Two Months, exactly, in Honduras

After last week's sort of scary, more depressed about the security of the country blog, this one is a little more upbeat. Overall, we have been exceedingly blessed and continue to be so.

The children are making good progress in learning Spanish. Jack is doing a good job practicing…just talking, trying out new words and combos. It is great to hear him work on that. Henry and Aspen are learning and seem to understand a lot, even if they aren’t speaking back. Abe still is working and Calla is still (though less than before) uncomfortable when everyone around her is speaking Spanish. She furrows her brow and just looks displeased. However, she keeps surprising us with the Spanish words she knows. Jack asked her today, “What does venga mean?” and she correctly answered, “Come.”

In Honduras February is the Mes de Amistad (Month of Friendship). Friendship is a theme throughout the month. I think we should do that in the US.

We went insect-collecting this past Thursday afternoon until about 8pm. We set up a mercury-vapor lamp near a white sheet to attract a lot of moths and other insects—mostly moths. Likely we attracted a new species in this place. It was a higher elevation, forested region about 1 hour from campus. I will try to post a few pictures of some cool moths that we saw. This one was a little bigger than Monarch-butterfly size. The trip to Santa Inez was a VERY bumpy ride over very bad roads with huge rocks in them. We were in a converted ambulance that had benches on the sides for people to sit in with all the stuff placed in the middle. It was hard to sit and not fall all over the place as we rode along. Plus, the generator was leaking gas the whole way, so we got a little buzzed going and coming. I am sure my brain is now 41 years old having lost about a year’s worth of brain cells in that atmosphere. I would definitely go again, though. Dr. Schlein is a real entomologist and knows his insect families. It was great to be out in the field with a real expert. Reiniery Ortiz was our driver. He is an excellent driver and tireless worker. He was collecting insects like a pro. He has been working for the University as a driver for the science fieldtrips for about 14 years. A driver does way more than just drive up and sit around. He also helps teach the soils class and did a lot of work with us collecting insects. He probably knows enough to have a BS in Biology!

Reiniery and I are also in the Branch Presidency together. I would put him up there with any other counselor I have worked with or known. He has been a member of the Church for about 4 years and is totally dedicated and is a great worker and speaks up, with great ideas. He is outgoing and a solid guy. I can see him moving upward in the future. I think of him as a friend and his wife, too. They remind me of the Fife’s—Solid, good, funny, friendly, totally honest, smart people. We also had great food at their house a few weeks ago. This is getting long, so I will have to write a little more about them another time.

This week was interesting in a number of ways. We went to Valle de Angeles, a town that caters to tourists and is made up of shop after shop filled with things tourists would like to buy: purses, dresses, paintings, sandals, sculptures, magnets, machetes, and so on. We had been once before, but just to look. Now we went with clear goals of what to buy.

Aspen: I looked and looked for a dress and finally found a traditional Honduran dress. It has a white shirt and white skirt, with red, green, blue stripes [of rickrack—those are the ribbons on the upper and lower edges of the dress. It is really quite nice and Aspen looks like a bleached out Honduran.]. Dad came to my class to talk about science. I knew most of the answers.

Abe: I had a party at Valentimes day. I had orange soda and sprite. I got some chips and pizza and I got a Valentine from Nadia. It had Elmo and superheroes on it.

I got a chair in Valle de Angeles. It has these sticks, without bark on them. It has a leather seat with a horse head carved on it. [It is a three-legged chair. The leather seat has little pockets for the sticks to fit into so it stays on. It fits Abe perfectly. I am thinking to get one for everyone for camping. They’re very cool little three-legged stools.]

Henry: I bought a machete and a hammock with my own money in a little town called Valle de Angeles [Henry calls it Angelos Hanjelos]. The machete has the seals from all the different countries in Central America. It has a black leather case that has a part cut out of it so you can see the little seals on the blade. My hammock is orange, black, blue and yellow. The hammock was $15.

There was a skunk at school and it sprayed a girl in the face. I saw the skunk. She had to go home, [as you might imagine!]. She was in 4th grade. She came back to school two days later.

Jack: I bought a hammock that is black with red and white stripes. It also has some other stripes, but I can’t remember. I got the hammock for $15. I also got a little bracelet. A girl at Church today said,“¡¿Bob Marley?!” because the bracelet has green, yellow and red stripes.

I went bug collecting with Dad, Reinery, some students, and Oliver [Dr. Oliver Schlein from Germany, working as the director of the insect collection. He is funded by GTZ, which is the German gov’t equivalent to USAID. I worked for them in Indonesia in the ‘90s]. All of the native villager people came up to us to ask us what we were doing. We just told them we were collecting bugs. I kept catching little bugs in my hands. I stood around talking with people in English and Spanish. We had these super-filling dinners and Henry started eating mine.

There was a big fire in a town called Comayagua where more than 350 people died [you might have heard about it on the news…it was very massive in this Tennessee-sized country]. We also saw a fire in Comayagüela when we were in Tegucigalpa on Saturday. [Comayagüela is the other half of the capital city. It is also one of 3 Honduran LDS missions here—Teguc, Comaya., and San Pedro Sula.]

There was a safety party and I bonked my chin on the floor while I was doing the worm. We had a gift exchange for Friendship month in YM/YW on Sunday. I got a haircut. We rode in a mototaxi again today. I got to ride shotgun this time.

Ranae: So, having a maid is great. I have enjoyed Miriam’s company this week and deeply appreciate her help. The children are wowed by the good work she does. Besides keeping our house spic and span, doing laundry, and helping with meals, she helped remove a splinter from Calla’s foot, mended Abe’s torn blanket, cleaned Calla’s well-used baby dolls, and taught me how to make tortillas from just plain corn. On Monday she taught me how to make tortillas from Maseca (a kind of cornmeal you buy at the grocery store). On Tuesday she brought a bag of dry corn kernels and lime powder, which we boiled till the corn was soft. After Miriam took the corn home and ground it that evening, she brought back the resultant masa (dough) and we made a big batch of tortillas. The fresh-corn tortillas are tasty and . . . corny. We laughed and talked as we made tortillas. Wow! I laughed and talked in Spanish!

