Tropical Depression Agatha in C.A.

Well, the rainy season has arrived!

After 10 virtually dry months, we are now enjoying the tropical rainy season we have felt cheated of for so long.  Tegucigalpa was looking like a dusty, dry, barren land a month ago.  However, we have been blessed with daily rain for the last 2 weeks and now the thirsty mountains are getting water-logged.  As we drove around the city today, much of the water run-off on the street was the brown-red color of earth.  With this much rain in a short period of time, it cannot soak into the drenched ground anymore and is just rushing down the mountainsides and into storm drains.

A common sight over the past couple of weeks have been water rushing UP and OUT of manhole covers.   This is truly an amazing sight and our best guess is that clogged pipes underground are not allowing water to pass, so rivers are created on the roads as the water is coaxed by gravity to go somewhere else.

This picture from La Tribuna was taken yesterday in Comayagüela (across the river from Tegucigalpa). 

 

These pictures, from El Heraldo, were taken in Tegucigalpa as well.

Here is a video from the news.

There are a lot of people who are impacted by this storm in a significant way.  Many people in this city live in houses that are in areas where mudslides and torrential rains can wipe out their homes.

We hope to fly home for the summer this Thursday evening.  The airport has been closing for periods of time over the last few days because of the rain.  We're keeping our fingers crossed that our plane will be able to take off.  But we also realize that our potential problem of having our flight cancelled is small potatoes compared the real problems, heart ache and challenges other people endure.

Happy Birthday Eric

We celebrated Eric's birthday with a party at our house...

A new painting by Honduran artist Maury Flores

Deluge

We were treated today with an authentic tropical downpour.  I had my camera at school to take a couple of pictures, "Hold on, kids, I have to take a picture of this CRAZY rainstorm!"  The rain was so loud that I couldn't hear my students speaking.

This was the view from my classroom

This is just outside my classroom after the rain.  There were rivers flowing down walkways, 

flooded grassy areas and a lot of kids gawking at the beautiful storm.

When we got home, the power was out because of powerful lightening and a loud clap of thunder.  We took the opportunity to start celebrating Eric's birthday early and we had a happy hour/lounge time with the Roberts, followed by chicken and vegetable soup with matzah balls.  YUM!

¡Ganamos!

Last weekend we went to one of our usual haunts, the Honduras Maya.  We lounge in the sun.  We swim in the pool. We soak in the hot tub.

Last Saturday when we arrived at mid-afternoon, there was a whole different scene happening there.  Music, salsa dancers, tropical decorations and a lot more people.  Turns out, it was Dia del Periodista, or journalist appreciation day.  This didn't impact our day at the pool too much, there was just better music and people watching.

But then the games started.

We didn't jump in and participate in a strange scavenger hunt-like game.  We've been at some birthday parties where a clown/MC will start shouting out different things, and people run to the clown with the item in hand.  Sometimes, it's an everyday thing like a belt or earring.  But then they start asking for things like blackberrys, wallets, and credit cards.  Then they played bingo, with a journalistic theme, like calling our "camera!" and "pen!"

Then the hula hooping started and a man approached me to see if I would participate.  At first I said no, then he asked again (in typical Honduran fashion) and I said yes.  Long story, short, I won the contest and the prize was to stay at a resort in Tele called Telemar.  Check it out!

Then the next competition started, the swimming.  Eric has already won a swimming competition at the Maya about a month ago.  He won a towel with a "Barena" patch on it (a Honduran beer, not very good, but the towel was cool).  He won that competition easily.  But this time the stakes were higher... a weekend at the lodge at  Pico Bonito.

He held back a little at the start, then he jumped in and the competition was over.

Just before his turn, he was far in the lead. 

We ended up winning both the trips!  Now when we get back this summer from California, we have a couple of good road trips to look forward to!

Care Package!!!

