Birthday

So yesterday was 23 years since I was born, or found in my crash landed space ship, or however it happened. It was a good and relaxing day.  I got lots of birthday wishes from both people back home and people around here. I was surprised how many people around here knew it was my birthday considering how few people I told.

My host family had a little celebration for me in the evening. They made a tres leches cake and from my experience with birthdays in my host family, I had a hunch that I'd end up wearing some of it. The tradition in my host family is that the cake you get for your birthday is yours. You have complete control over it including if, and how much you want to share. Therefore cutting the cake is a job only for the birthday person as they decide how greedy or generous to be. So after dinner my host mom pulled out the cake and they sang the first few lines of the birthday song in English. Only the lyrics were pronounced “Happy baby to you…” which put the biggest smile on my face. I then was instructed to cut the cake at which point the picture taking started going nuts. And before I knew it, I had cake smeared on my face as I had predicted.
It was a fun evening and delicious cake. For those of you who weren’t able to make it to Honduras to come celebrate I’ll post some pictures of the evening.

Thanks for reading

Where did the time go?

To bring you up to speed with what's been going on with me. I just started teaching again about two weeks ago. I've noticed a significant difference from this round of classes compared to the last. Most significantly is being able to communicate with students starting on the first day. Everyday I am reminded how little Spanish vocabulary I seem to know, and how much work it takes to improve. Yet also everyday I am reminded how much Spanish I have learned, and that I am able to interact and converse, most evident in the ability to answer student's questions. I also set my class sizes more intentionally this time, I enrolled kids in smaller groups. Something I learned from was that my teaching style is much more effective in a small group setting than trying to control larger classes, a fact that probably doesn't surprise people who know me. But in order to have smaller class sizes I decided I needed to offer more class periods. So I now have 7 hour long classes that I teach Monday, Wednesday, Fridays which has felt like the teaching equivalent to a marathon.

I feel that I continually get more accustom to the culture. I've noticed some gradual shifts in my perceptions and notice that I understand things I previously chalked up to mystery. A simple example is in the culture of the rapidito (my main form or transport, What is a rapidito?). I'd never encountered a form of transportation like the rapidito before, and I especially didn't understand them for a long time. They seemed to try to persuade the whole world to get in their vehicle without regard to how many people were in already. Then at some point, money is collected and then you shout the name of your stop as you approach (some stops near my house are Spanish translations of cockroach, donkey, clinic, deposit). After six months of using public transportation I have figured out that the rapiditos do have a passenger limit, and can tell how many more passengers they are looking to pick up before the focus shifts from picking people up, to quickly getting to the destination. I also sometimes now play a game where I try to guess, within a city block, when I am going to be asked for my money. Also since I'm a computer science guy, I sometimes think about what it would take to create a successful GPS service here since the majority of directions I give and get are relational to landmarks. No breakthroughs yet.

Honduras has had some headlines in the news in recent months. Most recently there were two big fires that occurred within the same week. Often the stuff that makes the news is the negative. Honduras has its problems going on but it's important to recognize that there is also good happening too. Even small stuff like getting offered an orange from a student's mother after her son's lesson, or bigger things like the children's clinic that is opening just down the street. It is easier for me to remember that acts of kindness exist here since I see them daily, but it's a privilege that most people who read this blog don't have.

Some other things that are going on:
The Proyecto MAMA English classes are changing their computers because they were slowly dying. So I recently inherited some of these computers to try to revive (better computers than the computers that I currently have). So now I am starting to review these computers and clean them of all the junk programs or viruses that have been installed. Plus I need to set them up in Spanish because my students don't normally know English. This will keep me busy in between my marathon teaching days.

And now I have officially been in the country for 6 months already.

Thanks for reading

A New Year

So it´s been a while again… and this time it looks like I’ve written the better part of a book. There has been a lot of stuff that has happened since I wrote last. I tried to break the entry up into sections so that you could read the sections that interest you, or get a snack half way through or something. There is much more that happened then what I had time to put into words, feel free to shoot me an email if you want to know more.

Pictures from Vacation

Christmas

I spent Christmas with my host family in a town called San Jose, where both my host parents grew up. I am glad to have experienced Honduran Christmas but I can’t say that it will be difficult to go back to Christmas I grew up with. I don’t claim that my experiences are pan-Honduras Christmas traditions, but I have heard similar stories from others. Firstly Hondurans will say that they celebrate on the evening of the 24^th, I fell for that. They really mean midnight or 1 a.m. which then is really the 25^th.

