Alias is a show about a spy…

(Just so we’re clear I have not watched an episode of Arrested Development since October and those dvds have been all over Honduras in the care of other volunteers.)

Hey everyone, its early July and I’m back with another entry. So if youre doing your biannual check of my blog you’ve missed a good…couple entries! Seriously, sorry about not being consistent with this guy. Ok, so in May I went back to the States and in June I posted some pictures of the trip and that’s about all. And that’s all I will do about that because El Amor Prohibido is NOT about weeklong benders spent in the USA drinking snow peak peach boone’s. Which, by the way, is the best flavor of boone’s (isn’t that right, Bleaker?)…

Ok, as I recount events in my head and my journal it turns out that June was actually a somewhat busy, exciting month—don’t worry, I wont subject you to all of it. The first three weeks were in fact dedicated to doing a topo study in the northern part of the municipio and once that was canceled I suddenly had an empty month on my hands. When I say three weeks I don’t mean it would have taken that long but that each of the first three weeks, separately, was set aside for the study. It was going to be the first week but then my buddy who has the theodolite we need had a scheduling conflict. Second week it was postponed to the third week because of transportation questions and other miscellaneous ridiculousness on everyone’s part. And then, at the beginning of the third week it was finally canceled once and for all when it was discovered that a topo study that had been previously done for the community (and very recently, apparently) was found in the mayor’s office. Scheduling conflicts and transportation issues were swept aside and I decided it was not necessary to do the same study twice, especially since there are many, many other communities that have never had a study done for them.

Since I was in Victoria more than expected I spent my time teaching my computacion classes and working on other system designs that needed fixes here and there. At the end of that first week I did decide to go south to Tegucigalpa and hang out with a couple of friends to watch game one of the nba finals. Not a bad decision at all. When week two opened up it really opened up because not only was the study postponed again but there were also no classes all week. Gen and I were hanging out one afternoon and we decided that on a whim we would go to San Pedro Sula the next day and bring each of our dogs to the vet. Small back story here for Gen’s dog, Pelé: while I was gone in the States one afternoon Gen was walking with her dog when a bolo riding a bicycle rammed into Pelé and screwed up one of her paws. Ever since I had been back it had been an obvious problem; she was limping everywhere she went and one of the nails was hanging loosely and awkwardly. So Gen wanted to get Pelé repaired and it was about the time for Tek to be “fixed” anyway. In the middle of the week we hopped onto the morning bus, dogs in tow, and kind of dominated the back row—everyone boarding the bus and heading towards the back to find a spot to sit was immediately intimidated by the sight of two, not-so-small dogs occupying seats. Our dogs are very chill dogs, though, and there were no incidents, gracias a Dios, of either the ‘attacking other passengers’ or ‘exploding bladders’ variety. It was seriously an impressive display—this trip, one way, is over four hours and they were fine the whole time. We had to leave the dogs at the vet overnight so once we dropped them off we did some errands and also caught the best Celtics game of the season—the Game 4, 20 point second half comeback win in L.A. to take a 3-1 series lead!!

Things went well with the vet—Pelé is all healed and able to walk without limping and after a week or so of me having to clean and hydrogen peroxide his newly sensitive area, Tek is good as well and we are back on speaking terms. Nothing out of the ordinary happened the week following but in the last week of the month I was able to go to a super-small community (14 houses, around 80 people) and complete a study. I had not done a study since the end of April so it was nice to get back on the horse and though the work itself went without incident the story of the week is the family I stayed with. Very generous, very sweet, and arguably the best looking family in Honduras! I know that must sound a bit odd but I’ll include a picture so you know what I’m talking about.

There are ten children in total but only six of them were in the house when I was there—three live in San Pedro and another one is in the States. The youngest, two girls aged 8 and 10 years, were schooling me as we ate dinner the first night about how I should call them “niñas” instead of “chicas” because the latter term is used only once someone has reached adolescence. They used that word, too, adolescence, and when I gave them a hard time and asked what age that was supposed to mean, the 10 yr old looked at me matter-of-factly and said, “15 years, silly.” OK then. Great family. And did I mention that in this village of 80 people in the mountains that I was actually able to watch the two European Cup semifinal games?! The family I stayed with is the only one in the village that has a solar plant, so they also have electricity. On a side note, what a great final, too--¡Viva España! (Oh, and heres a view from that town the morning that I left.)

