About Me
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- A Gringa
- Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
- "La Gringa en Honduras" has become "A Gringa No Brasil". All of my posts about Peace Corps and Central America are still here, but I've changed the name and design for my new locale - Rio de Janeiro!
What's New
Saturday, September 3, 2011
The month of August was a whirlwind. I’m going to try to keep this update brief, but I’ll probably fail. So here’s what’s up in case you want to skip ahead: Mariel’s visit, friend’s funeral, Christmas cookie workshop, farewell parties, close of service, and border problems (each is one paragraph). And check out the photo tab for pictures of it all!
Mariel (a friend/roommate from Cornell) came to visit Honduras for a week and got a mini Peace Corps experience. Since I was wrapping up my work and everything in my site, I didn’t really have time or money to travel too far so we hung out in and around my site for the week. She got to see Cantarranas, meet all of my friends and host family in town, experience a Honduran style barbecue, go out dancing in Tegucigalpa, hike in La Tigra National Park, and visit one of my volunteer neighbors in Danlí to try a lot of their famous corn products. It was so great having her here and being able to share this part of my life with her! It definitely helped that she speaks Spanish too because she was able to really get to know and converse with my friends. She said she had a great time and felt like she was walking around town with a celebrity when she was with me haha.
Unfortunately, right after Mariel left, a close friend of mine passed away from a heart attack. He was in his late 40s, but was overweight and diabetic and didn’t watch what he ate/drank as much as he probably should have. I got to know him through work – he helped organize the municipal and cultural fairs in town as well as the anniversary festival. I’m also close friends with his oldest daughter. He was a very generous man, always in a good mood, and always had a joke to share. It was incredibly sad going to his wake and funeral, but I felt like the entire town was there to show their respects and grieve with the family. He clearly had a lot of friends in town and will be sorely missed. For the rest of my time there, he was a popular topic of conversation – lots of town people were trading stories about great times they had with him, and I’m sure they’re still talking about him now.
For the past two Christmases, I’ve baked and given away Christmas cookies to my friends in town. While I was prepping to leave, several people were asking what they were going to do this year without my cookies haha. So I translated the recipes into Spanish and offered to give a cookie workshop to anyone willing to chip in for the ingredients. There were seven friends who said they were interested so we all got together to make peanut butter cookies, Russian tea cakes, and ginger snaps. Yum! I’m curious to see if any of them will actually attempt to make them again come December.
On August 29th, I had to leave Cantarranas :( A few of the new volunteers in the area came by ahead of time to pick up my furniture and other house wares since they are just starting off in their new (and unfurnished) homes. Anything that was left over was given away to Honduran friends and coworkers, and I sent a few things ahead of me to the States with friends. I brought a bag of clothes to the town hall and within a matter of seconds, everything was claimed! The rest of my possessions I managed to fit into a small duffel bag and big hiker’s style backpack. I had a small farewell party the Saturday before I left town, and I spent the last few days going around visiting all of my closest friends to say goodbye. Leaving Cantarranas was SO depressing. I was sporadically crying throughout my last couple of days, and I was a mess in the car when I left to come to Teguz. I had another farewell party in the city, which involved a million more tears at the end. I’m really going to miss these people. It’s so hard to say bye :(
Once I got to Tegucigalpa, I had to start in on a mountain of paperwork. Peace Corps, being a US government agency, has a bunch of red tape to get around before they’ll actually let you leave. I had a million medical appointments, interviews, and forms to get signed. I spent three days in the Peace Corps office going from one appointment to another, and was completely exhausted and stressed out by the end of it. But I did magically manage to get everything done and got a clean bill of health, so as of 8:00 a.m. September 2nd, I am no longer a Peace Corps Volunteer! Crazy.
Yesterday, I was supposed to leave for Nicaragua with two other volunteer friends. I’m planning on backpacking for a month through Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama. Unfortunately, there were some issues at the border. Apparently the Nicaraguan immigration officials changed their rules a few days ago and didn't tell anyone. When PC canceled my Honduran residency, they gave me a tourist visa stamp that's supposed to allow me to leave Honduras and pass into any of the border countries. Now Nicaragua is saying that they no longer accept that stamp. The only solution they gave us was that we have to go to the immigration office here, and get a special stamp called a próroga that costs $20. Of course we discovered this Friday, when it was already too late to go to the immigration office, so we have to wait out the weekend here in Teguz, go to the office on Monday morning, and try again. Fingers crossed!
