It often feels like a week doesn’t go by without there being some kind of celebration in Honduras. With most Hondurans being Christian, many of these are religious holidays, though there are also a large number recognising social issues. While they can sometimes be extremely frustrating, especially in September when it feels like you never get to see your classes, it’s also a great insight into the country I’m living in. I have compiled a list of the many celebrations and holidays that have been observed in our time here and others that we will experience before we leave.

Día de la Bandera (Day of the Flag) – 1st September

This is when things all kicked off for us after arriving in Honduras. Independence Day is in September so the month is laden with celebrations leading up to the big day. I honestly don’t remember too much happening on this day apart from a parade in the central park and singing the national anthem. 

Día del Niño (Day of the Child) – 10th September

This was a really fun day! It actually started the day before for us, with a visit to the school from some clowns to entertain the kids. More clowns for the main event (Honduras is not the place to come if you’ve got a phobia of them) and then a big lunch in their classes with games, dancing and a piñata!

Día de Independencia (Independence Flag) – 15th September 

The big one! The build up to this was huge, marching practices, drumming rehearsals, poster making, everything! All the primary schools and high schools from the municipalidad of Candelaria paraded through the town, with us proudly waving the Scottish and British flags (they couldn’t find an English one) and marching with Escuela Urbana Mixta de Jose Cecilio de Valle. The rest of the day included performances from various war bands, traditional dancing, singing and speeches. 

Día de los Maestros (Day of the Teacher) – 17th September

I enjoyed this one and felt very deserving, even after just over a month of being on the job. We joined all the other teachers living in Candelaria at a dinner hosted by the mayor where there was a performance from a Salvadoran singer, party favours and cake! There were also a few party games like a mini pageant and a balloon relay race (we played, we lost).

Día de la Biblia (Day of the Bible) – Last Sunday in September

We were invited to these celebrations by some of our friends from the Evangelical church. The night before the main celebration which was, of course, a parade and speeches, we went to a church service. The one service we had been to previously was hard work as we didn’t understand much but this one was more enjoyable, both because of our improved Spanish and the amazing family band that was performing.

Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) – 2nd November

A day known for it’s celebrations full of sugar skulls and dancing in nearby Mexico is a much tamer affair in Honduras. Amy and I headed down to Erandique, a town about two hours away from Candelaria where Jaime, our host dad, is from. This day is all about family, above all else. It’s a day to spend with them, a day to remember them, a day to honour them. In Erandique we went to the cemetery where Jaime’s parents and some of his siblings are buried to clean the graves and leave some flowers.

Navidad (Christmas) – 25th December

With Honduras being a religious, Christian country, Christmas is kind of a big deal. Some traditions vary from home and some are the same. Instead of a turkey on the dinner table you will find tamales, corn parcels filled with rice, vegetables and sometimes chicken or beef, though you will still see Christmas trees filled with ornaments and lights strung everywhere. Most celebrations happen on the 24th, though the official holiday is on the 25th. Many people will attend church on Christmas Eve and spend the rest of the night with their families, leading up to the insane fireworks that take place at midnight.

Nuevo Año (New Year) – 31st December

New Year is celebrated in Honduras much like in Britain, with parties on New Year’s Eve, lots of food, time spent with family but also with some interesting traditions. As the clock strikes 12am, you must eat 12 grapes, one on each stroke of the hour, to make sure you have a sweet year. If you’re looking for luck, love or success, wear your best pink, red or yellow underwear, respectively.

Día del Padre (Father’s Day) – 19th March

Not as big a deal as Mother’s Day (see below) but there were cards made, presents given, hugs passed out.

Día del Amor y la Amistad (Day of Love and Friendship) – 14th February

Honduras’ version of Valetine’s Day celebrates platonic relationships as much as romantic ones and was marked with a show at the high school that had singing, dancing and a hilarious drag fashion show! 

Día del Agua (World Water Day) – 22nd March

Unfortunately I was recovering from being ill so we didn’t take part in the (you guessed it) parade but we did watch a few speeches from the shade, which included one from a representative of Water First, an American organisation that supports our water treatment plant, Cocepradil, who organised the parade. 

Día de la Garifuna (Garifuna Day) – 12th April

This is the day the Garifuna people arrived on Roatán from St. Vincent. The biggest and best celebrations are in Punta Gorda on the island of Roatán and we were lucky enough to be able to attend. A large group of volunteers and their families were on holiday on Roatán that week anyway and PT have a project there too. There was a lot of Punta music and dancing and we got to hear the story of how an American man discovered he was Garifunan.

