3 of the main reasons I'm staying longer in Canada....
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Apparently my last blog entry did not contain enough information ;) So, here's the Honduras and Belize wrap-up (although I got home only 3 weeks ago, it seems like a long time). Honduras was certainly an eye-opener for me as I've only really been to western, wealthy countries (except a couple of days in Turkey, parts of which were similar to Honduras). 
It was a great experience to stay in the little, dusty, non-touristy town of La Esperanza with our lovely host family. I still haven't managed to process it all: what do you do with the experience of seeing so many kids (at the childcare centre I worked at) so obviously under-nourished and lacking in so much, and seeing so much rubbish beside the road and any rubbish that was dealt with, being burned? 
I certainly don't want that to sound like a 'we're better than them' statement but more a 'what on earth is the government of Honduras doing?!!!' kind of statement. Much is written about goverment corruption in Honduras and it is evident by the way people have to live and the state of the centre we worked at. I'm all for people living simply (by choice) but not struggling to be healthy. Now, all I need to do is figure out what to do with this point-of-view of mine, rather than just lapse into doing nothing out of helplessness.
OK, off my soapbox for the next little bit :) One of the best things about my La Esperanza experience was sharing it with my friend Jane from Sydney and the other volunteers involved in the 3 projects in the town. There were 4 of us from Australia, 1 from Canada, 1 from Denmark, 2 from the UK(/Portugal/Brazil/France :) ) and 2 from the U.S. It was so fun getting to know them, catching up for lunch each day and having some other adventures at some birthday parties and on the weekends. The kids at IHNFA were sweet if exhausting (they confirmed for me why I trained as a high school teacher rather than in Early Childhood :) ) and patient with my pretty crap Spanish. They didn't really accept my responses of 'no entiendo' and would repeat their requests louder and louder!. Here is Luis singing a song about Señor Jesús -love the trumpet solo!
It was a great experience to stay in the little, dusty, non-touristy town of La Esperanza with our lovely host family. I still haven't managed to process it all: what do you do with the experience of seeing so many kids (at the childcare centre I worked at) so obviously under-nourished and lacking in so much, and seeing so much rubbish beside the road and any rubbish that was dealt with, being burned? 
I certainly don't want that to sound like a 'we're better than them' statement but more a 'what on earth is the government of Honduras doing?!!!' kind of statement. Much is written about goverment corruption in Honduras and it is evident by the way people have to live and the state of the centre we worked at. I'm all for people living simply (by choice) but not struggling to be healthy. Now, all I need to do is figure out what to do with this point-of-view of mine, rather than just lapse into doing nothing out of helplessness.OK, off my soapbox for the next little bit :) One of the best things about my La Esperanza experience was sharing it with my friend Jane from Sydney and the other volunteers involved in the 3 projects in the town. There were 4 of us from Australia, 1 from Canada, 1 from Denmark, 2 from the UK(/Portugal/Brazil/France :) ) and 2 from the U.S. It was so fun getting to know them, catching up for lunch each day and having some other adventures at some birthday parties and on the weekends. The kids at IHNFA were sweet if exhausting (they confirmed for me why I trained as a high school teacher rather than in Early Childhood :) ) and patient with my pretty crap Spanish. They didn't really accept my responses of 'no entiendo' and would repeat their requests louder and louder!. Here is Luis singing a song about Señor Jesús -love the trumpet solo!
From the culture shock (I guess?) of Honduras to the gorgeousness of Belize. We were in awe when we arrived at Jaguar Reef near Hopkins. It was sooooo beautiful! The first photo here shows how close our room was to the beach (the Caribbean Sea!): our room was near the staircase on the right and the sea is that blue patch on the left!
Mostly, we just chilled out on the beach (or by one of the pools), read books, watched The Chaser, Summer Heights High and some movies or ate! We did do one adventure of snorkelling and we checked out the nearby town of Hopkins and had a drum lesson! It was such a great time - I can't wait to go back to Belize!
And now I'm back to freezing cold Toronto: it was strange, coming back from Belize, to go from 28°C to -10°C in the space of 24hours! The weekend after I got back I made the climate switch even more bizarre by going to the big Winterlude festival in Ottawa (including skating on the world's largest skating rink). More Honduras and Belize pix are here and more Winterlude pix are here .
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