Misa, Supermercado, y "Café para tí"

(this is Wendy Zhang's pic- thanks Wendy!)

The thing that makes me feel at home no matter where I am is going to Mass. The Catholic mass looks pretty much the same in every part of the world - always familiar, always home. Things where the same right down to the following details:

- they video taped the mass. I admit that when St. Thomas More in Chapel Hill was taping the Triduum I felt a little weird about it, but I let it go. The church in La Esperanza was not to be out done - they had 3 cameras strategically placed around the church and microphones in all the key locations. However, I feel like this church did a little better job of making the video taping blend in so it wasn't distracting.

- That 50-60 year old lady who runs everything was front and center. You know who I'm talking about. Every church has one. She knows everyone. She knows what everyone is supposed to be doing. She runs the show... all the shows. That lady was in the front row directing the children's mass.

- Speaking of children's mass, This church was really reaching out to the youth. They have a children's mass and a youth mass every sunday. Way to go La Esperanza.

Somethings however were not the same.

- We spent a good 10-15 minutes at the beginning of mass on personal intentions and the priests own freestyle prayer. Definitely not a bad thing - I think it makes things more personal for the community. On the down side, I'm not sure American attention spans would handle it, and it seemed like the Hondurans were getting a little fidgety too.

- Communion is a free for all. I knew it was coming. Everyone gets up when they feel like it and heads for the alter. This is unlike the for formal American version were everyone gets up in an orderly fashion row by row. I think this is a good illustration of the difference in the over all feel of mass between the two cultures. I think I was pretty successful at not judging when I noticed that none of the men went up for communion, so I was pleasantly surprised when it turned out that they were actually letting the women go first. How gentlemanly.

From that point on, I've been feeling much more at home. First of all, people were nice to me in church. I mean, I think they found me amusing, but that was the highest concentration of smiles (and smiling children - bonus!) that I've seen since I got here.

As I walked out of the church, I found the grocery store!! I know that doesn't seem like a big deal, but pollolandia just wasn't cutting it, and frantically writing papers has cut into my exploring time, so I haven't really found the restaurants.

After ensuring that I wouldn't starve to death while I finish this last paper, I wandered to a coffee shop (called Café para tí), drank some delicious coffee, and read a local news paper. And the girls working there were nice to me! The pollolandia lady acted like I had personally offended her by ordering the chicken burger, so I was pretty much psyched when the girl working at the coffee shop struck up a brief conversation. Apparently being alone in a foreign country has made me starving for human connections...

I figured I would feel more at home once I started exploring, but the end of the semester has been getting in the way. Anywho, I came back to the hotel and decided to work with the door and window open. This was a big step for me because up to this point I've been holed up in a room slightly larger than my storage unit with the door locked. The decision made me feel a little like Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone when he comes down the stairs yelling, "Hey, I'm not afraid anymore. Did you hear me? I'm not afraid any more!"

Happy Divine Mercy Sunday!