Semana Santa (Easter)

Semana Santa is the week leading up to Easter weekend which is when the whole country of Honduras goes simultaneously crazy and silent. Want a last minute booking in one of Honduras’ tourist spots, like Roatán or Copán, for this weekend? Think again. At the same time though, don’t try and go anywhere on Good Friday. You won’t find a bus or ferry going anywhere, trust me, I tried. Celebration wise, painted wooden carvings of religious images walk through the town and in some places the streets are carpeted with dyed sawdust designs and illustrations, the most famous being in Comayagua.

Día de la Tierra (Earth Day) – 22nd April

We were out of Candelaria this weekend but we heard there was a photo competition and a screening of The Lorax in the park and when we got back there were signs all around Candelaria encouraging us to take better care of the planet.

Día del Trabajador (Labour Day) – 1st May

Coinciding with the May Bank holiday, this is basically just a day off. No big celebrations, nothing fancy, just a day of rest for the many hardworking people around the country.

Día de la Madre (Mother’s Day) – Second Sunday in May

And that’s today! Or at least the celebrations at the primary school were today. Each class presented something from poems, singing, traditional dancing, dramas and my favourite, a faux boy band performance! 

Día del Arbol (Day of the Tree) – 30th May

This is primarily an educational holiday, to educate schoolchildren on the importance of looking after the forest. There are special tributes to Honduras’ national tree, the Mexican yellow pine. I’ve heard there are plans for a school trip to somewhere near Gualcinse for the day with the primary school. 

Día de Lempira (Day of Lempira) – 20th July

The Lempira referred to here is not the currency but the Lencan hero who fought against the Spanish in the 1530’s. Hondurans, and especially those in the Lempira department where I live, are extremely proud of Lempira and this day is very important to them. Expect a more in depth post about the celebrations after they’ve happened!

Ferías (Fairs)

At various points during the year, different in every town, there is a fair, almost like a bigger, more vibrant and bustling version of our weekly Sunday market. There are the usual food, clothes and homeware stores, there are carnival-like games and if you’re (un)lucky the rickety, diesel-smelling Ferris wheel.

The past three months have sped by and I can’t believe it’s already time for another one of these! The idea that the next three months might go at the same time pace terrifies me. At the same time there are things I’m am looking forward to about going home but I’m not ready to say goodbye to Honduras just yet. With the next three months mostly taken up by teaching and that being the purpose of the year (despite what my Facebook photos make it look like!) this anniversary blog post contains some top tips for making it through teaching in general and especially in Honduras.

Survival Guide: Teaching

• Take every opportunity for a day off – the kids aren’t the only ones that get homework in this job so it can take its toll at times.

• Be prepared to learn from them – this can be by them teaching you knew everyday phrases in Spanish to the games they like to how they learn best. Whatever it is, take note. 

• Sometime no matter how hard you try, no learning is happening today – kids are fickle beings and have short attention spans and sometimes they are just not in the mood so on these days there’s no use in running yourself ragged trying to force it to happen.

• Wear outfits that go with an inordinate  amount of stickers – if I don’t come away from a day of classes without at least a couple of stickers, something’s wrong. 

• Don’t be ashamed to wing it – it’s something we’ve all done. If you didn’t have time to plan a lesson, if the lesson you did plan isn’t working, if your class needs some unexpected revision, all are perfectly good reasons to just go with it. 

• No one is too old for If You’re Happy and You Know It or Sara Says – personal favourites of mine as they are perfect fillers for the last five minutes of class when you’ve run out of actual things to teach!

• Give up all concept of personal space – between the mountain of hugs at the start and end of every lesson and their favourite game (a version of peekaboo mixed with guess who) there are always little sticky hands grabbing at you. 

• Don’t let exam results get you down – you can be the best teacher Project Trust has ever had but at the end of the day some kids are not made for exams. Especially in the primary school, it’s easy to forget how young they are and at this age, as at any age, test results are not the end of the world.

• Don’t be alarmed when a kid brings a machete to school – machetes are something that you get used to quickly in Honduras but the first time you come into a class where every student has one under their chair, that’s still a bit of a shock.

• A full week of teaching is a rare thing – classes are cancelled, teachers are off, there’s a holiday, the list goes on and on but in the whole 9 months we’ve been here there has not been a week when we have taught every single lesson we are supposed to.

• Take pride in the small victories – sometimes the fact that your class can sing the alphabet without any help from you or that they answer the question ‘how are you’ without repeating it or that they are excited to see you when you walk into class is enough to make your day.

• Have fun with it – sometimes a lesson full of games is what everyone needs.

