Three week staycation!

There is a bit of a crisis going on in the country right now and I still can't really talk about it. Fortunately, I can still explain my work and the like.

Actually, that won’t take much time at all. The crisis hit and I’ve been on staycation. Since the capital is the epicenter of the current goings on (or was until recently) I’ve not really been able to travel anywhere. We have one backdoor route we can take to visit a friend, but what would be an hour drive turns into between 3 and 5 hours depending on how often the bus stops, which is a lot. For July 4th Alice and I ignored this slight inconvenience and made the trip to a barbeque another volunteer had. It was a little weird having a barbeque and not having to cook all the food as I have become quite accustomed to doing, but it was also kinda nice.

Anyways, back to staycation. Alice and I work mostly in schools, and this month school has had 3 official days of class, which sucks for both us and our students. This means any work we had obligated ourselves to is at a standstill, and if we take on new work we risk not being able to finish the new work or the old work. We’re taking advantage of our free time by doing things like making tasty soup, reading, and watching seasons of the office a friend lent to us. Sometimes we go for walks just to go for walks. I like to think this is like a short preview of what retirement is like, except I still have the vision and clarity of mind to really enjoy it.

The good news is that things are getting closer to normal. The three official days were Monday to Wednesday of this week, and some schools went ahead and had class yesterday too, though not all teachers or students showed up.

The best news I have is that my interns showed up. One of the local high schools has a focus on tourism, and since I really wanted to develop a website for my town that would be sustainable, I had classes with 2 students and then as their required internship they are making a webpage. They are getting pretty good at it. Their biggest barrier is the language, since HTML and CSS both rely on an English vocabulary, but they are starting to recognize important words faster and be able to change the properties. So far we have a main page, an example for a restaurant and they are working on an artisan shop. They like to use colors I don’t love, but it will be very eye catching, which is good. Overall, the point is that they understand web design and we get some more publicity for my town, which could really use a few extra tourists right now.

So that’s all I really have to say. I figure I should try to spice this whole thing up with some pictures, but I don’t really have many great new pictures. I am going to search my hard drive now for something interesting.

Okay, I can't get the pictures to upload.... Sorry. Sadly this will be just another boring pictureless blog.

Standfast, bird pics, and random update

We are doing well here in Honduras, and since we are bored and in limbo as we wait to see what will happen over the next few days, I figured I'd post some pictures from our recent activities.

In May we were lucky to have Drew's parents come visit. We took them to Roatan Bay Island, Copan Ruins and our site in a ten-day whirlwind adventure.Here John and I are sailing in a bit of rain after snorkeling on one of the best reef locations in the world.

My favorite activity was while we were in Copan Ruins. We went to a bird park where they rescue tropical birds. The small fee to enter the park helps maintain the park, and they had birds in almost every color. They also have a coffee farm near the park and you can buy fresh beans and enjoy a hot cup of java after the tour. They also let you hold some of the birds and see them up close, and they are quite friendly. One liked me so much it nibbled at my shirt and then poo'd on my shoulder, all while cooing in my ear. My shirt was orange, I guess I looked like tasty fruit.

I couldn't get the pictures to move to correspond with the text, but I know you all can figure it all out. We are currently under a national curfew and not allowed to leave our sites except for emergencies, but we are safe and doing well. Our town is very quiet, schools are out, so we are mostly bored and working on job applications. We've been cooking a lot and trying to hang out with our friends here ,just in case. We are avoiding large crowds, keeping our opinions to ourselves, and hoping that in the next days things get better and life goes back to normal, whatever normal may be! Keep us in your thoughts, and I will try to post some more pretty pictures over the next few days.