I was touched by a gift Miriam brought for Dia de Amistad—a package of cookies and a little card—and by her honesty when I was about to pay her ten extra lempiras on payday. She pointed out the 50¢ error, which won my heart. I am just really happy to have her as a help, a Spanish teacher, and a friend. She is cheerful, hard-working, and patient. I hope that our arrangement is favorable for her and that she feels comfortable as a dear friend in our home each day.

Here are Ranae and Calla next to an oregano tree (the tall, branchy white blossomed tree to the upper right) and a Poinsettia. I have seen a lot of oregano, but never this big! I always wonder if you could make something out of oregano wood--a table, and small hutch or something...maybe I'll do it someday.

The Yellow Wallpaper, Fresh Tortillas, and the Case of the Missing Pajamas

To begin with, this is a shot of the chapel/multipurpose room. When the electricity went out this past Sunday, we opened the window you can see behind the podium to provide light. The subdued light (I think) made it one of the more reverent meetings so far!

This week passed by as it were unto us as a dream. We continue to find new creatures nearly every day, for sure every week. This week, we found a purple-legged centipede-the legs were really very purple (deep lavender).

Henry: The electricity went out at Church, just before we were to begin. We got a maid who makes our bed every day and sweeps. Her name is Miriam and she used to work for our friends the Packs before they moved to Ecuador. At school I was in the English-language spelling bee. I got 2nd place because of “poison.” I am going to go to Tegucigalpa for the English spelling bee. It is verbal, not written [in California, the spelling bees are written]. I tried baleadas, which are a typical Honduran food. They were very good, except for the platanos. We invited some friends from Church over to eat lunch with us. I am doing my science fair experiments using paper airplanes. I will see how wind will affect different designs of planes.

Aspen: Didn’t report anything this week, though she is bright and beautiful and happy. Aspen is as imaginative as ever, which does require the need to urge her on, sometimes, to get the essentials done. But she is a good, tolerant, generally peaceful 7 year old. She is getting ready to be baptized and is quite excited about that. The font here is outside, and the (untreated) water is pretty cold. It is also above-ground, which is interesting and new. A eucalyptus tree hangs over and so we regularly have to clean leaves out of it. That is where Abraham found his big tarantula last week.

Abraham: Didn't report anything this week, though he is regularly getting candy in his preschool class. He always saves one for his little sister, Calla, at home. Great boy! This cute, little blond boy in Honduras is a hit with the Young Women at Church. However, Abe is as uninterested in them as can be. He is regularly mobbed by people at Church, which is difficult for this sensitive 5-year old. I taught him to use his elbows defensively and to say "NO,", I was also trying to think of short words that would communicate something useful and came up with "Dejame!" ("leave me alone") and "No quiero." We practiced and he did assert himself more this past Sunday, which was helpful and good. But people are not so easily dissuaded, and it seems that the notion of "No" really meaning "Yes," is present here. Occasionally intervention was still required. Hopefully, progress will be made from both sides as we live here longer.

Jack: I won the spelling bee in my class this week. The electricity went out at our house and at Church. I got 18 bags of skittles for my science fair project. They cost 13.30 lempiras each. I was sick for 1 day of school.

Stuart: Last week people got sick—a virus, I think—that has finally made its way through everyone. I was the last to succumb on Thursday night and am about 90% today (Sunday). This the 2nd time this has happened to us in about 6 months, but had never happened before. I lost my phone on Monday. While it was very inexpensive ($12), it had a lot of numbers on it I had acquired over the weeks. I got a new one on Thursday when I was in Tegucigalpa on Thursday.

I was in the capital at the US Embassy to attend a “required” State Department security briefing as a requirement of my Fulbright award. The information provided there was quite interesting! Mostly, it was scary and for a few days made me very concerned about staying here longer. I am better now, though lingering thoughts still persist. The embassy was very pleasant to be in. It was very relaxing and considering going back out into the city where crime is so rampant was a serious letdown. I just wanted to stay there longer. To be sure, Zamorano and environs is a safe place compared with the capital. Just like S. Central LA is not a place to go hang out and visit without being very alert and aware, the LA outskirts are quite pleasant and generally peaceful. My mission was more preparation for this trip than I had imagined! Besides the language, I had plenty of exposure to MS13 and 18th Street gangs (which were exported to C. America, with the same names).

Friday night Ranae and I went on a date to the pool and reclined in fine pool chairs under the coconut palms, gazing up at the star-filled, tropical, evening sky. In that circumstance, how could I be nervous about anything! There were so many stars, if you weren’t careful or hadn’t seen the constellation, Orion, you might not have been able to pick it out! It was so relaxing, I could actually feel the muscles in my back and neck getting less and less tense. It was truly idyllic.

Ranae: I’ll be honest. Life with five young children in a developing country that is ranked as the homicide capitol of the world is not all fun and games and tasting tortillas. After Stuart came home from his meeting at the Embassy, we both were sobered by the statistics and instructions he heard. Our sense of security was toppled. They reassured him that Zamorano is an island in this country, a little bubble of serenity and safety. Still, we do think we’ll keep our trips into Teguc to a minimum. Our prayer continues to be that we will be safe from harm, that we can be at ease when all is well, and that we’ll have a clear sense of danger if and when necessary. Faith is trusting that that prayer will be answered.

So now we have an employee, a maid. Such is the stuff of luxury and something we definitely couldn’t afford in America. The fact that we can afford help here reminds me that our middle class in America is upper class in Honduras. We are very blessed.

Miriam is fantastic. She is industrious and cheerful, patient with my Spanish, and willing to correct my mistakes. When we talk, I always have my Spanish-English dictionary handy, and we often write down our words so we can understand each other better. Having fresh tortillas, on demand, hot and ready in a tidy towel-wrapped packet, is luxury. Every day is clean bathroom day. Every day is mopped floor day. My house sparkles! I am not used to this! It is nice.

The other night Stuart and I were getting ready for bed and he couldn’t find his pajamas. We finally found them, neatly folded and tucked under our tightly-pulled-up sheets on our bed. Henry and I were treated to well-scrubbed tennis shoes, which now are white again. If we can pry it away from Calla, Miriam will give her doll a bath. Miriam makes lunch and chops veggies for dinner.

