Michigan Eye and Dental Brigade

We spent all last week interpreting for a medical brigade from Michigan that came to La Esperanza, so we thought we’d give you all some of the highlights. The brigade is part of a partnership between the Lions Club here and in Michigan. Every year eye doctors and dentists come to La Esperanza around this time of year to offer free services. We headed over to the Lions Club building on Sunday afternoon, thinking we were having a meeting to get to know everyone. To our surprise, the brigade was already getting started so we jumped right into interpreting.

People waiting in line

We started out helping with acuity tests (reading the eye chart at distance and close up) which was pretty boring, but quickly moved to where we were really needed, assisting the ophthalmologists as they asked patients questions and provided diagnoses and treatments. There was actually very little interpreting that needed to be done. The doctors only ask a few questions (Having any problems? Which is better, 1 or 2? etc), and most of the visit is looking at their eyes, which just requires you to tell them to keep their head straight and look into the distance, which for some reason was really tricky for most people. The doctors have also been coming for quite some time, a few for 20 years, so they spoke a little Spanish too. The dentists had everything covered so no interpreter was necessary. Our friends Zach and Karl from nearby sites came in for the week to help out, and having the extra company made it more fun.

Distance acuity test

Up close acuity test

Eye pressure check

Eye exam

Zach interpreting for Dr. Bob

Karl interpreting

As usual the patients who come to the brigade, rich and poor, figure out exactly what they need to complain of to the doctors in order to get new glasses or eye drops. The doctors really only half mind the lying. After awhile they were almost automatically giving everyone reading glasses, sunglasses and moisturizing drops. The funniest was one little kid, really intent on getting some glasses. The doctor began asking which lenses were better, moving the prescription up and up as the kid said each successive lens was better. Then the doctor started to go back down in prescription, and the little kid continued saying it was better and better until it the doctor got to zero prescription, which the kid still insisted was better than the last. That little guy didn’t get any glasses.

Nolan helping Iliona, our favorite little girl, get new glasses

The best part was meeting people. The brigade brought not only doctors and dentists but a bunch of others to help out with acuity tests, x-rays, and glasses fittings, most of whom were not eye doctors or hygienists or anything in the field of medicine. Several were teachers, another worked at the Michigan Forest Association, and many were retired. It was nice to chat with them, having Michigan in common, and sharing some of our insights into Honduran culture. We met people from the Lions Club in La Esperanza (Club de Leones) who, as you might expect, are the wealthy movers and shakers in the community that we now have connections with. We also ran into a bunch of people we already knew from around town and made friends with some new people, a couple who owns a hotel, a woman who works at the grocery store and a guy from the radio station.

Bill and Johnny

Toby was a balloon artist and made this little girl a house

Nolan had a couple opportunities to work with the dentists, so I’ll let him tell you about that….

Like Nicki mentioned, the dentists had things pretty much covered, they had one high school Spanish teacher with them who did most of their interpreting. Since there is less talking with the dentists than the eye doctors, she was able to go back and forth between the dentist and the hygienist. There were, however, a couple times when she was somewhere else, so I went and interpreted for the hygienist. The first and most interesting time, I helped explain to a young boy that she had to give him a shot to numb his mouth, and then that she was going to pull two baby teeth, and three rotted roots. The kid seemed to take it pretty well, didn’t want his dad in the room, and only started to cry when the dentist came and gave him a shot in the roof of his mouth. All the doctors brought little toys and things to give to the kids after they saw them, so he got several things, and seemed happy enough when it was over. The only real problem is that with a diet of coke and churros (chips) the kid will probably be back next year to have more rotting teeth pulled.

