Life back in Tela

THE BEACH:

I'm sorry I haven't posted any blogs in so long. It has taken me some time to readjust back into life here, especially after being spoiled back at home for 2 weeks!! So now I've been back in Honduras for about a month, and I really can't believe how fast these past 6 months have flown by! I'm only here for about 4 and 1/2 more months (I fly back home for good on June 21st)! The weather here was raining on and off at first, but now, it's slowly been getting warmer and warmer. March, April, and May are supposed to be the hottest and more humid months here, so the heat's been slowly but surely creeping up on us. The picture above shows my trusty little pink bike that has taken me many, many places. It's my second one (my first one got stolen after only about 3 weeks of moving here), and hopefully I'll have this one until the end! The picture above also basically shows how and where I spend almost every Saturday and Sunday.....reading or listening to music on the beach, right under that palm tree.

The picture below shows our friend, "the snow cone guy." Every time Sara and I are at the beach we see him lugging around his little freezer on wheels, with all the different colored syrups in bottles lined up along the side of the freezer. There's actually a bike attached to it, but of course we never see him actually riding it on the sand.

I wanted to post a few more pictures of different places in Tela and close to where we live, just so you can get a better idea of what life's like here on a day to day basis... AROUND OUR NEIGHBORHOOD/ IN TOWN:

The top and bottom pictures show the outside and inside our local "mini super" or market where we buy all of our groceries. It's really close to our house, only one house separates us, which is perfect because we usually end up having to stop in every day. The owner of the store is one of the very few people in Tela that actually speaks English. He grew up in New York, but now lives here with his wife and family.Another good reason to having a mini super close by is that we have to buy our drinking water in huge 5 gallon jugs about every week and carry it all the way home. Every few days we have to tip over the 5 gallon jug to fill up 2 pitchers we keep in our fridge for cold drinking water. The running water (when it isn't shut off, or isn't brown) is ok to use for washing dishes and things, but not to drink, nobody drinks the water here (on a random side note, everyone buys bottled or bagged water here...yes water comes in a plastic bag that you have to tear open with your teeth and drink very carefully, without spilling it everywhere). Another reason it's convenient to live so close to a store is that we have to buy a propane tank about every month for our stove, which also is heavy to carry back and forth. Luckily for that, we've always have a nice coworker offer to carry it over for us.

RANDOM BABBLE ABOUT WATER:

Back to the whole water situation, it often gets shut off without warning, this can go on for a half a day, a whole day, sometimes even a couple of days. In October, November, and December it was raining more, and water was shut off more often, then whenever it turned back on, the water was usually brown, sometimes you could even see things floating in it! When you go a day or two without running water, you take what you can get right?! I took the picture below right before I was about to take a shower. I tried to block out the brown water from my mind as best I could, but unfortunately it didn't work, the next day I broke out in rashes all over my neck. Luckily that was the only time that happened, and the only time (so far) that I've had to shower in water that bad! I don't know which is worse having no running water at all, or having brown water! Luckily our coworker gave us an extra storage tank to keep water, so we don't have to worry about running out anymore!:)

AROUND OUT NEIGHBORHOOD/ IN TOWN (CONT.):

Our mini super doesn't usually have fresh fruits or vegetables, so we have to ride our bikes to one of the close fruit stands near our house, like the picture below. I try to get as many fruits and vegetables to eat, but there isn't much variety. I usually end up with tomatoes, bananas, potatoes, and sometimes cantaloupe, apples, and pinapple. I've really been craving salad while living here, but the only lettuce they ever have available is always wilted and rotten because none of the fruits or vegetables are ever refrigerated. These are some of the nearby houses we pass while riding our bikes to and from the beach and the main town. Many of them look like they're about to cave in. Almost all the houses closer to the beach are built on stilts because of all the flooding, and many of them are brightly painted, like the ones shown below.Below is one of the many "pulperias" or little convenience stores that are in town. All of them are little stores built into the front of a house. They remind me of the store my grandma has in the Philippines. The picture below shows a "merendero" which is pretty much like a small restaurant/food stand with a few tables and chairs or benches. They usually serve typical food like fried chicken and beleadas (basically a fresh tortilla with beans and a few other things in it).