But there is a but. Miriam is fantastic, but what do I do now? I have a new understanding of women in the Victorian age, who had servants to raise their children, keep their houses, and do their cooking, and who had very few opportunities for engagement outside of their homes. What did they do? They had social clubs and philanthropic ventures, organized picnics and learned French. I can understand the discontent and even insanity some of them felt at not having work to do that is daily, demanding, and satisfying. (Did you read The Yellow Wallpaper in high school English class?)

The older four children are in school, and my common household chores are passed off to someone else now. What do I do? Visit the neighbors and volunteer at the school, organize dinner parties and learn Spanish. Calla and I take walks around the compound and find bugs and sticks and palm branches to play with. But if I do not do something that requires labor, I will really go batty. Either I have to have some work, or I can’t have Miriam come. I am confident that I can figure something out. The Spanish immersion and fresh tortillas are worth finding a way to shift things around in my schedule and make room for Miriam.

Mototaxis, Employment, and a Tarantula

2/5/2012

Abraham: When we were cleaning the Church, I was cleaning out the outside baptismal font, I saw a tarantula. It was in where you got baptized. It runned into my dustpan, because I was cleaning out lots of leaves that were in there. It kind of startled me. I didn’t get to ride in the mototaxi this Sunday. Almost every single day, I eat chocolate chip cookies when we are having snack at school. There are only four swings on the playground. Every day I always get candy at preschool. [Abe always requests one to bring home to Calla, who is at home and doesn’t go to school.]

Henry: Yesterday we saw a teeny, teeny scorpion scurrying across our dining room floor. We picked it up in a jar and it is sitting on our counter. We cleaned the church and I got to mop the chapel. Aspen and I were sick this week. I missed 2 days of school and watched a lot of movies. I rode in a mototaxi. Mototaxis rule!! One mototaxi is yellow and has a spoiler. It looks kind of funny.

Aspen: I was sick this week. I missed 2 days of school, but now am better. We went to the Martinez’s house for dinner. We played red rover [it was “red rover” since no one knew the name in Spanish]. We had pan de pan for dessert [she didn’t get sick from the pan de pan]. The night that we had it, I threw it up. That is how I got sick.

Ranae: I gave my first employee interview--in Spanish! Tomorrow our empleada, Miriam, will start working for us. She’ll come for about 5 hours in the morning and do housework and some cooking, with the intent that then I can be more immersed in Spanish. I will volunteer at the children’s school for a few hours each week, helping Mr. Carlos with his art and music classes, which are taught in Spanish. I will also have to communicate with Miriam. Part of my interview was to make clear to her that I need her to talk to me in Spanish and correct my mistakes. I hope she will take seriously that portion of her job description. She comes highly recommended as the past empleada of the Pack family. How strange it is to contemplate having a maid! But as Stuart said, I’m not going to learn Spanish by washing dishes all day.

Today I taught our Nursery lesson in Spanish. I think the little Honduran girl understood me. Calla did not. I was worried that I could not understand what the little girl is saying, taking it as a comment on my Spanish skills. But the woman that comes to help with music in Nursery told me that none of the Hondurans can understand her, either. Such is the way with some 3-year-olds. Calla continues to love Nursery and learn the gospel each Sunday.

Wednesday evening we enjoyed a real Honduran dinner at the Martinez’s home. The menu was platanos, corn tortillas, tomato salsa, chorizo and carne asada from the BBQ, creamy beans, and queso fresco. To drink, we had pineapple juice and for dessert, an awesome flan/custard dish called pan de pan. The food was delicious and worthy of importing to America.

It seems I am always reporting something about food, but truly, navigating a new cuisine, cooking for a family of seven, and providing and cleaning up after four homemade meals each day (that’s including the immense after-school snack) occupies much of my time and energy. I do think that having Miriam come will be a great help.

Jack: I rode in a mototaxi. I wasn’t sick and went to school all week. I get to go to the Tercero’s house on Friday. [we wrote about them in a blog post back. They live in a remote area, that is a 30 min hike from the road that is very, very steep.] I had a dream that I was the goalie for a professional soccer team. The game was on Valentine’s Day. All the kids of the soccer players got to come out and play instead of their dads. Instead of a soccer ball, it was a cheap plastic golf ball. I kept blocking the goals. There were a bunch of chubby little kids running around.

I have to write 1.5 (small) pages each day for school homework. I wrote a story for school. The story was about giant evil turnips that lived on Titan, a moon of Saturn (or Jupiter). There were big floating, tan balls.

We cleaned the church. Part of the Church we have to clean is outside. A eucalyptus tree drops leaves. We swept them up and didn’t really have a place to put them, so I dumped them over the edge. I accidentally dumped them into some lady’s pila who lives below the Church. A pila is a small open reservoir people use as a source of water, for washing clothes, or other things. She came and knocked on the door and asked who was dumping stuff off the back of the Church. We came down to help clean the leaves out of her pila.

Stuart: Jack and Henry rode in mototaxi from Church. Mototaxis are small, red, three-wheeled vehicles that have small engines (Henry says they have lawnmower engines). They have been wanting to ride in one for a long time and I finally brought the 12 Lempiras to pay for it. They rode with Hermana Penalva from Church, since she rides one from Church to the bus stop each Sunday. She agreed to go with them. We took her daughter with us, then gave them a ride so they didn’t have to ride the bus. The mototaxi doesn’t have doors closed usually, and even if they were, they’re cloth. Jack kept sticking his head out to watch us from behind. Hna. Penalva took a picture of them in the mototaxi.

I finally met with the Branch President. The president of the branch is the leader of the congregation in the local area. We call it a branch since it is small (<100 active members), which makes it different than a “ward” which would have >100s of members. I am his counselor, meaning I help him do whatever needs to be done in the branch to minister to the folks. We met this morning with the other counselor. He (the President) asked if I would conduct the meeting in February. This means that I run the main worship meeting. Welcome, song, prayer, announcements, etc. and basically direct the meeting. It was a total surprise about 40 minutes before the meeting started. I had done it a lot of times when we lived in Madison since I was in (essentially) the same position there and it turned out I wasn’t even nervous and the whole thing went smoothly .

