It has been a long time...

It has been a long time since I have written! So much to catch you up on. I have broken it down into several stories…so hopefully you can follow along. But before the stories I wanted to share a little something with you

My computer classes continues to be going well and the kids are enjoying the chance to work on the computers but at times it can be very challenging because I have about 15-25 kids in each class and only 8 semi-functional computers so I have to put 3 to 4 kids at each computer and you can only imagine what that is like. I have been thinking how wonderful it would be if these kids could spread out and each have their own computer. So I wanted to put it out there and see if anyone knew of anyone willing to donate a laptop…reason for a laptop because it is easier to transport down here but I am certainly not being picky. This is my project before I leave!! I would love to get some laptops donated to the school and get some Spanish programs on there for the kids. Give them a real chance to gain the computer skills they need to advance themselves. That is all…hope you enjoy the stories…Pura Vida!


Costa Rica
I guess I will start from my time in Costa Rica. Had an absolute blast! What a beautiful country. My friend Megan and I went out to the west coast to Tamarindo and stayed with my brother Mark who was down visiting a friend of his who lives there. We had an amazing time going to the beach and hanging out and we took one day and went to a National Park where we saw hot springs…definitely tops one of the coolest natural sights I have ever seen. You will have to check out my video. Megan and I agreed we felt like we were on the site of an Indiana Jones movie being filmed. It almost didn’t feel real. We saw the little sign in the path that pointed to the hot springs so we made our way over to them and as we got closer you could see the steam billowing through the trees. And our excitement rose and we walked closer and you could hear the water boiling…I mean really boiling and we walked up to the edge and looked over and there were just pools of water boiling and the steam was just floating up through the air and you could feel the heat from the pool of water….so cool!

Mark’s friend introduced me to the most amazing dessert called a Trit. It is this ice cream sandwich that honestly is so delicious…a little chocolate syrup in the ice cream and the cookie is thin and crunchy…yummy. Sang karaoke with local Costa Ricans, saw a frog on a toilette seat, ate some alien fruit and survived, and saw the most beautiful sunset.


Holy Week
When we got back to Honduras the weather was sooooooo hot! Holy Week was in full force. In the town of Comayagua they have the Stations of the Cross every year where the streets are closed off and people come and they layout these huge pictures on the streets made out of sawdust which depict the different stations of the corss. Absolutely beautiful! Very vibrant colors and very intricate designs. The parade starts in the early morning and the Bishop is there along with all of the priests in town. They gather and start the walk and behind them is this huge float that is carried on the shoulders of about 30 men…who knows how much this thing weighs…I am just happy that I was not called to duty for that job. It was such a hot day and the men were clothed in robes and tall white hats (kind of look like the kkk but not) If you have ever seen the travel channel where it shows any kind of Spanish festival it looked something like that. It was great to be apart of and see this huge parade come together. Tons and tons of people out on the street barely any room to maneuver. The Stations lasted for about 5 or 6 hours. At one station there was a little boy playing Jesus and it was so hot and he had been out there for hours and when the parade finally got to his station he threw up right in front of Mary (who was being played by a little girl)…so they had to pull another kid and put him in Mary’s lap. I guess the kid they pulled was quite a bit bigger than the original and Mary was like…no way!!!