• Reduce, reuse, recycle – Reduce your workload by reusing old lesson and recycling ideas. Also beg, borrow and steal from other teachers, volunteers, anything you can get your hands on. 

Thank goodness that’s over! The last two weeks have been the hardest yet in Honduras. I have had to translate everything into English, endure complaints about eternal bus rides from hell, find food that doesn’t include refried beans or tortillas and worst of all, put up with being parented again! Jokes aside, it has been quite the experience having my dad and Kirsty here for the last two weeks, as I’m sure it was for them.

It started with picking them up from the airport in San Pedro Sula (thankfully with all their bags, Lucy’s family weren’t so lucky). Kirsty was understandably on edge, being in the murder capital of the world, even though that is technically now Caracas in Venezuela, but we were only there for one night and then started the all day journey back to Candelaria.

With Amy’s mum, Penny, and gran, Sue, in tow, I eased the newbies into Honduran bus rides with a nice minibus ride from SPS to Gracias, only to turn around and take them on the four hour chicken bus ride along bumpy, unpaved roads. In my dad’s words – “It was four hours of pure torture. I shouldn’t have to sit there and try to convince myself that it doesn’t hurt!”

Moving quickly onward, we spent the next two days in Candelaria where they got to see all of my classes, experience their first taste of traditional food (they weren’t big fans) and get over their jet lag in 35 degree heat. It was definitely a tough start to their time but I think they enjoyed meeting my kids and seeing me in action.

On the Wednesday, we took Candelaria’s only mini bus out to San Juan where we changed buses to go to Gracias. The luxuriousness of Guancascos was welcomed after an early start, especially the fresh passion fruit juice (for my dad) and the strong wifi (for Kirsty). It took a while for me to be able to drag them away but eventually I got them out to Fuerte San Cristobal, home of the best views of Gracias you can get without climbing a mountain. To end our first day we headed out to the Aguas Thermales, where my dad got to enjoy his first ice cold Honduran beer.

Day 2 in Gracias saw us head to La Campa to do the highest zipline in Central America. Kirsty very bravely got through some nerves to do the first two ziplines accompanied by one of the guides and the rest by herself and my dad even more bravely offered to step back and take pictures. My hero.

Our next stop was the Copán Ruinas, a first for me too. We only had one night here so had to make the most of it. After we had some delicious lunch in Casa de Cafe, next to our awesome hostel, La Iguana Azul, we went to Macaw Mountain, a scarlet macaw sanctuary. It was a brilliant place with an amazing array of birds and you even get to hold some of them!

The main attraction in Copán Ruinas, as the name may suggest, are the ruins. Alongside our excellent tour guide Virgilio, we wandered around the remains of an ancient Mayan civilisation. I have seen a fair few Mayan ruins recently and I have to say that Copán might possibly be my favourite. Not only is it in Honduras making me a bit biased, it is incredibly well preserved and a very compact site, making it easier to imagine what the city would have been like back in the day.

No rest for the wicked as we were off to San Pedro again for a night before hopping down to La Ceiba for the boat to Roatán. Let the holiday really begin! I know this was the bit Kirsty was really looking forward to and I have to admit some R&R sounded good to me too.

It seemed like half of the PT volunteers were on Roatán that week which meant that wherever we went, there was usually a lot of us! Over our four days in Roatán we sunbathed, swam, snorkeled and went for a ride on a catamaran, among other things. We also went out to visit Calum and Tom’s project in Punta Gorda and to celebrate Garifuna Day with them. Garifunans are the people that live in Punta Gorda and arrived in Roatan from St Vincent.

My two favourite parts of the week were visiting the sloth sanctuary and our night dive. How many people can say they have been clambered on by a monkey, dive bombed by a macaw and hugged and kissed by Sid the sloth all within half an hour?! And then seeing as we were back at Honduras’ reef we decided that we might as well make the most of it. But why not mix it up? And that’s how we ended up doing a night dive and seeing bio-luminescence and strings of pearls. It was the most magical experience, like swimming through the night sky, even when we got lost in the dark!

We had to fly back from Roatán to San Pedro as we were leaving on Good Friday and there was no public transportation. One more night in San Pedro Sula before heading back to the airport, two weeks after they arrived. I would like to say that it was a tearless goodbye but I’m afraid I can’t. 

After this visit I really feel like I’m on the homeward stretch, a feeling that excites me and terrifies me at the same time. Having part of home come here has made me realise just how much I’ve missed it but the thought of leaving Honduras makes me want to cry at the same time. I guess I’ve still got a few months to come to terms with it!

