Hot shower! (by Laura)

Maybe the shower head that heats the water was a purchase we could have done without, but I'm willing to say it was a great buy! Though the fact that it took a few hours to install because they had to run an electrical line into the bathroom made me feel a bit spoiled. But I know that after a rainy October day (we've been warned about the nasty rains coming our way), I'll be glad for the hot shower before going to bed. And nothing makes me feel truly clean like a little bit of warm water.

I've been enjoying the visits to the aldeas and the fact that we're picking up the pace. We are hoping to get insurance on our truck soon so that we can drive it, but we'll see. Things just don't work here the way they do in the US so you have to take it as it comes. I don't have a whole lot of interesting things to say, but for some reason I felt the hot shower was newsworthy.

It's getting rainier here and that means we're having more power outages, but so far it hasn't been a big deal. As long as we can cook, I'm happy. The other night we were without it for the whole night and it was pretty hot without our fans! That was the longest we've ever gone.

We had a great day cooking for the internos at the Casa Pasionista on Monday and it was a relative success. Except that the faucet in the kitchen broke and they have to turn the water on with pliars until they get it fixed. And a few oil burns. Some of us are still mastering the art of cooking with hot oil, which is involved in most meals.

Well, I had better go find Todd for lunch, we are the 2 staying in Talanga today and had to split since this internet cafe only has one computer working with the internet today. The smell lunch of the family who owns this one is making me hungry!

Pastoral de los Enfermos (by Todd)

This morning I went with the "Pastoral de los Enfermos" - ministry of the sick - of the Talanga church. The ministry is a group of ladies who visit the sick of Talanga. On Sundays, they take communion to the sick, who can't make it all the way to church. They also bring a little food - some beans, rice, and bananas. And then, during the week, they visit again.

I went along today with two nice ladies to visit 6 "enfermos." Two of them were "niños especiales" (children with mental disabilities). The rest were elderly who were either bedridden or unable to make it all the way to church.

At each house, we'd walk in and say hello, and set up a candle and the communion on a table or stool. We'd then have a little miniature 'service' - say some prayers, sing songs, give the communion, and exchange the sign of peace. After the little service, we'd usually stay and chat for a bit, and give the food we'd brought.

We stayed about 10 minutes in each house. Even more time was spent walking (we covered a lot of ground!), so it took over 2 hours in total.

My favorite visit was to one of the niños, a little girl who smiled and giggled at me the whole time through. Her mother held her in her lap through the entire service. She also had three brothers and sisters looking after her.

And I traveled far and wide - we were really on the outskirts of Talanga. Our last two stops were in a barrio on a hillside that looked much, much more rural than the rest of Talanga. Instead of dirt roads they had grass, the houses were spread out and much smaller. And every house had a penned in area with chickens and horses and pigs. You see those animals in the streets of Talanga where we are too, but here they were just all over the place.

It was a very interesting day. But I am a little pooped! Until next time...

Cleaning the Pila (by Laura)

First let me start off with the experience of washing clothes. The pila is about 4 feet deep, 4 feet wide and 5 feet long. It's a concrete basin full of water. Set above it is a little washbasin with a separate drain and a washboard surface on the bottom. I feel like it's a blast from the past when I do my laundry because you have to scoop water out of the pila into the washbasin area to wet your clothes, sprinkle detergent, and scrub away. Then it takes quite a bit of water to rinse each garment. The clothes are line-dried and have the texture of cardboard when done. It's not that bad, but bad enough that I iron every single thing I wash after it dries down to my underwear. It takes quite a while to wash the clothes and you know they're pretty clean when you're sweating profusely and soaked down the front of yourself from the vigourous scrubbing and rinsing. It's actually a lot of fun, I never thought of doing laundry as a form of exercise!

It's the cleaning of the pila when it empties that's not so much fun...it collects algae and dust and forms a nice, brown mud (spa treatment, anyone?) at the bottom. Our neighbor was going to teach us how, but we were completely without water and I knew that the water was going to run yesterday so I decided to take matters into my own hands. There's a plug in the bottom that Todd pulled out and then I had to sweep the nasty mudwater out of a hole that's about the size of a 50-cent piece (the drain is not in the low spot, go figure). This was all while standing inside the pila. Then I had to bleach the walls and sides and sweep THAT water out. Afterwards I put the baggies of crystals that keep mosquitos from making the pila their home on the bottom and plugged it up and prayed that the water would come soon. Thank heavens it did, within half an hour of when I finished! And not while I was standing inside the pila, though on hot days I'm often tempted to jump in to cool off...except that we need to keep the water clean.

Other than that we're staying busy and starting to visit the aldeas and caserios (outlying communities) with Padre Daniel for masses and to get to know the areas. They're very rural but the people are very nice and hospitable and the kids don't know what to make of us. Mostly they just stare but some of them are okay with talking to us if we start a conversation. And they're all so dang cute!

The country is also beautiful. When we went to Valle de Angeles and climbed in elevation on the way, the valleys were so green and the hills in the distance were such a great backdrop. And it reminds me a lot of Washington with all of the pine trees. So amazing and green and still rather natural! I can't describe it! This really is a beautiful country.

¡Mas fotos! (by Todd)

Here are a few more photos for everyone:

Padre Daniel, the pastor of the Talanga parish, on his birthday. Notice the message on the cake we gave him: "Feliz Cumpleaños. Sin Bombas." - "Happy Birthday. Without Bombs." That refers to the fact that at midnight on his birthday, the parish youth came to his door with fireworks and gave us a huge fright (see earlier post).

