Tab and Teresa in Honduras

Good-Bye to All

2006-05-16T11:58:00.000-07:00

Hanging out at home with Mom and Dad today. It's good to be back. I've been spending 3 hours trying to sort out pictures so far in hopes of getting them developed as soon as possible before seeing everyone, but I don't know if that's gonna happen. But I'll keep trying. I'm hoping that now that I've returned to eating normal food my stomach issues will sort themselves out, but if not, I've already been recommended a good travel doctor to see. Ah the pleasures of figuring things out so easily when you speak the language.

Here are some final pictures. I'm getting tired of sorting through them, so there's only a few. There will be more than enough in hard copy for whenever I see each of you.

Geordie enjoying a swim in one of the watering holes we found on one of our hikes

The beach from last weekend

The super cool puffer fish

My favourite view on this trip...I LOVE HAMMOCKS!

Well that's about everything. I hope you enjoyed the blog :)

´Tis the End

2006-05-15T07:21:00.000-07:00

Well, it´s my last day in Honduras. I´m currently in the capital, which I´m not enjoying overly much. Sketchy people, nothing to do. My flight is in 4 hours though, so I´ll be getting out of here soon enough.

I spent the weekend in Omoa, another beach town. It was great. The backpackers place where we stayed had a gorgeous yard where I laid a blanket down to relax/snooze. They had super great hammocks set up in a loft where there was a cool breeze. And best of all, there were bicycles that were free to use. It was ridiculously hot out so I didn´t spend too much time in the sun, but I did bike around a bit. Dirt roads that lead to nowhere. I loved it.

I watched some guy catch a puffer fish on the end of the pier. There were a few guys fishing for little fish that were everywhere, but this guy caught a huge puffer. He brought it on deck where it poofed up right away. Being a big ball of spikes, the fisherman couldn´t really get close enough to remove the hook. So we sat there and watched the fish puff up and deflate a few times. Everytime it started to deflate it sounded like a fart at first...hehehe. Eventually a crowd started to gather to look at the cool fish. I thought this was a common event at first since no one was making a big deal of it, but I realize that there was no one around to make it into a big deal. But once a passerby came along craziness ensued and soon the pier was packed with people. Having lost my perfect view I left the scene, so I cannot report what happened to the puffer. But it was cool to see none the less.

I´m super excited to go home. I´m bored of travelling, and don´t really enjoy eating out anymore. I feel like I´ve really gotten to see what Honduras is like, and now I want to go home and start enjoying my summer with family and friends. It was a great experience all around, but I´m glad it´s done. I´ll be sorting out some pictures when I get home, so I´ll post them later this week. Until next time....

Finally Some Pictures

2006-05-11T08:16:00.000-07:00

In no particular order:

Checking out the scenery from the boat

One of the views after a 2 hour hike in primary rainforest

Another jungle view

A local futball game with a spectacular view

Hanging out in a river during one of the hikes

More boating in the sun

One of the cabañas we stayed in

A slightly different backround in the boat

And more boat.

There are a lot more pictures that are way better, but they take FOREVER to load, so I´ll be posting them next week when I have more time. For now, these will have to do. Okay, I´m off to the beach. Adios!

In the Jungle, the Quiet Jungle....

2006-05-09T16:31:00.000-07:00

I made it! Into the jungle and back. The trip was adventuresome for sure, but in a different way than I expected. We went with 4 other people, 2 of whom spoke really good spanish, and 2 who were a tad better than I. The trip into La Moskitia is the unguided part of the tour, and we definately had some difficulties. After not getting a boat due to a lack of batteries for the local town radio, we followed the advise of some locals and decided to catch a truck. Unfortunately we didn´t get all the details and it turns out the trucks are normally full when they pass the area we were in, so they don´t stop. After that we decided to walk down the beach for what was supposed to be 3 hours with ALL our stuff. This was definately not my idea but when the vote is 5 to 1, I loose. 45 min into the walk everyone decides to turn around because they feel unsafe. A group of gringos with all their luggage in the middle of nowhere with no one around...what´s unsafe about that? Ugh. So. We turned around and went back. I had asked before we left if walking was for sure our only option, and was told yes. But now it seems we could go back and try a different place for a radio. WHAT!?!?! Turns out the spanish speaking girls we were with were not the brightest. They are 16 and 18, and it´s really just a lack of experience that they suffer from. Eventually we got to where we wanted, safely, and the most ¨adventuresome¨ part of the trip was prettymuch over.

We enjoyed the first of many typical meals when we arrived. After 3 months of beans, tortillas, eggs and rice I figured I could definatley do without for a loooooong time. I found the food on this trip absolutely delicious though. Turns out I only needed a couple of weeks bean free. There´s a lot to write about, but I´ll try to summarize. The majority of the trip was spent in various boats travelling on the Carribean Sea, through lagunas, or down rivers both big and small surrounded by forrests in little canoes. The scenery was truly amazing, but the sun exposure was less so. I´m happy to report that I did not get burnt though. I am, however, out of sunscreen...again. Throughout the whole trip we stayed at various cabañas that were basically thatched roofs with entirely screen walls with a view of the stars and night and the sunset in the morning. Incredible. I used a moskito net every night, not because they were overly needed, but because they make me feel like a princess when I sleep :) One of the events of the trip included a crocidile hunt, which was sucessful. We only saw little ones though, but we did see a three footer a couple days later on a random boat ride. We did a couple of hikes through the jungle, which I LOVED! The broad leaf plants and all the vines make it a really unique view. The 3 girls and Geordie all wimped out on one of the hikes, but the German guy we were with and I kept going and managed to do a 5 hour hike in 2.5 hours. Oh baby was I ever sweaty afterwards. There was definately a lack of animals spotted on the hikes though, so that was slightly disappointing. But there was lots of swimming in the lakes and rivers, letting the current take us downstream where the boat driver would come and pick us up. Nothing like floating down a river watching the jungle go by. One of the sites we stayed at looked more like an African Savana than a rainforest area, and the sunset was truly amazing. But there was a sunset last night right over the area where the sea met the beach that was for sure the most beautiful I´ve ever seen. To end our trip one of the local indigenous groups put on a dance for us by a bonfire and we got to dance with them a bit, which was definately a highlight for me of course. We travelled for 12 hours today and have another 8 hours on a bus tomorrow which will leave us on the very western edge of Honduras. From there we may or may not head to Guatemala for a day or 2. I will find time soon to post pictures though, but for now, I´m too busy enjoying the trip to bother to find an internet cafe with the speed and USB capabilities. But soon.

Other random bit of info: the girls called me ¨mom¨ the entire trip cause I was the one prepared with everything; sunscreen, bugspray, aloe vera, afterbite, water purification tablets, and hand sanitizer. Yay, I´ve finally learned how to pack properly!

MONKEYS!!!!

2006-05-01T17:06:00.000-07:00

Went for a hike yesterday. Saw a girl fall down some stairs....she smashed her head open and no one knew what to do....I finally realized the importance of railings. Then we continiued along the trail and I saw 2 MONKEYS....so cool. Also saw a toucan, and a really big blue butterfly. Pretty neat. WE swam in a river that we were following to a waterfall. Met some locals at the waterfall who were super friendly and suprised to see foreigners at the waterfall. Aparently most people don´t make it that far.

Today we went to some hot springs that turned out only to be warm...but it was raining today, so the warm water was quite welcome. Tomorrow we leave for La Moskitia, so there won´t be any updates for 1 week, but it turns out that finding a decent internet cafe in this area is rather difficult, so I´m happy about that.

Super exited for the next week....I´ll let you know all about it.

Talkin ´bout a HEAT WAVE!

2006-04-28T12:45:00.000-07:00

We´ve moved on to the north coast and are currently in the beach town of La Ceiba. I´ve avoided the beach so far however cause it´s WAY to stinkin hot to be in the sun. Bumming around town is okay, but I think we´ll head out to the nearest national park soon and spend a couple of days hiking.

The other day we went rowing on the Lake. Although the super hot Ryan made rowing look real easy in ¨The Notebook¨, let me assure you, it is not. First off, the oars were attached to the boat by string, which was not super effective. And after about 20 minutes one of our strings broke. Bah. So after Geordie took several attempts to fix the problem, I finally took a try and fixed it immediately with my pant leg (pants that zipper to shorts are AMAZING!). From there on out rowing was okay. It took a while to figure out how to go straight, but eventually we got the hang of it. We rowed out the canal and into the lake, saw some cool birds, found a rocky bit to pull our boat onto and went swimming. We had gone to the supermarket beforehand so we enjoyed a great lakeside picnic lunch. Other than that I haven´t done much the last couple of days. Met some really intersting people though, which has definately been entertainment enough for me. Who doesn´t love hearing stories about travelling with a dead guy or wild conspiracy theories of a super paranoid ex-American?

Seems like there´s a lot going on at home that I want to get back for. Summer seems to be starting without me, but I´ll be back in 17 days. Since travelling started out so slowly with Geordie due to the baggage loss and then the sickness, I seem to have aquired a slow pace at which I want to do things. I dunno if it´s good that I´m relaxing, or bad that I´m not jumping all over the opportunity to see and do tons of cool stuff. Geordie seems to be getting annoyed with my lack of energy, so perhaps it will turn around soon and I´ll cram the funness in for the last 2 weeks.

At a Medium Pace

2006-04-25T14:33:00.000-07:00

Hangin out at Lago Yahoa. Staying at the bed and breakfast (which also happens to be a brewery) which we stayed at the last time we checked out the Pulhapanzik Falls. We went to the falls yesterday when it was stinkin hot out, so the hurricane rain and sweeping water was really welcoming. Took some pictures to replace my lost ones, only since it's now the end of the dry season things are looking a little dead around here. But it's still tropical scenery, which is great.

