Monday from HE Double Hockey Sticks

Written March 29th

The last couple days have been quite interesting, to say the least. I guess I’ll just start with yesterday. I know I’m skipping the weekend, but to be honest, nothing that great happened. I went on a mission to the city near by, but was unsuccessful in my mission to buy some new clothes. So, yesterday was Monday, which is just never that great of a day in general, but to make it worse, this particular Monday was extremely terrible - starting at 7:30 in the morning. Monday was the day for our second language interviews. Like I have already explained, in order to become a volunteer, you have to reach an “intermediate-mid” level in Spanish. So, after my first interview, when I first arrived at our training site, I was an “intermediate-low.” I really want to be at the “intermediate-mid” point, now. I feel like I have improved a great deal with my Spanish - enough so to make that jump up one level at least. So, obviously I was nervous about my interview. I really don’t feel that great about how it went, either. During the interview there were some scenarios that we had to act out, and mine was not that great and I feel like I wasn’t able to fully demonstrate my speaking abilities with the scenario that I was given. My language teacher told me that the difference between intermediate-low and intermediate-mid is the ability to ask good questions. So, I had kind of prepared some questions I was going to ask, beforehand. But, when I got my scenario, it was telling me to pretend my interviewer was a director of an organization. I had to introduce myself and tell about me, and then ask questions about her work and the organization. I was not ready for that, and the questions I pulled out on a whim were really not that great, which makes me nervous.

So, after the interview, you would think I would be able to settle down my nerves and go on with the Monday and try to make the best of if, but that was not the case. To make this particular Monday even more miserable, I had to give my first charla. It was going to be just fine, but one of the girls in our group - the one who could actually speak and understand Spanish well, was sick. So, for our charla, my group had three intermediate-low Spanish speakers. I was terrified. Our chrala was about making a map of your community to identify different places where men and women spend their time. For us, this is a useful tool to use to prepare for a charla. We can decide where we can recruit people for our charla. But, for the group of kids that we were giving the charla to, who were all mini-journalists, this was a good activity to think of places where they could go to find people for a story they are writing. So, we had to give our charla with out Glenn. In the end, it went well. The kids, who were ages 8-13, had fun and I think they understood why it was important afterward. During the question and answer we had after our charla was over, I had some trouble because I couldn’t really understand a couple of the questions, but after having them repeat it about three times, the three of us in my group could usually figure out what they were asking. After we answered all their questions, we went outside and played cops and robbers with them, and then tried to teach them Red Rover, which was my favorite game when I was their age. But, the language barrier was a bit of a challenge and they didn’t quite understand the idea behind the game, so we quickly moved on to tag (landa in Spanish).

So, that was my Monday from down under, and to top it all off it was in the mid 80s by 8 in the morning, and got up in to the high 90s very quickly afterward. I think that it got in the 100s, but I actually don’t know for sure. So, I had my interview, gave a charla, and suffered through some serious heat. To make the day actually end well, after dinner, my host mom and I talked for about 3 hours. It was nice. We talked about the differences in schooling in Honduras and in the USA, which lead to the differences between becoming a doctor, which lead to the differences in the health care systems in the US and in Honduras. From there, my host mom started telling me about a movie she watched once about a kid who needed a heart transplant in the states, who couldn’t get it because the family didn’t have any money. She explained this movie to me for a good half an hour (not even exaggerating) - which I probably understood about 75 percent of. The movie sounded really good actually. After her explanation, I told her that that was the way health care was in the states. There are people with insurance that can usually go to the hospital when ever anything is wrong, but then there are poor people or people without insurance that simply can’t afford health care. She said that was terrible and then brought up Obama and how he was going to change all that. It surprised me how up to date on current events in the Unites States she is.

