El Matador

Ever since reading Michael Pollan’s An Omnivore’s Dilemma, I have felt the need to take responsibility for my carnivorous habits by manning up and actually killing an animal to be eaten.

This past weekend, the host family of a couple friends had gathered several animals from their finca and brought them to El Paraiso to slaughter and invited all of us to participate. We managed to slaughter 3 chickens and 2 rabbits. The duck and final chicken got lucky. As you can imagine, a chicken is a lot easier to kill, emotionally at least. That’s how I found myself in front of the second rabbit. After seeing the eyes of first rabbits, and hearing it scream, no one else could do it. Since I had committed myself to participating, I had to do it.

I luckily got a sharper knife, so it was quicker, although you wouldn’t know it from movement of the rabbit. It was also messier than the first one. I personally didn’t get much blood on me beyond my hands, but my friend who was holding its back legs unfortunately did.

I have mixed feelings about it. It’s not an experience that I am looking to repeat anytime soon, but I am happy I did it. It gives you the full realization of what is involved in your dinner. I feel good that while it may not have lived a fully wild, happy life, it was life on a Honduran farm, which is nowhere near as bad as an American factory farm life.

As of writing this, I have not eaten the meat. I don’t know who will, but I do know that it will be eaten. I hope to be there as I would like to fully complete the cycle.

Update:

I got my chance to eat the rabbit. It was very delicious and topped with a very nice beer based sauce. I also got a chance to see the farm it came from. While the rabbits didn’t have as much freedom as the chickens, they definitely weren’t suffering.

Half-way through training

So this past weekend was our second visiting each other. I went to El Paraiso this time, partly to celebrate my birthday, which was yesterday. Here, for birthdays, the special dish is chop suey. Yes chop suey as in the Chinese food. And if you can imagine Chinese food made by Hondurans, you can imagine that it's not very good, so I’m trying to avoid that.

The bus to El Paraiso trip was actually kind of quick. The bus from Ojojona to Teguz takes about an hour and a half, even though it should only take 30 minutes, because it's a chicken bus that stops every mile or so. The bus from Teguz to El Paraiso is about an hour and a half as well, but it's a nice mini bus called a Rapidito. El Paraiso was beautiful this weekend, not too hot. Saturday we went to the campo to watch some of our fellow compañeros play futbol. Unfortunately, the El Paraiso marching band was practicing on the concrete court so they had to wait awhile until they finished. The band was pretty good actually and it was really nice to spend some time with the Wat/San people, since I haven't seen them in awhile.

El Paraiso is huge compared to Ojojona. Ojojona has about two restaurants, one farmacia, a few artisan shops and some pulperias (basically corner stores, literally on every corner). El Paraiso has paved roads, a grided street layout, tons of restaurants and shops, and even some Ropa Americana stores. These stores basically import ropa bulto (clothes in a big bag or bolt) that is from second hand stores or good will in the U.S. and then resell it out of huge piles in the stores. You can find weird stuff, like things from Gap and Tommy Hilfiger for 20 Lempiras (about a dollar). We even found a Michigan basketball t-shirt yesterday, although it was a little stained....
I’m more than a little jealous of all the offerings of El Paraiso.

My training in business has been going well, but has been a little boring since I’m not really interested in business finance/planning. I’m actually going on a trip with my group to visit the small island of Amapala off the southern coast this week for a lesson on tourism in Honduras. Although there are not as many tourists here as in other countries, like Costa Rica for example, Honduras is really trying to promote tourism (and sustainable or eco-tourism) as a way to build its economy. There are a lot of national parks and bio-reserves as well as the beautiful Bay Islands and some interesting historical/cultural tracks, including the Copan Ruinas (Mayan). Plus it is ridiculously cheap here - so you all should come visit!

Things overall have been going really well. It's actually been kind of rainy in Ojojona which is rare for this time of year. The meteorologists have been warning farmers not to plant crops yet because the rain is a 'false start' to the season and shouldn't last long. Farmers usually plant when it starts to rain, but if the rain doesn't continue, the crops won’t survive so they need to be extra careful.

The business climate here is very interesting. People don't have a good sense of what it means to open and run a business. They just think "hey, I can make tortillas, I should start a business", without taking into consideration the fact that 40 other people are thinking and doing the same thing. People are also sometimes afraid to advertise or put up signs, partly because they are expensive and partly because they "don't like to attract strangers" as one lady put it. They don't necessarily understand the concepts of profit or tracking finances or paying themselves a salary much of the time. That being said, there are still some businesses doing really well. But many do fail.

