Dull

What do you see when you look out your frontroom window? In the first moments of morning, when your eyes adjust to the reality of another chance at life, another day, what is the scenery that welcomes you? On my spectrum of the world, it is dull. I say dull because all the crisp colors of the buildings, the crisp edges of the hills and white circles of the clouds swimming in blue are dull. The air is suffocated with dust particles, smoke from the field fires, and pollution. No matter how hard I try to focus my eyes to see the beauty of color of nature around me, it is dull. I wish I could reach out my hands to console mother nature, remove all the pollution particles that suffocate her breath of life. So I wake up this morning and I exit through our black metal back door in order to use the toilet that sits behind a cement wall in our yard and right away the dull air greets me.
Just after a breakfast of toast and jelly (we find integral bread in Danli and jelly too), and a good tall cup of coffee, I stand in the back yard over the cement washing tub doing laundry. I marvel at my clean line of clothing drying in the sun. I stand close and see the crisp color of blue in my pair of capris, all the soils pushed out by my scrubbing over the wash board. In a day of walking up and down the gravel dusty roads in Moroceli, they will be coated in a gray film from the dirty air particles.
I would like to tell you my writing is a dramatic over exaggerated view, but really maybe its not dramatic enough. This infectious disease of pollution spreads into the rest of Central America. Today the newspapers anounced that all of the Honduran airports are CLOSED because of low visibility. I cant see the crisp colors out my front door, and the pilots cant see the runway.
Steve teases me and says my rabbits are so harmful. They eat all our cables, cords, furniture... After my little white foo foo bunny attempts to take a bite out of the orange extension cord that connects the fridge, he states, "Rabbit STEW, better to eat the rabbit than to have the rabbit eat the cords." My reply is "We humans are more harmful that my little bunny. Human STEW, better eat the human than have the human toast the world"

Oh, and one more thing before I close. Can you pretty please leave me some comments? I would love to hear from you, your thoughts, your input, and even better little love notes that keep me going :) I am going to go back outside now and coat myself with dust and gray film.

Brush Your Teeth!

Today is Thursday and I call it Guadalajara day because nearly every Thursday, we travel on our bicycles through the sugarcane plantations, cross the river, and to the small pueblo of Guadalajara to work in a school. Everytime we visit I teach fifth, sixth, and third grade English and Steve teaches fourth and second grade English. We also teach a Como Planear Mi Vida lesson together to fifth and sixth graders. Como Planear Mi Vida translates into English exactly as How to plan my Life and inside the teacher`s manual it has several lessons on self esteem, relationships, sex, aids, drugs, study strategies and values. In my opinion it is a great program developed in Costa Rica with many necessary conversations and activities for youth. Today, however, we left our house with more than our English plans and our teaching manuals. We left armed with eighty toothbrushes and toothpaste packets donated to Peace Corps from Colgate.
After teaching my fifth and sixth graders a lesson in the numbers from one to one hundred in English, I counted out twelve of them in English to volunteer to do a skit and teach the first graders how to brush their teeth. Four of the sixth grade students entered the first grade classroom with me holding white pieces of paper. I told the first graders that the four students holding the white sheets of paper were our TEETH. Then I told them that we were pretending it was in the morning and we were going to eat a few pieces of candy. I asked them who liked candy and of course every first grader raised their hand. On cue of hearing the word CONFITE (candy in Spanish) a student holding a bright pink paper with the word CONFITE written on it entered the room and stood in front of one of our TEETH. I told the students that candy is sweet and has lots of sugar in it and it covers our teeth with a layer of sugar. Next, I told them that it was snack time and we were hungry for charamuscas (little frozen juices in bags that resemble popsicles). Everybody agreed that they loved charamuscas. So on cue, a sixth grader holding a yellow paper with the word CHARAMUSCA written on it entered the classroom and stood in front of another one of our TEETH. I explained once again that charamuscas have lots of sugar in them and that sugar coates our teeth and eats away at them and can ruin them. Then I told them that it was the afternoon and asked if anyone wanted a coca cola to drink. Everyone of course shreaked with enthusiasm. A sixth grader holding a sign reading Coca Cola entered and covered another TOOTH. With all my sweet delights standing in front of the students role playing teeth, I explained that our teeth were now all covered with sugar and were being ruined. I can save our teeth and clean them by brushing them, I explained. I picked up a broom and told them that this was my toothbrush. They all roared with laughter as I brushed the students posing as sweets away and we once again could see our shiney white TEETH! I explained using the broom that we brush the teeth on the sides making little circles, almost like painting and the ones in front with an up and down movement. Next another sixth grader entered and posed as an example and I brushed his teeth in front of everyone demonstrating the proper circular movements on his teeth. Then I gave all the sixth graders toothbrushes and asked if they could do it correctly for the first graders. Finally, each pair of sixth graders took ten first graders outside and helped them brush their teeth using water in buckets from the pila (cement sink). It was an amazing dental moment in history! Seventy children brushing their teeth together in the school yard! Believe me, I took lots of pictures and they will be on their way to your email boxes as soon as I sign my name with love to this entry.
Oh, one more thing-- as you brush your teeth tonight think of me and remember that I love you all and miss you oh so much.
All our love, Teresa and Steve

