aaaaaaaah

Hey guys :)
Firstly i have to let you know that the internet cafe in Lepaera is very temperamental and basically stops working for the majority of each day. I’m trying my best to update this as often as i can though!
What’s happened since my last entry... Well the family we are currently staying with are so wonderful! They’re lovely and friendly and fun and caring. The two kids, Helene and Jose Luis are wonderful too...last week we were sitting in our room, beside the big living room with the hifi and MASSIVE tv when i heard the two kids and the maid (also called Helene, though we refer to her as Helene Grande so that we can distinguish them haha...) listening to music on the hifi. It was the first time i’d heard it being used and that thing was incredible. I’m going to put some photos on the computer of their stuff cos its outta this world! So i threw some cheesy pop songs that i thought they would know (a bit of Enrique and Shakira, some Black Eyed Peas and a bit of Britney) onto my memory stick and plugged it into the USB port of the hifi and we started dancing around like loonies! It was so fun :) theyre such lovely people and we had so much fun :) Stephy might remember when we played that game where you lift someone with just your index fingers? I tried that on Helene Grande and managed to lift her, and the amazing part is that we had to explain how to do this without actually being able to understand each other! It was so fun and we made it work. The look of shock on the family’s face when it worked was priceless haha :) i felt so chuffed.
Thoroughly raging currently though... Mercedes (the woman who owns the little school in Lepaera where the kids are so lazy...) has told us that she is moving us out of Lepaera into another village about an hour and a half away called San Juan, where she has opened a new school. Emma and i are pretty upset about this. We love where we live, we love the town and we love the people. Everything was great. Emma is quite easily swayed by things, like she puts all her hope into something and when it doesn’t work out she gets pretty upset...and for that reason we made a pretty solid grounding at our home in Lepaera. We tried to make it seem as stable as possible so that Emma’s transition to our new surroundings was as smooth and comfortable as possible, and that worked out pretty well for me too! The annoying thing about all this is that we are now moving out TOMORROW.
(Updated on Monday 16th Nov)
Last Sunday we travelled to San Juan on the back of a truck again (increeeeeeedible). It had an upside down single bed + mattress and a picnic table at the bottom of it, tied on with ropes. Emma and i were sitting on the bed, looking at the road behind us, for an hour and a half at about half 10 at night.i lay on the bed looking up at the stars in the mountains, and they were truly incredible. The thought that at night, you can look out your window wherever you are, and depending on clouds, see the exact same stars i’m seeing... i find that awesome :) they looked beautiful and i think i wasted a good twenty minutes just staring at them!
It did rain a little so that was a bit annoying but i was all prepared and wrapped up in my grandma’s blue cagoule so i was safe. The bed, however, wasn’t so happy. When we arrived, a tad windswept, the single bed turned out to be mine and emma’s, between us + no pillow. Great.
We went into the school building (unfinished, no lights in the building, no doors on the rooms, no door on the TOILET!) and honestly i thought we’d just as well break down on the spot. The outlook seemed so bleak, which it was. A single bed between us was not good, especially when we didn’t actually get to sleep until around 1am (along with a horrendously broken night’s sleep, no pillow and a tiny blanket between us) to then get up at about 7am. We felt awful, and started snapping at each other, and everyone around us. A lot of things went a bit wrong in the school in San Juan. There was no kitchen so our first dinner was bread + butter and coke. Basically we lived off takeout food and sandwitches for 3 days. No fruit, no veg, no water (because they couldn’t be bothered buying any...) and just EVERYTHING LOOKS BLEAK RIGHT NOW. I am not looking forward to tomorrow.
So, Monday morning could have been better in that respect...the one thing that is going to get me through this is the children. They are absolutely wonderful and so much better than the kids in Lepaera! These kids actually wanted to learn, they were eager and funny and just such a pleasure to teach. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes they misbehaved and were a real nightmare, but they were just such a pleasure to carry me through a bad day. I find it more difficult to teach the really young ones, as they obviously have a much shorter attention span than the older group...and the really annoying thing is that Mercedes makes us do an hour and a half lesson from 8 – 9.30am, give the kids a half hour break for their breakfast, and then back to teaching from 10 – 12noon...no other breaks. That is a horrendous thing for 5 & 6 year olds to have to deal with, and for Emma and i to reap their lack of motivation after half an hour! So i intersperse the lessons with a few sing-song things, maybe a game... its helps so much, though i don’t know what Mercedes thinks of it. I think she just wants us to plough on, learning or no learning. That’s what she wanted in Lepaera and honestly that was the crappest idea she ever had (i hope she’s not reading this, but we have a few problems right now and she’s really being insensitive and demanding, not at all understanding....though i should be a bigger person than to bitch about it. OH WELL).
