trying times

I missed my flight from Guatemala City to San Pedro Sula. Let's just sum it up by saying that I'm an idiot and leave it at that. I ended up spending the day (and night) in Guatemala City (which was really great...highly recommended if you happen to be an idiot like me) and left early the next morning for Honduras.

Being back has been strange. When I was in the states, it felt like Honduras was a long dream. I went to sleep on September 19, 2005 and woke up August 3, 2006. But now that I'm back in Honduras, it feels like the U.S. was the dream, with all its' luxuries that I took for granted for 24 years and really learned to apprecitate while I was visiting. If I wanted to bake a cake, I didn't have to go to the main town to use the rest house to do it. If I wanted to drink water, I could turn on the faucet and put a glass underneath instead of boiling it. I had more food options. If I wanted to buy a book, I rode my bike down to the bookstore, not get on a bus for 4 hours and worry about my money supply for the rest of the month because I spent too much money enjoying sandwiches in San Pedro Sula. It was those little things that made me appreciate the United States.

Of course with the good came the bad, too many options (especially with candy bars), everything at a fast pace, always worrying about other people's schedules, answering the "so what's next after PC" questions (and no, I don't know what's next yet). The worst being that I wasn't able to see everyone I had hoped to see, which I still feel horrible about. 12 days was just enough to get irritated with the U.S. and remember why I wanted to work abroad in the first place, but it was not enough time to really catch up with everyone and just enjoy Chicago. I had a lot of personal errands to run and got little sleep.

My friend Juvini gave me some money to purchase a digital camera for him while I was in Chicago, which I did and led to problems. All the teachers at the colegio said, "Well, I wanted a camera too and a laptop, why didn't you tell me you were going to the states?"
Sorry guys, I'm not a courier service and I did tell you that I was going but you tend to have selective listening when it comes to me. They are all asking when I'm going back or when my parents are coming down so they could bring "gifts" for them. It's a tough situation. I want to get them stuff, but getting them stuff leads to them thinking that I have money, which leads to them asking me to lend them money or buy them stuff. I guess if I said no to Juvini in the first place, I wouldn't be having these problems.

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The Thursday after I came back, I played a volleyball game with the teachers from the colegio versus the 9th graders. I am just learning how to play volleyball and I sucked. It was really embarassing how much I sucked and I was so upset about how poorly I played in front of everyone. I went home and tried to workout my anger away but that didn't really work because kids were knocking on my door all afternoon asking for glasses of water and candy. I had just arrived so I didn't have much clean water and didn't really want to share because there was no water that day from the pipe so I said no and Williams said, "You know what? You are just really selfish." That statement combined with my anger about the volleyball led me to snap. "Don't you dare call me selfish when I share my food with you, buy you juice once in awhile and always let you into my house. You can drink water from the
tap, I can't." Williams says, "Well we're doing you a favor by eating your food because you're so chubby anyway."

Well. There you go. What do you think happened next? I slammed the door and broke down. It was embarassing and I shouldn't have cried over it, especially considering he's just a kid. And it doesn't look good for me to cry and get angry in front of kids.

Later, when I had calmed down a bit, Brayan and Luis came over to talk to me. Luis, being the more sensitive one simply said, "He's an idiot. Forget about it."

I'm trying, I'm trying.