igor's got an infection in his weiner

naum naum naum i love my rawhide that grampa andy sent me!

the swimmin' hole...featured are alison, jessica, and lisbeth.

me in my hammock with my favorite little guys, noel, alison and douglas...if you look carefully you can see douglas is in the process of peeing on my leg.

my little neighbor guys, elvin and elmer and....i forget the middle kid's name.

with their older sisters, brenda and sulema.

walking back to our houses after swimmin in the river...there goes jessica and igor.

enner, glenda, douglas, neil, and nely...all neighbors. enner and neil are two excellent pitchers on my baseball team, too.

Eliqui, Chui, and Alison coloring on my floor...thanks for the art supplies, folks!

i love this little old lady. she gives me mangos and CLIMBS TREES. and she's like a hundred years old.

me and my baby, out by the river.

more coloring, featuring the tongue of Andri...

Chui and his little brother Cristian, my next door neighbors.

Douglas, like me, prefers green. And no pants.

Igor (pre-weiner infection)

he's all like DANG MOMMA WHY CAN'T I COLOR TOO and im all like CAUSE YOU AINT GOT NO OPPOSABLE THUMBS DARLIN

5 March 2009
Hey, chochachos! More specifically, hey Dad, happy dang ‘ol birthday. I can’t believe you’re finally 30! Don’t go crazy and go buy a riding lawn-mower or something else related to a manly mid-life crisis—that kind of purchase requires a lot of maintenance (like matching trucker hat, water-bottle holster, etc). Igor is also celebrating today—he turns four months old. He snuck into my safe last night (how did he get that code?!) and bought a crazy riding lawn-mower on E-bay, which I suppose is why I thought to warn you, Dad. We don’t even have a lawn, unless you count dirt and scrubby weeds, which I don’t. Anyway, Happy Birthday! If I could make this blog into an extravagant pop-up card, I would.

This month is getting’ CRAZY GO NUTS. I totally have items to do all the time, which is a nice change from my lounging-about-all-day-long-on-the-government’s-money period, AKA summer break. But now that the kiddies are in school, I can take advantage and do all kinds of stuff. I gathered all the teachers that pertain to Alubarén together the other day (about 40 or 50 of them) and told them about the project I’m starting soon, called TEAM (Teaching English and Methodology). Basically, this is a project through the Ministry of Education in partnership with Peace Corps Honduras, and I will be teaching weekly English classes, using American methodology, to all the teachers interested. They all get manuals and CDs and all the materials necessary. The idea is that as I teach the classes, the teachers then turn around and replicate the class to their students. If the teachers come to all the classes and get good grades, they get certificates from the Ministry of Education at the end of the year that states they are now certified to teach English. EVERYONE seemed interested, but I have another meeting today to discuss the schedule and we should begin meeting toward the end of the month, once the manuals come in. I wasn’t too crazy about the concept of teaching English, but it’s required by the state that the kids learn it, and the teachers can’t teach it if they don’t know it, so it’s a good fit.

I’m also going to start a program called Sonrisas Brillantes, or Bright Smiles, which is a project through Colgate toothpaste and Peace Corps. Colgate donated a ton of soaps, toothbrushes, and toothpastes, and manuals for how to teach oral hygiene. I was just going to do one school in an aldea, but I decided I might as well cover as many kids as possible, so I’m going to attempt to do it with ALL the first-grade teachers in the area, which would be about 13 teachers, reaching about 230 kids. (I know that doesn’t sound like much, but it means crazy work for me because I have to go out to each school to help the teacher do the workshops and supervise the tooth brushing, and some of these villages are like three hours walking up and down the mountains.) The kids keep the toothbrushes and toothpaste at the school, and all brush together after the school snack, and then after six months, they get another toothbrush to take home. The idea is that you drill it into their little, moldable six-year-old minds that they must brush every day, and hope the habit sticks. That would be great if it did, cause basically no one around here has all their teeth. Thank goodness mangos are so soft.

I’m also beginning a project, another Peace Corps Honduras one, called Joven a Joven, or Youth to Youth. It involves a week-long training in Valle de Angeles, to which I must bring a teacher from my town, and then we come back and implement the workshop, which is like 2 hours a week for 15 weeks. It’s an awesome program, which trains the high schoolers in leadership, team work, how to identify, apply for, and be successful in jobs, sexual health, self-esteem, the whole deal—though I do believe the focus is on how to enter the work force after graduation. So I went to the District office the other day and ran the idea by them, and they loved it, so then I went and spoke to the principal, and SHE loved it, and told me she’d pick a good teacher for me. I was delighted when she chose Rubenia (fake name), because she’s very involved with the kids, does a lot of extra curricular stuff, and really seems to genuinely care for the kids welfare (though she DOES scream a lot). But she also teaches first grade in the mornings at the elementary school, so we went to go ask the principal of the school (aka my counterpart and old host granny) if she could excuse Rubenia for a week (since the principal doesn’t teach any classes, it’s her job to fill in and substitute when a teacher can’t make it). I imagined she’d be delighted at the opportunity for the high schoolers to participate in such a great workshop, and since she’d taught first grade before, wouldn’t mind subbing the class for five days. I was very mega wrong. If I hadn’t seen her temper tantrum with my own eyes, I never would have believed that a 60-something year old woman would be capable of acting quite so childish. She went off on this crazy, disjointed, screaming rant about how first graders are very delicate little kids, and that it’s the most important grade because it’s when they learn to read, and that it’s VERY irresponsible for Rubenia to ask for a week off, and that there is NO WAY she will sub for Rubenia because her first graders are a bunch of cry-babies, and it’s EASY to sub for older grades because you can just give them busy work and then sit back at your desk, but with first graders you have to make them repeat stuff like parrots the whole time or they don’t learn (yes, she actually said all that. And she’s the PRINCIPAL.) Then she repeated herself several times that you mustn’t ever yell at the kids or hit them, and then if they cry you must give them water. Then she repeated again how irresponsible it is to ask for a week off, and that doesn’t Rubenia even want her kids to learn to read? It was basically a disaster, and I was trying very hard not to let my face should how I felt inside—incredulous that the principal of the school was pitching an actual FIT because subbing for first grade would require more involvement than sitting back at her desk while the kids copy words over and over. Once the other teachers left, she started ranting to me about how it’s not FAIR that they always pick Rubenia for trainings, and she’s such a TERRIBLE teacher, always yelling and beating the kids, and that she’s SICK of Rubenia always getting picked for stuff, and it’s not fair. So basically it sounds like she’s got a personal vendetta against Rubenia, and I don’t even know what to do. But I want to do this training, and I have to bring a teacher…dang man. It’s like professionalism doesn’t exist here.