Anyway, we returned on the Tuesday, took the bus to Gracias with Sergio and Ernesto (Mercedes husband and son), where they dropped us off to back to San Juan, for me and Emma to take our first bus ride alone. It could have gone a little better... some strange man came on and sat infront of us, to the side a tad, so he could see directly up and down the bus. He then asked me where i was going and i was just like ‘nooooo’ and he was like ‘you going to Guatemala?’ and i’m like ‘no entiendo’ (which means i don’t understand) and his response was ‘Ingles’ (English). Suddenly 2 youngish guys came on the bus, one sat directly behind us, and one opposite, and the first man thought it would be funny to shout and laugh in Spanish over our heads to these other 2 guys, making Emma and me very uncomfortable. We were going to move towards the front of the bus more, but there was no space unless it was infront of the first guy, and honestly i would rather not have had all of them behind me! I sat there shaking literally, all these thoughts were running through my head about what they could potentially do to us... the 2 men who came on laterally moved and sat beside the first man, and kept turning and looking at us, and there was so little space between us. I felt horrendously uncomfortable. Eventually our stop approached and we literally RAN off the bus, our knees shaking. It was not nice. We’d been warned about the situation of the buses, and i am always cautious but some things are unavoidable...like another experience i had which i will talk about later.
ANYWAY, once we arrived back in Lepaera, we went to get ourselves organised to travel to Roatan the following day! We were so excited, but the taxi which was supposed to take us first thing in the morning the next day wouldn’t be around, so we had to travel back to Gracias (to get the early morning bus to San Pedro Sula, where we would get our connecting bus to La Ceiba, the port) the just a couple of hours after we arrived back in Lepaera. We got a lift from Mercedes fellow Jahova friends (Mercedes’ whole family are Jahovas...) who drove us to Gracias, me and Laura on the back of a flatbed again, this time facing the front (mouthful of flies..ew). We slept over at this friend’s house, the family were so hospitable, cooked us tortilla con queso from scratch (basically a cheese tortilla sandwich, fried) and gave us freco (fizzy juice...LOVED by everyone here) and we went to sleep, up at 4.30 the next morning for the early bus. The journey to San Juan passed so fast because we all fell asleep haha! Though at one point, the bus was stopped by the traffic police, all the men were taken off, searched, and the bus was searched too. Strange experience...We slept on the journey to La Ceiba too...though that bus was rather different, with more gringos than Hondurans (a gringo is an American man, gringa is an American woman, though it has now been adapted to cover any white person). All the gringos were SO TANNED from living on the islands, and Emma and i felt rather gutted about our lack of colour.
We arrived at the port, in La Ceiba, and waited for our ferry, scared it would not depart due to torrential rain. It did, however...and that was hilarious. The weather was ATROCIOUS so the ferry was literally being thrown about by the waves! Emma claimed to be sea-sick, i knew i don’t get sea-sick, and Laura was like ‘nah i never get sick’ and about ten minutes into the hour-long journey Laura turned horrendously green and vanished to the toilet, not to return until the end of the trip! Emma held up fine, and personally, I enjoyed it haha! It was like a rollercoaster. We arrived on Roatan, and got a taxi to the other boys’ house on the island. Ian and Sean are 2 volunteers who live on Roatan, though they were away travelling when we arrived, so we went to Sandy Bay to hang out with Adam and Casey (nicknamed CaseyAdam). When we met them off the main road, due to the bad weather, Roatan was in blackout, so we walked along the path in the pitch black which was exciting, as the next day it looked COMPLETELY DIFFERENT. They live ON THE BEACH in a little wooden house with 2 rooms and a toilet. They have a hammock hanging out on the porch, and a stray dog that they have adopted as their own, called Bingo :) he’s a beauty, and so friendly and caring! He took to us immediately as well. The first night we all sat in their lounge/kitchen/dining room, and talked about all the things they had encountered in their last 3 months of being here. They had some SERIOUS school scandals hahaha, the life on Roatan is pretty dangerous and risky, yet incredibly fun (something San Juan and Lepaera lack...fun). I was incredibly jealous of the experiences they’d had, but when we talked about some of ours they seemed to think they were pretty cool too...maybe our lives here aren’t soooo bad haha...!
