Photos of Santa Lucia

Honduran Food

Honduran food is yummy. My host mom is a good cook. In Honduras, everything is fried. Tortillas, cheese, eggs, beans, meat, plantains, bananas… It’s all delicious, BUT it’s all fried. Nothing seems to escape the 2 inches of deep frying oil (at least they use vegetable oil). Ok, so the oatmeal and pancakes escape this fate. I’m not complaining. My host mom cooks these great fried tortillas with melted quesillo (this really good stretchy, salty cheese similar to Mexican Oaxaca cheese) in the middle and Pico de Gallo on top. She makes great enchiladas (Honduran enchiladas are fried tortillas with everything on top of it (with great guacamole). She makes this great dish with fried plantains, pico de gallo, hamburger meat and barbeque sauce. And her Baleadas are amazing! Baleadas are thick pancakey tortillas filled with eggs, beans, cheese and sometimes pico de gallo or meat or avocado. They are delicious!

The Plato tipico contains: red beans, rice, queso fresco, huevo and usually a little avocado. And tortillas on the side. However, they don’t make tacos with their food, like in Mexico. Instead they roll them up and put them in their left hand and occasionally eat take a bite of them while they eat. (Personally, I prefer the Mexican way. It’s just easier to stomach corn tortillas when they are filled with stuff.)

So today I went to Teguz with my host mom and my uncle. We went to this big market with lots of fruit and vegetables. Thankfully, my mom likes to give me fruit and vegetables for lunch! We also stopped at a supermarket where I bought 3 jars of peanut butter (2 for my PC friends and one for my host family). My family likes peanut butter, but it is too hard to find and expensive for them to buy. It costs like $4/jar! Everything Americanesque is more expensive in the Supermarket. For example, my favorite cereal, Smart Start costs almost $6/box here (I didn’t buy it.) I also bought some brownie mix, chocolate chips and Dove dark chocolate bars.

Today, my host mom and I made brownies. It was like the second time that they had ever used their oven! It’s just that in Honduras, no one knows how to use ovens. My family really liked the brownies, so maybe I can start cooking with them a lot and show them how to use the oven more. However, they thought it was strange that I would drink milk plain (ie: not in coffee or oatmeal). I told them that milk went well with chocolate. Maybe this is just an American culture thing. They just laughed and drank Pepsi or banana soda with their brownies. I brought a Velveeta shells macaroni and cheese box. So that’s next on my cooking agenda. I gave my mom a Betty Crocker cookbook when I first arrived in Honduras. She’s super excited about it. So maybe I can cook some of the recipes with her and show her how to use the oven.

ETing

To the surprise of everyone, 4 people in our group of 48 trainees have ETed or Early Terminated their Peace Corps service. Some did this for health reasons or missing fiancés or boyfriends or a variety of reasons. It makes me wonder how many people are going to finish the whole 27 months. It has only been 2 weeks and we’ve lost 1/12 of our group. I wish the best for everyone who’s ETed.

Retro Night at the Disco

The the Disco Movil had a retro night with American music from the 80s. It was quite an experience…Hondurans dancing and singing to music from the 80s. It was a good time. Definitely hilarious. I wish you all could have seen it. I went with my host brothers and sisters and taught some locals how to dance to 80s music (as if I knew how…I was born in 1984). Just working on Peace Corps goal #3: To give people of other cultures a greater understanding of American culture. It was definitely a good time. There were only 3 of us gringas there. I think the funniest part was watching the random 80s music video clips which usually clashed in a hilarious way with whatever song was playing. My siblings and I stayed out until the late late hour of 1 am.

Some of My Favorite Peace Corps Quotes, So far…

“Peace Corps is not about your job—it’s about your life.” –Luis, our Training Director. He is the coolest.

“You are professionals. You are not kids. The only things that make you look like kids are the thermoses and the yellow bus.” --Luis, talking about professionalism

(We really do carry big thermoses to school everyday for lunch and, yes, most public transportation here is on yellow school buses.)

After a frightening charla (chat/presentation) on Safety and Security:

Trudy (PC Country Director): So, what’s your first impression of Honduras?
Wesley (fellow PC trainee): Good chance of getting shot…

“Don’t be a hero; make heroes out of other people.” -Luis

Die rooster scum…Die…

So, there are these crazy and very confused roosters that live in a house down the hill from me. They do their little cockadoodledooing all night long. It could be 11 pm, or 2 am or 4 am. No les importa. (They don’t care). This is not the cute storybook version of cockadoodledoo. No this sounds more like the roosters are drowning or are at least gargling. It is FAR from cute. I’m usually a pretty sound sleeper, but sometimes they are just too loud for even the soundest of sleepers. Every once in a while I meet them in the street. I usually have my words with them. I tell them in Spanish to shut up and threaten to kill them. They just give me a menacing look and then run away in fear that I might carry out my threats.

What lives in my ceiling?

So, I’m pretty sure that some creatures live in my ceiling or perhaps on my roof. Every night before I go to sleep I hear an intermittent pitta padda pitta padda pitta padda above my head. The first few nights I heard this I freaked out. The headlamp was definitely one of the best things I brought. I hang it on my bedpost and whenever I hear a strange sound or need to go to the bathroom at night, I wear it. I guess the creatures in the ceiling can’t hurt me, so I will ignore them for now. I like to think that they are cute little geckos or pigeons perhaps. I try not to think about the fact that they might be rats or cochroaches.