Life after Costa Rica

Hey

So after we arrived in Gracias, we did the usual, get a Chinese, sit on the internet in Guancascos, hang out with Holly and Lena. The following morning Mercedes wanted us back super early to paint the ‘new’ school. Yeah, we’d moved building again to another school, a REAL school this time. We now had a few of the rooms from the public school in San Juan, we painted them up (using my paint, Mercedes owes me money for that, I was going to return it and I am now skint...again) and decorated them with school related stuff... and now they look really good!! It was a lot of effort, I lost my only pair of jeans to DIY damage in the process, but it was worth it :)

I also returned to a letter from my cousin Tricia (HAPPY BIRTHDAY BY THE WAY 17 you big babe! (belated now, I apologise, the internet has not been kind to me of late...) and THE SAME TO STEPHY (though I can’t say you’re 17...) but happy birthday anyway, I’m sorry I couldn’t be with you, I wish I could have been, but I hope you had a really great day, both of you, regardless of the dark EMPTY feeling you felt knowing I wasn’t there ;) teehee. Happy birthdays!)...

...and a package from mum! Just a little one though, it had a new sleeping bag liner in it (it got stolen before Christmas when we were living in the hotel in San Juan...) and A MEMORY STICK full of TV programmes, a couple of movies, and some photographs. The photos were really lovely, there were some from my fundraising ceilidh (all the way back in March, almost a year ago now!), some from the sponsored walk up Conic Hill (thanks guys...and apologies again for my mashed up ankle at the time that stopped me from getting right to the top) and some other classics from the past few years...

At the school, we met a little girl from Miami, and her brother (Jessica [8] and Tony [10]) who were hilarious, and like little white versions of ALBERT from Roatan...their accents just made me laugh soooo much haha... and they were typical little American kids...obsessed with TV programmes and cringeworthy phrases such as ‘awww COME ON!?’. I have mixed feelings towards them, as is clear...

That weekend, we went to Gracias again, did the usual, and on Saturday, we planned to head up the mountain to some of the American teacher’s house, near the school that Holly and Lena work in. The girls went early because I had some stuff to do on the internet, and I went up the mountain a little later by moto-taxi, to the school. The guy told me I had to get off there because the wheels were getting damaged by the ground... and naive little Jen forgot that 8 minutes in a car was about half an hour walking... and got out. I then realised I had a half hour walk from the school to the girls’ house ahead of me in the dark, armed with a laptop bag, and a plastic bag full of crisps, cookies, snickers and leftover Chinese...

I stumbled around in the dark on my way up the terrible rocky ground of the mountain, panic slowly growing...as I’d already phoned Holly who was giving it all ‘just WALLLLKKK’ and I was like ‘NO I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHERE I AM GOINNNNGGG AND I CAN’T SEE A THINGGGG...’ and eventually I persuaded her to send Emma and one of the teachers, Sarah, to my rescue in another little moto-taxi. It was so dark I could barely see my hand in front of my face, so there was hardly going to be a chance of me seeing the massive rocks at my feet without my contacts in, and I ended up BOOTING one so hard I cut my toe and broke my big toe nail (all have to ‘awww’ in sympathy of poor Jen).

EVENTUALLY they arrived, and I jumped in, soooo tense and sad and we got to their house. I was greeted by homemade pizza fresh out the oven, which really helped me feel a bit better :) I put on the rice to heat and we talked about music for ages. Our original plan had been to watch the 3 Bourne movies in succession, but that fell through to the cause of new music mwahahaha...

Jackie made brownies for us (and maaaaan they were good) which vanished fast, and we decided to made another DOUBLE batch to satisfy extra sugar cravings! We had camomile tea and talked about the Villa Verde scandals (the school they all work in) which i reckon would bore you so I’m not going to share them...

The next day we got up and had pancakes and fruit salad! We took a little stroll to a nearby stream just 3 minutes walk from the girls’ house, it was so tranquil and picturesque (PICTURE SKEW). We returned to the house where LAURA COLLINS (The partner of Laura and Renske from La Union) just appeared at the house (La Union is about 3 hours from Gracias) with her dad! They only hung about for long enough for her dad to get a photo of us all together, and then they were away up the mountain :)

We headed back to San Juan, as it was a Sunday, to a house full of dirty dishes, which Emma and I take turns with every night. Nobody else in the family washes their dishes so we have to wash for 7 people every meal time... :(

That night there appeared to be no dinner on the go, so I had to spend my dwindling funds on pasta...The only food available was simply refried beans...and nothing else. So I watched Emma shovelling that down and realised I would never be able to stomach it if SHE could hardly do that...so I resorted to buying some pasta. I also had to donate my bed to Nena’s family and her children, as they were too late to get back to Gracias that night. I always feel truly happy and content to return to our home here in San Juan after such a terribly boring and hostile weekend in Gracias (PFFTTTT).

...And we were up the next morning at 6.30 for ‘school’.

The only way to put the last week of school was ‘a farce’.

No need to go into the ins and outs, but basically it was the most disorganised, boring, unfulfilling, de-motivating and pointless institutions ever known to man. We had 3 students between the 2 of us, and we had no resources... I don’t even want to talk about it, but every day I returned in a HORRIBLE mood and tried so hard to stop myself crying all the way through ‘class’.

I left at 11am with Emma one day, to go and get lunch for everyone and cook it... I got pork, and there was some rice in the house, so we were going to eat that. I thought that I had messed up the rice so spectacularly, so I called Andrea to let her know to pick up more if that was what they wanted, cos I was going to resort to pasta again, for me and Emma to eat with our pork.

To cut a long story short, they thought I was going to buy enough pasta for 7 people and cook it in anticipation of their return...which I didn’t do, because that wasn’t how I thought it had been agreed. They returned to some AWESOME fried pork (seriously good, not even kidding) but no pasta, and Mercedes had a fit. She screamed at Emma and basically we thought that it was make or break at that point...we planned our escape route from this placement in San Juan, should we have felt it necessary... and went to sleep.

Thursday 4th February, we had informed Project Trust of how bad we felt the situation was becoming, and after a lot of deliberation, said that we would stay here until the official start of school the following Monday, to see if it would improve at all, if not, we were going to Gracias to try and get a placement in one of the other bilingual schools located there.

By Friday we were supposed to have received our allowances...overdue for 3 months, and GUESS WHAT!!! We didn’t get them.

Holly and Lena, for the first time, were coming to see our home in San Juan. We didn’t know if we would go through with this, what with all our tension...but Saturday came, and the girls arrived. Mercedes stopped us from doing the dishes that day (even if just for appearances sake, it was still nice), and the 4 of us went a big walk up to the beautiful stream we found one day when we were handing out leaflets for the school last month. We sat by the stream, and we walked up through the coffee plantations, and talked for hours about what we were going through and what the girls thought of it. They, like me, agreed that we shouldn’t be dealing with it, and thought it was time to take action. The plan was set, we would wait and see how the following week of school panned out, after being informed we would be getting a schedule and resource books...this was the final straw, and we agreed on it.

Aside from our San Juan struggles, we had a really nice lunch that day, pork, rice, boiled potatoes and beans, it was delicious! We had our walk around San Juan, and we returned home that evening, full of resolution to lose weight in this tortilla forsaken country...and the girls told me about ‘tribal dancing’ ...basically put on some music with a really strong beat, good bass and sort of tribal style (MIA for example) and then just dance like a loony for an hour and you work up such a sweat and like stretch and tone and stuff and it reeeeeeally worked! It’s kinda my evening ritual, it also helps us waste an hour of the afternoon in San Juan when there is nothing else to do!

On Sunday we all decided to walk up the man road leading to the near town (hour car drive)to La Esperanza. On the road there is a gate leading to natural pools, and Mercedes told us it was about a 15 minute walk towards Esperanza and we would come to it.

But no, it turned out to be about an hour and a half walk to the frigging pools... it was a case of “it’s okay, it’ll be around this corner....or the next one...no, no, it’ll definitely be around the next corner...wait, I think I can see it! Oh maybe not, that’s just someone’s house...” and by the time we finally got there, we didn’t even believe it was the right place! ...but it was :)

We went down to the pools and it was just the 4 of us, but some Honduran guys were there too, they had brought rice and chicken and tortillas and coke, so they gave us some lunch which was nice! Then we left the pools for the hour and a half trek back to the house. I wanted to hitch but the girls wanted to hang out in the sun...so that’s what we did, I was so burnt when I got back, it was like walking through the desert in the midday sun, just one really long road through the mountains!

The girls left and we braced ourselves for school the following day...the first real day of real school in a real project...

....

Okay so to explain the past few weeks of school...

We now have timetables. I teach grammar or maths first period to grade 5, I was supposed to teach English to one student but she left, so I now have a free period 2, then I teach spelling to grade 1 and 2, then it’s snack...i take the babies for half an hour, then get my snack after that, then I teach grammar to grade 1 and 2, and then spelling to grade 5. Then it’s lunch time. I have a free after lunch and then I teach maths to grade 5.

We start school at about 7.15, whereas for the first week it started at 7, so I was up at half 5 every morning so we could leave the house in time to be there at 6.45... luckily Mercedes changed that to a bit later so now I get up at 6am :)

In kinder there are 5 kids...Magdalena, Scarleth, Karen, Brayan and Milton. They’re a nightmare, but pretty cute all the same J

In grade 1 we have Jeffry.

In grade 2 we have Milton, who is taught at the same time as Jeffry.

In grade 5 we have Lizbeth...and occasionally Ernesto (Mercedes son) if he feels generous enough to grace us with his presence...pffft.

So yeah, 9 pupils, and like 5 teachers? A bit ridiculous. I can deal with it, we had almost double the number of pupils at the start, but suddenly some rumours started being spread around San Juan, so now the campisinos have left the school. (campisinos are the Honduran ruffians)

These rumours are along the lines of...

1) Mercedes was previously renting a different building to house the school, and the landlord claims that Mercedes wont pay her rent, and threatened to kill her. Mercedes then told us ‘If I was going to kill her, I wouldn’t have told her, would I?’

2) When Emma and I lived in the hotel, there was some creep who constantly annoyed us, so we politely told him to get stuffed and leave us alone, and about 2 months later he now claims to be about to shut down the school because he doesn’t like us.

3) The woman who owns the paint shop in San Juan has been spreading the rumour that Emma and I are stealing the local children and sending them to America with us. WE DONT EVEN COME FROM AMERICA YOU RACIST.

But anyway, that’s what we’re at right now... I’m just trying to blank it out to be honest, there is no need for me to get all caught up in it, Mercedes doesn’t care too much so I’m not going to either. It’s just so frustrating, it feels like the locals don’t want us in their community, and that is a really horrible feeling...it feels racist.

