reduced the humidity in the air. Which made our last morning at the coast very pleasant to be outside.

Our next destination was a small town called San Jose. This small town is where my host parents grew up. It's back in some gorgeous mountains, surrounded by corn and sugar cane farms. Sugar cane is ripe this time of year but we didn't get to see cane being processed since everyone was on Easter vacation. We only got to spend a short afternoon in San Jose but it was cool to show the family around.

The last day we went to a city called Comayagua where they have a popular Good Friday tradition. Different groups paint sections of the street with colored sawdust to make what they call carpets. My understanding is that they start making the carpets around midnight of Good Friday and try to finish them before the mid-morning processional walks over them. This is a tradition that is done in various cities in Honduras but the carpets in Comayagua seem to be the most famous.We arrived early enough to see some groups putting on the final touches, some finished and being misted with water (help preserve them), and some that possibly would not be completed before the parade came by. It's a very colorful tradition that attracts a lot of tourists. Some people put a lot of work into a piece of art that has a life expectancy of only several hours.

It was a really fun and exciting week. It was interesting to watch my Dad's driving become more and more Honduran as the week went on. We lost a camera during the trip but I have a few general vacation pictures.

Also I have found out that I'll be getting back into Reedley on the 24th of July. Feels so close yet there is a lot to do between now and then.

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