We've also decided it's interesting how Honduras appears to outsiders compared to what it actually is. Houses are a great example. Here, people don't necessarily fix up the outside of their houses like they do in the U.S. Often they are poorly painted, rocks holding down the corrugated zinc roofs, ugly bars on the windows (this is for safety though). But people living in houses that look crappy still lead a pleasant and content existence. They take a lot of pride in their appearance and hygiene and are amazing at cooking on wood burning stoves. And you'd often be surprised by the beauty inside the houses, tile floors, bathroom, normal stuff. Just looking around a lot of the time, you'd assume everyone is leading an impoverished existence. Of course there are desperately poor people, drunks or bolos, and gangs etc, but most people have lifestyles which are pretty similar those in the US.

The "don’t judge a book by its cover" rule goes for people much of the time as well. When walking down the street, people often appear grumpy, upset, mean, rude. But as soon as you say hola or buenos dias, they brighten up and respond with a smile and reply. The exterior does not reflect what's on the inside. We've overall found the people here to be incredibly welcoming and generous and friendly. My family even calls me a miracle because they think I’m such a well-behaved and smart trainee :)

We hope hope hope to post some pictures soon so you can bring our words to life, but the internet connection is so slow that it makes it difficult. But we will try soon!

Beginning FBT

This week, we moved into our new host families. Like we said before, Nicki is now in Ojojona, a small mountain town south of Tegus. She has a bigger family this time, with a host father and mother, and 2 sisters. One of the sister's is adopted, which is very strange for a country like this, but it could be because they are Evangelical. Evangelical's in this country are much stricter, they think drinking and smoking are horrible.

Catholics on the other hand, or at least in the case of my new host family, are very different. I'm in El Paraiso, which is less than an hour from the Nicaraguan border. My host family is very similar to our last one, with the exception of not having a 4 year old running around. I have a 62 year old host mother, and a 24 year old host sister. My host mom has told me that I could drink in the house if I wanted, and yesterday, when we went to lunch, she even had a beer with me.

Both my family and Nicki's are very nice, and patient with us as we are learning more and more spanish. My host mom studied teaching, although she has never taught, so she is very good at breaking things down for me until I understand what she is trying to say.

Nicki's house is similar to what we had before. My house is different. In fact, all of the Wat/San trainees are kind of spoiled in El Paraiso. The 3 of us in my family live in a 5 bedroom house, with a bathroom in every bedroom. We have water all the time, although they are still careful with it because most of the water in the region goes to the fincas de cafe (coffee farms), and there isn't much left for the people. I even have an electroducha, so I can take hot showers. They aren't needed as much in El Paraiso though, as it is a bit hotter than Zarabanda.

This coming week is Semana Santa, a big deal in a highly religious country like this. Government employees get the whole week off, and everyone else gets Thursday and Friday, including us. Because we are married, the Peace Corps allows us 3 nights of visiting through this 7 weeks of training, which means that I am going to visit Nicki on Saturday and Sunday. We are both very excited about this.

That's all for now, I hope everything is going well back in the EEUU. We'll write again soon.

Volunteer Visit

*Names of current volunteers have been changes to protect their identities.

This past week we went on our 'Volunteer Visit,' a trip during which we travel on our own to visit a currently serving volunteer at their site. The goal is to get a better sense of the work volunteers do and their lifestyles on site. Luckily for us, we were able to go together along with our new best friend T.J. (known as Te Jota). Our trip was to Catacamas, Olancho. Olancho is the largest departamento (state) in Honduras, it spans nearly a 1/4 of the country but is sparsely populated. Most of the residents are ganaderos (ranchers), granjeros (farmers) and vaqueros (cowboys). It's like the Wild West, but actually it's the Wild East. Catacamas is a pretty large city, about 50,000 residents, and it's located at the far east end of Olancho. What this meant for us was about a 5 hour journey from our house via chicken bus (used U.S. yellow school bus that's too worn out to let our kids ride in it), taxi and bus directo (like a chartered bus, but more worn out). The transit went relatively smoothly. They've been trying to seriously scare us with tales of robberies and assaults, but if you're smart and take the better buses, you are pretty safe. Plus, I forgot to mention the PC completely funds this four day trip, so there is no excuse not to take the nicest bus available.

