Just a girl living in an extraordinary world : Week Five in Honduras

I've fallen in love with bachata music. Look up 'Prince Royce' for an example. You can not help but to feel happy if you hear songs like that on a sunny day. I'll lip-sync along til I know the lyrics, and hopefully someday I'll know what they mean as well!

This week I finally mastered saying "I must exercise every day", "Are you married?" and stuff like "I like your hair."It's still a struggle to carry a conversation, and a few days this week I felt pretty discouraged but then Honduras won the game over Costa Rica and ALL IS WELL. Tickets were sold out, so we watched it at a bar-it's so fun quenching our excitement with Salvavidas (the national beer here-it means 'lifesaver' in Spanish...genius.) and high-fiving bellowing locals!

I burned a CD for the Kinder kids this week, just basic English kids songs plus the Macarena and the kids went crazy over it. We learned farm animals this week, but it was chaos because their teacher was gone a few times and these kids love to destroy the classroom. Ever since I gave up trying to manage this class up to Taiwanese standards, I've been much happier. It's just not going to work here, but as long as the kids love coming to school still, that's okay. Every day there is so much I wish I could say to them, but even now my Spanish just results in cute puzzled faces.

On Friday night some volunteers and I went 'camping' and then on to a reservoir lake area (Cuero y Salado) the next day to search for crocodiles and manatees. At least that's what I was told! But we only saw monkeys, birds, and lizards instead. It's alright though-manatees kind of scare me. They are so big and float around in murky water like shadowy monsters...lakdjf;ladfjadls. Later on we hiked Pico Bonito up to a waterfall. There are lots of snakes and we had a close encounter with a jaguar (apparently everyone heard it and froze in place while I continued to climb up the trail) and our guide had us eat termites! They taste like carrots, really-just a POP and a burst of carrot flavor in your mouth.

There is never a dull moment living in La Casa de La Playa (volunteer house). Even though I've only been here a month and a half I'm practically a veteran now since every week people arrive and people leave. Over the course of a week my roommates have changed from two american girls to two european girls, one from Norway and one from Germany. Everyone gets along more or less-it's like Big Brother or Friends. I'm whichever one who tries to get everyone to join my workouts (Day 26 of Insanity now!) and then later to have beers. And you know how I know I'm American? Cause Americans talk about themselves a lot, and often, and basically the three Americans in the house (including me) speak the whole time for everyone...so. I'm going to work on that. It wasn't as obvious in Taipei-I don't know why, but living here it IS. Why do we do that?! Anyways, my two teaching partners from Spain left yesterday, and a guy from Australia arrived, so we went out to party again in La Ceiba. Let me tell you, there isn't a lot of variation in their club music-it's basically dirty Spanish grinding music for hours on end, and the men standing around the bars look greeeeesssayyy. I had hoped it would be more fun my second time around, but now I'm pretty sure my clubbing days in Honduras are over.

Sometimes I get excited about cooking and reading. I've started reading half a dozen books (I promise to finish at least one of them) and I'm trying out at least one new recipe every week. It's really weird, and I wonder if it means I'm finally growing up. At 25, I still feel like all I've done so far is travel, play and enjoy life-and it's disgusting and unfair to others whom have toiled away at their office desks all day since university. It's not that I don't want to build up a nice career-I do and I will. And when I do, you can bet I will be working my ass off like crazy cause I like to be busy. But I still don't know what I want to do or become yet, so meanwhile it doesn't hurt to see more of what the world needs, learn more about what I can contribute, and meet people that inspire me. And add on to my personal growth on the side, such as enjoying music that I don't understand.

Hasta lluego!