I love Thursdays

I love Thursdays for three reasons:
1. It's almost the end of the week.
2. I don't have to teach anymore little kids. On Wednesday, I have a very full day which includes teaching all of my classes. I have 3rd, 4th, and 6th grades, plus my usual 7th, 8th, and 9th grades. It's usually not a very good day for me.
3. It's bread day!!

It starts with Doña Olga. She gives us some kind of bread every week on Thursday. Usually, it's these babies.

I have no idea what they're called. Today, she called them "pansitas" but I'm pretty sure that's not the real name.
They are quite dry, so dry that it's dangerous to eat them without water. And have a little bit of a sweet flavor to them. Alex doesn't like them so much, but I think they're delicious.


Then, if we've remembered to put in an order, we go pick up our order of bread from one of our student's aunt's. She cooks bread every week and sells it only on Thursday. We've been told that many people come to buy this bread, even from an hour or so away from here. It's pretty delicious, especially with coffee.

Oh, what do we have in this bag?

Oh, "samitas de trigo". These are out favorite samitas.

A little bit of sugar on its hard outside, soft crumbs on the inside.

YUM.

Oh, well, here is another bag...

OH! More samitas and a torta!

These are "samitas de arroz". 

They are also good, but a bit more dry than the samitas de trigo.

Oh, and the torta...

The "torta de mantequilla" is the perfect bread for coffee.

Moist. A little bit of sugar.

Melt in your mouth goodness. 

As you can see, I cut into that torta right away. We decided that since we had just bought more coffee, and now we had bread, that it would be a good idea to just indulge immediately. It just felt right.

And for 100 lempiras ($5 usd) for all that bread, boy, was it right. Delish!

for as much traveling as we did today, we didn't get very far....

We were on track.
Well, we were late for school, but at least we had our clothes, toiletries, and some food.
We got more minutes for our phone, our schedules planned out for the days we were gone, and money on our person.

We left with Marco after school. Though he was going to San Pedro, to the east, and we were headed west, we all had to start at the same place.

We boarded a packed van/bus, that I'm pretty sure was meant for about 10 people, that was over capacity by at least 33 percent. It made it fun at first though. We were on our way to Guatemala, a new country, where we'd face new challenges. The excitement and anxiety was all bubbling to the surface, making even the simplest things fun (i.e. I saw cows in the road and started laughing... I see cows in the road almost everyday.)

When we got to the main road, a bus was waiting. Marco said, oh, that is your bus! A boy ran up to our incoming bus and started yelling "Ocotepeque". He was in a hurry, but we were stuck behind the elderly people climbing out. We retrieved our bags from the top of the van/bus and ran across the street to catch our bus.
Part one complete.

Once we arrive in Ocotepeque, we are instantly asked where we're going. We say Esquipulas, but they know we mean Agua Caliente (the last town in Honduras on your way to Guatemala). We get on the bus, and nearly an hour later, we are at the border.

When we get off the bus, we are bombarded by about 5 guys. We didn't know if we were just supposed to change buses or what, and they wanted to change us money. We had stashed our money in various places (money belt, pocket, wallet, socks) and we knew that we needed to get all of it out in order to change it. It felt awkward revealing all of our hiding spots. But, I knew that the exchange rate was fare (1000 lempiras = 400 quetzales), so I didn't feel too bad.

Then this guy started speaking English to us. He asked us where we were from, and if we knew a lot of Spanish. Then he told us he was going to help us out. We didn't really know what that meant because we can really handle our own, but he insisted and took us over to the border patrol.
He asked for our passports. Then he asked us if we had the little yellow pieces of paper that we got when we arrived in Honduras.
Turns out, we didn't have them.

The English speaking fellow tells us that he's going to try to help us out. He said that we might be able to work out a deal to get us in for a price. Well, of course there is a price!

At first, he tells us that it's going to be about 2,500 lempiras each (about $130 each). Then he said he might be able to get it down. The next offer was 2,500 lempiras for both of us. Well, that was better, and we definitely did not want to go all the way back home, but we didn't bring enough.
We tell him that it's too much. He tells us to give him a number. I tell him the most we could do is 200 lempiras ($10). He said, oh, well the guy is going to want at least $50 usd from each of you. We tell him that we can't, and that we'll just go home.

All this time, the guy is trying to convince us that our papers at home might be missing, or thrown away. I assure him that we know where they are, that we have an apartment and no one has moved into it or thrown it away. In between negotiations, he would go talk to his posse of fellas while smoking a cigarette.

