Hi all!
So, here I am . . . I have been in
Honduras for over a week! I apologize for not starting this blog
sooner; I've been a bit under the weather (my stomach is getting
accustomed to Honduran food, as the sisters say). Since this is the
first post, let me give a brief introduction:
Early this year, I decided that I would
like to do a year of volunteer work. I searched around a little for
the best fit, and chose VIDES. VIDES is an international program for
young people who would like to spend some time volunteering with the
Salesian sisters (the women's branch of St. John Bosco's order).
The Salesian sisters primarily work with poor girls, and especially
in areas of education. I requested to be sent to a location in
Central or South America, and was asked to go to Honduras (it's in
Central America, near El Salvador and Guatemala, a little south of
Mexico . . . I had to look it up too). After a hectic summer of many
blessings, here I am in lovely Santa Rosa de Copán, Honduras.
As some of my family and friends know,
Honduras is not considered a particularly safe country by global
standards, and apparently San Pedro Sula (the city I flew in to) is
one of the least safe areas of the country. In all honesty, I was
pretty nervous getting off the plane (I'm by myself, I'm obviously a
foreigner, I don't speak Spanish very well, what if the sister's not
waiting for me?, etc.) . . . but I recognized the Salesian white
habit right away, and off we went with no problems whatsoever.
The Honduran countryside is absolutely
gorgeous (if I had been clever enough to remember the chord to
connect my camera to my computer, I would post several pictures at
this point . . . working on that). Everything is so lush and green.
Santa Rosa is a little city, fairly inland, and up in the mountains.
The first few days here were a bit of a
whirlwind. My Spanish is really very poor, so I was pretty confused
as to what was happening more than half the time. I was very
grateful to have Fatima, a very sweet and patient
volunteer from El Salvador, to follow around. Maria
Auxiliadora – the school where I am staying – has another 250+
students in addition to the 50 or so boarding girls. I was
definitely mobbed several times by school girls trying to ask me
questions in Spanish, trying to speak the couple words of English
they knew, and - the one I was not really expecting - trying to see
my blue eyes, and then exclaiming “Que lindas sus ojos!”. At one
point I followed Fatima into a classroom, as usual, not really
understanding what was going on. Apparently we were subbing for a
teacher, because we spent the next 45 minutes or so there. The class
was one of the youngest age groups at the school (I think they were
about 11 or 12 years old), and I'm pretty sure my presence made the
class period a lot more hectic than it was supposed to be. One girl
would come up to the front to ask me a question, and then another
would come, and another, and another, until I was surrounded by
basically all of the girls. They kept begging me to sing a song in
English, and, although it was somewhat mortifying, I eventually had
to give in.
I arrived on Tuesday. On Friday, the
girls left for a week of vacation in honor of the feast of St. Rose
of Lima – the patron of the city. On Sunday, Fatima returned home
to El Salvidor, and the sisters went with her for a couple days of
vacation. So I, a sister from another house who came to stay with
us, and a couple of the boarding girls who could not go home, were
all of the sudden left in a very quiet school. For me, it was
probably for the best that the timing worked out that way, because I
got sick soon afterwards.
There is so much I could talk about,
but I need to get to bed . . . tomorrow, I wake up at 4:45 or so to
head to some sort of camp (I'm still not exactly sure what it will
be) with one of the sisters and some of the boarding girls.