Baseball is going awesome. The kids and I made this cool thing with tires the other day—basically two huge tires stacked on the ground, and then one balanced on top vertically, wedged into place with rocks and sand and cow shit. Then I marked off 46 feet and BAM! we got a hella sweet target-practice doohickey for my pitchers (Kevin, Neil, Junior, Ever and Enner). Genius. We finally have a fixed date for our tournaments, too—April 18th for the regional one, and June 11th for the Nationals (which we only go to if we’re Regional Champions). Aww yeah VIVA LAS PANTERAS.

Last weekend was a blast…I took a bus down south to Choluteca and then to another town called Monjaras, which is on the coast of the Pacific, in Honduras’s little Golfo de Fonseca. I chilled there for the weekend with fellow volunteers Matt, Joel, Emilie, and Erik, and while it was no El Salvador, it was nice to be in the ocean, dirty as it was (I collected like 10 plastic bags and stuff while I was swimming). Because it was a gulf, the waves weren’t anything to speak of either, but it was nice and warm. We had fried fish and cold beers and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. I finally made it home late Sunday afternoon, despite several unpleasant travel glitches….Leaving Monjaras, I grabbed a jalon in the back of the pick-up with a nice old lady and her kid, though due to some kind of communication error they did NOT take me where I thought they were going to (Choluteca), which I realized after an hour and a half of bumping along a random dirt road instead of the freeway. My left kneecap got rather sunburned, but other than that, it was okay…eventually we ended up in another city, San Lorenzo, and I hopped out and grabbed a passing bus that was headed north toward Tegucigalpa. The bus was crammed, but the nice bus attendant gave me his over-turned bucket next to the driver. Except that meant I then had to sit there while the four dudes breathed on me and asked me the typical Honduran-male questions, which are “are you married? Do you want to be married while you’re here? Do you have a boyfriend? Would you like one? Do you have kids? Would you like some? Why are gringas so extremely beautiful? Don’t you think Honduran men are extremely sexy? Do you live alone? Can I have your number?” etc. It’s always uncomfortable and I just give terse little answers and try to look frumpy. I finally hopped off when they got to the entrance to my mountain, where I waited about 15 minutes until a bus turned up the road, headed toward Reitoca, the pueblo near mine. I gratefully sat down next to a farmer and his daughter (farmers tend not to bug me), which was awesome until the kid puked on my legs. But it was pretty watery puke, so I guess I can’t complain.

Thanks to those of you who have sent me children’s books in Spanish…I am still waiting on the library to open, but I’ve been reading them aloud to my various baby-friends in my hammock, and next week will be going to the preschool to read aloud to them, too. One of my little neighbor kids, Elqui, is particularly attached to me…he’s always waiting outside my gate for me, and the other night I gathered him into my hammock and read Buenas Noches, Luna (goodnight, moon; courtesy of Letha!), and he LOVED it. He was mainly concerned about why a baby rabbit was sleeping in a bed instead of outside, but once we got beyond that, he was pretty happy. He’s easy to please. The other day he informed me it was his birthday. I asked him how old he was turning (even though I already knew he was turning five), and he said “Uh…two.” WRONG. But I gave him a little plastic Hot Wheels car (thanks, Aunt Lisa!) and, on a whim, a cantaloupe. He was THRILLED and raced home screaming “I’M GONNA EAT THIS WATERMELON RIGHT NOW!!” I hope he wasn’t disappointed when he figured out it wasn’t a watermelon at all.

Mmm, delicious…it’s about 10:00am right now and Igor and I are enjoyed a snack of banana smoothies…I recently discovered the little guy goes nuts for banana smoothies, so he gets about one a week now. No wonder he’s such a fatty.