Catacamas is extremely hot and very humid. Temperatures were in the high 80's, but felt much worse due to the humidity. It was about as bad as DC in mid-summer. The city itself is in a large valley, so it's well laid out in a nice grid pattern (which cannot be said of most places in this country) so it was a nice change from our windy mountain roads. We met our host volunteers, a business volunteer (Liza) for TJ and Nicki and a wat/san volunteer (Juancito) for Nolan. We got perhaps the sweetest deal regarding our living situation, the married couple we were supposed to stay with ended up having to make an emergency trip to the U.S. and left us three to stay alone in their fabulous house. They quite possibly have the nicest house, three bedrooms, living room, dining room, huge kitchen, yard with hammocks and a lemon tree and a garden. They also have a T.V., cable, and an electroducha (a device that warms the water as it comes out of the showerhead - a highly prized item). Most houses are not like this, mostly because the allowance they give us for housing rarely allows for houses this big. It would be our dream house if it wasn't so darn hot. We are able to put in our preferences for our future site, size of town, type of work etc (whether or not they listen is another issue) and we definitely learned this week that requesting somewhere that is not unbearably hot is our top priority. It is very hard to function in this environment because the heat just takes away all your energy and enthusiasm.

Anyway, the first night, we headed to the grocery store and bought fixins for our specialty, homemade spaghetti! While it wasn't the best stuff we've made, it was pretty good for Honduras and it was an instant hit with Liza and Juancito. We relished every bite of non-tortilla-y goodness. It's hard to describe how nice it is to finally be able to cook for ourselves, if only once, and to eat something we love.

Monday we took a crazy bus ride across town and up into the mountains. By crazy we mean an hour and a half of riding on dusty, bumpy dirt roads in a broken down chicken bus packed full of kids, adults, old cowboys, groceries, furniture, a fence, and vendors selling fried chips and bags of water (yes, bags) - just your normal everyday bus here - that literally stopped every 100 feet to individually drop off each passenger at his/her house. Oh, what an experience. We were headed up to Las Cuevas de Talgua (the caves), a popular tourist site up in the mountains. At the base of the hike, we met a PAM volunteer, Josue, (Protected Areas Management) and since we said we were going up to his house in the park, we didn't have to pay the entrance fee. We also met the Volunteer's host dad, an amazing mountain guide named Calixto who took us up his house and offered us some very sugary cafe (coffee) and a break from the sweltering heat. If you look at any travel book about Honduras, Calixto is THE guy to contact to guide you to the caves, and he is fantastic. We didn't even have to pay him - a perk of being in the PC I suppose. We hiked to the lower cave only to find that it was locked and that the staff didn't really feel like going down to get the keys for us. So we hiked further up to a second cave. Liza got to ride Josue's horse up halfway - which we were all slightly jealous about. The upper cave was quite spectacular. This is not your average U.S. cave that has lights and platforms, this is down-home independent spelunking. The guys grabbed flashlights and followed Calixto and his son into the depths of the cave where a few times, they could barely fit through the crevices. The girls hung back and chatted. The caves were lovely and much cooler than outside. The hike back down was more of the same, sweating more than we've ever sweat in our lives perhaps. We were exhausted and dirty by the time we arrived back in Catacamas. We ate dinner at a nice cafe, known as the Ass Cafe, for the size of the owners rear end, which had amazing limonada. We crashed into bed and barely noticed the stifling heat.

Tuesday, Nolan was invited to go on a water system survey with Juancito and Josue, so he had to leave at 5 am. Juancito's counterpart drove them an hour away into the mountains to a small town where they had breakfast and met some locals who were going to act as the guides and machete-wielders. Since the survey was mostly finished, all they had to do was survey a few hundred meters up from the beginning of the system to locate the water source higher in the mountains. Basically it's a topographic study to get a sense of the angles and elevations of the land to plan the easiest way for a water pipe to fit on the mountain. The locals led the way, whacking the dense bushes aside with powerful machetes. The engineers have the priviledged job of doing the surveying rather than the machete-ing and also get free food from the locals who are so thankful for water, they will give up room and board to the surveyors. It was a long and tiring day for Nolan. On a side note, on the way back from the trip, Josue bought a puppy for about USD$8! We had a blast playing with the adorable little guy all night (and picking ticks from his poor little ears).

