I'm on top of the world! and bare-assed in a hole...

Happy New Year everyone! I can’t believe it is 2010. It seems like only yesterday the Krings hoard was celebrating the millennium by vomiting together as the clock struck midnight (a family tradition I am happy to say did not continue past that year, maybe it will remain a purely millennial tradition). Anyway… my new years was certainly different than last year, and all the years previous. Instead of wandering around DC in heels I was climbing Honduras’ version of Mount Everest. That’s right, I climbed the tallest mountain in Honduras in celebration of the New Year. In a way I think it was very metaphorically fitting, as I am certain the coming year will be more challenging and (hopefully) more rewarding than most. My only hope is that I do not smell quite so bad or look quite so grimy (metaphorically or otherwise) at the end of the year.

My mountain adventure began, as do most of my adventures, with the lovely 5am, 4 hour bus ride to La Esperanza. There I met up with a bunch of fellow H-15ers who I hadn’t seen since training. It was really amazing to see them and was great to speak English and share stories. From La Esperanza, we headed to Gracias, Lempira to meet up with the rest of the hiking crew. All in all there were 12 of us (I think). The next morning we got up, ate a big breakfast, and took a van to the base of the mountain. We all piled out of the van, strapped on our backpacks and started to walk. We walked for about 30 minutes and already I was thinking “Why am I doing this?” Then we arrived at the welcome center. Not a good sign when you are questioning your motives and have not ACTUALLY reached the starting line. Anyway, we hiked for about 5 hours and finally made it to our base camp. Well, we thought we made it to the base camp, it was a nice camp site with a latrine and a pavilion so we assumed it was the camp we had read about. It was not. The actual camp site was about 30 more minutes up the mountain. However, the fake camp site was a heck of a lot nicer than the real camp site so it was a fortunate error. The hike was pretty tiring. Most people had super cool backpacking bags but I just had my stupid backpack from walmart loaded down with a million pounds of stuff so my back was killing me. But, we made camp (and by “we” I mean the 5 or so people that actually had half a clue what they were doing) and made dinner and all was good.

• I think I should take a minute to explain just how wildly unprepared I was for this particular journey. I did not even pack a flashlight. What kind of person goes camping sans flashlight? Apparently me. Considering it was maybe my second time camping ever, I am choosing to label my stupidity naivety instead.

The next day (New Year’s Eve) we hiked another 5 (very steep) hours to the top of the mountain. The hike, though hard, was beautiful. Celaque is a cloud forest so everything was super green and the trees were humongous. When we got to the top, it was unfortunately too cloudy to see much (apparently on the rare clear day you can see San Salvador). We mainly just saw…cloud. But, it was still great to be on top of Honduras, plus I rewarded myself with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, so obviously that was awesome. The trip down the mountain was just as hard (and I think a bit more dangerous) than the trip up the mountain. A couple of us spent a majority of the way down clinging to tree branches and laughing at each other’s falls. Although there were no serious injuries, grace was definitely not one of the prevailing themes of the day. Once we made it back to our camp we made dinner and all sat around the fire. We talked and made smores and a few of us even managed to stay up until 12 to ring in the new year. In the morning we trudged back down the rest of the mountain and headed to a lovely hotel in Gracias. Everyone was abuzz about how great the hot showers were so I was super excited. Unfortunately, I was one of the last ones to jump on the shower wagon and did not get any hot water, which was definitely disappointing. However, I had a giant plate of fettuccini alfredo and a brownie which more than compensated for the lukewarm shower. Then we all went to bed in nice cozy soft beds.
I headed home the next day. The journey home was exhausting, and the bus popped two tires in between La Esp and home but I finally made it. As I walked up to the house all of the kids were playing outside and gave me a horrified look and sprinted into the house. Obviously, this caused me some concern. As I climbed the steps to my room I heard frantic whispering and scurrying about. As I rounded the corner I was just in time to see my host mom desperately flinging suitcases out of my room. Apparently family had come to visit so the family put them up in my room. I didn’t really care but was a little annoyed they seemed to think I would be stupid enough not to notice…

• In related news, I have been “in negotiations” with a guy in my community for my very own house, hopefully I should move in within the next month or so.