The 24^th started early when my host family and I loaded the truck at five in the morning for a two hour drive to San Jose. The 24^th seemed to be a full day of cooking, thus the reason for leaving super early. Traditional Christmas foods my family made were: tamales, bread, and leg of lamb. I spent most of the day with my host brother, Christian, visiting relatives and of course every place you go gives you a little something to eat. I don’t think I actually ate a meal all day.  The “evening” of the 24^th celebration consisted of the kids setting off fire works in the street followed by a secret Santa gift exchange at midnight with my host Mom’s family. And since we’re on Honduras time, we didn’t get started before 12:30 a.m. So everyone was tired yet excited, plus everyone wanted to joke around making it impossible for anyone to give secret Santa instructions. When the exchange finally ended we had coffee and sweet bread before going home at two in the morning. It was a long day.

The 25^th was really relaxed with no plans and lots of leftover food. I took advantage of being in a really safe small town and went for a run in the mountains, something I miss being able to do. The traditions here feel different so much that I forgot it was Christmas a couple of times, each time asking myself, “How do you forget it’s Christmas?” It was interesting to participate in different traditions and to think that these traditions mean as much to people here as my traditions back home mean to me.

Roatan

I was lucky to have my girlfriend, Liz, able to come visit during my SALT term. She arrived the evening of the 1^st, and the following morning we left to go check out Roatan. Roatan is the biggest of the islands off the north coast of Honduras and is famous for its large coral reefs, white sandy beaches, and blue waters. We took a 2 hour ferry ride from the main land to the island. We arrived on the tail end of a storm so the ferry ride out was kind of rough, and the water was stirred up for the first day or so. The weather and water cleared up in time with gorgeous days at the end of our time on the island. Roatan has amazing diving and snorkeling. Unfortunately the cost of diving would stretch a MCC stipend a little too thin and because of the weather early on limited our chances of snorkeling. I went through culture shock a little upon arriving because we were still in Honduras, but the island culture is different and has a lot of American influence because of tourism. I found myself unsure of what language to speak because my instinct right now is to speak Spanish unless I know the person speaks English, and most people there will first engage in English unless they know I speak Spanish.

We had a great time and relaxing time on the island, I had wanted to go ever since our family came in ‘05. The town where we stayed, called the West End, has a main road that travels about a half mile along the beach with lots of diving companies, souvenir shops, and restaurants. We tried a few of the restaurants plus we found a place that sells fresh fish and were able to do some cooking. Shrimp curry happened a couple of times. More than once we found ourselves on the deck of a restaurant watching a Cruz ship slide silently by in the near distance.

One of the mornings we took some kayaks out to explore the bay.  We raced around, gliding over clear blue water and live coral that was sometimes as close as a foot or so from the surface. The waves that hit the bay would break at the entrance of the bay because of the coral, which made the water calm inside the bay. Liz found out that you could kayak surf and ride the waves that were breaking at the entrance of the bay. This was fun until a wave caught her kayak at the right angle to roll her out and carry the kayak away, leaving here stranded in a patch of shallow coral. Luckily I was able to retrieve the kayak and she could use her oar to push away from the coral to avoid bad injuries. But the scrapes she did get made the idea of being in salt water much less appealing.

Guatemala

When Liz booked a ticket to come down, we knew that I had a MCC retreat scheduled for one of the weeks she would be here. It was a weird situation, me going to Guatemala while she was in Honduras visiting me. But it was the only time a visit would work, so we made the most of it. Liz spent a week in Copan while I met up with MCCers from all of the Central American countries in Guatemala. It was cool to catch up with SALTers whom I haven’t seen since orientation as well as meet other longer term team members. The location of the retreat was on a lake call Atitlan, which is a gorgeous lake surrounded by towering volcanoes. It was interesting to make comparisons between Honduras and Guatemala. I at one point had the naïve notion that all of Central America was practically the same. I’m still amazed by how blatantly wrong I was.

After Guatemala

After returning to Honduras I had a week left with Liz to give her a tour of my SALT life. We went to visit the Stephens (MCC family just outside of San Pedro). We went to see a waterfall, sailing on the lake, and ate fresh coconut. Then went back to San Pedro to visit my host family and see where I live and work. My host mom (Consuelo) taught us how to make flour tortillas, which was hilarious. Consuelo can make perfectly round ones in half the time it took us to make shapes like footballs or Swiss cheese. Then for diner, Consuelo served Liz’s tortillas to me and my attempts to Liz. It was a fun night and I was able to translate which takes a lot of energy, but kind of fun.

