Christmas & New Year's in Honduras 2010-2011

At first I thought staying in Honduras for Christmas and New Year's would be depressing, away from family, away from close friends for the first time in my life... but it turns out I had an amazing holiday with the new friends I've made here :)

I visited an orphanage that has children of all ages, from babies to teens, and that was such a moving visit.  These children were so full of love and extremely well-behaved that it was difficult to say goodbye.  They live in a beautiful house that has everything - hot water, washing and drying machines, full-stocked kitchen, tv room with fireplace, computer room, and bathrooms inside of all their dorm rooms with cleaning responsibilities delegated to a different person on a rotating schedule.  Outside the building is a playground, a small creek, and an enormous variety of fruit trees.  My friend Daniel brought the children a large trampoline too, so they made excellent use out of that.  One of the boys gave me a wooden airplane he had made and painted as a gift, so I had him and another girl write their names on it :)

I also had the chance to visit a village where Daniel is working at.  One of the projects his NGO is doing is helping people construct their own houses out of compressed earth block.  The people do all the work, which stands alongside the idea of if you put your own labor into making something, you'll be more likely to take care of it.  Also, they can train others in how to build houses as well.

I visited with my very first host family and my baker host dad finally taught me how to make his famous galletas de manteca (vegetable shortening or lard cookies).  They're delicious to eat with coffee.  He tried to make a smaller batch since he is accustomed to making the cookies on a larger scale, but the dough ended up too bread-like.   He did call me recently though to tell me that it just needed more water, since he had given me the recipe.  His son who is about 1.5 years old now can walk!  I really missed the whole family and was so glad that I had them as my first host family experience.  Going back I was put in a different room, and didn't have my mosquito net and that's when I realized how much my mentality had changed since first arriving to Honduras in June 2010 and revisiting the same house 6 months later.  As a noob, I was terrified of the potential spiders, ants, and whatever other bugs could be crawling on the walls and bed and flying around the room, and I made a conscious effort to always tuck my mosquito net under the mattress whenever I was in the room sitting or sleeping on the bed.  I even would wake up in the middle of the night and think I saw huge spiders hanging down in front of my face.. that happened for a couple of months and now maybe only once every couple months (pretty strange eh?).  Being back at their house in a normal bed in the other room without a false ceiling didn't bother me at all.  I got so used to sleeping with ants on my bed at my most recent host family's house that the bugs don't really bother me anymore.  I also think that ridding my own house of a cockroach infestation and spiders had desensitized me even more.

Cantarranas dance

I finally arrived in Cantarranas for the feria, or fair, and met up with my host mom there, who had a food tent.  Her children came by later and we played cards and I showed them card tricks.  Most of the weekend was spent with friends, visiting their host families, saying hi to familiar faces, eating, hanging out, and going to the dances in the Alcaldia.  It was great catching up and seeing people again!

I headed back up north for a bit, then headed off to Utila!  I stayed at Alton's Dive Center with Daniel and his niece Kristyn who was visiting from the states.  Morgaine and her boyfriend stayed at another place since they weren't doing any scuba-diving classes. Alton's is a backpacker's dormitory-style hostel with bunk beds in some of the rooms, and shared bathrooms.  There were a ton of tourists there from all over the world, including countries such as Australia, the UK, Netherlands, Switzerland, Canada, Taiwan, and the U.S., and everyone was super friendly.  I absolutely love the backpacker culture of traveling, meeting new people along the way, hanging out with them, and perhaps traveling together to the next destination.  Even though we came as our own group, we ended up spending a lot of time with the people we met on Utila, and that was a great experience.

View from our room

Kristyn and I did the PADI Open Water Diver Course, which is the beginner's course for people who haven't dove before, while Daniel did the Rescue Diver course.  There were 4 other people in our class, so it was a comfortable size.  It was my very first time diving, and everyone I knew who had done it before absolutely loved it.  Honestly though, I wasn't quite sure what all the hype was about.  Don't get me wrong, it really was a lot of fun and definitely something to experience, and granted I only did the beginner's course so wasn't able to dive toooo deep, but I thought it was just okay.  Maybe in the future I'll get the chance to do more and will grow to love it.  It is an expensive hobby though..  On our dives we saw a sea turtle, an eagle ray, coral crab, stingray, lots of angel fish, and some small banded shrimp, among other creatures.

Nina and me :) She's the daughter of one of the wonderful
ladies that works at Alton's.  So adorable!

At night I'd go out with Morgaine and her boyfriend Tilo to visit the different night spots on the island.  There was one place called Treetanic at the Jade Seahorse. It's a bar in a tree, and the whole place is like a mosaic museum, with bridges, swings, a cave, arches, and a whole array of decorative sections.  Other places we visited were La Pirata, Bar in the Bush, Tranquila Bar, and RJ's restaurant, a Bob Marley-themed restaurant (food wasn't that great), and some other cafes.  Mostly for meals we ate at Alton's small cafe on the dock, and the food there was simply amazing!

Marlin with pineapple salsa

Christmas came around and we celebrated by donning Santa hats and going on a small party cruise for about half an hour or so with everyone who was staying at Alton's.  

Me and Rita

The next day, our group had to leave and head back to the mainland, but the ferry wasn't going to run that day due to the storm coming in, and we really needed to get off the island!  We found out that there was a 3-seater charter plane, and a 7-seater plane available, so added a few more people to our group, waited a few hours, then took the tiny little 7-seater off, and paid much much more than we had planned.  Being on a PC salary, I was not happy at all about this because I spent 4 times more than what I would have spent if the ferry was working.  UGH!  It definitely was a fun experience though, as we all thought we were going to die.  The pilot told us specifically not to touch the doors to open or close, or we may be seeing red (the doors were super close to the propellers), and he had to seat us all by weight, saying "our lives depend[ed] on it".  We made it though!  Had the chance to hang out with a couple of the backpackers for the day and then my vacation ended, so I headed back to El Negrito for a bit before New Years.

I don't really remember what I did back in site so I'll skip ahead to New Years.  I made my way up to the coast again, but this time to a site near La Ceiba.  I almost got screwed getting there because the last bus from the station to the site had left La Ceiba and it was getting dark.  Luckily I asked around and discovered that there was another place to catch the bus up, so I made it!  That was my first time traveling on the bus at night and it was kind of creepy after hearing about all the things that could go wrong after the sun sets.. 

I met up with a bunch of other PCVs at this one restaurant, then we all headed back to the PCV's apartment, where we began the festivities.  Music and dancing and talking ensued.  When it came time for the countdown, some of us took pots and pans down and clanged them against each other in celebration for the new year.  We did the countdown probably 3 or 4 times because everyone's phones said something different, so that was interesting.  It was a great time and we all had a chance to catch up with each other.  

The next day some of us headed to La Ceiba and visited a Garifuna club in La Zona Viva and it truly was an immersive experience.  We were the only Gringos there.  And not only could every one of them dance, and dance well, they seemed to know the lyrics of every single song played, and would jubilantly sing aloud whenever the DJ changed songs, which was about every 30 seconds.  The atmosphere was somewhat clique-y though and we got some dirty looks from people, and firecrackers going off near our feet, but it wasn't so bad.

Overall, I had an exciting and fun-filled Christmas and New Year's break!