Daily Life

Sometimes at any random moment of the day, I stop and I wonder what those that I love and miss so much are doing at that exact moment. If I popped into Kalamazoo, where would I find my Mother at 1:17 p.m. on this Friday afternoon? I imagine her cooking lunch, maybe a tomato soup, or cheese sandwiches. I CAN imagine, because I know the place. I can picture the house, the surroundings because it is my place that I claim as a part of me. However, when you think of me, you can't really imaine with accuracy because Honduras is not a place that you can claim as your own in your experiences. So my challenge becomes complicated as I have to paint an entire picture as acurately as I can with detail for you to picture and become a part of my life still as I live far away in this foreign country. Really though, it is not so foreign and so different because we are all human. With the changes of language, climate, foods, culture--people are still people with the same overwhelming emotions of love, sadness, anger, and happiness.
I feel like the paper before me is immense and my job is to paint it vibrantly and accurately for you. What color should I start with? Should I paint the background scenery first? I'll tell you that each day I wake up in a sweat, baked from the heat. The dust enters through the front screened windows and cakes our floors with a dust icing. The landscape is brown, beige, vacant of greenery. The land, the people, the farms, the cows all thirst for water. There are abandoned donkeys that are too old to haul that roam the streets and wake us up in the middle of the night with their loud screeching roars. Our little house is on the main dirt road leading to the center park of Moroceli. Across the street, a nice pulperia (convenience store awaits with sodas, juices, crackers, and other packaged foods). With all the details painted, the overall landscape is a brown dusty town with donkeys, horses, and cows that randomly walk by.
Now for the foreground, I fill in the detail of my weekly routine. Sunday finds us leisurely hiking, or biking to neighboring villages to explore our surroundings. In my United States culture, if I walked up to a stranger's house and introduced myself kindly asking for a cup of coffee, the owners would most likely tell me to leave and call me a tresspasser. A stranger on the doorstep is percieved as danger and a potential robber. Here, where the women often spend all their time in their homes tending to the children, cooking, cleaning, handwashing laundry (beleive me this takes lots of time), they love visitors. On Sundays on our long hiking adventures, we often visit locals, sipping coffee with too much sugar (people here drink sugar with coffee rather than coffee with sugar). I use my freetime to practice guitar, read lots and lots of books, and crochet. On Sunday evening at seven p.m., I started an English class for the older high school students and they come to teach sixth graders on Wednesday. The problem I had this past week was that only one high school student showed up on Wednesday to teach the sixth grade out of the nine students that come to my Sunday class. On Monday, we wake up around 6:30 or so and eat bananas or have oatmeal for breakfast and then we head to the high school which is only a five minute walk from our new house. The high school is overloaded with students and has about fifty students per teacher. I teach an hour class on how to write articles for newspapers and am trying to get a bimonthly newspaper going to sell to the community written by the high school students. I started this project about three weeks ago. The students all voted on a title for the newspaper, discussed article ideas, and are now writing their rough drafts of their articles in groups of three or four students per group. Steve will work with them this Monday and teach them how to put them into microsoft word on the computer and put them into columns. I will keep you up to date on how this project continues. We walk home for lunch (usually beans, cucumber, tortillas, or spaghetti). Every afternoon, we visit people in their houses, go to the computer center, and try to help out at the art/culture center.
Tuesday we ride our bicycles to a village called Suyate and teach English and computer class. Wedesday, I hang out in the high school assisting various classes with discipline and go to the elementary school at ten to "observe" the group of high schoolers that supposedly agreed to teach the sixth graders English. I will let you know how many come next Wednesday. Thursday is the day to ride our bikes to a village called Guadalajara (about an hour ride on bumpy dirt roads including taking off our shoes to cross a river). There we teach English, and give talks about self esteem, drugs, communication. Friday we usually go to Danli to buy groceries and escape Moroceli. On Saturdays we are helping start a local market in Moroceli where people that have farms nearby in the mountains can come down and sell their produce. Now everybody goes to Danli or Tegucigalpa to buy their fruits and vegetables. I am tired to painting now. I hope I gave you enough detail to paint you a decent picture of our daily life here in Moroceli, Honduras.

The current moment finds us in the Peace Corps office in Tegucigalpa. There is a book exchange here and I am borrowing the books INTO THIN AIR by Jon Krakauer, THE NOTEBOOK by Nicholas Sparks, ANNE OF GREEN GABLES by L.M. Montgomery, STONES FROM THE RIVER by Ursula Hegi, and PRODIGAL SUMMER by Barbara Kingsolver. Any thoughts and recommendations on what to read first? Email me! I love to hear from you. Love and big abrazos, Teresa and Steve too!

Feliz Cumpleanos!

