new new NEW

Okay so the last time i updated this, we had just visited the little house with the 2 rooms in it, the Canadian woman, and Mercedes’ soon to be house. We after all of that, we decided to opt for the 2 rooms, but OH NO that didn’t actually happen. The next day, we moved into a ‘hotel’ about 10 mins from the school... a little room with a double bed, a single bed, and a toilet. I got the double cos emma wanted the wardrobe thing for her clothes...yes mine are all over the floor again. JOKING they’re in my suitcase. It’s supposed to be temporary accommodation because we were meant to move into Mercedes’ new house in ten days... i can’t see that happening. I refuse to empty my rucksack and pack a dirty rickety metal bar ‘wardrobe’ for just 10 days (though i should really know better by now...we’ll probably be located in the hotel for a lot longer than ten days, now that we are fully aware of ‘Honduran time’. So we were a bit disappointed at moving into the hotel we hadn’t even seen, when we explicitly got back to Mercedes within her time limit saying we wanted the 2 rooms... that failed. We’re cramped in a hotel room now, oh joy, for goodness knows how long. We were meant to have a TV, Mercedes claims to be paying for one, but one has not arrived in our room yet. Our shower was broken for the first 3 days because the tap just spun round, it was not attached to anything... and so the man came to fix it one night at like 9pm...claimed he would be back tomorrow with a new tap for it, and the woman said she’d come back the next day with our TV. So far none of these things have happened paha. I hate this disorganisation, how do people survive?!
Anyway... the last blog i posted was over a week ago i think, when we dropped into the internet cafe here in San Juan for the first time... it broke down prematurely so the photos are still not on facebook unfortunately. I’ve got loads though so keep watching! I’ll try and put some of the better ones on this too :)
Wednesday evening, we came back to the hotel, and i tried to get to sleep with no luck. A fever developed from nowhere, i was shivering and sweating, my head felt like it was going to explode and i was vomiting from both ends... :( i didn’t get any sleep that night and so i couldn’t teach the next day, i kept hyperventilating too which wasn’t so good... we thought i might have malaria, but the following day i took a good few paracetamol and my temperature dropped. I didn’t eat anything so the bodily expulsions stopped too, but all the other symptoms persisted. Its Saturday now, and i had a bit of a pot noodle last night, which was a bad move, and then i had an apple this morning cos i was soooooo hungry. Haven’t eaten anything else and its 3pm but my tummy keeps growling at me... i feel exhausted all the time too. Meanwhile, Mercedes has bogged off to Gracias for the day so i can’t get a hold of her to check me out, she just keeps telling me to rest. I need someone to blooming diagnose me alright its day 3 right now and i’m not feeling significantly better! My only consolation is that i’m getting slimmer at an alarming rate considering i’ve not eaten for 4 days. Joy, cos its all going through me too. Any thoughts? I’m really tired all the time too cos i’ve got no food for energy, cos it just comes right back out one way or another (i apologise for the amount of information, but this is all part of the fun of my Honduran experience, just wanna share it all with the masses...).
Anyway, hopefully things will get better in the next few days. I was gutted i couldn’t teach on Thursday or Friday, i had a great lesson planned as well! And another positive thing that has changed while we’re here, Mercedes’ daughter Andrea is at the school with us now too, so she’s taking one of the year groups... we’ve got more students now so Mercedes has split the students into 3 year groups, and we teach each one for an hour each day :) its good that way, and my favourite are still the eldest ones. There are 2 boys, Jordy and Kevin (AAHAHA what names, never expected them here, but the names are pretty funny...there is a Jennifer, an Emma, a Jerry...) who speak French fluently so they’re pretty good to chat with midway through the class, especially if someone doesn’t understand something. You can just say it to them in French, and they will translate it into Spanish for the class... saves me and Emma embarrassing ourselves with poor Spanish accents taking words straight out the dictionary haha :) the thing that pisses me off now, is that Mercedes has decided that because Jordy is only 11, he has had to be put down into the middle grade, with the wee kids. That really annoys me, because he is the most intelligent student in the school, he was top of the eldest class (which you have to be 12 for, according to Mercedes...) and i regularly have to run through to the next class to ask him something! He’s a brilliant kid :)
What do i do in the afternoon here? Well we teach until around 12ish, then we casually take a stroll down to the cafe (well, i did before i got sick...) have our lunch, and wander back either to the hotel or the school. If the weather sucks we go to the hotel and watch a movie on my laptop or something, but if it’s nice then we come to the school and sit at the back and tan while listening to music or whatever. We then plan our lessons for the following day, and wait patiently for dinner time. Then we stroll down to the cafe, get our dinner, and depending on whether Andrea/Ernesto/Mercedes/Sergio is energetic enough they’ll come with us too, if not, we bring back all their food as a takeaway haha. Oh well that’s just how it is. The evenings...we go to bed so early (which i was initially gutted about because i just never went to bed before like 2am back home, so here, going to bed at around half 9 seems SO early, but then again we’re up before 7 here for school... so it makes sense, and i feel pretty good for the amount of sleep. Emma sleeps SO much as well haha...) and we might watch a movie or something (our supply is dwindling rapidly. Bittorrent in Honduras is not fast enough to provide us with enough new movies either...what on earth will we do in this boring place when we run out of movies?!).
