Volcanoes

So, I haven't been the most communicative traveller I know but I hope you'll all forgive me for neglecting my loving family. I do still plan on coming home and not settling in Nicaragua, to forever work as a hostel-bed-changer or what-not.

As I'm sure you've guessed I'm in Nicaragua at the moment. Or 'Nica' as everyone calls it. Travellers are very lazy speakers. We arrived in Granada yesterday after spending way more time than we'd thought in Leon, a little colonial town (I say colonial but surely almost every town in the Americas is colonial having been colonised... Anyway I got a colonial vibe). It was our first stop after Honduras and such a change! We actually felt safe to wander round after 6pm, which I definitely would not recommend in Tegucigalpa. We even saw bins dotted all around town which is a nice change from the Honduran attitude of 'just chuck it out the nearest bus window'. Also there are noticeably more travellers in Nicaragua than Honduras, but hearing people's reviews of the place I'm not surprised. I get very defensive when the 'Honduras-bashing' starts, it's like family: you can make fun of them but if anyone else does then that's cause for war.  They all say Honduras is like every other place in Central America but just lacking all the good points of all the other countries, ie culture. It's too Americanised apparently. To be fair, I can see their point; there's a Wendy's in any town of a decent size.

Actually the first thing I noticed was the difference in the taxis and the dogs: you can always tell how rich a country is by the number and condition of their stray dogs. They are all kind of fat which is really surprising since I'm still sure nobody owns them. And the taxis were so clean! They even had seat belts and doors that opened from both sides. And windows! It was such a luxury. 

Well yes, so Leon is a very pretty little town, we stayed at a new hostel where we almost asphyxiated in the heat at night. We went volcano boarding down an active volcano called Cerro Negro. It's not actually as dangerous as it sounds, it's more like sledging on black instead of white. I'm proud to say I was the only one of our group who didn't face plant off the sledge onto volcanic rock though, which is a good thing since at the speed I was at I wouldn't have had a face anymore if I had done that. There was a live reggae night at our hostel one evening which was fun, the guy to me sounded just like Bob Marley, but then I'm not a reggae expert.

Oh, maybe I should clarify the 'we' I keep mentioning is still just me and Sarah. We're meeting her little brother in San Jose and perhaps another volunteer at some point. Apparently the Peru vols have rented a car and are driving up the way so, you never know, we may meet them and hitch a ride.

We went to a nearby beach paradise for a night, and literally did nothing but finish our books and chat to strangers. My book, The Poisonwood Bible, is awesome but so depressing, it really makes you hate America. Well, the American government. The place was on the Pacific coast though so the waves were massive. We were going to go surfing but we're saving that for San Juan del Sur, our next destination.

Then on our last night in Leon we went on a full moon hike. We left the tour place at 11.00pm after a free dinner (well it felt free but was actually included in the tour price) and began our hike at half past. At 5am we reached the top of this volcano where you can peer over this terrifying ledge into this crater and see all the lava at the bottom (and choke yourself on sulphur fumes, but that's not advertised). We watched the sun rise and tried not to fall asleep on the rocks. We then had a sandwich and began trekking back down again; a pretty safe hike becomes impossible when you're asleep on your feet and falling onto the person in front of you every two seconds, and getting burnt by the morning sun on top of that.

I was amazed by our tour guide, he was this huge Swiss guy who (since it was another guy's last full moon tour) was wearing a floor length dress and a massive sunhat; did the entire hike in flip flops, despite the fact that the last hour was basically scree; wore sunglasses through the night; and chain smoked the whole way up. You have to admire that kind of dedication to smoking. Literally every half an hour he had a new one and this guy does volcano tours as a living.

Needless to say our next day was a goner since we were so dead, but they did give us another ''free'' meal when we got back.