And except for one last thing that pretty much catches you all up. Last week was an uneventful one of teaching and a failed attempt to visit an aldea in another municipio that has a rainwater system. The last thing is that a couple of days ago Gen and I embarked on a bold journey—we made our own beer!! Well, we steeped the grains and boiled the malt extract with the hops and once that was all done, pitched the yeast…you know what I’m talking about. Now the experiment is sitting in a bucket in my closet where it will remain for the next two weeks. After that we bottle the beer, wait another two weeks or so and then…beer time!! This being both of our first times at this I’m not really expecting it to turn out like anything other than murky, cardboard water. But the fun’s in the effort, right?

Ok, that’s it from Honduras for the moment. I hope all is well with everyone. Much love, Joe.

Yea, I can see marinating a chicken in that...

Ok, I have been back from the colonies for a couple weeks now and I have to say the trip was fantastic. First off I have to thank Lever and his parents, Sarat, and Cutrone for their generous hospitality, even if it did come with the "Joe, youre not paying--youre the only one of my friends who makes less than me" line every so often! Seriously, guys, thank you so much, you did too much but it was very much appreciated! I also want to thank Magri, Reif, and Bacon--not that you guys did much but it was great to see you too. There was no time to pre-write this and make it eloquent (or coherent) so I will leave you now with just a few pictures (this first one is me and Tek the morning I left Victoria) and get back to write a real update soon. I hope everyone is well.

This is the best man and I about to roast the groom at a pre-wedding dinner...

...this is the happy couple cutting the cake...

...my dog's namesake, up to bat after having crushed a solo shot at Camden Yards in Baltimore (the Sox lost)...

...the boys just outside of the Preakness...

...and here is what the Preakness was inside. Go USA!!

You’ll have plenty of time for ice cream in prison…ice cream sandwiches!

Fast forward to the final half inning: we are at the hour mark but its clear the umpire/tournament organizer (who is wearing an authentic replica Cubs uniform from head to toe for some reason) is going to let San Luis have its final swings before the game is called. Our pitcher is tired and not nearly as effective as earlier and after four batters there are runners on second and third with two outs. It is at this point that he calls to be replaced—my first thought is “C’mon! Are you kidding me, Fernando?! You’re one out away from finishing this thing off!” Plus there’s the whole issue of someone not warmed up being called in to make sure no one crosses home plate when there are already two runners in scoring position. I don’t say any of this, though, and it ends up being the decision Grady Little never made but should have in ’03 against the Yanks. Our relief pitcher (and game 2 starter) comes in throwing hard and getting strikes and the PC volunteer from San Luis gives me a look that says, “Where did SHE come from?!” With two strikes and two outs the batter is free swinging and after a couple of fouls he pops one up toward second. You guys can imagine that with 10-12 yr olds who have just learned the game that routine plays are anything but—up to that point every time a ball was hit into the field of play the batter had reached base safely. So there is this moment where the ball is just hanging in the air, the runners are heading home, and Gen and I are both screaming something stupid in slow motion. But our second baseman catches the ball and we win!

In the second game of the tournament Minas de Oro stomped all over the team we had just barely beaten and their score was 10-0. The team from Minas does not have a PC volunteer as a coach and they are oddly disciplined and very, very good (weird). As batters they hit home runs, as fielders they scoop up the ball and accurately throw to whatever base they want like its nothing. No one…drops…anything. It’s bizarre and I seriously can’t imagine there are children this age looking much more proficient at the sport in the traditional powerhouse countries that dominate it. After watching that second game suddenly our guys and girls are completely lacking motivation for the final, even after Mr. Cubs Uni explains that the winner gets a trophy and goes to Tegucigalpa to play in the national tournament.

The game begins and our squad bucks up and looks ready for the test. We get a couple of baserunners but don’t score in our half of the first; they get one run in the bottom half. After three or four innings we are hanging with them, 3-1, and everyone at the field is excited. We have to make a pitching change in the fourth and he is throwing alternately lasers or moonbeams and as a result walks three batters and strikes out two. So the bases are loaded with two outs and the first two pitches to the next batter are strikes. “Whew,” I think, “we’re almost out of this one.” The next pitch is hit for a grand slam and that’s the ball game. We score once in our half of the final inning for a respectable 7-2 final, but we know it could have been different. We just know it.