We’ll take a break for now

Love, Jen xxx

Costa Bombbbbaa Part 2

Hey again.

Okay so I’d just purchased probably the best $9 Subway I’d ever eaten, and we began our walk back to the hostel. When we arrived, I met two older women from London (I mean around late 50s), the elder one called Elsie, with a chubby red cheeked face :)

At this point I was trying to negotiate with Sean using the free internet where we were going to meet him, as he was currently in San Jose also, but planning was getting difficult, as neither of us had working phones in Costa Rica.

After that, Joan, Aron, Emma and I sat for a while discussing near death experiences, animal attacks and that type of thing, which was very interesting when Joan had been a surf instructor for a very long time...and Aron trained horses!

Then the two of them went to bed, they had early plans for the morning. Emma and I were going to follow suit, we chatted for a bit and were literally about to walk out when a guy came to our table and was like ‘can I sit here?’ and started up a conversation. This man turned out to be called John, and he was very confident and definitely the creator of the ‘not so early’ night which soon followed! Another bunch of Americans came to our table, some guy called David from Minnesota and 3 guys from Milwaukee – Dustin, Kent and Kevan.

Outside on the balcony, we were soon to discover, was ‘THE PARTY TABLE’. This consisted of Alice the birthday girl, a bunch of random people and 2 particularly camp guys. I commented on Nick, one of the camp guys, to Dustin, who continued to misuse my phrase...by saying ‘camp as the Queen’s tent’. Bless...

Elsie and Nick came to join our table (the NEW AND IMPROVED party table) to play a game which John suggested, called Preferences... it was HILARIOUS with Elsie involved...that woman was definitely not shy!! She was the source of the most laughter for the night, and in the end, we ended up getting chucked out the bar for being too noisy!

We moved down to the pool area for a while and chatted in a group of about 20...eventually the groups separated to different areas and I hung out with Alice the birthday girl, Kevan, Nick the Queen’s tenter, and some random German bloke. We played truth or dare using an app on Nick’s iPhone, the best of which involved me wearing a hat made out of toilet paper, having to jump in the pool fully clothed, and some bloke had to make his underwear solely from toilet roll! The party soon ended as I was practically dying from hypothermia from jumping in the pool fully clothed (luckily I wasn’t the only one who had to do that though haha...) so we headed to bed.

The following day, we met up with Kent, Kevan and Dustin to move over to the Costa Rica Backpackers Hostel about 20 minutes away. They intended to go up a volcano at some point over the next few days so we decided to tag along, it’s all about saving the money, taxis are a lot cheaper in a group!

We walked to the new hostel which looked pretty blissful also, but was a bit big, making it harder to meet new people. After my negotiations with Sean the other night, we concluded that he would meet us at this particular hostel at some point that day. Meanwhile, we dropped off our stuff, and decided to head back to the market, then the supermarket. The hostel had a communal kitchen, so Kevan and I were crowned chefs for the evening and decided to feed our group! We bought pasta, chicken, tomato sauce and other such ingredients...and we cooked the most awesome chicken and tomato pasta ever known to man. I say ‘we’, I mean ‘kevan cut the chicken and I did everything else’, it was awesome. We added tabasco to the frying pan of chicken which was definitely a GOOD MOVE.

Kent had brought a load of disposable cameras with him, so he took a few photographs (we’ve got his facebook so I’m going to steal his photos haha...) of the pasta! There was a little pasta left over (no sauce) so we left that on the counter in a big pot for Sean to get when he arrived, and I turned round in my seat at one point to see SOME MAN EATING MY PASTA WITH BARBEQUE SAUCE, WITHOUT ASKING!!!! Let’s say I was a very angry person and we’ll leave it at that.

We decided to resort to the classic game of Kings again while we waited for Sean, and when he arrived he joined in with us :) we had to go to the shop again to stock up which was hilarious, us all trotting down the main road in San Jose to the AM-PM shop. Good times.

Me and Kevan were sitting on one of the 2 man hammocks and Sean came and sat on it with us...that is until it broke! Hahaha...

We all moved to some seats on the grass near the others, and listened to our new dorm mates telling us stories. They were two guys from Israel, and they had some really interesting stories. Ignorance, I know, but I found out that they go straight from school into the army in Israel, where they stay for 3 years, then they get a year out to travel and THEN they head to further education! I had no idea! We talked a lot about politics and modern war and so on...really fascinating stuff. And then we all went to sleep.

The following day, Sean decided he didn’t want to go up the volcano with us and instead wanted to travel on to Panama...so Emma, Kevan, Kent, Dustin, Sean and I left the hostel and walked to the bus stop. We left Sean part way there, and reached the bus station. We took a bus from San Jose to Alejuela, and unfortunately missed the rare bus to Poas from there, so we took a taxi to the town the volcano was in. There were 5 of us in a 4 seater taxi and I was the one to lie across everyone on the back seat. Emma is smaller than me for goodness sake but it was still a good laugh!

We drove for about half an hour to Poas, then a little bit up the mountain to a small bar/mountain shack place called Lo Que Tu Quieres. We had previously purchase long French loaves, salami, cheese, sandwich spread, starfruits, carrots and beverages of course, so we dragged our stash to an area of open grass in front of the mountain shack. The boys decided to set up their tents there, Emma and I, however, went for the better option of a room, with a REAL BED, real covers, real pillows and a real door. The expert camping option I would say. It was a good decision, I wanted a good night’s sleep before clambering up the volcano the next day...

So that evening, we spotted a few HUGE moths, about the span of my hand (and I have big hands)! Jose, the man who owned the place, gave us a huge discount on the camping land and the room, gave us free shots and ice cream and banana and hot chocolate! He helped us gather wood for the best campfire in the world, and Kent had a great time with the machete!

We spent the evening around the campfire, relighting and rebuilding it as it grew old...we could see every single star in the sky, and I saw some unbelievably amazing shooting stars, one of which lasted about 5 seconds and had a huge tail across the sky. We watched the stars rotating around our heads, we played preferences IN SPANISH with jose, which was a good laugh too, and we heard about the tiger cub that lived on the mountain near the shack. We talked more about religion, we talked about our take on the creation of the earth and universe, we talked about what we think happens when we die, and we talked about life on other planets....Kevan was ‘a jerk of all trades’ as he called himself, and reminded me a lot of Stephen (no offence intended there mate haha). He knew a lot about science and astronomy and it was really interesting listening to some theories which had NEVER entered my head! The fire grew old and turned into golden orange embers burning on the grass, and we decided it was time to retire :)

The next day, we got up early and packed our stuff to get ready to walk up the volcano! Jose said we could leave our stuff in Emma and my room while we went up and we could collect it on the way down. We made the last sandwich and got ourselves organised for the 5km walk from the hostel to the entrance of the volcano grounds.

We began our trek, staring out over what looked like the whole of Costa Rica...and got pretty exhausted after about 20 minutes of walking uphill! I spotted a white people carrier bus coming up behind us and hailed it, though the guy wanted $2 each to take us to the gate, even though he was already going there with his empty bus! We decided to reject that idea and he drove off...only to remain hidden around the next corner waiting for us! We hopped in and agreed to the $1 each fee. He offered to take us IN to the volcano, instead of paying the $7 each entry fee, as long as we gave him a donation and hid under the seats of his van. We obliged, and paid him $4 total, so $1 transport and $3 entry fee! SAAAVEEEE!

So yeah, there we were, the 5 fully grown adults hiding under the seats of a minivan. Thank goodness the thing was clean...!

We squeezed out from under the seats ( I recall my exit from that location was the most graceful thing anyone had ever seen, like a Bambi on ice...) and started our walk to the crater!

We, for some reason, decided to take this ‘walk’ at full speed and I thought my lungs were going to either explode or cave in...My throat was definitely seizing up, but it was a HEALTHY kind of pain...it felt fulfilling! We reached the Laguna of Volcano Poas, and were a mixture of impressed and irritated. It was an incredible sight, a natural wonder, but it was SO FAR AWAY! The volcano park was really tourist focussed, and it was so built up and manufactured... I wanted natural, I wanted to BE ON THE EDGE of the Laguna, not looking at it through some frigging binoculars :/ ...but that still couldn’t take away from how truly stunning it was...

We continued our full speed march to the crater and were disappointed for a long time...and then amazed for 5 seconds, and then disappointed again. The top was completely clouded over, and for a VERY BRIEF 5 seconds, the clouds shifted, so we took a few snapshots, and then the cover was back...but yet again I am just so impressed and humbled by the beauty and existence of such an incredible thing that I don’t mind seeing it for such a short time, the image of the smoking crater will not be erased from my memory!

We began our descent from the volcano, and instead of taking the 5km winding road back to the mountain shack, we decided to take a vertical path straight through the fields...that was fun! We got back and had beans, egg and corn tortillas, and grabbed the bus back to Poas town, and I slept on the journey. I also slept on the journey to Alejuela too!

We arrived back in San Jose and the boys decided they were going to begin their travels to Nicaragua that night, so we said our farewells and headed back to Hostel Pangea for our final night of luxury!

We arrived, exhausted, and realised we had to do a LOT of planning to make sure we had enough funds to bring us back to Honduras...considering my debit card hadn’t been working the entire time we were in Costa Rica, I had to borrow money from Emma...luckily she had enough, until now... we were really scrimping and saving to make sure we had enough (our dorm mate for the night gave us a packet of stale cornflakes which we took most gratefully...saved us having to spend ANY money on food for our travels back. We made our money plans, and the internet had stopped working in Pangea so we decided to get our first and only early night! (After an absolutely FREEZING shower...)

We woke up the following morning at 6.30am, and went to reception where the man told us that SEAN had stayed the night. we were pretty gutted to have missed him, I had an email waiting from him that I couldn’t read the night before, when the internet had broken down, so that was probably what he was going to say! We were just about to leave when Sean appeared out of the corridor beside us (at 6.30am) wearing a pair of swimming trunks and a shirt.

He then proceeded to tell us that he had been watching some street dancers downtown in San Jose before heading for the Panama bus, when some guy grabbed his backpack from leaning against his leg and ran! Sean followed but 2 guys came out of nowhere after he caught the guy, so he decided to let it go... so the reason he had just a pair of swimming trunks, a shirt, his passport and a debit card are because they are the only things he had on his person at the time!