I finally signed a contract here as an empleado. That finally gives me the privilege of driving the car being insured. We had been driving (locally) for the time that we had been here. But now we can go wherever in the country. That is pretty liberating, so we went to the grocery store! We have plans to go to cooler places eventually, but we did get some yummy food at the store. All the store workers (ladies) were commenting and staring admiringly at the children, esp. at totally blond Aspen and Abraham. They are amazed at the blue eyes of the rest of the children. One lady kept giving them free doughnut (“donas”) samples, which was VERY well received by the children!

Another happy week in Honduras!

Uyuca and parrots

What a happy weekend! Our American friends, the Packs, invited us to spend Friday and Saturday at “the Chalet” with them, and we were so glad we did. The Chalet is a rustic cabin owned by Zamorano University up on Mount Uyuca, about a 20 minute drive from our house. (Remember to pronouce all the vowels: u = oooo, a = ahh.) Zamorano is in charge of caring for a certain part of the national forest reserve on the mountain. The reserve is humid forest and cloud forest at about 1600-2000m (5200-6500 ft) above sea level. This is where the clouds sit and rest at the top of the mountain for much of the days.

At the very (bumpy) end of the road up Mt. Uyuca, you come to the Zamorano property, which includes a home for Angel, the caretaker, garden plots for raising cut flowers (the sale of which reportedly helps funds the property), and two cabins for guests and meetings. The grounds are well-manicured in a simple, almost Japanese style, with benches placed under just the right trees and wide open views of the Honduran mountains (and junked-car lot). It was a refreshing, peaceful, clean, beautiful, paradisical place to spend the weekend.

The rustic cabin was clean and pleasant. The rustic-ness meant exposed wiring going up the wall from the light switches to the overhead lights and no interior sheet rock or covering for the studs in the walls. The studs just make up part of the decoration. It does have an electric stove and fridge and spring water, which was really cold and drinkable from the faucet. We loved the change in temperature we noticed when we reached high elevation. Good blankets were essential for the night. (Thankfully, the Packs had some extras. We didn't really bring any blankets with us to tropical Honduras!)

Friday night we enjoyed a campfire together, with a Dutch oven dinner, guitar sing-along, Honduran folk songs sung by Angel and his family, s'mores and hot chocolate. (The s'mores were an especial treat, as graham crackers are an oddity here, and marshmallows are not so common, either.) Our children and the Packs' have gotten along so wonderfully. We are going to miss their company when they leave this Thursday to move to Ecuador. Our brief overlap of time together in Honduras, though ironic, has been the perfect way for us to ease into this new country.

Saturday morning started early. By 8:30 we started off on a great hike that took us through starkly different ecosystems. We hiked about 3 hours, making a loop that alternated through dry and and then dripping forests. The hike was technical and tricky at times, but everyone plugged along happily and safely. Some of the trail was slippery with dead, slimy leaves and mud; sometimes it was rocky and dry. One part of the trail was only about a foot wide, with a cliff about 900 feet down to the left and the side of the mountain about 100 feet up on the right. It was dry at this point (no mud) because it was just over the ridge. Upon turning up and onto the other side of the ridge, the climate changed in about 5 feet, as if we passed through a door into another space that was totally dripping wet and filled with epiphytes, ferns and bromeliads—we were in the cloud forest.

Stuart was really in heaven with all the cool plants—he marveled at the tree fern forests. These tree ferns got to about 25' tall, so really, really neat! He has always wanted to walk through one of those and had the chance to do it several times on the hike.
He also marveled at hornworts, which he has taught about every year, but never seen, since they mostly are in tropical areas and aren't very common, though here they were everywhere. The moss and ferns were spectacular as were the orchids, bromeliads, and much that was quintessential jungle.

After a lunch of scones and scrambled eggs and a brief clean-up, we said good-bye to the Chalet and drove home though a gentle drizzle. We'll definitely return sometime.

Last Sunday, Stuart was called as 1st Counselor in the Branch Presidency at Church. He is excited to work with the Branch President and the other counselor Reiniery (sic) Ortiz, who also works at Zamorano in the same area as Stuart.

The hundredth day of school was this past week. There was a celebration at the school and it was great for everyone, especially for Aspen. She went for a granita to the Espresso Americano, which is a little walk away from the school. She got blackberry (mora) flavor. A granita is just crushed ice (granitas) with flavoring, usually also with coffee. She was excited. She also got some kind of yummy cookie there...all for about 38 Lps. ($1.97). With the change we bought a big branch of bananas that we ate for about 3 days. It was 12 Lps (and 19.1 Lps. = $1).

Our natural gas tank for our stove finally ran out last night. It lasted about 1 month of cooking a lot each day. Boiling beans, rice, making eggs, heating tortillas, cooking bread in the oven a number of times. So we like it and think we should get a gas stove connected to a tank to use at home in the US. It is really great. It's about the size of an old-fashioned milk can. We'll haul it back to the market for a refill of gas.

The 6th grade class that Jack is in has planned for some big activity for the 6th graders. The original agreement in September was that each student would pay Lps. 600 each month for the entire school year. That means that by the end of the year, each student would have saved Lps 5400 for some activity. (For quick calculation just divide that by about 20, or if you're hardcore look up the exchange rate, which hovers around 19.1 Lps/dollar. It is about $280.) Then they'd pool the money of the 12 6th graders to charter a bus, drive to La Ceiba on the Caribbean coast, stay in a hotel and go to the beach for a weekend. La Ceiba is 7 hours one way. Some discussion is underway as to what the actual event will be as that seemed a little excessive for a 6th grade graduation fiesta to some, but not all.

Abraham was chosen from among the children in his class to take home Mr. Osito and have a fun week with him. Mr. Osito is a large (Abe's size) stuffed bear. He is to return him this Friday after doing something cool with the bear and documenting it in a notebook that came home with the bear. We haven't done anything cool yet with the bear, but Abe has a week to do something cool. Maybe go swimming or play Indians or ride with it in a Mototaxi! We'll see.