Time to go…pee!
Love,
Hayley

P.S. Shortly after I wrote this blog, I noticed that Igor seems to have the 4-month-old-puppy equivalent of an STD...in any case, he's got green goo oozing out of his little puppy pee-pee, so we're currently in Tegus and about to go see the vet. Poor little dude...is it too crude to call this "pene de pus"?

indecent exposure

12 February 2009
Hey, chochachos! Happy February 12th…it wasn’t until tonight that I realized Valentine’s Day is coming up, which is sort of weird…people here do celebrate it, but they call it the Day of Love and Friendship, which I think is much more hilarious. Differently from the states, and at the same time EXTREMELY Honduran, my neighbors have informed me that Catrachos (Hondurans) celebrate by sending what I translate as: “hella text-messages.” So apparently I needn’t worry myself with 32 boxes of candy hearts and/or tiny cards with Spongebob on them…I just gotta make sure I have saldo (cell-phone minutes, sold in tasty little cards or sketchy re-cargas). CHECK.

So dudes, I just ate the first ripe mango of my life in Honduras, and it was….AWESOME. At first I totally pulled a novie move and chomped right into the skin, but after two extremely unsatisfying bites, I realized my mistake and tore the rest of the skin off before I ate it (yes, this was an extremely sticky process, most of which ended up on my shirt). Don Nativo was selling them today in his little pulperia/produce stand, and I just stared at them. “What fruit is that?!” I asked…because all I’ve seen so far is little hard, green mangos that you peel and dip in chile and salt and eat; it’s a crunchy, sour, salty experience—Hondurans seem to have a thing for taking fruit and eating it before it ripe, with as many masking condiments as possible. Anyway, when he informed me they were ripe mangos, I had 7 heart attacks and promptly bought five, at the price of one lempira each, which is like a nickel. Then I also purchased a selection of all of the other produce he had at the moment, which included two green sweet peppers, an avocado, and three tomatoes. Hells of tasty dinner, that is.

So this week was relatively busy Peace Corps style…meaning that I had something to do every day that wasn’t just playing baseball with the kids. I’ve been “steadily” (AKA lazily) working on this workshop on classroom management for the pre-school teachers for like three months…I didn’t have any documents or manuals or anything so I kind of just pulled most of it out of my b..rain. Anyway, it finally happened this Wednesday (aka yesterday), and considering that it was my very first solo workshop-facilitating (and creating, right down to snack time and ice-breakers), it went pretty awesomely. Almost everyone showed up, no one was too late (although two women did skip out to go take advantage of the health clinic in town, which was cool), and lots of people participated (like thirty!). I honestly think they learned a lot…although I totally forgot to measure if they learned a lot, which is by administering a pre- and post-workshop quiz, which is allegedly Peace Corps protocol…crap. We talked about lots of things, like atmosphere in the classroom, appropriate punishment, creativity in the classroom, using the curriculum they’ve got, being constant and firm, and, above all, using positive reinforcement with a basic token economy instead of just getting all screamy and negative. I made them do a lot of group work and dramatizations, though sometimes I think I stretched their willingness to be silly and involved a bit much…essentially a game in which they had to mill about the room making animal noises. While that type of ice-breaker wouldn’t faze a group of young American teachers, it was too much for them to bear. No matter. It was a fun and novel experience to work with an NGO to get funding for a workshop I was to do independently, and the fact that I actually did it and it actually went well is rather exhilarating. And exhausting.

Not much else is new. Igor continues to grow, and recently made his virgin voyage to Tegucigalpa, clutched in my lap on the bumpy four-hour bus ride. He hated the city…I’ve never seen such a scared little guy. He also hated the cold. When we got to the vet, he got all vaccinated, as well as tested for and then treated for parasites, a process which involved the vet sticking a long plastic poo-collector thing up his little butt…poor, poor Igor. He was VERY upset at this procedure and proceeded to be very sullen and angry at me for the rest of the afternoon. I then toted him to the nearby Peace Corps office, so I could show him to my friends and bosses, and also get some work done. This almost went smoothly, until the main-head-boss-of-Honduras-Peace-Corps-lady Trudy walked in on Igor and Sandra (my project leader). So poor Igor was kicked to the curb…which I guess makes sense, considering he had just moments before christened Sandra’s office floor with a little puddle of liquefied nervousness. We crashed for the night at my rad-Honduran-hippie-friends-who-live-in-a-glorified-tree-house, which was also upsetting for poor little Igor (he has never been away from home before!) But after a couple hours he settled down and was his old self, hella stealing shoes and chasing cats up the wall. When it was time for bed, I brought out his special flannel shirt and we snuggled together in my sleeping bag on the floor. Tegucigalpa is mighty cold this time of year (mighty cold by Honduran standards, not Chicago standards…I’m talking switch from shorts-and-a-tee-shirt to jeans-and-socks-sweatshirt-recommended).

