I find myself sitting here in front of the computer screen with a constipated mind. I feel like I must must must update my online journal because it has been so long since I have written. However, the idea that I must write something profound and well expressed with details holds me back. So finally, I give up on the beautiful details and profound thoughts and I just start to type. In all honestly, my life is ordinary and because it feels so ordinary I have trouble coming up with fantastic details. Many of you probably expect something unique because I am in peace corps and living in a foreign country. Really, I do the same thing that you all do everyday. I wake up in the morning, I eat, I do something productive or work related, I eat again, I read, write or do some leisure type activity, then I eat again, use the bathroom in between, and finally I go to bed and I sleep long enough only to get up and do it all over again. I do the same thing that I do when I am home. However, I do admit that the shades of the colors that paint my picture of life are a slightly different color because the shapes are filled in with different details. In the morning I enjoy fresh mountain harvested mini bananas that have a much sweeter taste than the imported ones that you purchase from the local super market. When I wake up to use the bathroom, I have to use a latrine outside and flush the toilet manually with a bucket. There is no inside plumbing inside my little humble house so after enjoying my coffee with milk, I have to wash my cup outside in the water basin. Because the water is a cooler temperature and I dont enjoy the bucket shower, I often just rinse my hair in the sink rather than taking a whole shower. I am very very jealous of all of you who enjoy a hot steamy shower each morning and made steve promise that I will never have to do without hot water again :)
Our most current work project is painting a large map of the world in one of the schools in the largest classroom. Each day we take a bus thirty minutes outside of Moroceli and then walk an additional twenty minutes to reach a small village called Guadalajara. First we worked really carefully using small flimsy rulers to create a large rectangle with perfect right angles in each corner. Then, we had the sixth graders in the school paint the entire rectangle blue (one and a half meters by three meters long). The hardest step which included making a large grid over the entire rectangle took a long few days. Finally, last Monday we started using the grid to enlarge a paper version of the world. We just finished drawing the United States, Mexico, and all of the countries in Central America including our much loved Honduras. Next week, we hope to finish drawing all the countries using our grid system and then paint them all different colors! I will be sure to take pictures of our completed world map and all the students that worked so hard to complete it!
Monday through Wednesday morning, we have been here in the ugliest city in the world (the stinkey overly contaminated/urinated Tegucigalpa) for midterm medical examinations. It felt so good to have my teeth cleaned after a year! We are still waiting for lab results on the really exciting poop in the cup experience (sarcastically).
Thursday and Friday, we had a pleasant stay in Siguatepeque. Peace corps paid for a two nights stay in a nice hotel since we went to give seminars to the new volunteers still in training on how to teach English and how to teach computers. The trainings both went well.
Friday marked a great change and a great marking of time..... I turned a quarter of a century of age.... ;) Friday morning, we enjoyed a leisure breakfast with coffee, fresh fruit from the super market, and a long walk through the neighborhoods of Siguatepeque. Later in the evening, Steve surpised me with a get together at our host family's house from training. He had invited many of our peace corps friends to share a cake and sing to me!
I hope that enough details popped into my mind in these moments to paint you a small picture of our lives here in Honduras. And even more importantly, I hope that you can feel the love that we send you all. After traveling and a long long snail bus ride from Siguatepeque we are eager to return to our quiet town. When we left, our girl bunny was pregnant with a giant sized belly. If I am lucky, we just might have baby bunnies waiting for us!
We both send you all our love and are so so eager to come home in just a little over a month to give you all hugs in person. Teresa and Steve