Something I often forget is that all the things I now find normal after seven months in Honduras are probably still at least a little strange to a lot of people at home. To help with this, I have a series of blogs planned to so you can understand some everyday parts of my life a bit better. First up is a food diary from the 13th to the 19th of February. It just so happened to cover my birthday weekend so there’s a bit more cake involved than my average week but I’m not complaining!

MONDAY

Breakfast
– Frijoles, ricissimo, green beans and egg, plantain and tortilla 
– Banana licuado
– Mora juice

Frijoles and torillas are a very important part of any meal. We eat frijoles at least twice a day, with breakfast and dinner, and a torilla with every meal. Frijoles come in many different ways such entero (the whole bean), licuados (blended so they are smooth) or revueltos, meaning refried (as shown in the picture).

Merienda
– Tamal de frijol
– Coffee

Merienda is basically when the kids get a snack at school, although sometimes it’s more like a meal. We uesd to eat it every day but because of timetable changes since the holidays they have it later, just as we’re heading home for lunch.

Lunch 
– Frijoles revueltos, rice, chimichurri, beef and tortilla
– Mora juice

Lunch is our most standard meal of the day. It is usually composed of chicken, rice, salad and a tortilla. Once a week we get beef, as we did today, once or twice a week it’s spaghetti (the best days) and occasionally fish or soup.

Chimichurri is a salad of tomato, onion and coriander.

Snack 
– Pan de piña

Pan is a very loose term in Honduras. In Spanish it literally means bread but it encompasses so much more. Pan is usually eaten with coffee and can be a sweet bread kind of like brioche, more cakey, or basically a biscuit.

Dinner 
– Frijoles revueltos, ricissimo, green beans and egg, courgette and tortilla

I have to admit here that I’m not actually sure if ricissimo is actually called ricissimo. It is kind of like cottage cheese but softer and smoother. We also have something called cuajada which is very similar cottage cheese too. The actual cheese that we eat here is very different from back home, not a bit of cheddar in sight. It is very hard and tastes a little bit like parmesan. I really like it but Amy’s not a fan.

TUESDAY 

Breakfast
– Frijoles revueltos, plantain, egg and ham, tortilla 
– Black coffee and sugar
– Banana licuado

 Licuados are basically milkshakes but so much better (for no specific reason). The most popular is banana followed by strawberry but I have to say I’m a banana fan. Very refreshing.

Lunch 
– Chicken, rice, cucumber, tomato, tortilla 
– Mora juice

We are very lucky that we have fresh juice to drink every day that Saida usually makes herself. Mora means blackberry and is surprisingly nice. Other flavours include orange, melon, lemon with chia seeds, passion fruit, a green one (not sure what it is but has to be healthy, right?), and mango.

Snack 
– Pan de piña

Dinner 
– Green beans and frijoles enteros, cuajada, beetroot, avocado and tortilla
– Water
– Kit Kat 

We usually have a stash of sweets that have either been sent over by kind friends and family or that we’ve brought back from weekend trips. Especially with chocolate, you’ve got to get it when you can.

Cake!

We were invited over to a friends house to celebrate El Día del Amor y Amistad (Valentine’s Day) and there was cake! I know what Valentine’s Day needs at home now.

WEDNESDAY 

Breakfast 
– Green beans and frijoles enteros, cuajada, avocado, plantain and tortilla
– Coffee

Plantain is like a sweet banana you can only eat when it’s cooked. This is my least favourite way to have though the softer it it, the nicer. It can also be cut into strips and pan fried, which is delicious. When the strips are deep fried they become kind of like chips and are called tajadas and if you deep fry thin slices they are like crisps!

Lunch
– Spaghetti in a tomato sauce, frijoles revueltos, ricissimo, tortilla
– Mora juice

Today was a good day – spaghetti for lunch!

Dinner 
– Frijoles revueltos, cuajada, avocado and tortilla 
– Mora juice 

Avocados are a blessing of Central American cuisine. I don’t eat much avocado back in Scotland but I don’t think it will stay that way once I return. Sometimes they’re a bit hit and miss but more often than not it’s a home run.

THURSDAY

Breakfast 
– Frijoles revueltos, ricissimo, scrambled eggs and tortilla
– Mora juice
– Coffee with sugar

People who know me at home know the closest I get to drinking coffee is getting a nice big whiff of the smell. I don’t really like coffee but here it’s a different story. I do need a lot of sugar with it but seeing as we don’t have milk to go with it I think that’s allowed.

Lunch
– Chicken, rice, tomato, cucumber, tortilla
– Mora juice 

Dinner
– Frijoles enteros, ricissimo, scrambled egg with tomato and tortilla 
– Fresh orange juice

FRIDAY 

Breakfast 
– Frijoles licuados, cuajada, scrambled egg and ham, fried plantain, tortilla 
– Fresh orange juice

This is my favourite type of plantain to have!