We had to depart pretty quickly after hearing this in order to catch our bus, but it was still a massive shame, he had everything in that backpack, almost nothing had been left in his house on Roatan, so he really lost a lot that day :(

We said a quick farewell and headed for the bus stop...the ride to Nicaragua was pretty long. We arrived in Managua and checked into a different, horrible, much cheaper hostel where we met Eric and Chris, two guys from America who were also travelling around Central America. We went for a bit to eat at the same eatery as we had on our journey TO Costa Rica, and then sat watching a documentary about elephantitis and discussing our future plans. Eric was a wild firefighter (forest firefighter) and aspired to be a librarian upon his return to the states. Chris had studied creative writing and was a waiter (yes waiter, not a typo) until he decided to go travelling to surf!

The next morning he was on his way to El Salvador with Tica bus so we got up early and walked to the station with him. We got on our respective buses, ours was stuck in a million traffic jams between Tegucigalpa and San Pedro...so it took us ages to get home! We got to Damaris’s house again, and briefly met Mercedes’ mother and father...and then had egg and bean tortillas again (staple diet). We went to sleep.

The following day, on mercedes’ advice, we went to the immigration office, to find out WE DIDNT NEED TO GO THERE at all... I spoke to fraudsquad, my card was sorted out, and we lifted money at the ATM in the bus terminal...major weight lifted from us there!

We got a direct bus to Gracias...which BROKE DOWN midway between Santa Rosa and Gracias (the last hour of the 5 hour drive...). The bus spluttered a bit and then rolled to a stop! We hung about outside the bus for about an hour at least, just chatting to people and rolling our eyes at the unreliable Honduran bus service (aren’t all bus services unreliable in their own way? *cough* the 44 *cough*). Emma thought I looked like a ‘Russian immigrant’ with my scarf around my head in the rain...mwahaha.

Standing outside it, I met some guy off the bus who spoke English and lived in the city...he had an eyebrow piercing (very rare to have any rebellious piercings in Honduras...) and, unprompted, he confirmed my suspicions of his homosexuality, another MASSIVE shock to my system – homosexuality is not only frowned upon, but can be punished too! He thought Emma and I were together...as in TOGETHER TOGETHER. Hahahahahahaha. He gave us some tajaditas (banana chips fried into crisps) and we just chatted for ages. I sat reading the paper in the bus driver’s seat HAHA.

Another bus eventually passed us so we hopped onto that, and finally arrived in Gracias...and this is where our Costa Rican Visa Renewal Trip comes to an end!

Love, Jen xxx

Costa Bombbbbaa Part 1

Well HELLO again!

It’s been a while, sorry... I just keep thinking that there is nothing major to update and then all of a sudden there is SO MUCH. I’ll try and keep them shorter and more regular AFTER this one :)

Okay, so we had just returned from Roatan to the new house...and we were still in spare beds, not in our designated rooms. Luckily, Mercedes travelled to Lepaera to collect all the stuff from the old house and bring it to this new one, so we ended up unpacking the lorry and moving our stuff into our new rooms :) I ended up with a WONDERFUL queen bed, and a kinda metal frame style shelf and rail for my clothes! So now Emma and I have our own rooms, which is so awesome, it’s nice to finally have somewhere to call MINE instead of living out of a suitcase...

So there were no pupils at the school the last time I wrote, and it kinda remained that way... one of the pupils (also called Emma) turned up each day, but nobody else did, so it was kind of a lost cause... Mercedes ended up cancelling school until the 1^st February. Her reason for no children coming any more was that all the fathers drink away the money. Sure Mercedes, EVERY father was doing the same thing, which is why NOBODY came to school... uh-huh.

So school was cancelled til February, which was good with us, seeing as nobody was coming anyway. I used the time to paint my room, two walls red and two walls cream, and to dedicate myself to go on a diet! Emma decorated her room with pictures and so on too, they both look really awesome now :)

Still during our time off, we went to Gracias (our staple weekend escape...which is becoming a much more common way of escape...) and hung out with Holly. Laura and Renske came from La Union also because Lena, the newest PT volunteer (and Holly’s partner) was finally arriving! She had chosen the 8 month Particip8 course rather than the full year, hence her arrival at the beginning of January. As usual I spent the weekend on the internet in Guancascos (they have WIRELESS!), we all went for Chinese at the restaurant which really delicious, our favourite meal out location! They serve portion sizes big enough for 4 people, so you can imagine the mistake we made the first time we went... at least you can take stuff home with you!

Wednesday 13^th January, I got a package from Grandma! It contained (definitely past tense) Haribo sweets, Percy Pigs, and Wham Bars! I also got a magazine and a few puzzle books to contain my boredom in San Juan...she’ll never know how grateful I am for those! Unfortunately still haven’t received the big package from Mum, cos the big things take ages to arrive.

As I said, we were not teaching until February, but Mercedes asked us to walk around the whole of San Juan handing out leaflets for the school...uuuft. Emma and I traipsed around the ENTIRE town and surrounding suburbs handing little bits of paper out to every man and their dog, and sticking signs up in every pulperia on every corner...tiring work, but it had to be done! The main issue I had with that was not actually the walking, it was more the fact that walking through the dirt roads to people’s houses poses ‘natural’ issues...stray dogs, violent dogs, aggressive dogs, and dogs in general...mothering cows and their calves, aggressive bulls (one chased me right into someone’s house), marshy bog land after rain can always be a good laugh too, in flip flops.

Saturday 15^th, we were ready and packed for our COSTA RICA VISA RENEWAL TRIP! We took the bus to Gracias where we spent Saturday on the internet and relaxing, to get the bus to San Pedro Sula on Sunday. Mercedes had asked us to take a ‘box’ to her daughter Andrea in the city, so we obliged, as she described it...’is not so heavy’. Oh how wrong... we dragged this thing off the people carrier into Holly’s house in Gracias, then had to haul it to the bus station the following day, that was a good laugh.

We took the bus on Sunday lunchtime to San Pedro from Gracias, and ended up having to convert to a different bus at Santa Rosa, and almost forgot ‘the box’. This new bus had many a smashed window and bucket seat and ended up jam packed full of people, but by this time we’re used to that kind of thing. We arrived in the city and a friend of the family came to collect us in his taxi, after driving around the whole Bus Terminal ignoring our frantically waving arms (when they weren’t on the box) for about 20 minutes. The man took us to Damaris’s house (remember them? Mercedes sister, the family we stayed with the DAY we arrived in Honduras?!) and we managed to shift the box onto his responsibility to take to Andrea at Lourdes’s house.

It was really amazing seeing the family again, Damaris, Javier, Javier, Fernando, Damaris and Debora (they like repeated names in this country). They had all changed SO much, as had our perception of their home... I remembered looking at the shower, totally horrified, on arrival, the floor was of poor quality, and it just looked impoverished by my standards... OH HOW THAT HAS CHANGED. Their home is lovely! It was warm and inviting, it was clean (by Honduran standards) and it was NOT impoverished! Not to mention the change in the family, Fernando has grown a lot, Javier jr has lost weight and Debora looks like a right young woman :) they had all lost weight significantly because of their HERBALIFE diet, which apparently we may end up following in the near future...

We arrived at their home to a warm welcome of Javier making baleadas with his mum, and we got hugs and kisses from the whole family :) We had to attempt to get dollars that evening before we left for Costa Rica, so Emma, Javier sr, Fernando and I took a taxi to the city mall. We passed a synagogue which was truly stunning (yes, a Jewish place of worship, here?! I couldn’t believe it!) and eventually arrived at the mall. I literally, metaphorically, had a heart attack. I felt completely lost and awestruck by how URBAN it was! There was an ESCALATOR! This mall was full of bright lights, colourful shops selling millions of shoes, food malls, clothes shops, gadget shops... there was a model in the centre of the walkway containing a Wii and Guitar Hero! There was a Lacoste shop, a Zara... let’s just say it was NOT what I expected, and not what I was used to either! I felt so tiny because we’d been stuck in San Juan for so long, I’d forgotten what it was like to be amongst fashion and money and beauty...

We traipsed around the slippery, shiny mall floor looking for a cash machine that actually contained dollars, but to no avail. We headed over the road about five minutes away to another city mall, passing a McDonald’s, and even better, a SUBWAY (the food store, they don’t do trains or underground in these countries). Javier and I had a nice little joke about Italian BMTs with all the salad and Chipotle Southwest sauce...i promised myself I would get one in San Jose! Unfortunately there was no cash machine with dollars here either, so we had to make our way back...after passing a Guess shop too :P

We returned to the nicest baleadas I’d had in a long time (and I eat them A LOT – remember what they are? Large flour tortilla with refried beans, scrambled eggs, liquid butter and sometimes hard cheese. I added some chilli sauce too, for good measure). We were really exhausted that night and knew that Monday morning would start at 3.45am, so we hit the sack pretty soon after bed.

Our taxi (another family friend) was due to arrive at 4am, so there we were, all settled on the couches, barely keeping our eyes open, waiting for the taxi. We had to be 45 minutes early for the bus leaving at 5am to check in...and 4.15am came and went...eventually, at 4.30am the taxi pulled up, and then we had to make the JOURNEY to the bus station, so we didn’t arrive there until about 4.45am! We scrambled to the Tica Bus terminal, after I lifted a few Lempiras at the station cash machine. We should really have known, by Honduran time we were still early at quarter to 5 haha...

We bumped into a couple of English girls in the queue as we checked in, and smushed our way onto the bus. I was knocked out for 5 hours til we arrived in Tegucigalpa (Honduran capital city...if you could call it that. It’s the equivalent, we all know Glasgow is better than Edinburgh [yeah Kirsty] yet it’s not the capital...the same with San Pedro Sula hehe...). We had a 15 minute stop here where they were selling bogging baleadas and microwave reheated pizza, which I DID buy, and then we were back on the bus, with slightly protesting tummies. The journey to the border was rather uneventful, apart from some TERRIBLE movie called FIREPROOF (don’t even think about watching it unless you can’t get to sleep or want to vent your anger on the TV set, it was atrocious). We watched Fast and Furious (I think) and then Nacho Libre which was actually pretty entertaining in a mindless sort of way.

We arrived at the border and we both got ripped off for dollars, we ended up paying an extra 3 Lempiras per dollar cos Emma didn’t understand what the man was doing. Oh well, what’s done is done. We drove for a further 3 minutes until we reached the Nicaraguan side of the border HAHA (funny to me cos I was like, a minute and a half drive over the border of 2 countries) where we all filed out again. I got an orange (they’re amazing by the way, a woman sits with a massive plastic bucket full of oranges and a knife, and peels them, then cuts through it about a third of the way from the top and hands it to you... they’re so delicious, and mega cheap) and chatted to the English girls again, a woman called Libby who lives on Utila (one of the Bay Islands) and is a dive master for some place called Old Morgan’s or something like that. Was a good chat :)

We got back on the bus and nothing happened and we arrived in Managua, the capital of Nicaragua (I feel it’s my duty to inform you nothing happened because you may think I’m keeping something from you. Seriously, I tell you everything in this, as you can tell). The Tica Bus station was in the middle of a clearly bad neighbourhood...haha. So we walked out of the station and turned right, walked for 2 minutes to the end of that block and arrived at our hostel, after sorting out someone’s major organisation fail by putting Emma and I on different buses the following morning...