The hygienist doing a cleaning

Dentist doing an extraction

The best day of the brigade for me, however, was the last day. The dental team spilt up into two groups to go to two different schools to teach the kids about brushing their teeth and also to administer fluoride treatments. I had been asked earlier in the week if I could help with the second group, so on Thursday I left early to go with them. The school we went to was not that far out of town, but it was still far enough that all 6 grades (37 students total) were in one class. A nearby school ended up coming down so we gave the presentation twice to 77 kids total (the other dental group presented to 200 students). The presentation consisted of the dental hygienist explaining how to brush your teeth (for 2 min, in circles, etc) in English, and me translating what she said into Spanish. We then explained about the fluoride treatment and how we would administer it. In the first class, one of the 1^st graders burst into tears when were explaining it. Once we figured out why he was crying, he thought we wanted to pull out all his teeth and give him a shot (how he came to that conclusion we have no idea), we were able to calm him down, but he never did let us give him the treatment. Another cute interaction was when we asked for questions, and if they understood what we were saying. One boy raised his hand and said he didn’t understand. It also took us awhile, but eventually he said he didn’t understand the dental team, and the teacher explained that that was because they were speaking English, and that I was there to translate what they said for the students.

After the presentation, we started the fluoride application. Basically, what we did was put on latex gloves, squirt a little fluoride cream onto our hand, and brush the fluoride onto the kid’s teeth. Other than the one kid, it was pretty easy to get them excited about it. We told them that it tasted like gum, but that they shouldn’t swallow it, and they couldn’t eat anything for at least 30 minutes afterward. At the end, we left each class with toothbrushes and toothpaste, enough fluoride for two more treatments, and a couple boxes of school supplies, all of which (toothbrushes, pencils, protractors, everything) the kids will keep at school, use during class, and leave there at the end of the day. This is so they don’t bring it home and lose it. It’s the safest thing to do here where people don’t brush their teeth because they can’t afford toothpaste.

Nolan applying fluoride treatment

Hygienist applying fluoride treatment

Maybe it wasn't such a good idea handing out those latex gloves...

Thursday was our last day, and we said farewell to the doctors and brigade members at a despedida (going away party) at our favorite local restaurant/dance club/sports bar, El Fogon. In typical Honduran style everyone arrived about an hour late, people gave speeches in English and Spanish that were oddly translated and repetitive, and everyone received at least one diploma (we got two, haha!). We were also gifted some Michigan wine and chocolates for our interpreting services. We had a full dinner with an open bar followed by cake and dancing to songs of the 80’s, 90’s and today. I suppose they chose U.S. pop songs because the brigade was from the U.S., but it felt tacky and lacking in Latin flavor.

The brigade comes every year and should come again before we leave, so we'll have a chance to see our new friends again next year.

A New Perspective

It has been a couple weeks since I returned, but I am finally getting around to writing about my translating experience (or to be grammatically correct, my interpretation experience).

I was first approached several months ago about my interest, if any, in helping to interpret for a member of the Virginia Medical Center Brigade. While the guy I would help would be a member of the brigade, the work would not be interpreting for doctors treating patients. The brigade has been coming to Honduras, to the city and aldeas of Comayagua specifically, for 10 years or so. A few years ago, in an effort to become more sustainable, they started training ‘Community Health Workers’ who could work in local clinics throughout the year when the doctors were not there. While training the Community Health Workers, they realized that many of the communities they were working with did not have clean, easily accessible water. Because clean water, and the education to properly use it, is perhaps the best preventative medicine they could give, the brigade decided to build water systems for these people. The guy they put in charge of overseeing these water projects, Dan, is a retired real estate developer, and because he doesn’t speak much Spanish, he has always had Peace Corps volunteers accompany him on his trips to help. The current volunteer that he has been working with finishes his service in May, so he was looking for new help, and another volunteer and I responded.

Dan flew into Tegucigalpa on a Monday, so three of us PCV’s met him at the Peace Corps office. He wanted to quickly meet Emily, our new Peace Corps Honduras directora, before going to review the current status of the as-built plans of the water system at the engineering office. At this point, I was just along for the ride, learning what I could about the system. Once those meeting were finished, we were off to Comayagua. It was already night, but after the 2 hour drive, we still had another meeting at our hotel to review the blueprints for an orphanage that the brigade wants to build in La Paz, a nearby city. We met with the architect over dinner at the hotel, and got to bed relatively early.

