Alfombras: this was a word that I heard more of in the last two weeks than I think I have heard in my life. In English, Alfombra means rug. Yes, everyone was talking about rugs for the last two weeks. Really, they were talking about them for a lot longer than that, but the last two weeks the word trickled down through the population and made it to me and the rest of the trainees - soon to be volunteers.
So, why was everyone talking about alfombras? Apparently these alfombras are very important for Catholics when they are celebrating Semana Santa - or in layman’s terms: Easter. Easter is a very important time for Catholics I learned over the last couple weeks. However, it is nothing like anything I ever participated in or witnessed in the United States. I’m sure there are parts of the county that celebrate Semana Santa in its entirety, but I don’t know where. So, what is it exactly? I will tell you!
Semana Santa is a week long (Semana) celebration of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. The celebration actually begins before the week of Semana Santa with flowers and candles placed outside everyone’s house for four Fridays before the beginning of Semana Santa. The Sunday before “Easter Sunday”- but they don’t call it easter here - is the start of the processions. Everyone walks through the street singing, and on every street corner, they stop and say a prayer, or read a passage from the Bible. In some of the processions, they also act out skits of the life/death/resurrection of Jesus on every corner. Throughout the week there were at least 6 processions - one of which began at 3 a.m. Saturday morning and woke me up from a nice deep sleep! I have no idea why they do it so early, but it sure was load - beautiful music, yes - but certainly uncalled for at that time of the morning.
Thursday night was the first big procession, which started at 11 p.m., and the alfombras are for the procession on Friday morning. This meant that everyone who was making the alfombras had to wait until after the procession was over (which was about 1 a.m.) to start their alfombra. This is because the alfombras are put in the middle of the street. The alfombras are made out of colored sawdust and are pictures of all things having to do with Catholicism basically: Jesus, crosses, doves, Bibles - etc. They were beautiful. Apparently, this year Tegucigalpa was trying to win the Guinness Book of World Record for the larges alfombra, but I don’t know if that is true, and if it is, I don’t know if they succeeded or not.
One of the many alfombras lining the streets!So, in honor of Semana Santa, we did not have class on Thursday or Friday. You would think most of us would have been happy about this, and in a way we all were, but at the same time it was a bit on the sad side. What were we going to do for four straight days in La Villa. Friday is the most important day of Semana Santa - with all the alfombras. And, in Comayagua, is always a hug celebration with “spectacular” alfombras, but unfortunately none of us could go because the buses do not run on that day. Also we are not allowed to overnight anywhere until August, so we couldn’t go to Comayagua on Thursday and get a hotel room - as awesome as that would have been.
So, what did we do to take up a 4-day weekend - not much! Some of us got together and had an afternoon of swapping photos and movies. I know only have 27GB left on my 500GB hard drive - ya, I already had a lot of movies, and now I just have a ridiculous amount. But hey, two years is a long time, and I will have a lot of lonely nights to watch movies. We did get to go to Comayagua on Saturday, but that ended up being more waiting for buses and riding buses than actually being in Comayagua. I only really wanted to go so I could go to the grocery store to re-stock on fruit. So, we all met at 9 a.m. at the bus stop; it took 45 minutes for the first bus to come - which should have been an indicator for how the day was going to go, but it didn’t phase us. After arriving to Comayagua, shopping, eating lunch, and grocery shopping we headed to the bus stop. We got there at 1:30, and there was not a bus sitting there for La Villa, which every other weekend there had been. So, we sat down on the sidewalk to wait it out - we figured one would show up soon. After about a half hour and a lot of hacky-sack, we asked someone. He said not to worry that one would be along soon, but that instead of the three buses that were running that morning they were down to only one that afternoon. So, at 3p.m., after waiting for an hour and a half, and watching Pete, Jeff, and Jeremy entertain themselves with a hacky-sack in more ways than I ever thought possible, we came to a group decision. We decided there were no more buses for la Villa, which meant we needed a plan B. We ended up walking over to the other - very close by- bus stop for direct buses to La Paz. We loaded onto this bus, which sat for a half and hour, and left at about 3:30p.m.. However, this ended up being the world’s slowest bus that drove literally 20 miles an hour and stopped every 10 feet. By this time my toleration level had reached its limit and I was starting to get really frustrated. I had been pretty relax about everything all day because there was nothing we had control over, so I was just going with the flow. But, when we were finally on the bus basically not going anywhere, I had had it. Obviously, though, there was also nothing I could do about it, so we all just joked about how ridiculous the whole day had been. I will remember never to try and go anywhere on a bus they Saturday of Semana Santa, again.
La Paz is a large town that is about a 10-15 minute drive outside of La Villa. So, we got off the bus at the “desvio” - the turn off- for La Villa, which meant we had to then walk back to town. This took us about a half an hour because we were not walking very fast, and we all had bags of groceries. To entertain oursleves on this tedious walk, we counted the dead frog/toad things (Sapos) on the road. Between the desvio and the edge of town we counted 32 dead sapos!!
Now it is Saturday April 30th - 65 days of training down - 14 to go! However, we leave La Villa on Wednesday, four days from now! I am so excited. I liked it hear in La Villa, and I liked FBT, but I am just ready for it to be over. At this point, I’m pretty sure everyone is. Training is great, and most of the information we learn I understand the reasons behind it and why we need to learn it, but after more than two months, I am done. Once we get back to Zarabanda, it will be pretty much all down hill. Yes, we have our language interview, which I am quite nervous for, but that is about it. We have a lot of technical stuff we will be going over, but the majority of training training, will be finished, and in 14 days we will actually be Volunteers for the Peace Corps.
My final hurdle is definitely my language interview. I really want to end training as an Intermediate-High, but at this point, I’m not sure if I will be able to pull it off.
No comments:
Post a Comment