Now the vacation is over and I’m back to work. I’m registering students for my next round of classes which start next week. It’s a little tough to switch back into work mode, I was getting used to vacation, travel, and visitors.

On a more somber note, my grandma (Erna Graber from South Dakota) passed away this month. I was not able to go home to attend the funeral. It was hard not to be able to go, but I’m really lucky to have support of the MCC team. It has helped a lot.

Thank you for reading

Feliz Navidad

To bring you up to speed with my life that has suddenly picked up pace. December came and so did Christmas decorations, mostly in businesses but a few houses on my street have hung some lights. But the businesses here really support the American commercial Christmas trend. For example City Mall in San Pedro has a decked out, 2-story tree in the food court. The beginning of December brought my first round of classes to a close. On December 7th was my last day of teaching for the year and the following day I had a mini graduation ceremony for the students. The ceremony was a very short program where the students received certificates (apparently very important to people here) followed by the customary refreshments of cake and soda. The classes I teach are 3 months long and are offered 3 times a year. Round 2 of classes starts in mid-January.

Then December 9th there was a Proyecto MAMA EndOfYear/Birthday/Christmas party. So in other words lots of food, candy, and gifts and a piñata (obligation for birthdays). A Mariachi band came and sung "Happy Birthday" (in Spanish). I thought it was really ironic that they sang the verse that says "now we want cake," three times... if you sing "now we want cake" over and over, do you really mean it? Proyecto MAMA does a secret Santa gift exchange for the Christmas part of the party. The gift exchange was a little different than any I've participated in before. For example there was a price minimum for the gift and there was a sheet to write down what you want your gift to be, and could be as specific as you want. I put down that I wanted a soccer jersey of a Honduran team (I got a nice one of team Marathon), but one could write what they wanted in a particular color from a particular store. Being able to write what you want ensures that you actually get something you want, but also takes away the fun of the anticipation, just my opinion.

I said that I don't have class from the beginning of December through mid-January. During this time I'm actually going/have started doing a lot of traveling. This week (Dec 11-17) I'm back in Copan Ruinas to take some more Spanish language classes. My Spanish is a ton better and my comprehension is pretty decent, but my grammar is still weak when I'm conversing. Plus I can understand a question and respond but I couldn't tell you what tense I just used much less the rules or patterns for the tenses. So this week I'm focusing on expanding my vocabulary, improving my knowledge of the structure of the language. Plus it's pretty relaxing to be back in Copan, and living with the same lady my family stayed with when we were here back in 2005. This is my 3rd time studying at this language school, I becoming a regular...

My next stop on my marathon trip is to San Jose, Comayagua. This is where my host parents are from and where most of their family lives. The plan is to spend 2 weeks-ish there and get to experience Honduran Christmas with them. I've been told to expect lots of tamales, apples, grapes, and fire works. It should be fun and very different from Christmas in the states. I'm looking forward to it, and will let you know how it goes. Then in the beginning of January, I'm getting a much anticipated visitor. Liz is coming to visit me for a couple weeks and we will to do some traveling. One place we plan to go is to Roatan island off the north coast of Honduras. I'm really excited because Roatan is supposed to have some of the best scuba diving and snorkeling in the world. A lot to look forward to in the coming month.

I'm not really planning on having much internet over the next month, so it will probably be a while before my next post.

A random fact:
Since I've been living here the amount of names that I respond to has grown exponentially. At home and school (normal Spanish speaking settings) I go by Miguel. I go by Mike or Michael in the occasional English setting (MCC team). Plus people who know a little English call me Mitchel because they think it's the English version of Miguel. Plus some people call me "Me-Kay," the Spanish pronunciation of Mike. It's almost to the point where I'll answer to any word starting with M...

Thanks for reading and have a merry Christmas

Soccer

So I guess it’s been a bit since I wrote last, sorry about that. I told people that I was hoping to play some soccer here and hopefully use soccer as a way to make friends. I’ve been working on finding a group to play with since I arrived. I live about 3 or 4 blocks from a couple soccer fields but was told that you have to watch who you hang out with there. So I looked for guys from church who would take me out to play so that I wouldn’t have to worry about the crowd. I wasn’t having much luck until I got the invitation to play street soccer that I mentioned in my last blog post.

