I HAVE A PUPPY AND HE IS NAMED IGOR.

me and esau in my hammock....no, i did not pick the colors. damn it.

Ana looking good (but not nearly as good as me) in my Adventure Hat at our hotel in el salvador.

salvadorean sunrise....feliz ano nuevo, chochachos.

Esau and Nuria, two of my favorite little kids....both play on my baseball team and their folks are my landlords. here they are in my Hammock of Love.

a bow-tie? its not even 7:00 yet! Oh, Igor, don't be so ostentatious.

oh yes you ARE the best puppy ever. oh yes you are.

Oh, Igor. You sassy man.

17 January 2009
Happy New Year, chochachos! Once again I have failed to upload a blog for a bit. But I’ve been just busy as the dickens eating sandwiches in the ocean and caring for my new baby (yes it’s true, I’m a new mommy). Now, I’m sure you’re all very confused. “Doesn’t Peace Corps kick you out if you get knocked up??” Yes. Yes they do. But I have “cersumvented” (anyone? Is it still cool to make Arrested Development references?) that problem by adopting, not a baby but a very fuzzy little sassy-pants puppy, whom I’ve named Igor. He’s about 10 weeks old and fat as hell (maybe because the skeletal street dogs make me sad, I can’t seem to stop feeding him). He has cinnamon colored legs and his body is a nice dark gray. He’s got little perky ears that flop down, and, like I said, is extremely fluffy. His tail is kind of short, too. His birth mother (who has visitation rights whenever she wants) is a huge, ugly-ass yellow mutt named Princesa, who managed to birth nine puppies in November (the 5th, specifically). I’ve had my eye on him (being the fluffiest of them all) since then, and the other day my neighbor Gila called me up and told me to come get my dog. Unlike the other pups, Igor is really chill and hardly ever barks. He’s also a genius, according to my dad, because he’s naturally potty-trained…he just goes outside to pee or poop and so far has yet to soil the house, even though he sleeps indoors. His favorite activities involve sleeping, eating, and chasing around jicara, which are these round goard things that fall from trees, about the size of baseballs. The first night I got him, he just cried and screamed all night long. The next night, he slept until about 3:30am, then proceeded to scream until 7:000am. Since then, however, he tucks in at the same time I do (about lame o’clock) and wakes up at about 5:30, quietly chewing all my clothes to pieces until I get up and let him out to pee. It’s crazy how much we’ve bonded in the past week…I’ve totally fallen in love. It’s like having a really, really easy baby. He follows me everywhere (he even waits patiently by the door while I read Harry Potter in Spanish while in my latrine) and comes when he’s called. He goes everywhere with me. Now, when the neighborhood kids see me coming, instead of screaming HEELIE they belt out IGGOOOORRR!!!! It’s great because his littler-mate, Kaiser, lives across the road with my awesome neighbors Neli and Tina (and Alison, Douglas, Noel, Alex, and Ruben) so they happily take care of my baby when I go to baseball or on trips.

So obviously I’m finally in my own place (adopting a dog with a host family would probably be hella rude). Igor and I love the Tarantula Oven, in all of its steamy glory. The house is small, divided in half by a wall with a little doorway. The first room is where I spent most of my time if I’m in the house, as it serves as playroom for the neighborhood kids that are always around, a kitchen (I’ve got a mini-fridge on the floor, and a little one-burner electric stove that sits on a table, plus a bookcase which holds my dishes, rice, and beans), and a living room (I’ve got a huge woven hammock hanging from the rafters). It’s got two windows, which helps with the heat. In the other room, I’ve got my bed (complete with diarrhea-green Vietnam-era mosquito net the Peace Corps graciously gave me), a wobbly table a neighbor lent me, and another bookcase, this time filled with my clothes, books, and many bottles of sunscreen and bug spray. To be honest, the name isn’t really all that accurate—despite the fact it will be an oven come the hot-as-balls months (March-June), due to the low, tin roofing and lack of air flow, it’s not too bad at the moment. And I have to see ANY tarantulas, at all, in Honduras. But they exist! And I’m ready! (My neighbor Tina, like most Hondurans I’ve met, is petrified of toads. So we’ve struck a deal in which she will remove any tarantulas from my home and I will de-toad her place.)
The best part about my house, though, is the yard. It’s nice and big, with lots of fruit trees (lemon, orange, cherry, plum, etc). Though I should clarify that Honduran cherries are terrible little balls of mealy semi-sweet white pulp and “plums” are hard little green things that taste like butts. Either way, it’s awesome. Out behind the house, up a tiny incline, is my pila, shower/barrel, and latrine. My landlords put a nice chain-link fence with a locking gate around the whole place, so I’m hells of secure. There is a handsome white horse who lives next door on one side, and a bunch of kids on the other. Today, we hauled wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow filled with dirt, cow manure, ashes, and leaves into the backyard…that’s right, I’m totally making a sweet compost pile. In a couple of months, when my compost is hella composty, I’m gonna plant vegetables and stuff. And then I’m gonna eat em. And totally not get bean-scurvy.

