March 28th

So yesterday was an eventful Saturday. My first Saturday here in Pespire I went to San Lorenzo and Choluteca with my host mom and sister. Marjory needed shoes for school. Her dad lives/works in the States and gave her money to buy shoes when he was visiting. Oddly enough, his family lives next door to us. They have a Trainee too, and I can hear everything that Ryan is saying. Weird. Also, because it’s so incredibly hot here, I bought a couple of skirts, because the thought of wearing pants for the next 6 weeks is unbearable.

First we went to San Lorenzo, which is a port town about a half-hour south of us. It’s just a little bit bigger than Pespire, but it didn’t have much in the way of skirts and shoes, so we continued on to Choluteca. Choluteca is the biggest city in this area. It’s probably about an hour away. We really didn’t get to stroll around that much. We went to a mall on the outskirts of the city, where I bought a couple of skirts. Then we took a cab into the city to look at Payless and some other stores. The cities here are pretty uneventful. They aren’t really constructed to attract tourists and such, as one might expect in the States. Cities here exist purely for commercial purposes. People come in, buy what they can’t get in their little towns, and then leave. They aren’t pretty, they’re actually rather dirty and over-whelming.

Having moved from D.C., which I consider to be a lovely little city, I had thought that I would want to be in a city in Honduras. They would have a few more creature comforts than a small town, but you loose the personal feel of a small town. Perspire is quite attractive. There’s a big Iglesia in the center of town, which looks pretty colonial. The Iglesia sits right off the central park, which has several big mango trees. The shops on the main streets are brightly painted, and people actually throw their trash in trash cans here. Choluteca, there’s dirt and trash everywhere. So, I have decided that I probably will want to end up in a smaller town, hopefully outside of a major city, for my permanent site.

My point was, I didn’t see much in Choluteca, just went specifically to buy stuff, but I don’t feel like I missed out on anything. Marjory didn’t end up buying any shoes because none of them were really to her specifications. So, we headed back to San Lorenzo, where we got sopa marinara (seafood soup). It was really good. That’s the first time I’ve actually eaten in a restaurant in Honduras. There was like a whole fish tail in my sopa, which I could deal with, but if I had seen so much as a head pop out of that broth, I would have been done with soup in Honduras. Because everyone in our town is Catholic, a lot of people came back from lunch pretty disappointed because they had fish head soup. YUCK.
Last week we had our first technical sessions outside. Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday we went up into the nearby mountain to do a topographic study after lunch. In the heat of the day, after huge lunches, we went into the blaring sun to struggle with tape measures and abney levels. Actually, it was pretty fun because I liked my group and we chismed (gossiped) all they way down the mountain. After the first day (the coolest actually) we all thought we were dying and went into the pulperia to look for something to cool us down. Charamuscas (spelling?) are little plastic bags of frozen fruit juice. They just blend up a watermelon or a pineapple and freeze it into this little bag. GLORIOUS! Well, after we discovered these little things we eat them about 3 times a day. Anyways, my host mom discovered that I liked them and we bought a whole bunch of fruit to make charamuscas for the technical session tomorrow.

So, after the ridiculously hot day of shopping, I came home and chilled for a second before I headed off to the hotel to watch Honduras play Trinidad and Tobago for the 2010 World Cup qualifying game. The hotel had set up a big screen TV on this veranda upstairs, and some of the townspeople showed up to watch the game and drink some beers. Me, Becky, and Ryan were the first to show-up to the game. Becky and I had jerseys one and got a lot of stares on the street. Eventually, more of the gringos showed up and we didn’t feel so conspicuous. A few of the host families attended too, which was fun because we had met them the night before at the party (gotta write about that). The first half was pretty boring, there wasn’t a score. Honduras just wasn’t putting any effort into the game. Second half though, that got fun. When we finally scored, the Hondurans went CRAZY! It’s always so much fun to watch a soccer game in a country that’s actually passionate about it. People were jumping up and down and banging on the tables. If I remember correctly, Honduras scored two and then Trinidad came back and got two to tie the game. It’s ok though, because Honduras still advanced. We play Mexico later.

After the game most people vacated the hotel pretty quickly, so a few of us went to Parque Central to hang out for a bit. A crazy man came shook his stump at Kathryn, after which she decided she was just going to go home! Awfully weird encounter.

The U.S. played El Salvador later that night. I only caught the last 20 minutes or so, but it was a much faster game than Honduras’ game. El Salvador was winning 2-0 before the U.S. scored two in the last few minutes of the game. The salvadorenos lost like three people to injury in the time I was watching. It was absurd! They were dropping like flies. I wish I could poke fun at Juan for it because I’m sure he was watching the game. It always takes something away from the game when people fake injuries to pull a foul. Oh well.

Overall a fun filled day of extensive sweating and cultural experiences.