So with baseball complete I left Victoria the week following (last week) and did a water project. This was kind of cool, actually—I took a bus and went the long way around the municipality to get to a village up in the north. From there I visited two villages a day and stayed in a different one each night as I slowly made my way, by foot or horseback, back to Victoria. The plan this time was to do aforos, or measurements of each community’s water source, to see if they can sustain the population during the dry season. During the rainy season there is water coming out of every hole in the ground but some institutions will not give money to a project unless there is proof that the aforo was done in the dry season. So I went from one aldea to the next, hiking up to the fuente with my 5 gallon bucket and camera and taking pictures of the guys measuring the output. In the morning I would do one village, come down and have some coffee or a bit of food with a generous family and then in the afternoon some representatives would arrive (sometimes with a horse) to take me to their village.

It is never usually more than a one hour walk from one town to the next but the last day, Friday, was a different story. We left in the morning from one village and did a nearly two hour hike up to its fuente. Once we finished measuring the flow we came back and I was handed off to a group from another village about twenty minutes away. When we had finished measuring their fuente we began what is normally a three hour hike to a town that is a one hour bus ride from Victoria. But three hours is really if you are walking the whole time and though I did not have much hope of catching that last bus to Victoria (when I had done this same trip in late October I ended up having to walk the hour-plus from the town in question to another town and taking a bus the last thirty minutes to Victoria), I did want to give myself as much daylight as possible to not only do the walk to the next town over but possibly catch a jalón back to Victoria. Luckily, so many aldeas have put me on horseback since my time here began that I have now perfected the sustained trot—its not a gallop, don’t be ridiculous. But it is a trot. So whenever possible my companion and I were at a trot and the stars aligned because we arrived in town just over two hours after leaving and not five minutes before the last bus left for Victoria!

And that brings us to this week. Unfortunately the news of this week is that I came down with something shortly after returning from my weeklong excursion. Bacterial stomach infection is the verdict, much better than the dreaded malaria or dengue, and I am well on my way with antibiotics. Classes will continue in the first part of next week and then I am off to the States to join some friends and go to a wedding! Below are some pics I did not include in the first half of this blog entry (published on Wednesday, Apr 30).

The top of La Picucha as seen from the first day of hiking...

...crossing one of the streams on a nature-built bridge...

...views along the way...

...and reunited at the summit!

Mistake? What would I have made a huge mistake about?

OK, I am back at the blog and apologize for the long delay between entries. I am sure that all seven of you who read this look to it on a weekly basis to lighten your loads and fill you with mirth and I am sorry for holding out so long. As you may have noticed the blog delay was accompanied by an email delay of greater length and there really is no good reason either happened. I had some unexpected trips into Tegucigalpa here and there over the past couple of months and each time I had not spent the proper time either answering emails or updating the blog here on my laptop so when I arrived there was nothing for me to send. But enough about that…
The last blog entry was towards the end of the first week in March and the reason I was in Yoro in the first place was to buy some ingredients for a baseball team dinner that Gen and I hosted for our guys and girls the night before the regional tournament (devotees will recall that the torneo was originally scheduled for March 8). The dinner with the players and their parents was a hit and then that night, for the first time in over a week, it started to rain. It rained all night and we woke the next morning and got the call from the tournament organizer that it had been postponed. Everyone was geared up and ready to go and then nothing; it was very disappointing.

So that was that. The next few weeks were kind of a blur of me continuing to teach computer classes and throwing in some aldea visits on my non-teaching days but the only big thing happened the week before Easter, or Semana Santa here. As it turned out that was the week of my birthday, too, and I want to thank all of you guys for your care packages, emails, and phone calls—you are an all-star group!! That is a week where no one works and things basically shut down country-wide. Most people flock to the beaches here but I joined a group of about ten volunteers and we went to hike La Picucha, which is the highest peak in the department of Olancho. It was an excellent trip and I will throw in some pictures here:

*************************

We entered the bosque on a Wednesday and hiked out on Saturday and in between there were lots of peanut butter sandwiches, the occasional can of sardines (w/ chili sauce, of course), granola bars, stream water with iodine tablets, small tents and rain. The rain actually came the night before we reached the summit and lasted for a good twenty hours or so, well into our descent. That wasn’t too bad but it did mean that at the top we were in a cloud and could not see anything. But the trip was a great way to hang out with some people I had not seen since September or longer. That first meal after finishing, the first meal in four days that was cooked, was so good—I almost overdosed on peanut butter during the hike.

