It is currently 8 p.m. on a Wednesday night and I am completely ready for bed. This has been my life for the last few days! Not sleeping Sunday night has really messed with my sleeping pattern and ability. Let me start from the beginning:
Friday, Amanda came to my site because it was the start of the Feria. Every town here in Honduras has a feria to celebrate a patron saint, and mine happens to be the month of September, which fits nicely with the celebration of Independence Day (Sept. 15) of all of Central America from Spain!! So, this is going to be a pretty happening month. Amanda came to visit to see what was going to happen for the start of my feria. We ended up dancing most of the night, of course, because we just can’t dance enough! Amanda is the one who taught me how to Bachata, which is my new favorite dance ever!! I’m still not much of a Merengue dancer, but I put in an honest effort, and when I have a good partner, it is really fun, too! However, we lost power in my site at about 4 p.m. Friday afternoon. Thankfully the people organizing the dance for the night had a generator, a fairly large generator, because to power all the strobe lights and colored lights bouncing around the dance floor along with all the electric/sound equipment, I think they needed a lot of juice. The dance floor was a just the lawn by the local restaurant in town, and it had rained recently, so there were some mushy spots, but the strobe lights and colored lights shinning all around us made it easy to forget how dirty you feet were getting.
Satruday, we still didn’t have electricity, and it stayed off all day. Amanda and I were basically dying because it was hot, and we couldn’t use my fan because there was no power. We ended up spending the morning lying on my kitchen floor because it is tile and was nice and cool. When the power is out, there is also no cell phone signal, but you can send a text from my back door sometimes. So, Amanda and I were lying on the floor in my kitchen with our cell phones aimed at the doorway trying to send text messages. At one point, a couple friends came over, and yes, we were still lying on the floor. They thought we were a little weird for it, but after describing why we were doing it, they seemed to understand. They were heading to the hot springs to cool off, which I just couldn’t understand. It was hot out, and we were sweating and the hot springs were about the last thing in the world we wanted to do. They said that it would cool you off, but we didn’t believe them! Saturday night, when the power came back on, Amanda and I ended up just watching a TV program on my computer and going to sleep at a more reasonable hour than Friday night, but still quite late.
Sunday, we ended up going to Santa Rosa, where I was able to actually get some work done on the Women’s Health Manual that I am working on. The bus ride back to my site was interesting. It was 6 p.m. on a Sunday, and we were two of about 12 people that were on the bus, which was quite unusual considering they usually pack so many people on the buses that you can’t move or breath. But, being so late on a Sunday, I guess they know there are not very many people heading back in my direction. A guy begging for money rode with us for a little while, until he realized none of us were going to give him anything, so then he hopped off. The rides back to site always seem to be so much longer than the ride to Santa Rosa. Going to Santa Rosa, it is always exciting - an adventure out of site. But going home, I always just want to be there already, so the bus ride always feels like it takes forever. This bus ride was even worse because it was so late and it was starting to get dark. As the sun was going down, and the fog and rain was settling in, it seemed very late, and it felt like we should have been home hours ago. The ride is really only about 45 minutes, but somehow it felt more like two hours.
We arrived back to my site and made it up to my house in one piece. The trek up to my house is never easy. Hiking up the 60+ steps right before my house is always a challenge, especially when you are overtired, have been traveling and just want to get home. We made our way up to my house, one step up at a time. It took us a little extra time, but we finally made it. Once we got there, we made macaroni and cheese, which was one of the most amazing things I had eaten in the six months I have been in Honduras. We were so worried we were going to lose power again and not be able to make it, but we lucked out. I probably should have bought a gas stovetop, but I didn’t want to have to deal with all of that - the extra hassle is not worth not being able to cook sometimes - in my opinion. It is crazy what you crave living down here, though. I never really ate mac and cheese in the states, but here, it always sound amazing. After dinner, Amanda played around with my music, putting some on her iPod, and I packed for our trip to Siguat! Reconnect was going to start on September 6th, but we needed to be in Siguat by the 5th at 6 p.m. We didn’t want to pay for a bus, so our plan was to jalon (hitch hike) our way there. Luckily, I remembered that my next-door neighbor actually works in La Esperanza, which is more than halfway to Comayagua, which is where we wanted to go for the day before training started! I talked to my neighbor about giving Amanda and I a ride, and he was fine with, but it turned out he was actually leaving at 4 a.m. in the morning, rather than 5, when he usually left. We didn’t want to pay for a bus, or deal with a lot of bus transfers, so we decided to just do it.