A birthday of someone you love is not just an ordinary day. It is a day to really celebrate how much you appreciate their being. So April 12 was the birthday of the love of my life. Normally, I would drive him to our favorite Indian Restaurant or Olive Garden, or even better yet to his Mother’s house for a yummy dinner and then we would head to the bar with a bunch of friends to get a little tipsy and maybe dance a bit. However, being in the Peace Corps with no nearby restaurants and Mom’s home cooking far far away, what can I do? A surprise party with the community of course! So for the past couple of weeks, I have been secretly inviting the high school students that we work with, all the nice families that have helped us settle in to Moroceli, and several of the children from our English classes. One of the teachers in the high school helped me make a cake called three milks and horchata to drink with it. Pastel de tres leches (Cake of three milks) is a wet cake. First it is made like a regular cake and then a mixture of condensed, evaporated, and regular milk is added on top and absorbed by the cake. It is a sweet soggy texture, but very yummy and Steve's favorite dessert here in Honduras. Horchata is a very popular drink here made out of ground rice, sugar, cinnamon, and a bit of lemon peels. It actually tastes pretty good. I told Steve that we had a “meeting” at the Art Center at five. Really no such of a meeting existed. Rather, all the people were hidden inside with the cake and horchata drink with their voices ready to shout sorpresa (surprise)!
Two of the other volunteers also called us up and payed us a surprise visit. They of course brought with them a bottle of rum and a bag of plantains to fry. For a birthday dinner, we had red bean soup, plantains fried, and scrambled eggs with peppers and onions. Steve's favorite Honduran meal. Brian, the visiting volunteer made liquados (milk shakes) with bananas, milk, and sugar in our recently purchased blender. To my love, I really hope you enjoyed the celebration of you!

A Dismal View

On Tuesday we had to travel from our site in Moroceli to Siguatepeque for a training on how to be an emergency zone coordinator. Each department in Honduras is assigned to two volunteers to be in control of emergencies. There are also perks involved such as a few extra vacation days and the use of a cell phone! Wow, imagine that a cell phone in Honduras! So it was on this excursion that I was finishing up with my reading of City of Joy, a sad sad novel about the poverty in Inida while watching the scenery of the shacks and lowlife in Tegucigalpa pass by on the window of the public transportation bus. The shacks cling to the mountain. I tried to see the joy in it, I tried to blurr my vision and make that mountain look somehow beautiful, but all I could see was ugly. A mountian destroyed with deforestation and litter and dirty insect infested shacks. But as my book, City of Joy, suggests maybe the lives in those shacks that see the mountain as their home make the beauty. As the city scape dwindles into a more picturesque nature view, the ugliness still persists. A cloud of smog suffocates the crystal light of the sun, and scars natures beauty with a gray haze. Our earth is now an old woman, with a heavy gray expression on its face, no longer light with youth and gaiety. Sometimes when I look at the world, I am disgusted and other moments when I look into the deep brown eyes of my husband and I see love I see the beauty in it. It all depends on my perspective of vision. I hope your view today is beautiful. Or even if the whole of it is ugly, look for the part in it that feeds the appetite of your heart. Love, Teresa y Steve

Rabbit stew anyone?!

So you all know about our four children right? We are just one big happy family in our lil house. Well, not quite. We`ve had a rooster, hen, a big boy bunny, and a baby girl bunny. Our original idea was to let the baby girl grow and then let her have a romantic night with the big boy bunny and then we would have baby bunnies! Well our baby girl bunny grew too fast and too much--it appears as though she has grown balls and a pee pee and she is not really a she as we thought. I am just kidding about the stew by the way and still love my baby bunny--just a little disappointed that we arent going to have any little baby bunnies.
Besides our bunny growing balls, our work projects are going fine. Today, we spent the day in the highschool. About a week ago, I met with the Spanish teacher and told him about my idea to start a newspaper in Moroceli. So he gave me a list of his best students and today we had our first meeting! I am always a bit nervous starting new projects as I never really know what I am getting into. The seventeen highschool students entered the classroom dressed nicely in their uniforms and I began with an ice breaker activity. I had each person write down two truths and a lie about themselves. For example, I wrote the following: My favorite color is green, I can play the piano, and I have traveled to Italy. The students need to guess which one is the lie. (For me of course my favorite color is not green!) So with this activity we became aquainted with one another. For our second activtity I had everyone divide in groups of three or four and think of two possible titles for the newspaper. When each group had two titles in mind they came to write them on the board and afterwards we voted on the titles and came up with one final title for our newspaper. The title of our newspaper in Moroceli is........ Lo mejor de mi Tierra (which translates to The Best of My Land) I think it is a pretty creative name and I am proud that at least we took a first step and have a title and a group of enthusiastic writers ready!
One of my other project goals was to teach some of the highschool students English to teach to the elementary students in Moroceli. So for the past week, I told several highschool students and every teacher I could find about a free English class every Sunday night at seven. And this Sunday, I had nine people show up! I taught them several animal names in English and various games to play with children such as acting out the animals and goofy animal songs that I made up. Our first time to teach in schools is next Wednesday and I will be sure to share with you the experiences as they unfold the quilt of my life!
I hope your quilts are unfolding beautifully! I miss you all so so so much and I send you all my love! Teresa and Steve too!