Hello hello.

Here's something new: Phrase of the day! Or rather, blog, since I don't think I'll be updating daily... =] These will be cultural phrases, so I don´t know if they´re used in other Spanish-speaking countries.

“El mal anda, mal acaba” - essentially means “What goes around comes around”

Things have been pretty boring around here. It might be because I have absolutely no energy to be going out after training and on the weekends. The days here are long and hot and all I want to do is stay in and not sweat, not get bitten, and just watch my tv shows and movies on my computer. I love this netbook by the way. It's a Toshiba NB305-N410, blue. I upgraded the RAM to the maximum 2 GB before I left the states and it runs pretty good. Has Windows 7 Starter, which is not bad, just can't change my desktop background, but I can live with that.

Anyway, the paletas here are delicious! The tutti-frutti is my favorite. It's basically like real mixed fruit juice poured into an empty yogurt cup with chopped up bananas, mangoes, apples, watermelon, and some sugar, with a popsicle stick in it too, frozen, and then eaten. Delicious! Only 4 Lemps, or about 20 cents.

We had a guest speaker come talk to us about climate change, global warming, and the greenhouse gas effect, and in her talk, she briefly mentioned that one of the peoples of Honduras called the Miskitos are excellent tree climbers and climb up trees to harvest the batana (sp?) plant, which is used in Ojon brand products. It was so strange to hear because Ojon sells their products in Sephora, and I've actually used their shampoo and conditioner before (they're insanely expensive and I'm not too fond of the smell, but it does wonders for your hair), but I hadn't realized that the ingredients come from the Miskito people of Honduras! Small world...

One thing I've found I really miss here is Asian people. I'm the only Asian in my Muni D group!! And I'm not even full Asian! Well there is one other guy but he's being mysterious about his ethnicity so I'm not counting him until I know what he is. But yes. I miss Asian people. I got so used to it over the past 6 years being at UC Irvine for college (which is like almost 50% Asian), working at a lab where almost everyone was Asian, living with my relatives who are Burmese, and all my friends were Asian too... Le sigh. I feel like a big chunk of my life is missing without a single Asian person here. There are two other girls in the overall training group but they're in different project so I never really see them. Anyway, just thought I should share that v^_^v.

I miss the piano too. I have a terrible habit of always needing to do something with my hands and can never sit still, almost like I have a beat in my head at all times, and I would really like some instrument to play to get it out. I play the guitar, piano and flute, but I lost my flute my fourth year of college, and didn't bring a guitar here, and definitely don't have a piano... Just afraid of losing whatever skills I had over these two years. Maybe once I get my own place I'll be able to track down an inexpensive keyboard somewhere.... Ha, yeah right.

Tomorrow my friend and I have to give a mini-charla (presentation) on recycling to some students and we have no idea how recycling in Honduras works because we haven't had a talk about it yet. We asked around and it seems like there is no solid recycling program other than in the larger cities, so the best way to make use of recyclable items is to reuse them. For instance, with plastic bottles, people have been painting them or filling them with sand to create benches and even walls and houses with other materials as well. I'm not really sure what else we can do with the other things but I'm going to do a bit of research online today to see what Honduras does...

The park this past week has been celebrating like cultural stuff, so they had karaoke and dance contests between the high school kids, and a food festival with so many different things.. Best food I've had here in Honduras so far were the Tacos Mexicanos at that festival. I also love that fresh passion fruit juice is widely available here, as well as coconuts and some other exotic fruits that I never heard of until I got here. There's one fruit called Nance (pronounced pretty much like my name) and it's the ONLY fruit that I hate with a passion. They taste like rotten fruit and smell terrible too, and cause body pains in some people, so I don't understand why anyone would ever eat them.





Hmm what else... had a little theft issue with some of my small items like chapstick, face stuff, candy.. that's very resolved though. Very, very resolved...

Guess that's all for now!