Nicki and T.J. basically sat around all day, watched Top Model, ate pancakes, did laundry etc - this is actually what most PC volunteers do on a daily basis. The best part of the day was their opportunity to teach english to some local teachers. The topics were simple, colors, emotions, and body parts, but they were still nervous. It turned out to be an awesome experience and Nicki actually really enjoyed teaching, and felt a little more comfortable with her spanish at the end of the day. The funniest part was the kids at the school who followed them around without saying a word, just staring intently. It doesn't help that TJ is 6'4" and just about the most american looking guy you can meet (no offense TJota). It was an interesting day to say the least.

We all finished off our day with a trip to the local pizzeria - which, if you know us, you already know it was not up to our high high standards. But hey, it was pizza in Honduras and it was edible. The whole weekend was a refreshing break from Honduran food which, although good, can get a little boring. But maybe they think the same thing about our food too, you know?

The trip back was uneventful except for the taxi ride to the mall in a car that we swear was about to fall apart faster than the Bluesmobile. We also had Wendy's at the mall, which was really expensive for us. It was 50 Lempiras for a medium drink, medium fries and chicken nuggets. 20L is about 1 USD. So that's only about USD$2.50, which is cheap, but when we are earning 58 Lemps a day during training, it's a day's wages! So we predict our Wendy's trips will be few and far between. It's still a little hard to get a sense of cost here, we are constantly trying to translate back to USD which is dangerous because we're not earning USD. For example, a 1/2 litre bag of water costs 2L and a bottle of about the same amount costs 10L. One mango - 2L. Pound of potatoes - 8L. A 4 pack of cheap toilet paper - 14L. One pound of ground beef - 35L. A bottle of body wash 70-100L. A 3.5 hr direct bus - 105L. Typical meal - 60-120L. A cell phone - 500L. A minute on a phone - 1L. The good news is that if you want to come visit, it's dirt cheap. For us, we're living the local life, so we have to be conscious of what we're spending.

Sunday we are finally headed to the second part of our traning, FBT or field based training. We'll be separate for 7 weeks, but the PC is nice enough to provide us with funds to travel to see each other for a whole three nights during this time. Other trainees can't even leave their towns, so we're pretty lucky. We'll be about 3 hours apart by bus. Nolan is headed to the departamento of El Paraíso, just south and east of Teguz, which is hot. Nicki is headed just south of Teguz to a small mountain town. We hope to keep you updated regularly, but we're supposed to be even busier during this second part - which is hard to believe! We will try to write again soon. Miss you all!

P.S. Aunt Mary and Uncle Tony, thank you for sending the big box of books! We just got it today! It is so nice to receive mail - it was a pleasant surprise! Thank you, thank you!

Hola de nuevo!

Our second week has passed in a flash, so we thought we'd pass along some more info. This week was much different than the first. We've started real spanish classess which last about 4 hours a day in the morning. We get breaks every hour, so it's not as bad as it sounds, but it's tiring nevertheless. They have a great set up though. Our classes have only 5 people in them so it's very personal and the emphasis is on talking/conversing. We do very little writing or grammar or anything like traditional spanish class you might have had. They say the Peace Corps has the best language programs in the world, and this is why, it's all about the talking. We've already seen improvements, but it's still what we struggle with most.

The rest is pretty easy. We had lectures this week on getting cell phones, possible diseases we might contract, how to behave if someone is trying to assault you on a bus, you know the must-know stuff. We also started this week in our proyectos or projects. As you all know, Nolan is a water and sanitation engineer, henceforth wat/san and Nicki is a business advisor. We actually met our team leaders this week and got some materials. Nolan has a 500 page book about how to assess, design and construct water systems. Wat/san-ers will basically be working outside a lot to assess topography to see where systems can be implemented and then figure out how to create the system. They also do a lot of training and classes (charlas) on water safety, hygiene, health, recycling, water conservation etc. The business group is a bit more diverse. People can do anything from help a very small business try to keep track of their accounts, or help a business create a business plan, to teaching adults and kids how to use the internet or teaching motivational speaking or cooking. Nicki will probably be doing work with GIS (Geographic info systems) which is what she has been doing the last few years. Apparently people trained in GIS are few and far between so she will probably have some opportunities to work with the wat/san group and a group of current volunteers who are putting together a GIS training tool (she is in very high demand and is now known in the group as "the GIS person"). For those of you who know about or are interested in GIS, it's apparently getting popular to use here in Honduras. Many sites have GPS units and the GIS software but don't know how to use it. There is also not a giant database of geographic info to use like there is in the US. But the information, like boundaries, municipal services, land uses and socio-economic data is in high demand. It's been fun to learn a little more about what we will actually be doing. They try to integrate everything really well so in our spanish classes we are trying to use vocab words from our proyectos and safety training as well.

