Monday, June 29, 2009
Political Instability!
So the last couple of days here have been interesting... Starting Saturday, we were put on standfast, which means we can't leave our city. Sunday was the big day to vote on the "Cuarta Urna" which was a controversial topic. I'm still not really sure exactly what it was, I think it was a survey on whether or not the people would want to change the constitution so that the president could run two terms back to back. Right now the law says that they can only run one term. So the supreme court determined that it was illegal to have this vote, and the president continued anyways. Which leads to Sunday morning, he was arrested or taken away forcefully by armed men to Costa Rica. In his absence yesterday, the head of congress was named president, because he was next in line. So we weren't allowed to leave our residences yesterday, and we had a country wide curfew from 9pm to 6am. We also have the curfew again tonight, and we have instructions to not leave our site until tuesday. I had a doctors appointment scheduled in Tegucigalpa (the capital) for Wednesday and it looks like I'm not going to be able to go. I will have my sty for the rest of my life!! There was also a protest going on today downtown. We're just staying in our house and avoiding people! What an exciting life it is here!
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Recently
Hi! So things that have been going on lately:
• We think we found a house in our price range! Peace corps gives a price limit for renting places. We could only find teeny one bedroom apartments, so this place is awesome. It has a big front yard with lots of fruit trees (you wouldn't believe how hard it is to find a place with a yard). It has my 2 requirements of an avocado tree (its small) and a lime tree. It has 2 bedrooms, so we can have a place to keep our junk. It has a kitchen/living area that is currently open air which is really unique, but the lady is going to put up a door or screen so that it doesn't get broken in and keeps out the flies. It has a little old fashioned home made oven that her mother or grandmother made, so that's unique as well. It doesn't have a chimney though, so we probably won't use it. The one drawback to the house is that each room is accessible from outside, meaning there's no inside hallway. So when I walk to the bathroom i have to walk on the patio to get there. Oh another thing, about 4 or 5 houses in the area got robbed by the same person. They think the guy got in on the side wall, so they're making improvements to the house like putting bars on the windows, but they say that they can't put the safety wiring on the wall cause its made out adobe and it will fall since its the rainy season. It's in the historic district so there are laws about adobe walls i think. So we'll see what happens. We have a month to make changes. But anyways we're super excited about the house, it had all the requirements we wanted!!
• SOCCER - There was a game of US versus Honduras and US won. It was kind of a bummer for the people we were watching it with, but at least people won't bother us about Honduras beating the US. We watched the game with people from our work. I watched the 1st half and during the second half I grilled meat with 2 other girls: my boss and a girl from spain who will be here a month. It was very yummy.
• Neighbors! So we found american neighbors who are missionaries here and they are awesome. They let us use their WIRELESS internet!! and they roast their own coffee beans and make expresso and lattes and they made us pancakes AND they play settlers of catan!! and they make their own yogurt!! I think we lucked out big time. They have english church once a month so we're gonna go on the 21st - yay!
• Hot springs! We got to go to the hot springs again! They are amazing every time!
• Bad news - I still have a stye on my eye. I've had it for about 6 weeks now. It won't go away no matter how many hot compresses I put on it. I got sick last week with tummy stuff but it was just a bacterial infection and I took pills and I'm better now. Bert got sick yesterday, but he's getting better.
• Good news - We found a scale this weekend: I have lost 17 pounds and Bert has lost 22 pounds. That is 39 pounds combined! YAY!! Now all our pants are falling down...
• Earthquake - We experienced our very first earthquake! Fortunately there is not bad news to go along with this section. We got woken up at 2:30, I was having a dream that we were on a very bumpy road and Bert was telling me he thought it was an earthquake. I said, "I think the bed is going to break" because it was squeaking like crazy. It kind of felt like we were on an ocean and getting bounced around by waves. Bert stuck his leg on the ground to get up and the floor was moving like a boat and so he stayed in the bed. After it stopped everybody was awake and we went to see if it was actually an earthquake. There wasn't any power and there weren't any cracks in the house. Everything looked like nothing happened except one container of cereal fell in the kitchen. Afterwards all the neighbors were in the street with flashlights to talk about what happened. Very very unusual. We found out later about 10 miles away about 25 houses fell. They were old and made out of adobe, but still that's a lot of houses. Also 2 kids died in our department. Thank God we are safe and alive.
• We think we found a house in our price range! Peace corps gives a price limit for renting places. We could only find teeny one bedroom apartments, so this place is awesome. It has a big front yard with lots of fruit trees (you wouldn't believe how hard it is to find a place with a yard). It has my 2 requirements of an avocado tree (its small) and a lime tree. It has 2 bedrooms, so we can have a place to keep our junk. It has a kitchen/living area that is currently open air which is really unique, but the lady is going to put up a door or screen so that it doesn't get broken in and keeps out the flies. It has a little old fashioned home made oven that her mother or grandmother made, so that's unique as well. It doesn't have a chimney though, so we probably won't use it. The one drawback to the house is that each room is accessible from outside, meaning there's no inside hallway. So when I walk to the bathroom i have to walk on the patio to get there. Oh another thing, about 4 or 5 houses in the area got robbed by the same person. They think the guy got in on the side wall, so they're making improvements to the house like putting bars on the windows, but they say that they can't put the safety wiring on the wall cause its made out adobe and it will fall since its the rainy season. It's in the historic district so there are laws about adobe walls i think. So we'll see what happens. We have a month to make changes. But anyways we're super excited about the house, it had all the requirements we wanted!!
• SOCCER - There was a game of US versus Honduras and US won. It was kind of a bummer for the people we were watching it with, but at least people won't bother us about Honduras beating the US. We watched the game with people from our work. I watched the 1st half and during the second half I grilled meat with 2 other girls: my boss and a girl from spain who will be here a month. It was very yummy.
• Neighbors! So we found american neighbors who are missionaries here and they are awesome. They let us use their WIRELESS internet!! and they roast their own coffee beans and make expresso and lattes and they made us pancakes AND they play settlers of catan!! and they make their own yogurt!! I think we lucked out big time. They have english church once a month so we're gonna go on the 21st - yay!
• Hot springs! We got to go to the hot springs again! They are amazing every time!
• Bad news - I still have a stye on my eye. I've had it for about 6 weeks now. It won't go away no matter how many hot compresses I put on it. I got sick last week with tummy stuff but it was just a bacterial infection and I took pills and I'm better now. Bert got sick yesterday, but he's getting better.
• Good news - We found a scale this weekend: I have lost 17 pounds and Bert has lost 22 pounds. That is 39 pounds combined! YAY!! Now all our pants are falling down...
• Earthquake - We experienced our very first earthquake! Fortunately there is not bad news to go along with this section. We got woken up at 2:30, I was having a dream that we were on a very bumpy road and Bert was telling me he thought it was an earthquake. I said, "I think the bed is going to break" because it was squeaking like crazy. It kind of felt like we were on an ocean and getting bounced around by waves. Bert stuck his leg on the ground to get up and the floor was moving like a boat and so he stayed in the bed. After it stopped everybody was awake and we went to see if it was actually an earthquake. There wasn't any power and there weren't any cracks in the house. Everything looked like nothing happened except one container of cereal fell in the kitchen. Afterwards all the neighbors were in the street with flashlights to talk about what happened. Very very unusual. We found out later about 10 miles away about 25 houses fell. They were old and made out of adobe, but still that's a lot of houses. Also 2 kids died in our department. Thank God we are safe and alive.
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