I feel i should tell all of what happened the following day... CaseyAdam’s toilet had been pre-blocked by some of the other volunteers who went to visit them... and basically it was a tad temperamental. So Emma and i went to the bathroom...and the bog wouldn’t flush. It just refused to drain after flushing! So we were like WTH do we do!? We tried to flush it again which was a big mistake as it just rose....so Emma took a cup, a bucket, and literally scooped the ‘water’ out of the toilet, into the bucket, and then down the shower (shower’s aren’t anything like they are at home. It’s literally a hole in the floor that lets the water run out to the ground below the house). So this happened, and we managed to empty MOST of the contents of the toilet... we left it about an hour (the boys were teaching you see) and so Emma and Laura decided to flush the toilet...bad move. It filled up again, with MURKY HORRIBLE DIRTY POOEY WATER again. Emma emptied it again... and we decided it was time to go and enjoy the nice sunny day! So we left the house and went to the little baleada hut to get our lunch... a teeny wee hut on the beach about a 30 second walk from CaseyAdam’s house. It was YUM. 15 Lempiras (lemps) for a baleada?! Brilliant! I’ll explain food and stuff later though, Stephen asked about stuff like that so i’ll let you know at da ennnnd. So we ate some food, and sat on one of the little piers and sunbathed for a while, Bingo sat with us which was nice. I went back to the house to get some lemps for a freco, and i went in and checked on the toilet...which was gradually filling up NOT COOL. I emptied it, and watched the water trickling from the cistern into the bog and filling up. So we had to take a half hour rotation to empty the bog or it would have flooded the floor :( the boys returned and we explained it (they blamed us obviously) so they called their landlord who came out later on. Meanwhile we all went back to a different pier and we went diving off and swam in the beautiful sea! It was absolutely amazing :) so happy about that...great fun. We returned and the landlord explained that the toilet was NOTHING to do with us, he had a septic tank which had been there for 14 years...and was basically full! He turned off the water to the house so it stopped filling up and we just enjoyed our evening.
Friday, the boys were teaching again but only for a half day. I felt really unwell, sick and with a terrible cough (which i still have, and as i write this, Andrea, Mercede’s daughter, brought me in a cup of bitter tea to help with my bark! The whole family is ill...) so i slept the morning away, but i felt much better for it! The boys finished teaching, and we walked up to meet them from school...
Previously, CaseyAdam had told us about a little boy called Ozney who is just SUCH A CHARACTER :) He came up with the name CaseyAdam....he thinks they’re both called that! He’s a wee thing who just clambered all over Casey, on his shoulders, round to his side. Casey was literally a climbing frame haha! Ozney has a thing about chickens...so when he sees one he just stops whatever he is doing and in a unrealistically deep voice for something like a 5 year old...he says CHAAAKAAAANNNN and runs at them! It was something you just had to see, but he was so sweet. The devastating part of this is that Ozney has HIV, and both of his parents have died from it. It’s so sad...yet i felt so happy to have met him, and as the boys said, he is literally the most fun thing in their day. They love him to bits and he brings the sun out for them every day.
We dropped Ozney off at home, and we hitched a ride up to a pool bar nearby. It was SO AMERICAN i felt i was betraying myself by being there! But it was a really nice trip. The swimming pool was fun, as the weather wasn’t too good it started raining but we could have a drink while we were in the pool which was just brill :) really nice! We met a friend of CaseyAdam’s who told us some very sad information about her husband’s recent murder on the island. It was traumatic...
That evening we came back to CaseyAdam’s house, not our hotel, and sat in their hammock. For some reason, Casey was reading The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe on the hammock...which we then took turns to read aloud to the rest of our group! It was funny because everyone had their own reading habit haha... it was fun!