This does sound particularly boring...the day goes reasonably fast i guess, but it’s definitely boring, nothing like the Bay islands. The boys can just go for a swim WHENEVER they want, they can play beach football if they want, they can walk Bingo the stray dog, or hitch a ride to the pool bar...but here we have pretty much nothing to do :( I’ll have to ask Mercedes about what ‘attractions’ there are here. i’ve spotted a kind of games arcade... about 8 tvs with some form of games consol attached (haven’t checked what yet, probably SegaMegaDrive...) but like either of us will go there... its kinda frustrating. We’re contemplating what we can do at the weekends... i think we’re supposed to be going to Lepaera next weekend for ‘graduation’ ahhaa... yes, it’s a bit of a farce, it’s like moving from p2 – p3 deserves some massive celebration. So that’s what we’re doing next weekend i think. The following weekend i think we’re going to head down to Gracias to meet up with Holly for a bit, might stay over at Fronny’s hotel again which will be nice :) We’re going to plan our Christmas and New Year holidays... think we’re all going to try and get down to Roatan again and just chill there for Christmas, then maybe go back to La Ceiba (the port on the mainland) to celebrate New Year. We’ve heard that La Ceiba is the party city, so hopefully that will be good fun! And there will be a big group of us too so that’s good :)
Our days off are just Saturday and Sunday. School is weekdays from 8-12, so that’s quite tiring, and its nice to relax at the weekend, would be nice if we could find more to be doing though. I’ve decided i’m going to try and paint a mural on one of the school walls because its sooooooooo boring looking. Just grey walls inside, they need some colour! That will be a nice secondary thing to do, i might even paint more than one mural. And my goodness my artistic skills have improved significantly since arriving here, you’ve got to draw millions of little objects for the pupils so that they can associate it with the Spanish word. I can now draw cheese more expertly than i ever thought possible.
As for Spanish, its going alright i guess, i’ve kinda hit a brick wall because we don’t have enough resources. I’m going to write to some people still at school and get them to forward me some of their Spanish stuff cos i need the equivalent of what we did in French, but in Spanish, for me to learn more. WORKSHEETS please :)
And on Roatan, yeah, the water goes deep from the dock, and progressively gets shallower til it reaches the reef, then obviously gets deep again. We didn’t have a snorkel or goggles at the time unfortunately so we didn’t see anything, and i didn’t go too close to the coral because i could have sustained a major injury, i already got a few cuts and stings from the sea which was annoying but hey.
[Point to add... i’m sitting on one of the beds in the school, the back door is open, and i can see through the curtain of this room out into the garden, i’m the only person in the school, and all of a sudden a MASSIVE golden thing comes into my eye-line through the curtain... i sneak out to the backdoor to look at it... A BLOOMING BOY COW HAS BROKEN INTO OUR GARDEN TO EAT OUR GRASS. I was contemplating closing the back door in case it wanted to come into the house, but i got near the door and it saw me and gave me such an evil eye. I was freaking out because i retreated into the casa again and realised there are no doors at all so if it does come into the house i’m screwed. Remember those wee primary tables you get, the ones that are lower than your knees to the ground? They are my only weapon against ‘man cow’. Luckily Emma has just returned and the cow is down the bottom end of the garden now. I feel safer now haha... shall keep you informed of the cow state of play as the story progresses...]
Stephen obviously doesn’t read the blog well enough. The local men wear cowboy hats and dirty jeans and suit shirts that are also dirty. The women just wear like t-shirts and long swishy skirts, and they do actually carry baskets on their heads, it’s quite a skill! I’ve been trying to find an opportunity to take a photograph of a wee wrinkly Honduran lady with a basket on her head as some authentic image, but they’re always surrounded by people who have the strength to rob me haha. Guess i’ll just have to wait for the right opportunity!