Lunch 
– Chicken, rice, tomato, cucumber and tortilla
– Fresh orange juice

Dinner 
– Baleadas (with frijoles revueltos, cheese and scrambled egg) 
– A plum
– Mora juice

Ah, baleadas. By far my favourite food in Honduras, baleadas are made of a different type of tortilla to our usual, filled with refried beans, Honduran cheese and mantequilla (kind of like a mix between mayonnaise and sour cream) and then folded in half. This is called a baleada sencilla or you can have con huevos (with scrambled eggs). The king of Honduran food.

SATURDAY

Breakfast
– Frijoles licuados, spinach and egg, plantain, cuajada and tortilla
– Mora juice

Ever since I got a touch of anemia in October (coupled with the flu which made it look worse than it was), our host mum loves stuffing me full of spinach and I must say I have a new found taste for it.

Lunch
– Chicken enchilada (crispy fried tortilla, chicken, potato, tomato and shredded cabbage) 
– Banana licuado

If you’ve read my previous blog about my birthday weekend, you’ll know we climbed a mountain next to Candelaria so thought we deserved a treat. We went to a local cafe and got some enchiladas, which are thin, deep fried tortillas with toppings.

Dinner
– Cena tipica from a comedor (frijoles licuados, scrambled eggs with onion, chicken, cheese, plantain, avocado and tortillas) 
– Coca-Cola

I actually forgot to take a picture when we were out with Jesse and Lucy at a comedor (a restaurant that kind of looks like it’s in someone’s front room!) on their last night with us so this is from another day but just imagine this plus a slice of avocado!

An interesting thing about drinks in restaurants is that as well as buying cans and plastic bottles of juice they also come in glass bottles that you return at the end of your meal. It’s obviously much more eco-friendly and I personally think that Fresca (a grapefruit flavoured fizzy drink) is never more refreshing than out of a glass bottle.

Cake! Again!

It was my birthday weekend and we decided to have the cake a bit early. Cake in Honduras is another weird one. After baking the cake, it is usually soaked in milk to keep it moist (more like sodden). At first we were repulsed by this but over time have come round. I did still opt for a milkless cake for my birthday though.

SUNDAY

Breakfast 
– Frijoles, cauliflower and broccoli, plantain, cuajada, tortilla
– Water

Lunch
– Fried chicken and tajadas with salsa
– Pineapple juice (in a bag)

We went out into our weekly market and were treated to a free lunch by our friend’s parents as a birthday present. An interesting thing with this meal was that our juice came tied up in a small freezer bag. You bite the corner off and suck it out through the hole. This is not uncommon and bags of water are seen in most shops which actually saves on money and plastic if you already have a bottle. You can buy a few and squeeze them into the bottle you have, saving a bit of plastic compared with buying a whole new bottle.

Dinner 
– Frijoles, mantequilla, avocado and tortilla 
– Orange juice 

Bonus!

This food diary was supposed to be a week long but I knew our dinner from the Monday after I finished it had to be featured because it’s one of my favourite meals!

Dinner
– Tacos flautas (topped with a tomato sauce, shredded cabbage and grated cheese)

These tacos are unlike any I had had before coming to Honduras. Instead of typical taco shells or soft tortillas, it is a tortilla curled into a flute shape and stuffed with, for us, chicken. The best way to eat tacos, in my humble opinion.

As most of you probably already know last weekend saw me celebrating my birthday here in Honduras. I had decided I wanted to spend my birthday weekend in Candelaria and then go to Santa Rosa this weekend to celebrate with some of the other volunteers (though has been postponed until next weekend now). Unfortunately Jesse and Lucy, our buds from Tomala, had said they couldn’t afford to go to Santa Rosa which was disappointing but after three months on the road understandable.

So what a surprise it was when, on the Friday before my birthday, who got off the bus from La Esperanza to Candelaria but Jesse and Lucy! Apparently they had been planning a surprise visit since Christmas! I thought Amy had been acting a bit suspicious… We showed them around, to the schools and our favourite spots, introduced them to some of our friends and then took them home for some baleadas! They were tired as they had come quite a long way that day so we had an early night, all curled up with two single beds between us.

The next day, Amy and I had plans to climb Cerro Cerique, the mountain that overlooks Candelaria, with our friend Alex so we took Jesse and Lucy along with us. We had thought it would be an easy wee climb but it was several hours of scrambling up and then down treacherous slopes covered in dust and loose gravel that caused a few cuts and scrapes, one tumble and almost concussion and worst of all a ripped pair of leggings. It was very hard but satisfying to have done considering you can see it from basically anywhere in Candelaria.