It’s nice being back after my week vacation in El Salvador…I’m working on a workshop I’ll give to all the preschool teachers in our area (33 in total), I’m giving computer classes to the employees at the NGO where I work, I’m doing baseball, my pregnant women’s club, and soon I’ll be started a weekly story-and-art hour at the library, as well as a program that teaches teachers how to teach English to their students. HELLS OF BUSY. But El Salvador was so freaking INCREDIBLE, if I get stressed I just put on some sweet dub reggae and bask in my memories.

I hooked up in Choluteca with four gringo friends, Ana, Gabe, Emilie, and Justin, and together we boarded a bus to the border. Crossing was ridiculously easy, all we did was saunter across and the inspector-lady glanced at our residency cards and waved us on. Then we caught a bus to large city called San Miguel, then another one straight down the coast, to a beach town called Cuco. The sun was hanging low in the sky when we got there, and we basically ran to the first hotel we saw, right on the water. In a record amount of time we had changed into swimsuits and I stumbled into the Pacific just as the sun was smearing red and orange all over the dang place. It was HEAVEN. The water down there is warm as bath water…you can stay in for house and never get even a little cold. After swimming we had dinner and some cold beers and hit the hay. Once in bed, I managed to lacerate my cornea with a grain of sand, and, in route to the bathroom mirror while screaming like a nancy, I stepped on a belt buckle and shanked the hell out of sole of my foot. I awoke the next day with my eye nearly swollen shut and my foot equally stabby in pain. An auspicious beginning. Throwing caution to the wind (aka I’m a dumbass) I went swimming all day anyway, while debated over the grilled shrimp and cold beers whether or not I should seek medical help for my eye. Later that day we wandered down the beach until we found some cheap cinderblock-and-hammock hostel built right onto the sand that rented rooms for like $7, on a sweet, unpopulated beach called Playa las Flores. The folks there were super nice, and one the surfer dudes who worked there took me out on his 8.5-foot longboard, and before I knew it, I was hangin’ ten, hella gnarly bro, etc. (This later proved to be my most successful surfing endeavor of the entire trip, which I attribute to the non-insane waves, the handsome surfer dude, and his monstrously large board.) That night we got a jalon into town in the back of a truck and ate papusas until our stomachs neared explosion of cheesy-beany goodness.

The next morning we decided to go for one last swim before heading up the coast to meet up with our friends, which was great until the riptide subtly pulled Ana and I out to sea. We started to swim back, but, still caught in the current, we got tired quickly and Ana started to panic. I got scared to and started to call for help. Emilie and Justin came out, and Emilie basically saved Ana, who couldn’t swim anymore, and helped her get in. I’m still not sure how exactly I made it in. Anyway, we won. Suck it, Ocean.