So, Tuesday. Today was not a crazy/terrible day like Monday, but it definitely had its moments that stood out. To start, I have to say that it was even hotter today than it was yesterday. And, in addition to it just being ridiculously hot, we didn’t have any electricity, which means no fans in our classrooms. The morning was more tolerable because the house my language classes are in thankfully has an outside patio in the shade where we can sit and have our classes. It was hot, but I could handle it. But, it just kept getting hotter. When it came time to go to our technical session, which was about one of the projects we could be implementing in our site - “Yo Meresco” (which means I Deserve). It is a program for 9-13 year old girls about safe sex, abstinence, teen pregnancy, and self esteem. So, for this session, we were in our large classroom, which has no sort of air circulation at all, and the power was still out, so we didn’t have our two fans. It was dreadful. All of us had paper out folded into fans - we were miserable. During one of the breaks one of my friends asked me “how are you doing my Alaskan friend,” everyone laughed when I said I actually felt like I might die, but at that moment - I felt like it was true! We suffered through the technical session, which was actually interesting, but really hard to pay attention to when it was 100 degrees. So, the interesting part. Right as class was ending, a storm started, with the works: thunder, lighting, hail, and a lot of rain. One of the ladies said it was the first time in four years that they had hail. It was more like big chunks of ice falling from the sky. Hail to me is small little chunks of snow-looking stuff. This stuff was clear ice chunks. Half of the people made a run for it right when the rain started and got to their houses, but the ones of us that stayed to watch the rain ended up getting stuck in our classroom. It was some of the hardest rain I have ever seen in my life, and for any of you that know Sitka, Port Alexander, and even Seattle, know how hard it can rain in those places. But, this was even crazier that that. Me, and two other people decided we wanted to run around in the rain. We had been sitting inside all day long sweating profusely, so we went for it. About 20 seconds after we started running through the street, the big ice chunks started falling again. Wow, those things sting. We took shelter under a gazebo-type thing in the center of the park. Just standing there, we started getting a little cold so we took our chances and ran back to the classroom. Like I said, man those ice chunks hurt. So, we all waited in the classroom for about 30-40 minutes for the rain to stop, which it eventually did.

When I got back to my house, my host mom and her empleada (lady who helps cook and clean), had mops and were trying to clean up the house. The whole floor was flooded from the water that came through the gap underneath the front door. In the kitchen and sitting room, there are no windows, and they face the direction the wind was blowing, so there was even more water, and all the furniture was soaking wet. When I saw that, I got a little worried. I pulled out my key and opened the door to my room. I had of course left my window open to keep some air circulation going, which caused a lot of damage. The floor was soaking wet, but the only thing directly on the floor was my backpack with nothing in it. But, my bed was completely drenched as was my language notebook that was sitting on top of my bed. I felt really bad for leaving the window open, but a lot of the damage also came through the rough, not just my error, so that made me feel a little better. But, it still was a total bummer. We took the mattress out of my room and swaped it for the one in my host sister’s room (she is only here on the weekends), and we mopped up all the water on the floor. I need to wash my mosquito net because it is covered in dirt and mud that seems to have come down from the roof.

So, that damage was minimal, but the work to get all the water out of the house, and to get me a new mattress was a bit of a chore. Also, to top this all off, remember, we didn’t have any electricity. And, by this time it was 6pm, so the sun was down and it was definitely getting hard to see in the house. I went to my friends house to see if they needed any help cleaning up water, which they didn’t. So, I stayed and visited a bit and then went back home. My host mom had candles around the house and was cooking with a little gas-operated, one-burner camp stove. She wasn’t using her fagon (an inside cook stove, that is actually bad for your health when made improperly, which hers definitely is not), like she did in the morning because all the fire wood had gotten soaked by the rain storm.

