Taking Out the Trash

Honduras is not exactly considered the most clean of nations in the world. Recycling is something best left to more civilized nations and general garbage etiquette (i.e. NOT tossing shit where ever) is ignored. Needless to say, we were surprised to find out that there IS regular collection of our waste. This is coming from a city where clean water is a luxury (we buy two, 5-gallon jugs of water every other week).

Despite trash in the streets, I'd be afraid to see what the country would be like without the "bird cages" or what passes as garbage cans in San Pedro.



These things stink like all hell, but at least its better than the streets... or, in our case, the median across the street from our house. Here we have a lovely bit of green space that is slightly buried in some construction waste. Beautiful!



This is, of course, much, much, better than Alex and Caitlyn's situation. Today we returned from shopping with them and Jesse (who is the coolest kid on the block 'cause he has a car... just like high school) to be greeted by a bag full of trash hanging from the barbed-wire that surrounds their apartment. Someone decided that rather than toss it in the "birdcages" or even in the streets, they would toss it over Alex and Caitlyn's wall.

So it hangs from the wire, dropping bit by bit into their lovely backyard (complete with a garden that Anah and I are jealous of... we're starting ours soon).

Today, Jesse, armed with a machete, took decisive action against some of the garbage that fell into the yard.



Another Honduran problem solved by American ingenuity.

A Twenty-five Dollar Trip

This weekend several teachers and myself traveled to Lago de Yojoa, a lake about 1 hour away from San Pedro Sula. Our trusty bus driver, Arturo, drove us there for 67 lempiras (approx. $3) and we spent the day touring around a coffee farm and enjoying the river that ran through it. For the evening we went to our Hotel, which was at the D & D Brewery, owned by an ex-pat from Oregon. He was quite a character. When we asked how long he'd owned the place he told us that about 9 years ago he started brewing beer down there and sold it on the corner, but then people wanted food to go with the beer, so he built a restaurant and then people didn't want to leave after they'd been drinkin' all day, so he built a hotel. A pretty sound business model, I'd say.

We enjoyed a lovely dinner of Tilapia, "Anafre" (refried beans and warm flour tortilla chips), margaritas and a variety of the beers available. We ate and drank like kings for under $10. I shared a room with 3 other teachers and we giggled the night away. The room was $40 total, so split 4 ways is another $10 to my tab. On the way home we stopped at a fruit stand where I bought a bunch of bananas, a pineapple and a watermelon for a whopping total of $2. So, all in all, about 500 lempiras, or $25 dollars. Not a bad investment.

The only downside of the adventure was on the way home my camera was acting funny, so I decided it would be a good idea to "Reformat Memory Card", well, not surprisingly this reformatting process deletes all your pictures.

So, in the meantime, you can enjoy the one above from the D&D website, and use your imagination and enjoy my "pictures" of coffee plants, ginger plants, wild butterflies, banana trees, a beautiful lake surrounded by mountains, our adorable cabin and delicious food. Aren't they beautiful? My friends are promising to send me their photos, so hopefully they do and I will post those for your true enjoyment.

My Playground has a Palmtree

The lead blogger here at "Howdy from Honduras" is on vacation this weekend, so I've been asked to step in to satisfy all of our avid readers. This past week was our first week with students, and it was wonderful! The students are very excited about school, eager to learn and incredibly respectful. In addition, I have loads of prep-time and best of all, an ASSISTANT! (Dan has loads of prep-time too, but he's jealous of my assistant!) It's unbelievable. All this being said, it's still been a lot of work but it's been fun work so you'll hear no complaints from us.

In addition to the sweet set-up for work, there are a few other work perks that I thought I'd share:

1) Palm trees on the playground. Yesterday I had "Recess Duty" which was always a chore in Milwaukee, but yesterday I found myself actually enjoying it- I mean, I was looking at palm trees with the misty mountains in the background...is this real?

2) Fresh papaya, pineapple and grapefruit salad for lunch in our "lunchroom". Yep, the "School Lunch" is not the dreaded mystery meat that we're used to. The students have many options, including delicious fruit salad, fruit smoothies and banana chip nachos! Also, Hondurans are big believers in Mid-morning snacks, which usually are delicious treats known as "Baleadas", fresh flour tortillas filled with refried beans, a sour-cream like sauce and cheese. These are awesome, but in order to not get a Baleada-Belly, I think I will stick with the fruit salad most days!

3) Outdoor Hallways. When teaching in Wisconsin, there were many days, especially in the winter, where the only time I'd get to be outside was the time between my house and car in the morning and then my car and the school building! Here, all of our classrooms are connected by outdoor hallways so every passing time is a nice little trip outdoors where we hear the birds chirping and the sun shines on us!