The following day the boys had their final SCUBA exam, and we had to get the ferry at 7am back to the mainland so that Laura could get her flight the following day. When we got to San Pedro we had to say bye to her, and travel home to Lepaera on our own, nothing went wrong thankfully. We spent the night packing and hanging out with our lovely family for the last time, as we travelled to San Juan the following day (Sunday), by ourselves again. We’re not too bad at dealing with this Honduran transport...though it went a bit wrong for me...i was so unhappy. We arrived at the crossroads near Lepaera to get the bus to Gracias, then onto San Juan. When we arrived at the crossroads, carrying ALL OUR BELONGINGS, we could barely carry them. We tried to clamber on the bus and a Honduran guy gave me a hand with the really heavy bag (thought nothing of this, as they did that for me every single journey i took, the first time it took me by surprise but they are all very helpful to everyone which i was pleased to witness)...so he sat on the single seat beside my bag which i was initially unhappy with as i wanted to sit with it myself OBVIOUSLY, usually they just leave it for you on a spare seat and you sit down with it...but not this creep. He sat next to it, and i had to sit in the single seat infront of him with my laptop bag and a plastic bag full of shoes and clothes that i couldn’t fit in my suitcase... and then he started tapping my shoulder. I thought fine, turn round to see what he wanted and he was giving it all ‘i love you will you marry me?’ and blowing kisses at me, and I’m like CRAP we’d been taught about them doing this (a police car had already pulled up to me in Lepaera once to propose to me....not the car, the man in it obviously haha). I said ‘no adios’ meaning ‘naw goodbye YA CREEP’ and he continued to stroke my shoulder. I felt incredibly uncomfortable and tried to stand up but the thing about Honduran drivers is that they are MANIACS so the bus was flying in all angles and i would not have been able to stand and get to Emma, carrying my bags without falling (Emma had sat about 6 rows back because there was no space...) and so eventually as the man kept touching me and expressing his love AFTER ASKING ME TO PAY HIS BUS FARE i just stood up with this mad adrenaline rush, threw my stuff in the seat infront of Emma, marched back down and luckily the man had moved forwards a row and left my bag unattended so i struggled with that to the seat with Emma. My knees were shaking, my hands were shaking, and i felt so disgusting...i’ve never even been treated that way at home, and it was horrible, so many people were staring at him disgustedly and i think he got the point. He was an ugly creep into the bargain. Old and toothless and disgusting. EWWWWWWWWW. But he got off the bus, and i got off in Gracias, and onto the people carrier to San Juan. I felt so much better once he’d got off. Bah, horrible experience. But it’s over now, so nothing to worry about. I will just be extra cautious next time someone helps me with my bag. I still feel that was a one off, but it was just unfortunate, it could have just as easily been Emma if he’d picked up her bag instead of mine, as they were both lying together. But it’s cool, I’m over it.
So then we arrived in San Juan and hung out at the school. A lot of stuff has been sorted out, for example, we have our meals down at a little cafe that one of the pupil’s mum’s owns. So that’s cool...everything is on a tab to be paid by Mercedes haha! Also, we were gifted an inflatable double bed...still no pillow and no cover this time, but i slept in my silk sleeping bag liner ;) after dinner last night we walked to this wee house where a woman had 2 spare rooms Mercedes was maybe going to rent for us, and we walked to a Californian woman’s house, a missionary worker, who lives with her wee cat (so happy about her cat, she was) and looked at her rooms, with the intention of residing there, and the woman, Molly (HAHA GRANDMA ...Molly...your wee kitten. I only just got that) was going to move out. Mercedes was thinking of keeping the house for the next volunteers to come... so we thought it would be cool, but the woman was basically a weirdo and we didn’t wanna live with her for a month til she moved out. So we’ve decided to go with the 2 rooms in the first house for the month to come, and then we might move in with Mercedes (she’s looking at a 5 bedroom house with a BATH TUB omg. It has a bath tub in it...you have no idea how big that is. Serious luxury). We also went to look at the little Bernan shepherd puppies up the road from our possible house, because Sergio would really like one. And i’ve got to admit i would too. I’m thinking of getting one and bringing it back HAHAHA okay mum i’m kidding, it couldn’t live in halls with me. Anyone want a beautiful dog? I wanna call it Muchacha. That’s what we’re called out here...it’s like teenage girls...a flattering term, and i want to call the beautiful puppy that took to me last night Muchacha :) but don’t worry i won’t go through with it...it’s just nice to dream :(
But it’ll be cool when Sergio gets one... i’ll get to hang out with it :) Our neighbour at the school here is due to have twins as well, how sweet.
Now for the questions Stephen has asked me... (if anyone wants to ask anything about the culture i’m in, don’t hesitate!)