I had some water project trips postponed because of rain so the next couple of weeks were just me in Victoria teaching a couple days a week and visiting some new aldeas on the other days. Around Final Four time I decided I had missed out on enough major sporting events (World Series, Super Bowl, etc.) so I went to stay with a buddy in the south of Honduras who has a nice cable setup. There was a small group of us volunteers there watching some disappointing semifinal games and an amazing championship game. I still cant believe how good that Memphis/Kansas final was—and it came down to free throws after all!! Rock. Chalk. Jayhawk.

The last two work weeks I have been out of Victoria doing water stuff. Two weeks ago I went with an engineer friend of mine and we did a topo study in an aldea about two hours from here. Not much to tell about this one: I had been in the aldea a week or two before to visit a water source of a nearby town and it was super-dry, the roads nothing but dirt and rock and dust…naturally, the week my friend and I were up there it was raining and extremely muddy. It delayed us a bit but not too much and I was able to spend Friday of that week getting our baseball team’s jerseys for the big regional tournament the next day, Saturday.
Ok, so heres a big sports buildup for really a very small time event…but here goes nothing. Three teams in this mini torneo, one spot for a trip to the nationals in Tegucigalpa in June. The teams: Victoria, San Luis, and the host team, Minas de Oro. Minas de Oro has represented our region in the national tournament as long as anyone here can remember and with beat our humble Victoria squad last year by a score of 15-2, I believe. That Victoria team was coached by Gen and, though they did not win a game, did get an alternates spot in the nationals by virtue of having scored a lot of runs. We play San Luis first and the winner takes a break while the loser plays Minas in the next game. First game and our big pitcher, who is often as wild as Mitch Williams during practice, is on the mark and is striking batters out like it’s his job. San Luis’ pitcher also throws hard but is a little off the mark and actually walks in two runs for us in the first, 2-0. These games are only an hour long or five innings, whichever comes first, and the next few innings are tense but very even with no runs scored.

Another unexpected trip to Yoro so I´ll paste what I have and leave you in suspense about the results of the tournament. More to come very soon...

On an A.D. dry streak...

Ok, so shoot me—I haven’t had my Arrested Development discs in my possession since December and hadn’t watched them for two months before that. So theres no clever quote, I’m sorry. Maybe I’ll just change the name of the blog.

Where were we? Last I wrote was towards the end of January and now we’re into March so I guess theres some updating to be done. First off, I have to say that last week my pup Tek nearly died but that now he is back to good health. It started on a Monday morning and the first two days of the week I was out in an aldea from early morning until late afternoon and so didn’t really appreciate what was happening as fast as I would normally have. He caught something, distemper maybe, perhaps a bacteria of some sort, and would not eat or drink anything for nearly three days straight. No food, no water, nothing, and as a result his pudgy little body wasted away slowly until he looked like a heap of fur and bones. His nose was white he was so dehydrated and because he only wanted to find the darkest corners of my backyard to lay in he was covered in dirt and spiderwebs—it was pathetic and looked like he was not going to make it. I had to feed him electrolyte rich serum through a syringe for three days and he wasn’t even keeping that down for about a day and a half; there was nothing but throwing up for awhile. Towards the end of the week he started to be able to keep the serum down and then it was water and after a couple of days he could drink some milk. He started throwing up for the first time on Monday morning and it was nearly an entire week after that moment before he ate his puppy chow again, but eventually he got back to normal. Now he is back to his old self, eating a ton and playing with his mom and its been a huge relief. One of his sisters caught the same thing and died during the week Tek was so sick—she was even bigger and chubbier than he. Fortunately it passed, though, so when Tek was doing his crazy, puppy shriek/bark last night at a toad that was in the patio, I couldn’t help but smile.

In other news there has been some work with studies and designs and water stuff but the story of the past few weeks has been what PC calls secondary projects. First off, Gen and I had a baseball tryout early in the month for our youth team because the regional tournament is Mar 8. We had been kind of half-assing practices and with each of us gone here and there for various errands and projects it just was not conducive to a consistent showing for or from the children. So I went to the schools and made announcements for the tryout in the 4^th, 5^th, and 6^th grade classes while Gen put up posters and did a schpeel on the local cable access channel. The “prueba” went well and we made a roster of 22 or so players and then have been practicing pretty consistently for the last few weeks. Yesterday we whittled that list down to the 15 allowed to travel to the tournament and this Saturday, Mar 8, we go to a nearby town and test our baseball mettle. Go Victoria!!

