Have "helmet" will travel

Motorcycles are ubiquitous here. And by ubiquitous I mean really, REALLY annoying. There appear to be no rules governing motorcycle traffic patterns.

There must be rules requiring helmets, however, because virtually all motorcyclists and riders are seen wearing them. The type and use of the helmet seems not to be very regulated because I have seen all of the following serving as motorcycle headgear:

The standard motorcycle helmet. Many of these are seen to be in less than stellar condition and even more frequent is to see riders with the helmet tipped back on their head so they are not looking through visor but rather under the chin of the helmet.

The standard bicycle helmet. This is especially common on motorcycle passengers which I just can't figure. First, passengers tend to be children or girlfriends/wives. Wouldn't you want to give them the superior protection? Furthermore, the driver has something to hold on to and is more likely to know when the accident is going to happen. Give him the chintzy helmet! (By the way, a common passenger arrangement is smallest child in front of driver, medium child behind driver, and wife behind that.)

I have also witnessed the following as helmets:

The Batting Helmet

The Hard Hat

And for the first time today...

The Equestrian Riding Helmet

Denominational Differences

We are an inter-denominational church which means we make an effort to get along and the pastor takes turns offending people in his messages.

But even for us there are limits.

This evening a young boy came to Bible Study dressed in the white uniform of the Real Madrid Futbol Club, something like this:

After study I casually mentioned his attire and commented, "Soy de Barça," indicating my preference for Real Madrid's arch rival, Barcelona. The astonished, wordless, and withering gaze this youngster offered me upon hearing my profession of futbol faith was a sight to behold.

I think I'd get a warmer reception from my Baptist mother if I converted to Hare Krishna.

Little hope for change

No, this post is not about Obama, rather, a specific follow-up to an observation made in an earlier post.

Today I ate lunch out with a friend. Our bill came to about 200 lempiras or $10.00.

Neither of us had much in the way of small bills so I paid with a 500 lempira note, roughly worth $25.

My change, all 300 lempiras of it, came in 10 and 20 lempira notes (13x20, 4x10).

To put this in perspective, I essentially got $15 worth of change in thirteen $1 bills and four 50¢ pieces.

Language Barriers

In moving to a foreign country one expects a certain amount of difficulty communicating across the language and cultural barriers. This is true even for those that are semi-competent in the local language.

By and large we have been able to communicate more or less effectively. Stephen's Spanish is adequate and Debbie is learning.

There have been some additional and unexpected language challenges, however.

First, Ellyn's best friend here is the child of deaf parents that work with New Life Deaf Ministry, whose director attends Union. At 7, Carolina already is competent in Spanish, English and Lesho, or Honduran sign language.  (She would like to learn French and Chinese!) Needless to say, our interactions with her parents are limited to the two signs we know: "hello" and "thank you."

Today yet another language challenge faced us. Along with the other household items that belong to the church, the previous pastor and his family left behind a fan which has been sitting at church since their departure. Since the warmer months are coming we thought another fan at home would be a good idea.

HOWEVER.

When we went to turn it on we were confronted with this:







All is not lost. The ones in the picture on the left appear to be (reading from the bottom up: on/off, high, medium, low). That toggle switch, though, has me stumped so far. Fortunately, we do go to an international English-speaking church and I know of at least one Chinese speaker in the congregation.

Sight of the day

A lot of cast-off clothing from the US finds its way to Honduras. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised to find out that some of those t-shirts printed for the World Series losers end up here.

This means that it is quite common to see people roaming the streets with clothing sporting brand names or English text. The wearer's grasp of English being what it is (or isn't), this can create some humorous pairings.

Like the portly, middle-aged Honduran man I saw at the auto mechanic shop the other day sporting a sweatshirt labeled thus:

It only sounds like complaining

I know what you're thinking.

"Okay, Steve. You've been funny and informative and even thought-provoking on the blog so far but honestly, haven't you been a bit too positive? I mean, it can't be all peaches-and-cream, right? C'mon, give us the dirt."

Fine. I'll tell you what I don't appreciate so much about life in Honduras.

