Tiempo, Donde va?¡

As March sneaks away slyly, and April sneaks up behind me like an unsuspected monster, I wonder where these months have gone?! Maybe time and memories just fly away and vanish, but really I like to think that life is more complex that just time and all its events getting lost in the dust. Maybe the memories that we create float up in bubbles to stay with God so that he can read them and judge our behaviors. Or maybe more clearly, the memories of the past influence us and make the present. So now in these moments that I am spending in Honduras are shaping me, molding me into who I will become in the future. Every little thing and conversation I have and do influences others. If I would not have gone to the highschool at the same precise moment, I might not have discovered the wonderful house we are living in now and we would still be living in darkness without any windows! If my Mom and Dad would not have loved me so much, I might not have the love for others and the longing to help out and I might not be here today. So then all the memories in the past have brought me here and therefore time does not just go away and disappear. The past lives on to make the present and the present will breathe life into the future.
I will share the memories of today with you. And you can take them where you please. We woke up in a hot sweat at six a.m. (the heat never takes a nap and breathes air as hot as fire at us at all hours). I ate a quick bowl of cornflakes mixed with powdered milk and ventured into the already blazing sun to continue my fight against my enemy named the laundry heap. I scrub and scrub all the dust that blows in the thirsty streets. There was no water in the faucet, so I used the water in the "Pila." The pila is a huge tank where we store water reserves. I use one bucket and mix it with laundry soap and swirl the clothes around, my hands are the washing machine. I am careful to splash some of the water on myself to sway off the heat. I refill the bucket a second time to rinse them all and twist all the water out before I hang them to dry. The sun is so strong that even the heavy blue jeans dry in an hour! Steve left on the six thirty a.m. bus to travel to the capital to put funds from the computer center in a bank account. In this way, the computer center can obtain a bank card to pay for telephone minutes over the internet. Finally, Moroceli will offer international calling as many people have family members illegally living in the U.S.A. Everybody has a story to tell about how their brother, son, or husband, cousin, nephew, or sister has snuck safely over the Mexican border to live the rich live in the U.S.A! There is a steriotype here that the United States has lots and lots of money and lots and lots of jobs. There is no escaping the reality that there are better paying jobs in the U.S and even a dishwasher earns much more than the factory work here in the tabaco factories. The tabacco factories are the ONLY work facilities here in Moroceli. So my love left for the capital around six thirty and I stayed behind to finish laundry and then I wrote a long letter to my parents because I miss them soo soo soo much! I tried to mail it today, but without success because there are no stamps available. I will have to wait until next Tuesday. Around nine thirty, I went to check internet email and attempted to write this journal entry, but the power went out and everything got erased! (Yes this is my second time writing this!) I left Moroceli at nine thirty a.m. on by mountain bicylce for the super bumpy rock roads that wind through the sugar cane fields and across the river to the small pueblo of Guadalajara. Today there was a mother´s meeting and the teachers introduced me as the English profesora. The mothers gave me a loud applause and one even invited me to her house afterwards to see her tortillas and her mango tree. She lives in a humble clay house and has a fire stove and a large open space with a few mango trees and chickens. I thanked her kindly and continued my battle against the hot dusty climate of Honduras to make my way back across the river and through the sugar cane fields. The big companies can afford to irrigate the sugar cane fields with the water from the river, but once I pass the sugar cane, everything is dry to the bone and there are only brown spiney plants that poke their way through the tough hardened earth. So I finally arrive at home after my hour bike journey in full sun and I drink too bags of water within ten minutes. Then I sit with the old man named Victor who teaches art classes in the art center that was started by the past volunteer. My little good friend named Migelito sees me and runs to me with a large hug. It makes me feel warm inside and he walks me home to my new house. He cuddles with my bunny and I see the bus come in from Tegucigalpa and I am sooo happy to see the love of my life has arrived from the capital! He brought me a bag of grapes and how yummy they tasted!!! I hope I gave you a little taste of my day...I kept all the grapes to myself!
We are going to peddle our way home soon and will head to spend our Saturday in Danli, seeking chairs and a few more kitchen utencils. We send you lots of abrazos y besos de Honduras!
Love, Teresa and my wonderful husband (Esteban as he calls himself in Spanish)

Casa Nueva

To all those that we love and miss so much,
It is funny how things work themselves out sometimes. I find that if I am patient enough, things always paint themselves into their own beautiful picture. I struggle to be my own artist, struggle with mixing the colors too much until they make a black glob of frustration. If only I let my life glide with patience, the colors mix together so nicely. I wonder though if it is this way for everybody. What about the poor people that sleep in the streets, or the women who have ten children and stay with their husbands that they know are cheating on them just for the income from the farms? Does life work itself out nicely for them? Do they feel blessed and why is it that I am so lucky? The love of my life offers me the best advice. He tells me to appreciate all that I have and share my happiness with others. He tells me not to think so much, not to try so hard to stretch every detail out of life`s workings and just let it glide and paint itself.