The other new thing in life here is that I am now teaching computers to the fifth and sixth graders. There isn’t some funny story associated with this storyline, at least not yet, and it just started this week. The water system work is plenty, to be sure, and if I didn’t do anything but aldea visits and topo studies and designs I’d be busy for the rest of my time here given this municipality’s water scene. That said, it is a nice change to actually be doing some consistent work in the town where I live, interacting with children and teachers and parents…a new chapter to life here in Victoria.

In water news I returned to that town where I finished the conduction line study at the end of January. This is the one where I encountered the tick problem that this time of year brings—oh, and on that note, I was wrong about ticks replacing the mosquitoes. I thought the dry season (dry and hot as a mofo!) would mean the end of the blood sucking bastards, but that’s not the case. The mosquitoes now are a new breed, the next generation of horrible flying insects—these guys are invisible, I swear, and I’ve been bitten three times before I even know there are any damn mosquitoes in the room! When I got here these guys were slow and dumb and as a result the walls of my living room are peppered with smashed mosquito carcasses. Nowadays they fly fast and low and don’t hug the walls…I swear I hardly ever even see them now, I just have the itchy bites to let me know theyre around.

Anyway, I went back to that town to finish the study of their distribution network this past week (when Tek was busy throwing up a lung). I had mentioned in the weeks previous to people how many garrapatas our group had encountered along the way in January when we were heading out there and the response I got was always something similar to this: “Oh, that town? Yea, you take one step off the road going out there and youre gonna get some garrapatas on you.” The day I finish the study of the distribution network I am walking back to Victoria and decide to stop and cool off for a bit. Its blazing hot, we’ve finished earlier than expected, and theres no reason for me to be killing myself with the pace I’ve set, I think to myself. Might as well step off the road in a nice shady spot, pick a smooth rock to sit on, and just relax and drink some water. So I do just that. The words of the people who have told me about “stepping one foot off the path” are lingering in my head and I smile because I know its hyperbole, even if just barely. I take two steps off to the roadside (the ground appears to be just dried leaves), sit on a smooth rock in the shade, and even decide to keep my backpack slung over one shoulder instead of plopping it on the ground, just in case. I uncap my water bottle, take a few swigs, and enjoy the cool air in the shade as a breeze rolls across me. Glancing at the ground around me, I think how theres little chance that anything is living anywhere near here…and then I look more closely at my jeans and see that my right leg is now covered in tiny garrapatas.

No clever title, no update...

...just some overdue pictures. An update to arrive in the coming weeks...

Here is that artsy, leave-more-to-the-imagination shot of Victorias feria, taken mid January.

And here we have a couple shots of Tek--at rest and mid-fight/training conducted by his mother, Pele.

Well, Michael, I did not find their buffoonery amusing...

It’s the last week in January now and its getting hot here. The dry season has kicked in now and the temperatures are climbing—apparently March and April are the worst here. The arrival of this new season means less in the way of mosquitoes and that our non-paved roads will not be made into mud. The flip side is it is now tick season and the roads here become extremely dusty…it’s a fair trade, I’d say. The tick thing would not be so bad if I were, say, a lame “Youth Development” volunteer (that’s for Gen…even though she doesn’t read this blog) and the most I dealt with the outdoors was my daily walk to school and back. But as a Water/Sanitation volunteer I find myself mostly cutting through land where the only path is the one created by the guys with machetes in front of me. OK, that’s all a little dramatic—Gen does much more than teach in the schools and I am not nearly as cool as what you might think a wat/san volunteer would be. Needless to say, the change in seasons and all that entails was made very clear last week.

The week in question I was finishing up the topo study for a community that already has a water system design but has significant problems. This is the system (I think I mentioned it in an earlier entry) where there are tubes in the ground (for the conduction line) and the tank is built and sitting atop the community. It’s just that the water does not arrive to the tank but somewhere 70-80 meters below—that says not enough pressure. But the other major problem is along the way there are several spots where the tubes, buried in the ground, have cracked and are leaking water—too much pressure. This system was built six years ago but there is no copy of the design so I decided to map the terrain again so we could see where exactly the problems were and then go from there. Step one was this past week when we finished the study. This week I put the numbers into our spreadsheet and did the design as much as I was able and will send it off for someone much smarter than myself to review—that is step two.