Geordie is currently in bed with what he thinks is food poisoning. We ate at a little street vendor yesterday for lunch. I'm still doing fine however (minus the normal poncho visitations each morning which I've just come to expect) so perhaps I've built up some sort of immunity to the bugs here. So we're gonna stay in the area for a few days till he fills better.

Hangin Around

2006-04-23T11:24:00.000-07:00

I now know the importance of packing your carry-on properly. Geordie´s back has been AWOL since Friday. And he didn´t pack a carry-on. Hilarious! But that means we´re still hanging aournd in Teguc waiting for his bag. But we´ve been assured it has arrived so all we have to do is pick it up and skidaddle. We´re going to head to the lake and waterfalls where I went on our first weekend away. It´s stinkin hot here, so some cliff jumping is definately looking good.

Not much else is new. The capital city is crappy, so all we´ve been doing is walking around and eating. Met some really entertaining drunken bums last night who asked us for money for drugs. The cops were keeping a really close eye on us, so I wasn´t overly worried, and they did entertain for at least 10 minutes before we were fed up with it. Oh, some kid did try and steal Geordie´s hat yesterday, but a local came along and literally kicked his butt. Oh Honduras.

Good-bye My LUNG!

2006-04-20T12:46:00.000-07:00

My better half has gone. Flown home yesterday, she left me alone. The volunteering aspect of this trip has now entirely left, as I´m no longer with anyone from La Esperanza anymore. Twas good while it lasted, but I´m excited to start travelling. To all those who follow the blog because they know Teresa, I welcome you to keep checking on the updates of my travels as I go, and to Mr. Partridge, you can still post comments and sign them as Dad if you want (I like the comments).

So on my first day alone, I did what I could to occupy my time:

My family informed me that a group of volunteers from some of the churches in our area at home were currently in Honduras working on a water main project. So with a few days to myself, I figured I´d see if I could find them. I knew which town they were in, so I took a bus out there. From the bus station I had to find the chicken bus (old school bus) to the little town outside the big town. Thankfully I met some nice people who found me a taxi and made sure he wouldn´t overcharge me and I was on my way. The taxi man dropped me off at a random location, and I asked around and found out where exactly to catch the bus. Another nice couple sat with me until my bus came. Then the tricky part came. Basically my plans were to bus out to the town, then ask around for a group of volunteers called the ¨Carpentaros¨. On the chicken bus on the way I asked the guy sitting next to me if he knew about this group and where they were. And he did, which was excellent. So I asked if it was close enough to walk to from town. He said no. Then I inquired about taking a taxi, but again was shot down. As I started to worry a little I shot a glance at this helpful guy next to me only to watch him not bother with me anymore and go to sleep. Bah. Luckily another gentleman came over a few minutes later to chat with me and he was really excited to hear that I was looking for the Carpentaros. He said a bunch of stuff I didn´t understand, but I figured he was my best bet, so I asked him if he could take me to the group. He said yes, and then he got up to get off the bus at a random house and looked back to see if I was coming. Welp, with no real other option I figured why not, this guy seems friendly enough and there are other people around on the road and whatnot. So I went to Carlos´ house and met his family (4 kids and his wife) and they all got ready to take me to the Carpentaros on bicycles while I waited patiently in the hammock on the front porch, not really knowing what was going on. About 40 min later we hopped on our bikes, cycled down this random dirt road for about 20 minutes until I saw the man in charge, Ken Vanderlaan, walking down the road. I stopped and said ¨Hi Ken!¨ and I think I shocked him pretty good. I found the group I was looking for, with a lot of luck. The watchful eye of God was protecting me, but I vow to never press my luck like that again....at least not by myself.

Lucky for me I met up with the group just in time. They had just finished their last day of work, and I got to see the leaving party celebrations, enjoy a great dinner, spend the night and have them give me a ride back to the capital on their way home this morning. Perfect timing. Plus there´s nothing like a little Dutch Bingo to make you feel at home! They were staying in a super rural community...basically the same as where Teresa and I worked, but we definately did not stay there. Living without electricity is something else. It was awesome to see the carpentaros interact with the community members though. It was quite different from my own experience, as they had translators and were therefore able to communicate with the Hondurans a lot more. Everyone was incredibly friendly and welcoming, and I had no problem mooching a bed and food off of them. Even though it was only for a short time, I´m really glad I went. There were a lot of devotions and group prayers, and it was wonderful to do some worshiping with a group, which has definately been lacking on this trip. Also, it was cool to see how the people were so thankful for the work the carpentaros had done. It really made me think that this is perhaps how the community members in Chiligatoro felt about us, only we weren´t able to communicate well enough to know.

Today has been spent running errands such as getting laundry done and buying groceries...and I have every intention of finding a hammock soon and not moving from it until I go to pick Geordie up from the airport tomorrow. So don´t worry Mom. On saturday Geordie and I will head out to a local Honduran town on the way to our next country, either Guatemala or Belize, I haven´t decided yet. Oh the lack of plans...I love it.

2006-04-18T14:44:00.000-07:00

The sunrise from Pumpkin hill

The desserted beach we found. Oddly enough even though there were no people there was still tons of trash

Teresa admiring the water

Some last minute discussions with my dive course crew before hitting the boat. Sylvano, my instructor, is the hotty in the blue shorts

Some of the volunteer folks enjoying the full moon beach party

One of the many cayes surrounding Utila...not Water Cay though

Me and Matt toughing out the Friday morning dive. Sure I may look like a tool, but the sights underwater were more than enough to make up for it

Giant spider hanging out at one of the bars

There was a bar on the island called the Jade Seahorse that was decorated with tons of cool crazy stuff including seashells, jewels, old liquor bottles, and much more

More of the Jade Seahorse

Dave, Matt and Teresa hanging out at one of the pitstops on our hike yesterday

After the hike we waited at a random spot on the side of the road in hopes that a local chicken bus would pick us up

Me in my new bartending job. Look at me, I´m a pro....one for you, one for me :)

One of the last things on our list of foods to get, watermelon from a street vendor. It was delicious!

Finally an Update

2006-04-18T09:27:00.000-07:00

Okay, we haven't written for sooo long so we have a lot of catching up to do.

First of all, leaving our family in La Esperanza was sort of hard and a little sad. They were really great to us for the whole twelve weeks we were building and after that long it really felt like home. We gave our house mom a little gift on Saturday morning to say thank you and parted with hugs and kisses from both our house mom and her mother. We spent the rest of the day on a chicken bus to San Pedro and then caught another bus to La Ceiba. La Ceiba was packed with tourists for Semana Santa and we had a bit of trouble finding a hotel so we treated ourselves to something way out of our price range. In general La Ceiba seems really fun. There were tons of bars along the beach and a huge concert sponsored by one of the local breweries was going on while we were there. On Sunday we checked out the night life but starting at a "bar" that was a little wooden shack off the street that sold beers for around 70 cents Canadian. We then managed to sit pretty and have several beers bought for us over the next hour or so. A couple came from a really sketchy character who was selling straw hats along the street. I have to type this sentence cause teresa is all embarrassed. This guy was totally in love with Teresa, kept telling her how beautiful she was and whatnot. I was very entertained by the whole situation. And he thought I was good at Spanish and she didn't understand a word, so everything was said through me starting with "tell her...". Ah my super translation skills. When I didn't know what the heck he was saying, it was fun to make stuff up and watch Teresa go red with embarrassment. Oh the good times. Um...yes...thats roughly how it unfolded. Anyway the night was pretty funny. Eventually we had to run away from this guy and get drinks and street meat elsewhere, but not before he insisted I give him my number. I was of course delighted to write down 867-5309 ( sadly only a couple OLD volunteers like myself remember this classic song).

On Monday morning we took a ferry to Utila. The island is really small and basically everything is located on two streets. There were tons of tourists and backpackers there and it had a cool beach town atmosphere. We spent the first day doing banking and other errands and walking around the island to figure out where things were. Tab booked diving at Crosscreek so we stayed in rooms there. The rooms were located right on the dock and there was a fun kitchen-lounge area for the diver to hang out in. We met tons of people while at crosscreek which was awesome. I'll let Tab fill you in on the diving adventures.... I spent the week relaxing and hanging out with other volunteers from La Esperanza who weren't diving. There was lots of swimming and beach time and some relaxing and reading in Matt's hammock that we strung up on our porch, and of course there was lots of eating!!! The first morning we were there, Tab and I got up at 5am like superstars and hiked out to pumpkin hill from which you are supposed to be able to see the whole island. The plan was to watch the sun rise from the top of the hill. Although we didn't quite make it all the way up the hill we found an empty beach at the base of the hill and were able to see the end of the sun rise. It was really nice to be out so early and the beach was really nice and peaceful. Another day a bunch of us rented a boat to take us to Water Cay, a tiny tiny island that is uninhabited. It was really beautiful and we spent the day there with just a few other people on the whole island, picnicing, swimming, and snorkelling. From the beach of Water Cay you could walk out a long plank to get to a little outhouse on stilts over the water and upon future inspection we found that the toilet consisted of just a seat that was open to the water and you could see toilet paper sort of floating in the area. So besides having to steer clear of that whole side of the island we had a great day. The other highlight was renting a scooter with Matt and driving around the island. We saw some iguanas running across the road and took the scooter to the old airport to race down the runway and also took it to the beach and had a good time posing for some scooter glamour shots.