In order to fit everything in, we got started early the next day. We went to the current orphanage (in an old falling apart school building) to meet with the nun who runs it. We wanted to show her the plans before we met with the mayor and city council to give them an update on our progress. After those meetings, the plan was actually completely changed, so we will see how the architect redesigns it next time. The orphans were very cute. We got there right as they were waking up, and the first thing they all did when they came out of their bedrooms was come and give each of us a hug.

Comayagua is actually one of the bigger cities in Honduras, so obviously we weren’t going to stay there to help with water projects. We had to go up about an hour and a half into the mountains, about an hour past where the last bus reaches. We were going to be camping up there for 4 nights, so once we had stocked up on food for the week, we set off. Our camp site turned out to be near the top of the mountain in a clearing that serves as a typical Honduran aldea center. There was a soccer field, a school, a church, and the new clinic that the brigade was having built. It was actually quite a dense ‘downtown’ for a community like this. We set up our tents, and reviewed the plan for the week while waiting for church to end so the woman who had agreed to cook for us could make dinner.

Campsite at the top of the mountain

One of the ways to try to get the community to take ownership of a water system is to get them as involved as possible. The community typically provides sand, rocks, wood. They do all the unqualified labor including digging ditches for the tubes, and chopping and carrying equipment for the topographer. Being a machismo society, those are all typically male jobs. The women usually provide food. I always get lunch made and brought to me when I survey, and here, while we bought the food, we were having all our meals cooked for us.

Ready to help

The next three days were spent inspecting various parts of the water system. We walked along the along the line, making sure everything was in order, noting when there were small things that still needed to be added or changed. We also had to count the pipe anchor in places where the pipe couldn’t be buried. This was to make sure that the Brigade was paying for the actual number of anchors that were built. Because all my work thus far has been on theoretical water systems that may or may not be built during my service, it was very interesting to get a chance to see a currently functioning water system. Plus, inspecting it with people who have done this before gave me insight into what to look for in current systems. I have tried to inspect one system before, but I didn’t really know what to look for. Now, I have a much better idea what can go wrong, and where to look.

Lonely water tank

Riding up the mountain...can you say fresa

Counting the anchors

Taking a break from the hike

In addition to the inspection, we also met with the junta de agua, the local water board. This system is actually quite a large rural water system, serving 8 different communities. Because of this, each community has their own water board for their section of the system, which together forms the general water board for the entire system. Serving so many communities, there are bound to be differences of opinions, which we experienced during the meeting. It was our first real test of interpreting, trying to keep up with the argument while translating simultaneously. In the middle of the meeting, the general water board president said he was resigning, and walked out. After the meeting, we went down to his house to talk to him. He felt no one appreciated him, and that he was receiving all the blame for everything. We told him to take some time to think about his decision, and by the next day when we were leaving, he had decided not to resign. Of course, that brought up some other complications. After the resignation, we had effectively put the VP in charge, and no one was sure if it was possible for the president to renounce his resignation. It turns out that a verbal resignation doesn’t mean much, and since he didn’t sign anything, he had not officially resigned, and remained the president, so everything turned out fine.

We had been camping for 4 days, not only subject to the local politics of rural Honduras, but also the local microclimates. Our camp site was high enough in the mountains to be in the clouds, and after the first nice clear day, we had essentially been in at best a misty rain the whole time with actual rain at night. We were wet and ready to head down to the valley. Because of the rain, the roads had become impassable, but luckily we had parked the trucks a little way down, below the scary muddy cliff hugging roads. Once we safely made it down, we got cleaned up for a nice dinner to celebrate the week.

Dan and his pack mule, Selvin (Selvin carried his backpack the whole week)

We camped above this lower edge of the clouds

We stayed in Comayagua one extra day in order to meet with a community that the brigade had built a water system for 2 years ago. We wanted to visit and make sure everything was still going smoothly for them. As it turns out, the water board was at the end of their term so we were able to experience the election of the new board. Of course, nothing much changed; all the current members were reelected, with the community just electing people to the positions that were missing. Everyone there seemed very competent, and it gave me hope to see a community with such a well functioning water system, they were even properly chlorinating! Que bien!