This is us at the Casa Pasionista, about to have lunch with some of the internos. Puri, the director of the Casa, is the man in the red shirt on the left.

Another photo of us at the Casa Pasionista.

And here we are, the volunteers, riding in Puri's enormous, 12-passenger van on the way home from Tegucigalpa. Let me tell you, Puri sure can handle that monstrous van on the hectic streets of Tegucigalpa!

That's all for now. More soon!

¡¡Talanga!! ¡En foto! (by Todd)

Let´s start with a map of Talanga. As you can see, it´s just south of the road to Tegucigalpa. It´s also divided into eight "barrios" (neighborhoods), each of which has a different color (or white) on the map.

Here´s a shot of Talanga from above. What you see is about a tenth of the town - it´s the red sector in the map above.

And here, finally, we have Talanga from the ground. This should give you a feel for the town. All the streets are dirt roads, the houses are all one story. Most of the streets around town look like this.

Here´s another typical street. What you don´t see is all the stray dogs that are everywhere. Nor the chickens. Nor the holes that are always popping up as they put in an underground sewer system.

This is the "calle principal" - the main street of Talanga. It´s formal name is the "calle San Diego", named after San Diego, the patron saint of Talanga. This is the busiest street in Talanga. It´s lined with shops on either side, and it´s usually teeming with cars, bikes, and pedestrians.

And, while we´re on the subject of streets, this is our street. You can just barely make out our house on the left. It´s the first one that´s strikingly white.

One very convenient thing about our street is that on either end there is a "mercadito" (a little market). So we actually don't have to stock a lot of stuff in our house. When we want to eat, we can just hop on down to a mercadito and by what we need for the meal.

This is a shot of the church from outside. We spend a lot of time in the church, since we're so involved with the parish here.

And here´s the church from inside. It´s pretty simple: stone walls, wood benches, plain scaffolded ceiling. On Thursdays, the have an "hora santa" (holy hour) and they decorate the altar beautifully. They put tons of effert into it. Also, you can´t make it out, but the crucifix is extremely lifelike.

Here´s a shot of the "plaza central." I think it´s so pretty. Out of view there are basketball courts where kids are always playing.

This is a shot of the office building for the municipal government. We got a tour a few weeks ago and got to meet the "alcalde" (mayor).

This is a gigantic tree that grows on the outskirts of town. It is ENORMOUS! I think it must be a thousand years old. They call it "La ceiba." Ceiba is the type of tree. I guess when you´re that big you earn the "La."

Open the floodgates... (by Laura)

Oh, wait, they already were.

The good news: we have (or at least had for a few hours) running water and some water in the reserve tank.

The bad news: our house flooded this morning.

The girls and I woke up in the rectory with the intention of eating watermelon for breakfast, climbing the cerrito and taking a nice shower, which I hadn't done for real in almost 3 days. If a cold shower can be considered "real." Instead Lucian was chatting with us over the watermelon when he got a call from Todd...

Todd woke up to the reserve tank filling in the middle of the night and everything was cool, but at 8 this morning we woke up to a puddle. Fortunately the boys we able to move our dressers in the living room and dammed off that room and the kitchen in order to keep the water mostly flowing out the front door. The culprit was our toilet, which had a disconnected hose. I'm sure most the reserve tank water wound up in our house. It wasn't the first flood since we've been here and I'm sure it won't be the last. We cleaned up and made ourselves a brunch, after which I finally got my cold shower. It was the best one I've had so far.

In other news...I often feel like an animal in the zoo due to the fact that many rural people have not seen white people before, at least not too many. We went to visit Olma's (our neighbor) classroom last week and when we walked by one house a little girl asked her mom who we were. The mom replied, in wonder, "Se llaman GRINGOS." Later that day we sat down by a group of schoolgirls and one sat down next to me and started showing me all of her homework. Her friends followed suit and I was surrounded by a crowd of staring girls. Slightly disconcerting, what do you say/do when surrounded by staring eyes?

Like Kathy, I too have found a Honduran boyfriend, but he is 2 years old. His name is Daniel and he is the son the people who run the internet cafe we frequent. He is probably the cutest 2-year-old I have ever seen. I have a year to devise a plan of how to kidnap him. Ok, maybe not a boyfriend but still, I love that baby, we're buddies when I come to the cafe, right now he's sitting next to me eating an apple.

Well, until the next time...hopefully the water will be running then and not flooding.

Dance, gringos, dance! (by Laura)

Why do I feel so loved by the Hondurans? Because every chance they get, they call us up to the front of the church to dance. Really, I think they're glad we're here so they can get a kick out of us. No, that's not true, but at the rate this is going, we will be choreographing dance more sultry than Brittney's so they don't get tired of our moves. And I found out, thanks to the moves of our friend Alberto, that shaking your butt in front of the congregation is not taboo so dancing like Brittney may just be ok. At any rate, we have windows in our house now and the curtains for the doors have been made. I'm glad that a call to the US is only 20 cents a minute via internet since we can't use phone cards. Talk about being cut off, at least we have internet cafes at our disposal!

Katrina is all over the front page of the news here and I am aghast at how poorly the disaster has been managed. The US is being ridiculed for how it has handled things and even the gas prices here are spiking. Over $4/gallon. Well, I had better post this and get off to lunch. The boys are living in the house and we're cooking there now. I would also like to start moving some stuff into my room now that the windows are in and I can somewhat keep the dust out. Take care and keep us in your prayers!