• Tile floors. Some of it can be attractive but most of it is just functional. And I know that there are good reasons for having tile floors here rather than carpet, but that doesn't mean I have to like it. Thankfully it doesn't get too cold so the whole shocking bare feet on the icy tile thing doesn't happen.
• Motorcyclists. They are a lot like mosquitoes. They are buzzing everywhere, they follow no rules, they frequently make you swat (or swerve) at inconvenient moments, and they don't particularly care. If you hit them they make a bigger mess on the front of your car than mosquitoes, though.
• Taxi drivers. Complete disregard for the flow of traffic and all other motorists. If it is an inconvenient place to stop and especially if stopping there is prohibited, that's where they'll stop.
• Bikini Saturdays. Every day the newspaper stands along the road put up an enlarged version of the front page headlines. A fine way to advertise. However, on Saturdays they replace the front page with bikini-clad women. Viva le weekend I guess. (The adds inside the newspapers here tend to be a bit more risque as well).
• Loud music at restaurants. This is epidemic here. Hard to have a conversation. And when I need to hear and understand Spanish I prefer complete silence. No chance.

As you can see, these are not exactly important aspects of life here. We genuinely enjoy our lives here so far in spite of the changes and challenges.

And I haven't hit one motorcyclist. 

Yet.

Score one for Belgium!

Further investigation into the reliability of blogger's statistics leads me to make the following update to a previous post about the site's traffic. 

You may recall that in an earlier post, a certain relative of mine was chided for her lack of faithfulness to visit the site. It now seems that the data recording hits from Russia likely reflects false hits rather than unknown faithful Russian readers.

Accordingly, I have elected to disregard all data from Russia. This rockets Belgium from fifth place to, um, fourth place behind US, Honduras, and Swaziland.

Further in my sister's defense is the fact that there are far more interesting things to do in Belgium than there are in Swaziland (not to mention that she has three children, all boys) leaving her less time to stop by for her brother's witticisms and, well, criticisms.

Just in case you were worried...

It has not required expert stylistic analysis for many to figure out that I, Stephen, have been the primary (by which I mean only) author of blog posts here at The Communion of the Saints. For those of you who might wonder why Debbie has yet to register her voice, I can assure you that it is NOT because:

1. I won't let her near the computer,
2. She is so overwhelmed by life and culture shock that she can't bring herself to post,
3. She has been so barraged by Spanish that she has forgotten how to speak or write in English,
4. She hates Honduras so much she can't think of anything good to say,
5. She's been thrown in jail for some undisclosed infraction,
6. She has secretly moved back to the US,
7. She's so busy scrubbing clothes on the washboard, hand making tortillas, plucking and gutting the chickens, feeding and cleaning up after the goats, and patching the thatched roof on our hut that she doesn't have time to write.

For the truth of the matter, I guess you'll just have to ask her.

Same name, different face

As long-time residents of Racine, Wisconsin, home of S.C. Johnson company, we have developed a preference for their products. After all, can you really beat Windex for cleaning windows?

We were pleasantly surprised to find Windex when we arrived here, but don't remember this cleverly (or cheesily, depending on your perspective) named fellow featuring on the bottles in the states.

Coffee, beans, and culture shock

This morning I was just sitting down to a typical Honduran breakfast--coffee, beans, and crema* (in the beans, not the coffee)--when my daughter approached and asked what I was doing.

"I'm eating breakfast," I replied.

With surprise and a bit of what passes for derision in a three year old she declared:

"But beans aren't for breakfast!"

And I doubt most Honduran children would know what to make of her AppleJacks® either.


* "What is crema?", you may ask. I'm not entirely sure. I know that it is made from milk, has a consistency a bit creamier than sour cream, and that I like the taste far better than sour cream. I would say it is not as tangy as sour cream.

Neither snow nor rain nor heat...

Today we received our first piece of genuine mail here in Honduras. We have previously received bills delivered by the issuing entity (electric, water, cable, etc.) and mail through a forwarding service (we have to pick this up at their office). But today a motorcyclist rang the doorbell and delivered a Christmas card from the states (Thanks YK!). We weren't even sure this sort of service existed!

For the detail oriented:
1) The envelope had a 98¢ stamp affixed as well as 2 airmail stickers.
2) It was postmarked from upstate NY on 16 Dec 2011.
3) It was stamped upon arrival to the airport sorting center on 27 Dic 2011
4) It was further stamped by the Empresa de Correos on 28 Dic 2011
5) It arrived mid-morning 28 Dec 2011.

Christmas in July

When I was a kid our church celebrated "Christmas in July". The gist of it was that packages sent to missionaries on foreign fields took so long to reach them that if we wanted to give them something for Christmas it had to be sent in July. So we got together one Sunday evening and listened to Christmas music while packaging up whatever it was we thought would be meaningful to missionaries in Africa and Bangladesh. To my overactive young mind the thought that a package could take six months to get from West Danby, New York to Niger, West Africa was incomprehensible. It seemed like two guys in a rowboat could have gotten across the Atlantic in that time. This was the 1980s not the 1880s after all, wasn't it?