It was a tiring week, but I learned a lot, met some new people, and am looking forward to accompanying Dan on his next trip down here.

Quimica, Cooking and Photos

We’ve been slacking in the blog writing department this month, maybe because nothing new and exciting has happened. I did want to share a few random thoughts, stories and photos though.

As Nolan mentioned before, I started teaching chemistry at a school in town once a week, and am now in my 4^th week. It still amazes me how I can spit out lectures in Spanish with relative ease. Or at least what I assume to be relative ease. The students never say much so it’s hard to tell if they understand anything I’m saying. That being said, the kids are incredibly well behaved, which was my biggest fear of teaching anything here. “Kids” is the wrong word because most are young adults or adults. I have to share two stories about two students just to demonstrate what they are like.

The first is about a girl. She came up to me after class, kind of shyly, and asked a few questions about the lecture. She then asked if I would take a look at her notes from class. I leafed through her notebook to see that she’d copied things correctly (I wasn’t really sure what I was supposed to be looking for). She told me I could keep the notebook if I wanted and review it more. I told her no, you need it to do your homework. What good would it do me to keep it anyway? Then she grabbed the notebook and flipped back a few pages to a drawing of some chickens. She asked me what I thought. “Bonita” I replied, very pretty. She said it still needed to be colored in. Then she asked me about some other drawings she had before packing up her stuff and heading home. She’s a smart girl and is doing well is class, but she wanted my approval on how nice her notebook looked. All I could think was how desperately these students crave support, encouragement, attention and praise, something I don’t think they get often enough in school.

The second story is about a boy. I caught up with him walking home from class and we got to talking about where he was from etc. He told me that he worked at a health center (he said as a nurse, but I find that hard to believe since he didn’t have his high school diploma yet, probably more like an aide?) in a town about 5 hours from La Esperanza by bus. He works 6 days a week full time at the health center, then, on Thursdays, leaves at 2 am to get to La Esperanza for class from 8 to 1, then takes a 2 pm bus back to get there by nightfall to start work again the next day. He needs his diploma because he wants to go to medical school. He said he couldn’t find a job anywhere closer to La Esperanza. This story was interesting to me, not because it was sad (even though it was), but because I can only imagine that his efforts to get to class are not unusual, but the norm for half or more of the students in my class. (Well maybe a 5 hr bus ride isn’t the norm, but 2 hrs might be.) To them, a 5 hour bus ride is just what you have to deal with, it’s just how it is. It also makes me wonder how some students can still act like they don’t want to be there. For such a large sacrifice of time, you’d think they’d at least put in some effort.

So those are my thoughts on my class. Also this past week I finally got around to hosting an informal cooking “class” at my house for the girls I work with. They love praising my baked confections I’m always cooking up in my spare time, so I promised I’d teach them some simple recipes. Hondurans on average I’d say are not proficient bakers. This might be due in part to the fact that measuring cups and spoons are all but non-existent here and that your standard oven does not have an exact temperature gauge. So, utilizing my tools, we made some quick apple bread (literally 10 minutes to mix then 40 minutes to bake) and I showed them some cooking tricks and techniques, how to peel and apple with a peeler, how to zest a lemon, how to use a knife to scrape extra off your measuring cup, how to test bread/cake doneness with a toothpick and the importance of exactness in baking. The girls were so sweet; they did all the dishes, praised my well-organized kitchen and were amazed by my spice collection. It was a fun evening hanging out with just the girls and I hope it turns into a monthly event. If anyone has simple quick recipe ideas you think would be good, just let me know.