I just wanted to add something about the pumpkin hill escapade. I decided after the sunrise to venture around and find a way up the hill. Unfortunately I found that there actually is no real path, and I spent over an hour getting lost in the jungle like area climbing through various barb-wire fences and avoiding cattle to realize this. Eventually I found my way back burr covered and soaked, but I enjoyed the adventure. That afternoon the diving course started. There were 2 sessions in class that reminded me a lot of drivers ed...mostly common knowledge spelled out slowly with crappy movies. But it was worth it cause the diving was really cool. I did my course with 4 other travellers, and my instructor was this hot, young french guy that I'm pretty sure every student had a crush on. We did underwater exercises for 3 hours one morning (I was FREEZING afterwards) and did 4 dives along the corral reef learning how to breath properly, keep bouyant, and not touch anything. We finished the course in record time because there was a big full moon beach party Thursday night that everyone wanted to go to, so we had to finish the course before friday morning. Since we were only there for a short time though I still signed up for some fun dives Friday morning anyways, which ended up being great cause there were so few people diving. Matt and I went alone with an instructor which gave us the chance to go really slow and check out all the cool little things along the reef and not have to worry about bumming into other divers. I saw tons of cool fish, many brightly coloured, a sea cucumber, an enemity, and a SEA TURTLE (so cool). It was quite amazing to see everything. I went down 67 ft at the lowest depth.

Since the diving took up tons of time all I really did aside from that is hang out with everyone for the nightlife. Some of the nights were spent in the bars on the docks, and others were spent hanging out with other divers in the lounge. It was quite a party week, which we weren't used to after 12 weeks of going to bed at 8. So we participated, but we definately weren't the big party crowd. We'd be up around 6:30 for breakfast and run into some friends still heading home from the parties. All in all it was a really good vacation week with lots of friends and tons to do. On the ferry ride back Saturday morning some lucky volunteers saw dolphins...meaning Teresa, but not me.

We arrived in the capitol city of Tegucigalpa on Saturday night. Two other volunteers, Matt and Dave, are here with us as they're flying out today. We've basically just been bumming around the city, which was dead on the weekend. Apparently everyone was still at the beaches for the end of Semana Santa. Yesterday the town came alive though once everyone returned. We did some hiking in a nearby national park yesterday hoping to see some local wildlife (mainly monkeys hopefully), but alas, we didn't really see much besides the plantlife. A few butterflies and bugs, I caught a glimpse of a snake, but nothing really cool. The hostel we're staying at had a sign up for a bartender wanted, so I managed to land myself a job for the week I'm here. All I have to do is open beers, so the lack of experience and lack of spanish skill is apparently not important. I feel like such a seasoned traveller! However no one showed up last night, so I only served the 4 of us, but hopefully tonight will be different. Today the boys leave and Teresa spends her last night here before leaving tomorrow. The volunteer aspect of this trip seems to have come to an end. But it was great!

Last Day Pictures

2006-04-07T15:19:00.000-07:00

An overhead shot of some of the volunteers in the pickup we take to work. Our record to date is 14 people and 10 bags of corn.

Paolo has been our trusty driver for the three months that we´ve been here. Although the picture´s dark, hopefully you can make out his wicked mullet! And believe me his truck is a real beater, this is probably its best angle.

Trying to get three kids to look at you at the same time is quite difficult, especially when you don´t know how to say ¨smile¨in spanish. In pink is Alexandra and beside her is her brother Ilian. These are the two kids in our host family. The other girl beside Ilian is their cousin Laurita.

The adobe house that we were working on this week.

On Thursday there was a huge celebration for the community we´re working for. Although we couldn´t go because we had to haul bricks it was cool to see so many people milling about and see all the colourful clothing.

Another picture of Thursday´s celebration. Apparently some missionaries were there handing out clothes.

Ian and I sitting on the adobe bricks we were loading into the truck and unloading at our work site.

On our last day we thought we definetly deserve a huge, delicious treat. Practically the most expensive thing at the ice cream parlor, the ¨BOMBA¨.

Some drama at the work site caught on film; the family´s cat trying to hide in a tree.

AND...the dogs having none of that. I was definetly rooting for the cat during this showdown.

Last Day

2006-04-07T15:08:00.000-07:00

Okay! Today was our very last day of work! We´re both pretty excited to have the next few days to travel. Our plans for this weekend are to head to La Ceiba, a coastal beach town on the north side of Honduras. From there we´re going to Utila, one of the Bay Islands of Honduras, by ferry on Monday. On Utila Tab is going to do a Scuba Diving course and we´re both going to enjoy the beach, snorkeling, kayaking, sailing, renting bikes and possibly a boat tour. Unfortunately we won´t be online until next weekend so stay tuned for pictures and stories from Utila.

Other than that I only have one story; possibly the funniest thing that has happened in Honduras. This past week I´ve been getting pretty annoyed with some of the unwanted attention we´ve been getting around town and on the walks home. Its pretty harmless hissing and name calling. For example, we´re constantly called ¨gringas¨ even though we´re not American. Also lots of guys (and grown men) seem to shout out english phrases that they may have heard on TV including, ¨I love you¨ etc. A couple days ago we were walking home and one of the many DBs (our code language for drunken bum) was swaggering towards us on the street. We sort of kept walking past but since we already had his attention he felt he had to complement us. I guess he wanted to also express his LOVE for us but it kind of came out a little mixed up and he ended up calling ¨goodbye my LUNG¨ after us. Oh, my LUNG! It was awesome! Now Tab and I have taken to saying that to each other even if we´re going to part for just a couple of minutes. Goodbye my LUNG.

Talk to you soon.

Random Picutres In No Particular Order...

2006-04-04T13:29:00.000-07:00

This is the watering hole found at every house. The water runs into a non-drained area. The table top next to the water is a concrete washboard that has a drain, and behind is the shower.

Another mode of transportation, a fruit truck which never seems to carry fruit, only people.

On our list of things to try, ice cream cones from the ¨dickie dee¨ guy. Unfortunately, they taste like chemicals.

Our bedroom. Our sheets get changed weekly and our room swept and mopped daily. Nothing to complain about.

Our house from the outside. Note the compound wall in front. The gate to the driveway is open, so it looks slightly more inviting. Oh, and driveways are not common, I think our family is just somewhat well off.

Having run out of barbed wire, this family opted to paste glass shards above one of their walls. Not uncommon.

A typical cute Lenca couple. The man in Western clothes and a cowboy hat (yes, I´m in my glory with the huge number of cowboy hats around) and the woman in a colourful dress with a colourful headscarf.

An example of a bus with religious signs. Hard to read against the black it says Cristo Vivs (Christ Lives) and the Iglesia de Dios means Church of God. I don´t think this is supposed to mean the bus is a church...perhaps my Spanish translations needs some work, but regardless, and example of the signs everywhere.

An example of the dust flying off the road. Also in the picture are some girls walking home from school. Unfortunately they´re not close enough for you to note the brooms they are carrying. Home Ec. class the Honduran way.

Our lovely Teresa with the best bean dish in Honduras, Anafre. It´s tortillas chips served in refried bean paste with melted cheese served in a dish kept above hot coals in the black pottery thing. Delicious!

Radomness

2006-04-04T12:50:00.000-07:00

3 days, 4 sleeps left. To say we can´t wait to get outta here would be an understatement. Work has been great, we both feel like we´ve learned copious amounts, we´ve helped the best we could, and the experience is invaluable. But we´re ready to be done. Life here in Honduras has become ¨normal¨ to us, so we no longer notice little quirks we once did, and little things that we would just let slide are now starting to annoy us. Thankfully the end is very near though.

This weekend I decided to tinker with my camera right after getting up and but not before actually waking up. Bad move. I ended up deleting all my pictures. Way to go me. Luckily Teresa has been taking tons of pictures with her old-school film camera. And I used to tease her for taking so many pictures. Swallowing my words now! Anywho, this new development has pushed me to take more random pictures of life around La Esperanza this week and I thought I´d share some of the little things of life Í´ve noticed here.

it´s REALLY dusty here, so often you can find people tossing water on the road in front of their house to settle the dust
transportation here mainly includes walking, biking, or riding in the back of an old pick-up
bikes very rarely carry only one person, two or three are much more common, with different people steering and peddling
the trucks here are generally falling apart. Our own personal truck has super bald tires, a hole in the floor in which we can see a back tire, and one ride we had to stop 3 times so the driver could tighten the nuts on the ever loosening tire
our personal chaufer is named Paulo, and he´s got the wickedest mullet ever (I´ll get a picture soon)
since the roads here are really only wide enough for one car, when cars pass eachother one must go to the shoulder, which is very sloped. For this reason it often feels like the trucks are going to roll. Hence a large part of the time our thoughts on the way to work include the best way to ¨jump¨ from the truck should we roll
most of the houses here are behind some sort of compound wall that generally has barbed wire on top
all windows here have bars over them. Not usually prison-type bars, but wrought (sp?) iron bars in some fancy pattern. Bars none the less though
all the schools in town have uniforms, but the uniforms here include track suits!
all the buses here (and some cars) have some sort of religious saying on them, often both inside and out
like hotdog guys in Canada, there are street vendors here, but they sell oranges, mangos, watermelon, and lately there´s been a coconut guy by our truckstop
you can´t throw toilet paper in the toilets here, it goes in the waste basket

Well that´s all I can think of at the moment. Just a little picture into the world that is Honduras!

One More Week

2006-04-01T09:46:00.000-08:00

Hi everybody,
Things here are going well. We spent the week working at one project the whole time so its good not to be shuffling around anymore. We joined a project rebuilding an adobe brick house. Previously the other volunteers took off all the clay roof tiles, took down the roof beams and then took down all the bricks. An area next to the old house was dug out and leveled and then trenches for a foundation were dug out and a foundation of rocks and cement was laid. We´re now at the stage were we´re laying the bricks and mixing mud to be used as mortar between the bricks and the layers of brick. We don´t actually get to position the bricks so we mostly carry bricks from one pile to another for a few hours. There is a lot of down time on these types of houses because we have to wait for a whole layer of bricks to be placed before we can fill in the mud. So generally we carry bricks for a bit, rest and chat for quite a while, carry more bricks and then chat for the remainder of the day. All the other projects are progressing slowly like ours so we don´t feel so badly.