We've been talking to our madre this week about Hondurans in general. She has some unique opinions. First of all, she works in Tegus but lives all the way out here in the countryside, which she prefers because there is no traffic or noise or pollution. The city is very dangerous and although some nice parts have running treated water, there are still plenty of poor parts where people have nothing. She told us she rides the bus to work each day (takes 1.5 hrs to get into Tegus) and sees people living under bridges and bathing in water downstream from toxic dumping sites. But she maintains that the Hondurans are a very strong people. When someone gets malaria or dengue, the doctors barely pay attention to these people in the hospital, they just get over the sickness. Women give birth in their homes amid animals and without running water, but the children are healthy and happy. No one died in Honduras from the swine flu. The people here persist against all odds.

The big issue of this week was that we didn't have any water! Here, most pueblas (small towns) or aldeas (communities), don't exactly have running water. Some houses do, but most rely on their pila (remember the large concrete storage tank thing). The water is controlled by local water boards that sort of dole it out (we're still not really sure yet about how this works). Each community has someone who "turns on the water" to different houses on different days of the week. Some houses get water once a week, some every day, it just depends on how far out you are and what water is available. We are supposed to get water once a week, on Sundays. On these days, you simply leave the faucet/tap open that goes to your pila and at some miraculous time, water starts to flow and you let it run to fill up the pila. Well on Sunday, our water didn't come. Nor did it come on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday. Our madre kept trying to call the people in control, but no one was answering. Luckily for us, we live near relatives who had enough so we could just go and get a few bucketfuls for what we needed (small bucket baths, cleaning dishes etc). We finally got our water on Thursday! What a relief. It really makes you appreciate the water you take for granted every day when using your toilet or showering. What if you didn't know when your water would come again?

Hola Todos!

We've safely arrived in Honduras and have so much already to share with you about our experience. Our stay in Miami was brief, but enjoyable. We met the 53 other trainees (we are not officially volunteers until we pass training and are sworn in) and had a few of those silly role-playing and ice breaker sessions to get to know one another. We also received a lot of information about what is expected of us and what we should expect as well as some logistics. Most of the other trainees are near our age, 22 to 27. There are two older volunteers, and by older we mean about 50 probably, and two other married couples. Miami was very humid and a little rainy. It was almost like a primer to Honduras because most of the signs and instructions on the plane etc were in spanish. We had barely enough time there after our session to eat dinner with some new friends at a Cuban restaurant before falling into bed with exhaustion. We woke up at 4 am, checked out of the hotel at 5 and boarded a bus at 5:30 to the airport for our 10:20 am flight! I guess they expected it would take us 5 hours to check in and find our gate...

The flight to Tegucigalpa (Teguz), the capital of Honduras, was uneventful. The flight was only half full and PC trainees were at least half of those on board. I guess not too many people are headed to Honduras these days. The first thing you notice right away are the beautiful green mountains that circle the city. We knew there would be mountains, but there are really more than we expected. The rest was not too surprising. Concrete low-rise buildings in pastel colors, not many tall buildings, cars, trucks, a Burger King and Church's chicken. It reminded us a lot of Puerto Rico. The wait to get through customs was extremely long and Nicki's passport didn't scan correctly (like many other trainees) so she had her picture taken.

We were greeted at the airport by hot weather (but not as humid as Miami surprisingly) as well as our training staff who had some Dominos pizza, water and fruit for us for lunch. We took a 60 minute bus ride (only 15km though) to our training site way up the mountains. We had an afternoon of introductions to staff and then we met our host family for the first three weeks! We have a wonderful host mother (madre), Marcela. She is twenty two, so she's not quite our "mother" but you get the idea. She has the cutest 4 year old son who is so shy. Her mother also lives with her/us. Coincidentally, their house is the furthest from the training site, so we have an extra 10 minute walk from the bus stop with the others. The house is in the middle of the woods and their family owns a large piece of land on which our madre, her uncle/aunt and grandparents all live in three separate houses. They have all kinds of things, lemon trees with lemons as big as cantaloupes, bananas, tons of chickens, a few rabbits (not to eat), and a dog. The initial meeting was a little awkward. We quickly realized that our knowledge of spanish was insufficient to properly communicate, so much of the first evening was silence.