Our hostel was called Casa Vanegas, and it was decent enough, it had a low hammock in the wee tiny driveway, and a few different rooms, one computer with internet and some pretty cool backpackers! We got a twin room with a shower, fan and TV for $8 each. We met a guy called Harrison, from Austin, Texas, and we walked up to the pulperia to the left (in the Tica Bus direction... Harrison came from a different bus and arrived at the hostel coming from the RIGHT...and some guy in a car pulled up and was like ‘get the **** out of here, you wanna get shot?!” and all this kinda stuff in Spanish, and then we realised the hostel had a little sign on the counter that said ‘please leave the hostel and turn LEFT...’ which I think explains everything...).

So we went to the little shop and bought a few cans of beer and sat in a little food place and I had an enchilada! It was rice and cut up pork and vegetable in a thick pastry packet and deep fried ;) heaven.

So Emma, Harrison and I sat in the little cafe and chatted for a bit, then wandered home drinking our beers. We stood outside to finish them (not allowed beers or drugs of any kind in the hostel...HA) and then some guy who was helping Harrison and his mate find their way around Nicaragua came out of the hostel and was like ‘welcome to the tropics guys!’ and we got all happy and excited about setting out on our travels, bless us.

We sat on the patio area outside Harrison’s room and I met his mate Bobby who he was travelling with. We talked til 11.30pm about all kinds of stuff, especially religion. I’ve come to accept that it is a BRILLIANT topic of discussion to have with other travellers, and it always seems to come up... you get such an insight from the massive variety of minds and opinions and beliefs that travel the world. I love having those discussions and honestly I keep feeling better and better about my own opinion the more I talk, and the thoughts I have seem to make the believers happy too, they like questioning their faith or something. I don’t really know how to explain but the talks I’ve had with people about religion and deep stuff are often the best. This one was a particularly good one...though I won’t go into it, we’d be here forever as you can imagine (though by the looks of the size of this essay we’ll be here for even longer...) We talked about other things too, the vast size of Texas, how it is as big as France seemingly, and other interesting stuff.

The next day I was up at 5am for the 6am bus to Costa Rica. The journey to the border was uneventful, though the 2 border stops were really long, about an hour on each side... I saw some girl with mango and asked her where she got it, and she just gave me it. It was all lovely and cut up in a plastic bag, and after I’d finished hers I went and got more cos it was super cheap! The rest of the journey was pretty uneventful, and then we arrived in SAN JOSEEEEEE!

We got a taxi from the bus terminal to one hostel that was meant to be amazing, but it was fully booked. We met some other girls who were going to try and book in there too, so we all took a walk to the second place on the Lonely Planet list that appealed to us, a place called Hostel Pangea...we got kinda lost wandering around downtown San Jose in the dark, and ended up being directed to the hostel, which was behind a massive metal wall and a little door with a hole in it...

Oh my goodness this place is AMAZING. You walk in, and as soon as the doorman shut the metal door behind us, we were in pure bliss. This place was stunning, modern, and so welcoming. The walls had all been painted in amazing patterns that let your mind go mad, there was a big pool area, and lots of dorms, 5 computers down the stairs, and another 10 up the stairs. There were 2 bar areas (one with wooden tables and benches for food, and the other with cream couches almost exactly the same as ours at home) and a huge balcony overlooking almost all of San Jose. We could see lights up in the mountains from that balcony...

So we all checked in and got settled. In our dorm were 3 girls from Argentina, who were the epitome of beauty. We met some guys from Australia in the bar areas and ended up chatting to them for a while about their time in Cuba with their broken down rental car...

May I just add right now, I was up at 3.45 am on Monday morning, and 5am the following morning...Didn’t stop me going out this night though DID IT?!

We hung out with the Australians, only 2 of whom made any real impact, Martin was hilllaaarious and reminded me completely or Martin Hislop from home. And then Liam, because Emma gravitated towards him a little :p (she’ll hate me for writing this...) anyway, they were the only 2 names I can really remember. They were talking about ‘smug’ alot.

Smug:

Person 1: “I’m going scuba diving tomorrow” (has massive smile on ones face, bearing NO TEETH)
Person 2: “you SMUG pig.”

Person 1: “What are your plans for tomorrow?”
Person 2: “Oh, I’m going surfing” (sweeps hair back in Loreal advert style, radiates smugness)

Person 1: “So, Jen, what are you doing around these parts then?”
(after a lot of instruction and teaching of how to pull off smug)
Jen: “Oh, I teach English to underprivileged children in Honduras...”
Person 1: stares awestruck and impressed at Jen’s smugness.

ANYWAY, we all decided to head out to El Pueblo, the club/pub/bar complex nearby, which turned out to be entirely empty of anyone but the staff at the bars, and us... We got some tequila at the bar while the American girls did air skipping rope dancing. Liam, Martin and I headed round to ANY other bar considering this one was expensive and only consisted of the group that came with us. We found a really cheap bar where the boys decided they wanted to do ‘tequila suicides’. For those who don’t know what they are...

Tequila Suicides
1. Sniff salt up nostril.
2. Down shot of tequila
3. Squeeze lime in eye
4. Kick person opposite’s shins.

I filmed this for them (yeah they offered for me to participate, I just took the shot haha, but they asked me to film them performing this idiotic ritual...) which was absolutely hilarious to watch, but I learned from their experience and will definitely not be doing it. Ouchhh!

I ended up getting some pizza cos this stuff looked amazing, and that is one thing I really really miss, a goooooood pizza! (Apparently we’re going to make homemade ones with Mercedes or something, great)

By this time everyone was thoroughly bored and ready for bed, especially us what with the amount of travelling we’d been doing, so we headed back to Hostel Pangea and off to bed :)

The following day, I had to check out, then check back in (pointless) but I met a girl called Joan from the Netherlands who was a good laugh, she worked as a surf master and had been around the world working for different hostels, she offered us a summer placement in a surf hostel in Spain whenever we want, which would be awesome in the coming years when I’m a poor student...

She introduced us to a friend of hers called Aron (just one ‘a’) and he knew of a local market in San Jose, so we all took a little trek up the bustling city streets to the market, which was indeed, pretty cute! I decided to be as efficient a buyer as possible and hunted for the best things, compared prices, then walked the entire length of the market back the way, bargaining with the best ones. In the end I got a really beautiful scarf for $11, managed to get Emma in on the scarf scene too, so she got one as well, and then Emma and I both got a pair of earings made from coconut shells...i love them!

We headed to a nearby bakery, the smell radiated up the central avenue, and Emma was immediately drawn in, with Aron and Joan following quickly behind. They each got a HUGE doughnut with toffee icing stuff INSIDE it (it had a hole in the centre too...this was a good looking piece of baking) and chocolate and sprinkles and stuff on top. I didn’t get one, I just drooled over theirs!

Then, I decided I’d saved my appetite enough and after questioning Aron on the nearest Subway, thought it was definitely time to be a tourist...and so we headed there for a footlong Italian BMT on Italian cheese and herb bread, with lettuce, olives, green peppers, onions, chipotle southwest sauce on one half and barbeque on the other, cheese and toasted ...with a fanta to share with Emma and a cookie. It cost the equivalent of $9, which I didn’t realise until I’d purchased it. I am not kidding when I say I DID NOT REGRET IT.

However, for the moment we shall take a brief pause (for a few days) and I will write more of this blog and post it soon. Bet you’re all relieved, eh?

Love, Jen xxx

klickkk

i thought it was about time to add some photographs...holly's ride ;)
holly flying through the AIR
camilo, holly and THE PARTY CAR
emma, on our water taxi ride to west bay
casey, adam, guish (that's how you spell it actually), albert and holly
albert, holly sean, adam, casey and meeeeee
sean carter and myself having megaaa chats.
laura, renske's face through a gap, and casey russel-cantyyyy
renske strutting her stuff on the bar
holly's ride

Feliz Navidad!