Tab and I haven´t really worked out who´s who in the family we´re building for. There are a lot of people around and maybe two generations of a family in the house. There are two strange little kids at the house that usually play together and avoid us although occasionally the little girl Elisa will violently attack Tab or I in what might be an attempted hug. It´s sort of uncomfortable and hilarious all at once. The kids at all our projects just sort of roam free and we´ve both noticed that they don´t get much attention or supervision of any sort because their parents and older siblings are busy working. I´ve stopped freaking out when the kids start swinging around machetes although this week it was alarming that the little girl who is around 4 was starting little fires around the work site. We also saw her consume an entire plastic baggy but no one else seemed to bat an eye.

Quite a few volunteers are done this week and off to travel around Honduras. One of the guys bought a pinata this week and we had a little going away party at a lagoon by our work site. The pinata was a big blue dog that sadly didn´t hold up for too long, but that was followed by hours of eating candy. A group us also went out to a ¨disco¨here in town. The night life here is almost nonexistent as you can tell by the fact that the disco closes a 10pm. Seeing people finish their projects makes us both eager to be travelling and we´re already thinking about our last day and our next week of doing the touristy vacation thing!

Oh The Hot Dog

2006-03-28T14:39:00.000-08:00

This weekend was definately a sucess, although it was in disguise. The plan was to hit up a nice colonial town in Honduras and find a good hotel to hunker down in and watch tv. This was done, but being sick in bed was not part of the plan. It did not hinder the events from taking place however, so all was not lost.

Saturday we took the bus to Comoayagua and got there both feeling kinda crappy. Figuring it was just bus-sickness, we thought food was the quick fix. This may have been true, but our choice of Wendy´s was likely not the best. We quickly found a hotel and proceeded to lay in bed for the next couple of hours. We´re thinking it was actually food poisoning. Perhaps the hotdogs we were served with dinner friday night? The tv was good though, so it was okay.

We managed to still go out for dinner and walk about town a bit. But the plans for involving rum were lost. The night was still good, but it ended early of course.

Sunday morning we checked out the parks and churches in town. Comparatively speaking, for a Honduran town it was quite nice. Clean (which is amazing), with the cutest parks and nice little shops. I have finally realized that this country is fairly dead on Sunday mornings however, so getting a real idea of the towns is hard when they´re deserted.

This week we started working on yet another project. We´ve been moving around the projects quite a bit just trying to help out where needed and trying our best to find places that actually need help. The people here are all to happy to accept volunteers, but they are also slow to say when they have enough, which means we have to take it upon ourselves to find the work sometimes. But we´ve got a good place for the last two weeks. And it´s building a brick house, which is nice because it´s different from what we´ve done before.

The countdown is on for the end. Only 8 working days left. It´s great working here, but really, the thought of spending a week on the Bay Islands tanning and scuba diving is really keeping us going. Yes, the countdown is definately on.

Week Ten Picture and Events

2006-03-24T15:16:00.000-08:00

After eight weeks this is the finished house.

No, not a bird or plane, its Tab sporting the rain gear of choice in Honduras...a tablecloth!

Tab and Pete all dirty from a hard day of work, and yes, these clothes will be worn again, and again, and again.

Tab´s biggest fan, little Samuel.

The volunteers hard at work, playing with the kids.

The start of an adobe style brick house that we were working on. The bricks were taken down from an old house and are being used to make the new one.

Dave roasting marshmallows at last weekend´s beach bonfire.

Your favourite volunteers!

Hi eveyone,
Things here are good! This week we finally finished the house we´ve been working on. We sort of took it upon ourselves to set an end date since it was starting to drag on and since the family had started to repair their old house now that the new one is done. Of course on our last day we had to carry huge planks of wood on our shoulders for about a kilometer uphill. Christino told us that we needed wood to make the door but we carried so much wood that Tab was prompted to ask ¨This is for the door AND...¨ she kept stressing the AND part but we couldn´t figure out what else they were planning to do with the cut wood. Again a mystery that could be solved with improved spanish. Leaving the family was actually really hard. We thanked eachother a bunch of times and they told us that they were sad we were leaving and that they enjoyed getting to know us etc.

On Thursday we were driven to a new project by Save the Children, however there were already three volunteers working there, including 53 year old twins from England who are awesome! I asked the one woman if she´d ever done anything like this before and she said ¨Oh no, well my other sister and I did backpack around the world when I was 50!!!!¨ Anyway, at this project there wasn´t really enough work for the three that were already there so we ended up picking up trash from the family´s yard and then working in their califlower field pulling weeds. The weeding was actually pretty satisfying and it was cool to see their crops. Also at this project we were treated to some sort of aweful refreshment whose main ingredients seemed to be milk, maize and sugar. I could hardly drink this corn-shake and had to down it like a series of shots so as not to be rude. YUCK!

Today we moved projects again and took over for some volunteers who were away travelling. Although the day consisted of a lot of sitting around, playing with children and trying to convince them that we weren´t hiding bon-bons in our backpacks, we did help out making mud mortar for adobe style bricks to be laid on. Again it was cool to see a different house and a different style of building. The best part about today was that the littlest boy at the house kept calling out ¨Tabitha¨ all day! He seems to be the only Honduran who can say her name properly and he sort of skipped about all day calling her, it was really really cute!

Anyway after being shuffled around a bit this week we´re hoping to get a more permanent project next week where there aren´t too many volunteers and where there is lots of work to be done. Due to the fact that ¨Tabitha¨doesn´t translate well in spanish we were planning to give Tab a new name for the next project. I voted for Consuela or something crazily spanish but Tab insisted that her new alias be Maria, however after little Samuel did so well with her name today we might decide to keep to our normal identities.

This weekend we´re heading off to Comayagua which is only a couple hours away from La Esperanza. Its sort of an old colonial town that used to be the capitol city. We´re planning to just poke around the city and like every other weekend away, eat and drink what we like and enjoy some english TV curtesy to our hotel room. Talk to you soon!!!

Lesson Learned....The Hard Way

2006-03-20T14:25:00.000-08:00

This weekend brought about both good times and bad. I´ll start with the good.

The Beach. Warm water, soft sand, a cool breeze. Oh how I love the beach. We had lunch on a nice restaurant on the beach then hung out for the afternoon. Checked out the city of Tela a bit, but we were less than impressed so we just sat in the town square reading. Teresa started chatting to a local who spoke some English and she made a new friend :) That evening we met up with the 7 other volunteers for dinner at a great restaurant. Enjoyed some delicious non-bean food and had a chance to exchange our previously read books for some new-to-us english novels..always a great find in a Spanish speaking country. For the evening we headed back down to the beach where we had a fire. A couple of the guys claimed they could do it, but we definately had our doubts. They proved us wrong though, and we enjoyed a fire complete with marshmallows and hotdogs.

After the fire, the not so good times begin.
When we first arrived in Tela we went to the hotel of choice. Unfortunately they only had room for 4 people, and we had 7. So we decided to try and find antoher place to take us all. We found the next available hotel, and it had enough room. Done. Well, we definately found out why it had room, and also why it was so incredibly cheap.
We returned to the hotel Saturday night to find an ample suply of ants on the bed spread. No problem I figured, I´ll just shake them off. But when I pulled off the cover a giant cockroach crawled out from under my pillow!!!! Naturally I jumped, which resulted in me putting a hole in the floorboard. Wonderful. So after bathing in some bugspray, Teresa and I lay on the bed with the lights on, not moving a muscle. Needless to say it took quite some time to fall asleep. I was then rudely awaken when I realized that, sure you could come back to the hotel at any time of night, but you had to bang on the door loud enough and long enough to wake up a staff member to let you in. Unfortunately I´m not as heavy a sleeper as the staff. After 45 min of pounding the first group got let in. A bunch of drunken people, they made lots of noise and took their time heading to bed (not that I was really bothered by this...it´s understandable). One of them however had a bit too much to drink, and he proceeded to run down the hallway past our room to the communal toilet. Only he didn´t make it. Gross. And the upper part of the walls in this place were screen, so sound travelled well. He repeated this little jog numerous times in the next hour or so. Finally things calmed down and I managed to fall asleep again, only to be awoken by the next group pounding on the door. Fortunately it only took about 20 min for them to be let in, and this staff member found the bathroom mess and cleaned it up. But by this time the hot dog that I thought was such a good idea at the fire was starting to talk back to me. Sleep did not come easily. I finally dozed for a bit, but Teresa got up to go to the bathroom, and came back less than happy to have found a plugged toilet. Ewwww. After that the ants came back and started making a feast of my legs. There was little to do besides lay there waiting for the hotdog to run it´s course, add to the already revolting toilet, then leave the disgusting, seedy hotel by 5 am.

On the plus side of life that meant we got to watch the sunrise on the beach. Also, I slept for the better part of the 6 hour bus ride home.

So the lesson learned is go for the more expensive hotel with sealed rooms, even if it can´t fit all your friends. I vow to never cheap out on a hotel again.

This week we will be starting a new work project, which will be exciting. Also, with our newfound exchanges we´ll have a quiet week with our noses stuck in a book. Definately looking forward to it.

The World is Our Toilet

2006-03-16T12:49:00.000-08:00

So, Tab got mad at me for taking a picture of her secret forest pee spot today. I think she´s almost over it... The ¨facilities¨at our work site are non existent so we´ve all staked out secret little spots in the woods and on the paths leading to the house. So far we´ve yet to be surprised by any animals or people, but it always makes our mornings exciting.

Things here are good. We´re almost done the house. Everyday we go to work thinking that it will be the last day but they find new jobs for us, maybe because we´re so delightful they don´t want us to go. At some of the other projects there are a lot of sons or family members helping out, but at our site its often just Tab and I and Christino so things are dragging out a bit. Its cool that we get to see all the jobs involved. Today, if we understood right, we were told that we get to make the door next, something that we´ve never done. Next week we´ll likely start our third house. We´re both hoping to see a different style of building so hopefully we´ll get an adobe house to work on and get to make some bricks and such. Right near our house a group of corporate volunteers are adding an addition onto one of the Save the Children one room schools and they´re using stones and cement to make a foundation, which is more like proper building. Its been cool to see their progress these past couple of weeks.