Mariel (a friend/roommate from Cornell) came to visit Honduras for a week and got a mini Peace Corps experience. Since I was wrapping up my work and everything in my site, I didn’t really have time or money to travel too far so we hung out in and around my site for the week. She got to see Cantarranas, meet all of my friends and host family in town, experience a Honduran style barbecue, go out dancing in Tegucigalpa, hike in La Tigra National Park, and visit one of my volunteer neighbors in Danlí to try a lot of their famous corn products. It was so great having her here and being able to share this part of my life with her! It definitely helped that she speaks Spanish too because she was able to really get to know and converse with my friends. She said she had a great time and felt like she was walking around town with a celebrity when she was with me haha.
Unfortunately, right after Mariel left, a close friend of mine passed away from a heart attack. He was in his late 40s, but was overweight and diabetic and didn’t watch what he ate/drank as much as he probably should have. I got to know him through work – he helped organize the municipal and cultural fairs in town as well as the anniversary festival. I’m also close friends with his oldest daughter. He was a very generous man, always in a good mood, and always had a joke to share. It was incredibly sad going to his wake and funeral, but I felt like the entire town was there to show their respects and grieve with the family. He clearly had a lot of friends in town and will be sorely missed. For the rest of my time there, he was a popular topic of conversation – lots of town people were trading stories about great times they had with him, and I’m sure they’re still talking about him now.
For the past two Christmases, I’ve baked and given away Christmas cookies to my friends in town. While I was prepping to leave, several people were asking what they were going to do this year without my cookies haha. So I translated the recipes into Spanish and offered to give a cookie workshop to anyone willing to chip in for the ingredients. There were seven friends who said they were interested so we all got together to make peanut butter cookies, Russian tea cakes, and ginger snaps. Yum! I’m curious to see if any of them will actually attempt to make them again come December.
On August 29th, I had to leave Cantarranas :( A few of the new volunteers in the area came by ahead of time to pick up my furniture and other house wares since they are just starting off in their new (and unfurnished) homes. Anything that was left over was given away to Honduran friends and coworkers, and I sent a few things ahead of me to the States with friends. I brought a bag of clothes to the town hall and within a matter of seconds, everything was claimed! The rest of my possessions I managed to fit into a small duffel bag and big hiker’s style backpack. I had a small farewell party the Saturday before I left town, and I spent the last few days going around visiting all of my closest friends to say goodbye. Leaving Cantarranas was SO depressing. I was sporadically crying throughout my last couple of days, and I was a mess in the car when I left to come to Teguz. I had another farewell party in the city, which involved a million more tears at the end. I’m really going to miss these people. It’s so hard to say bye :(
Once I got to Tegucigalpa, I had to start in on a mountain of paperwork. Peace Corps, being a US government agency, has a bunch of red tape to get around before they’ll actually let you leave. I had a million medical appointments, interviews, and forms to get signed. I spent three days in the Peace Corps office going from one appointment to another, and was completely exhausted and stressed out by the end of it. But I did magically manage to get everything done and got a clean bill of health, so as of 8:00 a.m. September 2nd, I am no longer a Peace Corps Volunteer! Crazy.
Yesterday, I was supposed to leave for Nicaragua with two other volunteer friends. I’m planning on backpacking for a month through Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama. Unfortunately, there were some issues at the border. Apparently the Nicaraguan immigration officials changed their rules a few days ago and didn't tell anyone. When PC canceled my Honduran residency, they gave me a tourist visa stamp that's supposed to allow me to leave Honduras and pass into any of the border countries. Now Nicaragua is saying that they no longer accept that stamp. The only solution they gave us was that we have to go to the immigration office here, and get a special stamp called a próroga that costs $20. Of course we discovered this Friday, when it was already too late to go to the immigration office, so we have to wait out the weekend here in Teguz, go to the office on Monday morning, and try again. Fingers crossed!
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