Las Panteras continue to practice every day, with no observable progress but plumb plucky spirits. We start every practice by huddling up, and putting our hands/paws together. Then I should, “QUIEN SOMOS?!” (Who are we?!) and the boys and girls scream, “LAS PANTERAS!” Then I shout, “QUE SOMOS?” (What are we?!) and they all scream, “LOS MEJORES!” (The best!) Then we take off and run a lap around the dirt field, and then meet in the middle and do our stretches in a big circle. Depending on the number of kids and day of the week, we either play a scrimmage (definitely their favorite) or do various batting/fielding/catching/throwing/base running drills. Then we huddle up at the end of the two hour practice, and I do something called “La Mera Pantera,” which is essentially MVP. I single out a kid who made a great play, or had a great attitude, or improved something, or perhaps, for the first time ever, chose not to throw a screaming “N’HOMBRE, N’HOMBRE” hurling-glove-to-the-dirt-and-stomping-around-temper-tantrum after being tagged out (that was today’s, given to a remarkably calm, 12-year-old kid named Ever). I actually had a meeting before practice with the parents today, which I’d never done before…it was fun getting everyone together; we ate cookies and drank pepsi and I told them to support our team, to come watch their kids play, and they we have a “big” championship coming up. One of the moms stood up halfway through and announced in a relatively scary voice that we had to do everything possible to win the regional championship; that we won it last year and it would be shameful to not do it again (she was looking at me intently while she stated this and it made me rather sweaty, like maybe she would not think twice about feeding me venomous tortillas if I made her kids lose). The two dads in the room came up to me afterward and enthusiastically informed me they would do ANYTHING to make sure we win. It’s hilarious and great to see this extremely competitive side to my kids’ folks, though, so I love it…even through it does make me a little nervous for myself if we happen to lose. Which we might…if only baseball was scored based on how many balls you could drop, with extra points if dropped in an extremely clutch moment in the game.

May you dream with the tiny angels! (A direct translation of my favorite Spanish good-night phrase)
Hayley

18 February 2009
What’s UP, chochachos! I have recently discovered that Reitoca, the next pueblo over, now has working INTERNET. That’s right. I no longer have to travel four hours on multiple buses and taxies to check e-mail/read Achewood/upload bloggy-blogs to you people. So that’s freaking sweet.

Valentine’s Day, last Saturday, was fun…I woke up and made papaya smoothies with my neighborhood posse of children (plus Nely and Tina), which we drank in my yard. Then I handed out little foam hearts (thanks, Sherry Carpenter!!) with little candies to all the kids, which was cute. They were all shrieking “CAN I PUT THIS ON MY FACE?!” and I’d be like, “SURE MAN PUT THAT DANG THING ANYWHERE YOU WANT” and the kids would be all “HOOORRAAAAY!!! ANYWHERE!!!” and proceed to stick them all over themselves and then shriek some more. Ah, the Day of Love and Friendship. I sent and received many text messages, so I’m pretty sure I did a good job. Then my friend David, the volunteer who lives in Reitoca, came over so we could eat baleadas and drink cokes and speak English in my little house while I locked the gate to keep the babies out. Of course, the fact he came over on Valentine’s Day didn’t do a thing to help quell the rumor that we’re actually secret novios…he was gonna crash for the night on my spare mattress, so he wouldn’t have to leave at like 4:00pm to walk home, but I think—no, I know—that would have just been too much for my gossipy townsfolk. They don’t know what a blog is, but I bet they would have created some kind of campo version just to spread the word that the gringa and her secret boyfriend are sharing a secret overnight Valentine’s Day situation. It’s actually really annoying, that this culture is so unwilling to accept platonic man-lady friendship…in the states, havin’ a guy friend spend the night wouldn’t be weird or eyebrow-raising. And the neighbors probably wouldn’t even know/care. But here, you can’t even walk around next to the dude without people elbowing each other and whispering about it as you walk by. Part of me just wants to say screw it, it won’t kill me if they gossip about me, but the other part actually lets the culture here get to me enough where I would feel really embarrassed knowing they were talking about me and David (or whomever) like that. Dang man.

The next day, Sunday, was equally delightful…I went hiking with a million babies and my neighbors through a dry creek bed, under a grove of mangos, until we got to a less-dry creek bed, which housed a very tiny and rather dirty swimming hole. I was hot and sweaty, though, and the water didn’t have green scrum floating on it yet, so I thrashed in fully-clothed and basked in the delightful sensation of goose bumps in the south of Honduras. After a bit I got out and sat on the mossy rocks with the moms and a random hella-old farmer lady who stopped by, chewing on green mangos and watching the kids shriek and splash around. (One kid even filled a plastic bag with water and dropped it from a little cliff into the rocks below, which filled my soul with intense pride. God I love throwin’ bags of water off of stuff…) At one point I noticed one of the ladies staring rather blatantly at the chest-region of my tank-top, which was plastered to my torso with river water. “Oh,” she sighed, “I bet Hayley’s nipples are just so white and pretty.” I didn’t really know how to respond to that, so I just said “Yes.” and hoped she would not press further, which, being the shameless Honduran campo woman that she was, she certainly did. “Show us them!” “Yeah, show us!” “We wanna see gringa nipples!” I was trapped. So I whipped ‘em out…I even had to turn around so that the third and final lady would not be left out of the once-in-a-lifetime-opportunity of gringa-nipple viewing. Actually, it wasn’t embarrassing…I totally understood where they were coming from. After all, haven’t we all wondered what the nipples of someone of a different color look like? (No? Stop lying to yourself.) A perfect example of a) how Honduran campo folks have no shame, about anything, but especially regarding the body; and b) how long I’ve been here, that whipping out the nips didn’t even make me blush. Fortunately, though, none of the kids saw…wouldn’t want that getting back to my baseball team.

I can’t wait for the rain to start up again, in April or May or whenever…it’s getting so dry, I barely have water. My pila hasn’t been full in a week, and the barrel I keep my bathing water in in getting dangerously low, too. I’ve even had to wash my dishes at the neighbors a couple of times, who had water when I didn’t….it’s ANNOYING as HELL, dang it. I have so many sweaty shirts to cleanse! And my compost heap is getting cracky! And my plants are wilty! And I’m SMELLY! I talked to the dude in charge of the water, but he told me that’s just how it is this time of year. So I guess I’ll just drink pond water and DIE (which is what I wanted to shout at him, but didn’t).