Soccer Tournament turned to most embarrassing moment of my Life
So probably the funniest/most embarrassing thing that has happened to me to date…
The teacher who heads up the school her name is Domi and she told me and my friend Megan that there was a soccer tournament coming up in a few weeks where 6th graders from all these different schools in Comayagua will participate in. So for weeks Megan worked with the kids on the rules and regulations of the game and she had her father donate soccer jerseys that the kids could wear so they would all be matching. So the game was scheduled a few Saturdays ago and I decided that I would go and support the team and assist Megan if she needed my help. So Megan and I got up early on Saturday at like 7am went up to the school to meet the kids. They were all there in their jerseys ready to go. We sat around for a while waiting for our transportation to pick us up…and we sat and we sat. And then finally the bus came so we all piled into the bus and then we sat some more….Finally the bus started moving and Megan and I were like…cool on the road ready to go! Then we only got a few feet down the road when a pickup truck full of boys pulled up beside us. It was boys from the brother school down the road. So the boys got out of the truck and piled into bus. The funny thing was that they were wearing their school uniform and their dress shoes…Megan and I looked at each other and were like…hmm interesting. So we finally got to the place where the game was going to be at around 9:30 (2 ½ hours later and it is only about 8 miles down the road). The kids were all excited and they filed into a line so they could register their names at the front door. Megan and I were the last ones and as we saw the kids entering the gymnasium in the distance we could see them taking their jerseys off. Again Megan and I were like…hmmm. So when we finally got through the door and walked into the gym there were a ton of kids sitting in the bleachers wearing school uniforms. Uhhhohhh. So the teacher of our school told us that apparently there was no soccer game. Okay so what do we do now. Well the gentleman that was on the microphone asked our school to stand up and introduce ourselves…ohhhnooo! The teacher for our school was like you have to come down and introduce yourself…you must. So I tried to file further down the line so I could listen to what other people were saying so I could follow their lead but of course the man with the mic starts right in the middle and then passes it to me. Hahah. So I went ahead and said Me llamo es Joana y yo ensana la clase de computadora y fisica. (My name is Joan and I teach computer class and PE). Phewwww…no big deal was a little nerve wracking but I made it through. But then…when everyone had introduced themselves the gentleman got back on the mic and started saying something…I don’t know what something about computers…wait what…why is he looking at my and pointing the mic at me? AHHHHHHHHHHHHH I have no idea what he just said…what does he want me to say. The teacher looked at me and was like go ahead so I grabbed the mic and said the only thing that came to mind…Yo no hablo engles…yes I said I don’t speak English. What!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I was so nervous and then I thought he was asking me where I was from so I replied Sono di Atlanta…yes that Italian for I am from Atlanta. I mean I have never been so embarrassed in my life…mortified…I had like a million eyes on me and my mind just short circuited and my voice was sooo loud in the gym echoing echoing!!!!
So anyway after the most embarrassing moment of my life we sat down and the man had us learn all of these really weird hand games where we would clap and sing funny songs. I am not really sure where they got the soccer game from but there was no soccer game. Apparently it was some kind of school conference to get 6th graders from all over Comayagua together to meet each other and get the schools familiar with each other…who knows…welcome to Honduras!


Inspirational
I was up at the Mom’s project the other day hanging out with the children and I had brought up a few books to read to them. When I sat down Carlos, who is about 8 or 9 years old, sat down next to me opened the book and stared reading out loud in Spanish and then asked me to read the English translation to him. The book was about the food pyramid and how much of each food group you should eat. It had pictures of families at BBQs eating burgers and chips salad and fruit and all different kind of drinks and I could see Carlos looking at it in amazement saying que rico…how delicious. And then we flipped to a page that had a man and his son shopping for cheese in the dairy section of a grocery store…and there was like an entire aisle of millions of different kinds of cheeses…and you could see Carlos’ eyes almost pop out of his head…And I was thinking to myself…this kid has never known anything like this in his life…just the excess of food and all different kinds…I mean they are used to rice and beans and tortillas and I think at most they have two different kinds of cheese here. Part of this experience made me sad thinking of just the excess of food we have in the US when they have very little…but at the same time I was so happy that he wanted to sit down and read with me…he was interested in reading and learning which is a huge step for his family because his mom can not read or write and Carlos will have a chance to break the cycle of poverty for his family. It was a very moving and enlightening experience in many different ways.


Blue Grass meets Central America
You will never believe it. I went to a Blue Grass concert last night! Yes I said Blue Grass! I guess the State Department has been funding a program that sends musicians throughout the world to introduce American music to other nations. So the Jumping John’s string Band played in Comayagua. It was so amazing. They had planned to have the concert outside on a stage in the main square…but the rain started to fall so they moved everything inside a museum that was located across the street.
They set up shop inside the museum in their open air courtyard. The band was in the corner and then chairs were set up along the sidewalk and we just had the roof covering us from the rain. It was such an intimate setting with the beautiful Spanish styled architecture and the rain falling in the background. I thought to myself…never in my life have I had such an experience…sitting in Honduras among 80 or so Hondurans stomping their feet and hootin and hollerin, listening to blue grass music in a historical Spanish building…out of this world. The music was awesome and it was nice to get out and enjoy the town at night. That was my second time being in town after sunset…so a pretty big deal!