After an extremely long and sweaty day of traveling north-west on chicken buses, involving many detours, undesirable urinating locations (such as ditches, and for one of my companeros who shall remain names, on the floor of the actual bus), and more than one drunken mariachi, we arrived in La Libertad, a allegedly shady coastal city. We caught a jalon in a nice man’s pick-up to the beach community of El Zonte, where our friends were waiting. At about 9:00pm, after a delightful ride along the coast under the moon, with the warm wind in our hair, we stumbled into Olas Permanentes, aka the best hotel in the world. I’m not sure how our friends found it, but it was incredible. Right on a beautiful black-sand beach, we found ourselves in a friendly little surfer hotel with cheap rooms, comfy hammocks under palm fronds looking out at the water, tasty toasted sandwiches (you guys know how I feel about that) and sweet island dub reggae playing softly out of speakers woven into the many dangly drift-wood art creations that smattered the cabanas. It was so wonderful we immediately ditched any plans to continue north (as we’d originally wanted to do) and spent too many days to count waking up, surfing, boogie boarding, eating sandwiches, and making friends with the delightful folks who called this awesome place home. At night we went to beach parties, or dragged lawn chairs into the surf to sip a beer and contemplate the stars. We spent New Years Eve chilling at a couple different shin-digs on the sand, finally making it back to our hotel by about 3:00am. Then me and a couple buddies decided to wait up and welcome in the new year, and spent the next couple hours splashing around in the warm waves and waiting for the sun to rise. By the time we finally left, it felt like leaving home. I can’t wait to go back.

Only three more days until Obama swears in! I don’t have a TV in the T.O., but I’m sure they’ve been going on and on about it and I’m gonna try to find a neighbor who will let me watch history unfold.
Paz,
Hayley (and Igor, who is currently chewing on my big toe)

i almost ate 10 tamales

25 December 2008
Merry Christmas, chochachos! Dang I guess I got all “busy” and stuff and stopped blogging for a bit. Not that it really matters, since internet doesn’t exist in the Lubes. But anyway. Merry Christmas! Today, Christmas Day, wasn’t anything special—I just got up, washed my clothes for a couple hours, rode my bike around, and ate several tamales. Yesterday was the big tamale (pun intended…is that a pun?), and most folks were up at 5:00am, boiling masa (corn meal stuff), killing chickens and pigs, gathering banana leaves, and boiling beans for the big Tamale Feast. I helped Sandra slice up potatoes and stuff, and then watched as Paula, her mom (and my counterpart), laid a piece of banana leaf on the counter, dolloped corny-goo in the middle, then beans, then potato, then red stuff, then dead animal bits (mmm delicious). Then Paula would wrap it all up and her mom, who looks like she’s 200 years old and can’t hear, would tie them up with a little piece of fiber. Once they were all done, we loaded them into a huge pot with a bit of water and boiled ‘em for hours. Other families also make torejas, which is sort of like what French toast would be if it decided to go to college and really make something of itself—it’s so hot and gooey and drenched in honey. Celebrating Christmas away from my parents, not to mention my culture, was a little weird. Back in the America-land Christmas is basically the biggest thing that happens to a kid all year—no doubt due to the presents. Here, presents aren’t really exchanged like we do—parents buy their kids clothes, but that’s about it. No tree, no Santa, no stockings. Here, all the focus is on the food. Christmas doesn’t hold the same frenzied joy that it does back home—I ran into several kids who weren’t even aware it was Christmas. Except for the excess of firecrackers (HELL YES FIRECRACKERS), the violent increase in drunk men passed out in the dirt (I awoke Christmas Eve to the sound of a bolo (drunk) barfing at the top of his lungs in the street outside my house), and the communal feasting of tamales, it’s basically like any other day. I didn’t even stay up till midnight! (Officially an old campo woman.)