Unrelated, I also found a dead baby chicken in the pila the other day, which was gross and sad. How did it get in there? Part of me is worried some punk kid threw it in there, as a practical joke….because chickens can’t really get into my yard due to the chain link fence. And chicks can’t fly…I think it was a terrorist attack. Maybe the same terrorist that ripped down my “VIVA OBAMA” sign, back at the my old host family’s house…I’m considering getting a rifle and taping it to a machete AKA bayonet, campo style. Watch the heck out, terrorists. Im’a shank you.

Love,
Hayley

OODLES OF PICTURES.

Neighborhood boys getting insane on my floor.

My tiny baby compost heap! That's right, avocado skins. Bake in the sun and become dirt.

Three of my neighbors, Noel, Neil, and Enner, solemnly displaying in my backyard the new hit of the neighborhood, a giant plastic rainbow slinky that Whitney sent me.

One of my favorite little babies, Douglas, sitting atop a random barrel I have in my front yard for no real good reason.

Here he is again...you can't really see it, but he's holding onto aforementioned slinky.

My bathing quarters.

A view of my house AKA Tarantula Oven, from the road.

Alison and Noel playing in my yard, stretching the slinky to their hearts delight.

Tina and me!

My baby, gazing at my face with adoring eyes.

Igor leads a very indulgent life.

Igor contemplating the gravel in my yard.

Alison, getting her slink on in my backyard.

A CAVE! In La Tigra. I saw giant crickets inside.

An old mining shaft (also in La Tigra) that is now used as a water souce for the local community at the base of the mountain...I think.

Words do not describe my contentment.

Quite possibly the coolest picture anyone has ever taken of Justin, ever.

Same for Dora.

CHRISTMAS CARD.

Waterfall, duh.

4 February 2009
Hey, chochachos! It’s an extremely, extremely blustery night here in Alubarén…I feel as though if I were to go outside with the right duct-tape-to-cotton-sheet ratio, I could totally fly. However, it’s too windy to go outside, so here I sit with my computer-machine and a cup of tea (yes, it’s going to be a pee-in-the-bucket sort of night…which is essentially synonymous with “havin’ a real good time”). Igor is lying at my feet, breathing moist-ily onto the top of my foot and being adorable without exerting much effort. I recently purchased him a little green nylon collar, so he has dropped the formalities with his rag bow-tie and is now strutting about like the stud he is (literally...though not forever. Little does he know, he’s about to become the very first dog to ever be neutered in Alubarén. Possibly via machete). I am still falling in love with my puppy…he now follows me so well he doesn’t need a leash, so we parade about the pueblo together, which usually results in old ladies stopping and commenting, “Oh, how nice, you’re with your little pet…and he’s such a fatty!” (It’s true. He’s a total pig.) He’s also very “bien educado,” and draws gasps of admiration whenever he performs the only trick he’s mastered at the tender age of three months, which is to sit on command (in Spanish, obviously…he’s a bilingual pup but I think he’s more comfortable with his native tongue). Of course, he has his annoying habits…he plays this game he calls “haul all of Hayley’s shoes and flip-flops outside and hide them in the dirt,” and has also been known to tear holes in certain people’s mosquito netting, thus rendering it “pigeon netting”…but when he pops his little head and paws onto the side of my hammock and snuggles into my belly for a nap while I read, all I feel is love. SIGH. (In that sense, he’s come in quite handy when the annoying men around town ask me if I’m looking for a Honduran boyfriend…I just point to Igor and inform them that yes, thank you, I’ve found one.) (Yes, I’m aware that’s creepy and kind of gross. I just play the weird-gringa card and run away.)

Enough about Igor…so, the other day, I totally celebrated Christmas AMERICAN STYLE, WITH PRESENTS….even though it was February. Apparently, the mail system here (dude with a backpack) had a bit of kink, and let all the materialized love from the states build up, only to shoot it all to me in a torrent of goodies. The mail-lady called me and was like “Uhh dude come to the post office, and being a kid with you to carry your shit.” I RAN there, and joyfully carried home not one but MANY boxes, filled with awesome Christmas goodies, as well as like 10 letters. Humming Jingle Bells Batman Smells, I leapt into my hammock and, trying to savor every moment, carefully sliced open the cardboard boxes. It was awesome. I cried. Thanks, dudes.