Without windows, our house was gloomy and my thoughts were gloomy and I was feeling more homesick than ever. We met with Profesora Keta who travels everyday from Tegucigalpa to work in the highschool yesterday morning to inquire about her house that is vacant. She said that we were welcome to rent it for 900 lempiras per month. Steve, my patient cool cucumber husband, said we would wait until Friday to move in slowely and peacefully. But God knows my patience level. Let me just tell you that I borrowed a truck and we moved in by ten 0`clock last night. We were out in our dust bowl of a yard hunting for my bunny, Galleta and our hen and rooster at ten 0`clock last night to move them. It is always a funny sight to watch Steve chase the rooster and the hen and watch all three of them flock around the yard. This morning our whole family woke up happy to the sunlight shining through the windows (when I say our whole family I mean our four children too). Our four dumb children are a big boy bunny named Galleta (Cookie in Spanish), a little girl bunny named Rosita (Rose in Spanish), a big fat hen named Bell (Short for beautiful in Spanish), and a loud white rooster named Ogi (short for proud in Spanish).
After fresh oranges and oatmeal for breakfast on our tabletop stove, we walked the now short five minute walk to the highschool. I met with the Spanish teacher and talked to his class about starting a Moroceli newspaper where the students would write the articles in pairs and we would work together to print it out on the computer. The Profesor Jorge gave me a list of his best twelve students. I read the names on the list and told the students that if anybody else was interested they could add themselves to it. I told them that I wanted only people that were willing to work hard and no HARAGONES!!! I now have a list of seventeen students who want to work on writing a newspaper together. I told them we would have our first meeting on Monday at 8:20 a.m. I was brainstorming fun ideas to get them started on the newspaper and I think I have my plan all set for Monday. I am going to have them divide in groups of four or five people and come up with a list of three possible titles for our newspaper per group and then we will vote on the newspaper name. Next, I will have the small groups brainstorm ideas for articles or fun things we can include in a newspaper and we will put all the ideas on a whiteboard. We will then give one article assignment per pair of students. I hope all this works out. I have lots of ideas. It is only a matter of personal confidence and organization strenghts that I need to spin them into reality.
I wish you all the most of every moment. We send you lots of amor, abrazos, y besos, Teresa y Steve

Amor, amor, amor

Today is one of those days where I think and I wonder too much. I woke up this morning, itched my eyes clean of morning eye boogers and immediately questioned my place in life. I fought the green mosquito netting, and stumbled to begin my conscious battle of the unbearable heat. Clearly this is not my homeland of Michigan where the winds still bring a chill until late April. Here the heat never stops and it only gets worse in April as they say. So what am I doing in this dusty hot country of Honduras? It all stemmed from a conversation over coffee one evening. I sat looking into the deep brown eyes of the love of my life while sipping a sweet chocolate mocha and together we talked the night to its end, sharing dreams, ideas, hopes, building our lives together. In those never ending nights of coffee with just a little bit of sugar, the idea of joining the peace corps stirred and then it was only a distant dream. We filled out papers, wrote essays, read books, but most of the effort to join was the pushing desire to help people. God knows I want to badly to help others in need, to really change something. I feel that life, god, other people, have given me so very much that I never even deserved. I have a wonderful family. I have the opportunity of education. I have real love. I have a best friend and friends that really love me. I have everything that I need. I want to share all that warmth that I have inside me. And so somehow those words over coffee stirred into a reality. On August 16, 2004, I cried my eyes out as I saw my Mother and Father, my sister, my family, my friends just one last time before boarding the airplane. But at the same time, I felt an unexplainable whirl of excitment. I thought to myself...I am going...I dont know where! I am going to live...I dont know where! My job will be...I dont know what! I was just going..and the unknown was so exciting to me! So we were off to Miami to start Peace Corps training for our two years service in Honduras. But the adventures then were a mystery. Now I am well into the novel of my adventures here in Honduras. We survived months of extensive language training, four to six hours a day of classes. We lived with two host families that were absolutely amazing! On November six, we arrived to our site, a little pueblo called Moroceli. And here we are still with such a broad mission---to help the people. The big question is HOW? Well, the people here want to learn English, they want to learn how to use computers. So for the first three months, we offered lots of English and computer classes for all ages. We had a graduation ceremony with diplomas for all our students on the last day of February. My personal problem is that I dont think teaching English is really changing the world. And just like joining the peace corps itself grew from a seed in the mind over coffee, every idea has its seed. And I have so many seeds in my mind now...what can I do? I was thinking on the long bus ride the other day... I am always thinking... But here are some ideas that I will try to impliment in the next couple of weeks. A community newspaper written by the highschool students Nutrition, Health, Sexual education on Aids talks in the highschool gym class Teaching the older highschool students elementary English and having them teach my elementary students. Giving more talks on developing relationships (what do you want in a relationship?) I will see how things go in the coming weeks. We took our first step towards these goals today and we marched our butts in the scorching heat down to the highschool to talk to the directora. We shared with her our ideas of the newspaper and the English classes. The Spanish teacher agreed to form a group of ten students for us and help us with the grammar revision of their articles. We will see where it goes. Our idea of joining peace corps led us here. Maybe one of my corny ideas one day will lead somebody to change. I am lacking the motivation to keep a consistant journal and so today with a fan blowing on my back in the computer center I thought keeping an internet journal might encourage me to write more often--- One more post notice--we are looking for a new house because our current house has no windows and is extremely dreary and HOT! Today the teachers in the highschool showed us one house that MIGHT be up for rent. We absoluetly loved it because it has more windows and four rooms instead of just two, it also has a porch! I will keep you posted. I really miss you and love you all--- Teresa y Steve