First Impressions

• Claudiacfavre's Profile
• About this blog
• Entry from Cofradia

Trip Start Jan 04, 2008 Previous
Entry Trip End Jul 16, 2008 Next
Entry

  Cofradia, Honduras
Thursday, January 10, 2008

My flight here was almost too good.  I kept waiting for something to go drastically wrong because it was so smooth.  My friend Chad came to Honduras with me, in case you didn't know.  We have known each other since about sophomore year of high school.  We had a layover in Houston and then flew down to San Pedro Sula by noon.  Ben greeted us in the airport.  Ben is the man with the ideas that basically started the Cofradia Bilingual School, in which I will be volunteering.  His wife, Mirna, runs the place though.  Ben was almost an exact replica of my favorite custodian of all time, Dave.  If you are a climber at SEMO, you get to know Dave very well, very quickly.  Ben is much the same way; he tells stories after story and basically just talks for hours on end without letting a word in from his viewers.  They also look startlingly similar.  Bernadette, a girl about my age from New Jersey, was with him as well.  Turns out, we were on the same flight but didn't know to look for one another.  We have definitely hit it off but unfortunately she is only here for two weeks because she is still in school at Rutgers.  Lauren was on the next flight.  She is a Spanish major from Nashville, Tennessee who will be staying for the whole semester.  I actually ate Wendy's in the airport, which I usually don't even eat at home.  It hit the spot though.  It marked the beginning of my language adventures.  Even broken English is hard to come by around here. 
 
After driving to Cofradia from San Pedro Sula, we visited Ben & Mirna's house for a cup of tea.  They have a lot of people living with them such as children, a sister, and some nieces.  It was a full house but probably much less populated than many of the Honduran homes in this area.  My house is a very nice house.  I live with a lot of other volunteers.  Chad and I are splitting a room with a wooden divider down the middle.  It is a common misperception that we are a couple, we are not!!!  Alex, Nathan, and Gerardo have been living here since the fall.  Alex is from Indianapolis, Nathan is from Canada, and Gerrardo grew up in the country's capital, Tegucigalpa.  It's nice to have a bilingual local to assist in getting used to the city.  There is a smaller house down the road that a few other volunteers live in.  I briefly met Genevieve but her parents are in town right now.  Mel & Toby are a married couple that also lives there.  Anne, a girl from Vermont, hung out with us most of the weekend.  We basically just hung out on our gigantic porch and played my favorite game, the "Random Question Game", to get better acquainted.  We stayed up late telling stories and laughing. 
 
The house is kind of interesting because there are a lot of really nice things in it that are "just for decoration", such as a Jacuzzi tub, a clothes washer, an oven, and many of the faucets.  They just don't work... also, there is really poor water pressure so sometimes it isn't strong enough to get water to go upstairs, which is where the shower is located.  Usually the toilet upstairs is good for one or two flushes per day, but there is a fully functioning toilet downstairs.  Apparently they usually shower using a bucket of water that they heat in the microwave.  On Saturday there must have been too much water pressure and it flooded the downstairs with about an inch of water.  Luckily, Lauren noticed it in the middle of the night and the floor is tile, so it was easy to clean up.  It was good motivation to mop. 
 
On Saturday, we took the "chicken bus" to San Pedro Sula.  It was neat to look out the window and briefly observe their culture, which is very different from my own.  Usually, the chicken bus is over crowded but it wasn't so bad this time.  We went straight to the mall; many of the volunteers have been here much longer than us so they were craving American food and American movies.  While they did that, the newbies explored the city.  There is truly nothing to see, but it was fun to do some more observation and get a little exercise.  One thing that I like, is that the locals seem to be completely oblivious to us gringos.  There is zero tourism here, so I don't think they associate us with money.  They don't seem to have any opinions about us what so ever. 
 
Chad and I cooked dinner and then the whole group hung out on the patio again.  We played Uno and Egyptian Rat Screw.    I tried to get a good night's sleep to get up early and go to the market.  My alarm didn't go off so I ended up going at 7:45 instead of 6:30.  There was still a decent selection.  Our money is really strong here.  We get nearly 20 limpera (limps) for $1.  I bought some produce and then walked around town a little bit.  For breakfast I had a baleta at the market.  A baleta is a traditional Honduran food; homemade tortillas with beans, chicken, and eggs.  It was decently good but it's a strange food to eat first thing in the morning.  It is also hard not to be a picky American and be a little disgusted by them cleaning the grill with blue jeans... I almost got a psychological stomachache.  I attempted to go to church this morning, mostly to observe since I can't actually speak Spanish yet.  I kept walking by and they told me it started at nine but I never saw it in action. 
 
Today we walked down to the school.  It's so cute!  Mountains and jungles surround the town so the view is pretty amazing.  The school has some neat murals too.  Most of the classrooms are divided by bookshelves and there is a large courtyard in the middle of the compound.  The whole thing has a high wall around it and a guard at the front gate.  There were two little boys there that I practiced my Spanish on.  Next, we walked down to Terry's house, who is Ben's friend that is an ex-Vietnam vet from America.  The school's pool is in his back yard.  There is a large tree house above the stone pool.  They built it all by hand and I can't wait to jump in it next week sometime!  Ben definitely comes up with some wild dreams, almost to the point of disillusionment.  However, after seeing the school and the pool in person, I have become more of a believer in what a dreamer is capable of. 
 
The rest of today has been lazy... for fun we read books, shoot slingshots, jump rope, play with a flat volleyball, learn Spanish, and take naps.  Rough life... haha. 
 

Print this entry Share San Pedro Sula hotels

Previous Entry Next Entry