When I left for Honduras, I lashed to my backpack several large and cumbersome camping things, including but not limited to my tent, hiking boots, my sleeping bag, camping pad, camp stove, mess kit, and way too many knives. “Hayley, you’re a durn fool,” said my mom. “That is some heavy-ass stuff. Also you will not use it.” To that I replied, “The HELL I won’t use it; Honduras is all jungle and I totally wanna go camping around in the jungle.” As it turns out, only part of Honduras is jungle, and for the first 7 months I had little time nor opportunity to embark on any nature adventures requiring over-night lodging. However, I recently decided the non-sweltering forests of Honduras had eluded me and my “Best Friends Clubhouse” (aka little two-person tent) long enough, and so me and some buddies finally loaded up the packs and tramped out into the woods. Specifically, I met up in Tegucigalpa with some Peace Corps friends, and we left early Saturday morning for La Tigra, Honduras’ oldest national park, which is surprisingly close and easy to get to. We loaded onto a city bus, and road it as far as Jutiapa, a community at the border of the protected area—it took about 45 minutes, I think. They unloaded us at the bottom of the mountain, and we stood there, trying to psych ourselves up for the incredibly steep multiple-hour-long hike up the paved road to the park entrance. However, the psyching was unnecessary because the ride-gods were good to us and a nice fellow with a pick-up truck pulled up before we had even shouldered our backpacks. We leapt in and enjoyed a beautiful 20 minute ride up the mountain, waving joyfully to the locals on the way and occasionally yelping with spontaneous happiness to not have had to waste half the day hauling our crap up the freeway. Once we unloaded and thanked our jalon, we took our stuff into the visitor’s center, where two cute kids immediately sold us delicious banana pancake things. We left our stuff there, and departed for what ended up being one of my favorite hikes, the cloud forest trail. It’s INCREDIBLE this place is to close to the city...you step in and you feel like you’re in Ferngully, minus Batty. The vegetation was nothing like crusty old Alubarén, where it hasn’t seen a drop of moisture since October….I’m talking hella-rainforest style. (Well, cloud forest…but since I’ve yet to see a real rain forest, this was close enough.) Huge gnarled trees, fluffy with thick mats of moss, awesome fern-trees, which previously I’d only read about, strange plants with leaves big enough to swaddle a manatee, drooping vines, all dripping with water…we saw waterfalls, and heard what I’m sure were the most exotic birds in the whole wide world (except for one particularly elusive species, which upon closer examination turned out not to be a bizarre mating call but actually a shoddy drainage pipe). Later that day, we returned to the visitor’s center and hauled our stuff about 40 minutes into the forest to the only campground in the whole park, which was rather disappointing in many respects (housed what must have been a Large Spider Family Reunion, contained only small, wet sticks for firewood, and was perhaps the only campground in the world that is, paradoxically, never flat). Despite its inconveniences, however, we pitched our two tents, had a fire both nights, and stoically avoided any spider bites, so I suppose I can’t complain. The next day we pretty much hiked the rest of the park (it’s not very large, in comparison to some you might find in the states), and my mind was totally blown. We alternated between lush, jungle-y cloud forest with towering waterfalls, cool pine groves, and stretches of golden broad-leaf deciduous woods with a thick carpeting of crunchy fall leaves on the forest floor that seemed like something out of a Midwestern calendar. We saw many caves (and spelunked most of them, thanks to my trusty headlamp) and several abandoned mines (relics from La Tigra’s relatively recent history as a mining site). The whole adventure was delightfully disorientating, and I can’t think of anything more excellent then lounging in the leaves around a little fire with several buddies, eating candy and burning stuff. The next camping outing is scheduled for April…hells of hooray, yo.

You’d think from the focus of my blogs, all I do as a Peace Corps volunteer is play with puppies and pointedly spend time in the woods that are not in my site, but that’s not the case. I totally do stuff. Summer break is finally ending here in Honduras, and the kids are grudgingly (though not nearly as grudgingly as the teachers) gearing up to get back into the scholastic groove. They start Monday, allegedly (I’ll believe it when I see it…). That’s good news for me, as the summer break season is always a bit slow for the youth-oriented volunteer. I’m going to be starting an oral-hygiene project, sponsored by Colgate, in the surrounding villages, and that should be fun…they donated a bunch of little toothbrushes and toothpastes and I’m going to train the school teachers to do little health classes on a weekly basis, while the kids practice brushing their teeth after the school snack. Should be cool…I’m also going to be teaching the teachers in my town how to teach English to their kids, using American methodology, which is nice and imperialistic but admittedly a huge improvement to the rote-memorization tactics used here. So, no one can say I don’t do stuff. That’s some stuff I’m gonna do!

As for stuff I’m currently doing, that is basically summed up in one word: BEISBOL! Las Panteras continues to be a lovable pain for me, which I’m sure any youth coach can attest to…it’s fun, and the kids are great, but good GOD they are little monsters at the same time. However, it’s a great exercise in patience for me, since half the things I want to scream at them I can’t, because I can’t do it in Spanish (I definitely yelled, “COME ON, GUYS!” today. In English). Seriously, though, they are great kids despite their constant desire to fight and shout cusses. I usually have about 20 kids at practice, which is perfect. The dynamics are very interesting…I have the older boys who played last year with John, who are great because they help the younger, newer kids, but terrible because they are constantly trying to exert their emerging manhood by seeing if they can break the rules (they can’t). The younger kids are much better behaved, but also much worse at the sport of baseball, which frustrates the older kids to no end. One of the rules of a PC baseball team is you must have as least two girls…I began the season with like seven, but now I’m down to the required two. One is little Nuria, a 10-year-old who can actually throw and catch pretty well and has a very plucky spirit. The other is Lisbeth, a nine-year-old kid with a heart of gold but who is admittedly still too immature to be trolling around with 20 older boys under the hot sun every day…a rare day indeed when she doesn’t come running, sniffling because someone hurt her feelings (the kid can’t throw or catch to save her life, which sometimes results in criticism from her more coordinated teammates). However, I’ve got to hand it to her, because she comes to every single practice with a smile on her face and always offers to help out. The kids are all bursting with enthusiasm these days, because the Peace Corps recently announced that no other than ALUBARÉN would be hosting the regional tournament this year, on the 28th of March. That is big news for us, and the kids feel very proud that the other teams are going to have to truck up our steamy mountain to play in the tournament. We will play against two other teams, Pespire and Reitoca, and the team that wins will go to the National Championship in Tegucigalpa. I really hope we make it…the kids want it so bad, and since they went last year, if we don’t make it this year I will feel like I’ve failed as a skilled baseball coach (which I admittedly am not).