What do i eat on a daily basis... well back at our home in Lepaera i would have a cup of lovely local coffee (that’s how Lepaera got its money...and yes Stephen, i will be making good use of your coffee machine when i return, now that i can appreciate the wonders of the stuff!) filled with sugar...that’s what they do to it. Some mornings we might have a little sweet sponge cake type thing. Sometimes we have a baleada (flour tortilla, refried beans and hard cheese... a bolibaleada is one which has egg and sometimes a meat in it too...). we sometimes get the equivalent to hot cross buns with raisins in them :) i feel like i’m missing out on something...i mean we had toast at one point but that’s not so special, maybe i’ll think of it another time :) OH on our first morning, we had cornflakes with HOT MILK. I honestly felt i was going to vomit...it’s not nice so we didn’t ever have it again ahha...
For lunch, yesterday we had a delicious soup with large lumps of lamb in it, very oily though. There were potatoes and carrots and they put rice in the soups too...and i even found LEEK in it! Lunch and dinner is usually interchangeable, we could eat anything for both. Baleadas are so staple here, at least twice a week...and i have learned how to make them from scratch, make the tortilla itself...so yummy, and SO DIFFICULT! I can’t wait to come back and make them at home :) We could also have a pupusa ... its corn tortilla usually with cheese through it, and they could put spicy vegetables on it, tomato, cabbage, onions, jalapeños, and spicy carrot too, usually with refried beans too (known as fricolas). We could have something that looks like a full breakfast...with fricolas, scrambled eggs, a lump of hard cheese with chilli through it, some type of meat, and maybe some fried bananas... theyre very sweet, the bananas, i don’t like them. My favourite meal is fried chicken with TAHADAS! They are green bananas, fried and cut into little oval slices...they’re not sweet either. Oh man they are heavenly :) ...if i can think of anything else we have for dinner i shall let you know in due course. Desert doesn’t really exist here. It could be coffee and a sweet cake, but they don’t really do desert. Usually too bloated from the amount of carbs in each meal. I really think i’m getting fat! But Emma and i have it quite good...Mercedes is a little mean with her helpings so that puts me in a bad mood but at least i’m satisfied yet not pigging out! And for our lunch and dinner at this new little diner we go to, it’s a little walk away, and in the sun it’s pretty good exercise. Things are looking up for our weight!
What is totally different from Glasgow... well it rains a LOT heavier here...puts our constant showers to shame! There are literally no bath tubs, and showers are tiled rectangles that have an open hole to the world below (hence minging smell from sewers). The showers tend to be freezing, not everyone has an electric head on the shower either, so it’s just like a giant tap dropping freezing water on you. There are no public bins, and pretty much no bin collection so people set fire to their waste in the garden or street (smells horrendous). As i said, toilets can’t deal with toilet paper so that goes in a bin beside the loo (or a bag in our current case as they haven’t got round to buying a little bin yet...) there are no fancy cars, everything is practical, the majority of cars have a flatbed at the back for transporting stuff including up to 15 people. People hang out of vehicles while they are moving. Stephen, you would be so proud of the Hondurans...when someone wants out of a bus, it rarely ACTUALLY stops, they just sort of jump out of a moving vehicle, or get hauled on by the ticket man from the side of the road. The men here wear cowboy hats and always have dirty jeans with suit shirts on. Everyone is smaller than me, men included, that’s a BIG difference to Glasgow haha! There are hundreds of ‘newsagent’ equivalents, called pulperias on every corner. You cannot drink the tap water so you can buy bottles, or BAGS. Little rectangular bags teehee! There are hundreds of stray animals, mainly dogs, but loads of horses just hanging at the side of the road. Men gallop through the town whipping horses as they go. There are no pavements, we all walk on the road, and regardless of whether you are actually talking to the driver of the oncoming vehicle on the mobile at the time, they believe it is their duty to honk at pedestrians! Taxis pick up more than just your fare hah! I shall keep my eyes out for other little things which are different... as for the shopping bags people use? Just little mini black plastic things. Everything is hand-washed, though we had it SO LUCKY in our old house, they had a washing machine, and a tumble drier, not to mention the MAID who did it for us!!! Don’t worry, that lifestyle is gone now, raging :( oh, people say things like ‘hola, mucho gusta, adios’ or simply nothing! They tend to be quite rude...when you say gracias for something, they don’t normally respond, but if they do it tends to be ‘baya’ which literally means ‘go’. It’s a rare thing to hear someone say ‘de nada’ meaning, ‘it’s nothing’ as a form of ‘you’re welcome’. I still haven’t heard anyone say anything other than baya. People are a little rude, thinking it’s okay to just ask for something and expect to get it, regardless of whether the person actually has it... someone will want to go a trip somewhere and just invite someone with a car solely so they can get a lift! That’s the type of thing they do here haha...
