I have friends? I almost forgot!

This week I had a great opportunity to see a little more of Honduras and learn about Baseball. Yes, I know the basics but since I am supposed to be coaching a team and the last time I played softball was about 8th grade, I needed the refresher. Kyler and Emily are starting their own team in San Francisco del Valle, Ocotopeque (it's near the borders to El Salvador and Guatamala). Since most of these kids have never played or watched much baseball, they are clueless, even to the basic concepts. As an introduction and to feel out interest, Kyler put on a 3 day baseball camp. Expecting about 40-60 kids, he enlisted my help (also a great reason to visit friends). By day 3, 40-60 kids turned into almost 100 (that we counted). Granted, some of them were outside the 8-12 year old age range, but that is still a lot of kids to practice with.

The trip was great. They have a great site and it was wonderful spending time with friends. I had been feeling a little isolated from that the last month or so. I also visited Connie Head (yes, another person from Wenatchee serving in Peace Corps Honduras, although she finishes her service in December) so that was a good time.

This entire trip has been a little bit more of an adventure than I expected. I left my house in Talanga at 5:40am Sunday. About 10 minutes outside Talanga the bus broke down. Great start to a 10+ hour trip, that leaves a lot of time for more problems. Luckily, that wasn't the case. Another bus passed about 30 minutes later and we made it (quite crowded but safely) to Tegus. Of course the taxi driver tried to rip me off (and sort of exceeded but not too much) for the 3 min cab ride. Yes, I timed it. 3 minutes, is not far by any standards. The rest of the trip was long and slow but pleasantly uneventful. I did recieve a drawing from my last seat buddy, a 17 year old Honduran boy who just graduated from colegio. I'm going to need wall decorations when I move into my house and that's a start. hahaha. I arrived in San Francisco at about 5:30pm. Yes 12 hours and I only changed buses once with a 30 minutes wait. Hence my excitement about the possibility of a ride back with one of the PC doctors (PCMO) who was in the area.

I cut a few hours off my trip back to Tegus by going with the PCMO. Unfortunately, we left a little late in the afternoon for me to catch a bus from Tegus to Talanga. I tried to stay in one of the usual PC hotels but they were both booked for the night. I received clearance to try the Maya, the backup plan because it's more expensive (I think "Guad 1 and 2" run about 250 lempiras/night, the Maya is about triple that). The Maya was also almost full and could only put me in a L1000 room. For those of you trying to do the conversion, I think it's about $60. That's fine when we're earning a US salary but you forgot, I earn Lempiras and that's more than a week's pay. Luckily, I think PC will reimburse me for part of it but I am waiting to hear. Either way, my "free" ride probably turned out to be more expensive than the L184 bus ticket and an extra night in Tegus. There are positives though... I am taking advantage of free internet at the PC office and I got to pick up my packages! (Thanks Traci and Katie and Abbey and crew for the Halloween care! I love them both! Also served well for breakfast :) )

It's really hard for me to conceptualize the time of year and that Christmas is approaching to quickly because the weather hasn't changed since I arrived in July. I bought chocolate last week and when I realized it was Christmas wrapped, my initial reaction was "How old is this?!... Oh, it's October, it's for this year." For a second, I thought it was July. Time to run but I am doing well and still enjoying my experience here. Miss and love you all!