Other than that, I spent a lot of time doing what I’ve been doing since the day I arrived, which is socializing with the townfolk. My new neighbors, especially…Tina and Rubuen, their two children Alex (19) and Nely (26), and Nely’s three adorable children, Alison (4), Noel (6), and Douglas (about 17 months). When I’m not over there, sitting in hammocks in the shade and sipping on sweet coffee, everyone’s over here, sitting in hammocks in the shade, sipping sweet coffee and watching the kids search for “cherries” in the dirt. I truly love them. And I know they love me…the other day, when I was randomly barfing up my guts without avail for 24 hours, Tina brought me several cups of cinnamon tea and was so concerned she almost carried me to the health clinic (I recovered, however). The first thing I do in the morning when I let the dog out is shout GOOD MORNING! to them, to which the kids always bellow back GOOD MORNING! before racing over to harvest any cherries the wind knocked down during the night. They bring me tortillas, I bring them beans. They bring me bananas, I bring them melons. I share my Christmas goodies, and Tina presents me with an embroidered tortilla-cloth she made just for me. It’s like having real family, right across the street…I wish I could help them more. They’re so poor. Ruben, the father/grandfather, has a bad case of Parkinson’s and shakes so bad he can’t even dress himself, but they can’t afford medicine. Tonight, while Tina and I were sitting outside watching the day turn to dusk and the kids charge up and down the road engaged in Coke-bottle-cap warfare, she broke down into tears and asked me if there was any cure for Parkinson’s. I had to tell her no…she told me some man on the bus told her he had the cure and sold her some little bottles of liquid. I held her hand and she cried for the husband she used to have, who is slowly turning in another child for her to care for…every night, she told me, she prays that they will discover the cure for Parkinson’s for her husband will go back to normal. And yet despite the intense emotional and physical challenges this family faces, I’ve never met a happier, more loving and joyful group of people. They appreciate everything. That’s what I love about them…they’re so genuine.

Bedtime…I love you guys.
Love and paz,
Hayley

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.

lubey lubes

Nedi! She makes me tamales and soup. Scarlett's "mom" /grandma.

Here is my best friend Scarlett.

here we are after a grueling baseball practice.

here are my kids hangin out on the soccer field.

Here i am telling them how to be white blood cells.

they straight up hate AIDS. hate it to HELL.

Here are all the townspeople of alubaren who are interested in HIV/AIDS prevention; aka my baseball team who i forced to participate.

7 December 2008
Hey, chochachos! Today is basically the best day ever. Why, you ask?? Because yesterday I opened the library with the woman who has the keys, as well as the gringa Johanna who lived here ten years ago and founded the dang thing, and who is here visiting, and now I have copies of “Anastasia,” “Ramona the Pest,” and “Tuck Everlasting,” all in Spanish. I loved those books as a kid and now I get to relive them in the mediocre way that only a Spanish translation can yield. Woo! The library had like seven inches of dust on the floor because the roof has a hole in it, but other than that it was looking pretty good. It has four big shelves filled with books, most of which were brought by Johanna on various visits (she is married to a Alubarén native and comes to visit every couple of years to check on the library, bring books, and visit her family). There ARE some kids books, which I didn’t realize—though not many. There are also many research-y books, and about 200 copies of some book called “Where do you turn when it hurts?” or something, about God and poverty. They’re all in English. I have no idea where they came from. There were four little tables and a handful of chairs, too. The current problem is that we have two women who want to be librarians, and only enough funds for one. It’s turned into a bit of a cat-fight, and I’m still struggling to understand why we can’t just vote and pick one. One of the issues is that the whole “Library Board” is made of three or four people, all of whom are family, so people complain that it’s turned into nepotism. (Apparently there used to be several members who were not related, but they’re since quit). However, as Johanna pointed out, this “family-ized” board has received money and books and none of it has been stolen or lost, so why rock the boat. We’ll see. I do want to open it up though, and start a weekly story time followed by a related art project with the kids. Hopefully we can do that before the New Year. In the meantime, I’m still hells of psyched to have Beverly Clearly and Lois Lowry en espanol for my own reading pleasure.