As for the most disgusting thing i’ve eaten...probably the hot cornflakes. Though i was offered pigs fingers one time but refused (it was the NIGHT I ARRIVED okay!?) i also saw for breakfast one time, it was like kidney beans in milk, like a soup. Not cool. My favourite thing? I love tahadas... the savoury fried banana, with spicy sauce and cabbage :) i love tortilla con queso with cabbage and vegetables too :) honestly, the majority of the food here is delicious...probably because it is ALL fried haha!
So that’s all for the moment... i know that was a long blog, but it was to make up for 2 weeks! I apologise, i have not really been near a computer for ages.
Any questions? Let me know and i will tell y’all!
Missing you all, hope life’s good wherever you are :)
Love, Jen xxx

OHHH YEAH

Hello guys... Sorry it’s been so long since i last wrote...only just over a week though! So much has happened since i arrived here, i don’t know where to begin!
I arrived in San Pedro Sula airport, and the travelling day seemed to take ages... Like i said, i didn’t sleep on Friday night, so i ended up sleeping the majority of the flights which was a relief, they went by pretty fast! At least i know what i need to do for the return flight to make it go a bit faster haha :) We arrived in San Pedro Sula and we were collected by Donny and some of the family. We stayed with Javier and Damaris who were very caring! The poverty was particularly apparent in San Pedro, even within a relatively ‘well off’ family. Our room had a double bunk bed with a single above it, and a single bed beside it. In the family there were 6 members...Javier and Damaris, the parents...and Javier (16), Fernando (14), Damaris (12) and Debora (10) were the children. The two girls slept in the single bed beside ours, and the single bed above ours was unoccupied, covered in clothes etc. When we were heading to bed, i noticed in the parents’ room that the two elder boys were sleeping without covers, pillows or sheets, on the tile floor. I was so shocked and part of me felt so disgusted with myself that the family felt so respectful and responsible for me and Emma that they gave up any form of bedding, so that we could sleep comfortably... though one thing i’ve realised, and am beginning to accept, is that some things cannot be changed. Do not dwell on them, just get on with making the things that can be changed better.
The parents worked during the day for long hours, so we were being looked after by the 4 children. Javier, the eldest child cooked for us some pretty amazing meals! He looked after us really well :) another thing about Honduras is that there are so many tv channels with dubbed british and American movies to watch...and on our first day we were BLESSED with the opportunity of watching Love Actually... for those of you who have seen that movie i’m sure you can imagine that the airport scenes were not particularly what we wanted to see on our first day after leaving our loved ones for 10 months. Still, a good cry did us both well haha...
The 2 nights that we stayed with Javier’s family, we went to a little cafe a few blocks up from their home. It is run by Lourdes, another member of the family (not quite sure who though...we think she’s Damaris’s mother). The first thing i ate that was typically Honduran was a poposa. Thick tortilla with cheese in the centre, deeeeeeply fried. Everything is really really fattening here, and i’ve been informed that i will return a bit chubbier than i left which i am NOT okay with. The food is incredible, but so fattening and full of carbs. They really have barely any fruit around here which is another nightmare. Another local delicacy was pig’s trotters. I couldn’t dare touch them, especially not on my first night, they looked thoroughly unappetising haha... anyway, the little cafe i am referring to was literally a concrete reclangle with a tin roof. They had a mini hifi inside it though, and all the little friends that we had accumulated came in to dance with us to such classic hits as ‘Single Ladies’ by Beyonce, and ‘Boom Boom Pow’ by the Black Eyed Peas. After you have heard these songs on repeat for a week on end they really drive you nuts. Then some traditional Honduran music came on called Punta...the mother Damaris taught me how to dance the Honduran way... basically shake my hips and bum as much as possible and wave my hands around in the air. Seemed to go down pretty well if you know what i mean ;) kidding on i looked like a right idiot but hey, i’m here to learn a culture and if i have to look like a fool to integrate myself then so be it :)
We travelled from San Pedro Sula to Lepaera on the Monday with Lourdes, she came to help us on our journey (and thank GOODNESS she did...Honduran buses are nothing like ours...there are no bus stops, you literally get on and shout at the driver when you want to get off, so we would have had no idea what to do if it hadn’t been for Lourdes). It was a nightmare figuring out what to do, so we just followed Lourdes’ lead as much as possible which was the best thing we could have done. I still don’t understand how Holly (another volunteer staying in Gracias on her own) managed to get from Gracias to the Bay Islands using only public transport on her third week or something! Beyond me.