There is no plumbing in the house. They have two types of water. Agua purificada (purified) that comes in jugs like for a water cooler, or that they boil and put in pitchers. This is for drinking, brushing teeth, cooking etc. Out the back door is a 'pila' - sort of like a large concrete holding tank for water that is used for washing (clothes, dishes, ourselves). The bathroom is a sort of separate space you access by going outside. The toilet doesn't flush so you have to throw a bucket of water down it when you're finished. No showers or bathtub - we now take 'bucket baths' where we simply scoop up and splash water on ourselves. We can heat the water up on the fogon, the outside wood burning stove, but we've also been taking very cold bucket baths the past two days! Despite all these differences, it's actually been okay adjusting to new hygeine habits. Let me be clear, not all the trainees have similar situations. Some families have showers and some have hot showers, some even have internet. We don't, but we do have a few channels of t.v.

The food has also been pretty easy to adjust to. Our first real meal was baleadas, flour tortillas filled with frijoles refritos (refried beans), scrambled eggs and this sort of creamy butter that comes in a plastic bag. Those were delicious. We also had small corn tortillas topped with more beans and queso seco, a dry cheese that is very salty and somewhat unpleasant by itself. The tortillas are not hand made, but the eggs are fresh. For breakfast, strawberry milk and more tortillas, this time with some cheese in between, like a quesadilla, but not really. Tortillas basically come with every meal. They are heated up on a little griddle on the stove (they have a normal stove and oven). But, not all the meals are so traditional. One day we had corn flakes for breakfast and chicken lasagna for lunch (that Nicki and our madre made the night before) and fried salami for dinner. Our madre makes us a lunch every day for our classes. It's like going back to elementary school. A big yellow school bus comes to pick us up in the morning at our different neighborhoods (its about 30 minutes to the training site) and we all hop on carrying lunchboxes, thermoses and tupperwares with our lunch. Hilarious!

The action at training this week has been draining. We wake up at 5 so we have time to shower and eat before we catch the bus. From 7:30 to 4:30 we have hours of sessions on saftey, expectations, rules, customs, banking, money, medical needs, emergency info, new people etc. We also have a few hours of survival spanish a day which is thoroughly exhausting, the profesors speak no english. The spanish thus far has been the hardest part of everything. It's difficult in several ways. We can generally get the gist of what we hear, but subtleties are totally lost on us. And it's hard to respond because we don't have the confidence or vocabulary to say much. But we're not the only ones in this position. Some trainees are much better, fluent even and others are much worse, so we don't feel too bad. We had interviews Friday where we had to just talk in Spanish so they can assess our knowledge to put us in our classes for the rest of training. We have to reach a minimum level of competency before we can 'pass' training and be sworn in. But we can say that in just a few days, we already feel like we're making progress - helping cook, do the dishes etc and our host family's little boy loves the card game Uno, so we've started to play with him in the evenings and even this is improving our Spanish.

I guess we'll leave you all with that for now. If you have questions or comments or want to know more about anything, just let us know and we'll get around to responding!

So long, farewell...

On the eve of our departure, we wanted to say goodbye to everyone and leave you with a few important parting words.

This may be our last post for a few weeks (even though it's only our second post). We've just learned that our training site outside of Tegucigalpa (the capital, and henceforth Teguz) does not have good internet access, so for the first three weeks or more, you may not hear anything. Don't be alarmed, we'll keep track of our initial impressions and update you as soon as we can!

Please also take note, we've posted our mailing address on the right side of the blog page. We would love letters, postcards or care packages if you have time. We ask that you try and follow a few guidelines when sending us any type of mail to ensure it arrives safely:

1) Date and number your letters or postcards, this way we'll know if we missed one you've sent

2) Don't send anything very valuable, expensive items are subject to taxes and import fees and may get stolen or damaged, or simply not arrive.

3) If asked to declare what a package contains for customs purposes, simply say 'personal items' to minimize taxes and fees.

4) If you do send cheaper items, ship them in padded envelopes as opposed to bulky boxes. Boxes are more suspicious and thus more likely to be searched and seized, preventing your package from arriving.

5) Include in your package a list of items you're sending, this will allow us to know if something has been removed from the package.

Also, to reiterate, if you have a gmail, twitter, or yahoo account, you can sign up to follow our blog and you will automatically get emails when we make an entry. To do this, simply click the "FOLLOW" button on the right hand side of the blog page below the disclaimer and follow the instructions.

Thank you to everyone who has sent us messages and well wishes. We greatly appreciate all your support, confidence and faith in us as we begin this journey!

Adios for now!