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.