Busy busy busy

Well it has been so busy the last few weeks. I think I have only had 1 day off since the middle of February! Time here is truly flying by and I feel that I am really becoming a part of this place!

It is so nice to walk up the hill to the girls school and have them yell out “Joana, Joana!” and come running up to me asking if they are having computer class today or what will I be teaching in PE. By the way the PE class is going great! On Fridays I have three classes. In the morning I have the first and second graders and then 3rd and 4th, and last are 5th and 6th. With each class it gets easier and easier to teach because I learn what went wrong with the 1st and 2nd graders and by the time the 5th and 6th graders arrive it is top notch!!!

Last week I had them in four different stations one doing jumping jacks another doing push ups another doing lunges and the last one on jump ropes. A sight to be seen!! Haha! I had about 45 kids in the last class and they were so excited for about the first ten minutes but then they started to sweat and were slowing down and I would jump in with each group and do their different exercises and when the two minute interval would come to the last 10 seconds they would do a count down in Spanish diez, nueve…dos, uno!!! And they would all start hooping and hollering!!!!!! And then I would have them go to the next one! They were so energized it was great! Their school teacher peeked her head in to see what in the world was going and then she joined in later for our Frisbee game. It was so funny she was running across the salon in her heels trying to beat another kid to get the Frisbee almost taking him out!

The teachers came up with some themes for the PE class and they asked that I work with the kids on direction and learning the left from the right foot and stuff like that. So last Friday I had two volunteers come with me and we had the children doing a gringa-fied version of the Hokey Pokey. I wish I had a picture of this. One great big circle of kids with three tall white people pointing their fingers in the air turning in the circle singing the Hokey Pokey in broken Spanish…pretty entertaining!

Other than that not too much is going on…really staying busy with school stuff and helping with volunteer projects…a lot of painting.

I had a nice evening a few days ago. Betty, one of the long term volunteers that lives in lives in a house that she built about 2 years ago and it sits right next door to the main volunteer house. She had us over for appetizers…which was so nice because I have not been in a home in about 2 months…and you don’t realize how much you would miss sitting on a couch or just seeing walls with paint on them instead of grey cinderblock. So it was so nice and refreshing and we made some guacamole (delicioso) and had some bruschetta type food and I just felt normal for a little while. We sat outside on her porch where she has all of these different plants and flowers growing up around her house and they were all individually beautiful and each one had a different color: vibrant fuchsia, soft mango, deep red…absolutely gorgeous! And we sat on chairs and chatted about different things and Betty who has lived all over the world told us a little bit about when she lived in Egypt and how spectacular the pyramids were and it didn’t matter how many times she had seen them every time was just as amazing and breath taking.

After weeks and weeks of constant moving around with the short term volunteers that were coming and going… it was nice to just sit back and watch the sunset. I have to say this is such a special time for me in my life…especially because I have great people to share it with and am in such a beautiful place. The sunset that night was majestic. The sky was a beautiful clear blue and there were full white puffy clouds scattered through the sky and the front of the mountains were a cool gray color and as the sun dipped behind the them and you could actually see the individual sun rays shooting through the sky and breaking around the clouds. I felt like I was right there with the sun. And the color of the sunset was gorgeous it was pink and yellow and bright and as it fell more and more behind the mountains it became more of that soft mango color. Mmmmm just beautiful!

That is all I have for now, busy, busy,busy…but thoroughly enjoying every minute! I am off to Costa Rica for two weeks on Wednesday can’t wait to see some of my family!

Hope all is well!
Pura Vida!
Joana

Waterfall

Hi,

So I have been wanting to upload this for a while!! I hope it works.