And, speaking of cooking, here are some long-awaited photos of some of the interesting food items we have here:

Vacuum sealed package of refried beans

Round log-shaped chunk of manteca/veggie shortening, thinly wrapped in plastic, a half of this package might be used for one meal

The infamous banana flavored soda, a Honduran favorite which actually tastes more like bubble-gum

In a 4 aisle grocery store, a half aisle just for oil, margarine and manteca - they do love the stuff here

A popular current brand of 'corn flake' - no there is no Spanish name for corn flakes, and yes this looks like a 1970's retro Wheaties box or something

Whole milk, in a convenient (not) almost 1 liter bag

New Year's on Utila

One of the two beaches on Utila

The lovely Mango Inn where we stayed

Jackie and Stephen tearing up the dance floor on New Years Eve

Happy New Year!

Getting ready to dive

Nolan jumping in with SCUBA gear

Jackie and our new friend Delaney in between dives

Sitting at the Treetanic bar

Combing the beach looking for Robinson Crusoe's or Captain Morgan's caves, depending on who you talk to

Hermit crab who found a home in all the trash on the beach

Finding our Zen in Utila

Soy Maestro de Quimica

“¿Profe, cuando es el examen?” Five minutes into my first chemistry class and I’m already a professor.

Hondurans use titles a lot. It’s a sign of respect. Most people don’t go to college here, so if you have a bachelor’s degree, and they know it, you are automatically Licenciado So-and-so. Whenever I go out on a topo survey, I am Ingeniero (Engineer), even after I introduce myself as Nolan. So I really shouldn’t have been surprised to be addressed as professor, but I still was.

I’m not a teacher, I have no teaching experience, can’t they tell that? What am I doing teaching a high school class? How is this even legal, receiving a certified high school diploma when they were taught by non-certified Peace Corps volunteers? But there I was, teaching a class I hadn’t taken in 8 years, concepts I barely remembered.

I was teaching for a program called Maestro En Casa, which is more like a GED program than a high school. The students are all from the surrounding aldeas where there are no high schools, so they only have elementary school educations. The curriculum is the exact same as what is required for normal high schools, so it includes Math, Chemistry, Biology, Physics, Spanish, English, etc. They are even required to complete the community service requirement. The students receive two classes at a time for about 2 to 3 months each. They come to La Esperanza just once a week for classes and are supposed to study on their own at home with their book. The entire curriculum lasts two years and when they finish, they have a Bachillerato en Ciencias y Letras. In high school here, students basically have to pick a career when they start, so they study computers, business administration, teaching or science and letters (general studies which is what Maestro en Casa does).

The Honduran education system being what it is, I’m sure you can imagine that Maestro En Casa is usually lucky to be on par with your average high school, which isn’t saying much. The La Esperanza branch of the program however is run quite well, despite having very little money to work with. The program here was started by Susan, a woman from Vermont who came to Honduras 10 years ago looking to find some way to help. She keeps costs as low as possible for the students, who usually come from very poor areas and her teachers are very motivated, actually trying to get the students to learn the concepts instead of just memorizing the text. Some students have gone on to study at universities both in Honduras and the U.S. which is a sign that the program is pretty successful. Peace Corps volunteers have taught at the school for at least 4 years, teaching classes in whichever subjects they feel comfortable with, usually math and science. Which is what I did.

While chemistry is not my forte, I did take AP Chem in high school so I figured I was off to a good start. Plus chemistry was the class the first year students needed to move on to second year. I had 15 students in my class, down from about 30 who had started the program at the beginning of the year. Most of them looked to be around high school age, but I also had 3 middle aged women in my class. And just like in any class, there were students who paid attention and were motivated to learn as well as other students who sat in the back and looked bored or mad that they had to be there.

Teaching in Honduras is tough. The kids are taught to write everything down and memorize. Even when giving a presentation, you have to be careful, because anything you write on the board will immediately be copied down word for word in the ubiquitous notebook that everyone has at meetings, and no one will pay attention to what you are saying until they have finished copying whatever you wrote. As such, Hondurans are excellent memorizers but have trouble when you ask them a question.

The first several chapters of chemistry went pretty smoothly because it was just memorization, history of chemistry, atomic structure, the periodic table. Then came formulas and equations, and the struggle of actual teaching, made more difficult because it was in Spanish. I spent a lot of time doing examples, forcing the students to come up to the board and work through the problems themselves.