The children have been playing Indians this week. They've made a fire pit, hunted deer and buffalo, picked berries, collected buffalo chips, made axes and knives and bows and arrows. Henry discovered he could make sparks by hitting two rocks together. He is a “true descendant of Nephi.”

Guayabas are yummy and a very unusual flavor. Kind of like lemon mixed with pear, with the texture of a very ripe pear, but then again a bit more spongey.

Abe made fingerpuppets and dreamed of becoming a fingerpuppet vendor, at the price of $5 per puppet. He gave one puppet (for free) to each member of the family.

Henry: Lately parrots have been coming by our house. Right now I am hearing the parrots in our big tree. They are mostly green with red under their wings. They have yellow beaks. They are about as big as a pigeon, but a bit more skinny. They look like a pirate's parrot on his shoulder.

A Very Tropical Birthday and the Terceros

How do you spend a birthday in Honduras? How about a morning swim under coconut palms, watching the sky turn blue above the mango grove? Then you might enjoy a breakfast of pancakes topped with mango puree, a lunch of beans and fried platanos, and eventually a dinner of pupusas. But watch out—that pickled cabbage salad ("cortido" (sic) for those wanting to be official) that tops your pupusa has some pretty hot peppers hiding in it! (Ranae was rather debilitated by one.) Ranae's cake was chocolate with mango frosting (from the puree) and slices of fresh starfruit to garnish it. We had a festive dance after dinner, and then off to bed. It was a very happy Honduran birthday.

We enjoyed hosting Hermano and Hermana Tercero for lunch Sunday afternoon. They are the Honduran version of Stuart's parents—good people who have lived life well and are committed to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. They married when she was 15 and he 19; now they are about 70. After lunch we drove them almost home; we couldn't drive them all the way to their house because the road doesn't go there. We had to drop them off at the start of their foot trail, which takes them on a half-hour hike to their remote mountain home. Each Sunday they walk to church for just over two hours. They appreciate a ride back (as far as possible) because the walk back is undeniably uphill. They invited to us to come see their home when we have the time for the hike. They raise all their own food (meat, eggs, produce, and grain), go to sleep and rise with the sun. We loved their good company! We look forward to taking them up on their offer.

Stuart and the children are settling into the routine of school and work, though Abraham's days are very long, according to him. Preschool starts at 7:30 and goes until 12:00. But this week, he is saying he likes it.

Abraham did take a day off to play Indians. He made a knife from some rocks here (mainly basaltic rocks) and worked on smoothing out a stick. He made a firepit and did some other things that Ranae can tell about later. In short, his day was full and fun and what a 5-year old should be able to do all day.

The mango is finishing flowering and the little mangos are forming. I am excited. They won't be ready until April or May, so plan your visits accordingly. It is also one of the early varieties, so if you come in June or July, there'll still be mangoes.

Since we're by Copan....

I heard this news report while I was working today. It is from The World.

We are nearby the area where the Mayans lived for a long time. So the idea of 2012 world ending has been interesting to me; to wonder what they think of it all.

This article tell something of that.

http://www.theworld.org/2012/01/guatemala-looking-to-cash-on-2012-doomsday-theory/

technical difficulties

I had a few technical difficulties with internet access here so we didn't post anything on Sunday or Monday.

I will get the full post up later on Tuesday.

Last week was a good week for us and the children are doing well in school.

It has been cloudy and pleasant the last few days and since they finally burned all of the sugar cane fields, the smoke is a less constant.

The ATM hasn't worked for a week so we are trying to make sure to conserve our cash. The credit card machine at the little grocery store is also not working. So to get food, we have to go to Tegucigalpa which is about 40 minutes along a winding road.

More to post later

New School, Big Flames, Morning Swim
Aspen: I started school. I am in 2nd grade. I am learning stuff I already learned. My teacher is Miss Fanny. There are 21 students including me. It is the biggest class in the school. My best friend in my class in Honduras is Déborah. This week I saw a guatusa (/watusa/). [It is a small mammal (rodentia!) that looks like a teeny capybara. Bigger than a rabbit, but not by much.]
On New Year's Eve, I liked the spinning butterflies that threw sparks everywhere. I had library and music and I really liked them. I also like computers.

Abraham: I saw them burning sugar cane fields. I also started pre-school this week, was sick two days and got a new reading buddy named Luis. I also had my birthday which was good. I had a Mr. T pinata filled with good candy in it. I had PE and played with some balls. The first day of school, Abe came home and said it was good. The second day he came home and said it wasn't good.... “It was too LONG!” School here starts at 7:30 am and for Abe ends at 12. For everyone else it ends at 2:45. So for Abe, that long from the beginning was a long day for newly 5 year old.

Jack: I started school and am in 6th grade. It is rather sad. [I used to be in 7th grade in the US and is taking a semester of 6th grade so he can learn Spanish. Otherwise he'd have to go to Tegucigalpa for school that would cost a LOT of US$.]
There are 12 people in my class, including me. Their names are: Luis, Doc*, Isaac, Nancy, Freddy, Mauricio, Christian, Denzel, Marian, Victoria*, Roberta, and Me*. My teacher, Mr. Andrew*, is from Wisconsin. In Music class, we (my class) are learning to play “I'm Yours.” I play Futbol at recess, and I usually play goalie. I don't have much homework. My closest friends are Christian, Doc, Isaac, Luis, and Mauricio. Me gusta mi Escuelita.
On our way to Honduras, I lost one of my church shoes. I have to wear my Adidas Sambas to church.
*A star indicates that they are a gringo.

Stuart: We are becoming Honduran Residents. Then we can stay here past the 90 day tourist visa. That will be kind of fun. We'll have to get IDs. I have never been a 'resident' of another country so that will be kind of cool. I want to be able to keep my ID when we get back just in case. I will be initiating a long-term ecological monitoring project with about 50 species of woody plants (trees and shrubs). We will be recording their phenology (timing of bud break, flowering, etc) for the next 20 years. That means that I will have to hike around campus (about 16,000 acres) looking for the tree/shrub species to label and track over the next while. I am excited, though I didn't bring any boots....though I was impressed several times to do so...and didn't find the room to pack them.