During the week where step one was accomplished I was formally introduced to the seasonal changes that wet to dry brings here in Victoria. The second or third day of the study I notice that the guy walking with me is consistently slapping at his jeans with a twig. Now at this point in my time here I had heard much of the tick (garrapata) and seen little—Gen was constantly picking them off her dog when I arrived in May of last year and on a couple of studies I did last month before Christmas I overheard guys talking about “garrapatas” several times. But I had yet to really witness anything myself (I had picked ONE tick off of me in the eleven months I had been here and that was during training) so I ask him what he is doing. He responds “garrapatas” so, thinking this is my chance to finally see what the fuss is about, I ask him to show me some when we come across them next. Not three minutes later he gets my attention and points at my jeans. I look down and my right lower leg is covered with at least two or three dozen little specs of dirt. Of course these specs of dirt are moving ever so slowly along my jeans and suddenly I realize the genius of having a twig in-hand to swat at my leg.

You guys may be old pros when it comes to garrapatas but this was a new experience for me. I had only seen them in the past once they had reached a much bigger size—I couldn’t get over how effing SMALL the ones we encountered were. You could fit several on the head of a pin, I shit you not, and only with the magnifying glass that I carry around on these studies could one see the legs at all. We did not seem to have any problems until that second or third day of the study and from then on the study would pause intermittently here and there for guys to get into various stages of undress to pick the damn garrapatas off. We stopped for lunch one day and guys were picking them off one another’s backs—that’s the kind of good time we were having.

I resisted the temptation to have other men pick off my garrapatas for me and by the weekend (when I was still finding them on me) I had picked off not less than five. I remember reading a couple of blogs of volunteers here in Honduras before I flew down and one guy mentioned having found a tick or two below the equator. At the time I thought it sounded like a pretty horrible thing to happen—now I know its not the end of the world. You just get the tweezers and pull the bastard off! The ticks were not the whole story, either, because somehow I got an even smaller insect on me that was leaving tiny bits up and down my legs and feet for four or five days after we finished the study. These guys are even smaller than the baby ticks and a friend at the health center said all you can do is wait them out—they feed on you for several days and then just die. The itching the bites were causing was awful, and I remember hating life the weekend after the study. So there you go.

This week has just been working on the spreadsheet and starting the design and fighting with Tek about being housebroken but it occurs to me that I did not write anything about the FERIA that Victoria held in the middle of the month. Every January Victoria hosts it’s feria which is sort of a state fair equivalent in the States. It generally lasts about two weeks and apparently is the major party in this town for the year. And now it’s done. But it was pretty impressive—there is one main street on the back side of town that was lined on both sides with vendors selling clothes and jewelry and toys; there were fairground-type games and a whole section of just tables where people were playing card games; mini-restaurants and bars were everywhere as well. Anyway, during the week this street generally got going with people around 4pm and was doing business until midnight—on the weekends it started earlier and lasted later. Victoria is generally a pretty tranquilo, laid back town but this is the type of small town event that EVERYONE comes back for. A large number of families here (as in many towns across the country) have relatives living in the States and a number of them were back in town—many I met told me they never miss a chance to come back and see the feria. Relatives who work or go to school in the bigger cities of Honduras were in Victoria as well for the feria—more people come back for the feria than for Christmas.

In addition to the main street of activities there were events planned throughout the two weeks. There is a local soccer league here and teams from Victoria played against teams from major cities and, in one case, against the farm club of the team that won the professional league title in Honduras. They built a mini bull ring and had several shows—rodeos which became not bull fights (no swords, no blood) but humorous shows wherein a man dressed as a woman would wave his red flag and dance around and avoid the bull. There were also dances every single night for 6 nights in a row, the final one being just for older people—someone told me no one younger than thirty was going to be allowed in. All told it was pretty exciting, especially because for the first seven months here I had gotten used to not a lot of people and not a lot of activity. The feria new and different and exciting but even before it was over I was ready for Victoria to return to its humble self. The one picture I took of the activity on the main street is going to disappoint you literal-minded folks…theres almost nothing to see. You artsy, creative types will appreciate how it hints at festive activity but leaves more to the imagination than anything else!! Right.

PS--Just read some of the ¨comments.¨ Yes, no pictures this week, there was no damn time--they are worth a lot of words (hundreds, perhaps?) As for the history of the Honduran ethnicities, c´mon! You´ll get what I give and like it. Its possible I can work in some social/political/historical commentary in the future, just dont hold your breath. More to come. Which are you all more interested in -- the Super Bowl or Super Tuesday???