Well, it's May. I have now been living in San Sebastián for a year and I'm happy for it. This little town has really grown on me. Towards the beginning of April I went to Tela on the the north coast of Honduras with my host family for Semana Santa, or Holy Week. We spent almost every day on the beach, with one day off to swim in a river in the middle of a bamboo forest. It was a great time, and it felt almost like hanging out with the fam back home.


I stopped by in La Ceiba for one night too, to visit a friend who is studying iguanas on the islands. When I got back, my host family offered me iguana for dinner, but having just learned of their status as an endangered species, I turned it down. My host family told me iguana is puro pollo, so I had to ask, why not just eat chicken then? At least one species of iguana has been eaten out of existence here.


Towards the end of the month I visited the site of a volunteer living in Ocotepeque, which is in the west of Honduras, bordering Copan. It's very mountainous and beautiful country known for its coffee. I believe its also much poorer than where I am, because all there really is is coffee, and the productive land is largely owned by just a few people. The volunteer there had some 200 computers shipped in from the US, and she asked me to help her install Spanish software on the machines so that people here could actualy use them. It was not an easy task, for a number of reasons (like power outages), and even with the help of a self-taught computer tech from her town it took us the better part of a week to get through them all.


While I was there I also tagged along on one of her other projects. She has been going out to two of her aldeas to teach basic business concepts, like savings or capital, to the elementary school kids. That was a lot of fun and great for the kids. In one of the aldeas they hadn't had school for a month because there was no teacher. It started raining during our session there, and afterwards the truck we went in couldn't make it back up the mountain because the mud was so slick. We had to leave it there and walk back in the rain, at night. It was a really nice walk.

It was a great time, and I learned a lot, except that now everyone in my site is asking me when I'm going to get computers shipped in for them. I didn't know how long it would take, so when I got back everyone said they were worried that I was lost. The computer teacher I work with took advantage and started a rumor that I got married to a girl in Copan. She likes to mess with me, and chisme spreads fast here.

It's been quite a month. Classes have now started at the colegio, though it took a few weeks for things to get going. First there were two weeks of recuperación for the kids who weren't able to pass all their classes last year. After that was a week of talks on things like good behaviour and the environment. Not all the kids bothered to show up for those. They have the talks because the teachers are not actually allowed to teach any classes until they are officially named by the government. Some teachers were not named for any classes until a few weeks after school had started, which is why I was asked to give an English class to the 7th graders for a while. Teaching forty noisy, undisciplined pre-teens was quite an experience and I learned a lot. But I was relieved when their usual profesor was finally named and he was able to continue the class.

Now many of the kids I was teaching come into the computer lab to play around during their breaks. Turns out that before they just didn't think that they could. Now that they know me better they're less shy about coming in. They sit two or more to a computer and play games, draw pictures, listen to music, or write love notes to each other. There are only 8 computers, yet today there were as many as 26 kids in the lab until the teachers kicked them out so that they would study for the tests they have this week. The most popular program for both kids and teachers is World of Goo, which is a great puzzle game. The directora seems to be grudgingly accepting, though she wants me to be stricter with them.


I also have a computer class in the evening for anyone in town, and now have at least one person interested in learning programming. The computer teacher here and another teacher from the escuela are also taking a programming class at the university in Tegucigalpa, so I've been helping them with that. Then there's my English class at the Mayor's office. They've been saying they've wanted one for months now, but it's only just gotten started. Still, it's going well.

It's nice to have work again, even if there's not as much time to read. A friend of mine left a laptop with me for a few days to fix and I barely read a thing. I was actually happy to give it back. I will have to get one eventually, though, since I will need one to do some of the things I want to do here.


The above pictures are from a trip to La Piñeta, one of the aldeas, or villages in my municipality. We went up there to handle a property dispute with the neighboring town of Guajiquiro, and stopped by a coffee farm on the way back. The woman in the middle of the first picture is a Cuban volunteer who lives and works in my town.