I got to thinking about this this Christmas for a variety of reasons. First, I am sort of a "missionary" now so all those missionary-ish things I remember from my childhood are put in a different perspective. Second, I am grateful that it only takes about 2 weeks for us to get things sent from the states and on top of that, there are constantly people coming and going so it is not that difficult to send or receive goods. Besides, there's not much that I want here that I can't get (perhaps more on that later).

Finally, the main reason that I got thinking about Christmas in July is because, well, to this Wisconsin boy, it's beginning to feel like July at Christmas. We have noticed, however, that in an act of what we regard as selfless solidarity, many of our Northern friends have chosen to celebrate a green Christmas as well.

We love you and hope that you have a joyous season celebrating and anticipating the Advent of our Lord Jesus Christ.

(Note: The poinsettias here are astonishingly plentiful and vibrant. Just one of the many flowers blooming this time of year.)

FDR would be amazed

Americans love acronyms. They are ubiquitous. Just think of how much time you spend on CBS, NBC, and ESPN watching NFL, MLB, NHL, and NBA not to mention CSI, CSI:NY, and NCIS. The government is in on it too: CIA, FBI, DEA, FDA, etc. (or perhaps ad nauseum).

One of the contributing factors to this is that all but one of the names for letters in English are monosyllabic. (You're smart enough to figure out which one isn't.) This fact is more important than you think. By contrast, in Spanish ten letters have two syllables (f, h, j, l, m, n, r, s, x, z), one has three (w), and one has four (y). What this means is that approximately half of the letters require two or more syllables to pronounce. That can lengthen the pronunciation of an acronym by 50-100% easily.

Consider ESPN. In English this is an unproblematic string of single syllables: ee-es-pee-en. But in Spanish (and yes, we have ESPN access here) two of the letters are double syllable making it eh-ese-pe-ene, or 50% longer. Worse still is Major League Soccer, the MLS. All three of these are double syllable--eme-ele-ese--making the acronym 100% longer than the English original.

To compensate Spanish speakers make their acronyms longer. The point of this is to form the acronym into a collection of letters that can be pronounced as a word. The result is some astounding acronyms. A skim through the paper here on an average day yields an absolute alphabet soup of these, so many I can't keep track of them all. ENEE, SANAA, CONASIN, UNAH, IHNFA, FARP, AHCORENA, SOPTRAVI, etc. The list is endless. (Notable examples of the same phenomena  in English would be POTUS and MADD). Explaining one will suffice. One of my favorites is INJUPEMP. It just looks silly to me and doesn't even work that well as a Spanish word. That m-p consonant blend is unusual. Here's what it stands for: Instituto Nacional de Jubilaciones y Pensiones de los Empleados (roughly translated: National Institution for Workers' Retirements and Pensions).

The NFL suffers the same fate as MLS; its acronym requires six syllables rather than three. Maybe it could improve its chances if it modified its acronym in Latin American countries to NaFoL, or better yet LiNFA for Liga Nacional de Fútbol Americano.

That and if it could somehow become as interesting and beautiful a game as fútbol. 

When statistics go bad or Who are you and why are you looking at my blog?

As part of its user settings Blogger provides the user with an array of information about one's blog: number of visits per posting, recommending sites, how people arrive at your blog, etc. Among these details are two pieces of information that I find intriguing, one because it's useless and another because it's vexing.

First, one of the details they provide is what software one's readers are using to look at your site. Now for big time bloggers I suppose that it might be helpful to know what platforms people are using so that you can modify the content to maximize its appearance on that software. But for your average blogger like me it is a useless bit of information, though I admit to being a bit curious as to who it is that uses Linux.

But the other detail is much more tantalizing to me: blogger tells me where (as in what country) people are accessing the blog. Most of this info I find easily explicable. Obviously most of our hits come from the US. Second, not surprisingly, is Honduras. So far so good. Third place goes to Russia. Here I get confused. I have been to Russia but exactly none of the people I met there would care (or be able to) to read this blog. My only conclusion is that the hits come from a former student who spent the semester in Lithuania. THAT might show up as Russia, right?

Fourth place goes to Swaziland. I know that you're thinking that seems more unlikely than Russia, but as it turns out I know that another former student is spending a year working there. Makes sense.

Fifth is Belgium. This is a problem. It is a problem because it means that my sister who lives there is not reading the blog very faithfully. She really should be ahead of Russia and Swaziland.

The next five go like this: Germany, Italy, Slovenia, Czech Republic and France. Each of these has multiple hits and I can't explain any of them. For my sister's sake I hope it means that her internet service provider is periodically assigning her foreign IP addresses. Sounds like something the EU would do. (Though even if I add all those hits to the Belgium count, she still lags behind Russia).