Semana Santa - La Ceiba and Roatan

This week has been a little different, it's Semana Santa here in Central America (Holy Week) and we have the week off school. This is by far the biggest celebration of the year, even bigger than Christmas, for Christmas people get the 24th off and the 31st but they get this whole week and the country goes a bit crazy. Tela gets flooded with Honduran tourists looking for a beach, in fact the whole coast gets packed with people. Not wanting to stay in Tela but still wanting to be part of all the celebrations Sarah and I decided to go to La Ceiba with two of the other volunteers. La Ceiba is just two hours away by bus or, if you happen to be as lucky as we were, one hour in a very nice air-conditioned car. We decided to hitch a ride after waiting for ages for the bus. Don't worry, hitching is really common here, everyone drives around in these trucks so if you hitch-hike you just hop in the back and let the wind blow your hair into a beautiful afro. It's great.

So we stayed three nights in La Ceiba in this hostel called Banana Republic, an old wooden building that gave us exactly what we paid for and not a thing more, but it did the job. I realised on the first night going to sleep (and this is the first time this has ever happened to me going away) that I hadn't brought more contact lenses! It was an absolute nightmare. I had to get up and go and find salt and cups but the man working at the 'desk' said they ran out of salt that day so I had to go and buy salt down the street, come back and make saline solution for my lenses. Ever since I've been just waiting for them to get too dry to wear and I've been wearing them for a week now.
We took full advantage of the fact we weree in a city and went first to 'the Mall' and wandered around the air-conditioned shops trying on ridiculously priced dresses and drinking frozen coffee. We even went to the cinema one evening, Sarah's first cinema trip in nine months she says. It was strange being in the cinema because, apart from the quality not being as good as at home, we could have been in any cinema anywhere in the world. I was surprised we were the only ones there though, it was cheap to get in and it's the only cinema in town but we had the place to ourselves!
During the day we went to some of the 'must-see' places around Ceiba that we could afford like we went to these hot springs which felt like we were in baths. We spent one of the afternoons there and had lunch and these amazing coconut milk topogigios. Topogigios are frozen liquid in a bag that you pierce with your teeth, a bit like an ice pop but not on a stick. The nicest thing about the springs was that all the area around it was completely litter free since they want people to some here to relax and what not. You really notice the difference when you don't have to pick your way through bottles and bags and cans all the time. This country is so full of litter! At home you would never finish a bottle of water then throw the bottle over your shoulder! Here, my friend Jackie was actually surprised when I told her off for doing it. She just didn't see why it was a problem. But then they do that and still complain about how dirty the place is. I reckon cleaning up this country would do wonders for how the people here treat it, they might actually take pride in being Honduran.
The other day we spent at Cayos Cuchinos, these 16 tiny island off the coast, literally tiny. You go for the day and hire a boat and the driver takes you around the islands, you eat lunch on the biggest one and then they drive you back to the mainland. The man driving the boat stopped on the way next to this other boat, got two fish off him and spent the rest of the ride cutting them and just eating them raw. Thankfully ours was cooked, and delicious, it was clearly just caught then put on to cook.
We spent the next night in Pico Bonito National Park at this lodge where we went river rafting and jumped off these huge rocks in the Rio Cangrejal. The river was really low so the rafting wasn't as difficult as it would be at other times. This park is huge though, it has Pico Bonito, Honduras's largest mountain right in the middle and this river also running through it. Most of it is just left to its own devices but there are these eco lodges and tours there as well. But, I left my iPod there. I'm actually quite upset about losing it because it has all this music on it from here and from loads of different people that has taken a long time to collect but when I called the lodge they claimed to have never seen it. I wonder what I'll listen to on my walks now.

That morning we caught the ferry to Roatan, originally we had planned to go but then changed our minds after seeing how little money we had left. Then changed our minds back again. So we turned up at Roatan and set about finding a place to sleep, which during Semana Santa is not an easy task. We eventually got put up in this little house that was just next to the beach and very cheap so we could forgive how disgusting it was. There was no light and the water didn't work for the first day.
Roatan isn't really Honduras, everything is different, the people, the culture, the language and on top of that Roatan in Semana Santa isn't really Roatan. So our experience of Roatan hasn't really been an accurate representation of what it might be like to stay here. The volunteers who live here on the island work on the other side of the island anyway and that's just a whole different world. The tourism has changed this end so much that's it's almost two separate islands. You have people working in the hotels or in restaurants who have to actually pay to work there just so they can get the tips. Then they go from the massive complexes and resorts to their homes where it's lucky if the electricity works. The difference is shocking.
I met this local called Morvi who told me that if it weren't for Semana Santa and all the people that come to the island then, some people wouldn't be able to live. They make so much money in that one week.
We've been pretty lazy here, we spent some time with the boys, Tom and Ali, and Tom's family who are here to visit and we've relaxed, snorkelled and basically been a classic tourist. Except for eating. To eat cheap we eat  local food whereas all the tourist go and have pizza.
We're catching the boat home today, planning tomorrow, then we go back to school on Monday. Then it;'s just the last stretch until the summer holidays.
Asta Luego.

Long Overdue Update

Okay; I am aware that the last time I made an entry was 28th February but I am going to blame my extremely sporadic internet access which is usually for ten minutes tops. I also wrote an entry a week ago only to have it deleted as the computer I was on died.
I have, thakfully had a very busy two weeks, the weekend before last two girls from another project came to visit us, last weekend we went to see the Copan Ruins with the school and this weekend Sarah and I are off to Lago de Yojoa again to meet with all the other Honduran Project Trust volunteers as well as Jen and Vegas. It's going to be fab.
The weekend the girls came to visit didn't go as smoothly as one might have liked though, on their first motning here, on our way to collect bread and pastellitos form the bakery, we saw this guy get shot. This man called out to another man on a bicycle and when he turned around just started shooting him. We turned around and cycled away top speed to the sound of him still shotting him repeatedly. The strange thing was it was on the main road into Tela, not a dodgy side street or a creepy alleyway. The lure of the bakery was too strong though so after a while of sitting down we decided to go back. We had to walk past the dead body and the crowd surrounding it with our bikes and people pointing and saying we were the 'two gringas who had seen the shooting and run away'. There was an angry man with a gun, and no way I was sticking around to see what he would do.
It was hard explaining to the other girls our 'bad news'

Me: 'Hey guys, I have bad news...'
Sarah: 'No! The bakery was shut.'
Me: 'No, no the bakery was open-'
Sarah: 'They had no pastel de piñas.'
Me: 'Nope I've got them here-'
Sarah: 'Was the bread stale again?'
Me. 'No. Everything bakery related was fine! ... We saw this guy kill someone outside Telamar.'

silence....

Me: 'Pastel de piña?'

But I feel surprisingly unaffected by seeing my first dead body. It sounds callous but it's hard to feel too strongly about someone you never knew. Apparently they were trying to kill the man's brother but he was too smart for them and got out of Honduras, so they settled for the man on the bike. ç
Despite all that we still had a really fun weekend, which makes me feel even more callous in some ways. We just got up and went on with our day and ate breakfast, went to the beach, went to Maya Vista, ate ice cream and did all the usual things even though we'de seen someone alive one minute, dead the next.
The rest of their time thier went by pretty stress-free, no more dead bodies I can speak of, or car accidents. We joked that each time I meet up with the 'Hondies' something happens, whereas Maurico and Hector (Graciella's sons) have just decided I'm cursed. When I spoke to them about it, they said they've never seen anything like that. The worst Hector's seen is a kidnapping and that was years ago.

The week at school was the easiest week I have had so far in Honduras, I only had exams for my Colegio classes so I didn't have to teach any classes. Instead I decided that my room was ugly and disgusting so I gacve it a make over, I bought paint, boards and paper and cardboard and redid the whole thing. My shelves were really boring and plain so I painted them yellow and finally sorted out their 'library' into age related groups. Put up boards to pin things on and made them look pretty with card and paper. I bought a bin. The room apparently hasn't looked this nice in about 4 years which was the last time they had a teacher in that room who stayed longer than a year. The 10th graders are moving in there next bimester and they really appreciated it so I didn't mind the money.
I brought in music to listen to as I was painting and all the kids gravitated to my room to help me out and listen to my music when they didn't have an exam (which did seem to be most of the time, they had an hour and a half allocated for each one and they comlpeted a few in about 5 minutes). However a couple of times I did have to put my foot down and take the music on conditon they would only get it back if they spoke only English. They can do it but they just don't! Obviously it feels more natural to speak Spanish but when they had the music taken from them they made such an effort and they really can do it.

Then this weekend we went with the school to Copan, 100 of us squeezing into a 60 person bus. We acvtually got stopped and fined for having too many people, I'm amazed we only got a fine! There were people standing, sitting on tires or on preschool chairs in the aisle for FIVE HOURS.  It was ridiculous.
I need to leave now, before it gets dark but I will continue soon I promise!
Asta Luego.

She's back!

Sarah's back! And not in a matchbox either, you'll be glad to hear. I spotted her wandering down the street looking sunburnt and a little tired, so I took her to buy the Vasitos that I bought with Genesis. That, at least, made sure she was relatively calm before telling her exactly how stressed out everyone was. It turns out she never actually lost her passport, but got 'fraped' by her friend (for those not of my generation a frape is when someone sees the opportunity of an open facebook page and takes it by changing all sorts of things, in this case, her status, saying she had lost her passport). People over here weren't best pleased to find out they had been worried for nothing so she's in the dog-house a little at the moment.
We also found out we are being visited by Jen and Vegas in a month and we'll be heading off to Lago de Yojoa again to stay with them for a while. What will be nice is finally all the Honduran volunteers back together again and findiong out how they've all been managing in their projects for the past half year. Most of them I haven't seensince August!
So, on Thursday or Friday, I can't remember which, Genesis and I had decided to make Pastelitos on Saturday. Pastelitos are basically little pastry things filled with meat, rice and potatoes and, in theory, I now know how to make them. In theory. In reality our failed attempts almost set the house on fire and poisoned us to the point where we had to just give up, dissect them, and eat the insides. We then spent the next hour on our backs on the couch groaning about sore stomachs. I still don't know what went wrong! The dough was burnt and raw all at once. Fail. But like i said, I know the theory, some day I'll try again.
Also on Saturday, I gave Mauricio his first Italian lesson, which, after a slow start he seems to be gettng the hang of. He says he woke up on Sunday with Italian phrases running through his head. We also burnt all the rubbish in the feild next to his house, no joke. Well, we tried at least. In the field there's about seven tonnes of plastic waste that's just been thrown there for years so we burnt it. Definitely think you aren't supposed to burn plastic bottles but hey ho. The fumes probably counter-acted some of the affect of the pastelitos.
Sunday was less eventful, I didn't burn anything or poison anyone but these two guys had come to the house on Thursday preaching , one Honduran and one American so we chatted for a bit and I promised them I'd go to church on Sunday. I ended up getting completely lost and found myself at the Telan police station with no idea where this church was and in the end, went to the wrong one. But I saw them again and I said this time I'd find the right place. So we'll see how that works out next Sunday. I like Sundays, seeing everyone in their Sunday best is such a refreshing change from tank tops and shorts.  Everyone, or nearly everyone makes a real effort to look presentable on a Sunday and the beach is completely bare in the morning only to get unmaneuverably busy in the afternoon.
For the kids in the Primary this week is exam week and after that I'll be starting the 2nd grade Maths classes again (or Math as they call it). So I'm looking forward to being reunited with my babies. Hopefully they'll speak a tad more English this time around.
Asta Luego.

