Just a Week

Mellow Weekend
On Saturday Christina's boyfriend came for a visit. They stayed in town that night and left the next day to go to Lago de Yojoa so I had a few days by myself. I relaxed at the beach most of the weekend. Along my bike ride down the mostly dirt roads I saw goats, horses, lots of dogs and chickens, pigs, birds, and a squashed frog. It was fairly humid all week, about 88F, but with a nice breeze. The nights get down to about 72F. Besides the beach, I hand washed some clothes and hung them out to dry, went into town for soy milk, bought birthday gifts for friends, stopped by the post office to mail some letters, watched some movies on my computer, listened to some NPR podcasts, and, of course, read.

Scorpion
On Saturday night I noticed a scorpion crawl across my bedroom floor. As I began to panic, it crawled out of my room and into Christina's. I put on my Vans to try to avoid being stung and went into her room with a can of bug spray. I am not convinced bug spray would be effective on scorpions but there was no way I was going to step on it. It was beside the point because I had lost sight of it anyway. I superficially searched around a little but not too thoroughly since I would be happier not seeing it again... and I didn't. I shut her door and stuffed a towel under so it wouldn't get out. Even with my precautions I slept very anxiously and awoke to every little noise, turning on the lights to scan the room before continuing my fretful sleep. I tried searching Christina's room again (in the daytime) but found no signs of it.Holidays at School
We celebrated Father's Day last Friday at school. Each class performed a song or poem. My class wrote an acrostic poem for "Happy Father's Day" and each student read one line. All the students pitched in money to buy a father's day gift and one student's name from each class was picked to give the present to their father. This was a frustrating holiday for many students as some have been more or less abandoned by their fathers and just as many have fathers living in the US. This week, on Tuesday, April 22, we celebrated Earth Day. Usually the holidays at our school are disorderly and confusing but this was the most well planned holiday ever. The kids started the day in their rooms, learned about the history of the day, painted rocks to resemble bugs (for paperweights... I suppose), painted a picture about Earth Day, and made "healthy" food to sell at recess. My class made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. The other classes made liquados (smoothies), fruit cocktails, nachos?, bags of cereal?, and bags of trail mix. There was also a teacher painting faces, I couldn't pass it up. After recess, we all went outside to have a poetry contest. The student from my class won. Then there was a fashion contest for who wore the most green clothes. The kids also picked up trash around the school, I talked about reduce, reuse, and recycle, and new plastic recycle bins were introduced. Of course there wouldn't be a Honduran holiday without cake, so we sang happy birthday to the Earth and ate cake while writing our promises to the Earth on a paper leaf and taping it to a giant cardboard tree. Fun Around the House
There are a few hassles about the house that I deal with an a regular basis. First, the refrigerator has sealant problems and will randomly pop open. To keep our food from going foul, I tied a rope around the door and wrapped the other end around the window latch. Whenever opening or closing the fridge, I now have to unwind and wind the rope around the latch again. The fridge also has a condensation problem causing everything inside to be constantly wet. Second, the pipe in the pila (large concrete wash basin) outback keeps coming undone. One piece of the pipe disconnects causing all the water to come gushing out. Then I have to shove the pipe back in the hole while trying not to get soaked from the spray.

Third, the pipes under the kitchen sink also leak. To avoid an incessant flood on our kitchen floor, I placed a bowl underneath it to catch the water. It catches most of the water. The sink also leaks around the rim into the wooden drawers adjacent to it. The top drawer is constantly wet and has developed mold so we can only use the bottom three drawers.Fourth, the yard in insanely overgrown. At the beginning of the year, we had a dispute with the school about the yard work. They tried to tell us the previous volunteers all paid for their own gardening. We argued that they stipulated all bills related to the house were their obligation. They finally agreed to pay for a gardener... but they wait until the yard is so impenetrable and Christina and I almost reach our breaking point before getting someone to take care of it.Fifth, the toilet has been getting the chain stuck under the flap when it is flushed. This means jiggling the handle every time to ensure the toilet doesn't run constantly. Half the time I forget and have to go back in the restroom to jiggle it.

Sixth, the windows (in the whole house) don't properly fit creating space between them and the concrete house. On the top portion of each window, the gap is as much as 1 1/2 in. while the gap on the bottom of the windowsill is much smaller. This causes two problems, bugs can easily get into the house as can water when it rains. For the bugs, we taped up all the windowsills with duct tape.

The water issue is harder to solve. Fortunately we have overhangs above most of the windows in the house so the rain can't even reach the window, unfortunately the two windows with no overhang are in our bedrooms. So when it rains and is windy, the water trickles in the gap and down the wall to our beds and the floor where we have clothes and suitcases and other junk. I tried stuffing bags in the holes to no good. I also tried taping it but the tape just comes off. So when it rains, I put a deodorant can under each suitcase, to lift it off the floor, move the clothes to the other side of the room, and pull my bed away from the wall. I also laid down paper towels under the ledges to try and soak up some of the leakage.

In any house there are bound to be little annoyances. The difference is in San Diego I can call someone to come fix them or go to the hardware store and try my handyman skills whereas here there is no one to call and even if you do they probably won't do anything (or anything that lasts) anyway and the hardware stores are sadly lacking (plus I don't have a lot of extra money to spend there).

Mom
My mom is coming to visit me for a week. She will be here Saturday. I am so excited. We are going to the jungle for a few days and the idyllic paradise of Roatan, an island off the Caribbean coast, for a few more.