Anyway, we arrived in Lepaera and met Laura, a volunteer who came for 3 months to teach English at the school we are currently working at, outwith Project Trust. She is from Manchester so it was nice to hear some proper English (even if it’s not the accent i’m used to). We met Mercedes who is one of Damaris’ sisters who runs the bilingual school here that i work in. Mercedes is very good at speaking English so it’s a relief to have a decent translator. We are staying with one of the richest families in Lepaera...they own all kinds of stuff including a liquor store a minute away from the house...which proves to be a tad scary when one is coming home after dark (which happens around 6pm) due to all the drunks who are either passed out on the street, or swaying precariously and muttering foul Spanish words to themselves. However they are usually too drunk to either notice us, or make it over to us in one piece before we have locked ourselves in the house. So no need to panic haha... (i wrote this blog in the house there, came out and i am now checking over it in Mercedes’ house with Laura... the thing is, i left my house alone there to take the 5 minute walk down here, and as soon as i came out the green metal doors onto the street i looked to my left and literally a foot away from me was a drunk man sat down on the ground, swaying onto his knees, and round onto his back... i was so panicked trying to close the gate (which is a right biatch to close, never mind in a hurry) while this drunk Honduran bloke sways in my direction. Was not a pleasant sight experience but i made it down here without him even being aware that i was anywhere near him. Probably couldn’t have said his own name if he was asked to, never mind use any of his limbs).
Anyway, our house is one of the only 3 story homes in Lepaera, and the top floor is ours. We have a large room with a toilet in it, and 2 double beds. There is a huge lounge area with curving corner sofa, the biggest hifi i have ever seen and a huge widescreen tv. One of the things about Honduras is that people do not tend to prioritise very well... the walls are cracked and peeling and stained, the sockets hang off the walls, there is usually one toilet per household (which is not too bad but when there are about 8 people staying in one home it can be a little bit of a nightmare...especially when they run out of toilet paper. Another point to add is that the toilets cannot deal with toilet paper, so ... yeah, it has to go straight in a little bin beside the toilet when you’ve used it. Not to mention when the water runs out in the house and you can’t flush the toilet. Me and Emma have made a pact that we do NOT use our toilet for anything but a number one, should we need something else we go down and use the family’s toilet hahahaha. It’s working well so far for us :P ). Yet they feel it is their obligation to own the biggest car on the planet, the hugest hifi and tv and a new computer. It’s ridiculous.
Annnnnnyway, our first day of teaching was on the Tuesday, the day after we arrived in Lepaera. It was horrible because i was shoved in with the preper (the tiny ones, aged 4 with basically no English, and no concentration either). That proved to be disastrous, though i managed to keep them under control, i don’t think they learned very much. Mercedes and Laura said it wasn’t so bad because they will have learned something, and the wee ones just tend to run away and do something else most of the time. Hondurans are incredibly lazy but in a way that is spurring me on to make them more proactive...so yes mum, i’m not quite as lazy as i was at home, honest... so that afternoon when lessons had finished i spent the whole time interrogating Laura as to what each year group knows now, what they need to know, and what they are like in terms of their ability and work ethic. So Wednesday’s lesson turned out to be miraculously AMAZING. I had prepared my lessons, some worksheets for the classes, a few things for the kids to do when they’d finished their work or they were refusing to concentrate... i was so happy at how it had panned out. I know that Tuesday was not supposed to be a good day...nobody had told us anything and we just had to turn up and teach! Emma didn’t teach the preper for a good few days, and as soon as those lessons ended she looked like she was about to explode, which made me feel better about myself seeing as i knew it wasn’t just me that found them to be a nightmare. Even Laura can’t put up with teaching them for any length of time and she teaches the equivalent to Primary One in Manchester!
