Moon light and mountains

Hola!

Some of you have been telling me that I havent been updating my online journal as frequent as I should. Really, as of recent things have been going great and I have a lot of new experiences to share. I have so many beautiful moments of experiencing the cutlure and the country of Honduras and finally really being a part of it. What I lack is the words to do it justice. I tell myself that I will wait and write when the more creative words come to me. I say right now I dont feel like I can write all the details to make you feel the experience. So I often put off writing because I feel that I cant do a good job or arranging the words in a beautiful bouquet of detail. But never the less, I will try to give you at least a nibble, a taste of our last weekend.

It was late afternoon on Wednesday after an hour of teaching English to a group of fourth, fifth, and sixth graders. We colored pictures of animals with the words printed neatly below in English "Monkey, Cat, Dog, Pig, Cow, Snake..." I took a deep breathe as they all raced out of the high school courtyard with one more page of their notebooks filled with new information that hopefully makes it into their minds. I had enough of teaching, playing with hair, writing on chalkboards, and separating temper tantrum tangles. I yearned for the air of the mountian, the escape of endless hours of footsteps. Steve pulled the dark blue L.L. Bean backpack stuffed with clothing onto his back and I was armed with a sack of tortillas, water bottles, and the umbrella. We made one stop at a small quaint adobe house on the edge of town to add on a good companion and spice to our adventure-- Darwin, a student from upper level high school classes. At four in the afternoon, we started the grueling climb beyond the nance bushes, guayaba trees, into the higher pine forests, past the first small mountain community of Los Posos. The climb left us sweaty, empty, full only with hunger. The people gifted us with more hot corn tortillas and beans-- direct protein to pump up sore muscles. Our first night of the adventure, we stayed in the community on top of the large ascend known as Buena Vista (loosely translated as good view). For dinner we were like monkeys, ravenging through the coffee plantations and pulling off fresh bananas from the shade trees. We even got a quick lesson on how to transplant the seedlings of the banana trees to create more shade for the coffee plants below. Before leaving the next morning to further our hike down the next side of the mountain, the senora of the house made us fresh coffee with once again more corn tortillas. I peaked into a wooden crate resting near the wood stove to see the youngest of her six children. She shared with me that she had the baby right here in the house by herself because she couldnt walk to the nearest clinica in Moroceli. WOW, what a strong woman! We hugged her and exchanged kisses on the cheek. Gracias por el cafe tan rico!
Our hike brought us to the next community (more like a cluster of adobe houses with maybe one house selling snack size potato chips, lard, sugar, and rice) of Las Uvas. We passed a school filled with staring eyes. Coming upon the school, I enjoyed listening to the tune of their national hymn, but as we approached the children were distracted by our height and white skin and the tune fell off key. We kept walking, talking (Thanks to Darwin all in Spanish), hiking, sweating... The views over the green rolling mountains were incredible. It reminds me of the rolling appalachians in Vermont in the United States, only no paved roads and more men on horseback with an entirely different culture forming the details of the lives of the people below. So we hiked, observed, and really dug deep into what is Honduran culture enjoying every corn tortilla and banana along the way and finally arrived to El Jute (another communtiy cluster of adobe mud houses and smoking wood stoves) and at last to Paso Hondo, our final destination where we would stay two nights with our host family. After three hours one day to Buena Vista and additional four to arrive to Paso Hondo we had made it! We read our books, sat lazily by the rivers edge, and shared jokes in Spanish. We no longer felt like North Americans intruding on a tranquil Honduran culture... just friends hiking and enjoying each other. One more detail that truely amazes me that I must share and end with! In the communities where there is no electricity--- there is light... The moon lights up the whole sky and I can always see the gravel stone road, the bubbling of the brook, the lips of Darwin moving rapidly as he tells the finishing line of a good joke!
And this weekend, we are passing through Tegucigalpa towards our biggest adventure yet! To climb CELAQUE-- the biggest mountain in Honduras. We plan to hike up it in two days and down in one day, sleeping in tents in the moonlight with a group of six other volunteers. We are off! one step in front of the other. I send you all my love and just a little taste of the beauty of simple life here in Honduras!!!

Truckin It!

Buenos Dias amigos y familia!
At five fifteen a.m. this morning, our alarm honked an absurd amount of beeps. Steve swatted at it, but it was relentless as it knew best. We arose from our slumber and threw our jeans, t-shirts on and we got out of the house by five thirty. Every morning, the big yellow public bus hauls itself over the hills, down the dirt dusty roads to the capital. We had never traveled out of Moroceli to the capital on a Sunday and mistakenly counted on the bus leaving regularly. The neighbor advised us that Sunday buses do not pass as frequently as during the week. So there we found ourselves, in the morning dawn wandering down the paved road. Not more than ten minutes later a roar of an engine gave us hope of finding a comfortable ride on the public bus. However, instead of the yellow bus, a large monster of a semi truck hulled itself over the hill. I stuck out my thumb, and at this gesture you must understand that it is not as dangerous here as in the United States to hitchhike. Here, hitchhiking is a common form of transportation because the majority of the population does not own their own automobile. In response to my gesture, the driver of the semi truck pulled took his time putting on the break. The semi lay waiting about twenty-feet ahead of us and we ran for our free ride in the high up cab.
You might think that here is the climax of my story. While it was exciting to ride the semi truck, our ride ended all too shortly at the intersection at the main road and we found ourselves waiting once again for a bus to pass. Those of you that know me well know that one of my greatest faults and beauties is my lack of patience. For this life is never boring since I go from one thing directly to the next. So as you can imagine, as Steve was ready to take a rest under the shade of a tree, I advanced walking not willing to waste a precious moment waiting. We walked up the hill still an immense distance from the capital. Each pick-up truck that passed, I tried the luck of my thumb, but the trucks roared past on the main road. Finally a loud chug, chug, chug, hummed in the distance and its song came closer and closer until we saw its beastly headlights and large white frame. Another semi. We joked about the inprobability of it stopping but we both tried the double luck of our thumbs. It roared past us and then the beast calmed down to a rest some forty feet in front of us and the drivers hand waved out the window, a friendly invitation. We ran with all our might and climbed onto the big jagged tires and crawled into the red capeted cab. My curiosity lead us into a conversation about where he was from, and respectively we shared our experiences with him. Our friendly driver carries cuban cigars all over central america. In his current trip, he had left his home country of Costa Rica the day before and was headed to the North Coast of Honduras. He has two children, he says, and enjoys his job of passing through and getting to know the Central American countries. And for sure we had one opinion in common-- Tegucigalpa is indeed the ugliest capital in all of the world. And in that horrible ugly, smelly, smogged city, he left us with a hand shake and a Que le vaya bien. It was a great adventure truckin it from our small pueblo of Moroceli to the big fat captial of Tegucigalpa.