As many of you well-informed citizens might know, the 1st of December was World AIDS Day. I wasn’t actually aware of that until about a week beforehand, when Fondo Cristiano announced they were going to do something to celebrate. They then single-handedly changed World AIDS Day to the second of December, because the first was the day after Honduras’ internal elections and they informed me that the locals would be too tired from partying all night to come out to anything we might do. “We’ll do a march with the high school band, have health charlas, and of course lots of skits,” Franco informed me. We decided it would go down in the park like last time. Franco then proceeded to go sit in the little room where we have a computer and listen to music, while my two coworkers got to work on the giant mural, which is the centerpiece of any Honduran public campaign (created by taking a giant portable chalk board, covering it in big pieces of white paper, and cutting and pasting letters that state whatever it is we’re celebrating, which in this case read “Dia Mundial Contra VIH/SIDA”). I had this great mental vision of a park teeming with locals, eager to learn about the dangers of unprotected sex. I decided to make some “educational games,” where people could come up and pick a “Fact or Fiction” flap on a giant board and win a condom and lollipop with a correct response, or receive a little illustration of some behavior (people kissing, people sharing a glass of water, people boning) and win said condom/lollipop if correctly placed on the “Safe” or “Unsafe” side of the board. Then I planned out this skit with some local kids, which demonstrated how HIV works in the human body and how it turns in AIDS, eventually killing the infected person. My coworkers were in charge of planning the march and forming a skit for themselves. We also invited two neighboring villages to come participate. The big day came, windy as the dickens (why does this always happen?). I had placed a couple posters around the pueblo advertising what we were going to do, but by 9:00am the only people who had shown up were about 20 kids from my baseball team, who may (or may not) have been threatened by a certain gringa baseball coach that absence from the event would result in extra laps during practice (that might be a rumor, though, we Peace Corps volunteers believe in positive reinforcement and would never resort to threats in order to gain attendance at an event…). We also had to change location to the elementary school at the last minute, because over the weekend the alcaldia (local government) had decided it would be a good time to start tearing up the park to rebuild it. So now it’s like 9:30, and our numbers had swelled to the incredible amount of about 30. So I took a lap around the park with a megaphone, and forced/bribed my baseball kids to follow me, who seemed excited at first, waving their little white flags I’d made with the AIDS ribbon on them. I announced we were about to march against AIDS, and that everyone should come out and join us and win “free prizes,” and that did you know AIDS was transmitted through three fluids: blood, breast milk, and sexual fluids?? (Once I started yelling through the megaphone about “sex fluids” my baseball kids just looked mortified). We headed back to the school to begin the real march, but almost no one new came to join us. World AIDS Day had now become “Hayley’s Baseball Team Learns About AIDS Day.” (Oh yeah, the marching band part also fell through). So off we went, up the dirt road and around the park, with little 7-year-old Anner cheerfully thrusting flags and little red paper ribbons with safety pins onto any interested parties, baseball kids Cristian, Samer, Jairo, Hanci, and Toño carrying a banner, and everybody else walking dutifully behind, while I continued to holler about sex fluids in Spanish through the megaphone. Once we got back to the school, everyone crammed into the shade and we went through the schedule, enjoying several prayers, a health talk given by yours truly, and a couple of skits. Then we played the games and I handed out condoms to old ladies, eight-year-olds, and everyone in between. Awesome.

Baseball is going awesome. We practice every day from 3-5pm up at the “campo,” which is the town’s soccer “field.” (It’s actually a huge dirt lot scarred by potholes and small ravines and an ample covering of cow and horse manure). (The latter actually comes in handy—cow shit makes awesome bases, as I discovered.) We run a lap around the field, then form a circle in the middle and stretch our muscles, during which time jokes are told (throw-back to my drumline days, aww-blaht). Then we play catch for a while, then do some other type of drill or game, and usually I split them into two teams and we play a short game. It’s funny because most of them can’t really catch, and no one seems to know where to throw the ball when they do catch it, so there are always tons of home runs. (I realize as a coach it’s my job to tell them where to do throw it, but I’m learning too, so whatever. We got time.) Sometimes it’s a liiiiittle stressful, because the kids fight a lot (I’ve had to send like three kids home for the day already due to the cusses and kicking), but some high school kids have started to show up and help me, which is awesome. VIVA LAS PANTERAS. Again, though, if anyone has kid-sized baseball mitts lying around, send those puppies to me and I will take pictures of the kids playing with them with looks of pure joy on their faces.

So the other day one of my baseball kids Esau (who’s mother is my future landlord) asked me if I’d like to have dinner at his house after the 6th Grade Graduation that Friday evening. I said of course, unknowing that this was a subtle invitation for my to be his Madrina, which is basically like an adult selected to walk across the “stage” area with the graduating kid when he gets his diploma. There is also the requirement of a gift. Now, I didn’t know anything about that, so when I showed up at the graduation on Friday and his mom ushered me to a special chair at their table set aside for the Madrina, I had several small heart attacks (since I had no present for the kid). The present is actually sort of a big deal, in the sense that it’s expected and then lots of pictures of taken with the madrina and the kid, with the present thrust out in front. So we had all our photo opts gift-less, and I apologized profusely several times while his mother awkwardly told me not to worry about it (oh, but I did). Then all the kids sat in the middle of the concrete court while the adults sat around them at special tables, and we listened to “We Are The Champions” on repeat for about two hours while the kids got their diplomas and the principal yelled at the crowd for not applauding enough. Then I went to Esau’s house and ate rice mixed with chicken bits. I’m gonna buy a present for him this weekend.

Guess that’s about it for now. I went to the Evangelical church last night and enjoyed it more than the Catholic mass (much easier to hear and understand), but after the preacher started yelling about the evils of Cartoon Network (their slogan, “Hacemos lo que Queremos,” or “We do what we want”, doesn’t sit well with him), I was ready to leave. Either way, my neighbors and Johanna the gringa invited me and the entire congregation was so delighted they included us in their prayer.

Peace out dudes!
Love, Hayley