As for gadgets and stuff... if you are a white person walking around, you are already conspicuous (unless you’re on the bay islands in which case there are millions of gringos...) but on the mainland, white people are few and far between, ESPECIALLY up in the wee mountains where some people have never even seen a white person. So if you walk around waving a mobile phone, even if it’s the most old fashioned brick in existence that any Honduran would be ashamed to be seen with, it still makes you even more conspicuous, and a higher target for robbery. They don’t really have iPods... a lot of them have sony ericsson’s so they put their songs on that and plug earphones in, but only on the long safe bus rides (without stops...direct buses). Everyone has mobiles, i’ve only ever seen 2 phones with any resemblance to blackberry’s or iPhones, because the majority of the mobiles are old bricks without colour screens, mono ringtones, and the original snake... we just have to be more cautious because theft and muggings are common enough as it is, without giving anyone an excuse to rob you!
[point to add: another cow has joined him and they are both eating our grass. I’ve chosen to ignore them.]
A luxury item in Honduras... probably a bath tub. Hot running water is definitely a plus, and a washing machine is like WOOOOOOOAH. TVs are completely staple, everyone survives on TV up here in the mountains, which is partly why Emma and i are so rage, because our hotel hasn’t provided us with ours yet, and we’re bored out our boxes. I suppose jewellery would be luxury, but i have not really seen anyone with any one, apart from Mrs Araselli (the woman who owned our house back in Lepaera, the rich one). We walked in on a pampering session in her lounge, she was having her hair re-dyed, her nails painted, the full shebang. We didn’t know where to look, but it was good cos we got our nails painted too :) oh how i miss that house :( alcohol is most certainly not a luxury here. not really heard ANYTHING of wine, in all honesty, never seen anyone drinking it. Up here in the little towns, its pretty much unheard of, a woman buying alcohol. In the bigger towns and the big cities its not a big deal, though the alcohol is just hideous. You can get Bacardi but you’re gonna pay a lot for that. Plata is the name of the cheap, minging rum that pretty much makes you hallucinate! So alcohol is really not a luxury. I’d say freco is a luxury (coca cola). A house that doesn’t leak is unheard of too, i think. I haven’t really witnessed any luxury other than our wonderful home in Lepaera. We’re going back next weekend (getting clothes washed much?) so that will be nice hahaha ;)
Why is one exclamation mark never enough... i don’t have a clue why the Spanish insist on putting and upside down question/exclamation mark at the start of the sentence as well as the regular one at the end... maybe its because they don’t really have questions, they say statements and add a raised inflection at the end to imply it is a question..so i reckon when its written down you can’t read it’s a question, so they introduce it as a question at the start with an upside down symbol, and then incase it’s a really long statement they remind you again that it’s a question by adding another symbol. That is probably completely false but it’s my theory.
I have not seen any Indian/Korean/Japanese food here (but at the same time, i’m stuck up a mountain so its a lot harder to reach anything universal from here...) but we did get FRIED RICE for dinner one night. it had prawns and chicken and beef in it, and it was definitely from a Chinese takeaway. We got it in Lepaera, our family just whipped it onto the table and we sat mesmerised for a good minute trying to figure out if we were hallucinating or not...but nah there is not really any takeaway food. We did go to a Chinese restaurant the other day, in Gracias which was AMAZING. The food was served in portions enough for at least 3 people... we were so full and i could barely move. Because we decided to see if we could eat ALL the food on the table... we managed but it was sheer gluttony! There is a pizza hut in San Pedro Sula bus station which has our custom every time we’re at the station. YUM.
[and now the cows have left, clearly satisfied. What a relief! I didn’t want my cause of death to read ‘massacred by hungry cow’...]
Sport? Are you kidding? Ahaha... yeah i suppose soccer is a big one, Honduras is in the world cup so they’re all celebrating after each friendly match. I couldn’t sleep one night in Honduras for the amount of music blaring. Laura was here the night Honduras made it into the world cup, and she said everyone just jumped into their cars and sped around the town calling out and stuff! Would have been a sight to see! More to add on that later ;) At least we’ll be around for the world cup. Funny thing is, Honduras were knocked out by Northern Ireland one year, so Emma is keeping her head down at the moment haha... oh we shall see. What a miracle it would be if Honduras made it to the final PAHAHHAHAHA.
There is seemingly a cinema in Santa Rosa de Copan. I don’t know if that’s a city or a town, but it’s big. It’s got one, and i presume the cities all have cinemas, but NO CHANCE would i find a cinema in San Juan or Lepaera. The nearest thing i’d get to a cinema is some wee woman with her front door open and her tv playing a movie with uk subs, charging a lemp on entry (which doesn’t happen incase you were wondering).
As for entertainment, i made that pretty clear earlier on, NADA. Nothing.