A few weeks ago my neighbor's dog went into heat. Not many people here like to keep a female dog precisely because of what happens next. Dogs from all over town (and even neighboring towns, I'm told) were suddenly hanging out day and night around her, waiting for a chance. Some she allowed, some she tried to fight off, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. Sometimes other dogs would help her fight one off. She had had puppies only some two months before, and the two that hadn't been given away would sometimes help her fight someone off. My front porch was covered in urine from dogs marking their territory. Then there was the barking. Good times.

For April Fools I am moving time back one day, so today is now March 31st and I have not yet missed a month in posting.

I almost forgot to post this month. I've actually been pretty busy, which took me somewhat by surprise after so many weeks of idleness. I'm currently teaching English classes to the employees at the Mayor's office, as well as the students of 7th, 10th, and 11th grade. I'm helping the computer teacher with her classes for the high school students. I have my own computer class open to anyone in town in the evenings. I'm still working on convincing the director of the colegio to let me teach computer classes to middle school. There are only 8 working computers, so she doesn't want the younger kids messing with them. The government has promised another 10. In the meantime I've been sneaking elementary school kids in when there are computers free. I'm doing some tutoring as well.

It's been quite a change. People here never asked me to do so much before. Maybe it's because they finally figured out how to use me, or maybe it's because I finally shaved my beard. Regardless I'm enjoying myself.

I'd write more, but I'm in Comayagua at the moment and don't want to miss my bus. I'll try to be more interesting next time.

I have a new post office box in La Paz, which I'll be sharing with a few other volunteers. The address is on my contact page. It saves me a night in Tegucigalpa when I get mail. Send me books, in Spanish if possible. I'm on my second to last.

The past few weeks have been incredible. Unfortunately, as I no longer have a computer of my own, I won't be able to go into that much depth or post pictures. Two days before Christmas the graphics card in my laptop died, so I can no longer see what it's doing, even with an external monitor. It now serves as an overpriced and inconvenient MP3 player, playing the same music, over and over. Oddly, I've hardly missed my computer at all.

So, I've been reading a lot. Some time ago I read this article: Is Google Making Us Stupid?, and I think there must be some truth to it. It took me several months to get through the first half of Dostoevsky's Demons because I kept losing my concentration. After my computer stopped working I finished the second half in a week. For the past week or so I've been lying in my hammock, finishing a book every one or two days. Of course, with school out and the mayor's office closed for the feria, there hasn't been much else to do. Makes me wonder what I might be doing if I had never gotten into programming.

Christmas and New Year's were fun. I spent them with my host family. There where a lot of firecrackers and on New Year's dummies were dressed up and burned alive. Christmas was the start of the feria in Lamani, the town next to mine, so I went one night to hang out with the volunteer who lives there. On the 14th, the Business project had a workshop in Siguatepeque. We were asked to bring a teacher from each of our towns and we learned about a small project developed in Guatemala for use with elementary school kids to teach them some business basics. It's good project, and the math teacher who went with me liked it too, so we've made plans to use it. It was also fun to see friends again.

Right after the workshop, the feria in my town started. Six days of bull fights, processions, the mohiganga (drunk guys in scary masks pulling people out to dance), church services, fireworks, and dancing. There was a ferris wheel and other small rides, and booths set up throughout the park. Then there was the toro de fuego, a wooden bull covered with fireworks. Several guys (usually drunk) take turns carrying it and running through the park while the fireworks shoot off into the crowd. What can I say? Overall, the feria was a lot of fun, but pretty exhausting. People running the local businesses went on two hours of sleep every night. I've never seen the town so full of people, though I'm told there would have been many more if it hadn't been so cold.

I'm sure I'm leaving a lot out. The feria in Humuya (another neighboring town that used to be an aldea of San Sebastián) starts this weekend. Today, incidentally, is the one year anniversary of this site. Oh, and I have water again, 24/7, clear, and ice-cold.