Honduras: day 2

Dec 16, 2008

I wake up on my own at 7:00 am in my top bunk bed with extreme pain in my back and right shoulder since I have been sleeping on a thin mattress and can feel every 2” board supporting me (I am not complaining, just trying to tell the story like it is). My flight leaves at 4:30 pm and I am not really sure what I am supposed to do with myself until then (turns out I am writing this entry to keep myself occupied), so I stay in bed and attempt to go back to sleep. However, Carmen has to go to work with the kids at Casa Angeles, and I have to figure out from her how I am going to get to the airport, so I drag myself up and gather my things to shower. Carmen shows me to the bathroom (I will spare you the pictures of this) and I take what I am sure is the first of many freezing cold showers. After the shower, I return to the room to find Carmen gone. I stand in the middle of the room (there is no place to sit) for about 15 minutes in confusion. Eventually Carmen finds me and leads me to the kitchen for some food. I am definitely hungry, but I totally loose my appetite the minute I enter the room and the scent of slightly rotten food hits my nose (Kuzir, you and your sensitive nose would die from this smell) and I see a big brown head of broccoli decomposing in the fridge. I tell Carmen that I am not hungry and we move on to more important issues like planning my trip to the airport.
I arrive at the airport 3 hours before my flight leaves as recommended by the airline employee that I talked to on the phone. I attempt to check in to my flight, but the check-in counter is closed, so I finally get some food (hurray!) I wait and wait and wait for the counter to open. Finally at 3:15 (my flight is scheduled to leave at 3:50!) some women mosey up to the counter and begin checking people in. Time is obviously not an issue here, which will take some getting used to. I go to the gate that the flight is scheduled to leave out of and can’t understand why nobody is there. I see another confused looking woman who, thank goodness, speaks english and ask her if she is on the same flight. She confirms that she is and does not seem to be worried, so I chill out and wait. The explanation came soon enough when the same group of people from the check-in counter cruise up to the desk and take the tickets from all 4 of us planning to get on the plane. I guess Tegucigalpa to San Pedro Sula isn’t a popular flight. As the plane is making its way to San Pedro Sula, I realize that my travel agent has told me that I will land in La Ceiba (my final destination) at 9:30, which is about 5 hours from the time my flight left. I don’t know much about Honduras yet, but that seems like an extremely long time to fly half way across a country that isn’t very big. In fact, my flight was roughly 1 hour long with a stop in SPS. I arrive in La Ceiba at 6 pm, which is unfortunate considering my ride from the spanish school is planning to pick me up at 9:20. For some reason everything in the airport is closed down at 6:00 and of course I am starving again. By 6:30 the airport is deserted and it appears as though the 5 people who work there are just waiting around for the next flight to get in. Eventually, I ask the airline employees if I can access the internet in the airport to get the cell phone number of the guy who is supposed to pick me up. I call my ride and he picks me up before our scheduled time.
As we enter the neighborhood where I will be living, I can’t believe how close the homes are to each other. I didn’t think it was possible to get closer than in Chicago, but these houses are pretty much touching on all sides. There is no visible ground in between. We arrive at my “home” and I am introduced to my house mother, Dunia. She is a sweet 60 year old woman, who speaks very little English (this doesn’t matter since we are not allowed to speak english anyways). She shows me to my room, which, for those of you who have been there, is very similar to the “back room” of my old house in Delray Beach. This is luxury compared to my accommodations of the previous night. Dunia has dinner waiting on the stove and promptly serves me scrambled eggs (yes, I ate eggs), black beans and rice and tortillas. It was delicious! We chatted a little, but the effort was so great after such a long day that I wasn’t much good at conversation. We watched the end of a Hallmark movie (the only one in English with Spanish subtitles…compromise) and then I went to bed.