Home Sweet Honduras

It’s kind of crazy to think that I’m currently living in a country other than the United States. I flew into the capitol of Honduras, Tegucigalpa on Friday with Mike. Our plane landed on the runway and the whole cabin immediately broke into applause… this is the first time I’ve experienced this, but because of the mountainous terrain and short runways, I guess a safe landing is something to be especially thankful for. We made it through immigration and were finally reunited with the rest of our group. We loaded all our luggage into the backseat of the truck, along with Sean, and went out for our first Honduran meal together… at Burger King. The food was a little different, but for the most part the same idea as the American version. Tegucigalpa had everything from a Pizza Hut to a Sherwin Williams, and to my amusement a John Deere dealership. We also stopped at a larger grocery store in town which I’ll always remember as the first place, but definitely not the last, I saw a man in a truck openly displaying a large weapon (and we’ll just leave it at that.) Apparently nothing to be alarmed about though, so we headed north to Talanga, our home for the next year! Talanga is definitely different from Tegucigalpa, with its one paved road running through the middle of town. All the others are dirt and filled with massive potholes, but most of the transportation is by foot or horse/donkey/oxen so that doesn’t matter as much. Talanga is a fairly large town with a small town feel. There are no large stores, only numerous small shops called pulperias every couple of blocks that sell all the necessities. The people are extremely friendly and welcoming. It’s been different getting used to greeting every person you walk by with a “buenas” or an “adios” (ironically enough), because not doing so is considered rude. Anytime you actually stop to talk to someone, a kiss on the cheek is customary. It’s been hard learning the names of all the people we meet, and I feel bad because it seems everyone remembers mine. There’s a group of 5 “key players” as Joe calls them, who are members of our church that help us out immensely here, and we can go to them with any questions we may have. Friday night we stopped at a roadside stand near the church for a good dinner of balliatas, which are tortillas filled with beans, cheese, mantequilla (sour cream-like stuff), and eggs… all the staples.

We returned home, played some cards, and all was going good until we decided to head to bed. I came out of the bathroom to find the guys all gathered in Mike’s room. Immediately, I spotted the problem… and it was huge. Hanging out on the wall above Mike’s bed was this giant black tarantula… probably the one thing that scared me most about coming to this country. Of course we all joked about how there were tarantulas down here, but in reality, you rarely see any (the volunteers from last year had seen only one, and outside their house) and I never expected to see one my first night here, and in my new home of all places. Well, thus began the ordeal of removing the spider from our casa, but unfortunately he didn’t go far. This was an ordeal in itself, but luckily we do have the raw footage of his capture J Obviously killing the beast would be the best plan, but I don’t think anything smaller than a 2x4 would have done the job… and there were none lying around the house.

Anyway, “Muerto” or “Dead” as Lauren and I like to call him, has a new home on our front patio because the boys insisted on keeping him as a new pet. The next day we caught a gecko in the living room… those things are quick little creatures- I had to jump on the couch to avoid its erratic behavior… but the original plan was to make Muerto and gecko fight it out for the rights to be our pet. But we decided that was cruel and let the gecko go. I keep insisting we need to drive the spider 10 miles out of town and release it too, but Joe has since looked up how to care for a tarantula so unfortunately it may stick around a while. All the locals think we’re crazy though, and everyone we’ve shared this story with has advised us to kill it. I agree with them.

Well the Internet is very slow, and it´s very hard to put pictures up, so I´m going to try again soon... and the video I mentioned too!