This past weekend, though, was such a blasty-blast it makes up for the fact I didn’t get any Christmas presents. On Friday, I was hanging out in Reitoca (nearby municipality) for a two-day Fondo Cristiano meeting, which including a Christmas dinner. The dinner was delicious, and I amused myself and others by trying to dance to traditional “cuerdo” music (string band, basically). It was sort of like a high school dance, only with booze. (Or maybe there always was booze at the high school dances and I just didn’t know.) The men were getting drunk as quickly as possible (even the band would stop every could of songs and, with decreasing discreetness, dump guaro into their cokes), and the women would send the local strumpet to fix herself a mixed drink, then return and very surreptitiously tip it into empty cups outstretched underneath the table. (Only skank-wad ladies drink here, or so says the culture.) I danced meringue with my boss and this very frightened-looking 20-year-old kid who works in another town. I stepped on his toes like eight times. So that was all Thursday night, and on Friday the main-boss dude was headed to Tegus, so I hopped in his car with him and caught a free lift to the city. My host mom and her sister and kids happened to be there too, so I crashed at their house and had a great time going to the mall and eating two Cinnabons, just like an American. Saturday night I met up with my friend Andy, a fellow volunteer, and we went to an awesome Honduran house party with some friends of his. It was so fun, a dog barks. People were hanging around, drinking beers and smoking, listening to crazy music and talking—no guaro, no reggaeton, no creepy men. It felt like I was back in the states—the crazy hippie Hondurans at this party weren’t anything like the humble folks waiting for me back in the campo. It reminded me of being in Chile. To be honest, I think the party has widened my mental representation of what it means to be a Honduran—until now, I’d pretty much only interacted with the country mice, which are arguably quite different from the city mice. In fact, I met one dude, who suddenly struck me as familiar. After chatting with him for a minute, I realized why it felt like I knew him—he was from a small pueblo in the south, too, and just happened to be visiting. This was also an interesting discovery; that I’ve been here enough that I can get a vibe about where people are from in the country. A bunch of people asked me for my phone number and promised camping excursions and adventures, so we’ll see if any real friendships come out of this. Either way, though, it was the most fun I’ve had after 9:30pm in a very long time.

I’d better go to bed…tomorrow I have my Pregnant Women’s Club (the theme is about the actual birthing process, what goes on and what the danger signs are). Then I’m going to move into my new house! I’ve had some of my stuff there for the past couple weeks, and now I’m finally gonna finish the job. On Saturday, I leave for El Salvador a week of surfing (I’m gonna learn!) and chilling on the beach with about 10 gringo friends. When I get back, I’ll be living in my new little house, aka the Tarantula Oven. Come visit! I have two hammocks, and the latrine has some plants around it. Real cozy like.

Love,
Hayley

12 December 2008
Hey, chochachos! Dang I’m sleepy. I’ve turned into a mega-old woman these days…9:30pm rolls around and I’m just huge exaggerated yawns and stretching. I’ve turned into my father. I can’t even sleep in anymore, either!! If I wake up and the clock says 8:00am, that means that either a) someone has kidnapped my hella-screamy host sister, or b) it must be Saturday. Which, coincidentally, is tomorrow. Currently, Carlita (3-year-old sister) and Said (9-year-old host cousin) are screaming and thundering up and down the slippery tile hallway, collapsing in a pile at my doorway and screaming some more. Oh, good. Now she’s shrieking in anger. Dang I wish I had a door…I would name him Doory (Dori?!) and he would be my friend. Not that I don’t adore the little kid, she’s really grown on me…but jesus god does she love to scream. Sometimes when she’s in a I’m-three-and-can’t-accurately-express-with-words-the-frustration-I-feel-right-now moods she does this lion-bark thing where she screams at you in short, throaty bursts of rage. It’s kind of scary. Today I received an awesome box of art supplies from my delightful Aunt Lisa, which also had a big bag of trail mix. I brought it into my host mom’s room to share with her and Carla, who were lying in bed giggling, and they thought it was AWESOME (which it is). Carlita then proceeded to pull a “Wendy Kercher,” which, for those of you who’ve never seen the dame eat trail mix, involves carefully picked out all the M&Ms and ignoring any non-chocolate product. I was chatting with Sandra and turned to see Carlita with a HUGE heap of candies in her lap, which she promptly shoved into her mouth with astonishing speed, breaking all kinds of oral-volume records (think tiny brown hamster?).

