Holy Week and Sawdust Carpets

Happy Holy Week and Easter to all. I’m entering my sixth week of training (half way through) and things are still going strong. I think that I’ve decided I like summarizing my paragraphs in a sort of table of contents at the start of my blog entries, so I’m doing it again. Read what interests you but don’t feel obligated to read it all, obviously. I’ve written a whole lot this week:

1. holy week vacation: visiting extended familia in Tegucigalpa and Valle de Angeles
2. alfombras de aserrín take two (sawdust carpets)
3. rain during the dry season!, subsequent power outages (apparently all too common)
4. NCAA basketball tourney (Duke Puke)
5. cultural day in the PC training center (singing, dancing, pickup lines and dodgeball)
6. training: ask and ye shall receive… hands-on activities

1. Holy Week. Holy Week is a pretty big deal for most people here in Honduras—since people are either very religious or, if not, they’re at least appreciative of the entire week off of school or work. Many people use the time off to go to the beach or to visit family. The Peace Corps gave us Thursday and Friday off, so I got to relax a little bit myself but it also gave me the chance to get a couple really cool peaks into Honduran culture that I feel kind of special for having been able to experience. The fam took me on a two trips in their car (a big luxury!) to visit extended family.
On Thursday we went to one of the poorest neighborhoods in Tegucigalpa where Jose’s (my host dad) elderly aunt and uncle live with their children and grandchildren. They had two rooms in their house that were separated by a hanging sheet—nonetheless, not to sound intentionally cliché, they were probably the nicest people I’ve met in Honduras yet and went out of their way (and probably their budget too) to make me and my host family feel welcome there. They said that the running water only comes to their house once a month and that they’ve got to ration it or else they’ll be in big trouble; I can’t even imagine. Even though all of the houses around them were as small and humble as theirs, the neighborhood was actually kind of bonito (“beautiful,” a term Hondurans use a lot) because of all the trees everywhere. I was surprised to see so many.
On Saturday we went back to Valle de Angeles (where I lived for three weeks for the first part of training) to visit more extended family living there. Valle is a real tourist destination and it was packed since it was perhaps one of the busiest vacation days in the whole year. But I actually enjoy the town a lot—it’s colonial and historic with a nice downtown park and lots of artistry places—the climate there is very agreeable as well.

2. Sawdust Carpets. Last blog post I lamented the fact that I missed the traditional sawdust carpets. Well, good news. All the PC trainees were invited to Don Ricardo’s house (he’s one of the super rich fellows in town who apparently always invites PC people to his complex) on Black Friday to help make our own sawdust carpets. He had bought two pickup truck loads of sawdust of just about every color. The twelve or so of us who showed up were down on our knees playing around with sawdust for about six hours making religious designs. (see picture-- if it decides to upload) It was fun for about the first hour or so, but got tedious pretty quick. We also met some other Americans from the US embassy. The sort of sad part was that only three hours we finished it, it started to rain, which brings me to my third point.

3. Rain! It rained here for two days in a row this week! It was the first time it had rained in four months according to my host family. For a country that is experiencing a pretty severe drought, that’s a big deal. I liked it because it really cooled things off around here. It also settled some of the dust that’s been pretty rampant these days. The bad part is that when it rains, the power often goes out. So, we had about 5 hours of electricity over the span of about two and a half days. I think that’s bad for the food in our fridge.
4. Basketball. I luckily got to watch the two final four games on Saturday and hope to be able to watch the championship game. It’s too bad that I’ve missed the entire tournament, my favorite sports event of the year by far, but I feel privileged to have been able to watch these last games. Duke Puke.

5. Cultural Day. Last Wednesday the PC trainees put on a Cultural Day in our training centers and invited all of our host families. Each of our Spanish class groups gave a presentation about something related to American culture and a few Honduran groups did the same with their culture. It was actually a lot of fun. Since one of the other guys in my class knows how to play the guitar, I borrowed my family’s guitar and we played (and sang!) a hit bluegrass song called “Wagon Wheel” by the band Old Crow Medicine Show, which talks about a guy’s trip “heading down south to the land of the pines” looking to start a new life. Of course he’s talking about going to North Carolina, but we thought it could work for us going down to Honduras since there are pines here too. It went over well, I think (after we explained the lyrics and what bluegrass was to the families). Other groups taught the Electric Slide, American pickup lines, how to make ice cream floats and Dodgeball. Fun stuff.

6. Training. In my last post I think that I more or less lamented the fact that training here in Ojojona hadn’t really started getting interesting yet and that I wanted to do more hands-on stuff. Well, lucky me, the other volunteers who already speak Spanish and I will be giving 16 classes on various business topics to the local technical school over the course of the next several weeks, starting this week. Not to mention that in a couple weeks we’re all going to be doing a three or four day business simulation at the local high school, as well as a charla on HIV/AIDS. Also, finally, at the end of this week, the whole Business group is going to the beach in the south (on the Pacific) for a two day long field trip.

Okay. Wow. I’ve definitely overstayed my welcome in terms of length of this blog entry. I never wrote this much about my life when I was in Spain or in college or in high school, but for some reason being here in the Peace Corps I feel like it’s my duty to write down a lot of details—I’m guessing this will change over the months to come, but until then, you’ll be hearing about everything that’s happening. Pues, ya está. Hasta la próxima vez. Mucho amor desde Honduras.