HEY guys :)
Okay apologies, this will be a long one, but believe me, it’s worth it ;) go get a cuppa ready before you sit down...might wanna run to the bathroom in advanced too haha...
So, when I last left off, it was midway through the week before our Christmas holiday, and we were in the middle of rehearsals for the Christmas show. For the show, I had to draw 2 full length princesses, and my goodness I was well proud of them (got no thanks for them, but that’s the way it rolls in Honduras). They were beauuuutiful and they were decorations for the hall where we were holding the show. We also did a massive poster saying ‘NEW LAND BILINGUAL SCHOOL AND COLLEGE’ with lots of moons and stars and it took me about 3 days to do... looked good at the back of the hall though!
We arrived the day of the show, and I was feeling pretty unwell...we thought I had like acid something happening in my stomach which turned out to be more accurate than Stephen’s suggestion of “you’ve got squids in your tummy by the sounds of it, Jen, a friend of mine DIED of that...” so I started taking some drugs for that and it has cleared up now! Reminds me of this woman we work with, Max-Lauren who is Mercedes’ friend’s daughter – she was helping out at the school for a fair while, and she barely spoke any English...for some reason she ended up asking for the translation of ‘SPRAY ANTI-UGLIES’ as a form of punishment for the kids... basically she would air spray their faces and say ‘spray anti-uglies’. She also used to crack an air whip, and make the equivalent hand gesture of ‘dishing out’ – punishment I presume. Strange girl...
So moving swiftly on, we ended up at the town hall, to find it flooded. Swept up water using a brush (efficient, believe it or not) and we ran through rehearsals with the kids for all their songs and dances... and then evening came! And another problem popped up...the light in the hall was ridiculous. I could barely see my hand in front of my face, it was so dark. So we had to do some last minute candle gathering, and I had to wax melt them onto the floor of the stage, around the walls, so that people could ‘partially’ see what they were there for... and I swear it was the most dangerous idea in the world. We had open flames on the stage where any of the children could so easily have caught fire. I was extremely concerned for the health and safety of everyone involved, but THIS IS HONDURAS (that’s my new saying, it means ‘deal with it’).The families started flooding into the hall, sitting down in the chairs, and, as per Honduran time, Sergio was late, and he was carrying the sound system. Yes. We were waiting around for about 45 minutes til he got there with the stuff haha! No one seemed particularly bothered, but by UK comparison, everything is inefficient, almost to the point of destruction... if we behaved that way at a school concert at home, so many people would have walked out! But no, they all sat chatting away, stray dogs wandering into the hall between our feet, the children’s nerves building, so nervous to say their English introductions...but somehow they pulled it off brilliantly :) all the children said their piece and got ready in their beautiful dresses and shirts and trousers to do my dance! They did the Scottish dance so brilliantly...i am really really proud of them, it was fantastic! Brought a tear to my eye, so it did! (Though I’ve got to admit I was very scared for the girls’ floaty skirts in case they caught fire on the stray candles...but luck was still on our side)
The performed some other dances and songs, and then Edson’s mum (who owns the Comedor San Juan where we had our lunch and dinner every day) brought a huge amount of delicious food to the hall, and after the show finished (we had to do a little on the spot speech, which Mercedes translated to the parents) everyone got food! The nicest chicken with a spicey sauce, rice, vegetables, roast potatoes, bread, and a fruit salad (which I couldn’t eat because of my acidic tummy – so raging, and I may have had a little teeny bit cos I have no self restraint and I miss my fruit out here) for desert! They even had a pineapple and cinnamon tea type thing and a little bit of cake at the start for people, it was kinda like mulled wine, yummy!
So the night ended with everyone very full and happy, and Emma and I headed home, in our beautiful dresses (we got all dressed up and even put MAKE UP on for the show) for a good night’s sleep, finally.
Next day, we travelled to Gracias on yet another fully packed bus, I was jammed against the sliding door and had to be door operator for several stops, fun. There were 2 other white people on the bus, a woman from Newcastle in Australia, and some guy, both of whom were volunteering in an orphanage in Guatemala. We led them to Guancascos in Gracias for a place to stay, and I sat on the internet for way too long haha...grabbed some malaria tablets from Holly’s place and dropped off the laptop, had yet more Chinese at the restaurant (where the Chinese chef woman came out and started screaming at the waitress in Spanish for ages, embarrassing) and then hopped in a rickety motor taxi to Nena’s house ( Max-Lauren’s mother). We sat in the room chatting and fighting over prunes hahaha, we were just so excited about our holiday starting the next day!
Got up super early, and was at the bus stop in one of Nena’s hats (attractive) by 5am, in the dark and reached San Pedro about 10am, only to find the ATM not working! We took a cab to the nearest machine and were overjoyed to find that my card is working again (minted – went overboard and took out like 12,000L between us for the holiday ahahaha). Then we raced back to the bus terminal, got ripped off by the taxi driver (they all do that, and they then get all shocked when you point it out in Spanish that they’re bullshitting...i love not being a real tourist!) and bolted to the ticket terminal for the bus to La Ceiba. We bought our tickets and the woman said something about the bus leaving even if you’re not on it...or so we thought. We got some pizza at pizza hut in the station, then headed back to the terminal half an hour before the bus was due to leave...for it to already be gone. Turns out she said it will leave when it’s full (admittedly my Spanish is still not that awesome...) so we were stranded, and clearly going to miss our ferry to Roatan from Ceiba 
Ended up getting a later bus, got to Ceiba and had to stay overnight in the big city! On the Ceiba bus there were more gringos, so we borred their ‘lonely planet’ book and looked up places to stay in Ceiba, and decided to go for Banana Republic, it looked good enough. We arrived at it, to find hammocks and free internet access on the computers! I signed in on the sheet, to see someone with the name KYLE WALLACE. I was just like, ‘MATE HE MUST BE SCOTTISH WITH A NAME LIKE THAT!’
Headed upstairs to our room, and met this Kyle guy, who it turned out, lived on Copeland Road, Ibrox ahah! Small world eh? He was a major character, I’ll tell you that much...
There was also some poor guy from California at the hostel, a teacher. He came to Honduras over the Christmas/New Year we think, cos he’s lonely :( he was kinda following us around...when we went to the nearby SUPER BALEADA (baleada restaurant, which, judging by the name serves them super...) to see him come in the door about 3 minutes later. Oh well. Emma ordered 2 baleadas, not realising that they were about 40cm in length, each, and I only got 1 (who knows why, lets be honest, I can’t have been well) and when they showed up it was like OH MY GOODNESS I’ve never seen such a plateful of baleada. It was amazing, I had mine with extremenos (like spicy sausage) and avocado, scrambled egg and all the normal stuff, beans, cheese, mantequilla... was heavenly!
Next day, got the ferry early in the morning to Roatan! And now the holiday begins!
(Possibly time for another tea break/pee break – this part is not for the faint hearted, and fill in the cliff hangers with your own ending if you wish...)
We watched the Simpson’s movie on the ferry over, and neither of us was sick, I was having a party to myself again cos the ferry is like a rollercoaster! We hopped in an unmarked taxi (Emma was a little worried but it was totally cool) and went the 45 minutes to Punta Gorda, where Ian and Sean stay.
Punta Gorda is a Garifuna village, a village with deep black Caribbean people, rather than Latinos. They have an almost entirely different culture there to anything I’d seen before!
Sean was not on the island, he was stuck in England after his holiday home, because of the bad weather, so we just turned up on Ian’s doorstep (which was actually a cliff edge, and homemade wooden steps...) and marched on in! Renske and Laura were there already, other volunteers from La Union (the ones who went to Tegucigalpa during the elections for thanksgiving), Ian was there too.
Ian’s home was really authentic, and had been a PT volunteer home for 30 years! That leaves someone with a lot of books (about 30 dive manuals...), some cool wall decorations and little photographs, and a little block painted behind the broken sofa, with the names of the volunteers written on it...it made me feel pretty homely! It has inspired me to make my room in the new house (yeah we dropped our stuff off at Mercedes’ new home before we left, and I shoved mine in one room and Emma put hers in another... we’re having separate rooms, end of) as beautiful and warm and new volunteer friendly. This is the first year a volunteer has been on our particular placement, so I’m going to hopefully start a trend for them, just like the 30 volunteers before Ian and Sean have done for them :)
Laura and Renske had been there a day before us and had a whale of a time, considering the evidence hahah! The existence of ‘glass towel’ which was used to clean up an accidentally broken glass could give you an idea... and the ‘freshly washed hammock’ which still had a faint smell of vomit might also give a hint hahaha... not pointing any fingers of course...
Laura and Renske had some pretty amazing stories, like hanging out in a VIP club with models and Honduran and Brazilian footballers. I was very jealous, they even stayed in the HILTON hotel free of charge. Doesn’t get much better than that eh?
so we played poker with the beans I sorted into piles (and I couldn’t play it to save my life...) and we tried to make hot chocolate on the tiny portable stove, but managed to spill it all over the floor from the frying pan we had to cook it in hahaha... I slept on one of the 2 hammocks in the living room, which was strange, but very fun. Felt like being a baby again, and strange to wake up and have no blood in one’s legs...
Next day we woke up bright and early (not) and started making baleadas from scratch. Holly had stayed in Banana Republic too, the night before, because her ferry wasn’t running due to bad weather, and she arrived...happy enough, let’s say that haha... she had just gone travelling to Belize the previous week to renew her visa and it sounded like she had a pretty awesome time (we’re going there in the next couple of weeks probably to renew our visas as well...or I might head back to Cancun in Mexico instead!)
we started toasting the HAND MADE tortillas on the pan on the stove for it to break. Yeah, it broke, after we had made so many beautiful flat tortillas (it’s an excercise and a half believe me. Roll the dough into a ball, flatten it and then clap your hands in a round movement until they are thin and flat. It’s really difficult!) and were ready to toast them. So we headed over to some woman called Karen’s house and used her cooker and utensils to make some pretty good baleadas I’LL SAY!
So after munching away, we took a half hour trek to a nearby private beach, in the gringo are of Punta Blanca, just near Punta Gorda. We swam there for ages and watched the little fish and crabs floating around in the perfectly clear water :)
We then went over to a friend of Ian’s home, Mike and Julie. They’re in their mid 60s and Michael is English, Julie is Chinese. Mike was a sailor for about 30 years, and doesn’t stop talking, and Julie dotes on her dogs NO END, but they are both the most hospitable people to the extreme, it felt like a dream! They poured us the strongest gin & tonics, and rum & cokes, and offered to have us over for Christmas dinner...ALL of us! The view from their home is absolutely phenomenal...it’s on top of a cliff overlooking the atlantic, it’s absolutely stunning, and took my breath away repeatedly! We returned to Ian’s on the back of Mike’s truck (which he was driving slightly under the influence...) and they donated us an air mattress for the number of people who were going to be crammed in the one tiny house!
