Ho hum
Trip Start
Mar 28, 2003
1
12
20
Trip End
Jul 23, 2003
Tegucigalpa,
Honduras
Wednesday, May 28, 2003
The weekend was a bit of the same old thing...went out to the discoteca and hung at the mall. On Sunday I went to Valle de Los Angeles. It's a cute little touristy town about 30 minutes away. There you can buy tons of wood and pottery handicrafts...so I loaded up on the exotic Lenca pottery. Got home around 5:00 and met my Honduran friends at El Patio for pupusas, chorizo, and beer. The championship soccer game was on: Montagua (Tegus team) VS. Marathon (San Pedro Sula team). Marathon won 1-0. But they do things different here. Rather than playing a set and determining the winner via best 3 out of 5 games, etc...they do it by the highest number of goals scored?! So if this Sunday Montagua scores 2 goals-then they are automatically the champion on the spot. If they only score 1-then the game will go into overtime....blah blah blah. So that's the lowdown on Honduran soccer.
We had Monday off to celebrate Memorial Day. I spent the day with a friend in El Centro and took some pictures. I broke yet another rule set by the Regional Security Office (it's my goal to break as many rules as I can!). We are not supposed to take taxis--but I take them with my Honduran friends. Another big rule is that if you do in fact take a taxi, you never let the driver pick up other passengers along the way. So Alan and I hop in a taxi and all of a sudden this guy starts to get in next to me and I start
freaking out. Alan loves to laugh at all of the stupid Gringo rules about these things. He told me we had to "economize" and ride with other people. So along a 15 minute ride about 10 people came and went in our little pathetic taxi. But it was much better b/c what usually was an 80 Lemp ($4.50) ride was only 10 Lemps ($0.60)!! So I definitely won't freak out the next time he decides we should share a taxi.
Monday night we had 4 new interns arrive. I have been just wiped out as I have been put in charge of holding their hands and getting them to where they need to go. Two of them are here in the POL section with me. I feel bad b/c there just isn't enough work for 3 interns to be doing right now...but there is this vicious competition at the Embassy for interns and I think we are more of just like prize items sometimes :) So I've been
showing them the ropes and have planned activities for all 5 of us pretty much every night for the next week. One lingering intern who's been here since January left last night so we had a BBQ for him.
So tonight we have the obligatory 'welcome the interns' dinner at my boss' house. I'm staying at my co-worker's house the rest of the week while he is in Guatemala for a conference--as his fiancee doesn't want to be there alone. Thursday night I guess they have regular casino and movie night over there, so a bunch of people are coming over for that. I'll probably lay low Friday night b/c Saturday we are planning on going out to Comayagua again to do food sorting at the Monastery, and then lunch at the Joint Task Force Bravo base at Soto Cano. Then I am going to get these interns out to the disco on Saturday night to break them in and hopefully loosen them up a bit. And if everyone isn't too hung over on Sunday--we'll hit up the mall to see Matrix II.