This afternoon we have a big soccer game planned at the Plaza in town, which is a dirt soccer field. Tab and I had been playing pickup with local kids pretty regularily until our ball met an unfortunate incident with some barbed wire. There are actually very few surfaces in La Esperanza and surrounding countryside that aren´t COVERED in serious barbed wire. So hopefully we won´t be too rusty. Including the corporate volunteers, bankers from the U.K who´s company sent them here, there are probably about 25 volunteers around - perfect soccer numbers.

This weekend we´re heading to the north coast to the beachs of Tela with a bunch of other volunteers. After the most obvious highlight, the beach, we´re looking foward to lots of eating, drinking and hopefully a book exchange or two. Since we´ve got only about three weeks of work left we´ve made a pretty extensive list of foods we have to try before leaving. Most of the items are treats or traditional baked goods, like coconut bread that you can get in Tela, although some are more sketchy like ¨huevos de torro¨... check out a spanish dictionary to figure that one out... actually that one is on our list of something we´d like to witness someone else eat. Because we´re two competitive girls, we weren´t satisfied with the Eurchure Campion of the World contest that we have going so we´ve made up new and exciting La Esp challenges for eachother. Mine is to find a pulperia in town that sells coke in a bag. Since you get money for the glass bottles that coke and pepsi come in, stores open the pop and pour it into a plastic baggie and hand you a straw. This challenge is mostly for the photo opt. and should be realatively easy. Tab´s is to buy a paletta from a kid selling them. They are fat little homemade popsicle things that kids sell from little coolers. I was afraid of them for a long time because they looked like they were made from frozen corn kernels, but Tab´s theory was that they are in fact mushed up banana chunks. Either way her challenge is a little more questionable for the digestive system. We´ll keep you posted on who comes out on top in this and future challenges.

Have a super weekend and think of us on a lovely, and hopefully garbage free, beach!
Talk to you soon.

Hiking Pictures

2006-03-13T14:51:00.001-08:00

The first attempt at finding a local waterfall....result less than productive (see middle of nowhere post)

The second attempt was better, but we were still a little unsatisfied. PS. the sweater Teresa´s wearing is one that another volunteer says ¨reaks of the Dutch¨ HA!

Finally, with perseverance, we found what we were looking for. Unfortunately since it´s the middle of the dry season, the water was somewhat less than impressive, but we were still proud to have found it.

Since we live in the mountains, the vegetation is a lot like home :)

Relaxing Weekend

2006-03-13T14:51:00.000-08:00

This weekend we opted to stay in town while groups of other volunteers all travelled to places we´d already been. The weekend was quite nice, starting with the Friday off. We travelled out to the local laguna for some sun-bathing and picnicing before a hike home.

Saturday was the second attempt at finding a nearby waterfall. Knowing where to get off the bus this time, we had much more confidence. Teresa started off the day with some wonderful spanish skills asking about various bus times and asking for directions once we got to the town. Super job Teresa! We were pointed in the right direction, then we cleverly followed the river until we found the waterfall. The hike was quite reminicent of home given all the pine trees and maple trees....the little lizard that skittered past was rather unexpected however.

Once we were content with our hiking adventure we proceeded to wonder around the little town we had come to. We ran into a local missionary, Jimmy, who was very informative about life in Honduras. It was really interesting to talk with him, but rather long and windy. For a detailed description chat with us when we get home.

Saturday night was a splendid evening of card playing and movie watching. This would be the second time in 2 months that we managed to snag the family tv for some English movie goodness.

Sunday was rather uneventful. Teresa spent the day reading in town and I spent the day in bed. I´ve been feeling pooped beyond belief the past few days, so I figured there´s no better way to solve that than by spending a day under the covers. I surfaced for all opportune food moments of course though :)

In other news, another local Canadian arrived Saturday. Erin is from Cambridge and is quite friendly. She´s volunteered with GVN previously in Nepal, so she´s a little better prepared than the rest of us, and her stories are of great entertainment to all. We´re happy to have her aboard.

Finally Some Pictures

2006-03-10T07:11:00.000-08:00

Tab´s delicious birthday cake, before face plant.

She´s too old to have ALL her candles on the cake.

The best Honduran tradition we´ve encountered so far!

An afternoon by the pool in honor of the birthday girl (not shown).

Tab and I with the family we´re building for. Although hard to make out, the three kids Keyda age 6, Jonas age 4 and Gasbar age 1ish, are always around the work site helping out and playing with us. The parents, Paola and Christino are super nice and despite our lack of spanish skills they always make an effort to ask us questions and chat to us daily.

The kids walking us to our pickup truck after a morning of work.

Tab in the process of putting a calcium carbonate paste on the walls of the house...the best job EVER!

Me, mixing up some ¨cal¨ rocks with water to make the paste...another easy and relaxing job!

And finally, the house with the cal on the walls. At this point we´ve covered the whole outside and will move on to the inside walls next week. We´ve heard conflicting things on the purpose of the cal. Orginially we thought it was to seal the walls and protect the mud from water, however when we asked Christino he told us it was to make the house look white??? That´s what you get for not knowing the language. Incidently, that´s our favourite excuse for all the things that don´t make sense down here.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TAB!!!

2006-03-09T15:32:00.000-08:00

Okay. Happy birthday to me! Yesterday was an excellent day, if I do say so myself. It all started at the truck stop, where two of the guys gave me gifts. Dave made me a button that said I am 24, and Iain made me a card with 1 Lempira in it for the purchase of an orange after work. Excellent! Then I pseudo worked in the morning while Teresa and Matt just told me to relax for the day. In the afternoon T suprised me with a little gift I´ve been eyeing while here. Since we spend almost all our time together, I¨m suprised she got it without my knowing. Good job her.

For the afternoon a bunch of the volunteers and I headed to a high class hotel outside town for some beers and some swimming in the awesome pool. There are now over 40 volunteers in La Esperanza, so things are quite different than when we got here and there were only 5. So a group of 15 or so hung out with us by the pool, soaking up the afternoon sun. So good.

In the evening my host family cooked up a special meal. BBQ chicken, cheese potatoes, veggies, and, of course, beans. But they were the good spread kind of beans, not the gross boiled kind. And since bbq is my favourite, I loved it. Also, some friends of the family came over for dinner, and they work for the Peace Corps. and speak english and spanish, so there was lots of chatting and only a little akwardness, so that was good.

After dinner the cake Teresa bought was brought out and everyone sang Happy Birthday AND Feliz Cumpleanos to me, once in spanish, once in english. After I blew out the candle, they informed me that it was Honduran tradition to take a bite out of the cake. I was a little skeptical, but the idea of just plowin into the cake didn´t seem like such a bad one, so I decided to go for it. Well one of the guys helped my head in a little further than expected, and I had icing everywhere. On the plus side however my piece consisted of everywhere I had touched, which was clearly a large area. I´ve decided to carry on this tradition for future birthdays.

We have lots of good pictures, which of course aren´t loading at the moment, so we´ll add them tomorrow. For no reason in particular we were given tomorrow off, so one more day to do pretty much nothin. Ah life in Honduras. I´m lovin it.

Picturama

2006-03-06T15:08:00.000-08:00

Here are some pictures from the ruins.

This lovely picture is the 3 Canadian ladies demonstrating the act of ¨spooning¨ to the international volunteers. Oh how little they know.

We´re Still Here!

2006-03-02T13:39:00.000-08:00

Hi everybody,
Just a quick hello. Tab and I are still here, working hard on the house. We´ve finished covering the walls with mud and have only one more week on this project covering the mud with some calcium carbonate substance. This weekend we´re off to Copan with a bunch of other volunteers to see the Mayan ruins, eat some familiar foods and just relax. We´ll post more work pictures and hopefully some weekend pictures on Monday. Have a great weekend!

The Weekenders

2006-02-26T14:03:00.000-08:00

This weekend started out pretty ¨shitty¨ for Teresa. Unfortunately she´s the one who got sick this time around, and pretty severely too. But our just-in-case antibiotics came in handy and seemed to do the trick. She´s up and runnin now, but unfortunately she was bedside for most of the past few days activities. Like the trooper she is though, she´s still smiling :)

I had a stupendous weekend myself. Friday afternoon started with some chillaxin by the local lagoon near work, swimming and tanning. Then a few of us walked home and went out for drinks. A perfect start to a weekend.

Saturday I met up with only 2 of the 5 other volunteers I was supposed to meet. Getting lost and being sick seemed to prevent people other than Teresa from this weekends festivities. 3 of us however were enough to catch a bus and head up to some local caves which have been excavated for 400 m, than you can explore beyond that on your own. The caves were really cool, super huge with tons of amazing rock formations. The first 400 m were lit up by coloured lights, giving it an kind of eerie feel. Than we explored beyond for a few hundred meters. It got really humid and hot however, reaching 37 degrees. I borrowed T´s head lamp, which is the most amazing thing ever! I gotta get myself one of those. After spending a few hours exploring we headed out for lunch. Deciding on fish, we hitched a ride to the lake for the fresh catch o´ the day. The menu consisted of the owner asking us if we each wanted a whole fish. So I guess I was eating a fish. When it came, it was served on the plate with not a thing missing. Fins, head, teeth, eyes, they were all there. But I was tough. I ate the entire thing. Well, all the meat anyway. Mom, you´d be so proud of me! Then Matt and Terri headed to the waterfalls where we were a few weeks ago, and I went back to La Esp. all by myself! First solo bus ride. Yay me.

Than last night T and I finally were able to snag the family tv long enough to watch an entire movie in English! We also had popcorn, which makes for a delightful saturday night.