Joan

A little bit of fire and a whole lot o baking

It has been a whirlwind of a week…

Last Sunday we had a brush fire…there is a fire pit about 200 feet from our house and the wind was really strong that day and someone had lit a fire. The wind picked up a piece of trash and carried it about 50 feet from our house. I have never seen anything like it. I was up at the Mom’s project at the time which is another 200 feet past the burn pile. At that time we had a men’s group visiting the Mission and we were all up at the Mom’s project when one of them noticed all of the smoke that was billowing toward our house. All of a sudden they all took off and they grabbed shovels and rakes and ran to the burn pile to put the fire out. The rest of us went to the pila where we wash our clothes and started filling up buckets of water. There was this tree not too far from the house and the base of it was consumed in flames. The grass was all black and the smoke was unbearable. It was hard to breath. The guys were yelling into the house…”Fire, fire…this is for real…it is not a joke” So they all came running out and in a few short moments they had extinguished the fire!!! Thank goodness they were there…because I don’t know what I would have done.

That was totally amazing…I have never really witnessed a fire being out of control…and it was scary how much power it had. Thankfully we were in the right place at the right time!

On Monday we went up to the Mom’s project and made fried cakes and strawberry syrup as little desserts for the families for Fat Tuesday come a day early! Since I have been here I have had plenty of time hanging out with the kids but I did not know the moms very well so it was nice to spend time with them and get to know them a little better. We brought the ingredients for the cakes and went into their communal kitchen and the mom’s and the volunteers put the dough together and they showed us how to roll the dough out into individual tortillas. It was great watching them work together and having them teach us tricks of the trade.

As we were all in the kitchen rolling out the dough the women were having fun laughing and playing little jokes on each other. It was definitely a room full of joy and happiness. Which I am sure for some of those mothers is a sigh of relief just to enjoy the day without any worries. It was great to see the kids come in and out of the house and you couldn’t tell which child belonged to which mom…they all help each other out and are all friendly with one another. It was great to see the community in which they live and how positive and uplifting it is.

After making the tortillas we melted about 1 ½ lbs of fat and fried the tortillas in the fat…right then and there I swore off all fried foods. Until about 15 minutes later when they insisted that we try one because we had helped cook…and I didn’t want to be rude…and man alive they were delicioso!
Fat Tuesday. So for Fat Tuesday we decided that it would be a great idea for each long term volunteer to make a special dessert. We each took turns baking in the kitchen and after dinner we made a plate for each person in our group along with each person from the Men’s group and we had a chocolate cookie with peanut butter chips, toffee bar, peanut butter chocolate bars, and I make a chocolate cake with butter cream frosting (from scratch…I might add…and it was very tasty!) and we all dove in and enjoyed every last bite. And now I know why it is they have Fat Tuesday right before Lent…get rid of any desire to want to gorge yourself ever again…I felt so ill after my sugar overdose…I don’t know if I have ever has so many choclately, sugary, deliciousness in such a short period of time and about 15 minutes after licking my plate clean I thought I was going to die! Hahaha!

Other than that not too much is going on. We dropped the Men’s group off at the airport on Saturday and then picked up 3 university groups (Catholic University, Villanova, and Vanderbilt). Don’t worry team…I will make sure they all have custom vv apparel.

I will be leading Catholic University and will be in charge of my first work project. So wish me luck…we will be painting the a bunch of houses in the Mom’s project. Next week I will take pics of the different sites so you have an idea of what I am talking about!

I just uploaded my pictures from the past few weeks so they are a bit jumbled. There are pics from my computer class, some from a retreat center we went to…this has all of the pics of the arches, the fire, some churches, waterfall, and the beach pictures are from Tela.

I hope you are all doing well! I miss you!

Joan

Close Encounter

Hola a todos! I hope you are all doing well! I hear the weather has lightened up a bit so I hope you are having a chance to enjoy it!!

Here is a picture of the nice little surprise I had the other morning. As I was closing the door to my room something brushed my hand and then fell onto the floor. I thought it must have been part of my bag that was hanging on the door but when I looked down I saw two claws and a tail…SCORPION!!!! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! Think fast…I heard they are pretty hard to kill so I picked up a rock that was in my room *I always wondered why I had such a large rock in my room…but now I know why!* and I took it and crushed it! Threw it into a garbage bag and brought it out to the trash.