Because our morning was filled with more physical exertion than any of the four of us are used to we were pretty dead for the rest of the day but did manage to rouse ourselves to go and get dinner and then pick up a cake! Seeing as Jesse and Lucy had to leave very early the next morning, they unfortunately wouldn’t be able to be there for much of my actual birthday but that didn’t mean we couldn’t still eat cake!

Even after our draining morning we all managed to make it to midnight and see the 19th of February come in. Only a few hours later we were dropping Jesse and Lucy off at the bus and waving goodbye. Because we’d spent yesterday doing nothing it did mean that I had some work to do on my birthday but it wasn’t so bad. We did get free fried chicken and tajadas in the market and of course there was plenty of cake to eat.

To end the day we went to mass at the Catholic church, which we had never been to before. Some girls from my sixth grade class had invited me and even had it announced that it was my birthday during the service. It was a very different experience to when we’ve been to the Evangelical church but nice to see the other side of religion in Candelaria.

Overall, it was a very different birthday to my previous 18, not least because it was spent in Honduras! It was also the first time I’ve spent my birthday away from Amy (that would be twin Amy) and I think that was weird for me and her but also for my mum. We all managed though and hopefully next year we’ll all be back together eating more cake!

Two weeks have passed since we arrived back to our home in Honduras and I was extremely happy to find it truly did feel like a homecoming. It wasn’t until we left and came back that I realised how comfortable I’ve grown here, how much a part of our host family we are and how many friends we actually have. These were all things I wanted out of being immersed in a community and Candelaria managed to deliver that without me noticing.

Another thing that happened without me noticing is that we are now six months in. These past six months have undoubtedly been some of the best of my life and I wouldn’t change them for the world. A lot of this time has been taken up by traveling during our holidays but now that we’re back in our project I’m looking forward to doing as much as we can and using the time we have left to make as a big a difference as possible.

In the three months or so that we have been outside of Candelaria it has seen some significant changes. It’s summer here which means that instead of afternoon rainstorms we just get more sun. The river now consists of various pools of still water and the roads are basically made of dust meaning an approaching car now signals a coughing fit and the need for a shower. It should start to cool down and, more importantly, rain again in May but until then it’s mid-day siestas and dust blown hair for us. 

We were thrown right back into things when we arrived back, and were making torillas for baleadas barely half an hour after getting off the bus. Candelaria was also in the midst of a fería which meant for the next few days we had concerts in the park, stalls lining the streets, the coronation of the Queen of the Fería and a singing competition held literally right outside our door.

I’m not going to lie, our first week back, before our lessons started, was spent not doing very much. We did manage to force ourselves to unpack (which wasn’t actually that hard seeing as it’s a luxury we haven’t had for a few months) and do some planning for classes and the rest of the year but that was about it.

Once school started it was easy to get back into the swing of things, the hardest part being remembering that all the classes are now a year older so when I say 4th grade I probably mean the new 5th grade. Or do I? Very confusing. We had some changes to our timetable, the biggest being that we know have 4-6th grade for three lessons a week instead of four which is disappointing but despite our efforts there doesn’t seem to be much we can do about it.

What we have managed to do however, is finally organise teaching some classes in the colegio. We went to a teachers meeting to introduce ourselves to everyone that works at the high school and then the next day we sat down with the deputy head to make a timetable – easy as that! Instead of watching our afternoons drag by as we try and amuse ourselves, they will now be filled with an hour and a half each of English classes with students in the last year of their studies. The way it works means we still have some spare time so we’re going to see how this goes and then possibly try and fit a few more classes in. They might as well make full use of us!

Outside of school we’ve made a few trips to the river, if it can really be called that right now, gone on a few walks up to a point on the road where you can see El Salvador and played football with Candelaria’s girls team. While we may have more friends than we realised, it’s not really an even split so we’re on a mission to find some amigas rather than all amigos!

Since being back we’ve also celebrated everybody’s favourite holiday, Valentine’s Day. In Honduras it’s called El Día del Amor y Amistad which translates to the Day of Love and Friendship. Much more inclusive and it makes me feel better about the fact that the only interested party I had to fight off was Amy wanting a selfie and the only gift I received was a highlighter from a 2nd grader. I did get cake though!