This morning I tried a new church. I really enjoyed this one, as they held a small Bible study in the morning with the adults while the kids were in Sunday school. The leader wrote stuff on a whiteboard at the front, so it was much easier to follow along. As well, they took turns reading Bible passages, so next time I go I´ll bring my Bible and hopefully follow along even more. After an hour the kids were let out and things proceeded as a church service I´m accustomed to, with singing and praying and everyone greeting eachother. Turns out this is the church our host family attends, and I recognized some of the extended family, which was nice. It´s always comforting to see familiar faces. All in all, a fabulous weekend.

2006-02-21T13:42:00.000-08:00

Everyone workin hard on the house

Stompin the mud

Lunch after a morning of work

Best Bus Trip Ever

2006-02-21T13:28:00.000-08:00

Hi eveyone,
Things here are pretty good. In case you aren´t counting down on your calendars, this is our half way week. We´re both pretty excited about that. Its all down hill from here.

This past weekend was...interesting. We started out with some great plans to do some hiking in a nearby town where there are trails to a waterfall. We boarded a yellow school bus, the second most popular mode of transport besides pickups. After waiting at the bus stop for an hour and a half for the bus to leave we proceeded to ride the bus well past the city we wanted...not speaking too much spanish and being jam packed into a bus sitting three to a seat with people all over the isles both contributed to this misfortune. We travelled to the ¨last stop¨ which was in fact the middle of nowhere. There we were, three conspicuous white people at a deserted end of the line. It was kind of funny in retrospect. We ended up waiting for a bus back to where we were going just in time to catch the last bus back to la esperanza. It was a lovely day of bus tours.

Sunday we didn´t do too much. We basically relaxed, and did some reading in the sun. Tab had to fend of Poncho for part of the weekend, but I´m sure she´ll fill you all in later.

Other than that, not too much is new. We´re still both really loving work and have included some more work pix.

Kay, bye.

Days Go By...

2006-02-16T12:20:00.000-08:00

Today was one of the harder days for these lovely ladies. Sometimes the poverty of the country really gets to me. As well, being away from home just plain old sucks sometimes. We´ve nearly completed 5 weeks however, leaving only 7 to go. Next week will be the half way mark, and from there it´s all downhill. Here are some random pictures we´ve been taking. Enjoy!

All the necessary tools to build a house:
machette, ladder, hammer, nails, shovel, hoe,
tin roof, and some weird giant scapel thing

Can´t start off the day of work without a coffee

Chess with Miguel

The boys fashioning a swing for the kids during some down time

We weren´t kidding about it being cold here.

San Pedro Sula Girly Weekend!!!

2006-02-13T13:47:00.000-08:00

Hi eveybody!
We just got back from an excellent weekend away in the much bigger and much warmer city of San Pedro Sula. Due to some timing difficulties, we were separated from half of the volunteers who had originally planned to go and ended up with just our friend Mikaela. This with the perfect combination for a true girly weekend! In San Pedro we got a really nice hotel, which was similar to a western style hotel, although way way cheaper. We then hit up a mall! Yes that´s right. In addition to crazy busy markets and street vendors, the big citys have American style malls. At the mall we treated ourselves to a foodcourt lunch where we could choose from some well known names like Wendy´s, Pizza Hut, Burger King, and KFC. Being the health conscience ladies that we are we enjoyed subway sandwiches that tasted mostly like at home with some questionable sauces. Apparently in Britian they don´t have grape soda so Mikaela was also treated to some interesting beverage choices too. We shopped around the mall which was actually kind of surreal. It was just like at home, although the styles of women´s clothing mostly entail a lot of frills and sequins and bright colours. All the prices in the mall were as we´d expect at home and some of the price tags were even in American dollars. I guess the weird thing was to see something from home in such a poor country. It was a huge contrast to La Esperanza and felt more like a vacation than our other Honduran experiences. I bought two tank tops for about 7 canadian dollars each, without any beading or sequins, just so you know. Tab and I both picked up some English novels for those lonely nights when we´re in bed by nine - oh sorry, that´s each and every night. After the mall, we did some grocery shopping for after the bar snacks and got all dolled up for a night out. This mostly involved showering since we didn´t pack many toiletries or even nice clothes for that matter. We ate at a really nice Mexican place that looked like it could´ve been a chain restaurant in Canada. Afterwards we tried to go to an Aventura concert. Coke was sponsoring a free concert at a stadium and all you had to do was bring a coke bottle to get in, clearly a clever marketing plan. Sadly the stadium was packed and there were lines right around the whole building. At one point we made an attempt to get into the stadium but after experiencing a true stampede for about a minute we all decided to bail. In an effort to get as far away as possible from these crazy crowds and streets littered with coke bottles, we cabbed it to a disco. The bar was actually really really fun. It was just like any club at home. We got there super early and just watched the night unfold. It was the typical bar experience. Everyone wanting to dance but waiting around for other people to start. It´s fairly safe to say that we got ripped off on every drink we purchased, but we had some excellent girly cocktails and it was all worth it. After waiting out a couples only phase of the evening, we finally made it onto the dance floor to bust a move! It was really really fun. A lot of typical english dance music was played and we had fun singing along to what we could make out.

Sunday we checked out a market in town and it was amazing. It turns out it´s the best place to get souvenirs. They had all kinds of things that we´d seen other places for much better prices so we enjoyed browsing around and getting gift ideas. After that we had some difficulty finding a place for breakfast because strangely nothing was open but shoe stores. The area we were in had more shoe stores on one block than I´d ever seen. In the end we got a sort of brunch and just ended up checking out. Overall it was a great weekend away and something totally different from La Esperanza. It was interesting to see a richer city or the rich parts of a big city and compare that to what we see every day here. Also, it was great to spend the weekend with Mikaela whose starting a new project after this week.

Things here are still rainy so we can´t work. It´s still quite cold and I had to break down and buy a second hand sweatshirt today, it´s bright orange! Hopefully we´ll be back at work for the rest of the week so the days will go a little quicker. We´ll write again later in the week. Happy Valentines Day!!!!

Rain Day

2006-02-09T12:00:00.000-08:00

Hello Hello.
Although we´re accustom to snow days, being rained out for the last two days takes some getting used to. The weather in La Esperanza isn´t too too bad, although it´s chilly, but in the mountains it´s rainy and the roads are terrible so we haven´t been working.

Last night all the volunteers went to Gracias to sit in the hot springs there. This trip involved a 2 hour ride in the back of a pickup in sort of a constant mist. The hot springs were really hot and so relaxing. They were naturally fed and were set up so that the water drained into various pools. Despite the subtle smell of rotten eggs, the whole experience was awesome. I can only imagine how it must have been for the others who don´t have the luxury of having luke warm showers. We´re going to get some pix of the hot springs from the others and maybe post them later.

Another Canadian, Terri, from Toronto arrived yesterday so thats kinda cool. We hear that there´s some snow at home.... We´re proud to say that half the volunteers are now Canadians. We also met another guy from Quebec, but he´s working on some teaching project and we´re not to sure which organization he´s with.

Not much else is new. We´re off to San Pedro for the weekend for some shopping and Honduran nightlife (read: dancing). Hopefully there will be lots of stories for Monday. Talk to you soon!

Looks Like Somebody's Got A Case of the MONDAYS!

2006-02-06T11:45:00.000-08:00

This weekend was uneventful due to the less than good weather. We had big plans of sunning ourselves beside a pool, but since the sun was not out, that was a no go. Instead we went to the hotel with the aforementioned pool and had lunch with the owner, and got the rundown on the place. It's the most gorgeous hotel I've ever seen, so we're definately going back for a swim.

Sunday morning we went to church. The local Catholic church in the town square. First off, I don't know much about how a normal Catholic service goes, but Teresa ensured me it was somewhat similar, just in a different order than normal with a few changes here and there. However, not knowing much Spanish made the service somewhat tiresome. People were constantly coming and going, and the band would start up at random times while the Priest was still talking. It seemed kinda chaotic at times. But there were lots of people there (b/w 300-400), and everyone sang along with the band, I recognized a couple of songs, and generally everyone was friendly, so it was okay. But definately not what was expected. Perhaps next time in town I'll try another church.

This week is a crunch week with the money. ATMs are only found in large cities (not La Esperanza) so we're only gonna do internet a couple times this week. But the plans for the week include a trip to the local hot springs one night, and this weekend we're heading to San Pedro Sula for a fun times girls weekend. It's gonna be great!

Save the Children

2006-02-03T11:48:00.000-08:00

Earlier this week we had some representatives from Save the Children come to see us at work and check on things. They were quite informative about the inner workings of the organization, and we would just like to share.

First off, the family we are building for is part of the Lenca community, who are the indiginous people of Honduras. Originally their society was a matriarcial society, which is awesome. This community gets together every so often and they decide who needs/derserves help from Save the Children for a new home/addition. STC then sends volunteers and provides things such as nails, laminent for a roof, and any tools that might be required. We also learned that although these people own the land, since they don´t have titles for it the government randomly expropriates land where their homes or fields are. We also learned that they mainly farm for income. They grow what they need themselves, then work for other, larger export farms for a few weeks here and there when needed for extra income.

Save the Children is currently running 7 schools in the area. Each school has all the supplies donated by Save the Children, and a lunch program is run where two mothers come in each day and cook a good meal for the kids. This is STC´s way of ensuring that each child has at least one full meal each day. They´ve also recently started a shoe program in which each child is given at least one pair of shoes to ensure no one is barefoot. Currently there´s a school near our job site that was built several years ago from a donation given by a lady who´s a former volunteer who opted to send $2000 for a new school rather than having a 50th birthday party. To this school they are adding a kitchen in March. We´re excited to see how that´s going to look.

Basically this is where all the extra money is going from our project fees. It´s nice to know what´s happening with it, and it seems INCREDIBLY well spent. Thanks again to all those who made this trip possible for us.

