La Esquina Caliente

In San Marcos i try to be pretty social, meeting and hanging out with random people and eventually getting to know their names… usually I know a lot about people before I know their names, it’s kind of a problem I have. Most days if I don’t have any work to do and it’s not raining (which really limits my time) I can just walk from my house in any direction and within about a minute I’ll run into someone I already know or someone who waves me over to talk to the gringo. It’s a great way to meet new people, but it can be tiring constantly having so many acquaintances but no real friends. Fortunately I have become part of a group of guys that has taken me in as more or less one of their own. They call themselves the “esquina caliente” or the “hot corner”, if they weren’t all in high school, part of the church, and very friendly it would be like I was part of a gang. The reason they are called the esquina caliente is because, after hanging out in the park every evening till about 8:30 playing soccer, we walk to the corner store, buy a 2 liter of soda or juice and drink it and hang out talking to whoever passes by. This is how I pass my nights…super exciting. One of my first days in site we went to the rio and had a BBQ and hung out, and yesterday we traveled to Petoa to play soccer against another group from there. I scored a nice goal from 25 yards out, but we lost 3-2, I am now referred to as “Gringo Donavan”. We couldn’t finish the game because we had to leave early because the last bus home was leaving without us…they don’t really think these things through ahead of time, but we managed to make it back safely to San Marcos. Although sometimes I get tired of hanging out with highschool kids because I feel super old around them I really do appreciate the way they have taken me in and provided me with some fun times.

Catholic Church

Here in San Marcos, and Honduras in general, religion plays a big role in society. Contrary to what I anticipated the Catholic Church doesn’t have as much dominance in the towns, the Evangelical churches are growing at a much faster rate. In San Marcos I’m pretty sure the Catholic Church is the larger and more dominant religion. Although I had never been to Catholic Church before, I go a lot here because there isn’t really that much to do here besides soccer. I usually go to the Thursday service and the Sunday night service and I’m becoming more involved with the youth group that meets Saturday nights. It is interesting seeing how divided they can be though, although this is mostly only seen/talked about with the old people. Where it is most seen by me is when people die, if they were Catholics there is a ‘velorio’ or wake the night of the death from 9ish to 4,5,6 in the morning where the entire community comes by and hangs out, the family serves bread, coffee, and rum. Then there is a big church service followed by a procession to the cemetery for the ‘entierro’ or burial. If they are evangelical only a small group of people go to a service and only a handful go to the burial.You’d think that this wouldn’t be that apparent, because we are a town of less than 5,000 people, but somehow there are tons of deaths, at least one a week since coming here, sometimes up to 3 in a week, I really don’t know how it works. During our training they say it can make work difficult if you associate yourself with one church or another, fortunately for me, when people ask if I’m Catholic or Evangelical and I say I’m Presbyterian they have no clue what to make of it and they leave it at that. Gotta go to a funeral right now…seriously.

Youth Group Retreat

This last weekend the Youth group at the Catholic church went on a overnight retreat and i was invited. I didn’t know what to say, but because I’m friends with a lot of them and there wasn’t anything else to do I said “why not?” and went along with them. I didn’t know what to expect on this retreat, all I knew was that we were going to meet at 7:00 AM in the park, bring 70 lempira ($3.50) for food and lodging, and some clothes and a bible. Just like normal at about 8:30 AM we finally left the park and went to ‘las milpas’ which was like a retreat center about 20 mins away. I was amazed when everyone got there, it was mostly people from San Marcos, but also some from Trinidad, Quimistan, and from some of the aldeas of San Marcos, in all there were about 70 people there. The retreat ended up being OK, not the most interesting and fun retreat I’ve ever been on, but it was enjoyable none the less. We had a lot of lectures, 7 in total, all about an hour/hour and a half long about different topics. This was nearly unbearable by the end of the day when it was super hot, no power, and another lecture in Spanish. It was fun getting to know the people, most of the kids were between 13 and 18 and then there were some leaders between 22 and 50 years old. The thing that killed me though was the sleeping situation, in theory it wasn’t bad, everyone had their own bed and sheets, the problem was that there were 30 teenage boys in one big room and we were told that we had to be in the room with the lights off at 10…never going to happen! What did ensue was a 2 hour pillow fight and then tons of talking until about 1 AM and then at quarter to 5 in the morning they all woke up and started fighting again, I am too old for this! At 6:30 we had to go to mass and then another 3 talks to round out the trip. By the time I got back home, 2PM, 31 hours after leaving, I was absolutely exhausted and in a very antisocial mood, but all in all I’d say it was worth it.

