Hott, with two t's!

(For your viewing pleasures... Bigoté Ridículo. Yikes.)

Quierdo Familia y Amigos Mios,

Well, I really outdid myself last time, I don’t really know if there’s much to say this round. (Well, I just finished typing, and there was quite a bit to say, or maybe I just got carried away, my apologies).

I bought a bicycle, and I feel like a part of me has returned! I don’t know what it is about these two wheeled machines that you make little circles with your feet with, but they just feel like home (it’s all your fault Dad!). I went to Tegucigalpa and bought a good bike from a good bike shop I found on Google. I called the shop before I came to check and make sure they had what I was looking for, and when I stumbled through a few sentences in Spanish, the voice on the other end said in crisp, clear, perhaps better English than mine, “It’s okay you can speak in English.” The guy who owned the shop was fluent in Spanish and English, and as I sit here, still very very far from fluency in Spanish, I can’t describe the respect and awe I have for people who have mastered more than one language. Anyway, I returned to Santa Elena just in time to construct my bike from the box they packed it up in, and I rode a few miles to my friend Rain’s site for her birthday weekend celebration. (Don’t worry, I’ll write personal emails to my bike friends, i.e. Allen, Mark, Matt, Dad with all the specs about the bike, I’m sure it’d bore the tar out of most everyone else)

Rain’s party was a blast! There were 10 other volunteers who came from all around Honduras to celebrate, it was really good to see them all, I miss my training crew so much already. And Rain somehow managed to receive 3 different birthday cakes during the course of the weekend. We visited the lake, via paddle boat, jumped from a bridge into the canal, went swimming, played games with a few kids from Rain’s community, and had a general good time hanging out.

Pues, estoy aprendiendo español todavia. (Well, I’m still learning Spanish). Again, I have to reiterate, this has been the largest challenge I’ve ever tackled …ever. I’m afraid that the friends I’ve been making here in Santa Elena are going to grow tired of conversations with me. Because, it’s difficult, from their shoes, to talk with me. It takes concentration and effort to really get anywhere in a conversation with me. I’ve noticed a few have started to grow weary of talking with the gringo, but I’m extremely grateful for the overwhelming majority of people who are still pulling with me. The teachers at the school especially. No big surprise here; naturally, elementary school teachers have what seems like inexhaustible patience. I really feel like they support me. Even though I have contributed nothing more than general manual labor at the school (building bookshelves, fixing ceiling tiles), they really make me feel like someone special. I sit quietly during their meetings, like a mute, just listening, smiling, and laughing at the jokes I do (and don’t!) understand. The teachers incorporate me into jokes sometimes, and talk to me on the side about various things, etc. Stuff like this really makes me feel good. I’ve found a cool crew at the school, I just gotta stick with the Spanish; hopefully I’ll be able to teach environmental education starting with the new school year in February.

It’s also strange, after spending a full weekend of English with all my Peace Corps friends, I return to my site with a Spanish slump. It really throws off the rhythm! Here I return, and have lots of opportunities to talk about where I’ve been, what I’ve been up too, etc., but it’s just so much harder to articulate after a weekend full of English. One thing I’ve certainly learned here in Honduras is this: I’m good at English! Talking with my friends, I’m really good at it! I really took it for granite until now.

After all this talk about my inefficiency in the Spanish language some of you may be wondering, “Didn’t he have a Honduran girlfriend? How’d he communicate with her?” Well, that’s just more logs in the fire that is my embarrassment. We couldn’t really communicate; well not as much as a healthy couple should at least. Again, I don’t know what I was thinking. Well, thanks to a kind email from a close friend who was “reading between the lines,” it was pointed out that I was lonely. I’m afraid I must agree. (Yikes! I told myself this would be an online journal, and I’d save stuff like this for my real journal. Here’s to wearing your heart on your sleeve I guess, but don’t be surprised if there isn’t much more of this kind of stuff in the future. I’ll save it for personal letters and emails.). It’s been sort of therapeutic to share this lesson with my loyal readers back en los Estados Unidos, thanks for listening/reading.

Who needs a girlfriend when you got a bike, right? (I’m only kidding …kind of). The riding has been beautiful here. It’s definitely tough though. Honduras is HOT (¡Que calor hombre!). As you all are enjoying the changing colors and the cooling breezes of autumn, I’m still roasting. You guys in Montana got the first snow yet? I remember it was this time last year we got a truck load of it in Bozeman. And I hear it’s hitting the twenties in Minnesota?!? We couldn’t be on the same planet. It apparently gets a little cooler here in November and December, but I haven’t seen any sign of change yet. Nevertheless, hot or not my afternoon rides have brought back a part of me I almost forgot about, and man it feels good!

What’s coming up for David?
- I move into my own place on November 9^th. I’ll be making my own meals, doing my own yard work, cleaning my own house, etc. I’m looking forward to it; I hear landing your own pad for the first time is a good feeling. It’s a really cool little house too.
- There’s an opportunity to see Mozart’s Requiem in an old church in Tegucigalpa, performed by the Honduras Philharmonic on October 25^th. I’ll definitely be making an effort to check that out (I miss our ASO Fridays Dad …terribly).
- It’s coffee picking time! I’ll be making efforts to get out in the field and pick some coffee with a few local farmers.
- We’re remodeling the library in the school. New shelves, reorganizing, putting up a few white boards, etc.
- Another close Volunteer, Jeremy, wants to join our two sites via new trail. We’ve been mapping/planning out a new trail through the park. We’d like to have a camping spot in the middle somewhere. It’s going to be tough; we gave it a whirl on Monday, and failed miserably, but learned a lot. We hacked for hours only to find ourselves in a coffee farm less than a mile from where we started. How’s the saying go? “Back to drawing board” I believe. I’m going to his site this weekend to get a look at it from his side of the park. We’re definitely going to have to get the communities interested in this project if it’s going to go anywhere, if we can’t do that the attempt will be futile.
-Still taking it easy, sipping coffee, and getting to know my community. No big projects, starting small and starting slow, just as I was told.

I need a funny story or something, this has been a pretty boring entry, lets see here… ah I know! Did you guys know that I’m hot in Honduras? Yeah, that’s right, receding hairline, vertically challenged, cello geek, David, is a heart-throb here in Honduras! I get “piropos” (pick-up lines) all the time. Every time I go to Santa Cruz to get mail and grocery shop with Rain, there’s a group of girls in the park who say “I love you!” (in broken English) to which Rain always says “I love you too!” much to their dismay. Other girls here in Santa Elena audibly blow me kisses (mmmmmwa!) as I pass by, and just the other day a girl said “Davíd, regalarme sus ojos,” which translates to “David, gift me your eyes.” I kindly explained that I was kind of attached to them. It feels good to be hot, definitely a new experience for me!

Okay, I’ll stop typing/babbling now. Thanks again for reading.

Hasta luego,
David