We have been buying food at the Zamorano store here. They produce a lot of food, as an Ag school and then sell a lot of it. A large part of the student's education is summed up in “Aprender haciendo” which is on a lot of the Zamorano products. It means “Learning by doing” or “learn by doing”. So the students have classes in the AM and work on the Univeristy “industries” during the afternoon or at other times. So much of the produce, dairy and meat and other things they produce are made with student labor. It is pretty amazing all the material they produce.
One product of interest is the giant zanahorias (carrots) that we buy in the store. They are the largest carrots I have ever seen, and they are very good.
Each day, though we don't take pictures of it all, we see some cool new insect, bird or plant. Ranae just discovered Lemon grass and used it in a FABULOUS tom ka gai Thai soup last night. It was a hit.

Henry: This week we started school. I have a nice teacher. I already have a lot of friends. The first hour on the first day was kind of scary, but then I started getting friends, and it was good. We have to wear uniforms. The uniforms are blue jeans and a white polo shirt with the school name on it. On PE days we wear blue sweat pants and a t-shirt with the school name on it. We have an art teacher, a music teacher, a Spanish teacher, and a PE teacher. We play soccer at recess, and I don’t have as much math homework as at my old school.

The building is made of stone and we eat outside every day at picnic tables. There are a lot of palm trees, and I’ve heard a lot of different kinds of birds. The children’s family maids bring them lunch instead of bringing their own lunches to school. We do not have a maid yet.

We have seen a lot of smoke because down the highway (our road) there are big sugar cane fields that they burn. The flames are probably 40 feet tall, so we can probably see the flames from our house. They burn the sugar cane fields to get all the leaves off the sugar cane so they can harvest it easily. One day we were driving down the road and we saw gigantic clouds of black smoke coming from somewhere up ahead. We started driving towards it, and once we got there we saw a big field that was on fire, and the flames were really tall. We were just across the road from it. There were guys standing right next to the flames with blow torches and gas cans to catch the cane on fire. Soon the fire went away because all the dry leaves were burned up. Yesterday we saw big trucks hauling away all the sugar cane, and the fields were totally empty. The truck was filled till it was about to overflow with sugar cane sticks.

We have been going to our American friends’ house on campus. We play on their trampoline and in their tree house. Sometimes in their back yard we see these little animals called watusas. They look like an oversized rabbit with short brown fur and short ears, kind of like a miniature capybara. You should look these animals up.

There are many people here named Fanny.
Today we had a power outage. It only lasted for about 20 minutes, though.
Me gusta Honduras!

Calla: ghjicviv9l88’ Hi6
[Henry said "This place is paradise," as we sat in the cool of the evening near the mango trees, palms and blushing sunset; Calla then said, "Yes, It's parrot eyes."]


Ranae: That almost-at-the-equator sun beats down fiercely, and I have taken to wearing my hat every time I go out. Still, the breezes are pleasant and the mornings are cool, the tropical vistas are lush, and our little mountain valley is as beautiful a valley as I have ever seen. My heart is settling in.

Friday was my day to break through to a feeling of being fully happy here. There has been good food, good friends, simple hours, and a wonderful school where the children have been warmly welcomed. Stuart has work that will feel more like a hobby; I have appreciated the opportunity to spend many hours with Emmy Pack, who has filled me in on details of Honduran life and invited us to several fun activities. However, my experience has felt a bit restrictive. I cannot drive our vehicle (hopefully I’ll eventually get on the list of insured drivers for the university), cannot speak the language, cannot walk anywhere, and—till Friday—hadn’t figured out a good plan for consistent exercise for me, which is a key to contentment and sanity. But Stuart is attentive, and Friday morning we started a new routine. He’ll take the children to school (they start at 7:30) and Calla will tag along. I’ll slip over to our
landlord’s pool and swim laps for half an hour. Friday and Saturday, it worked like a charm. Ah! My perspective was refreshed, my body invigorated, my spirits lifted, my mind cleared. For me, the final piece was put in place, and I can be very happy here.

I want to figure out about using fresh coconut milk. I might need to buy a machete to open them, but the roadside fruit stand has tables full of the yellow fruits. Wouldn’t that be delicious with chicken and rice? Why buy canned?

back online

I have just been approved for internet access at the University. This means that I can post, check my email and communicate with other people at the Univ. which has been difficult.
For a few times, I sat in front of someone's house and used their wireless from my vehicle. I felt a little strange doing that.

But we have been blessed to have met the Pack family that is shortly moving to Ecuador. They have let us use their internet, which has allowed us to post previously. They have 5 daughters in the same range as our 5 children. Kind of cool! Plus they know all about the area and have been showing us around and teaching us about life in Honduras.

With their 7 in Church and our 7 in Church, we two families make up about 20-25% of the membership of the total branch (Rama Zamorano if you want to check it out on the "Meetinghouse Locator at lds.org) and the vast majority of the Primary.

We have seen sugar cane fields on fire and now that we have fast internet, I think we will be posting more pictures of what we are seeing. Maybe we'll post a video on YouTube too or some photos on Flickr or our PicasaWeb Albums. In the meantime, I have posted a few pictures from December in the posts below. Check them out.

Others will post later, now that we can get this material online! Woohoo!
Stuart

Feliz Año Nuevo!

Jan 1, 2012

Last night a friend stopped by to take nearly all of us to a traditional Honduran New Year’s Eve party. Stuart stayed home with Calla, who was already asleep by that time.
The tradition is to make an effigy (sort of like a scarecrow) to represent the old year and fill it with fireworks (mostly fire crackers) and other flammable material. For good measure, they also douse the figure with gasoline. They light it just around midnight and get out of the way! Many other fireworks are lit and it is a very festive, loud time. We read something about fireworks being illegal for normal people to have because so many children were burned at this time of year.

The fireworks were impressive!! Here are a few thoughts from those who saw it all first-hand.

