First Days . . .

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.