So teaching is going pretty well at the moment, preparing each lesson at the end of the day works well for us, as we can all pick up from where we left off :) we take turns teaching the 3 age groups. Preper has 5 kids, Pre Kinder has 2 kids, and Kinder is supposed to have 4, though usually there are only 2 kids... the reason there are so few children at the moment is because the school year has finished, and this is just a type of English summer school that we are running just now. Mercedes is opening up another school on Wednesday in San Juan and she said there would probably be around 25 children in the year groups. She wants me and Emma to move there and teach them, though she is suggesting that one of us stays here and one moves there. Emma is horrified by this idea and i am not very comfortable with it either. Hopefully we won’t have to do that, we’re supposed to be going there tomorrow or Wednesday to figure out what the plan is, though we’re just going to tell her that we’re not separating.
On Friday we planned to go to the nearest big town, Gracias for the weekend. We stayed for free in Hotel Guancascos which is owned and run by Fronny, a Dutch woman who has lived in Honduras for 22 years and is involved in the PT web. There is an American Peace Corp volunteer staying here in Lepaera for 2 years called Darren. He’s a friend of Laura’s and he is fluent in Spanish, so he came with us to help us cope with the buses and locals! We arrived there and as we were walking down the street in Gracias we heard someone shouting Emma and Jen... it was Holly coming back from work and she just happened to see us which was really lucky! She’s complaining about having put on 10 pounds since she’s been here and i don’t blame her...i think ive put on a couple already too :( she came for dinner with us, and told us a bit about what life was like for her, and how her trip to Roatan went. It all sounds pretty amazing, and hopefully we’re going to go to the islands before Laura leaves in 2 weeks time (yeah, Laura’s stay is almost over which is a bit of a shame, hopefully she’ll be coming back in February we think). We ate dinner and sat in the hotel room chatting and listening to music for ages which was nice, then we took holly home. She only lives a 4 minute walk from the hotel!
The following day we went to the natural pools just outside Gracias, just the 4 of us though, Holly had things to do. The weather was kind of grey, which was good because we didn’t want to get burned, nor did we want the place to be too busy. It was lovely, all the naturally heated pools, and very few people in them! It was lovely and we had a great time. When we were done we went to the cafe and sat for a little while, when suddenly a horrendous TORRENTIAL TROPICAL DOWNPOUR started and we knew we were buggered. We were in the downpour for all of 30 seconds and we were soaked through, denims completely drenched back to front. We had to trek uphill from the pools for about 20 minutes in flip flops that didn’t fit, on an uneven dirt track. By the time we reached the top we were soaked through, contents of our bags included. It’s a miracle my electricals made it out alive! We got to the top to wait for a bus and thought it would be better to start walking in the direction of Gracias, torrential downpour still in full force. By this point the main road had turned into a river. We walked along, me, Laura, Emma and Darren, completely soaked and hoping for a hitch on the flatbed of someone’s truck. After walking for about 5 minutes, a car pulled up and we bolted through the downpour and clambered onto the flatbed, no questions asked. This truck’s flatbed did not have a back to it, it was open and we literally could have gone flying out the back as soon as he took off, but i slid a little and grabbed the side of the truck. After i sorted my placement out we were off. It was AWESOME, the driver must have been going about 70 mph and we arrived in Gracias in about 5-10 minutes...the downpour had drizzled out during the car journey and we trekked the 15 minutes from the hospital where he dropped us off, to the hotel.
So that was our experience at the springs, it was awesome!
Now i apologise for the length of this blog...theyre probably all going to be about this length, but this is all the gossip i’ve got for now (you’ll be glad to know). Will update probably in another week or so when more exciting things happen on my Honduran journey :) We’re going to head to Roatan in a couple of weeks so look forward to some great snorkelling chat and some goss from the guys on Roatan!
Speak soon, missing everyone terribly though it might not look like it from this... i’m trying to keep myself as preoccupied as possible to stop myself going mad :( i’m having an incredible time but its true that i’m missing people a lot. Another point to add is that these months will go by pretty fast... as Darren put it so eloquently when i asked him how he felt about being here for 2 years, he said ‘the days go slow, but the weeks go fast’ and that is the most accurate description i could ask for!
See you in some short weeks!
Love, Jen xxx