Ranae: An unrestrained free-for-all with children holding flames and sparks zizzing through the crowd. It took me a while to decompress when we got back home, to ease my nerves.

Aspen: Awesome! I liked it a lot. I liked the color of the volcanoes and how they shot up.

Jack: There were these guys who were trying to shoot each other with Roman candles. They didn’t have very good aim. There was a little kid who was running around with lit fireworks. He was probably younger than Aspen (7 years old). It was awesome. We also ate soggy French toast [which is called Torrejas and is a traditional Honduran Christmas/Ano Nuevo food—the sogginess is syrup and it is pretty sweet, though not too bad and very wet.]

Abraham: A guy catched on fire that was a scarecrow. I held a sparkler.

Henry: They made a scarecrow and poured gasoline on it and stuffed it with fireworks and lit it on fire at 12 o’clock.

Stuart went to Teguc. to buy beds that will be delivered in about 10 days. Jack is going to make a video of the trip there…we hope to post it later, so you can get the flavor of driving in a very large, Central American city. We will be hooked up to internet this week sometime. In the meantime, our neighbors are generously sharing their connection.

One sad event was what happened to Calla (2 yrs) a few days ago. She was sitting, innocently as a two-year old can be, holding her doll and watching us run around during our nightly pre-dinner games. The wall was made of rocks, stacked up with a layer of cement on the top, where she was sitting. At that spot it was about 1.5 feet tall. Her dangling legs dislodged a rock that covered an ant house. Unbeknownst to everyone, including Calla, the ants swarmed out and up the wall where she was sitting. She cried out and we ran over and saw the HUGE number of ants on the way. Ranae was there first and took her off the wall and we tore off her diaper and skirt and brushed of the many ants. She had a lot of welts on the backs of her legs. As Ranae held and comforted her, she still had ants on her and one bit Ranae in the ear.

We administered first aid and she was fine a few hours later and is making a great recovery. Needless to say, we are certainly experiencing some of the huge range of ant diversity in the tropics.

Honduras is not known for its cheese.

December 31, 2011

We don’t drive much because we are not insured on our university-owned vehicle till January 5. So we brave the highway only as far as church, the mercado, and Zamorano’s campus. Today we took another auto tour of campus, made exciting because the children don’t have to stay buckled and we see lots of interesting animals and plants. The new creature of the day was a large rodent, what we think might be a cavi. We’ll have to look it up.

We buy a lot of our produce from the supermercado on campus. Zamorano is an agricultural school that follows the “learn by doing” model. The students are involved in all the farming, which includes hogs, chickens, goats, dairy cows, bananas, cacao, berries, and tropical fruits we don’t yet recognize. They grow, process, package, and sell the food. We bought a jar of their mango jam and another jam from a tropical fruit we don’t yet recognize. Their produce is organically grown and very clean.

However, their cheddar definitely isn’t made with the same recipe as Tillamook’s. It is super sharp, with overtones of blue-ness. As Stuart remarked, “Honduras is not known for its cheese.” It does taste great mixed in and melted with the refried red beans that come in a foil pouch. We’re thinking we’ll have to bring some of those pouches home. Buen provecho!

Life (ours and the critters') this week

What a Christmas vacation! Our slow, easy days have been filled with playing Go Fish!, tennis, and Frisbee; swimming; jaunting to the mercadito for water, tortillas, and produce; washing dishes; making up games to play in the house (like tag with your arms folded or various relay races that involve running from one end of the house to the other while making motorcycle noises); visiting with the neighbors, Fernando, Sarita, and Evelyn; and avoiding the intermittent waves of smoke from the other neighbor’s daily plastic fires. The weather is pleasant all the time, and we sleep with the windows open. Last night as we looked at the moon and Jupiter’s moons through Fernando’s telescope, I was glad I had put on long sleeves.

Yesterday I was happy to do laundry all day long in our new washer. I hung it on the line and we ran past it in our game of Kitty Wants a Corner.

There are little glitches like there always are when you move to a new home. Some are fixable, like the plumbing problem in the master bathroom; some we’ll live with, like the fact that our new fridge is too tall for the kitchen cabinets. We’ll keep the fridge in our dining/computer/craft table/library/living room (where, incidentally, we discovered and hopefully exterminated a colony of gigantic ants setting up house in our wall). That room gets a lot of use.

Each day we seem to meet new representatives of Honduran fauna, some outdoors and some indoors. Apparently the pesticide bomb that the landlord used before we came has about a one-week efficacy, and we’ve been in the house for just over a week now. In the last couple days, creatures have appeared, including those giant ants, teeny tiny crumb-sized ants, a huntsman spider (about the size of Aspen’s palm, a flat, skittery spider that stays on walls and ceilings), a cockroach or two (the big ones have only been outside so far), and an unidentified but now captured 10-legged friend with noticeably large mandibles. If we had come to Honduras before Stuart’s PhD studies in entomology, I don’t know if I could have handled life with so many critters. But they all make good food for the geckos. The boys found one in the room the other night, and it chirped them to sleep. We found a teeny baby gecko in our doorway this morning. It was about an inch and a half long.


Outside, we have seen spiders the size of my palm. They are common garden spiders and make their yellow webs in our mango trees. Our neighbors had a tarantula on their bodega wall. A flock of parrots swooped and chattered over the houses last evening. During a drive on campus, we saw a half dozen large lizards (iguanas or monitors?), turtles, herons, and a turquoise-browed motmot. (That’s one you should look up.) Large cockroaches, large leaf-footed bugs, millipedes, centipedes—what you would expect. Flocks of vultures soar overhead constantly, and we now know from firsthand experience how true the statement is that where the vultures are gathered, there will the carcass be. All these observations we have made with no real effort or searching; so many more wonders await!

Merry Christmas!

This is our first, weekly on Sunday post.

We arrived on Tuesday 12/20/2011. Our house wasn’t furnished enough (no beds, no stove-oven, no fridge) when we arrived to actually stay there. We stayed at a small hotel on campus for 2 nights. It was very nice and had cable TV with movies in English with Spanish subtitles (Tangled, Toy Story)!

