Another Week Past, Welcome to 2008

Hey everyone, I just wanted to quickly check in and let you all know that we successfully brought in the new year in Teguz. I am quickly finding that most big days and exciting times here involve a lot of fireworks and the burning of things. I believe I alluded to that in my last post concerning Christmas and I will second my comment. New Year's eve here also involves eating a substantial amount of food, much like Christmas Eve. I ate three dinners on the 31st which all involved chicken, rice, beans, tortilla's, salad with red beets, and nacatamale's (rice, beans, chicken with a soggy bread wrap - needless to say I wasn't that into it because of the soggy bread).

Speaking of food, this week I had an experience that was encouraging in regards to my adaptation to this culture. I was sitting in Spanish class and was getting very hungry. When I'm hungry I generally have a certain craving or a desire for a certain food; I realized that at the moment I would have been most content with anything in a tortilla. Then I realized that I really wanted some beans in my tortilla and wouldn't mind having chicken and rice accompanying. That night for dinner I saw that what was served was the same as my first meal here in Honduras. The great thing was that I really enjoyed dinner this time and I remember that my first night, that was not my opinion at all. It was really a very nice feeling that I am beginning to appreciate and enjoy the food here (except the nacatamale's of course).

Another exciting part of my experience here has been developing a relationship with my brother Lemuel (24). This last week or two has been great as we have finally gotten real comfortable with each other. We have a card game he taught me, but I didn't know the loser was supposed to get slapped by the winner. He just told me that this week and so we have gotten to a point where we can freely slap each others arm with force as the game requires or slug each other in the shoulder as a brother would as a way to say hi. We got to spend some time working together on "our" house early one morning together as a wind storm removed part of our roof and we went searching for it. We found it close by on a neighbors roof (it was a section of tin about 4 ft X 15 ft) and drug it back to our house. Little things like that and talking about movies we like and feeling free to beat up on each other are really helping me feel a part of the family.

As I have been in contact with people, a frequent question continues to be my adaptation to the language. Based on my unreasonable expectations that I had entering the country, I am doing very poorly in the language. But given what I know now about the difficulties of understanding a new language, I am very pleased with my progress and look forward to learning much more. I can generally get my point across to those I am trying to communicate with, but understanding is very difficult. I actually find it much easier to speak Spanish to my STEP group because they understand my gringo accent as they have it too. Nonetheless, I enjoy trying to have conversations with those I meet on a bus and with my taxi drivers as well as developing relationships with those I have met in the church.

My next update should include some information about life outside the city as my current plans with my host family are to go about three hours outside the city to a village in which my host brothers father lives and my host brother was raised. Thanks for your time in reading this and thank you for all your prayers! Also, I have signed up for Skype, so if you so desire to add me as a contact you may - just search my Skype name of "jhersh85".


I somehow don't have a picture of myself with my host family, but this is one of Karen's H's pictures - this way you can at least see my family. The lady to the left in the red shirt is Kenia, she is a host sister of mine. Beside her is Lemuel, my 24 year old host brother who plays drums for the church (I don't know much about drumming, but based on the opinions of others that know about that stuff, he is extremely talented) and is studying in college to become a dentist. Beside him going to your right is Walter; he is Karen Hess's host father who works as a traveling electrician. In the back with the hat on is Aroni (Lemuel's nephew), he is 17 and lives closeby (though I don't know with whom as I believe his father works in Maryland, US as a dentist). I spend a lot of time with Lemuel and Aroni every evening. The lady in the black shirt is Karen's host mother, Audely. She is a sister to Lemuel. The child she is holding is her own, Sofia (8 months). Karen is quite obviously the white girl in the red shirt. In the front row from left to right is Flor (17 year old niece of Lemuel that lives in our house with us, I think her mother lives in Maryland, US as well). In the rocking chair is my host mother and she is holding Diego (Walter and Audely's son) who is 6 years old and attends a bilingual school (English and Spanish). And I am standing behind the camera pushing the button. Hope you enjoy seeing those I live with here.