I'm in Honduras and I have HBO

So the main form of entertainment in Santa Lucia besides going to the Cyber Alex internet café is watching TV. Strangely, my family has over 100 channels, including HBO and every movie channel imaginable and seemingly obscure channels for Honduras such as a Chinese channel. TV has been a great source of conversation at my house. Quite interesting conversation actually. On most nights, my family gathers around the TV to eat dinner and watch mostly American movies. Most of the time, they are in English with Spanish subtitles, although some are dubbed in Spanish. The other night, we were watching Saving Face, a movie about a family in Chinatown where the grandparents were ashamed of their daughter because she was having a child out of wedlock and the daughter was mad at her daughter because she was a lesbian. So here were some interesting Honduran taboo conversation topics…

The Honduran (and general Latin American) view of Asians is quite strange. Every person of Asian descent is referred to as Chino (Chinese), whether they are Korean, Japanese, Chinese or American. Hondurans see Asians as one and the same, and don’t seem to realize that there are huge differences not only between the Chinese and other Asian cultures. For example, there is a program called JAICA here, which is kind of like the Japanese Peace Corps. JAICA also has its training center here in Santa Lucia. One of our neighbors is a JAICA trainee. Yes, he is Japanese, but to everyone here (my family and even his own family included) he is Chino. Many people are big fans of martial arts movies here, especially with Jackie Chan and Jet Li. So he gets asked if he knows Kung Fu or Karate almost every day here. (He doesn’t.)

Back to the movie… My conservative family kept asking me about Lesbians, because obviously, as an American, I am a lesbian expert. I explained that in many places in the US being a lesbian is socially accepted, although some people still disapprove of it. They kept asking me awkward questions like, So, in a lesbian couple is one girl the guy and one girl the girl? How to answer this question… They seemed to think that the concept of people being lesbian or gay was hilarious and giggled throughout the movie.

My family enjoys watching Dragon Ball Z (and sings the theme song). I’d never seen this show. They also are big fans of BET. Every night, there seems to be more and more conversation topics…