Today was a very special day!  A surprise care package arrived from Sonoma County.  Michelle was probably wondering why we did not post on this earlier, but it just got to us monday morning.  Apparently it can take as much as 3 MONTHS to ship magazines to Honduras.  After all that time the box had some water damage but only two of the magazines were ruined. As you can see we got a hearty infusion of magazines and even some stuffed animals for the kids.  Thanks Michelle!  

Chiminike!

I still don't know what the word means, but when we went there, we sure had fun!  We had heard that the museum was fun and modern, but we were amazed by how great it was!  We knew about Chiminike long before we moved here.  The superintendent who interviewed us used it (I think) as a selling point to get us to move here with our kids.  "Tegucigalpa even has a children's museum!" she said enthusiastically.

So why has it taken us almost 10 months to go there?!  I don't know. They had tractors we could drive, a tv studio where Linnea gave her first newscast, a children's grocery story that had everything from sushi to batteries to Big Sexy shampoo.  We played with a wind machine, got sneezed out by a giant nose, played in a trippy light/projection room where our psychedelic image was projected on a wall, operated on a person, "Operation!" style where the buzzer sounds if your forceps hit the edge of the person.  We played in the water room where we could divert the water and cause floods on a seaside town, we created energy by peddling a bike.  We even went in "La Casita de Equilibrio".  The view was not quite as dazzling as the Discovery Museum in Sausalito with the GG bridge and the San Francisco skyline in the background.  But the view was pretty good!  We had a great time.

Three Weeks of School To Go!

Well, it looks like we have just about made it through our first school year of our international teaching experience!!  Before we know it we will be kicking back in the plaza in Sebastopol at farmers market, hanging out with missed friends and loved ones, enjoying our summer vacation.  We have learned so much over the past 9 months, it is almost hard to imagine how far we have come since we all got on that plane in San Francisco on July 28th.

We have started making our plans for the summer.  We should be arriving sometime on Thursday the 3rd of June... Our flight arrangements ended up getting pretty messed up and we are waiting to see if they can fix them.  We have house sitting gigs lined up for most of the summer in our old neighborhood.  We are going to take a couple of road trips to visit friends and family.  We are hoping to catch a couple of music festivals as well before we head back on July 21st for some more travel around Central America, possibly El Salvador and Guatemala...

It also looks like there is going to be a summer vacation kick off party on Friday night (June 4) at the Clam Bar! Think Racer 5!!!

Simple Pleasure

     Last March we got some grim news from Jorge, our property manager.  Our cistern had run dry twice (fortunately it filled the next day, both times) and he predicted that by April we would be in a water crisis where our cistern would only be filled 2 times for the ENTIRE month.  Up to this point, our cistern was being filled twice a week.

     The entire capital was feeling the pinch of a very dry "wet season".  Locals talked about this being the driest the capital has been in 80 to 100 years.  100,000 capitalinos were without water in their cisterns.  We have 2 cisterns for the 6 units in our apartment building.

     We were scratching out heads, trying to figure out how we had contributed to the draining of our cistern.  Twice.   Granted, we are sharing this cistern with two other apartments.  But, we were already water conscious denizens.  We are Californians!  We know about water shortages!  We know about turning off the water while brushing teeth and washing the dishes.  We always fill the washing machine full... never those skimpy loads!  We turn off the water when we shave... I even started collecting the water before getting in the shower while I was waiting for the hot water heater to kick in.  We tried to think of other ways to reduce our water consumption.  Sorry kids, but bath time is next on the chopping block.  So they started taking showers with us in the morning.  This was not a popular idea.  They love  bath time together.  But we had to make some dire and necessary changes.  Fortunately, for all of April our cistern never went dry.

     Last week we noticed that our downstairs neighbor was out of town.  His car was gone and we hadn't seen him.  AhHa!  One less person using water!  (It's so funny how our brains work in crisis mode).  So the kids were surprised tonight with the treat of a bath.  We will still have them take showers and we will continue to use as little water as possible, but the bath was just so much fun!