So, Amanda and I listened to music while I packed, and then a couple friends came over and we were all just listing to music and chilling at my house. We all stayed up really late, and by the time everyone left and it was just Amanda and I left at my house, we decided that trying to sleep was a bad idea because we were afraid that we wouldn’t wake up to our alarms and that we would miss our ride! I’m glad we decided to just stay up, because when my alarm was supposed to go off at 3:40 a.m., it didn’t. I looked, and I had actually set it for 3:40 p.m. Like zombies, we walked across the street to my neighbors house, and luckily only had to wait about five minutes before he was ready. We figured we would be waiting at least a half an hour if this guy ran on the usual Honduran time, but thankfully, he didn’t! We made it to Gracias in about a half an hour, but there we had to switch from my neighbors little pick up to the big work truck. We got to ride up front and there was a lot of space, so we just slept off and on the whole way to La Esperanza. The truck must have been made somewhere in Europe because the steering wheel was on the wrong side of the car. I am usually ok with that, but Hondurans are some crazy drivers, so it made me a little nervous. We obviously arrived just fine, though!
We were in La Ezperanza before 8 a.m., which was amazing. We ended up just hopping on a bus because it was early and we had no energy for trying to find a jalon. It was only 80 lempira from there to Comayagua, so it wasn’t too bad! We got to Comayagua at about 10 a.m. and our first stop was Dunkin Doughnuts because we wanted a bagel and cream cheese - I didn’t even get a doughnut, which I was very sad about later that day! While eating our bagels, we decided to go to La Villa de San Antonio and see our old host families from Field Based Training back in March, April and May! We didn’t let them know we were coming, so they were very surprised to see us. It was a lot of fun. We brought them doughnuts, and spent some time catching up and then went back to Comayagua where we met up with Nina (another H-18 health volunteer). We were all staying at Andrea’s house (an H-12 health volunteer, she extended her service). We all went out for dinner, and when we got back to Andrea’s apartment, Nina, Amanda and I all fell asleep - between 8:30 and 9 p.m. We were like grandparents, but we were running on nothing. Nina had gotten up early for her 7-hour bus ride, too, so we were ALL exhausted.
The next day, we just relaxed in Comayagua, went to the grocery store, bought cheese and crackers, and made a picnic in the park! Then we did a little bit of tourist shopping, in the limited stores that are there, and then it was time to head to Siguat to start Reconnect - the annual training/get to know the other volunteers in your projects for Peace Corps.
This was another adventure! We went back to the apartment, packed our stuff, put on our heavy-ass back packs and then headed to where we thought was the road for Siguat. We walked down the meridian of the street for about 20 minutes before we realized that we were actually on the wrong street. There is a highway-type road that goes to La Libertad, and that was the one we were walking on, so we jumped in a cab and took it out to the mine highway for Siguat. Once we were there, it only took us about five minutes before a truck pulled over that was headed to San Pedro, which was perfect because they have to pass through Siguat.
However, about five minutes into this jalon, they pulled onto a small dirt road, which was mildly scary until they stopped and said they were hungry and asked if we wanted to jump out and find another ride or hang out while they ate. So we just decided to hang out while they ate. Even though getting that particular jalon was not that difficult, we didn’t feel like trying again - and besides, we had time, so why not hang out? The place they were eating ended up being very nice. There was a small lagoon/lake/pond thing with a little rowboat you could use. The area with the tables was open so you could see the beautiful lagoon. The food looked great, we didn’t eat, but the seafood soup the guys were eating smelt and looked delicious. They asked us if we wanted anything, but we had way to much pena (kind of embarrassment) to say yes. We ended up letting them buy us a drink, though. We stayed there for a little more than an hour, which was more time than we should have, but we all just kept chatting. They had a lot of questions about Peace Corps and what we were doing with our projects. The older one had worked with Peace Corps people before, so he knew a lot about it and was very interested in what we were working on. There names were Eduin and Jose Miguel - or at least that is what we decided their names were after they dropped us of and we were trying to remember. Once we left the restaurant, the jalon was very fast. We got to Siguat a little after 5 p.m., which was perfect. We were able to grab a cab, go to the grocery store and stock up (the hotel is really far out of town and we were not going to be able to go back) and then grab a cab out to the hotel. We got there basically right at 6 p.m., which is when we were supposed to arrive. Thankfully, we were not the last ones - that would have been a little embarrassing!
So, all in all, our jaloning adventure was a success- Amanda and I did cheat and took a bus from La Esperanza to Comayagua, but it was only 80 lempira, and we arrived in Comayagua by 10 a.m., so we are just going to let that one slide!
Jaloning back home was a total success!! The bus from the hotel dropped us off at a shopping center because we wanted coffee, I needed to find a present for a friend in site, and some gals wanted Wendy’s - but, once we were ready, we went to the highway, and grabbed a jalon to the desvio (the sort of fork in the road) for La Esperanza, and there, we only stood there for less than 10 minutes, probably about five, and then a big truck stopped. It was a little creepy for a couple seconds until I finally got a look at the guy driving - it was someone from my town! He recognized me and pulled over to see if we were headed there. WHAT LUCK!!! We ended up in my site at about 2:30 p.m. - a little more than four hours!! From there, Amanda and I headed to my house to go to sleep - not sleeping much during training, and then jaloning is very exhausting!
Jaloning to Siguat from Comayagua
Jose Miguel and Eduin
Gotta love chillin' in the back of a pickup!!!
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