Getting ready for spring break!

Well I haven’t done a whole lot since returning from Copan, but I figured I would do a blog post on some odds and ends before leaving for spring break tomorrow. I am pretty excited about spring. Tomorrow four other girls and I are leaving for La Ceiba, a pretty vibrant town up along the North coast, close to the Bay Islands where most of the tourists in Honduras go. We will be here until Friday, and then leave for our real adventure, La Moskitia. La Moskitia is a region of Honduras to the East of La Ceiba. It is the largest undeveloped rainforest in Central America, just north of the Amazon. It is mostly unreachable by land, so my friends and I will be taking trucks along the beach to get there. Once we get there we will mostly get around by boat or foot as there are no roads. There are 8 of us going on this leg of the trip, and it might be nice have a bit of a larger group to go on hikes and travel with, it also makes it cheaper. Going to a undeveloped rainforest is a lot more expensive than you would think. La Moskitia unfortunately has become a big area with the drug trade, with drugs coming from Colombia and getting passed through Honduras and to the Mexican drug cartels. A speaker in class today told us that La Moskitia is the “center of the universe for cocaine transportation”. As long as we stay on the beaten path with our guides we should be fine. I really don’t know what to expect, but it should definitely be an adventure.

In other news, we are just about halfway done with our time here in Honduras. We only have 54 more days until the end of the semester. I will be here a bit longer since my parents are coming down the day the group leave and we will be here for another week or so. I think we are going to go back to Copan and then up to the Bay Islands, which will be fun and it will be nice to see more of Honduras before I leave. It’s crazy; I don’t know where the time has gone. When we get back from spring break we will be in our last class. I can’t believe that everyone at Calvin is on spring break already. I am a bit jealous that they are all able to go home, but spring break here will be fun, and I will be home soon enough. I am trying to figure out all my summer plans, which is significantly harder when you are out of the country. I think I have found a good internship for the summer, and I will be happy if that all works out. I think I am also going to take some online classes at the community college and try to stay busy. Well that’s all for now- need to finish up packing for tomorrow.

Travel, travel, travel

So this was a pretty busy week. Last weekend was one of our two three day weekends, so a group of 8 of us decided to go to El Salvador. It turned out to be great fun. We left Friday right after class, and just barely made it in time to catch the bus to the border, the first of our many fun bus rides that day. Because we couldn’t make it on time for the Tica Bus- the nicer, direct to Sal Salvador bus, we ended up taking chicken buses all the way there. The bus to the border was supposed to take two hours, and ended up taking about 4 ½ (when will we learn?), and was incredibly hot and very full of people. These chicken buses stop every few minutes to pick up and drop off people, so they can take forever. It is, however, a very cheap way to travel and you always meet interesting people. Well we made it to the border, realized that there was no way we would be able to make it to San Salvador that night, and changed up our plans a bit. We ended up spending the night in San Miguel. So a few bus trips, taxi rides, arguments about whether to stay in a cheap or safe hotel, and some unsavory characters, we ended up a nice hotel. We were stressed, irritated, and wondered what we had gotten into. We went out for a nice dinner and then went to bed early. The trip was uphill from there.
We took a luxury bus to San Salvador the next morning, watched Fireproof in Spanish, and arrived in the city before 9 am. We found a bus that would drop us off right at out hostel, so that was nice. Our hostel ended up being fabulous, and the beach was gorgeous. It is apparently a great surfing beach, so it was full of foreigners around our same age. The water was wonderful, and though none of us surfed, we had a terrific time.
I would say that one of the highlights of our trip was the hostel we ended up staying at. It just so happened that the day we arrived they were having a birthday party for the owner and his son in law, and they invited us. We had a blast. They gave us great food, lots of rum (which was mostly drunk by a German who was staying at the hostel) and made us feel right at home. El Salvadorians really know how to throw a party. They made us feel right at home. They had dancing and karaoke. Lots of karaoke. They were singing until about 7 o’clock the next morning, and the karaoke machine was about four feet from our room. We all had a difficult time being angry since we had had such a fun time.
The next day we pretty much just bummed around the beach and relaxed. We met some really interesting backpackers who had been traveling all throughout Central America for several months. It was interesting being around foreigners after just being around our small group of Americans for such a long time.
We decided, after the difficult trip to El Salvador, that we would take the Tica Bus back home. That was nice and easy. It ended up being about 10 hours to get back to Tegucigalpa, but was significantly less stressful to not need to change buses.
We got back Monday night, and then had to immediately pack up again for our class trip to San Pedro Sula and Copan the next day. That trip ended up being really fun too. We first went to a maquila (clothing factory), and saw the conditions there and heard some speakers about that industry. It was really interesting to see a factory. We had some difficulties getting in, even after everything had been Okayed the day before. Someone said that we needed authorization from the US government, which we clearly did not have, but it ended up working out fine. The maquila we went to was one of the nicer ones. It had air conditioning, and many different services for the workers. They told us that this factory was also unionized, which was surprising, but there were no union representatives there, so who knows how it actually is. After leaving the maquila we met with a workers rights group for maquila workers, so we heard a bit of the other side of the story from them. The clothing industry here is really in a hard situation. The US buys the majority of Honduras’ clothing, but Honduran clothing exports only make up about 2% of the total clothing imports in the US. Honduras then is easily replaceable in the eyes of the US, but Honduras needs the US to import their clothes. This puts Honduras in the unfortunate situation that they need the US to stay happy with them so they continue to buy their clothing. But back to the workers rights group. Maquila workers work in horrible conditions many times. Most of the factories are not air conditioned, and they workers are forced to work overtime without being paid. The workers are trying to form a union, but as soon as the companies find out they are trying to unionize they are fired and blacklisted. They had some great success stories though. One maquila in particular was closed after trying to unionize, and they got the support of university students all over the US and Canada and stopped buying that particular clothing brand, and the workers got their jobs back and got better working conditions and pay for overtime.
The next day we went to a Chiquita banana plantation. That was super cool. I have never actually given that much thought as to where my bananas come from. So they explained the process to us, showed us around, etc. One thing that I found interesting was how strict the regulations were for bananas going to the US. The bananas had to be completely without blemishes or anything unattractive, as well as a certain size and shape. The man who was taking us on the tour said that Americans are getting increasingly more and more picky with our bananas. The banana that didn’t cut it stayed in Central America. After the plantation we went to a banana workers union, which was similar to the maquila workers right group.
After San Pedro Sula, we left to go to the Copan Ruins for a few days. It was quite fun. The weather was horrendously hot while we were there, and the drive there (in our retired school bus without air conditioning in 100 degree plus weather) was a little rough at times, but we managed to keep hydrated and in fairly good moods. The ruins were so much fun, and the town was great. We just kind of took it easy and enjoyed ourselves. We went to a bird sanctuary one of the days, that was pretty neat too. I will be going back with my parents when they come down in May.
So now we are all back in Tegucigalpa, and happy to not be on a bus for a few days. We have a week here, and then a week and a half of spring break. The semester continues to fly by, as of today we only have 62 days left in the semester. Once we get back from spring break it will be a race to the end. Hopefully we can manage to get everything done that we want. Tomorrow we are going to do some picture sharing, so I will try to finally put up some pictures here.