Am i getting a tan ;) well yeah it’ll be good by the time i come home. I’m going a nice bronze colour which makes a nice change from being pale. It reminds me of my childhood, brown face, red cheeks. Attractive.
Okay, as for the postal situation... i live way up in the mountains and we do not have a post office, nor do they deliver up here. The mail is delivered to the post office in Gracias, so i can send mail from there, and receive it. It takes about 4 weeks to arrive anywhere...(BAWZ). I have managed to get my hands on an address though so feel free to send a wee package out or a letter if you get the chance, it would be REALLY nice to get a letter...things are so bland around here sometimes.
Jennifer Hepburn
Rdo Magdalena Martinez
Casa 1
Barrio Marielena
Gracias
Lempira
Honduras
CA
What do i miss from home ... :(
I miss people A LOT. I miss mum for her nagging that actually gets stuff done. I actually have to do it myself here, and i’m still finding it difficult (especially with the current financial crises i have found myself in, where the bank has frozen my internet banking, and my card so i can’t get a hold of any money at all, and ive run out pretty much). I’ve been calling on her day and night (via internet) to help me try and sort this out seeing as i can’t afford to call home :(
I miss stephen’s cooking, and his witty banter (though i’m getting a decent sized dose in the emails i receive from him, which is...refreshing haha). I could murder a roast chicken dinner SO BADLY. Oahahahhdheiofkdd YUM.
I miss Tom’s cheeky hilarious banter, and i’m gutted i’m missing out on white russian’s with Matt!! :(
I miss Molly, my grandma’s kitten which a) wont remember me when i get back and b) wont be a kitten when i get back. I miss Grandma and going with her to Uncle Bill and Aunt Anne’s for the most amazing spag bol and salad ever.
I miss Jilly because she’s so fun and keeps me happy when sad things happen, and she’s really amazing to hang out with when i’m just wanting OUT and somewhere happy and safe and relaxing :) i don’t miss her empty fridge (teehee).
I miss kirsty and Katie who are miles away in Edinburgh. I miss Louisa, though her photo album is AWESOME and makes me very happy :) i miss Kirsten’s hilarious banter, though i’m getting a good amount through facebook which is a relief! I miss all the girls.
I miss Kev cos let’s be honest there’s no one like him ahha. We have the same ridiculous sense of humour which is so refreshing when you’re used to the same CRAP everyone comes up with. ‘Mate, why you going to the House of Commons? Cos you’re COMMON AS MUCK!’
I miss too many people to put in this. I shouldn’t have mentioned anyone cos you’re all gonna get your niknaks in a twist at not being mentioned, but i’ll get y’all on facey, HAVE SOME UNDERSTANDING FOR ME PLEASE. I miss everyone, but i’ll be with you soon enough :)
I really miss being able to download awesome music FAST. I miss not being able to see New Moon in the cinema. I miss not being able to make a tuna sandwich whenever i want, and i miss seafood pasta. Infact, i just miss seafood! I miss pasta pesto, sushi, and a massive pizza.
I miss a permanent residence. I’ve lived in someone elses house for 2 weeks, i lived in a school for a week, and i am now living in a hotel. I want my own room and my own bed. I want to look out of my window over Highburgh Road and people watch, and laugh when i see so many people i know passing my window in such a short space of time. I miss walking up to Ashton Lane. I miss going to Sauchiehall Street. I miss all the people i have fun joking with. I miss going to gigs. I miss live music that isn’t cheesy poppy crap that they play in Honduras with 4 chords for every song, played on the keyboard. I miss my guitar. I miss the view of the Cottiers church steeple from the skylight in my room.
I miss decent shopping, and i miss fashion. I miss being able to get dressed up at night and go out dancing and enjoy looking pretty. I miss looking at the memories and pictures stuck to my wall. I miss the twinkly lights at the end of my bed. I miss being able to pick up my mobile and text anyone i want, or call anyone i want and meet them just because i want to, because i’m bored, because i need to talk. I miss getting the 44 and hopping off the stop after the rock, to go to my house.
There are so many things i miss. But at the same time, i am not sad.
I might feel a bit gutted from time to time that i wont be getting any of the things for another 8 months or so... but my happiness at what i am gaining by being here, and experiencing everything i am completely outweighs my sadness at missing out on life at home. This is a dream which i have made come true. I wont ever detract from the experiences i’m having here, because even the bad ones are teaching me to be a better, bigger person! No matter what i face, it will always result in a positive learning curve after it has passed...
Anyway, i hoped this would be shorter as it’s only a couple of days since my last one, but hey. Sorry if this one is crap but i thought i’d answer some questions :)
Take care and we’ll talk again soon :D
Love, Jen xxx