In the end, I think the class went relatively well. Given the fact that I had less time than normal because I had to fit everything in before Christmas, and the fact that some students didn’t seem to care at all, I was happy with passing 8 of the 15. I could tell that the 8 who passed were the students who wanted to be there, and wanted to learn, even if it wasn’t always easy for them. In Honduras, if you don’t pass the final exam, you are always given a Recuperación or make-up exam that can take the place of the first one. Several of the passing students had to take this, but in the end I was happy for them when they passed. I’m looking forward to teaching them again this semester when I start teaching second year math, things like trigonometría, geometría, y funciones. Nicki starts teaching chemistry today, so I’m interested to see how her experience differs from mine.

Artisan Fair and Family Health Charlas

December felt like my most successful month thus far in Peace Corps.

Tuesday the 7^th was the annual artisan fair at the U.S. Embassy, which I think I mentioned before is a shopping event held for embassy workers which brings together small time artisans that are working with Peace Corps Volunteers as well as professional artisans from all over Honduras. Since I work with small women’s groups, many of whom make artesanía, I was able to bring two groups to the event, one that makes woven items like scarves, shawls and tablecloths and another that makes interesting home décor items our of woven pine needles.

Nearly everything I’d done in the last two months had been leading up to this event. The business project organizes the event and I was on the task force, my job was to assemble the catalog which displayed a biography, pictures, products and prices for all of the 21 Peace Corps groups coming. It was a huge task which took weeks to compile, but I did get many comments on how great it turned out. In addition, I had to prepare my two groups. I gave them each charlas on basic business planning then helped them make some promotional material. We also had to figure out what they would bring and how much, how we would get there, who wanted to go etc.

Tuesday, Nolan and I woke up at 3 am and met the two participating women at the bus stop at 4 am. The bus ride was long, but we slept most of the way. We barely fit all four of us and all the boxes into a taxi to the embassy. It was surprisingly easy to get us all checked in, except for Nolan. Somehow his name hadn’t made it onto the ‘approved attendees’ list so he had to sit outside the embassy for about an hour until they finally agreed to let him in. The embassy is pretty strict on who they let in, and many groups who had switched attendees at the last minute had to wait for awhile too, so it wasn’t just Nolan.

We helped the women set up their products and the fair began at 10am! Of all the groups, I think my two did some of the best business. Their items were popular and affordable. The women were dutiful in attending to clients, despite having had very few opportunities in the past to participate in these kinds of events. They barely wanted to leave their tables to eat anything, worried they’d miss out on a sale. I felt such a great pride and relief to finally have the event come to fruition after so much hard work. It was a beautiful day with many amazing artisan products.

Nolan and I did some Christmas shopping, mostly for ourselves. The professional artists had items that were way out of our price range, but we were still able to sample some delicious wine and chocolate, two things we are often deprived of here. Most of the Peace Corps groups had affordable stuff. We bought a ton of beautiful Lenca pottery that was dirt cheap. A lot of other PCV’s showed up to buy gifts as well and it was great to finally see people whom we hadn’t seen in months. The day passed in a flash and before I knew it, we were packing the women up to head home. We stayed overnight to do some grocery shopping and came home Wednesday, exhausted but fulfilled. Despite it not being Nolan’s project, he did a lot of work to help me out, for which I was very thankful. What a great husband I have.

It also looks like I’ll be taking over as head coordinator for the event next year! Sadly, the coordinator this year, my amazing friend Harrison, will be leaving. I’m already looking forward to planning the event next December!

Then this week, just when I thought I was off for the holidays, the other organization I work with called and wanted me to finally implement my much awaited nutrition and family health charlas. Having pushed them back from October, I thought they might never get done. But at the last minute the proposal had been approved and the organization needed to spend all the deposited money by the end of the month, which actually meant in one week since they all take the last two weeks off. So Monday I was instructed to give the full 5-6 hour charla to the staff in order to train them to do the charla in 5 communities Wednesday and Thursday. They then solicited me to do the charla in two other communities Tuesday and Wednesday. Needless to say it was a long week.