Embassy visit and Ojojona

It’s hard to believe, but this week will be the end of my Spanish intensive class, as well as our first development class. The first week or two I felt like this semester would never end, for better or worse. It’s hard to believe it is almost a third of the way over. This week is one of the harder weeks academically, with two papers and our final in Spanish. Oh, I also have a presentation to do in Spanish. Sometimes these classes are hard to take seriously as real classes, but I am really enjoying them. Yesterday for Spanish class we went out to eat and then to one of my Professor’s favorite bakeries for some cake, it was a lot of fun. Today we visited the American Embassy here in Tegucigalpa. It was interesting, I have always wanted to see an Embassy. It was, unsurprisingly, very nice. Well manicured lawns, and nice areas to sit outside, it was an odd site against the backdrop of Tegucigalpa. We heard four different people from the Embassy speak, and they seemed to have the ability to speak a lot without actually saying much. I felt like we got a little bit of a watered down version of the story. We were supposed to hear from the Ambassador, but he was called out on business. I doubt he ever intended on coming to speak to us. But it was interesting to hear a little more about what was going on with the Embassy, and what they are trying to accomplish in Honduras. One of the most interesting parts was hearing about how they gave out the visas. I still don’t quite understand the whole process, but it was interesting. For non-immigrant visas, you basically have to prove that you have strong ties to Honduras and that you will return. It costs $131 to apply for a Non-immigrant visa, and the refusal rate is 5-40%. There are around 250 applicants every day. The immigrant visas are a little different, someone in the US needs to petition to get someone from Honduras into the country. The fasted that you could get a visa is about 6 months, and it is quite complicated. The application costs $950, which is a huge amount of money here in Honduras, sometimes several months pay. In addition, many times you have to prove you are the biological parent of your child, and these DNA tests cost $800. It’s all quite complicated.

This past weekend a group of us went to Ojojona, a little artsy town about 45 minutes away from Tegucigalpa. It was a very cute little town. It looked like it was attempting to be a tourist trap, but whether it’s off season or many people just don’t know about it, it was not too busy. They had some different arts and crafts, mostly cheap tourist things. Transportation is always interesting here. I will never again take for granted being able to drive myself basically anywhere I want in the States. The drive up took about 2 hours, in a very crowded bus. The way back was a bit shorter, and both times it only cost about 50 cents to ride. Most public transportation here is dirt cheap.

This weekend will start a hectic week. I am going to El Salvador for our three day weekend, and that should be fun. I haven’t heard too many rave reviews of El Salvador, but at the very least it will be a fun experience. Transportation is a little iffy getting there and back, but I’m sure we will work it out. So I will get back on Monday, and on Tuesday we are leaving for San Pedro Sula. This is where I flew in at the beginning of the semester. We will go see some Maquilas (the clothing factories) and banana plantation there, and then go to the Copan Ruins on Thursday. The Copan Ruins are apparently the Paris of the Mayan civilization, and are very cool. I am very excited to see that. We are there until Saturday and then will head back to Tegucigalpa. We then have about a week until spring break, which is still in the works.

So that’s my next few weeks. Not much else going on. It has gotten quite hot here in Tegus, I never knew I could sweat so much. I think I have fully recovered from my illness, and I am hoping for good health the rest of the semester. There are still many ups and downs being here, but I am hoping for more ups and less downs from here on out.