Food glorious food

The last few days have been dominated by food, our favourite! 

Our neighbour works for Herbalife, a nutrient programme which helps you gain or lose weight and ensure you get the right balance of all things good. We've been trying out the three drink combo that replaces your breakfast this week. You have a cold drink, a green tea like hot drink and then a milkshake. These help your digestion and supply something like 40 vitamins and minerals. No less than Real Madrid's Ronaldo promotes this on their website. I'd never heard about it, but everyone seems to have!! In conclusion, it has made me feel better, but I wonder how much is being forced to have lots of fluid first thing. Next week I might try having a glass of water and a hot herbal tea each morning.

Our Herbalife neighbour is great fun. She cooked us our favourite Honduras meal so far, gringas (similar word to the nickname given to Americans) a couple of weeks ago. It's basically a wrap filled with spicy chicken, guacamole, citrusy salad and chimichurry (parsley, garlic and extra virgin olive oil). Tastes so amazing that we got her to come over last night and show us exactly how to make it. One for the repertoire when we get back home!!

Got a fun packed next few days, off to the main tourist attraction in Honduras - Copan (ancient ruins) plus some marketing work for Selina and her group. It would be rude for me not to join them! ;-)

Ah go on.....

Everyone asks me what my favourite beer is. They're not great to be honest. I suppose I'd pick Port Royal. One thing is for certain, they're CHEAP!! Beers cost about 16 Lempiras each, which is about 40p!

Having said that, any beer tastes good at the end of a long, sticky day! There have been lots of hot days in the last week or so. I start craving an afternoon downpour to freshen the air.

(Quilmes is Argentinian)

The hard core locals seem to prefer something a little stronger. I don't particularly like walking around the town on a Sunday afternoon as most people have the day off, and (a bit like in Britain when everyone is off at the same time) there are quite a few worse for wear people around by early afternoon. Some of the guys live very much in the moment, spending the earnings they have made that morning in the bars. I bet tourists think the same in British cities on a Friday or Saturday night!

More beef!

It is the people that make Marcala. At the weekend we went to our neighbours for a meal of authentic Honduran food (enchiladas and gringas my favourites). We took homemade scones, but without cream as it does not exist here! 

Then on Sunday we went for a party with some of the English class at one of their homes. Lots more local food, including marinated beef cooked on a wood BBQ. We probably should have avoided it given that this was the identical meal that made us ill the other week. But as usual we just carry on eating and it was excellent! They make a really spicy salsa-esque salad which I love. 

Selina is back on the farm today after a week or so away. I have prepared an automated Excel file which updates a set of analyses as more data is entered, it prints our nicely with lots of colourful charts. I've started training the guys in COMUCAP to use it! I wish my Spanish was better, but I have written the entire file in Spanish!!

Selina has been painting the COMUCAP office with great effect. Here she is with Brett:

I love the grass. The office is the highest building around so you can see the clouds from afar!

Mmmmm beef...

We went to the neighbouring town of L'Esperanza at the weekend for a party with the other Progressio group who work there. It was great to actually stay out to a proper late time at the weekend. Great bunch of people and good fun had by all. The only downside was that we both ate dodgy (but tasty!) beef which made us sick and upset tummies. The return journey was not fun!

We had another party last night to celebrate one of the team's birthdays. You can't go wrong with musical chairs and a piñata!

Selina's pretty much finished her farm work which I'm sure she will miss. There is much painting going on including an impressive mural at the school. And yup, I've been doing more data cleansing using coding in Epi Info software and countif's in excel! S-A-D! English classes with the inspiring group of people continue, a real pleasure to work with. 

I literally have no photos! So to continue my quest to inspire Selina to upload some, here is a photo of a fly not an ant. I thought I might have discovered a new species of ant with 360 degree rotating front legs. A quick google threw up the name of a Professor who confirmed that this is merely a fly with tiny wings! I still think I might have discovered Antus Gibbus!

"Teacher?!"

What is it like teaching Excel to a class of 11 year olds in Honduras?

