Welcome to Candelaria, Lempira!

Welcome to Candelaria Lempira! I'm writing this on my last day in this beautiful town and I thought it was probably about time that you got a look at the place I've called home for the last 12 months!

This is the view of Candelaria from what is essentially a viewpoint (not sure if that is the intended purpose, It's basically just a layby, but doesn't the town look good?) called the circumbalacion. Candelaria has a population of roughly 800 people living in the town centre, pictured, with a further 200 or so in the surrounding aldeas of La Hacienda, Posada de Flor and El Regadillo. The mountain that's visible is called Cerique but is commonly known only as 'el cerro' (the mountain).

This is the view of Candelaria from the other side, from just below the summit of Cerrique. While it was very rewarding to climb the hill that looms over us wherever we are, it's not something I would ever do again. Do not attempt without an experienced hand that also carries a machete! Our 'experienced' guides, Alex and Jonni, can be seen in the photo.

First stop on our tour is where our mornings start every Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday - Jardín de Niños de Profe Marcelino Pineda Lopez a.k.a. Kinder. There are around 50 kids here split between two classes, pre-kinder/kinder for the 3-4 year olds and prepatorio for the 5 year olds. Its more or less a minute's walk from our house.

From Kinder we walk down this rather steep but thankfully paved road (at least we're not going up it though, right?). We go past our favourite comedor (a Honduran restaurant that is usually just the front room of someone's house), Comedor Delmy, or as we call it, Nayely's because our friend Nayely lives there. You can't actually see because of the angle of the photo but is a bright pink facade below the blue one two thirds of the way up the photo.

The bottom half of the road above. When we swim in the river with our host sisters, we walk down past the pink house that is visible which leads to a nice swimming spot that has a natural slide the girls love!

We continue along this road to the primary school, passing by our friend Erik's mechanic's workshop.

The canchita (playing court) where we used to play football all the time is below the road above on the left hand side.

On the last stretch of the walk from Kinder to the primary school. In reality this walk only takes about five minutes. This road is always nice to walk down because it's frequented by a variety of very colourful and very beautiful butterflies!

Crossing the bridge at the bottom of the steps up to the entrance of the escuela, you can see the formidable form of Cerrique very clearly. (It's not actually that high, it only took us 4 hours to go up and down and part of that was because there's no path so you have to scramble your way through scrubbery and up rock faces.)

This is the last step (haha, get it?) on our journey to school. The bridge from the previous picture is at the bottom and the gates are on the right. (The girls are our host sisters, Jamie and Daniela.)

Welcome to La Escuela Urbana Mixta de Jose Cecilio del Valle!

These are what our classrooms are like. The buildings are over three different levels but I haven't included many photos of the school here. If you want to see more have a look at my blog post Introducing: La Escuela Jose Cecilio del Valle. In total there are about 230 students. 

One of the many gorgeous views from the school. 

On the way home now, this is at the top of the butterfly street looking the other way. Many of the houses here in Honduras are painted bright colours, like you can see here. It's one of the things that you first notice as being different to home when you arrive.  

This hill is the bane of my life. It is every bit as steep as it looks and incredibly bumpy. I'm smiling through the pain.

After the steep road we come out onto the square from the gap on the left hand side of the photo. Our house is straight ahead on the left from this angle. On the right is the central park and as always, Cerrique is watching. 

Our house! The windows looks into our bedroom and the door is into the living room.

If you go the end of our block and turn left, this is the road you are faced with. It is steep, slippery and not properly paved, all the things you want from a road and all the things you can expect from many roads in Candelaria.

The road behind our house, which is the green door behind the flowers on the left.

The street outside our house again. It forms one of the sides of the parque central. 

If you go anti-clockwise from our side, you'll come to the side that has the Catholic church and is the unofficial mototaxi station. This is also where they set up the stage for the big celebrations like Independence Day or Lempira Day. 

The iconic (at least to us) Catholic church that sits on one side of the square. We have attended mass here once, on my birthday after some of my sixth grade girls invited me. We've also gone to the Evangelical church a lot with Lety and Victor which is a very different experience from the Catholic services. 

