After an eventful stay in Park Ridge for NYE, our journey to Honduras began. First we had to drive from New Jersey back to South Carolina, where our flight was booked from. The entire 12 hour drive I remember Shayna and I kept asking ourselves “What the hell did we get ourselves in to?”
At this point we didn’t know where we’d be staying, who we’d be with, or what we really would be doing while in Honduras. Our understanding of the trip was very, very, alarmingly slim.
We had a layover in Texas that, of course, was too short and we missed our flight after a delay in Columbia. Luckily there was another flight to Honduras about an hour later (who would’ve guessed flights to Honduras were so common?). All of a sudden, we were in Honduras. Getting off the plane was frightening. Inside the airport it was hot, muggy, everyone was speaking Spanish, and we had very little instruction to follow. Somehow we managed to find our luggage sitting in the middle of the floor near baggage claim. We grabbed it, walked out of a gate and saw people holding up “Students Helping Honduras” signs. This was good. We found a group of people and ended up sitting on the floor of the Honduran airport for probably 2 hours.
Eventually, we got on a broken down, dirty old school bus that took us to a grocery store. We came out with all the essentials – a bottle of champagne, a bottle of wine, a 6-pack of Honduran beer, and peanut butter. We were all set for our trip. Once we got to the hostel we would be staying at, we were given instructions: wait and you will be assigned your room. Well, it turns out me, Shayna, and three other girls were the only ones who actually listened to this. By the time we figured this out, all the rooms had been claimed and we found ourselves concerned and alone. We found a few extra beds in one room, which we were later kicked out of, so we eventually found an empty room that was designated for the guards, but we were directed to stay in there.
The first day wasn’t very eventful. We got to know our roommates: Ashlyn, Kiersten and Taylor, all of whom were seniors at USC. Taylor actually is in my sorority and we didn’t even know it. The five of us ended up becoming very close during the course of the trip, but more on that later. We went to a pick-up soccer game that night and then went back early for dinner and showers before our first day on the work site.
The shower was a nightmare. The door wouldn’t close, so I was basically standing in the bathroom butt naked. The floors were dirty and the ice-cold water trickled out so slowly it didn’t even feel like a shower. I would argue that I was never truly clean on that trip. We also learned pretty early in the trip that the WiFi was extremely unreliable; only 20 people or so were allowed to be connected at a time, so people would deviously reset the router without telling anyone. The first 20 people that connected were good, and everyone else was pissed. It took us a little bit to understand this system.
I slept on a bunk bed with a rock-hard pillow and a bath towel as my blanket. It was a rough first night to say the least.
Day 2
We got to explore some of Villa Soleada (the village we were staying at) in the morning half of our day, and then we traveled to the village of La Nunez, which is where we would be building our school. For lunch we got split up into groups of 3, one of whom had to speak a very good amount of Spanish. Shayna and I paired up with Fernando, another assistant who spoke almost fluent Spanish. We went to a tiny little house up where a girl named Edith and the mother who had taken her in and raised her lived. This mother had 4 children of her own (one daughter, three sons), the youngest being 20 years old, and now she had taken in Edith. Edith was around 5 or 6 years old and had been abandoned by her birth mother.
At their home, Edith and her mom taught us how to make a very traditional Honduran lunch – baleadas. Baleadas consist of homemade tortillas filled with scrambled eggs, avocado, and refried beans. They were delicious, but making the tortillas was a lot more difficult than it appeared. First, we mixed the ingredients to make the dough. Then we had to pound and roll out the dough into a perfect circle, and there was a strategy to this that Shayna and I seriously struggled with. But, all in all, the baleadas turned out delicious and perfectly cooked. After lunch, Edith’s mom showed us how to make pastelitas de pina, aka pineapple pastries. They were some of the most delicious desserts I have ever had – filled with warm, cooked pineapple. I’ve craved them every day since eating them! Edith even ran out quickly and returned with Honduran chocolates for the three of us. It was amazing meeting such wonderful people who had very little for themselves and yet were willing to give so much. Edith’s mom told us that if we ever came back to Honduras, we would always have a place to stay with her. They were such amazing people and I will never forget my experience meeting them.
After lunch, our group as a whole met at one of the teacher’s homes. Our group consisted of students from USC, Hampton Sydney, Virginia Tech, William and Mary, and a few from other schools. We went around in a circle and introduced ourselves: where we were from, our names, our age, etc.
This is where we found “the one” 😉
When we got back to Villa Soleada we found that we’d gotten kicked out of our bedroom again. This would be the second time in 24 hours. So now, Shayna and I had to go into one room to join a group of girls from William & Mary, while Taylor, Kiersten and Ashlyn went into another room with girls from Virginia Tech. Turns out that Shayna and I got the better end of the stick there. We met Katie, who ended up being one of the funniest, coolest people we would meet on this trip. We spent the night casually chatting and gearing up for our first full day at the worksite tomorrow.
A Journal For My Journeys 