*deep breathe in*

1. As usual leave way too little time to get to school! Speed walk in, so hot and bothered when arrive.

2. Hang on school gates desperately trying to catch someone's attention to let me in. Shouting "llave", "maestra" and "hombre" in equal measure which means key, teacher, man, in a desperate bid to get in school. Mental note each week, leave more time next week! Obviously will do same again next week!

3. Walk across concrete play ground, kick four different footballs back to kids as they cross my path. Why is it I am so able to play sports in far flung countries, but so incompetent in England? I still remember proudly catching a cricket ball that kids hit towards me in India and playing American Football with kids at Milton Hershey School in America when I was 14!

4. Into my classroom, quickly write up lesson on whiteboard. Turn round at 10.02, two mins into class, to find two faces looking at me. Ok, where are the other 28?

5. Send one of the two faces to get others, who drag themselves in over the first ten minutes of lesson.   Why is it always the boys who are last?!

6. Such a well prepared lesson plan. I've even got sweets as prizes for those that answer my ultimate question! Yes, I have an ultimate question and yes, I am sad! First thing, make sure everyone has their computer on. Half the class have forgotten where Microsoft excel is since last week! Half the class need my help already. Real struggle, some computers have setting menus, like Brightness, frozen on the screen, so difficult to see the actual screen, some computers just don't have excel in there, it just seems to disappear! And some computers just down right don't even switch on. Frantic ten mins trying to get folk just to have blank excel sheet! I'm sweating already!

7. Get cracking on recapping what we did last week, this will be a doddle! I taught them how to use sum, plus, minus, divide formulae with cells last week with this identical example of a supermarket receipt. Lovely jubbly, This will only need ten minutes.... oh no.... All my pearls of disjointed Spanish wisdom from last week have sunk without trace! Cue an onslaught of "teacher?" At any given moment three kids want my attention. I literally run around classroom trying to help everyone, occasionally stopping to give general advice to everyone. Questions vary from checking formulae, getting my acknowledgement they got it right to wider reaching questions: what is my name, where do I come from and how much longer am I around for! I sense lots of the boys want my acknowledgement. I've literally just told one boy his work is correct and he's immediately calling me over again to show me!

8. Before I know it, time is up. Feeling exhausted and a little deflated I receive lots of thank you's and a few handshakes. 

9. Then the really cool bit .... about 4 or 5 of the 30 come up to me at the end of the class. They have just quietly got on with the first exercise then took it upon themselves to answer my six questions, including the ultimate question, all written in very poor disjointed Spanish. Even having a go at understanding them deserves a medal! Now none of them got all six right, especially not the ultimate question (that's my sweets safe for another week - harsh, but fair you'll agree!), but the fact they had a go with no prompt was just a little moving and rewarding.  So over the space of an hour and a half I've gone through a range of highs and lows, but ultimately I'm left scratching my head as how to tackle next week with such a range of abilities and standard of computers. Back to the drawing board (over a chewy sweet or two)....

*deep breathe out* and relax!

Rainy season...

We're both really busy working (and having fun) on lots of different projects. It's clear that there is a lot more to do here than volunteers (and funding). So many basic things we take for granted in Britain are not set up here. 

One good rainfall literally washes roads away, then getting around takes a lot longer (and you get more bruises in the 4WDs!). As the roads are so treacherous outside of town, the taxis which are not 4WDs are unwilling to take you! There's constant repairs to roads going on, but I worry that another big rainfall repeats the problem. I even found myself hopping out the car the other day to clear some boulders from the road so we could carry on our journey!

Market street after a light rain:

Selina and I are working on a new project this week together. There are about a dozen guys who are trying to set up tourism in Marcala and they want to improve their English. We've started a series of evening English lessons to get them started. They are so enthusiastic, it is impossible to say no! It's very rewarding work.

I even did some data cleansing yesterday in the Mayor's office! I actually think I might be getting examples here to use in interviews next year or I may well find myself doing similar work! I really think you could turn up to a place like Marcala and just find stuff to help out with, even with limited Spanish.

Mayor's office: