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Published: January 24th 2010
So for the last month or so it has been unusually cold in San Lucas…unusually cold meaning maybe around 45 degrees F or so. But hey, when you need to take bucket showers, that’s plenty cold! The thing about the cold here though is that the wind whips and the air is cold, but it is always the most beautiful sunny day. Had Syracuse had nearly the same kind of winter weather, I guarantee you Le Moyne College applications would increase exponentially! Thankfully, however, it’s starting to warm back up again.
This past rainy season was also unusual in that it was fairly dry. Everybody keeps on saying how last years rainy season was horrible, daily torrential downpours for hours on end from around May - October. When it rains, the roads literally disintegrate. So anytime anybody needs to get on a bus, it takes infinitely longer. The volunteer I replaced here in San Lucas recently came back to visit during Christmas and actually delivered a Christmas Stocking for me (thanks again, Elisa!). She was telling when the bus gets stuck, the driver tells all the men to get off and either push from the back of the bus or pull from the front with chains. This appears to be a lose/lose situation for me and makes the life up in Penacook, NH with Uncle Kenny seem glamorous. But this is all part of the Peace Corps life I suppose!
So Marianne came to San Pedro Sula, about 4 hours NW of Tegucigalpa, with a group from Harvard! She was flying in on Saturday, so I went to the airport in SPS to meet in her. In typical Marianne style, she was a sniffly mess almost instantly, but that is most certainly part of the Marianne charm! Another Peace Corps friend who I recruited to come with me and I were able to get some food smuggled to us via Marianne for dinner and then the next night Marianne and I were able to make the expected joint telephone calls to Nana and Grampa, Mom and Dad, and Martha. My host family from San Lucas was hopeful that Marianne would visit because they wanted her to marry my 19 year old host brother named Johnny. I had to give them the bad news that Marianne most likely would not be able to come and elope.
While in San Pedro Sula, I was staying at a really great hostel, Hostal Tamarindo. It was in a nice and safe part of SPS and was fairly cheap compared to other hotels/hostels, about $10 per night. As far as hostel living goes, it was par for the course: you meet some really great foreigners and some not so great (that group from Argentina wasn’t the nicest bunch). My Peace Corps friend and I one night walked to the corner store. The store owner asked as how long we were visiting Honduras for, thinking we were tourists. We informed him that we were volunteering for 2 years, to which he replied “(guttural sound) Cuerpo de Paseo.” Peace Corps in Spanish means Cuerpo de Paz, but Cuerpo de Paseo is the joke-like of a PCV in which he/she never does any work, travels around all the time, and uses 2 years as a paid vacation. This was the first time I had ever heard a Honduran use Cuerpo de Paseo, and the certainly the first time I had heard it in a negative and accusatory tone. It just reinforced the point that much more that although people might now always be willing to work with you, they take notice of whether or not you’re doing anything. Considering my friend and I were taking time off of work to be in San Pedro and were in a store buying beer, we couldn’t do much to dissuade his opinion, but it won’t be something I forget.
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Marguerite
non-member comment
MARIANNE AND YOU IN SPS!!!
DON'T TAKE IT SO SERIOUSLY, CUERPO DE PASEO...!!!! CUERPO DE PAZ... TRANSLATED, SOUNDS LIKE CUERPO DE PASEO... AND YES, PROBABLY IT IS A JOKE!!!! BUT AS A MATTER OF FACT, WHAT IS EXACTLY WHAT YOU DO THERE AS PEACE CORPS.... I HAVE NEVER REALLY UNDERSTOOD OR KNOWN WHAT IS WHAT YOU DO IN THESE COUNTRIES, WE SEE YOU, NOW AND THEN IN GUATEMALA, BUT NEVER KNOW WHAT IS THE FINALITY OF YOUR TRAINNING OR YOUR STAY, PROBABLY YOU CAN ENLIGHT US WITH SOME DESCRIPTION OF YOUR WORK. HOW EXTRAORDINARY THAT YOU COULD GET TOGETHER WITH MARIANNE COMING INTO SAN PEDRO SULA, SEEING YOUR SISTER IN GUATEMALA FOR CRISTINA'S WEDDING WAS A HIGHLIGHT THAT I WILL ALWAYS TREASURE. NEVER KNOWING THAT SHE WILL SOON BE COMING BACK TO CENTRAL AMERICA,, I DIDN'T GET TO SEE HER SNIFFLING HERE IN GUATEMALA, PROBABLY THIS WEATHER IS BETTER FOR HER, SO PLEASE TELL HER TO COME BACK AGAIN, AS WELL AS YOU. ANY PLANS FOR THE FUTURE? I WILL TRY TO CONTACT YOUR GRANDPARENTS, OR MOTHER, NOW THAT WE ARE STAYING FOR A WEEK IN JACKSONVILLE. WE WILL BE BACK IN GUATEMALA, NEXT WEEKEND, TODAY IS MY MOTHER'S BIRTHDAY, I HEARD EVERYBODY CELEBRATED HER, AND WE CALLED HER, AND SHE SOUNDED SO HAPPY ARRIVING AT 77 HEALTHY AND HAPPY!! BIG HUG, AND BEST WISHES FOR THIS YEAR 2010 IN YOUR LIFE, LOVE, MARGUERITE