The next weekend I headed to Teguc to pick up packages and medicine. On the way I met up with another volunteer and we stopped by a friend’s house in San Jeronimo for the night. We made baked pasta and apple pie and it was super delicious (again, by “we” I mean “they”). The next morning we continued on to Teguc. Teguc was great, more or less like being in America again. I went to the mall, saw Avatar (cool looking but too long for someone with the attention span of a fly), and ate yummy food (way too much yummy food). My friend Christine and I shared a hotel room and watched a lot of English TV. Unfortunately, we were morons and the mail room and medical office in the Peace Corps office aren’t open on the weekend so we had to wait until Monday to get our stuff. The packaged were well worth the wait (not so much the malaria meds that taste like crap and have weird side effects) I think I now have enough stuff to stock the average American snack food isle in a grocery store. So thank you to Aunt Betty, Aunt Karen, the Putnams, Doris and Blossom, and the parents, I appreciate everything so much! The trip back from Teguc was epic, too long and exhausting to write about but just to sum it up, it involved many busses, many hours, and the first time in the history of the world the Colo bus has actually left at 3:00pm (which was problematic as I arrived in La Esp at 3:05). But, I finally made it home and went to bed at approximately 6pm.
This past weekend I went into La Esperanza for a birthday party. A bunch of other volunteers came to celebrate and we had a lot of laughs. Coincidently, it was also La Esperanza’s Feria (fair). It was the potato feria (woooo) which meant that there were French fries everywhere (apparently there are no other uses of the potato). The feria was slightly lame because it was supposed to be in June or July but was rescheduled because of the golpe. A highlight of the feria had to be when a man walked by one of the other volunteers and queried, in perfect English, “Are you wearing panties?” Really buddy, that’s the English sentence you chose to memorize? A highlight of the trip would have to be Dona Maria’s baleadas. Baleadas are a traditional Honduran food, it is a flour tortilla filled with beans, mantequilla, eggs, and avocado. There are a lot of variations, but that is the standard. Dona Maria’s house is about a 30 minute walk from the main part of town but it is well worth it. Not only is her food delicious, she is about the cutest little old lady you could imagine. If any of you come to visit, I will force you to walk the 30 minutes so prepare yourselves. The bus ride home from La Esp was rather trying because I sat next to a man who tried to woo me, for four hours. He is a nice guy but slightly obnoxious, I finally had to proclaim that I could not possibly have a novio (boyfriend) for at least one whole year because I was too busy acclimating to Honduran life. To this he replied “well, I can help you acclimate!” ughhhh get the point. I might have to invent a pretend giant, strong, extremely jealous novio in the states….

A few random stories:

• A while ago I was sitting on the porch with the empleada (the lady that cooks and cleans for my host mom….this isn’t very unusual here in Colo, most people either work in a school or work for someone who works in a school). I noticed a little boy who couldn’t be more than two sitting bare-assed with his feet in a hole. Now, this wouldn’t be totally unusual but he was sitting in the middle of a field where two under-aged, under-muscled children were learning how to ride motorcycles/playing motorcycle tag. In light of recent events (please see Christmas entry) this made me slightly nervous, especially since there appeared to be no one monitoring the child. I said something to the effect of “Oh my goodness look at that little boy!” the empleada looked at me and said “What do you think he is thinking?” Now, I was expecting something more along the lines of “yea, we should go move him” or “where are his parents?” so I was a little confused and told her I had no idea what he must be thinking. She then gave me an all-knowing look, sighed and responded “Well Sarita, his feet are in a hole, that means he wants to die, or is at least very seriously thinking about death.” Oh. Uh, a suicidal 2 year old? To be honest I am just not sure he was thinking about his own death. And if he was contemplating suicide I think the big indicator would not be that he stuck his feet in a hole, but that he was sitting smack dab in the middle of a practice session of the world’s most inexperienced motorcyclists
• In light of the recent earthquakes in Haiti* and Guatemala my host mom calmly looked at me the other day and said “I think the world is probably ending, since all these bad things are happening.” And then continued to sweep the floor as if she had not just predicted the apocalypse. *If you were thinking of sending me a package, don’t. Send your money to Haiti, they need it way more than I need a chocolate bar.
• I went to a family birthday party the other day at Edna’s house. Everyone was talking and laughing (I was more sitting in the corner and smiling when other people smiled because I still can’t follow/contribute to large group conversations). Somehow the conversation took a turn for the dirty and the grandmother started singing lines from a popular song entitled Como se Mata el Gusano. This means How do you kill the worm. What is this song about? Well, think of the most vulgar thing a worm could stand for, and then imagine “killing” it. The song describes the necessary motions in detail. Now imagine a grandmother singing it. Now boil your brain to erase the memory.

That’s about all for now, I started up one of my classes again (just one this time, 3 days a week) so I have that to look forward too. I am going to try to start planning things for the coming school year so I’ll let you know how that goes. Miss you all, thanks again for all the packages! Happy new year.