Uhhhh! As we say when we start seeing new things…because no one has been here for the full year “oh it must be the season” Well I hope the Scorpion season does not last too long!

Last week I had the opportunity to go to the beach for a few days. Me and my friend Patricia packed a few snacks and headed out and spent Wed through Friday at a beach called Tela that sits on the northern coast of Honduras on the Caribbean. We had such a wonderful time…the “hotel” I stayed in was $6/night…for a reason…yuck! But the scenery was beautiful and we spent all day on Thursday at a private beach…we paid $5.00 each to get beach passes and rented two chairs and a beach umbrella for $3.00! And stayed there for 8 hours! So nice just looking at the water and seeing the waves! We left Friday morning and ended our trip with a nice cup of coffee at a hotel that was built up into the hillside overlooking the ocean

The big news for this week was that I was designated to be the assistant teacher for la Classe de Computodora. I had my first class on Monday. Yeah sounds great! I think I am the most computer illiterate person on the planet that added with the fact that the head teacher was helping with a group of volunteers at an offsite project so I had three classes that were 50 minutes each that I had to teach all by myself. Oh yeah…did I mention my Spanish isn’t very good. Haha! It was definitely a sight to be seen...I felt like I was in the movie Old School where ??? get’s the question at the debate and all of a sudden he blacks out and is able to answer the question perfectly and then when he is done he comes to and is like “what just happened”! The kids seemed to follow along pretty well and we played a few games and sang a computer song that I made up…I was pretty desperate but the song ended up being pretty catchy!

Because Todd is the project leader I am thinking that there are going to be many more classes where I will be flying solo…but I think this will really help me dive into the language and start learning at a faster rate! I will have 6 hours of class a week plus PE for 3 hours on Friday…trim and bilingual…not bad! Haha!

That is all for now! I can’t believe I have been here for a month and time just seems to be flying…I hope all is well and will be thinking about all of you!

Take care!!

Joana

New School Year

Hola Muchachos! Well the Honduran school year is about to start up again and I was up at the school with Todd another long term volunteer and we are going to be teaching a computer class for grades 1^st through 6^th . More like I will be his assistant because I am not the most computer savvy even when it comes to the easiest of things!

When we got up the hill to the school all of the girls were out dusting and cleaning out the rooms…I felt like I was set back in time out on the Prairie where all the towns’ kids gather and lend a helping hand to get things moving. Imagine about 40 kids *age 5-13* moving desks and old time sewing machines picking up brooms and sweeping and moping the rooms out. Todd and I were marveling at how well they worked together and how they did not even need much direction…Maybe because it is the only thing that has happened in a while there…so they wanted to be part of the action. I don’t know…but it was truly amazing. Todd and I helped clean out one room that had about 30 table top sewing machines and a huge lawn mower that had a busted tire. About 5 little girls and Todd pushed from one end while 8 girls and I pulled from the other…there were so many hands on the machine it was hard to find space to hold on to…but after a long struggle we got the lawn mower out of there…wish I had pictures of this it was so funny! Then after we got that out there came a line of girls pushing the sewing machines one after the other…they snaked them through like a train and within 15 minutes the room was clean and good to be used as the new 5^th grade!

Later that day I went back up and played with the kids…I have a few great pictures of them playing this game with these tires…they would roll the tire up to the top of the hill and then a line of kids would gather going down the hill and one of the kids would roll the tire down and they would all jump up over the tire as it was rolling down…doesn’t sound like too much fun but you should have seen the kids they were sooo funny laughing and screaming as it came rolling down the hill! Pretty Fun!

Last night something pretty amazing happened. We had a family show up out of no where. A mother and 4 kids *ages 9,8,3, and 1* The younger boy who was 3 had no pants or underwear and no shoes. The entire family was so dirty and from the looks of it probably had not had a shower in a few weeks. They were only carrying one small bag with them…who knows where they came from and how long it took them to get here…by bus or more likely by foot. The past few nights have been really cold and you could tell they were freezing. The young boy was crying. We had an empty house open in the moms project so we opened that up for them and brought them a few clothes from donated goods that had been brought down by a volunteer group along with a bar of soap and some shampoo and tooth brushes. Every Saturday night the Moms make bread so they fed the family with the bread they had made along with leftovers from their dinner.