I went into my room and pulled out my flashlight, headlamp, and found my other lamp-type light. But, the second I stepped out of my room, the electricity came back on. My host mom was relieved,, and was able to finish dinner on the regular stove. I had fried platanos, frijoles, queso, and some lunch meat stuff, with tortillas of course. I finally was able to get up the guts to tell them that no I did not want juice. I get juice with every meal. It would be fine if it was actual juice but it is gross juice that is pure sugar and tastes usually like fruit punch or Sunny D. Sometimes they make some homemade juice which is awesome, but then they add an insane amount of sugar to it. I also got up the courage to say that there was entirely too much food on my plate, so she took away one of my cheese wedges. I am the type of person that will just eat everything that is set in front of me, but they give me way too much. I started stopping myself before I finished and having them rap up a bit of it for a snack later, which works pretty well, but I think I really just need to get them to stop putting so much on my plate. They don’t eat that much, but I’m a gordita, so they think I want a lot.

In Honduras, people are very blunt. You are called by your physical attributes quite frequently. I have not actually been called a gordita to my face, thankfully, but I’m sure it has been said. (It means a little bit chubby girl basically). But when ever someone is talking about someone else or describing someone, they pick what ever trait is most obvious about the person and just call the person that. One or our facilitators comes and buys a paleta (homemade popsicle things) from my host mom almost every day, and the way she described who it was, was by saying the bajo gordito (the short chubby one). Our director person was described as el musculo (he is really buff). Another teacher was rubia gordita (blond chubby one). When someone is a teacher and widely known as that, a lot of people will just call that person maestro (teacher). A couple of my friends that have come over who are really thin and pretty, my host mom refers to as delgadas (skinny). Those are just some examples, but like I said, Honduras are very blunt. It doesn’t seem like they even take offence to being called what we in the states would think of as derogatory remarks. If someone ever calls me gortdita to my face, I don’t know what I would do. It is definitely not something I am used to, and I don’t think I would ever be able to get used to.

Oh, to add another story - this is actually from Sunday. I think my host mother is trying to set me up with her cousin. He is 29 and has a daughter, who I think looks about 8 years old. My host mom had him come over to help me with some of my homework, which I appreciated. He is a teacher and I had to learn about one of the departments in Honduras, and my mom didn’t know anything about it. Jose Enrique did know about it, and brought a couple books about Honduras that were very helpful. But, after we were done talking about Gracias A Dios (the name of the department), he stayed for about two more hours and we just talked about the states, I showed him some pictures, and I found out he is an artist and a “romantic.” he went home and got his sketch book and showed me some of the things he has done, my host mom actually has a painting he did on the wall, which is pretty darn good. He also wrote down a poem that he wrote a couple years ago. The poem is actually really beautiful. I asked him if he wrote it about a someone, and he said no - he is just a romantic guy, he likes to listen to music and gets inspired to write poetry. He gave me the poem, too. After this, he started telling me different leyendas (legends) in Honduras. The only one I understood completely was “La Cartera Sin Turros” - the cart with out bulls. It is a cart that rolls around places with out any bulls pulling it, and there are skulls attached around the top of it. I didn’t catch why that is, but it was still creepy. It would be fun to learn the whole leyenda to tell as a ghost story some time. At about 9:30, I finally told him that I had to get to bed, so he left, but I heard him and my host mom talking and he said he was going to come back the next night. Which, he did, but my mom and I were having our talk about schooling and health care in the states. He sat in the living room waiting for us to finish for about an hour and a half, but then left. I didn’t realize it was him until after he left - I thought it was the husband of my host sister. I asked my host mom why he didn’t come in and join us. Apparently it is a sign of respect for a man not to come and interrupt a conversation women are having? She said he would come back tonight, but he didn’t because of the flooding/no electricity. So, I’m guessing he’ll be back tomorrow, which is slightly awkward. I want to be nice and it is actually really helpful for my Spanish to talk to him. He is a teacher and knows how to talk slow and enunciate, which is muy bueno. But, I don’t want to encourage any sort of set up that may be happening. I don’t know for sure that that is the situation, but it seems like it to me. Maybe I’m wrong, and he is just a really nice guy that wants to help this gringa with her Spanish!