I play with a group of guys who range from about 15-ish to a few years older than me. We play on certain section of street that divides an elementary school. The school has buildings on both sides and these buildings have outside lights for security. There are a couple houses next to the school that have outside lights as well, adding to the visibility and safety of the game. The dirt road has many rocks to watch out for, plus an array of potholes scattered throughout the field.  When it rains the potholes fill with water and become mud pits. The first couple of times I played I had to get used to obstacle soccer. Cinderblock walls on either side topped with razor wire have claimed their fair share of soccer balls. We kick around whatever ball we have, sometimes it’s a normal soccer ball other times it’s a plastic 50 cent ball. We score on little 2-foot homemade wooden goals. The games are quick and usually 3 v 3. When you score, you yell “quadra” and the team that lost is quickly replaced by a team waiting.

We play most evenings after it gets dark.  I wasn’t sure people preferred to play by the sparse light after the sun the sun goes down.I’ve figured it has to do with a combination of it being cooler, people having more free time, and there are fewer pedestrians later in the evening. It is a decently traveled street with most of the traffic being pedestrian. Since every time someone mistakes our soccer field for a normal street.  We have to pause our game to let them pass safely, and then the game starts again just as quickly as it stopped. It’s always fun even though I end up with scrapes of some kind about every other game. Nothing too bad, but enough to sting when I apply disinfectant afterwards.

My world can be a little small here sometimes with a language barrier and pretty much all my time spent with family, work, and church. I’ve put a lot of energy into knowing people in these settings but it feels constricting to have that be my entire life.  I’ve been working on getting to know more people in the community and neighborhood street soccer is great for that. It’s a setting where I can interact with youth while playing and also meet people walking by. And as a result I have had some conversations with people who live really close, but might not have met if I didn’t have a reason to go to their street. It’s fun to look down other dirt roads flooded with inhabited buildings and barbed wire fences, and think of the possible friends or conversations that might exist.

Last week our street took a collection and bought a truckload of dirt to fix up the sloppy sections along our road, mentioned in the last post. I got to help filling in the mud pits with most of the guys who live on our street. My understanding is that the government is technically responsible for maintenance but couldn’t possibly keep up if they really tried. So it defaults to community responsibility. It was really cool to see the community working together to pay for and fix their road. Another moment to stop and compare cultures. The road is much better these days and it is possible to walk to work and not have to watch and calculate your every step.

Other News:

School is winding down and my trimester will end the first week of December. Then the next week I will go back to Copan for another week of Spanish classes to hopefully help my grammar become more natural.

I had Thanksgiving here. The country reps Andres and Amy Zorrilla invited MCCers who were able to come over for a Thanksgiving meal. We had turkey and a whole delicious traditional Thanksgiving meal. Incase you who were worried that I’d be missing out this year.


Thanks for reading.

Expectations

Insert your favorite cliché stating that you should resist the natural human desire to have expectations or assumptions. Things taken for granted often don’t translate cross-culturally, but you already knew that. But a personal example is I had the assumption that the lines painted on the road mean something… so far it looks like I’m wrong. Also I didn’t expect that the next neighborhood over would be exclusively black for what I’m told. I have yet to get myself into too much trouble because of misguided assumption, but I have been thinking about the topic lately.

Back in August at SALT orientation, one piece of advice that repeatedly offered was “have low expectations.” This concise phrase was to remind us that even though we are young (thus invincible and can accomplish anything we set our mind to) and volunteering for a year (where a year in enough time to accomplish anything), that the visible effect we make might not be as drastic as we have dreamed it will be. Maybe it’s because of 17 years of teachers encouraging confidence in my abilities, but I find this advice hard to swallow. As I’m approaching the 3 month mark, there is a tug-a-war is going on in my head about what I’m accomplishing compared to what I feel I should be accomplishing. In the classroom I can see progress, but in the community I still feel like that white guy down the street. I have few community members who are more than just passing greetings but I’m just starting to accumulate enough courage to initiate a conversation with a stranger.

The other evening I church I arrived with my family on time, so naturally we were early. I sat in the back by myself because my host family decided not to sit down. Then sometime during the service a middle aged lady sat next to me; I knew her face but not her name. Services have many scripture reading and most people have a Bible to follow along, she was no different. When the pastor announced the closing scripture, she found the passage and then noticing I didn’t have a Bible she offered her’s to me. I accepted her offer but insisted that we share because I didn’t want to deprive her of being able to follow along in her Bible. She recited the last verse in unison with the pastor, took back the book, and asked me if I could follow along with reading. I thought it was an odd question but assumed it was an indirect question about my Spanish ability. I responded saying I could follow along and understood most of it. She looked impressed, and then told me that she could not read and that she memorizes the passages that get read often. It was my turn to look impressed and that was the extent of our interaction for the evening. Since then a congregation of Bibles has taken a different meaning.

