There is a two hour time difference between Honduras and Cincinnati. That being said, Honduras is directly south of Cincinnati, which results in a 5am sunrise and a 6pm sunset. At 5am, I found it difficult to get back to sleep this morning. I was able to roll over and snooze for a little bit, but it wasn't long before I was up to start my day.
Freddy had told me yesterday to dress down in a t-shirt and jeans because we were going to Talanga. That meant nothing to me, but I complied putting on my Cincinnati Reds shirt around 7:30 as I headed out the door. Freddy picked me up outside of my apartment, and we ran a couple of errands before heading over to the office. When we got there, I had a very brief conversation about Linguistics with Edgardo and talked about inuendos and double meanings of words and phrases.
I wasn't in the office for longer than 30 minutes when Freddy and Elmer (who is in administration) let me know that it was time to go. We left shortly after 9 and began running around town dropping off various bills and picking up Maricela and fish food. We then drove to Talanga, which was 30 minutes outside of the city. 30 minutes outside of the city meant 1 hour away from where we were.
We drove for a while, passing various construction sites where workers were hosing off the road so that more dirt could be packed in. Not thinking, some of us left our windows open, and got a little wet from the hose spray. It woke up Freddy and was very funny. Around 11:15 we stopped for lunch on the side of the road at a little cafe which had two options: Meat, or Mixed. I took the meat option and had some beef kababs served with beans and tortillas.
After lunch, we continued on our journey progessing on less and less smooth roads. When we finally got to Talanga, we turned down a couple of side streets and ended up at Mounte Horeb, which is the center that CCD supports in the village. It is a center set up to help at risk youth by teaching them a trade.
When we got to the center, Elmer parked the truck and the four of us walked to a pond. Elmer excitedly ran inside the nearest building and came out with a handful of fish food. He walked around the pond and threw it in excitedly. I was curious as to why he got so excited, until I saw literally hundreds of fish jumping into the air to get the food. I had never seen anything like it. Freddy explained to me that the fish were a program that Mounte Horeb was running in an attempt to raise money. There were about 1200 talapia in a pond no larger than half a basketball court. Freddy went on to explain that in town the fish weighs about a pound, and can be sold for 40 lempiras each in town. 15 lempira is about 1 US dollar, but the money goes a much longer way here.
The four of us spent the next hour or so wandering around the facilities with the caretaker Oscar, picking fruit and talking about the various programs offered. There are courses offered in computer sciences, clothes manufacturing, cosmetology, welding, and mechanical engineering, just to name a few. There are roughly 70 youth that attend ranging from 12-24 or so.
My Spanish is not nearly as good as I would like for it to be, and I had trouble keeping up with the conversations. Luckily, Maricela and Freddy helped to translate the important parts. At one point Oscar turned and clearly asked me a question, but I was not sure what it was. Maricela informed me that he was hoping that I could let him know what cirriculum I would be using. "Cirriculum for what?" I asked.
It turns out that the help that I am to be giving these at risk kids is by giving a series of lectures, or talks on Values and Faith for the next six months. It is apparently the same kind of thing that I will be doing at the Seminary, but I was not aware that in "helping to teach about Values and Faith" that I would be developing a cirriculum and teaching more than a semester's worth of classes on the topic in a language that I am extremely lacking in.
I am very excited to do it! It presents a wonderful challenge to me, and I am looking forward to figuring out how exactly I can do this. I know that I will have a lot of help, but this is a project that rests largely on my shoulders, and I couldn't be happier to be active in this way.
After we went around meeting with the students, we said our goodbyes and got back in the car to leave. We left around 2:oopm and drove a different way back home. We drove through the town of Talanga and then through some of the mountain roads made out of dirt, which were incredibly bumpy. The trip was a rough one, not only because of the roads, but because of the unbelievable mixture of beauty and tragedy. In one glace, the majesty of the mountains burst forth in radiant sunlight under the deepest hue of blue sky. In that same glance, I could see the hovels and lean-to's of the impoverished. I had never seen so many animals as skinny as I did today. But the ribs did not only show on the animals, they were evident on the people as well. The constant combination of the wonders of God's creation mixed with the heartbreak of man's creation was tiring.
As we continued up the mountain paths, we ran into a few parts of the road that were one lane due to recent land and mud slides that had wiped out half of the road and sent it rushing down the steep slopes. Eventually we made it back into Tegucigalpa and the CCD office, where we made it there just as everyone else was departing for the day.
Freddy, Maricela, Patty (a woman from the office who is very nice to me and speaks English), and some guy who's name I don't remember all drove back to Freddy's house. From there, we went to the Plaza Mira Flores, where the three of them caught taxis back to their apartments and I went shopping for an alarm clock.
I received my fair share of stares, not only because I am a gringo, but also because I am roughly a foot taller than the average Honduran. I was slighly embarrased a the electronic store because I couldn't understand how much the lady was asking for the radio, and I gave her the wrong about of money. All in all though, things went pretty well, and I was soon on my way back to the apartment.
When I got back, I fixed myself a quick dinner and took some pictures of a beautiful sunset. I hope that you can see it.
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