tour of the new apartment

 ¡¡Bienvenidos a nos casa!!

Ours is the door on the left.

what we see when we walk in.

Turning to the right...

Where we keep our clothes, books, and medicine.
The door on the left is to the bathroom.

See?

Sink, toilet, and shower

The most beloved feature in our house.
Shower with HOT water!

View from the far corner of the room.
Bathroom on the left, entrance on the right.

That's our window from the outside and the pathway we take to get in and out.
The building below and to the right is our landlady's house.

Looking from our door in the hall, we see the path to the kitchen.

Our kitchen! Fridge, Stove/Oven, Sink, and Microwave!

Our little portion of the kitchen. Just the bottom sections ... enough for us!

Our section of the fridge. Fresh squeezed orange juice, "wheat" bread,
oranges, limes, cheese, beans and rice.

Stepping outside the kitchen, we have a hammock.

A bit further to the left and there is a pila to wash clothes.
Not the best nor most fun to use.

And out in the yard, flowers, plants, and the hammock.
Take a look at the top right - bananas!

beans and rice

I now understand why the Latina's I've seen cook don't use measuring cups... there are none in 3rd world countries.

Beans -
- 1 lbs beans (that's two cups people)
- 4 cubes of garlic bouillon (or two table spoons of minced garlic)
- 2 small tablespoons of salt (not all the way full)
- 2 tablespoons of chicken bouillon
- a bunch of cilantro... there is no way to know how much, but it was a lot
- 2 packets of cumino (each packet is about a palm full)

Rice -
- 2 cups of rice
- 3 cubes of garlic bouillon
- 3 juicy limes
- 1 three finger pinch of salt
- a bunch of cilantro

Put the rice in a pan with some oil (enough to cover the rice, but not so much as to drown it) and lightly brown. Put all of the other ingredients in a pot with four blue cups of water (our cups here are blue.... I don't know how big they are or how much they hold!) and taste, adjust if necessary, and then put the rice in. Well, you people know how to cook rice...


Disclaimer: We have not tried the food that has come of these recipes. I will take this post down if it is terrible. I will add if our burritos turn out delicious!

sunday. what a fun day

First of all, good news.
As I wrote this morning, we were headed to the market to get some essentials for cooking. We had no plates, bowls, silverware, or knives after leaving our old apartment because we were borrowing items from our landlord... thus, the only thing we could really eat this week was cup of noodles. Well, I got some chili sauce for my noodles (I like them spicy!), and we also found a bunch of stuff that we needed for a pretty good deal! Mind you, we wanted/needed to buy things separately, like silverware, so we didn't have to buy a whole bunch that we didn't need. Get it?
Here's what we got for 100 lempiras ($5.30):
-2 plastic cups (pretty sturdy)
-3 forks (sturdy)
-3 spoons (sturdy)
-one big knife
-two bowls (flat at the bottom to double as plates)
-one plate (for toast and such)

Now, when I say sturdy, I mean they are real. We saw some other silverware that someone else was selling, and it felt like we could bend them in half super easy. The ones we have are totally usable and we probably won't have to buy new ones like we would have had to with the others. The silverware was 3 for 10, that's why we got three.

So, we have things to cook and eat with, now we can buy cheaper food at the market and actually cook! Right now, we're cooking some red beans to make burritos tomorrow night. We also picked up some spaghetti.

Also, we got some new movies! Hondurans like copies of movies. They sell them for super cheap. A lot of times, you can get 3 movies for L.100. We got GrownUps (yes, the newish one), and El Mariachi, Desperado, and The Mexican (all on one disk) for L.60. Yahoo! Unfortunately, we can't watch them now because we have so much work to do with school, but it's still exciting.


Secondly, I have the address where you can send us things if you'd like or if we need something:

Our Name (either or both)
Green Valley Primary
Barrio Santa Rosita
San Marcos, Ocotepeque
Honduras, Central America

At this point, we do not require anything from the US, but there may come a time.

Back to cooking and school work for us! Oh yeah, I like getting comments, and thus far no one has left any... soooo, maybe you should try it some time. I think you can log in with your facebook account, which is the easiest way.

two weeks (in pictures)

On the plane, getting ready to take off to Honduras (at 1am).


Bed set up on day one.


Bed set up after week one. The bed holder, if you will, was quite uncomfortable.


Closet situation. Clothes, books, and medicine.


Though these next pictures were taken in one day, it is typical of our activities when we venture out of the house. Thus far, we've got the market and Lorena's house under our belts. Next is traveling.





Market produce.