Serttling Back In

So, it´s been a pretty good first week, all in all, actually it´s been fantastic. I am so much more suited to seconary teaching than primary and my job is so much less stressful beacuase of it! On top of that, my room looks less like an animal hovel and more like a bedroom now and the weather has been perfectly breezy all week.
The only downer was that my partner left to El Salvador on Saturay morning, due home on Sunday; that was until she lost her passport and wasn´t allowed to leave the country. In some ways though this is a relief, now I am safe in the knowledge that at least I´m not the only disaster case. I´m currently in a bit of a limbo to see if she´ll make it back by next week, if not I´ll be covering all her classes again next week.
So, despite the fact that the subject I am teaching is dry as anything I have ever had the misfortune to have to read, I am much happier teaching ´Collegio´ upstairs than I was downstairs. I am not joking whe I say it is dry, eveything I teach to them I have to learn myself beforehand, and to me it all seems like useless knowledge, if such a thing exists. (Primary school is on the bottom floor from 12 - 5 and secondary school is upstairs from 7 - 2, so early rises for me! It´s nice doing that though, I feel as if I am actually acomplishing something with my day, and it means I can go to the beach in the afternoons.) I´ve developed a bit of a routine now; every break I go down and cht to Mauricio as he sells his food in the Cafeteria and help him out and in my afternoons I take my bike and walk Genesis home from school and get Vasitos on the way (little ice creamy things).
The day Sarah left was the day of the dance competition and, once I figure out how, I will put up some hilarious videos of the kids dancing. This was part of their PE exam and they had to dance either Danza Christiana or Moderna. Very, very different dance forms I tell you. The juxtoposition was hilarious. You had some kids dancing to lyrics like 'Jesus is my superhero´and the next group´s soundtrack would be ´I´m Sexy and I Know It´. And the costumes some of them wore! It´s seriously disconcerting watching 9 year olds hip thrusting. However I must be getting used to the culture: I didn´t even bat an eye when the show that was due to start at seven didn´t get going until half eight and was pleasantly surprised when I got away only an hour after we were supposed to. (Hondurans aren´t the best time-keepers you see.) The two finalists did their dances again at the very end, weating away in the midday sun and I felt truly sorry for them, I think their feet were burnt by the end. So there was food and drink and dancing and prizes and, all in all, a fun way to start the weekend. I even made guacamole which was a (partial) success. It went slightly black since and weird I had made it the night before but it wasn´t a danger to eat. I hope.
The rest of the weekend was more relaxed, I went to the beach ( the Caribbean beach... that is on my doorstep. Yes, I know you´re jealous.) I got burnt, read my book, met up with my friend, rode a horse (not everyone here is poor, I´ll have you know, some people have enough money for two cars and a horse). So it was like that my first weekend in Honduras drew to a close and my first working week began.

Arrival!

9:20, Honduran time. I step off the plane in Miami and work my way through customs. I have been travelling for 22 hours straight. Despite my tiredness though it feels good to be back, the air tastes surprisingy familiar and it is a tolerable 24 degrees. There´s a man there to pick me up and take me and some German girl to the hostel where I pass out on my bed within seconds and that´s that. The next day my host´s mother Miss Graciella (called Miss despite the fact that she´s been married God knows how long) comes to pick me up with her husand. They speak no english and my Spnish is atrociously bad at first but I soon get back into the swing of things and make decent conversation and they tell me all Tela´s gossip. We stop at this place to eat lunch where they buy me a very sickly drink made of blended corn which I pretend to like. It is in fact still sitting in my fridge, untouched. Then continue on to Tela. It´s three o´clock by the time I get there and having arrived on Valentine´s day the school is all in a flurry of pink and red with people all over practicing for a dance competition on Saturday.
You might have thought a bomb exploded in 2nd grade when they saw me. Screaming my name they all ran outside and almost killed me. I challenge anyone to feel more loved than I did being suffocated by twenty seven year olds. Thankfully Miss Juni called them off saying I was injured and shouldn´t be ´molested´. Don´t worry molested means annoyed.
The rest of that day was spent relaxing around the school and catching up with everyone. We had a little lunch party since it was Valentine´s Day and everyone broght in .
Later on I found out that sadly a father of two tudents had been kidnapped yesterday. He was a doctor who was assumed to have money. So on Thursday the entire secondary school marched through Tela with four or so other schools as a peaceful protest against it. We were fighting for peace, as ironic as that sounds.
Apart from that I have been just chilling out the past few days, sorting out my room which was absolutely disgusting when I arrived. I may eventually paint it to get some ominous looking stains off the walls.
Since I found out I am starting on Monday I have been slowly planning lessons, takng my time and trying to figure out a disciplinary scheme for them. I´ve heard they can be pretty rowdy. The children I will be teaching aren´t really children anymore. ´Language´ for 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th grade are now my responsibility (2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th year English) as well as 2nd grade Maths, and Social Studies for 8th grade. That´s is basically American Geography and History. They simply shrugged saying I´d pick it up when I told them I know little to nothing of American History. So that could be interesting. Thankfully it´s only 2 classes a week so I can´t damage their education too substantially.
Now it´s Friday and I´m sitting in the school´s computer room listening to the dance practices going on outside the door and enjoying the fan´s cool breeze on my back.
Asta luego.