So I was on a bus the other day, setting off on our three months of travelling that will contain more buses than I care to think about and I realised that while Honduran buses are now extremely normal to me, nobody at home has any idea what they’re like. So here’s hoping I manage to write a blog post about buses that proves to be more interesting than it sounds…

Timing

• Despite the relaxed Honduran sense of time buses do actually leave fairly promptly.
• Every trip we have ever taken begins the same way – waiting at the esquina (the corner) for either the 4am or 6am bus to Gracias. 
• It has taken us three months but we have finally accepted that the bus does not come at 6 and is not supposed to come at 6 but instead 6.30. 
• It’s rare that we get the 4am bus (which likewise also comes at 4.30) though this does give you a stunning view of the sunrise as you drive through the mountains.

The Roads

• All this time I’ve been talking about bus rides. A much more accurate way to describe them would be roller coaster rides. It is extremely possible and highly likely that you will get some airtime while speeding over a bump.
• The roads in our part of Lempira are not brilliant, I won’t lie to you. They’re not paved, most of the time they’re barely flat and occasionally if you’re really lucky you’ll wonder if you’re on a road or driving through a mudslide. (One of the reasons I’m trying and failing to dissuade el padre from renting a car when he visits… Don’t listen to me the buses aren’t actually this bad!)
• To give you an example, our regular bus ride to Gracias takes 4 hours and it is 3 hours 20 minutes until we get to paved road in San Juan. San Juan is 65km away. If the road was paved it would take an hour and a half to get there. Let that sink in.
• In general the roads don’t affect either of us that badly, neither of us get bus sick, though I can tell you going home on the bus with the flu and an especially enthusiastic and speedy driver was not the most enjoyable experience. 
• As we travel more around Honduras I can see the range of quality. There are both roads like ours between Candelaria and Gracias but also beautifully smooth dual carriageways like the one we took to Tegucigalpa recently. 

The Buses

• The buses themselves are not what you’d expect. There are no fancy Citylink or Megabus monsters here. It’s an old American school bus or nothing. Before you ask, no the novelty still hasn’t worn off yet.
• They are surprisingly comfortable, except when there are three people squeezed onto a bench that really only has room for two bottoms.
• There is also the Honduran version of a conductor who is always ready to stuff any size or shape of bag into the luggage racks and will collect the 110 lempira (just under £4) for the four hour journey ahead.

Cold/dust

• A welcome and unusual sensation in some bus rides, especially those through the mountains, is the cold. It gives us the opportunity to actually wear the massive Project Trust hoodies we lugged all the way over here but never have need for in Candelaria.
• A decidedly unpleasant sensation on the unpaved roads is the invasion a dust through the open windows. The dust can be so thick that the banks at the side of the roads can be grey due to the continual onslaught. It gets in your eyes, it gets in your hair and it makes constant cleaning of phone and kindle screens a necessity. 

Vendors

• Something that would never happen in Britain – at certain stops, usually in bustling towns but occasionally just at the side of the road, the bus will be invaded by a swarm of vendors marketing their wares. 
• San Juan, on the way to Gracias is an especially busy one; anything from baleadas to empanadas to cena tipica, tajadas and popcorn, sweets, ice cream, oranges, lychees, jewellery, medicine, all without leaving your seat. 
• My favourite is the fresh granadillas (passion fruit). We are physically unable to resist buying a bag as they go past and I have to fight Amy off to make sure I get my fair share!
• The one thing about the bus vendors is that there are a lot of children, especially the granadilla sellers. It means they’re not in school and are probably extremely poor if selling bags for 20 lempira is more lucrative than receiving an education.

The Views 

• These by far make up for any unpleasant aspect of the bus rides in Honduras. They are absolutely stunning, breathtaking, whatever adjective you prefer. They are the kind of views that you are used to seeing in long swooping shots in David Attenborough documentaries or on the front of a glossy photography books but never expect to see in real life. 
• Around Candelaria you’ll find rolling patchwork hills painted in green and brown and adorned with patterns of trees and the occasional house that tweak at my heart and remind me of home to more distant, craggy mountains shrouded in clouds in the early morning, seen over vast flat expanses of lush forest. 
• My favourite bus ride that we do is the one between Gracias and Santa Rosa. A short 50 minute drive, the hills, right next to the road, are so dramatic that they demand attention. 