At the market, this kid was squeezing oranges for juice.



We totally drank some. It was good. And yes, that is a bag holding our juice.


Woman at the market making pupusas.
We were going to have some until we saw these...

Tacos Mexicanos! Delicious, I tell you! You can only find these sometimes and in certain places. The people at the market make the best we've had so far.


Lorena's very nice kitchen. This is what I call a proper kitchen. Very American. I will post pictures of ours for contrast, at some point.


She has 50 chickens (gallos - males, and gallinas - females) in her back yard!


View from Lorena's yard, which is quite large. It has many fruit trees - aguacates, pinas, cashews, limes, etc.


Cashews! The brown part contains the nut (really the "fruit") that we usually eat, though it's difficult to get out and apparently it smells really bad when you put it in the fire (the only way to obtain the nut). The green part is the "swollen stalk"; they make juice from it here. It smells like bell peppers, and though I don't think it tastes like it, Alex begs to differ.


Besides hanging out with us, teaching us Spanish, and feeding and watering/juicing us, she lets us use her washer machine so we don't have to hand wash our clothes using a pila (the thing on the right)! It makes me a happy girl.


At night, the chickens get in the trees as to not be attacked by a chicken-eating rodent. Kind of funny, but smart!

two weeks

I suppose we've technically almost been here for three weeks, but really we have only been teaching for two.

In the States, not a whole lot happened in two weeks unless you were planning something or in the midst of a transition. At least for us, it was same ol' day after day. I can't say that I minded it, but we needed some adventure and now here we are in western Honduras.

It turns out that Green Valley School is a real place in an actual town called San Marcos de Ocotepeque in the Ocotepeque department of Honduras. We arrived here on a Monday afternoon after traveling by bus (nice but unairconditioned bus) with Marco for nearly four and a half hours from San Pedro Sula. We were whisked away after getting off the bus by Ms. Olga's driver (and let me tell you, we didn't catch her name until the first week of school, and we're still are unsure that it's correct), taken to our two bedroom apartment to drop off our things and then to meet Olga herself. She invited us in for coffee and cake, talked and asked us questions. We had literally been in Honduras for 20 hours and weren't accustom to hearing or speaking Spanish at this point, but we managed with the help of bilingual Marco.

The first week, we worked at the school from about 8am to about 2:30pm getting familiar with our book, working our schedules, and planning our classes. Alex chose to do math and English for 7th (6 students), 8th (11 students), and 9th grade (5 students). I chose health and science for the same grades. I also was assigned to help with phonics and reading for 3rd, 4th and 6th grade. We planned as best as we knew how for our classes and then waited for Monday.

The second week, we actually had students, books, and a schedule. We met everyone on Monday, a half day, and then started teaching on Tuesday. Everyone kept telling us to make sure we were strict with the kids and make rules right away. We decided coming to class prepared, turning homework in on time, and not speaking Spanish in the classroom was most important. Unfortunately, these are the things that they struggle with the most and it is a constant battle.

The third week was the same, but now we know our students names, how they are, what to expect out of them, and their habits. It turns out that 7th and 8th graders aren't the best of students. Lets just say, there is room for improvement and they ought to take some advice from the 9th graders.
I've given them several lectures on how they have the privilege and opportunity to come to school when many Honduran students can't because their teachers are on strike. I have mentioned that their parents pay a lot of money for them to attend this school, the school is paying Alex and I to be here which is not cheap, and if that if they don't take advantage of this education, they're wasting all that money and our time. I told them another time that I didn't come here for fun; "In America, I had a hot shower everyday. I knew how to cook food. I spoke the language. Not here. Here, I wake up early to take a cold shower. I don't know how to shop or cook. And I don't speak Spanish." Some listened well, and others snickered. These kids, I tell ya....

Some highlights for us have been going to the weekend market in town (they sell all sorts of fresh produce), meeting some Peace Corps Volunteers from San Marcos, San Francisco, and Sensenti (the next towns over), and doing our laundry in a washing machine and not by hand.

Everyone here has been really nice to us, and has done a lot to make sure we are comfortable and have things (kitchen utensils, stove, a towel, a bed, water). The first two weeks were difficult because things are very different here than in America. The roads are dirt, and after it rains nearly every night it's mud. Things aren't packaged like it was at home, so I don't always know what I'm buying or how much it is. The electricity works most of the time, the water on the other hand does not. We're slowly figuring everything out and  easing into the lifestyle, making things more comfortable. Though, I look forward to the day when we have a hot shower and an actual mattress to sleep on.