The next picture shows one of the many horse drawn carriages that go by carrying usually fruit or wood.This is a picture of the central park. There are always tons of birds in the trees, so needless to say, I don't recommend sitting on any of the concrete benches under the trees. This is where they have most of the town's festivals and celebrations.Right across the street from the central park, the streets are lined with food vendors. The funny thing is that they all sell pretty much the same thing as everywhere else in Tela: fried chicken with fried plantains cut up like french fries (they're more salty than sweet), and beleadas. The picture directly below shows the many food carts where the street vendors fry and sell food, and in the background you can see how close the palm-tree-lined beach is.
The lady below made Sara and I delicious beleadas with beans and avocado. You can also see a huge metal pot with oil frying both the chicken and plantains at the same time, kinda scary to have a gigantic pot of hot oil right on the side of the street! Sara took a quick video of her making the fresh tortillas for the beleadas. Click on the link to see it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ShxqkV1w-IThe blue container shows the balls of fresh dough that she uses for the tortillas. The two jars next to it hold pickled red onions and pickled carrots and peppers that you can eat with the beleadas. Beleadas are the most common thing referred to as a "typical Honduran food." You can get beleadas "sencilla" or simple, which means just with beans and a white cheese, or you can get other things added to it like avocado, scrambled eggs, or chicken. Other than beleadas, Honduras isn't really known for any specific dishes.Paseo Juniors is our favorite restaurant in town. Sara and I eat there almost every Friday night and sadly, usually order the same food because we like it so much! We both order "Imperial" or "Salva Vida", the only 2 good beers here. Then Sara gets two cheese pupusas and I get a chicken taco and cheese pupusa. I think I may have explained these dishes in an earlier blog, but just in case.....a "pupusa" which actually comes from El Salvador, is basically a tortilla with cheese inside, and it is served with pickled cabbage and onions, and the tacos here look and taste like taquitos, and they come with a red sauce and more picked cabbage. Notice the little kid plates the food is served on. They serve everything on Disney Princess, Spongebob, or Winnie the Pooh plates, it's pretty random!On a random side note, in the picture above, you can see the two men (one of them holding a broom), standing beside a wheelbarrow. People are hired by the government to sweep and collect all the dirt and dust that pile up on the sides of the street. We see many men and women working in the heat and sun, sweeping up the dirt and shoveling it into the wheelbarrows, all while huge clouds of dust float around them. Their faces and clothes are gray with thick layers of dust. Sometimes they cover their mouths with a cloth or handkerchief, but most of the time they just breath it all in.

It seems like there are always people building houses here, and they build them so fast! The picture above shows the extremely dangerous "scaffolding" that they use here. As you can see the scaffolding, if it can even be called that, is made up of basically only a thin piece of plywood set between two towers of cinder blocks. If you look closely, you can see that he had a huge concrete container holding wet cement sitting right in the middle of the plywood. It was clearly sagging in the middle from all the weight. The man walked back and forth without the least bit of worries, all while I watched the plywood bounce up and down with every step he took! I was so surprised the wood didn't snap in half right then and there!

The houses usually look unfinished because they build one story of the house first, people move in, and then much later, they continue building a second story. Maurico (Graciella, the founder of our school's son) just moved into a new house behind our school with his wife and daughter. The picture above shows his house. You can see what I mean about the top of the house looking unfinished, with no roof, and with metal wires sticking out. They're planning on building a second story sometime in the future. When we took a look inside the house they actually already had the stairs built, but as of now they lead up to the ceiling, until that second story is built.

RANDOM ANIMALS, ANTS, AND LIZARDS:

All around Honduras you can see these special ants called "leaf cutter ants." They are found in Central and South America. The first time Sara and I saw them we were completely shocked. These extremely strong ants can carry leaves as big as 10 times their own weight! Standing up, and looking down to the ground, it looks like there is just a giant trail of leaves walking on their own, but when you look closer, sure enough, you can see an "super ant" under each large piece of leaf. The ants don't eat the leaves, instead they carry it back to their nest, chew on it and mix it with their saliva to create a compost that will grow a special kind of fungus. They then eat the fungus and feed it to their young. If you look closely at the trail of ants, every few centimeters, you can see a "soldier" ant that stands guard and protects all the ants carrying the leaves. I know that's a ton of information that might not be that exciting to read about, but I swear, if you saw these ants in person, in action, you would be amazed too!! Sara took this video of some leaf cutter ants by our school. Click on the link to see them at work:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W5I0NeQVtg There are a lot of lizards that run along the walls here....walls in restaurants, our house, and everywhere. They're tiny little things, and really harmless, they actually help control the population of different insects and rodents, but seeing little things scurry along the walls did take some getting used to when I first moved here. Sara took this picture from inside our kitchen. There are so many random horses, cows, and chickens that wander around here, some tied up, but most are not. As you can see some even wander into our yard!

So that's all for now, I'll try my best not to wait so long in between posts next time. My sister Belinda is coming to visit from New York later this week for a few days, and if all goes well, I'm going to try to talk her into white water rafting with me!!! For those of you who know her, you know how hard she works and how much she could use a little bit of a vacation, so... if the weather permits, I'll be sure to post some good pictures and stories soon! :)