So, there you have it. Our first week was certainly a success, and we're both looking forward to the weeks to come. So far, we've been amazed at our students, their families and our co-workers. It's a great environment to work in- literally!

First Day of School

Monday was the first day of school for us and in true first-day-of-school-fashion Anah and I snapped pictures of each other like we were parents of kindergardeners.




How cute!

Sexiest?

Today (when I was supposed to be lesson planning) I was checking out JSOnline.com, which is the online version of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, when I discovered some shocking news.

No, not another crime wave, or even an article about the public schools' failures (which there was a whole series of "I-Team" investigative stories about MPS today), but this article.

The magazine Marie Claire recently choose Milwaukee as its "sexiest" city. I know, it blew my mind too.

Now don't get me wrong, I love Milwaukee, but I have a hard time thinking of the also-awarded fattest and drunkest city in the nation as also the sexiest. Unless of course one combines all three and your have drunk, fat people hooking up because of the "beer goggles" effect.

I can only assume that the award was based on the fact that Anah and I were living there for the past few years. Marie Claire spent months (if not years) working on this story so the research is probably pretty solid. Unfortunately, the ranking is sure to slip a bit, but I think San Pedro Sula, Honduras might just pop up on the sexy radar.

That is once you can see past the crushing poverty (which, of course, Marie Claire did as well with Milwaukee).

Saturday Relaxation

Anah enjoying the good life. Not pictured: Dan enjoying the good life.

With school starting on Monday Anah and I are playing it safe and staying in the city. Originally we talked about heading out and exploring the country with some friends, but decided it would be best to not exhaust ourselves right before school begins.

Last night, there was a end of summer/ school kick off party at one of the second-year foreign-hires' house. It was a low-key affair with the exception of a little hook-up gossip between two of the new teachers. The whole situation with all of the new teachers and the social circles we run in is a lot like being a freshman in college all over again. You meet a whole bunch of people at one time, live with all of them, travel to various places, party together, and apparently also hook up (and then have to call the girlfriend back home and break the bad news....). Its very entertaining to observe all of this.

I'm getting off topic... Anah and I woke up early, which is very typical for us and took off for the city market, Guamalito, hoping to find some art and decorations for our very Spartan home. Usually places like this a terribly over-priced, but ripe for negotiation where the products become steals.

Given my abject failure as a Spanish speaker, the negotiations were left up to Anah. Despite Anah's best efforts, the dealers at the market didn't seem to be interested in bargaining. Anah would offer half of the price, the dealer would say no and offer what coverts to about a dollar less, and Anah would tell him/her that it was still too expensive (which it was), and the dealer would walk away.



Some of the wares being hawked at Guamalito



We wanted some of this stuff(below), but we suck at bargaining.



I guess I expected a lot more back and forth. I don't know if we're supposed to be more proactive in offering prices, but either way we left the market empty-handed. Its not that big of a deal because I'm sure will be back for round two and there are plenty of other markets throughout the country that are supposed to be a lot better than Guamalito.

From the market we head off to Copantl, which is a hotel in San Pedro where the EIS teachers get memberships to as an employment perk, for a little R&R. Just like the maid situation, Copantl is another little bit of our spoiled life down here. Take a look:





Alex, Caitlyn, and just a little bit of Jesse back there, poolside



Reality sinks in tomorrow, though, because Jesse, Anah, and I are going into school tomorrow (on a Sunday!) to get things ready for classes on Monday. I think everything will be just fine, but that doesn't mean that we're all just a little bit nervous. We'll keep you posted.

- Dan

Happy Days are Here Again

Friday officially became the best day of the week. Certainly it was already a great day, being the end of the week, but now it's even better because Friday is the day our new maid comes to clean our house. Anah and I feel kind of guilty that we have such a luxury, but after seeing her handiwork I can't complain at all.

Ester is our maid's name and she is unbelievable. Between settling in at the new place, getting bogged down at work, and general chaos around here Anah and I were less-than on top of the house up-keep. No matter.... Ester took care of business. Dishes... done. Laundry... done. Ironing (including ironing our socks and underwear!)... done. Floors... done. Bathrooms... done. And probably a whole bunch of other things I have no idea she cleaned.

Here's her handiwork:









This is the sort of life I could get used to!

- Dan

Dan's Birthday

The birthday boy doing what he does best. Note: These are not all of my beers!

So Dan's B-day was yesterday. He turned the big 26. Pretty exciting stuff. Its kind of hard to celebrate a birthday in a brand new place, let alone a brand new country. Either way we managed to round up a few people: Jesse, Caitlyn, Alex, and a few of the other teachers at EIS to get drinks and dinner.