Here´s the frame of the house thus far

Look at this superstar, carrying that heavy log (uphill, of course)

Sure, it looks fun, but you should see the blisters

Construction Site Pix

2006-01-31T11:17:00.000-08:00

Making friends with six year olds!

Digging a hole for the frame of the house.

Scooping mud out of the hole a.k.a playing in the mud.
Nice safety pin, Tab.

Another volunteer, Matt, testing the depth of the hole.

Approximately one girl deep.

Pictures

2006-01-30T11:44:00.000-08:00

The trail leading to the falls.

The Falls, obviously

Two delightful Canadian girls at said Falls.
Thanks for the shirt Jon :)

The crazies, about to jump. No one wants to go first

The end. Waiting for a bus to happen by to pick us up.
There´s always lots of waiting to be done in Honduras.

Hurricane Central

2006-01-30T11:11:00.000-08:00

Hello, hello.
We´re back from our awesome first weekend away! On Saturday morning Tab and I met up with four other volunteers and took a bus to Lago Yojoa. After that we caught a couple little buses and then hiked a short 2km, just so we could secure rooms at a local brewery/B&B run by an american guy. We then hitched a ride and took another bus to the waterfalls. Now, I must say, this was the coolest thing EVER! Reading the tourist info suggested that you could get a guy to give you a tour to caves behind the waterfall. It sounded great, but little did we know how awesome it would be. To start the tour we basically had to get right in the water and proceed to hop across rocks to get to the base of the falls. I can´t even describe how crazy it was. As soon as we got in the water, our breathe was taken away because the water was falling so hard and spraying everwhere. At times you totally couldn´t see anything but the mist around you. After making it behind the water our guide showed us a couple of little caves that we could crawl into. It was sooo amazing! I can´t even imagine how they were ever found in the first place. After all this excitement our guide led us back through the rushing waters and showed us places where we could jump into the small pools literally surrounded by tons of rocks. Not having a bathing suit and being weighted down with nasty wet jeans I had to sit this one out, but NOT Tab!!!! She was right in there with all the guys (all the other girls punked out as well), jumping into all the pools. At one point they even swam (as fast a possible) across the rapids to get to the other side before being swept away. On the opposite side they jumped off this huge cliff into the white water below. It was soo awesome. Even with a bathing suit and water wings and a life jacket and while sedated I could never do that. I was sooo proud of Tab! Unfortunately even standing downstream from the 43 m falls was so misty and wet that I couldn´t get any digital pix of her, but I know I have a great mid-air one of her on film!!!! Crazy!

After the days excitement, we went back to our hotel and had a feast! It was really nice to order ¨a REAL hamburger¨ from the menu (that was really the name). We also got to try lots of different beers brewed on site, including some interesting fruit beers like mango, raspberry and apricot. I can´t say that I was a big fan, but it was definitely interesting. We just sat around playing cards and enjoying the drinks. We were actually introduced to quite a few hilarious card games. Ever heard of Scabby Queen? Good times!!!!

Sunday morning began with DELICIOUS blueberry pancakes. Then we went to a coffee plantation to follow some interesting trails. First off, I (tab now) felt very ignorant for not having any knowledge of something I drink almost daily. But now I know what a coffee plant looks like, and how they harvest the beans. Look at me....I´m learning! We were fortunate enough to meet a guy at our hotel that is big into bird watching, and he took us through the plantation and showed us this blue pool of water that collects from a stream that starts out of random rocks. Since it is a fresh source apparently the water is drinkable, but no one wanted to check.

When we checked out of our hotel we paid for dinner, drinks, the room, and breakfast all at once. Fortunately for us, it only came to $25 each! Whoa! Things are really cheap in this country. The ride back was uneventful. We stopped and had lunch at a restaurant overlooking the lake. Coming back into La Esperanza I found myself thinking "Ah, so nice to be home". What a change from two weeks ago of "Oh goodness, this place looks SKETCHY! What was I thinking coming here!?!" So things are definately getting better.

PS. I definately have some scrapes and cuts from where I didn´t quite avoid all the rocks. The cliff jumping was not as high as I´ve sometimes done (Ottawa river) but jumping into such a small pool definately takes a little more courage. So cool.

Random Thursday

2006-01-26T11:50:00.000-08:00

So.
Today was a fun filled day of leveling a honduran front yard! It´s much harder than it sounds. After work today we were treated to a lovely sit down lunch of torillas, rice and something eggie. After only a few hours of work, we all look forward to whatever they give us for lunch.

Not much else is new. Today we´re going to meet our first Honduran friend for some card playing and chess. Actually, to be fair, Tab met him first and we were unsure as to whether he was super friendly or sort of creepy. She definitely got razzed quite a bit for being picked up by a local. So with a crew of chaperones in tow she met Miguel on Tuesday and he was actually quite nice. He took us to his place, where he has a whole chess room. It´s a big empty room with these really cool tiles and in the center is a chess board with really intricately carved pieces and two chairs. It´s really cool. The best parts of the visit included the fact that he had really good eighties music in the background AND that he gave us each a lollypop when we left. Just like going to the doctor! Today I´m going to play him and score some more points for the foreigner´s team.

We´re in the process of planning a trip this weekend to lago yojoa where there is apparently excellent hiking behind a waterfall and also some caverns that you can hike into. We´ve managed to recruit three other volunteers to join us so that should be fun. At least it will be a much anticipated change of scenary. Check back for more details and hopefully pictures after this weekend.

Mas Pictures

2006-01-25T14:22:00.000-08:00

This is La Esperanza, where we are living. This picture was taken during our hike up one of the huge hills.

This is a public shower we stumbled upon during our explorations. Needless to say, we did not use it, although others seemed to be. The poverty here is mind-boggling sometimes. Although there also seem to be quite a few ¨wealthier¨people around, so it´s kinda confusing. Makes us SUPER thankful for what we have.

This is our new job location. We´re flattening out the front area where everyone is standing.

Cresto, Teresa and Tab, soakin up the sun after a long morning´s work. Now we wouldn´t want to get carried away and work all day now. Behind us is the old house, kinda crumbling to pieces. They have a toilet and wash basin unattached elsewhere, along with a fire pit, used as the kitchen.

Long Time No See

2006-01-25T14:05:00.000-08:00

Well well well, what can I say. First off, I would like to apologize to those worried about us for the lack of updates. See, I was rather incapacitated for a few days due to illness. A dearly beloved ¨friend¨of mine stopped by to see me on Sunday, Poncho*. Poncho and I stayed in Sunday afternoon for some quality time together, while Teresa, I´m proud to say, ventured off all by her onsie self. Good for her! Basically our weekend was spend hiking around, which was kinda cool, and lounging around town making some important purchases (such as a watch with an alarm).

Hiking was actually not overly different from the hikes at home. Given the elevation and temperatures, it felt like home, and a lot of the plant life is the same (evergreens everywhere). In town we shopped around for deals on the things we wanted, seeing how thére´s not much else to do. And we often came by houses playing english music, so good, but mostly eminem and oasis, so less than good. But at least it feels like home.

Monday Teresa went to work while I stayed home with Poncho. She and the other volunteers spent the day filling in the gaps between the logs on the inside of the walls of the house. Tuesday we did the same thing...as frustrating and trying as it was....but at the end of the day we were suprised to be told el projecto es terminar! The house doesn´t look any different from the pictures posted, accept there are now two doors attached. The way these people live is a huge eye-openner.

Today we started a new house from scratch. We spent the morning digging up the front yard (again) but this time making it level to build the house upon. Basically one person used a pick-ax to tear up the ground, another person shovelled the dirt/clay onto potato sacks, and two people carried the dirt away to a pile for later use for the mud making. We alternated between the jobs, getting hot, sticky, sweaty, and ubber buff of course. The man of the house (Cresto) informed us that it will take 2 months to finish. It will be exciting to see the entire process of building from start to finish. We were able to say in Spanish that we would be here for the whole duration of the project, and Cresto seemed quite pleased.

Upon the arrival of Poncho, I must say that I was quite homesick whilst lying around with nothing to do but think. We just wanted to say that we miss everyone from home a lot. Even though this adventure is amazing, sometimes it is hard. Good thing we have eachother! (awww) Cudos to people who come alone.

*Poncho is the name I pleasantly gave the parasite that took residence in my belly this previous summer.

Jan. 20th, Another good day!

2006-01-20T12:30:00.000-08:00

Well the day started off pretty well because we got pancakes for breakfast! Although the food´s been okay, since I don´t mind beans (sorry tab), it all kind of tastes the same and nothing tastes like you´d expect. Something sweet for breakfast was awesome!

We had another day at the house today. We finished slapping mud on the last ouside wall and finished the only inside wall as well. Then we set about throwing mud at the inside walls to fill the cracks. Keep in mind the ¨walls¨ are more like an elaborate wood fence. Tab had the hardest job of filling in the parts right next to the roof with mud. To complete this task she got to use a so-called ladder, which was really a log with grooves in it propped against a mud wall. Its really hard to balance anyway, but when your shoes are caked with a foot of mud and you´re trying to throw a 15 lb mudball its quite a challenge.

Anyway, below you can see some pictures of the house and the landscape around it. Also there are pictures of us trekking to get to the house. It´s really cold in the mornings and in one picture you can see the mist that just hangs in the air. We´re not really sure what the next job on the house will be. The floor is just dirt and we don´t know if anything else will be done inside. The other volunteers had to carry logs and chop wood at one point so those jobs might be in store for us yet.

Other than that, we´re just planning on having a quiet weekend at home. There is literally NOTHING to do in the city so we´ll probably venture out and do some hiking in the mountains. We´ve already seen one path that looks like it might be a promising trail. It´s pretty funny because after we eat dinner we just play cards for an hour or so and then are in bed by nine, well tab reads and I go to bed...NOTHING TO DO. To balance that out, we do get up around 5ish because the animals are stinkin loud!

