I won’t lie, I think it would be kind of awesome to ride around Honduras on a motorcycle, and I haven’t ruled it out, but the bus today wasn’t that bad. Regino came this morning to pick me up at my hotel. Regino is something like the mayor of Las Mercedes (the community where I’m staying) , although I don’t think his position is quite that formal. He is a soft spoken and humble man, and I can already tell that I'm going to need to dedicate a thank you to him in my thesis. We didn’t need to leave until after 10, which was a nice surprise. That gave me time to send in my last assignment of the semester (good riddance), write my MSPE paragraphs (how did I not realize before that I was pretty much writing my dean’s letter myself?), and figure out how to work my mobile modem (of course it couldn’t be easy).
The modem was tricky. All of the instructions in my Guía Rápida (quick start guide) and on the Tigo website pretty much said that you just plugged the thing into your USB port and it would “plug and play” (the only English words in the description).
If you aren’t struggling with a similar problem, skip the next 3 paragraphs because they will be boring:
(Well I plugged and it didn’t play. First I went to the Tigo store where I learned how to say, “The program won’t load,” and “restart the computer.” The guy verified that it didn’t work, plugged it into his computer where it faithfully “plugged and played” and then kind of shrugged and gave up. Granted he was very nice about the whole thing, even though I may or may not have inadvertently cut in line.
In the end I can only assume that my problem is because I’m running Leopard instead of Snow Leopard on my mac. Here’s what I did in case anyone on the wide internets has the same problem – Hondurans don’t seem to blog their computer problems quite as proliferatively as Americans:
The “Internet Movil” Icon shows up on the desktop. When you click on it, it opens a Finder window. When you try to start the application it tries to load for a fraction of a second and gives up. Right click on the Finder window icon and select “Show Package Contents.” Look in the “Resources” folder and choose “MobilePartner.mpkg” This half installs and fails, but if you follow the rest of the instructions on this blog:
http://blog.evandavey.com/2008/02/how-to-connect-huawei-e220-usb-modem.html starting with the Network Preferences part, I ended up getting it to work. Some where in the process I also downloaded the software that guy has on his page, so I can’t rule out that that helped.)
On to potentially more interesting topics: the Bus
This was where I discovered a treasure trove of opportunities to practice my Spanish. While the friendly store owners are will give it a shot and give up, no one perseveres in talking with an American girl with iffy Spanish like a drunk at the bus stop. (Don’t worry mom, I was twice his size… literally).
He told me about the beautiful instrumental music of Honduras and that we should go listen to some. When I declined he pressed on and started describing how beautiful his country is and how he only wanted me to experience the beauty of the music, and the scenery, and where was I going on the bus. Eventually he gave up and moved on, but not before he taught me that my Spanish isn’t that bad if the person I'm talking to doesn't mumble (oddly yes, the drunk man wasn’t mumbling).
my view from the bus
We got on the bus around 11. When you are stuck on a bus next to someone for 2hrs, it’s a pretty good opportunity to chat. I sat with a girl who is studying in La Esperanza but lives three hours away. Every time I hear how hard Hondurans work to get a good education, I feel really guilty about how much I complain about school work… please ignore my above comment about my last paper. She has nine siblings and is studying to be a teacher, but there are no jobs, contrary to the governments new, “Honduras is open for business” slogan. I’m still absorbing the intricacies of the labor problems in Honduras, but apparently they are stuck somewhere between not having enough educated people to support foreign investors and not having enough qualified jobs for the people they do educate.
Once we got to Las Mercedes I set up house,
Pantry, toilet, shelves for clothing, hammock
Pantry (to save the food from the dogs)
plastic door, desk, pile o' wood
took a long nap (which was necessary due to my most recent learning opportunity for which I am grateful), and talked to Regino about what I’m going to do here for the next 2 months. On this week’s agenda: do some surveys in Las Mercedes and rent a truck to visit the other 7 communities. On our whirlwind tour I will collect water samples and tell them when I’m coming back.
So we’re off and running. Since I don’t actually have that much to do in these two months (compared to the last 4 months), maybe I’ll just ride the bus…
you are sleeping in a hammock??? i'm sooo jealous.
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