A Catch-up List...

The highs and lows of our first Honduran summer so far:

Highs:
1. We've been traveling a lot for work lately - we made it to the beautiful little town of La Campa to check out where one of the new short-term MCCers will live and work next year with an organization called CASM (Mennonite Social Action Commission). We bumped around in the back of a truck for two days visiting some very small mountain communities, made it to a ribbon-cutting ceremony of sorts (one community we visited was celebrating the completion of many small metal silos that they will use to store their corn crops), and hiked up to a waterfall in protected rain forest. Click Here to view some pictures.

2. We had an MCC team meeting in Tegucigalpa for a few days - it was great to spend a few days with everyone AND we made it to a Guillermo Anderson concert in San Juancito. I am officially a fan.

3. During a day trip for some meetings in La Ceiba, a woman I'd met during our first few months here complimented me on my improvement in Spanish. This was a pretty big deal for me. I treated myself to an ice cream afterwards.

4. Andrew's birthday was the first weekend of this month and there was much celebration. We made vegetarian groundnut stew for MCC friends, enjoyed some air-conditioning at the mall with some Honduran friends, and spent almost 3 hours trying to figure out a few chords with the church choir. And then we had cake.

5. Our Goshen friend LaRita finished up grad school in Kansas City this month and decided to celebrate by spending a week with us! We spent some time with MCC friends Josh and Maria at their farm, went on an early morning birding trip at Lago Yojoa, and got in some good beach time so she could show off her early summer Honduran tan when she gets back home.

6. There has recently been an energized movement for peace in San Pedro. We see bumper stickers distributed by the local paper, La Prensa, that read "Recuperemos La Paz" (Let's restore the peace) all over the city, and there was recently a large peace march that went through the center of the city. After my last post on the violence that is so prevalent in the media and in the minds of people here it's been really refreshing to experience the excitement around peaceful change.

7. When LaRita came she brought us dark chocolate, a french press coffee maker, and new flip flops that I'd ordered. Awesome.

Lows:
1. It is just pretty darn hot and hazy around here. The temperature doesn't let up much at night and I am sweating more than I ever thought possible. The dry season is stretching on longer than normal, and the skies have been hazy for weeks as farmers have been burning last year's crops to get ready to plant. We took a hike up the mountains on the edge of the city and from there we could barely see the city through the haze. First people said the rains should come around the 15th, which has come and gone. Farmers in La Campa told us that the rains used to start like clockwork right around the 3rd of May... this knowledge of the changing climate did not help Andrew's and my global warming paranoia.

2. We've both been sick a bit on and off - I blame the heat and also that mysterious salad I ate at the bus terminal a few weeks ago.

As you can see, the highs are outweighing the lows so things are pretty good in general. I am "casually" looking for a second volunteer-type position to help keep myself busy when we are not traveling with groups or planning for groups. We will be meeting a group of church leaders from Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic tomorrow at the Nicaraguan border to lead a learning tour of Honduran Mennonite organizations this next week. Seven whole days of nothing but Spanish! Andrew put together some favorite Honduran pictures on our Picasa site. Click here to view them (some might be repeats).