Allen & Marcel Volunteer in Honduras

  Holy week in Spanish is Semana Santa which sounds to me more like Christmas (Navidad) than Easter (Pascua de Resurreccion) so I had to wrap my head around the confusion a few times before becoming more familiar with it. Holy week is celebrated here with a week of school vacation for the kids and teachers and with a half week off for other employees on the ranch. Many employees take the other half week off as vacation which means a light work week for most of the volunteers. I took advantage of the light work week to host a few Proyecto Familiars (Family Projects). As a reminder, this is when the volunteers host biological siblings for dinner and games at our volunteer house. For those with special needs on the ranch, this is sometimes changed to making pizza and entertaining the special needs group at their house. So Tuesday Allen and I hosted a sister and brother at San Vicente and Wednesday Julie, Natalie, and I made pizza and danced with the group at Casa Emmanuel. I greatly...

It has been a few weeks since my last blog because our laptop finally gave up on me. Allen bought a Microsoft Surface Laptop about 8 years ago, soon after he retired. I have been using it for my job here at the ranch. Last fall, the charger stopped working and computer support here on the ranch were able to find the broken connection and fix it which was a good thing since I do not think we could even find one here in Honduras. I kept using it and about a month ago it began to make loud fan noises and heating up. Computer support bypassed the battery for a while, but after several days, it finally just turned off. Luckily, I had several days to move the files I needed and prepare myself for the inevitable.  My office has a computer for me, but I have avoided it until now because it has a Spanish keyboard. The alphabet and letters are laid out the same, but most of the special characters are in a different place. I am slowly figuring it out which is probably good exercise for my bra...

  By far the most popular sport here in Honduras is soccer which is known here as futbol, not to be confused with “futbol Americano”. There are several soccer fields on the ranch and most of the kids play it every chance they get. It is also popular among the adults and frequently there are “friendly” competitions among adult teams. In the last month, there has been an invitation to all employees on the ranch to put together teams and form different leagues to play each other in a season that starts this week and goes through May. At least 8 players are needed to form a team since these games involve 6 players on the field at a time. The volunteers were able to enlist 8 of the 11 volunteers to form a team. Unfortunately, Allen was not eligible since the team was in a women’s league. He was drafted onto the Maintenance team instead. Yours truly joined the Equipo Voluntaria (Volunteers’ Team) even though I have not played soccer for over 30 years! The Voluntaria Soccer Team Under N...

  Apparently there was a large snake outside the kitchen before lunch on Friday. I found out about it when Allen sent this photo on the WhatsApp chat group for the Volunteers. Mica Snake by the Kitchen As an aside, WhatsApp is the basic tool used for communication on the ranch. Allen and I had used it very infrequently before coming to Honduras, but would be pretty much in the dark without it now. Allen had just finished with the maintenance team at the water purification building which is very close to the kitchen when he noticed a small crowd of people outside the kitchen. Max, the NPH chef, was outside and beckoned for Allen to come help. Max had a long pole with a rope loop on the end to try to capture the snake and lead it away. Some in the crowd wanted Max to kill it, but others said that it was not venomous (mica snake) and beneficial to have around (eating rodents?). Allen took this video of Max trying to catch the snake which eventually went up a tree and escaped. Snak...