More soccer, what do you know…

So the world cup has started! This means that an already soccer crazy environment is even more dedicated to soccer. Thursday afternoon I got back from a 3 day regional Safety & Security meeting, instead of working on Friday I decided to have more of a “cultural integration day” meaning it would be a soccer day. I woke up at 5 to start watching the opening ceremonies and commentaries before the Mexico/South Africa game. After this, because it was ‘students day’ or ‘week’ or something, all public schools in Santa Barbara didn’t have school all week, the high school in San Marcos was invited to play against the military high school in Pinalejo, Quimistan, about 15 minutes away. I went there with my host dad, the vice-principal and soccer liaison of the high school, with no real intentions of playing, but when they asked if I wanted to play (other teachers were playing too), and I saw that we had legitimate uniforms and everything I couldn’t say no. we warmed up for a while and then had to sit around for 2 hours for a girls game to get played, it wasn’t the highest quality game ever, but they played full 45 min halfs… I didn’t get to start the game because I don’t have soccer shoes here, but when one of the teachers got tired I got to borrow his shoes. It took a little while to get used to playing a full field, 11v11 game with people I hadn’t played with, who were all speaking Spanish, but I got into the swing of things pretty quick. Full time ended with a 2-2 tie, but everyone wanted to play overtime, I was tired and wanted to go straight to penalty kicks, but that didn’t happen. We played two 10 min overtime halves, the other team scored earlyand it wasn’t looking good for us, but we scored off of a free kick from 25 yards out with 30 seconds left in the game, sending us into pk’s . I don’t mind pk’s, as long as I don’t have to take them, I told my dad/coach this, but he said that I would be in the group of 5 that would take one anyway…thanks. We made the first one and the other team missed their first one, everyone else made theirs so we were up 4-3 with one pk apiece, and somehow I got stuck taking the last one, although it wasn’t do or die it was still a lot of pressure, if I made it we would win, if I missed it would probably go into sudden death pk’s. I tried not to think about it too much as I stepped up to take my shot, but both teams were lining the 18 yard box and the military fans/drum band were going crazy right behind the goal, and as the goalie walked by me he talked some trash, fortunately I didn’t understand him… I tried to not have my eyes give it away, I always go right, so I stared at the right side, the goalie went right, but for the first time ever I went left, scoring the winning PK. I was very relieved to say the least. It was also good because I talked to the Coronel/ director of the school and organized a meeting with them about doing some health presentations. All in all it was a very good day. Now I’m watching the Ghana/Serbia game, it’s on 8 different channels, another channel has a replay of a game yesterday, and two other channels have WC history on them. When Ghana scored my dad thought it was fun to say Ghana gana, Ghana gana (Ghana wins)…pretty clever.

Futbol

So down here futbol really is life, or at least a huge part of it. Other than chisme and how hot it is down here soccer is the main focus of conversation, especially with the World Cup coming up so soon. There is a Honduran soccer league and everyone has strong affiliation to their home team, which, second only to politics, can be a very hot topic, fortunately I haven’t been forced to affiliate myself with a team… yet. After their Honduran soccer team everyone has their favorite international team, usually one of the big teams from Spain, Italy, or England. Usually at any given time you can find at least 2, sometimes up to 5 different games on TV, your choices are really soccer, telenovelas, or music videos. It’s great with the start of the World Cup less than a week away and Honduras being in it for just the second time ever and the first time in 28 years. Even though Honduras is going to get murdered, even the Hondurans agree upon this, just making the selection is reason to celebrate. On all three days that Honduras will playing work, school, and pretty much everything is going to be canceled even though the games take place super early and people could easily work after the game…but I’m not going to complain, it’s awesome being in a place where just making it to the competition gets more attention than winning the world cup would get in the US. It’s also funny because the only reason Honduras qualified was because of a last minute USA goal against Costa Rica, knocking CR out and advancing Honduras, people actually thank me for that goal, they say It’s one of most important goals ever scored for Honduras soccer and it was scored by an American… Soccer has also been a great way for me to meet people, every night in the central park there are 3v3 games from 7-10 PM, there’s usually about 15 guys that play, it only takes one goal to win so everyone cycles through pretty quick. Also most days at the town stadium a bunch of guys play, last week over 100 guys came through, everyone is really chill and it’s a great time. Even though it’s not necessarily work related, soccer is helping me tremendously in terms of community integration, exercise, and it’s giving me something to do which is always good.

RIP Lobo January 2010- June 11, 2010

I don’t really know what happened, there have been a number of stories that I have heard, but what I do know is that on Friday June 11 my family in Yarumela woke up and found Lobo dead in the yard. There has been rumor that he was poisoned, by who I don’t know, but what my family thinks is that it was probably some infection, either way I’m really sad. It really sucks, especially because I didn’t get a chance to see him one last time, apparently he was getting really big and his fur had changed from black to more of a grey color and he was getting really smart and well trained. Today I also saw a husky puppy here in San Marcos, it was about the same size and color pattern, the only difference was that it was brown and white; it made me miss Lobo a lot. My plan is to either get a kitten or a puppy in about a month when I get my own place.

Rain

I’ll start this off by saying that Honduras has gotten a ton of rain the last week and it has caused lots of flooding and landslides, but I’m doing just fine in San Marcos, it’s doing a lot more damage to the big cities….It’s funny, being from Seattle, the rain doesn’t really bug me, even though it doesn’t rain as much as the myths have it, but for me the rain can be therapeutic. The rain down here isn’t the same type of rain that we get back home though. Seattle rain tends to be more of a constant drizzle that lasts for hours/days/weeks/fall through spring, here it’s different, when it rains it pours, there is no light mist, and it rains so hard that the power goes out, literally. Some of the time the rain is great, those days that it is too hot to do anything, the rain cools us down, makes it less dusty, and makes the green even greener. There are other times however that the rain isn’t as welcome, like when I have to walk the ½ hour walk to the maternal clinic, or when it rains early and then when it gets hot the whole town turns into a sauna, the rain also makes people lazy, myself included, when it’s raining no one really works or leaves the house, you pretty much are trapped wherever you are, even if it’s with a group of high school kids who invited you to watch them practice their theater/miming routine and you have to spend 3 hours with them listening to 50 Cent and Lady Gaga because it’s raining and you can’t leave. It’s also tough when it rains so hard that you can’t hear anything, music, people talking, nothing because the rain drops sound like drums beating on the roof. It can be a little rough when it rains for days on end and it feels like you never leave the house, but on those days when it doesn’t rain, like today, it makes it even sweeter when you get to walk around town meeting new people. Fortunately the rain is warm down here, the frogs come out, and you get to drive through rivers.