Glimpses of Honduras

• I’m a big reader and at home there’s nothing I like more on a long car journey than to bring a book along. I still read on the bus journeys here but I actually prefer to stick in a pair of headphones, block Amy out and watch the world (or Honduras at least) go by on the other side of the window (when I’m not catching up on my beauty sleep!).
• The time we spend going from one place to another gives us the opportunity to get a glimpse at other parts of Honduras, if only for a second. This can range from passing incredibly rural houses to passing by great big cities. 
• On the road from Candelaria to Gracias, we see houses littered along the road that can barely be considered a town, churches that are the only building in sight for miles and crops climbing up the hillside alongside the house of the farmer. We think we’re rural in Candelaria but these sights make it seem like a bustling town centre full of everything you could ever need.
• And then there’s the other side of things. Passing by, or through, large cities like Comayagua and Tegucigalpa, like we have in the past few days, is a very surreal experience. We are so immersed in the towns that we live in that I think we sometimes forget that Honduras isn’t all corrugated iron roofs and tiny corner-store pulperías but does actually have shopping malls and skyscrapers. 
• These are the times when the poverty and wealth inequalities are put into the harshest light. We live in areas where many of the children we teach are poor but there aren’t that many wealthy familes to compare them with so there’s no contrast. It begins to become normal, as bad as that sounds. Then when you go into the cities and suddenly everything we’re used to falls way down in comparison with the glossy buildings, bustling shops and mix of people. 

Hopefully this has given you an insight into what has become a very normal part of our lives in Honduras. It’s something that I keep forgetting, things that have just become normal for us were strange for us when we first arrived and would still be unusual for everyone at home.

It feels like we’ve spent this last week wrapping things up in our project, from the English exam in the escuela to spending the rest of today seeing all our friends before we leave for two and a half months of travelling tomorrow. That’s what this blog post is for too, to wrap up the last few weeks in our project. As they’ve been happening there hasn’t felt like too much to report, apart from our three month anniversary in Honduras which I marked with a special bog post, but now that I’m sitting down to write this it seems that things have built up!

First of all, I decided that the best thing to do the weekend after being bedridden with flu was to go and play football with some energetic fifth graders… Must have worked though because I am currently back to full health! We have also spent the last few weekends making more tomato soup (our best batch yet), attending a first grader’s birthday party (featuring a piñata obviously) and taking many trips to the river.

Going to the river is one of our favourite things to do here because it’s just so damn hot! We have a couple of friends that we usually go with but recently we’ve started to go with Daniela and Jamie, the girls we live with, because they don’t know how to swim and as two qualified swimming teachers we feel it is our responsibility, even our duty to at least teach them enough that they can be safe in the water. It’s a surprisingly common theme here that, despite the fact there’s a river running right through the town that lots of kids play in, many don’t know how to swim, which terrifies me slightly. There was also a child from Kinder who went down to the river by himself last year and drowned. We feel it’s very important to teach our girls as much as we can while we’re here, especially as we can’t do anything large scale.

In the past month and a bit we’ve also had two weekend trips, one to Santa Rosa and one to Gracias, both to celebrate birthdays. First up was Santa Rosa for Jesse and Lucy, who are not just partners but also have birthdays within two days of each other. This was the first time we’d stayed overnight in Santa Rosa and we took full advantage of being able to stay out past our usual 10pm limit!

Gracias was the weekend just past and we manage to gather more people than usual, 15 in total, this time for Siobhan’s birthday. It was nice to have a different mix of people than usually come to our weekend trips and it meant we also got to meet Eve and Alice, two volunteers who have joined us from the Dominican Republic because their project wasn’t working.

There have also been a few interesting events in Candelaria. On the 1st November we celebrated Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) with our family by going to Jaime’s home town of Erandique to visit and clean the graves of family members. The Day of the Dead has a reputation for the colourful, vibrant and altogether very lively celebrations that happen in Mexico and while it is more subdued in Honduras, it felt like a more personal connection with the dead.

Unfortunately that has not been our only contact with the dead recently. Walking into school one day, we were met by some of my fifth grade class who told us they were going to a classmate’s house because his mother had died the night before. After our classes had finished we accompanied a few other teachers to his house where a wake was taking place. It was a very difficult experience for a few reasons. Obviously it is incredibly sad, but at the same time it was heartening to see the way the community rallied around the family and gave them so much support.

Seeing the house was also hard for us. We don’t get to see too much of the extreme poverty that exists in much of Honduras because we are lucky enough to live with a family that doesn’t have to worry about having enough food or whether they can wash themselves today. From what we saw the house consisted of one room with a kitchen area attached at the side. The whole situation got to me because neither of these things are something that anyone deserves, especially not this kid who is so sweet.

Deep breath, and moving on to lighter things, guess who we had the honour of meeting last week? Only the First Lady of Honduras! Haha just kidding! Wait no I’m not…

And then that’s us almost done. As I said before this week was composed of exams, marking exams and packing most of my clothes back into my rucksack. Tomorrow morning we’re on a 6am bus to start our adventures! First up, Nicaragua!

Some gorgeous pictures of us and our kids snapped by Amy on her big camera –