I didn’t expect to be doing the charlas by myself, but they basically dropped me off and said, hey, we’ll be back in 6 hours to get you. While at first on the brink of tears, I realized this was an opportunity to show my strength and push myself. Despite freezing cold temperatures and fog the first day, the charla went smoothly. I had a group of about 20 women with kids, and we went over things like diarrhea, pneumonia, water purification, hand washing, nutrition/malnutrition and then did a cooking demonstration (which was the most fun and stressful part). I left feeling totally drained and smelling like fogon smoke, but also feeling satisfied that I had transferred some important knowledge to these women, and that I had done it all by myself. Day 2 was easier with another group of 20 women, I felt more comfortable alone and it was much warmer.

It always amazes me how much the women love the simplest activities. We do an opening activity where we throw around a piece of fruit and you have to say your name, how many kids you have and your favorite food. They laugh so much during this cheesy game, it’s hard to control them. Half of them also said their favorite food was spaghetti, go figure. We also did a taste test of different methods of water purification which they totally got a kick out of guessing which was which. I was also surprised to learn that they didn’t think cuajada (a kind of salty homemade ricotta-like cheese) was cheese at all. They never really said what they thought it was, but they didn’t think it was cheese. I’m not sure exactly what all this means, but it felt good to be sharing activities and knowledge that was new, exciting and important to them. Hopefully we’re still on schedule for more of the same charlas starting again in January, because this is one thing I have really enjoyed thus far. It’s combining my own passion for food and healthy living with a great need that exists in rural areas to educate people, especially women, about the most basic health topics.

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas….

…In every way except for that little thing called snow, although it’s almost chilly enough for one to imagine it could snow (39ºF a few nights ago). The shops are all stocking fake Christmas trees, ornaments (all plastic here), kids toys, singing icicle lights, sticky window décor, rainbow colored garland, Ferrero Rocher chocolates (out of our price range), even candy canes, and have been since before Thanksgiving time (which they don’t celebrate here so Christmas starts even earlier than in the U.S.). All the grocery stores are decked out with big Christmas trees and have special promotions going on. We’re hoping that we have a good chance to win a new stove or large refrigerator with all the shopping we do at our favorite Mini-Super Esperanzano. We’ve even heard some Christmas music around, mostly Feliz Navidad and English songs.

We’ve gotten into the Christmas spirit at our house too. We bought a little fake tree which we decorated with some pine cones, bulbs, candy canes and two unique ornaments – one a bird from El Salvador, the other a Lenca pottery piece. It’s nicely complimented by a navideño colored pañeulo from one of my women’s groups. We hung some blinking lights around our window. I took it upon myself to embroider some stockings which are hung by the front door with care and full of small trinkets we bought for each other. I also decided to make some homemade wrapping paper out of charla paper I had lying around. We splurged on a huge pointsettia for the house, but I think it’s a little too cold here, the plant is already losing many of its red leaves. We’ve started playing our loop of about 75 Christmas songs non-stop, which in addition to the decoration makes the house feel much more Christmas-y.

Here the big night is Christmas Eve, Buena Noche, when people go the evening mass then stay up all night eating things like nacatamales (variant on a tamale) and gallina india (native hen) then set off fireworks at midnight. We bought some of our own fireworks to set off and already are planning our two-person feast. Deviled eggs, stuffed cabbage and fried potatoes for the eve (if I can find ground pork). Then eggs benedict with mimosas for Christmas breakfast followed by a roast turkey or chicken with all the trimmings, as well as some pumpkin spice cupcakes. Mouth-watering just thinking about it. Of course our fridge is not working at present so it’s all contingent on that being fixed soon.

It’s still been more than a little depressing to realize that this is the first Christmas that we’ll have away from any type of family. And our first snow-less Christmas also. We want you to know we’re thinking of you all this time of year, missing you a lot and wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!