MERRY CHRISTMAS

Here is a picture of Vago relaxing in the hammock. It's a little tough right now because we only have one hammock and we have 2 humans and 1 dog that always want to use it. Hopefully we'll get a few more after Christmas. This will be our first Christmas outside of the United States and away from family. That will be hard, plus there is no snow. Our neighbors here are all very nice though. As I was walking to Emily's office today they asked if we had a Christmas tree and when I told them no they said that they had one for us to use. The culture here is very giving, but we have to be careful when they ask us about things we need or they will just get it for us or give us theirs, regardless of how little money they have. And here, you really can't turn down a gift. The local soccer tournament just finished up with my team taking home the 2nd place trophy. They lost in a penalty shoot-out. I stopped 3 of 5 shots (which they tell me is good) but we couldn't make enough to win. So of course, they gave the trophy to the gringo as a keepsake. I really appreciated it and will always have that trophy as a great memory. Not a lot of Christmas plans here so Emily and I are going to have a Crib-a-Thon, kinda like my family in the States. Our goal is to play 25 games over the course of the 24th and 25th, but that is a lot, we'll see. We went with Emily's work to Caribbean coast for their company Christmas party. That was a lot of fun as we stayed at a really nice hotel on the beach and ate good (and free) food. It's really weird not being in the U.S. and around all the ads and commercials for Christmas. I realize know that that is a huge part of the "Christmas" season in the states. Kind of sad really. But we will definitely miss everybody during this time of year (not to mention the pies). Merry Christmas and happy new year to everyone!

update part 2

This is update part 2, so read the one below first! I'm also working on getting some more pictures put up.

In working news, Emily has a story hour at the local library that is quite a hit with the 4-8 year olds. Libraries are different here, you can’t actually check out books, only read them in the library (which is open 4 hours a week) and there aren’t many books. One of my jobs is to start a baseball team with 4^th and 5^th grade girls. So I went to the classes and asked who wanted to play. Everybody wanted to play. So we had a baseball camp. A few volunteers from elsewhere came and helped teach kids who had never played before. We had 98 kids, and oh, if it doesn’t sound hard enough already, we only had 20 gloves, 14 balls and 5 adults. But they loved it. The biggest success of the camp is that no one was badly hurt. Kind of lucky, considering that the kids could already more or less throw, but had never really caught, especially with their left hand. Thankfully, our numbers have dropped a bit (I only need one team of 15) because it is now “summer” for the school kids. Just like in the states summer coincides with harvest (here, the crop is coffee). Not that kids in the states actually work harvest anymore (except Emily’s brothers). The baseball team still has a long way to go though, when I told the kids they weren’t supposed to slide at first they said that they didn’t want to get hit with the ball. Well, I couldn’t argue with that so until the first baseman can actually catch, they get to slide into first. We have other projects too, but they’re top secret so we can’t discuss them (actually it’s just because this is already so long).

I don’t know how I waited so long to tell you all, but I have been playing soccer with the local team. We are called Atletico San Francisco and we’ve got 4 different uniforms. It’s the big time! In my first game I stole the ball and scored a goal. All Emily or I heard about anywhere we went during the next week was my goal. I think it’s the first goal I’ve ever scored in my life. Right now we are playing in a tournament, with games on Sundays, and the town comes out to watch. I tell you, I don’t know if I’ve ever been as nervous as I was before the first game. You know, I don’t even know a lot of the rules, but I can’t really go ask my teammates either.

Emily and I got a few packages a couple weeks ago. We were surprised when it took less than two weeks. Thank you very much to our family for the wonderful goodies and photos. The most difficult thing about having one really good chocolate bar in your kitchen is how to decide when to eat it, because once it is gone you won’t get one for another few months.

Well that’s all for now. I must say that I will do a better job keeping up with this blog. The end of the school year made for a very busy team here because I became de facto computer genius. And don’t worry, Christmas season is here too, we were in the big mall in the capital and they have a 40 foot tree in the center. Though the Christmas music sounds a little different when it is sunny and 70 degrees.

update part 1

So it’s been awhile. We’ve been pretty busy around here, especially considering that volunteers are usually not very busy during their first few months. It would make sense to write about the past weeks in some sort of chronological order but that’s just not my style. The best news goes first!

We got a dog. We found a wonderful golden retriever pup in the capital city. He was raised with a wonderful family and was FAT when we got him. Now our site is about 10 hours from the capital so we were a little worried about having him in the crowded buses for so long…but….he did a great job. He pretty much slept the whole way and never made a mess. Now for those of you thinking “I didn’t know you could take a dog on a bus?” Around here, you can take damn near anything on a bus. Some are nicer “coach” style busses but a lot are also “chicken buses,” which are really just old school buses. But they are named chicken busses because people bring live chickens on them. Whenever I see them, the people usually just tie the feet together and tuck them under their arm. Finding a name for our dog was difficult, but then we decided on Hurley. Cute name, we thought. Well we live on a hill and when we were trying to walk the dog up the hill and all the neighbors were sitting around outside of course he wanted to embarrass us so he wouldn’t walk. So the neighbors took to calling him Vago, a slang word for lazy. So now our Hurley is officially had a name change to Vago (Spanish note: the pronunciation is more similar to bog (like the place) then “o”).

Other big news! The president of Honduras came to our small town. That would be akin to President Bush visiting Emily’s bustling home town of Colton Washington. He didn’t arrive by road because that would take too long, so he flew in on his helicopter. Now where do you land a helicopter in a poor rural Honduran town? Well, you would need somewhere large and flat…so…the soccer stadium (I say stadium just because it has a big concrete fence around it, there are no stands- there is a bench though). Now there are a few people that have keys to the stadium- the mayor’s office, soccer organization, and me. I don’t know what happened with the rest of them but early on the morning the president was coming a guy from the mayor’s office showed up asking to borrow my key because they couldn’t find theirs. I gave it to him, but looking back; I should have gone there and opened the gate myself for the president. What if we weren’t around? Sorry Mr. President, we can’t find the gringos with the key. The president brought quite an entourage, six helicopters landed on the field. Apparently Emily was on tv; or course, I was standing in the crowd near the president and Emily (who loves to stand- NOT! Not jokes work really well in writing!) was sitting in the park without a care in the world.

We are also happy to announce that we’ve moved into our own house. The week before we moved in was spent painting the entire house- bright happy colors of course. We did orange, yellow, green, and blue. It looks wonderful and the very relieved landlord likes it as well. She was noticeably nervous when we began! Right now, we are a little lacking in furniture, we have a bed and one plastic chair. But that means plenty of room for indoor soccer, yoga, and dog tricks. Our plan is for furniture is to use only hammocks (and some plastic chairs for the table we will get). We’ll get a couple hammock chairs and a couple regular hammocks. It’s exciting to be in a new neighborhood with wonderful neighbors but we’ll miss our old family- and they had tv. I think I’ll be visiting them on Sundays to watch football.

Our favorite holiday has passed. Thanksgiving. We had a great little gathering here in Western Honduras. About 15 volunteers got together, and had a real Thanksgiving meal. Some of the stuff was sent by family from the states (yams, cranberry stuff, etc), and others were home grown. The turkey was a concern during the week before as we couldn’t find one to kill (not like hunting, but find a family that would sell us a turkey). The guys in the neighboring town finally found one but chickened out (no pun intended) at the last minute and paid an old lady to do the dirty work of the killing. We ate around a huge elegant table that fit us all (it was actually a ping pong table with tablecloths over it) outside under a warm 65 degree evening.

I broke this into two parts because it was too long.