We finally decide that it's too much and that we will just go back to San Marcos to get our papers. They didn't seem too happy, but relented. Then we asked to exchange some of our money back, and the kid who helped us in the first place was trying to be difficult. He was speaking fast, and mumbling, and wasn't too helpful when we asked him to talk slower.
Finally, we got were able to exchange our quetzales for lempiras, enough for the bus back home and then back to Agua Caliente, and then left.


We are happy that we did not get scammed, though a little irritated that our travel plans were set back a couple hours. Tomorrow, we are leaving between 5 and 6am to try to make it to Puerto Barrios as early as possible. Hopefully there will be no problems then.

first trip to Santa Rosa de Copán

I have learned that sometimes you must be flexible.
Take today for example: I came to school thinking that I would do my work, read a little bit while I waited for Alex to finish making some tests, and then go home and relax. What really happened is that I saw an opportunity to go to Santa Rosa and decided that it was a better plan than the one I had envisioned hours earlier.

Now, it is better to travel by car than by bus for several reasons. One of which being that if you're going to buy things from another town, you don't have to worry that someone is going to rob you. This is of the highest importance if you don't have a lot of money... like us. Oh, and the safety factor, too.

Doña Olga, our school's headmaster/principal, needed to go to the bank in Santa Rosa to do some business. When I heard this, I asked Marco, second in command, if he thought it would be an inconvenience to her if we tagged along, as we needed to get some things in the city. He didn't seem to think so, because we started walking over to her office. She, being the nicest lady, said it was no trouble and then invited us over for lunch.

Once we got all the little details worked out (finishing the tests, getting students to leave us alone so we could actually leave), we ran home to drop off our things, get some more money, and then ran to Olga's house where we quickly ate a quesadilla (corn tortillas with quesillo), and then climbed into the back her son's, Jorge, van. Olga quickly became wrapped up in a conversation with her son and, not knowing the young lady in the van, so we fell asleep.

We arrived in Santa Rosa and were dropped off at a market place where we were told we would find the items that we needed. On our list was a rolling pin (rodillo), some towels (toallas), and a camal.
Needless to say, we did not find anything in that market. I don't even remember what the name of it was, but if you every come across a building with many makeshift stores with various random items in each one just leave.
We started walking around and after asking around, we found a store called Comercial Casa Bueso. This is actually the store that Alex went to the second week we were here. He knew from experience that this was the store for us.

We found everything we needed and then some:
- Rodillo para cocina (rolling pin) = L. 84.82 ($4.49)
- Dos (2) toallas (towels) = L. 416.08 ($22)
- Camal (aluminum griddle) =  L. 189.29 ($10)
- Batidor manual (plastic whisk) = L. 11.61 ($0.61)
- Juego de panas (set of plastic bowls - different sizes) = L. 151.74 ($8)
- Dos (2) jaboneras plasticas (plastic soap dish) = L. 14.28 ($0.76)
- Espatula Cocina (plastic spatula) = L. 64.29 ($3.40)
- Cuchara Medidoras (measuring spoons) = L.196.43 ($10.40)
**So expensive because they are stainless steel**
- Taza Medidora (measuring cups) = L. 62.50 ($3.30)
- Machacador (masher) = L. 103.57 ($5.50)
- Alfombra (door mat) = L. 98.21 ($5.20)
Grand Total (with taxes): L. 1560 ($82.50)

Yes, a pretty penny indeed!
We were not expecting those taxes (L. 168/$8.85), either, since we don't pay them in San Marcos. But, really, we needed some of these things for cooking, as we didn't bring them with us from home, and it was no more than what we would have paid at home.

Anyhow, after our shopping spree, we walked around a bit more and then returned to the market where we had been dropped off. We were thinking that our phone might not work due to the fact that Tigo (our phone/internet provider) sucks.
And, we were right.
Around 5pm, after nearly 2.5 hours of sitting and waiting, we finally saw the van that we had come in. They told us that they could not get a hold of us because our phone wasn't not allowing calls through. So, they returned to the area where they dropped us off and started looking. Thirty minutes later, they found us. And thank God because it started raining and it was getting cold, and we were just about ready to enact our Emergency Plan in case they forgot us, or couldn't find us.

Though we were tired, hungry, and really had to pee, we stayed up and talked with Nicole, Olga's granddaughter. I'd have to say that she is one of the very few young people we've met that has a good head on her shoulders. She wants to study law at Harvard and then come back to Honduras to help fix the corruption. We talked about teen pregnancy, school, AIDS, speaking English/Spanish/French, etc.


So yes, I have learned that flexibility is a good thing. Go with the flow and you might experience something you otherwise wouldn't have.
And, when all is said and done, I'd have to say today was a pretty good day.

pay day

finally!