There is one woman here who is the director and she okays whether or not a family can stay and the other Moms were worried that she would not let them because they were so dirty. Yojaira *one of the Moms* even told one of the volunteers that they were going to try and wash them before the director came to see them so they looked a bit cleaner. Fortunately the director said they could stay but I went up to see them last night and bring them the clothes and all 5 of them were huddled under one blanket…looking so happy to have a place to lay their head. I just hope that they stay long enough that we can really help them get on their feet and maybe put the kids into school here. Pretty crazy to think that I look at some of the moms that are currently in the Moms project and think that their lives must be really hard and then to see the shock on their faces at how dirty and how little the new family had was a true eye opener.

I hate to leave on a sad note…but hopefully things will turn around for this woman and I know we will help her in anyway possible!

I wish you all the best this week!

Adios amigos!

Joan

My New Friends

Hello Everyone

Say hello to some of my new friends- Coni is on the right and Carolina below her and i am forgetting the girls name in front of me but will get that later this week!

Well I have been here for a total of 13 days and to date I have spent about $35.00 which is actually a bit high…I could have probably gotten away with spending about 20 if I didn’t have such a sweet tooth. It is crazy to think that I am living at little to no cost!

Last Sunday I went to the Cathedral in Comayagua…absolutely beautiful…a real pretty light yellow color with carved embellishing on the outside and then on the inside it was nice and airy and they had beautiful silver lanterns hanging from the ceiling all the way down the aisle.

As I was sitting in my pew I saw this beautiful old lady coming back from the communion line and she looked so put together and looked like she belonged back in the old days of spain...with a black veil that covered her silver hair and a cream wrap covering her shoulders and nice floral dress underneath. But as she turned the corner I realized that she was not wearing any shoes and then looking even closer the cream wrap that she had on was actually an old towel. And yet she looked so beautiful to me. She looked so well put together and used what was available to her. Totally unbelievable!

This week I signed up to hold a Library class for the kids a few times a week and will also be helping out with PE. Which should be fun…I am sure we will be playing a ton of futbol! I find that the days where I feel 100% and full of life are the days I hang out with the kids. Because our housing is a bit separated it is easy to fall into the funk of not seeing them everyday and the language barrier can be kind of intimidating at times. So I guess my biggest struggle right now is to force myself to make time everyday to go and hang out with the kids. And you can tell it brightens up their day as well. I have been teaching the girls some dance moves…thinking of maybe doing a dance class! They love the chicken dance...i will have to get a video!

Right now there big thing is they have this really long piece of heavy duty black plastic / something I am sure they found out of the trash pile/ and they loop it around a tree limb and make a swing out of it! It looks like so much fun and i would love to join in but i have to remind myself that if I were to hop on the swing that I would definitely break the plastic if not the tree limb and the plastic…and that would ruin all of their fun!!!! But it looks so fun and free…maybe I will have to make my own swing!

Daniel, one of the kids who lives in the Margarita Cook which is a cluster of about 13 houses where single mothers and their children live, tried to get me to climb up to the top of the tree where the swing was tied around one of the branches…he kept saying ¨venga, venga!¨Come on come on...climb the tree with me. And just like a monkey he was about 30 feet in the air in no time. I said “no puedo, no puedo” I can’t…but you know what…I think I might climb that tree later this week. If I can’t get on the swing I can at least climb the tree. My big “to do” list! Haha!

Other than that not too much is going on…the weather continues to be absolutely beautiful…blue skies and nice sunny days! But I hear we only have a few more weeks of this until it is brutally hot…not really looking forward to that. But I have found a nice place on the top of the hill where the girl’s school is that gets a nice breeze so I am sure that is where I will be heading most days in the next few weeks.

In Mid February we are due to get 3 volunteer groups at once and then they will keep coming from then through the end of march...so I am enjoying a bit of down time before we get really busy!

I will send a separate email with pictures from ophoto!

Hope you are having a nice weekend!!! I am thinking of all of you!!

Adios Amigos!

Joan