Our first stop was a place called Mary's near some of the apartments that Anah and I were going to live in until the flooded last spring. Flooding = bad, but Mary's = good. I have no idea how a bar in San Pedro ends up having a regular English-sound name... maybe religion? Beer is relatively cheap in Honduras (costing on average 25 Lempiras... about $1.25), but Mary's is BEYOND cheap, a local beer setting one back a mere 13 Lempiras or 68 cents! Per ounce that's cheaper than soda.


A wild banana tree "in" Mary's bar

Mary's is pretty interesting. Its not so much a bar with walls, but really just two wooden structures with a halfway decent roof over our heads. Mary's has three frozen food coolers which the beer is kept in and the "bartender" just keeps taking the warm beer out of the plastic tubs it is delivered in and putting them in the freezers. Not a complicated operation. Don't know where to put your bottle caps? Right here:


Who needs a floor when discarded bottle caps will do?

After Mary's is was onto Pecos Bill's a local restaurant where a sandwich is named in my honor. Seriously. They have the "DANNY" which is a chicken and all sorts of other stuff sandwich. I didn't have it because the steak, refried beans, and plantain chips was much more appealing.

With the last prep day before school begins on Monday having loomed over us last night it certainly wasn't a crazy night at all, but a very nice evening still. Anah picked up some Betty Crocker cake mix and frosting so I'm going to get a cake sometime this weekend I'm told. Excellent!

-Dan

Montuca Sound System

Montuca rocking the place (literally)

Last night I went to a bar with Jesse and a few other teachers (Anah stayed home... she wasn't feeling well) to see a local San Pedro Sula band. The lead singer of Montuca Sound System is the boyfriend of one of the second year foreign-hires, Ashley, at EIS. They're a reggae group that plays a bunch of their own stuff and also covers other reggae music, which of course means Bob Marley.

The played in a little second-story bar in a bar-bones part of the city. With the exception of this place I could even begin to tell you what went for entertainment anywhere else nearby. The bar was in this ancient building and as the night went on and got more rockin' the whole place shook. The floor kinda bounced around like it was the wrestling mat in a WWF competition. I joked with Anah and Jesse that this was definitely once of those places that you might read on CNN.com "100 people killed in club collapse" (those types of stories show up from developing countries all the time).

We lived and the concert was awesome. I manged to take a bunch of pictures and videotaped two songs. Here's one of Montuca's own songs:



And here's their last song of the night, a Bob Marley cover:



All in all... a great night and a great way to get a little taste of the San Pedro Sula nightlife.

More from last night here:



By Dan

Wedding Photos

Our totally awesome wedding photographer, Rebecca, has managed to clean up and Photoshop all of our pics from the wedding (a hard task given how ugly Dan is) and posted them all online for your viewing pleasure. Be warned though because there are almost 600 photos!

They are available for your purchase from the site if you see any of them that you like. You have my permission to order poster-size pics of me if that's your thing...

Go to Images of Distinction and click on the link to "Client Galleries." There you will be asked for a password to look at the pictures. Type "Sparta" (don't for get to capitalize" and you'll get a look at all the wonderful pictures of Anah and subjected to a few of me.

Enjoy!

Home Sweet Home

We got the internet and cable today and when I say that the cable was "installed" I mean the cable guys literally installed the cable. We're talking lines all over the place. From pole to pole to the house, into the house, across the room.... cable from point A to B. After that the guys (three guy job here) could finally hook up the cable box and the internet to all of the cables they laid. Pretty exciting stuff.

So with all this technology in the house we're ready to start this blogging thing for serious. I've uploaded a bunch of pictures of our house to our Flickr photosharing account.


Anah cooking up some food in our kitchen

Whenever we've got photosets online we'll post this icon to lead you to more pictures.


Just click on the icon above to be taken to the pictures!

Tonight we're going to a concert. One of the foreign-hire teachers from last year has a Honduran boyfriend and he has a pretty popular reggae band here in San Pedro. Should be very interesting... I'll post pictures tomorrow hopefully.

Hi from the Library

So Its been quite awhile since Anah and I have been "departing soon." Given the distance between that post and this one one might assume that we have been very busy. I can't even begin to tell you how chaotic is has been since the day we left to this very moment.

So I'm not going to.

In fact, I plan on not discussing anything of consequence until I'm not just sitting here in the school's library during lunch.

Either way after many adventures that will be covered in much more detail we are here in San Pedro Sula safe and sound. Stay tuned as we re-cap what ended up being a 36 hour trek to Honduras and many other exciting updates.