We've been waiting for this day since the first week we got here.
You know, we left with $100 in our pockets. That was kind of a bad choice on our part, mostly because it was gone in the first 24 hours of being in Honduras. We spent it on our hostel in San Pedro Sula... some mix up. I will share it sometime.
Anyway, our hostel keeper was nice enough to take us to an ATM on the way to the bus station the first day we were here. We took out about $50 more dollars, which was also another mistake on our part; we are changed $5 every time we use an ATM out of the country and another 1% on top of that. Should have taken out more!
Then a week later, when we barely had any money left and were wondering if we could get some out of the ATM in town, we learned that the closest ATM was an hour away. We didn't even have enough money left to allow both of us to go to Santa Rosa. So, Alex went with Marco, got out about $300, and brought back bath towels, kitchen towels, and a rubber bath mat. And with the rest of this money, we survived September. Albeit on pupusas and cup of noodles, but we survived.

Pay day is the last day of the month. We had to get an advance of L.3000 to pay for the month in our first apartment. For some reason, the land lady did not require money before hand. Additionally, our new land lady, who is more business savvy, wanted us to give first and last month's rent. So, this month, we are paying for 3 months of rent, or nearly 4 if you want to consider that our rent is now only L. 1800 a month. Next month will be a lot better.

For the both of us, we'll be getting about L.15,000. It's really not a bad deal.


On a different note, I've been kind of a night owl these past couple nights (10pm is now super late for us, don't you know). Part of it is due to my new found obsession with Ree. Oh, she is funny and smart and is officially my new role model. You can check out her website if you'd like: The Pioneer Woman. Thanks to her, and some other blogs I've been gathering inspiration from, I am really excited to start trying new recipes and learning how to make delicious food from scratch.

But, as I've been reminded several times in the past two hours, it is past my bedtime, and we must be at the market at 6am if we want to get the best veggies. Meat is ready for sale at 8am, so we can skip the shower first thing. Good thing, because I am going to be tired in the morning.

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.

the price of being a pre-service volunteer

So, I've become increasingly irritated with the lack of information for pre-service volunteers. I have been scouring through blogs of current volunteers and I have found very little on their experience with paperwork and the entire process of becoming a Peace Corps volunteer.
Considering I'm starting this months before we even receive an invitation, I will be documenting my experience as a pre-service volunteer. I have thus far talked about emotions, but I think it's important to talk numbers here.

I had no idea that going to the doctor while not having insurance was going to be so costly. Because we don't have full time jobs with benefits, we've had to foot the bill for all of our exams, shots, blood work, and dental work. We will be getting reimbursed, of course, but it is only going to cover about one-third of our costs.

Desaree's bills
Physical: $257 + $50 for filling out the paperwork
Blood work: $230
Urinalysis: $25
Boosters: $175
Pap: $47

We were able to go to a dentist who does free exams and x-rays for Peace Corps applicants, so that was free. On the other hand, this particular dentist told us that we had several cavities (9 between the two of us) which would have been well over $1000, so I got a second opinion.
Second opinion: $100
Cleaning: $80

Eye exam: $119
Extra frames: $140
I am unsure on how much a new set of glasses will cost, but the frames I chose were approximately $140. Then I will have to pay for the lenses, as well.

Alex's Bills
Physical: $190
Blood work:
Urinalysis:
Boosters:
He goes to a different doctor than I do, so his prices are different. He just scheduled his blood work and boosters today, so I will fill those in when the bills come. On another note, we tried to get him in to the Health Department, where bloodwork would have cost $48 and boosters would have been $140, but they refused us because he was not a patient and they couldn't (or didn't want to) fax his results to another doctor. We tried!

Dental cleaning: $80
Dental work: $350
While he did not have any cavities that needed to be filled, the sealant that was on his teeth had worn down. This is more preventative care, but we chose to do it.

Grand Total: $1843


The thing I'm having trouble with now is whether or not we need to send the receipts from our appointments in with our reimbursement sheets. I think I will do so for good measure, but no where can I find if it's absolutely necessary. I've made copies to keep for our records, and I'm sending them the originals.

I hope that this helps any pre-service Peace Corps looking for answers on how much everything is going to cost. It's tough in this position, especially not knowing if you're actually going to get an invitation for an assignment or if you even want to make the leap into this commitment. I figured that since we already started, we might as well just continue our progress to ensure we don't have regrets later.

All I can say for now is thank god we live with our parents, or we'd never be able to pay for all this stuff. And really, I hope it pays off in the end.