That night we tried to start a campfire but it was too damp from the previous bad weather, and I slept on the hammock again.
Next day, we went to Mike and Julie’s again, and spent Christmas there. Adam and Casey showed up at their house after we arrived and so it was great to see them – they’d travelled to Cancun to renew their visas, and met a lot of strange and exciting people, and they went to a bar that you pay $40 to get into and then you get free drinks all night haha... there was a derelict bar, but it still had some stuff in it, including a corona bottle shaped wall light, which they carried all the way from Mexico back to Roatan ahahha... looks great in their house, seriously!
So we were plied with yet more alcohol and excessive amounts of food... they gave us a bottle of tequila and we spent Christmas eve in their guest house (separate from the main house) playing kings and card games... was a really good evening. We also played ‘have you ever’ but I was past the point of no return and simply did not understand the rules...i didn’t understand them the next day either!
So CHRISTMAS DAY!!! I thought I wouldn’t be getting any presents (Emma and I agreed not to get each other anything) but Holly had made little goodie bags for us all consisting of some pretty good sweets, and shampoo! The previous day down at the beach some of the group had gathered up shells, and on them they wrote ‘Feliz Navidad *name*’ and on the back, ‘HONDURAS 09/10’ which was a really nice gift which I’ll keep forever :)
[Note: The Honduran volunteers consist of Ian & Sean in Punta Gorda on Roatan, Adam & Casey on Sandy Bay on Roatan, Laura & Renske in La Union, Emma & I in San Juan, and Holly in Gracias. Holly’s partner is due to arrive on the 7th of January or something like that, Lena, and unfortunately Gemma & Tory are no longer in Honduras because their project kinda fell through...]
For Christmas dinner we had turkey, pork and beef, loads of trimmings for each one, and Christmas pudding and ice-cream for desert! We had crackers and cheese, and we also had prepared some rum truffles earlier in the day which were so strong....at least a shot in strength each!
We stayed at their house that night too, and went for a midnight swim down at the dock that night, it was beautiful bliss.
Boxing day, Adam and Casey left early to go clean their house before we arrived. Before they left for Cancun, they were burgled and their land lord said he would get a proper lock on the door...but he didn’t, and they knew they were going to get their stuff stolen over their holiday. So they went home before us to clean up and figure out what was lost.
We remained at Mike and Julie’s for a good few hours, at a full English breakfast with a lot of amazing homemade break of many flavours, and then we had bread and butter pudding which was to DIE for. Then Mike drove us out to French Harbour (half an hour away) where we were then picked up by Krissy (friend of Adam and Casey’s whose husband was murdered before our first visit to Roatan) whose flatbed unfortunately did not have a back to it...so there we were, all strewn over the flat bit of the car, suitcases and rucksacks included, clinging to each other in a webbed mass to avoid going flying out the back!
We made it to Sandy Bay in one piece, and met Albert, a 35 year old guy from the island, who had spent a LONG time in Miami and America. He is Adam and Casey’s neighbour (its two wooden shacks joined together, A&C on the left, and Albert’s on the right) and his home ended up being a joint home for us all, as we left all our valuables in his house because it was secure, unlike Casey and Adam’s (who had not only had money, and iPod + dock and broken camera stolen, but their 2 hammocks, and a raincoat...).
That evening, we went out to a bar called Fuertes, where another friend (Brian) of the boys’ DJs from time to time. Adam, Casey, Ian and I walked up to the road (Roatan has one long road which runs down the centre, and the little towns branch off it, if you can imagine that) to get a taxi. In order to get to the road, we passed through some homes, and there was a maternal PITBULL tied to one of the houses, and it was clearly instructing some other dog who came out of nowhere growling and gnashing away. Quick thinking Casey picked up something and the dog scarpered. Wasn’t fun, but we got to the road in the end haha! We bartered with some guy who went down to a pretty cheap fare, but it was still more than we could afford. We remained stubborn and stood by the side of the road for about 10 minutes, and a bus driver stopped at one point and we looked at him pointedly, but he wanted to charge us the total fare of the taxi, EACH. So we quickly got back into the cab (who for some reason waited there. Obviously knew we were at it) and headed to Fuertes. The girls were all going in Albert’s car, which unfortunately broke down right before they left the house, so they arrived a little later than us (so we, understandably, had drunk a little more than them by the time of their arrival...)
That night was eventful...Brian wanted to introduce us to his boss, who, in turn, gave us free bottles of Salva Vida and tequila shots all night haha! Some guy turned up in an orange woman beater (the tank top you know?) and a pair of shorts. He had a strange shaped mouth and a very bristly black moustache, and danced like a woman. He was holding a silver thermal flask filled with TATASCAN (the cheapest, most disgusting excuse for white rum ever known to man, all around the world. It comes in a plastic bottle for crying out loud...it’s worse than the equivalent white lightening excuse we have for white cider back home...). Anyway, he placed this in front of us, and nodded expectantly. From the side of his mouth, Adam’s like ‘don’t drink it’ as if any of us ever would haha. Ian lifted it to his mouth and took a pretend sip, I did the same (it smelt like nail polish remover), and Adam followed suit. The man smiled crookedly at us, and held his knuckles out, nodding his head in appreciation! We all punched knuckles with the man, and away he danced! That was just bizarre, yet so hilarious...he kept knuckle punching us as we walked by him, with a marked look of respect on his face. Bless. If only he knew we didn’t drink the poison...
From there, we headed to another club but it wasn’t very good, so we just moved onto a HUGE club called Illusions, which had a VIP room (with free alcohol?!) and we got free entry to the whole place for some reason. We danced the night away and I chatted to Albert for a bit...interesting guy. He’s a very sound person though, we spent the entire time with him pretty much, for the whole holiday! Albert’s cousin was out that night and she was fun, looked after us all a fair bit which was good.
That night, all the transport was on someone’s flatbed, which I just stood on, overlooking the road, and everyone else jammed on the edges, and Holly took Brian’s motorbike!! I really wanted a shot, but I was slightly under the influence and it would thus have been a bad idea...but I was promised my shot on the bike the following day :)
In the morning, we went for a swim on Sandy Bay, just outside the house – the ease of life was just incredible. Bored? Go get in the sea, its RIGHT THERE!!
Then we decided to go to Punta Gorda (PG) again, via French Harbour (FH) again. Tonight, we were being driven around in a blue people carrier by CAMILO who was one of Albert’s close friends, and he looked just like Mario (the singer ‘you should let me love you...’) – identical. Anyway, he took us to FH and dropped us as the gas station while he got ready. The journey was hilarious, there were about 12 people in this one car, and half of us were on each other’s laps, not to mention that the right wheel suspension wasn’t working so all the big people had to go on the left. It was a BUMPY RIDE!
We bought some liquor (which you do just drink outdoors, most casually, believe me. Took some getting used to, but I think I’ve got the hang of it now haha....), some cookies and we planted ourselves at the side of the road. Brian then arrived on his scooter, plus 2 of his mates, one of whom owned a proper big motorbike. I knew I was gonna go for it then, hells yeah. I got on the motorbike, Holly got on Brian’s bike, and Renske got on the other guys bike, and the rest got in the car with. We all headed the other half hour up the road to PG! That was exhilarating, my bike was the first bike for most of it, I felt like I was flying!
So we arrived in PG and stopped outside a little food place but it was crap and no one was hungry (pointless visit) so we moved on to a Garifuna club – Flamingo’s - a little further up the road, which was much cooler. We were let in for half fare, and it was a bit boring to begin with, but suddenly 6 big guys came out the crowd of people on the dancefloor and gathered in the middle. They all had caps on and they looked like they had a purpose. Everyone gave them space, and they moved out a little bit, for some new music to start, with gun shots in the start, which one man mimicked shooting another of his dance crew til he fell to the ground. Then they started doing this amazing Garifuna and Punta dancing, it was so entertaining! [Renske has all the photos so I’m waiting to get a hold of them.]
There was extreme skateboarding on the TV in Flamingo’s and that just reminded me completely of Kelvingrove back home, all the skaters. Made me miss them! But it was really nice to watch and be reminded of them, in such an odd environment... then the BMXing came on too which was brilliant. We all got pretty drunk by the car listening to some BRILLIANT music (seriously this stuff was actually good) and met some very interesting people (that’s all I’m going to say).
Later on, Me and Adam and the 3 bikers headed up to Oakridge, a nearby town to see if a club called Black and White was open, but it wasn’t unfortunately. On our way there we’d passed the police but they never said anything. On the way back we all put on helmets and slowed the speed down a bit, but they decided to stop us anyway...pfftt. I had no ID on me whatsoever, but I got away with it, and Adam had his English travel card which was fine for them (the policeman was holding it very tightly so I wasn’t sure If he was going to keep it or not, but he gave it back). The Brian and the other driver had their papers, but WAYYYYY my driver didn’t have his papers for his bike, so the police took it away and paid some guy to look after it for them. We offered to pay him more to return it but obviously he wasn’t gonna do that so all of a sudden we were stranded in a little dark town at night with 2 bikes, and 5 people... you do the math haha... eventually we came to the conclusion that the pillock without his papers should just wait there til someone drove to Flamingo’s and back to get his ass. That was an event and a half, Adam found it pretty uncomfortable but I didn’t understand what the police were saying (they were talking in Spanish) so I didn’t get most of it, but Adam thought they were gonna take us away or something. Well they didn’t haha, so we went back to the club, and then headed home for the night, the hour’s drive from Punta Gorda back to Sandy Bay in the car was madness....lots of loud music and dancing in the people carrier took place.
Following day, (Monday 28th) we got up and decided to go to Punta Gorda AGAIN so that Renske could collect the clothes she forgot to pick up from Ian and Sean’s (way back when we first arrived on Roatan, remember that?). Casey decided he would rather stay at home and try to ‘catch the burglar’ hahaha.
We hopped in Gish’s car (another friend of Albert’s) and headed first to French Harbour, where we got 5l of wine and a massive bottle of Flor de Caña which is a decent rum to be found here, from Nicaragua. Not to scare anyone, but we had 3 following pit stops for the driver and passengers to refill their cups... got to Punta Gorda so that Renske could grab her stuff, and WOW, Sean was home!! He’d obviously got back from England, but nobody had been in touch with him cos he lost his phone, it was just luck that we decided to go there at that time.
