Los Chinos????

Oh the Chinese in Honduras. You rarely see them but if you need something unusual, they are where you go. Yesterday was the latest of many times I haven’t been able to find something and I’m met with “The Chinese, you need to see the Chinese people.” It has begun to really crack me up. These “Chinese people” are never referenced with a location only “Los Chinos”. I have a very large rat problem that has developed rather quickly in my house. I had the problem last year and evidently the change in the weather has brought them back with a vengeance. Yesterday Henry, the husband of my cleaning lady and best friend, came to fill in the rat holes, primarily the giant one under the sink in the kitchen, with cement. I had been several times to several stores to buy rat poison and everywhere I went they were out. When Henry asked me if I had bought the poison I told him this and all he said was, “Los Chinos.” He looked at Xiomara, my friend, and she said, “I went yesterday and they will bring it tomorrow.” LOL It is this underground item retrieval system or something. I know that when we wanted fireworks for the fourth of July we went to “Los Chinos” and later found out the fireworks we bought were illegal. I’m sure that the Chinese people here are wonderful and that the majority of them are not in the market of unattainable items but my experience so far has proven to be interesting.
Disclaimer: for those of you who don’t know me very well I spent my college career volunteering in English classes for, tutoring, and living with Asian girls. I loved each of them very much and have nothing against the Asian culture. I just find this amusing.

Nightmare in El Prado

For my faithful blog readers out there you may remember an experience with ants attacking me from a printer and a brief introduction to my house o’ rats. Well those stories are quiet lovely compared to what I experienced yesterday. I will begin by explaining that my house is extremely old and the kitchen cabinets are wooden and very worn out. Below the cabinets in the kitchen, in one corner there is only dirt that has been gradually taken out by my friends the rats. I had thought that I had overcome the rat problem, and for a few months I saw none, and then about 3 weeks ago they returned with a vengeance. For a while I just avoided the rats. When I told my mom about this problem her first response was “Aren’t you afraid they are going to get on your bed at night and bite your face?", WHAT!!! Well I wasn’t, but I am now. So then I figured out ways to block them from my room at night and talked to Henry about helping me out around the house with this problem. Henry brought in cement and began to fill in the numerous holes that we discovered around the house. During this process we pulled out several parts of the kitchen cabinets which led to an outpouring of large ants and cockroaches. I don’t think I’ve ever been so disgusted. I had seen the occasional cockroach in the house and killed it but nothing like this. I had no idea. Poor Henry and Xiomara were worried about me. I was so sick. According to them this problem should be taken care of with the removal of the cabinets that were rotten and just in case we’re also putting out cockroach poison tomorrow. At one point I had considered buying this house but that is definitely out of the question now. The house is much older and run down than I had realized before. I’m excited though about fixing it up over the next few months. I want to paint the living room and I’ve already starting working on the front garden.

Siguatapeque

Last weekend I took a trip to visit my friends, Cony’s mom and Yuvinny the young boy I have developed a close friendship with, in Siguatapeque with Cony and Michelle. It was really neat. We arrived late on Friday night and there was a little craft fair going on in the middle of town. We walked around for a while and Cony showed us all the things she used to do and the places she used to go. It was really interesting to listen to her talk about where the old school used to be and the first movie theater and many other things that have changed since she was a young girl. We have been there many times before but never have we had so many intimate talks as we walked around. It was very relaxing and fun to see Yuvinny and his grandma as well as get away from everything and just relax.

Cute Jovenes Stories

I have a little 4-year-old friend at Jovenes named Selvin. One of Selvin’s favorite activities is to run around with one of my shirts tied around his neck and say that he is Superman. He is very dark skinned and lots of people on campus call him “chocolate”. The other day Selvin and I were running around together and joking about him being chocolate. I said that I was made of chocolate and he said “No, I’m chocolate you are vanilla.” It was really cute. Another day I was sitting with Selvin and we were watching a storm come in over the mountains and talking about God watering the earth (and the trucks J). We started talking about Heaven and Selvin said that there are two men in Heaven. I was expecting him to say God and Jesus, but when I asked who he said, “God, and the man that drives his car.” I cracked up. Here it is very common for prestigious people to have a driver and Selvin obviously thought that God would have someone to drive his car.

Resourcefulness

I never know what my fellow Hondurans will come up with next. The other day at church I was wearing a pair of sandals which were basically glorified flip flops and very old (hand me downs from a friend) . I tripped (surprise surprise) and broke one of my sandals. Thinking “oh great, this will be fun” I go to sit down and try to make the best of broken shoe. The next thing I know when of the ladies at church is rifling through her purse and says “give me your shoe.” Out of her purse she pulls out a very large needle and thread and proceeds to sew my shoe back together. At one point as she was beating the needle against the bench to make it go through the bottom of my shoe the needle snapped and I thought “well it was a nice try.” But no, she pulls so money out of her purse and sends one of the church teens to buy another needle and fixes the shoe. She then hands me back my shoe and says “There, good as new.” Being the wasteful American that I am I went to Payless and bought some new sandals but I am sure that she would have continued wearing them until they fell completely apart.

The Blog is Back

Hey Guys
Since it looks like I´m going to be in town a lot more again I´m going to try and start up the blog again. I just want to reassure you all that I am doing okay after my abrupt change in jobs and that I greatly appreciate the love that has been flowing in since my email news. You guys are the best. I´ll post something real soon. Possibly highlights from my life at Jovenes.