I have also been on the receiving end of the assumption process. I was leaving work to go home a number of weeks back and met Luis from church. Luis is a 15 years old and plays the keyboard church, also the guy who recently cut my hair. He told me he was going to play some soccer and I asked where he played trying to sound interested. I got an invitation to go play some 3 vs 3 street soccer with him and his friends. When we walked home he told me that he didn’t expect that I liked to play soccer. Well he knows better now, and came over the other evening to convince me to come play some mud soccer. It wasn’t that tough a sell.

Some random fun facts:

White socks are not for mud soccer.

The Mennonite church here has had 2 food fundraisers so far, Hamburgers and Tamales. They’re good cooks.

The rain has turned some of the roads, including a section in front of my house, into mud soup. So my walk to work now more resembles an obstacle course.

Rapiditos 101

I thought I’d talk a little bit about the transportation situation here. The structure public transportation varies by location and can differ between cities so I’m talking about San Pedro. Here, in San Pedro, I’ve encountered direct taxis which operate like a taxi in the states. You flag them down, give them a destination, and after settling on a price they take you directly to that destination. This is the most expensive option. Then there are collective taxis that always are always parked in a certain place and run a specific route. They wait for a car load before leaving, so less private but not bad. You have to know their route because the taxi will let you out at anytime, but won’t deviate from their route much. Finally there are the bus routes where buses stop at the same places along their route. The 2 different kinds of buses that run these routes are: recycled school buses (mostly from the U.S. and I have been advised to avoid these for safety reasons), and Rapiditos.

Rapiditos are privately owned 15 passenger vans that have been personalized with decal stickers, window tint, and stuff stuck all over the dash. Many sport a large decal with some evangelical statement of faith, which sometimes in English. I’m still trying to decide if it is statement of faith or seen more as good luck... Maybe if people have to choose between two buses with crazy drivers, they’re more likely to get in the one that says “Protected by Jesus” on the side. When I say “crazy drivers” keep in mind that it is from a North American perspective, the rules of the road are a little different. For example it is common to drive on the shoulder when there is a traffic jam and then drive around the shoulder when the shoulder slows.

Rapiditos are 15 passenger vans but if you find yourself in one with only 15 passengers, you savor the moment. There is a driver plus a guy who mans the door and the collects the money. They pack people in and apparently are never full because there will be no possible way to fit in another person and they will still try to pick up more passengers. Also these buses are made for people who have a little shorter legs than I do.

This is my mode of transportation into the center of town where the MCC office is located. I catch the Rapidito a short two blocks from my house. Sometimes you have to pass on a couple of them because they are too full or look like they might break down around the next corner. When getting in one I have to make sure to have money in hand because there is no way I can get to my pockets. At a similar point in the commute they will start collecting money and one by one we pass up our 7 Lempiras. Then the tricky part is knowing the names of the stops. To get off you shout out the name of the stop as the bus gets close. I’ve figured out how to get to and from the MCC, which I do about twice a week, and have made the trip by myself enough to feel confident.

Everyone has Rapidito stories here, these are a few of mine.
During the Honduras orientation I was advised to not get into a Rapidito that looks like it’s racing. I remember smirking because it sounded like an odd and obvious piece of advice. Well I found myself in one of these the other day. Another Rapidito caught up to mine and our driver wanted to get to the potential passengers first. It was an intense about half mile where the driver was flooring it along with aggressive driving. It ended when a passenger took his time entering our bus, and we lost our lead. So we waited a while to let the other bus get ahead a ways, then continued at normal speed.
Another time a mother squished into the seat next to me. With her baby on her lap, she started breast feeding. I was unsure how to react to that but I followed everyone else’s lead and acted like it was no big deal.
And once there was a time when the Rapidito could not make change for a passenger. So when another Rapidito was passing up the driver yelled something at them and the next thing I know the buses are getting really close together. Our driver holds out a bill and there is a stretched hand stretched from the other bus holding a wad of smaller bills. After a few tries the money is exchanged and everyone got their change and, more importantly, nobody crashed.

I’m healthy and doing well. I’ve been teaching for over a month now and have a good feel for it. I’m on the trimester system so I have about a month and a half left of this trimester. It is frustrating sometimes when half a class or possibly a whole class doesn’t show up. But the bright side is that it saves me lesson planning time. My Spanish is coming along and I’m becoming an expert in Spanish computer lingo.

Thanks for reading.
And snail mail is always welcome (address is on the right)