So we ran into his house and made our greetings, and remembered that Mike and Julie had given us generous portions of extra meat from Christmas, and bread and butter pudding, so Adam went a little crazy with the B+B pudding, seriously wolfing that stuff down (he left before it came out on boxing day you see). We grabbed what food and drink was in the house and we all piled into the car!
We ended up in Twisted Toucan, a cool club in West End, and I had some great chats with Sean, and Renske managed to get a long thin cup from FatTuesdays so we were all drinking wine from it haha...she also managed to get a bunch of free drinks from some Americans at the bar, lucky girl!
We met a Rasta guy there who was soooo funny, all about the sharing and stuff (ironic cos he didn’t actually share, he hogged) but he was a laugh, but for some reason he ended up back at Adam and Casey’s....when the next morning Holly could no longer find her purse. It could have been him, it might not have been him, I’ll never know...
Tuesday, we decided to go to West End for a while (where all the shops, clubs, restaurants and bars are) and we took a stroll around the touristy shops, I popped into a dive shop at one point to check up on whether I could actually dive without my PADI card, but they looked me up on the system and I was certified in 2004 can you believe that!? That’s ages ago jeezo
We then decided to walk from West End to West Bay (the long white turquoise beautiful beach...) which would have taken about 40 minutes or so. We got about 20 minutes of the way there and then spotted a water taxi where the driver was going to allow 6 of us to travel for just 100L in total! Mega cheap (Casey went for a walk earlier and just meandered his way to West Bay without us, hence 6 people in the boat, not 7). We got to West bay in about 10 minutes, got a few photos of us on the boat, and we climbed out onto the beautiful pier! Then it was just sitting back and sunbathing and swimming in the clear sea... so much fun :) we decided to head back to West End to get a dinner in our group so we started walking back the way, and stubbornly refused to get a water taxi, we’d rather walk it...
We started walking and it began getting dark. The tide had come in and I could barely see cos I didn’t even have my contacts in. Everyone slopped their way along the beach til we came to a rocky patch, which Casey walked on, and I followed, when the others all trekked through the water to the bridge... I ended up falling all over the rocks in the dark and just kinda lunged into the sea cos I was getting mega stressed. I started slopping through the water and just hit a mental block in the dark and had a proper panic attack :( it was really disturbing, but Laura waited for me and calmed me down. We reached this bridge, with about 20 silver metal steps leading up, a straight wooden middle, and more steep steps down. I regained some composure and shook my way up the stairs, hobbled across the bridge, and went to take the first step down when (if my eyesight had been any worse I would not have seen this) I spotted the metal mesh of the stair was just non existent! It was simpy a metal bar, missing the step itself. I stepped down with wet feet and attempted not to fall off, clinging to the thing for dear life and I thought I was gonna die. I took gradual steps down, at the side of the steps, and eventually jumped the last 4... I’m a little shaken just repeating it now!
Anyway, I arrived on solid ground and we walked the rest of way over the sandy beach...thank goodness for sand. We got to West End, and Camilo turned up with Albert in the minivan and they drove us to a little restaurant in a place next to West End called Half Moon Bay. Renske and I didn’t like the restaurant cos it was completely empty, and they also didn’t serve fish soup, so we headed along the road to a busier one and it was reeeeeeeally nice. The woman working there was a sight for sore eyes though, seriously blonde touristy American with ratty dyed blonde hair and an over-friendly smile. She ranted and raved about her keylime pie: “4 people walked out of here today without food because they couldn’t get the pie, that’s how good this is!” she boasted... I’m sorry, how does that work out to your advantage that you have great keylime pie and that’s the only reason people wanna eat here? mmmmm okay.
Gotta admit though, it was good pie.
We were pretty exhausted after that and just headed home for a boring night at the house.
Wednesday, we headed to another friend of Gish’s homes, an American guy called Zack who’s house was just incredible....so gorgeous! And we got a load of Chinese food to munch on, wandered the huge house for a while, and danced with some girls who were at the house. They came out with us to Crooked Palm afterwards... another club in West End. We got in for free with Zack, and Holly and I sat in the VIP room, getting more free drinks, and looking through the one way mirror at all the plebs (joking) hahaha. We went back out to the bar area....to see Renske DANCING ON THE BAR. Ahhahaa, was hilarious, at least we got a few photographs! We all came home on Gish’s big silver car and I was supporting Renske the entire way back on the flatbed as she had a fair amount to consume (I would have needed a fair amount to get on that bar haha)!
We returned home, Albert was sitting on the porch and we were just hanging out there for a while, chatting, when a man came round the side of the house and told us that a man had been shot just up the street from the house. I walked down the porch steps and looked up the road, and indeed...a man was lying on the ground in very bad condition. There were only 2 people standing with him, though more arrived later as the news spread. Albert had heard 2 gunshots, then a third, around 15 minutes before we got home.
The man was someone that Casey and Adam had seen around a lot. I even saw him the days we were on Sandy bay, he fished on the rocks by the bar, and I think the fact that I had looked into his eyes, and then seen his figure crumpled on the road was pretty incomprehensible.
Casey and Adam’s host, Miriam, had been robbed a few days previously. Her house was one of the most secure in Sandy bay. They stole a knife, which was then used to stab the owner of Gemelas (the shop that we stood outside on boxing day, to go to Fuertes) while it was robbed. The girls had previously met an older couple in the street one day, who invited them to their home (Bob and Debbie...or Bobby and Deb as we kept mixing up) to watch a movie and eat and take warm showers. The girls did this and later on they received a call to ask had anyone opened the bathroom window...and none of them had. Perhaps another attempted burglary... the men who shot the man and robbed the pulperia were described as 2 young Hispanic guys, and the chain of crime on Sandy Bay, including Casey and Adam’s burglaries, implies that they may all be linked...
So honestly, that was a pretty shocking thing to come home to...and we just spent the evening talking and joking, to try and lift the mood a little. There is not much to say, honestly. What can you say?
So the following day was Hogmanay and a few days earlier, Casey and Adam were offered the job of doing doors for the pool bar (Oasis) that we were at the first time we went to Roatan. They originally declined, but we decided to go there for the bells so they accepted the job. We all went to the pool bar early in the afternoon, swam for a little while, I got some peanut chile chicken pasta which was sooooo good, and the boys talked business. It looked pretty dead to be honest, and it was proper gringo territory...hardly any natives, which I was kinda miffed about. If I wanted to go to a pool bar in America, I wouldn’t have chosen Honduras now would i!?
Anyway, we hung out there for a while, and the boys left early to go get their clothes washed at a laundrette (we were like NAW use the peeler! But they couldn’t be bothered handwashing their clothes like real volunteers...) and we headed home shortly after, Albert was going to make a BBQ for us! The boys came back, and Casey and Albert got real haircuts and beard shaves...and therefore Casey made them late for work hahaha... we had a BBQ and another of Albert’s cousins turned up at the house with Camilo, a guy called Lep (for Leprechaun, but we nicknamed him leper for some reason) who was built like a brick shithouse (but in a steroid kinda way, not the flabby way). Anyway, we headed out to Oasis to be with the boys on the bells, and I JUST arrived in time to see them and shout as the bells went off :D it was really amazing.
We got loads of free drink from oasis, 2 bottles of champers and a bottle of flor... I bought myself a daiquiri but some drunk gringa knocked it over and gave me an excessive 200L for a new one...
Then we moved onto Crooked Palm again, in West End, and we danced the night away. We got in for free, and that allowed us into the (free bar) VIP room again, and into the backstage arena where some live guy was singing. I got more free tequila at the back ahah...just danced for a long time! Man I’m going to come back a good dancer, believe me (huge amount of thigh exercise, punta)...
New years day, I went for a ride on Brian’s motorbike up to his best mate’s house, where his mother fed me the most amazing lunch EVER, I even got CHOCOLATE CAKE. The best stuff in existence :) we came scooting back, and decided to get a crate of beer and all of us go to the dock, where I spotted 3 footlong jellyfish! We just slept on the dock drinking beer with a massive group of friends, and Albert’s girl cousin was there for some reason, and some of Brian’s mates. Then we decided to head back to the same area where Brian’s friend stayed, and we went to Albert’s OTHER cousin’s house and sat there drinking more, and eating seafood soup mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, the king crab claws were delicious, but a nightmare to get open!
The following day, we did basically nothing all day. We sat in the house dancing around to music on Camilo’s speakers, and we drank Jamaican tea and had a good laugh (wink).
Following day we intended to come home on the early ferry, but didn’t bother....hahaaaa. we hung out at the house for a while, then took a drive out in Gish’s big massive white pimp mobile to French Harbour where a friend of his was making a massive amount of really good marine soup, with lobster and everything! We were driving along and Holly was sitting in the front seat when Gish just went, Holly, wanna drive?! And she was like heeeeelllll okay then? So Holly got in the car, and started driving (automatic only, and she’d passed her test back in England anyway) all the way to French Harbour! It was brilliant hahah, kudos to her i’ve got a photo of her standing with her ride hahaha...
So we had the delicious soup and met the guy who was making it (another Brian) He was a native guy from Roatan...but one of the generations of British descendents who came first to the island. He had ginger hair, and blue eyes, white skin, and he spoke with a very strong Caribbean accent. He was a very interesting type of person! He was on about having this Scottish/Irish heritage, but being born and bred from Roatan’s lifestyle... crazy.
The following day we got up early and did actually get the ferry...we travelled all the way back, and stayed overnight in Gracias, in Holly’s house (though she’s still on the island, after her purse got stolen she has no money and no way of coming back...we offered to bring her with us, but I would have declined if I was in her position too, staying on the island?! hells yeah!) and then got up very early this morning to return to San Juan. Turns out no pupils came to the school today, we stood waiting. Maybe they’ll come tomorrow? Hope not, I don’t want reality to return.
I’m sitting in Mercedes new house, in the dining room area and I am kinda happy to be here, though its frigging freezing :(
I miss Roatan, and I miss everyone there too, but roll on the next month... WE’RE GOING TRAVELLINGGGGG to renew our visas :D Belize? Cancun? Any thoughts of a destination we should go to, let me know ;)
Happy new year everyone, hope it is all you want it to be!
I hope you made it through this blog without either falling asleep or struggling from hunger desperation. Took me even longer to write, he he he...
Love, Jen xxx