Okay, later!!!!

Finally some pictures

2006-01-20T12:22:00.000-08:00

Our New Profession - Mud Slingers!!

2006-01-19T14:07:00.000-08:00

The first thing to report is that things with our family have improved greatly. We had lunch with the lady of the house yesterday and had the chance to chat with her for a while. Conversation was good, our spanish less than good, but improving. Now we know stuff about Gwendi and she about us...less akward...definately good.

Today we met the other volunteers to catch a ride to work. Apparently there was still some rain happenin in the mountains, so all the others girls bailed. Not us though, we´re troopers. The solo man on the job also decided to go still - Ian, a 17 yr old Scot. So into the back of a pickup we got, drove for about 20 min on dirt roads through nowheresville, only to be let off way before our stop cause the roads where too muddy to drive through. We trekked through muddy roads for about 30 min, then through a random field, next through someone´s backyard, then a cornfield, followed by a bush trail, and lastly another random field before getting to our destination. Hence, we were literally in the middle of nowhere, but there was no rain, so that was good. We are helping build a house for a family of 6. The dad (23 yrs old) made a mud mixture by digging up his front yard, pouring water on it, and mixing in some straw. We then grabbed a big load of mud, brought it over to the wall (a bunch of logs tied together) then threw it as hard as we could. It was AWESOME! So that was pretty much our day. We covered 1.5 walls and will finish the final wall tomorrow. The family we´re helping seems incredibly poor, so it feels good to be working alongside them to help with the new house. Even the kids (7, 4 &2) helped with the mud. When it was time to leave, we trekked back to the road and waited for a pickup truck to offer us a ride. After about 2 hours of waiting we gave up and started walking. But we were picked up after 20 min, so it wasn´t so bad.

This afternoon we made even more progress and found a supermarket. Super cheap food, albet a little dusty. Hopefully this will save money rather than eating out every day. Speaking of food the family we´re building with gave us tortillas after we were finished. I was pleasantly suprised when I saw Teresa bite into her´s and a blue colour appeared. Jam! Or so I thought. Unfortunately when I took a big ol´bite I was unimpressed to find a mouthful of refried beans...again. Oh you beans, how I despise thee. Why must they come with almost every meal? Hopefully they´ll grow on me.

So today turned out to be quite a success. We know where to meet in the mornings, we know how to get a ride, what kind of work to expect, how to get home, and where to buy food. Excellent. Plus I´m confident that given the physical demands of the job, we´ll be ubber buff when we return. Woohoo!

we had a fright!!!!

2006-01-18T08:43:00.000-08:00

okay, so yesterday was a very hard day! there was no crying per se...but still very difficult. nick put us on a bus to la esperanza and little did we realize that we would spend the next 5 hours on a ¨coach¨ bus filled with way way more people than seats. we were told that we could get off and take a pee break and get some snackies at a certain stop except we were warned not to both get off the bus in case the driver decided to ¨bootleg it¨. so, despite the bus stopping several times we had no idea whether or not we could get off or not, so the bladder pressure was immense. we managed to purchase tickets without getting swindled so that was good. the scenery was pretty cool because of the elevation and because we got to see little villages all through the hills. about two seconds out of the city everything looked really poor. we both couldn´t believe how many coke and pepsi signs there were. also, almost everyone around us on the bus was drinking coke...with a spanish label. weird. further away from the captial there were fewer and fewer advertisements but we did see a wendy´s in one of the small towns. we were told that if we´re really missing home a burger and fries might just be the trick for homesickness. anyway, the drive was long and super hot but we made it.

getting off the bus was a nightmare! we were let of at the ¨bus station¨, which was a dusty driveway with little market shacks around it. no one really accosted us except to ask us if we wanted a taxi. the problem was that no one was there. one women was trying to take to us but we could barely communicate. she did however, help me find a public bathroom that was probably the most disgusting in the country. anyway there was a lot of confusion because we were waiting for a saves the children employee, but the women, whose name we think is magala, was actually from our homestay family. we can´t figure out if she´s a family member or if she works for the family. she walked us to our families home once we finally figured out that we were to go with her. the house is actually quite nice and seems really safe. there are two locked gates and a locked door you have to enter. the house consists of a front room and kitchen-dining room and then two bedrooms. we share one bedroom with two twin beds and we have our own bathroom, which is great! putting up a bug net seem totally unneccesary since the house is really sealed. everything is decorated nicely, although the rooms are a bit sparse. there are lot of modern ammenities like a microwave, a super new fridge, t.v, computer etc.

we ate an early dinner of some kind of pasta, an egg and beans...yummmm beans. basically after that we set to unpacking and basically just went to bed. it will take some time to get used to the constant barking of neighborhood dogs and chickens and roosters. its funny that the public health nurse warned us to stay away from dogs, because they are literally all over the place. oh, our homestay also has a little cat, named ¨darwin¨, and the cat is so tiny! the family itself is the mother, gwendi ??, that what it sounds like anyway, and a little girl of around 2 year old named alexandria. we met gwedi´s mother in law but we´re unsure about the husbands whereabouts.

today, wednesday, we were supposed to start work but it was cancelled because of rain in the mountains. it is stinkin cold right now! in a way its good that we have the day off. we´ve spent the morning walking the streets of the town to try and get an idea where things are. this afternoon we´re hoping to meet up with another volunteer who lives right next door to us. it´ll be good to get some explanations in english and to ask her where everything is in town. although we found several restaurants we have no idea where laundry is yet. we also just found out that we´ll be at the same work site as the other girl so we´ll be able to ride into work with her. this is comforting since hitching a ride on the back of a pick up sounds really intimidating.
(don´t worry terri, we´ll have all this sorted by the time you get here. nick didn´t tell us the name of our homestay family, which is one think that you should make sure you know before getting on the bus. if we had known the families name we would¨ve known it was okay to leave with magala in the first place. one thing we both forgot is a watch or a clock. the sun rises so early and we´re not exactly sure how we´re going to get up at the right time for work) .

i guess tomorrow will be our first actual day. we have to be at the work site at 7.30 so that means getting on a truck at around 7. then we work until 1 or so and then have the afternoon free. usually volunteers have lunch and a beer together in the afternoon and then go home to the homestay for dinner. i think we´ll both be feeling better after we meet up with other volunteers today and tomorrow.

thats it for now. talk to you soon.

We Made It!

2006-01-16T15:45:00.000-08:00

We are now in Honduras finally Although it´s not much of a work trip yet as we spent the afternoon lounging beside our hotel pool. Orientation is tomorrow morning, then off to La Esperezna for the rest of the day. We met our in-country coordinator. He´s a quirky british guy who says things like "I drive like a tit.¨ I´ve already seen one medium sized spider and Tab has seen TWO yes TWO donkeys! On the plane we met a US marine who told us about a few touristy spots and who promised to email us if something fabulous is going on in the capital. G.I. Joe also promised us a base tour that included a helicopter ride. WooHoo! Until next time...

Halfway There

2006-01-16T06:37:00.000-08:00

Hello to all worried about us (aka Moms and Dads). We just wanted to let you know we arrived in Houston safely. The hotel was ok, and it DID have a pool. We leave for Tegucigalpa in an hour. We'll try and post when we get there.

This Is It!

2006-01-15T10:42:00.000-08:00

I've never sweated so much in my life. I haven't even left Canada, but for some reason, I'm cookin. I suppose it's nerves. Considering I leave in a couple hours and I JUST finished packing, it's probably time that the reality of this trip sets in. Having few clothes and many meds, Teresa and I will be on our way to Texas for our layover tonight, then we head out to Honduras in the morning. My family seems to be in a hurry to get rid of me, so it's off I go to sit around at the boring airport. Let the adventures begin!

A Great Big Thank You!!!

2006-01-04T13:22:00.000-08:00

Hi everybody, Tab and I are just finishing up all our last minute errands and then we're pretty much set to go. Before leaving we really want to thank everyone who made this trip possible. First off, we want to thank all those who participated in our fundraiser - played volleyball, ate pizza, drank beer (yummm) etc. Special thanks to the lovely ladies of 58 Howitt St. and the lovely ladies residing at 604 College ave, without your help and encouragement we'd be great big stress balls. Also, a big thank you to our families for their support! Through our fundraising efforts we were able to raise over 9000 dollars!

More formally, thank you to:
Dundas Calvin Christian Reformed Church
The Rotary Club of Guelph
Student Volunteer Connections (U of G)
Sid & Annette Boonstra (aka Dad & Mom)
Samantha Boonstra
Warren Boonstra
Beppe & Pake Slump
Oma & Opa Boonstra
Charlie & Diane Boonstra
Hank & Deb Boonstra
Sylvia & Roger Blenkinsop
Arnold & Karin Boonstra
Jeff & Chris Hogeterp
Randy & Jen Slump
Michelle & Clarence Houwer
Ted & Shellynn Tigchelaar
Brandon, Jason, & Jordan Slump
Alan Houwer
Ashely Welsh
Kate Armstrong
Mike & Ellie Partridge
Sarah Partridge
Kate & Mark Sedore
Kristin Pandke

Let the Countdown Begin

2006-01-04T10:14:00.000-08:00

T - 11 days until departure. Excitation is soaring...along with a twinkle of fear. Packing must begin....so much to take, but so little space to pack it in.

Here we are:Teresa and Tab. Being unaware of the computer situation in Honduras, this may be the only picture added to the blog, but hopefully this is not the case.

Look at those pasty legs. I'm (tab) gonna be burnt in no time.

Quick Intro

2005-10-13T17:58:00.000-07:00

This blog is an online link to Teresa Partridge and Tabitha Boonstra's wonderful adventures in Honduras. The site is just underway, so expect postings and excitement to come!