Otherwise...Who are you people and why are you reading this blog?

Catracho Pride

Hondurans, or catrachos as they self-denominate, love their fútbol. This past week has seen some important games between rival teams in the national league. But there is also considerable pride in la selección or national team. Internationally Honduras is currently ranked 54th though they are 5th in their region (CONCACAF) behind México, USA, Jamaica and Panamá. There is a particularly strong rivalry between Honduras and El Salvador for reasons having more to do with politics than soccer. Qualification for the 2014 World Cup in Brasil is underway and Honduras is hopeful to secure a spot though only three from the region are guaranteed spots in the final 32 teams (the fourth place team enters a playoff with a team from another continent for a possible spot).
All this by way of prelude to displaying my Honduran pride with the national team jersey that my wife purchased for me. You know who has been included as gratuitous cuteness.

It's beginning to feel a lot like...Memorial Day.

People frequently ask us how our transition is going. We can answer completely honestly that it has gone very well. We have been healthy, have had relatively few difficulties in establishing a home and various services, and even anticipate that our residency paperwork will go through soon. We are very happy in our home and find our church home equally comfortable.
The only "problem" is that Christmas is 20 days away but my brain thinks it is late spring because the sun shines every day and the temperatures are in the 70s. Having lived almost our entire lives in places where there are four distinct seasons this two-seasons-only-really-differing-in-the-amount-of-rain-that-falls thing will take some getting used to. It was helpful that last week a cold front came through and temperatures dipped occasionally into the 50s. We could pretend that it was autumn. (It was also humorous to see the Hondurans bundling up as if an Arctic blast had struck.)
But if this is the only thing we have to complain about, we're doing pretty well, no?

Thanksgiving (again)!

We hope that all of you enjoyed the Thanksgiving holiday. We celebrated the day with a meal and time of thanks at Union Christian Church complete with turkey, pumpkin pie, and Packer football. (It should be noted that it doesn't feel as much like football when the commentary is in Spanish. Something not right there.) There were over 60 people in attendance, many of them "visitors". It was our goal to expand our celebration beyond the church family and we were happy to have English-speakers from other churches and ministries, members of the Ministerio de Sordos Nueva Vida (New Life Deaf Ministry, a church and school), as well as several Honduran families. Below are some pictures of the festivities. (For more pictures you can visit the church's Facebook page.)

The fellowship hall prepared for the meal

The spread!

The crowd

The more the merrier

This group is watching the Packers-Lions

game in the church foyer.

One happy customer!

Funny little stuff

In visiting any culture there are big things to adjust to as well as small, even funny differences. For instance, we have never forgotten how weird it was to us that in England we ate potato chips in flavors like "prawn" and "roasted chicken." As I recall, they tasted like potato chips.

A trip to the grocery store here reveals several such differences.

Products in bags. Many things come in bags here that don't usually in the States. We can by in a bag: vegetable oil, mustard, milk, tomato paste, refried beans, mayonnaise, and many other products. I don't know whether it is more environmentally friendly or not but it is interesting. The oil and mayonnaise bags actually have a screw top at one corner for easy open and close.

Customer service. I've commented on this before. It is up and down. In some ways it is better, others worse. We think it is funny, yet helpful, that just as you enter the produce section of the grocery story there is an employee with a basket of plastic produce bags already taken off the roll and peeled open. I've long fought with those crazy bags but never thought it was worthy of a minimum wage worker to help me with them.

Eggs. Here the eggs are not refrigerated and come in multiples of 5 rather than dozens. So we buy 15 eggs at a time. (I also find it silly that the brand name Debbie usually gets is "Mister Huevo". Not "Señor Huevo" but "Mister").

Dish soap. While you can (and we do) buy liquid dish soap, the more common form of the product here is a tub of hardened soap (the texture reminds me of Lava soap) that one uses by rubbing it with a sponge and then applying to the dishes. This method uses less water, a valuable commodity during the dry season.

This list could go on, I suppose, but this is enough to make the point that there are many little things that make us say, "Huh. Hadn't thought of doing it that way before!"

Missing all the fun

Several times recently Debbie has related to me her adventures in communicating with Spanish-speakers. She has spoken to the guard at church multiple times and even managed to get information from the garbage man about what days he comes. She is quite aware of her linguistic limitations and very self-effacing when relating these events to me, willingly including details of her failure. I never fail both to be amazed by her results and get a chuckle out of the proceedings. The only thing I regret is that I never get to see these verbal forays in person!

Proof that we've got our priorities straight

The futon is not put together, but the rocking horse is!