We moved into our “new” house on Thursday. We had a LOT of help from Arie, Namiq, and Oliver to get all the stuff into the house. Stuart made two trips into Tegucigalpa to buy stuff and spent a lot of money getting bare essentials…(still no fridge, washer & dryer until Wed) Ranae kept the troops happy on those days and then moved our massive stuff into the house.

We have had a few observations on Honduras since we arrived:

Henry: Very nice people, a lot of stray animals, like dogs, horses, cows (apparently), and donkeys. Mucho coconuts—we even have a tree in our front yard. I ate a coconut. We saw a giant moving billboard. A famous guitar player was “playing” the guitar on a huge billboard promoting cell phones. We went swimming on Christmas Eve eve at the pool behind the house. There are lots of fires.

Jack: VERY loud trucks pass by our house regularly. People seem more prone to kiss you than in California. We saw a sign for a cockfight, lots of guys riding in the back of pickups. We have a lot fewer raw materials like paper, etc. It is not very Honduran, but very American. “I think I am in culture shock about how much not culture shock I am in. I thought there would be a lot more stuff in Spanish.” There are a lot of people riding motorcycles.

Aspen: I like it. What surprised Aspen was that Honduras was so nice. It looks really nice…I didn’t think it would look that nice.

Ranae: There are a lot of pine trees in the area where we are. I was surprised that I could have conversations (simple) in Spanish. I love the white-stone buildings from the local quarry with the dark mahogany wood it has a classic Spanish look.

Abe: I don’t know.

Stuart: We’re in a dry tropical forest, so we are surrounded by pine forest mixed with broad-leaved trees. Lots of bananas growing around, plus airplant growing on the myriad power lines. We took our annual family Christmas day hike in the back of our house into the mango/avocado orchard. April will be mango time and I am very excited for that. My Spanish is coming back nicely. Traffic in Teguc is unbelievable. I'll try to post something about that later. Our neighbors, Fernando and Evelyn are great and are letting us use their internet and fridge until we get ours next week.

Miami Airport

We are here in the airport, about to fly to HONDURAS!! Its about 11:00, but it feels like 8:00 because of time zone differences. This is a link on Youtube for the airport.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AU_LEpmyY_A&feature=related

Notice the plane is an American Airlines plane. We are flying American Airlines, so this is somewhat how it should be. We might post a video of our landing, if we remember to take one. Adios, mi amigos

Jack Wooley

Address...don't know if mail will make it here...

We'll live in a compound at
Casa Cuatro
km 27 carretera a Danli
Aldea del Pedregal de Cacalutepe
San Antonio de Oriente, Honduras.

I think this is right. It is off our rental agreement, that also includes mahogany furniture in the kitchen....Cool.

Final preparations

We're preparing to go. We're mostly packed and Stuart is finishing up work at school...one final to give tomorrow.

We hope we have tied up loose ends...here.
We have a house and someone will meet us at the airport. We won't have a fridge until a week after we arrive.

We'll post more as we find out what happens!

We are definitely going to Honduras on Dec 19. We'll be there until August. Come Visit!

We are going to Honduras, probably, sometime in December 2011 or January 2012.

Here is a little bit of what we did and saw in Death Valley during Spring Break this year.
We really enjoyed our time there, esp. at the huge Sand Dunes just in from the first major civilization (Ranger Station and Gas) on the west side.

The day before we went to the Golden Gate Bridge, Jack splashed hot honey onto his face and neck. The hot honey produced nearly instantaneous second degree burns. Here they are a day or two later.

This is a shot looking up at the north tower of the Golden Gate Bridge...looking up into the fog in mid July

 
 
 
Calla is also not the worst for wear. We were going to call her Jill, but weren't settled on that. In fact, as I was writing about "Jill's" birth in my journal, I had to stop writing it, since it didn't really "feel good" to write it. I was glad when Ranae called me and we discussed a different name and Calla is the better name for this girl.



These are shots of the aftermath of delivery. Ranae looks GREAT after the labor, if you can believe she just had a baby in the shot of her smiling. What a woman!

 
 
 

We went camping at Sequoia-Kings Canyon National Park in November. The trees were fantastic. Redwoods are the tallest, Sequoias are the biggest, and bristlecone pines are the oldest. All within about 3 hour drive of our house. How lucky is that?!



We are standing at the base of the largest single living organism, the General Sherman tree at 271 feet tall 55,000+ cubic yards of volume and 1200+ tons. Not the tallest, but the largest tree overall. A larger view of the tree gives you perspective. Note the 3.5' fence posts at the base of this tree.

 

While traveling recently, we came across some hillbillies. They were cute hillbillies though!

 
 


Calla developed in October and, like everyone, had her good and bad days. She esp. looks great in her Giraffe outfit, which keeps her toasty in the N. California fall.

This is Calla Mabel Marie in September 2009.

wisdom of the "ages"

I was sitting at dinner one night with the children.
Jack was talking about how he had heard that you should do many different sports when you were young, so you would be good at sports when you're old.

"I was under the impression that you [my parents] wouldn't let me wrestle until middle school.

But I am pretty sure middle school is too late to be young."

This was a paraphrase of Jack written by Stuart.

My day at the mill

I had a pretty good time at the mill. We hiked on a trail to the grave of James Marshall. It showed a statue of James Marshall pointing to where he found the gold. If you go to the gift shop bring lots of money. It has a real awesome arrowhead necklace. I got a necklace. I went to the mill, but it was only a replica (life sized!). The river is cold.

The Life of a Miner

The day in the life of a miner was usually very hot, cold, and boring. They usually didn’t find very much gold. A newspaper reporter from New York said that he thought that, within four years, 1,000 million dollars of gold would be found. Turns out that not many people found gold. The temperatures got up to over 100 F, and the water was frigid. The reason they knew that the water was frigid is because the miners stood in it all day long. The miners mined in the American River. They panned for gold, They held their pans in the water, took them out, and swished the pans around to get the gold because the gold would settle at the bottom.

The Impact

The impact was ENORMOUS. More than 90,000 people came to California after gold was found. It was one of the largest mass migrations EVER. People came from all over the world. There were people from Australia, Peru, France, and all of the U.S. states.