I made some pretty big mistakes today. Basically, someone (John, maybe?) sent a huge bag of baseball shoes for my baseball team, like 40 pairs. So I dragged this bag to my house from Tegus the other day, and had plans to divvy em up at practice today. On my way home from lunch, though, I passed three of my baseball kids, so I told them to come to my house and I’d give them their shoes now, thinking it would make things easier in the afternoon with less kids waiting for shoes. So they come, and get all outfitted. Now here, when someone is “regalando” (giving out) something, it must release some kind of scent into the air, because before I knew it, all kinds of neighbors and more baseball kids were shoving onto my porch with their hands outstretched. Why not, I figured, might as well get some more baseball kids out of the way…even though a lot of the kids who’d shown up were the “once and while” players, instead of the “every day” players…we had like 40 pairs so I figured it would be fine. Then, some neighborhood moms starting arriving, requesting pairs for their little boys or nephews or whatever. I explained they were donated with the intention of giving them to my baseball players, and that it would be dishonest to hand them out to other people. The moms got mad and called me a cheapskate, and left somewhat huffily. I know the rule here is that if you have something good, you share it, but obviously it’s not cool to take people’s donations from the states and misuse them (even though a kid with a new pair of shoes isn’t exactly misuse…). Anyway, now the problem was that I’d given out an awful lot of shoes to baseball players, many of whom don’t come all the time, and now I was out of shoes for several of my older players, who come every day (the issue being we had a ton of smaller shoes and only a few pairs of bigger shoes). But it was too late, I can’t very well wrench the cleats out of the kids’ hands, especially since a lot of them had already washed them and had walked home staring at the ground, admiring every single shiny, clackity step. So, crap. I called my boss and she said there are three pairs of larger-sized cleats in the office that she’ll save for me, so at least Cristian, Robin, and Junior won’t be hella pissed at me anymore. But the truth is, I really messed up—I should have brought the cleats to practice to give them to the kids who were there, instead of accidentally screwing over the kids who didn’t know I was handing out cleats and, at the same time, accidentally tripling our daily attendance. So today, 38 kids arrived at the campo, armed with new cleats, except for the few who couldn’t find a pair who fit (such as my older, bigger kids). Needless to say, tensions were running high—the older kids were pissed that our numbers had suddenly tripled and they had no cleats, and the younger, smaller kids were fighting. I had to send two kids home for cusses and for telling one of the girls to go to bed with him. I tried to have a baseball game, but the teams were so big the majority spent time waiting to bat or waiting for the ball to come their way. I also let the kids pitch for the first time, so we barely got any hits; it was mostly just a bunch of walks. Then, of course, all these grown men showed up to play soccer and were all pissed we had taken over the field. When the practice ended, I kind of wanted to cry (but I can’t because we all know about the rules regarding crying and baseball). So I went to Cristian’s house and hung out with his mom Toña, ate eggs and beans and then spent a cathartic evening in the hammock watching Titanic in Spanish with her three-year-old kid Elvis (PS, Hondurans are hells of obsessed with Titanic). Then Toña, the mother, asked me if the ocean really exists, and when I said yes, she asked, “But where?,” which ignited a conversation regarding the Earth’s spherical properties and how land-and-water works.

So, I went to Tegus this past week, Monday through Thursday. Monday I went to the doctor—after a couple days of splatter-foot (diarrhea) I thought maybe I should go poop in a cup for them, which I did, and it was discovered I have some kind of crazy intestinal bacteria infection thing. So now I have these little plastic vials (think teeny Squeeze-Its) filled with something, as well as antibiotic pills, which I take twice daily. My favorite part is drinking whatever it is that inside the vials and pretending I’m a giant enjoying a Squeeze-It. On Tuesday, I hopped on a bus and traveled to Santa Lucia, a cute little town right next to Valle de Angeles, where I used to live. We were having our Safety and Security meeting, for all the volunteers who live in the department of Francisco Morazan. It was super great, because the hotel was awesome, the food was delicious, the showers were HOT!!, and my friends were there. The next morning, I caught another bus to Santa Rita, to visit my old host family!! Just like old times, as I descended down the hill my two little sisters Melani and Madeline came screaming up the road, and dragged me home to a weeping-with-joy (literally) Suyapa and a beaming Javier, who can now toddle a few steps and is a poster child for Adorableness. We ate lunch, and then hiked up a nearby mountain to enjoy the view of the valley with all the neighborhood kids (including little Javier, who sat like a prince in his crappy stroller, which Suyapa and I took turns shoving up the mountain, stopping every two feet to remove a pinecone from the wheels). When we “summited,” we just relaxed on the soft pine-needley ground, chucked pinecones down the hill, and breathed in the sweet mountain air. It was so wonderful to be back in the cool, piney woods like that, especially with my first family…if Bob Ross had been there he would painted the hell out of us.

Oh heavens, it’s 10:15pm. It’s bedtime so hard right now.
Love,
Hayley
p.s. I love you guys.