YEEEhaa!

Hey!
About time i wrote another one...
Well school is still really fun...though lessons have ended now. We’re in the middle of planning and rehearsing for the Christmas show, this coming Saturday! The kids are going to do some dances and sing English speaking songs...like Jingle Bells and We Wish You A Merry Christmas... and Barbie Girl – Aqua and The Way You Make Me Feel – Michael Jackson! Haha its funny, the girls are doing Barbie Girl, and they’re strutting their stuff so brilliantly, I’m so proud of them! The boys are doing the MJ song, and i’ve been trying to teach them how to moonwalk, though they’re not really getting it. And yes, i CAN actually moonwalk, and it’s not because they have a crap teacher, thank you very much. So we’ve been singing a bunch of Christmas songs, we’ve been teaching them the words in English and i swear... i have never heard a group of more TONE DEAF people in my LIFE! They are absolutely horrendous. As a nation, Honduras is pretty tuneless it has to be said... It’s soul destroying! I love music, and i love singing, and for all these kids to be so utterly CRAP at singing is painful to more than just my ears. It’s hilarious, i tried getting them to sing a scale, i started them all off on a starting note, and not one of them could hit any correct notes...it’s a lost cause, but it’ll be fun to watch on Saturday. I’m going to try and film what i can of it, but i don’t have any camera battery life left, i’ll see if i can use Emma’s to film it...
Into the bargain... i have been teaching them the Gay Gordons! I’ve got some Scottish music (thanks Stephen) and i’ve been teaching them how to dance, i am SO EXCITED and i have to film that...you should see them. They’re fantastic! In their little pairs (the girls are all bigger than their partners of course ahah...) and they got the hold correct, they know how to twirl their partners, and our major achievement of today was that they learned how to polka! Emma is my partner (she’s the man, i know technically i should be the guy cos i’m taller, but Emma didn’t know how to dance either part, so she picked up the man’s part pretty quickly haha) and i taught her how to polka all the way around the campo (a pitch near the school that we’ve been using to teach them how to dance). Eventually we got the kids to follow suit, twirling their partners beautifully like little twirling pairs, all over the field :)
We then sat down on the stands, and put one couple on the pitch and we watched them dance the full Gay Gordons with no help, and then i corrected their mistakes. The wee boys just loved dancing with Miss Jennifer because she knows what she’s doing haha! Okay i’m joking, they were bright red all the way through it, just like the boys in my year when they had to dance with the teacher :P
It’s going really well though, they picked it up really well, and some of those girls are naturals! Punta is the style of dancing specific to Honduras, and that involves a lot of hip waving and bum shaking, so the girls are all pretty good at that, as they’ve been showing off during the Barbie Girl rehearsal. I’m so proud of them!
We’ve been to Gracias every weekend since my last blog – it’s keeping us sane, and i managed to send off some letters, so you’ll get them soon (it cost me A LOT OF MONEY so my apologies if you didn’t get one, but please write to me and i will write back). We are supposed to be paid 1500 Lemps a month (equivalent to about £70) but we haven’t seen it yet, but when i get my allowance that’s going towards sending letters out to people :) but please write! The address is 2 blogs previous to this.
Gracias is so good, we stay with Holly, and every morning we have yoghurt and alpen and fresh fruit and it is just AMAZING. So refreshing and healthy. Yolanda still loves hanging out with us, she’s so sweet, but she can be SO annoying sometimes. She reminds me of me, making a racket and dropping things. I’ve had some kind of homemade ice lolly called paletta... those little white plastic cups are filled with fruit juice and bits of fruit, or they are filled with milk and cereal, or any flavour that takes the cook’s fancy!... my favourite paletta is milk with fruit loops haha..that multi-coloured cereal. Its pretty yummy!
We were sitting munching these ice lollies in Guancascos, the hotel in Gracias with the free internet ;) when 2 American travellers popped in and sat with us, chatting to Holly and Emma. The girls had gone up to a fort near the hotel previously, but i had to stay behind and do my washing so i didn’t go, but while they were there, they bumped into these 2 guys and had casual chit-chat about Central America and so on... so the guys sat with us (they were hilarious... camp as a royal tent!) and started telling us a story of what happened when they went back to Gracias. They decided to go to a barber shop in town, and ended up chatting away to some Honduran local for a good 20 minutes, when all of a sudden that guy just jumped on a passing bloke and started battering him with his pistol! Meanwhile the 2 guys bolted into the supermarket next door to take refuge. They heard gun shots, but apparently he was only shooting at the ground (no bloodshed thank goodness). Then the police came and took the weird bloke away. We’re warned ‘don’t go out in the big city late at night’ when really the safety advice should be more along the lines of ‘don’t go out in the day to the barber shop in a small town.’ Haha...
We returned from Gracias for another school week, before our rehearsals for this Saturday’s show. The bus we get back is literally a people carrier...and from time to time, they can get VERY FULL. It was packed, and everyone was literally sitting on one another. There were a good 25 people in the teeny wee van, it was no wonder my knees were under my chin!
We headed to the campo for football (Mercedes had gone to La Esperanza, a town nearby so we were all alone) and it was awesome. Jorge (sounds like Horhay) is amazing at football and was showing off his skills, meawhile the girls were heading off in pairs to sit on the stands, because they didn’t like playing (who could blame them, it’s a hooligans’ game!) There is a water pump at the corner of the field and the boys headed over and started having a water-fight which was definitely a challenge to calm down!
While we were there, there were 2 mini-caravanas...but the peope were all so SOLEMN looking, they didn’t have anything to celebrate...and Jordy turned to me and told me in French that 2 people had died, and this was the funeral. I was shocked! I asked Mercedes about Honduran funerals, and they are basically an excuse to drink and eat in excess apparently! Pretty much like home then eh? Kidding on, but the people do literally get completely out of their box here, the cafe was FULL of people who were so so drunk...as Mercedes said ‘if you want fed, go to a funeral!’
There is a a wee dog that lives at the hotel where we STILL live... and when i first moved in, he was proper terrified of humans, like he just bolted away as soon as i went near, but gradually he started coming closer until i could stroke him. He now bounds towards me every time i go into the hotel! The first time he did that, he had his gums pulled back over his teeth, and i was absolutely terrified, though no growl came out. I just ignored him, he could have taken my hand off! But every day he did this, and i stopped ignoring him and he just wagged his tail all around the place and i realised he was SMILING! He now just loves me to bits, and walks the 15 minute walk to the cafe with us, sits outside for 45 mins while we eat, and then walks all the way back with us in the night, protecting us all the way up the road :) he came to school with me a few times (cos i couldn’t stop him, he’s out the hotel faster than we are!) but Mercedes didn’t like it. i’ve named him Homey... like ‘ma homey’ as in a friend. I suppose somewhere inside i was thinking about ‘home’ when i named him, seeing as he is from the hotel, and that pretty much is our home. Come tomorrow, we’ll have been there for a month :|
We’re supposed to move into the house hopefully before the end of this week (we’re going travelling so we don’t want to leave our stuff in the hotel over Christmas and New Year). I am so looking forward to it, though i don’t have my hopes up, we were only meant to be in the hotel for a week or ten days, and we’ve been ‘moving into the new house’ for the past 3 weeks, according to Mercedes. I’ve learned the need to see something to believe it here...
We’re going to Roatan this Sunday, to spend Christmas there :) i think we’re going to the port – La Ceiba, on the mainland to spend new year, its seeming the party city. We’re going to stay with Ian, one of the volunteers from PT, he’s from Scotland, his partner is currently in England, and will be back on the 22nd. YES HIS PARTNER CAME HOME blooming heck! I don’t know if i’m jealous... i don’t want to come home just yet... this experience is too precious to leave right now, and i would have a hard time leaving the kids even now! Anyway, we’re going to Roatan to hang out with Ian for a few days cos CaseyAdam are away travelling to renew their visas... they wont be back til the 23rd, so we’re going to hang out with them then. All of the Honduran PT vols are going to Roatan for Christmas, so it will be nice to hang out with everyone during the holiday period! Better than spending it alone away from home anyway, 2 people isn’t really much of a party it has to be said haha.
On the bus to Gracias on the Friday there, i had a pretty fun journey, there was a wee boy sitting in the row infront of me, and he was adorable, he had big black curls in his hair, and huge brown eyes as per usual here, and he was so sweet. He was playing with my hairband, putting it in his hair and calling it a corona (crown) and giving me high fives and fist punches! It was so cute :)
That evening, we went out to Cafe Kandil, a wee bar type place, with such a cool atmosphere! It was mainly gringos there, but there were a few locals. They played loads of English music...KINGS OF LEON and TRAVIS were involved too! It was so much fun, and we played uno (the card game?) for ages, and Holly kept winning. I never won :(
One of the American teachers, Natalia was there (she’s kind of our Gracias friend...she’s dead nice. i bumped into some gringas on the bus one time and just got the balls to say hi...turns out she lived in Gracias and when we went to Kandil the first time she recognised me and we’re pretty much friends now!) and she told us about another bar type place called Bohilo where they were playing live meringue music. We decided to take a look...BAD MOVE. It was full of horrendous drunk Honduran men, and as soon as we walked in (it was literally a shack, no doors no nothing, more like a kinda outdoor tent thing) a man shoved so hard past me, and went straight to the bar and grabbed the barman by the collar of his clothes and started screaming in Spanish at him... it was bad. We retreated into a corner, and then basically RAN from the place as fast as we could. Natalia got a mouthful for that i can tell you! She forgot to mention the part where you go at around 7-8pm...not 1am...LEARNING CURVE MUCH!?
We were going to go to San Pedro on Saturday to see New Moon in the cinema, but Natalia has mentioned that you can buy it off the street in Gracias for L35... and i was TOTALLY up for that, instead of wasting a mass amount of money going to the city. So we bought that and it was a WRECK. A lot of people were going to the toilet, it was dubbed in Spanish, and there were NO subtitles hahaha... could it have gotten much worse?! Luckily i knew exactly what was going on (cos i’m obsessed of course) so i was telling Emma (who had also read the books...not quite as avidly as me) and Holly (who understood everything that was said because she speaks very good Spanish) exactly what was going on... i enjoyed it despite the quality drawbacks! SOMEONE SEND ME NEW MOON ON DVD AS SOON AS IT COMES OUT PLEASE. I still prefer Edward by the way, none of that crap about Jacob being the new fav...PUHLEASE.
But that was an enjoyable Sunday night...Saturday was spent sunbathing in the extreme heat on the driveway of Holly’s home... it was awesome heat (my back was burned but hey it’s gone brown now) and Holly and I helped wash the dog...with clothing soap :| we felt so bad about it so we conditioned him afterwards hahah! And we used the hose to soak each other cos it was proper boiling. Initially we were somewhat concerned this would be ‘socially insensitive’ but the family joined in and were having a great time too! So we didn’t feel so bad...
We headed up to the carnival part way up the mountain that evening. There were LOADS of stalls, people selling perfume/beauty products, toys, authentic bracelets and bags, flip flops, sweets, food, jewellery...all sorts. I bought a pair of really attractive elastic flip-flops which i love, but that was all. I’m becoming VERY money conscious i should let you all know. I will return to Glasgow stingier than i left!
There was a ferris wheel, a magic carpet, and some kids rides. I wouldn’t have minded going on the wheel, but this is Honduras...it would very probably have fallen apart the time I went on it... so i avoided that at all costs. There was supposed to be a dance type thing, but we heard that they locked the doors once you were inside, and didn’t let people out til 5am! We had a look and it was bogging, so we ran back out before they could lock us in!
Sunday, we spent at a rodeo! It was a tiny circular stand made of wooden planks which were a HORRENDOUS health and safety hazard. I could have fallen straight through the gaps and that is NO exaggeration. My camera has run out of battery cos i have no charger, so Emma is the photographer – she got a lot of awesome pictures (check facebook over the next few weeks). No one was mauled, unfortunately, and they all rode bulls, not horses, but a few horses were being shown off by old experienced riders., the horses were hopping, dancing, side stepping, walking backwards, bowing, and LYING DOWN one man actually stood on the horse’s side as it was lying down in celebration of ‘man over beast’. I was just waiting for the horse to get annoyed..i would have been on the horses side! It was really fun though a great experience, as i can’t remember the one we went to in Dakota all that well...
We headed to the Chinese again (as per) and it was good, but there were 3 drunk guys...one of which was MINGING and hung over my left shoulder talking to us, asking for our numbers on repeat for 5 minutes, not accepting no for an answer. Holly put a fake mobile number in his phone and as he turned to walk away he planted a kiss right on my shoulder. I just focussed on not vomiting into my plate, Emma and Holly thought i should have slapped him but that was worth too much hassle. He left eventually, and i washed my shoulder repeatedly with antiseptic. I didn’t catch anything thank goodness hahaha...
So that was our experience! That evening was spent with the terrible version of New Moon, and we headed back to San Juan this morning, with the whole family. Andrea, Ernesto, and Scarleth have returned from San Pedro, and came back with us this morning to San Juan, so it’s nice to have more people around again...might spur Mercedes to move us all into the new house?!
WISHFUL THINKING.
Will keep you informed as things progress...hope all’s well!
Love, Jen xxx