If you go down the street at the end of this side of the park you come to our favourite place in the whole of Candelaria - the post office! Even the worst of days could be turned around with a text from the post office saying that we had mail! Unfortunately we could be waiting a long time for our packages, I think the longest was six months! Everything we've been sent has arrived though, eventually!

Continuing around, this side of the square house the municipalidad (the equivalent of council buildings) and the alcaldía (the mayor's office).

The mayor's office and the council buildings. 

A beautiful mural on the side of the palacio municipal (council building). 

 The park in the middle is very pretty and a lovely place to sit for a bit in the afternoon, as long as it's not too hot. Whenever there are celebrations there are usually a lot of things set up here and it's very full. Apart from that, it's actually pretty empty, even though there's free wifi!

This is what the bit of the square outside our house looks like on a Sunday morning when the market comes to Candelaria. The market is a great thing for the town because it brings people fresh meat, fresh vegetables, clothes, shoes, homeware, everything they could need!It's great, but not when they start setting up at 4am right outside our bedroom window!

Enjoying some (free) fried chicken and tajadas in the comedor area of the market. (It's all about who you know!)

Moving away from the square, this road continues from the side of the park that we live on, with the church being on the left. Our favourite pulperería (a corner shop),Irma's, is just visible further down on the right.

If you keep going straight, you'll arrive at Ferreteria Genesis, our second host family's hardware shop.

Going right and then left brings you upon this stunning view which you can see from the entrance to the colegio (the high school).

The colegio is much bigger than the escuela because students come in from the other aldeas once they leave primary school.

At one end of the high school there is the cancha (the court). Here there are a lot of people gathered for a dance competition that we judged.

Set up for the dance competition but usually this is where the football, basketball and volleyball teams practise.

This photo was taken down the road from Kinder. It features the public bathrooms I have never seen anyone use and would never dream of using. Seriously, hold your nose as you go past. 

Keep going and you get to, in my opinion, the worst road in Candelaria. Luckily we never really have any reason to be on this side of town so we can avoid it pretty easily. 

The only thing we´re ever on this side of town for is to go to the campo, the big football pitch. This is where we came with the escuela to practise marching for the Independence Day parade. 

The rio pichigal runs through Candelaria and there is nothing more refreshing on a hot day than going for a swim. Sometimes it's not necessarily the cleanest but sometimes you're just too hot to care! 













We would often take our host sisters, Daniela and Jamie, to the river to play and to try and teach them how to swim. Unfortunately it's a skill that many of the children here lack.














There is one 'main' road that runs through Candelaria. At one end it goes to Gracias, 100km that takes four hours on the bad roads.





















Way back when we first came and Amy and I still ran, we wouldrun along the Gracias road until we reached this bridge where I would die for a few minutes while Amy waited patiently and then we would turn around.




















At the other end, the road runs to Mapulaca, a border town with El Salvador.

The road goes uphill steeply but if you time it right, it is absolutely worth. You get rewarded with a breathtaking sunset over the hills of El Salvador. 

And that's it! That is basically all there is to Candelaria. I hope you've enjoyed having a look around my little Honduran town. Over the past year these streets have become my home and the people that walk them have become my family. It breaks my heart that I have to leave them tomorrow but I know one day I will return to walk them again. 

A Day in the Life

A Day in the Life - Monday 25th July

6am - My alarm goes off and I promptly silence it and roll over.

6.30am - I wake up in a panic that I've massively overslept! (It's ok, I've still got plenty of time!)

6.35am - We didn't get a wash done at the weekend because of a water cut which means we have to try and fit one in before school today.

6.40am - Time for a shower! (actually pretty warm for once!) 

6.50am -  I get dressed, today in cut-off jeans and my Project Trust polo shirt.

7.05am - Breakfast today is cabbage and tomatoes, beans, avocado, plantain, mantequilla and a tortilla.

7.35am - I brush my teeth, put makeup on, and then realise the water has gone off so our washing has stopped. We'll have to wait until later to start it up again, the water usually comes back in the afternoon.

7.57am -  Before I leave to walk the minute and a half to Kinder (by myself beacuse Amy's not feeling well today), I fill up my water bottle. Got to keep hydrated!

8am - Kinder starts. I teach the 5 year olds. It takes me 10 minutes to get them all into a circle to start singing If You're Happy and You Know It. They won't settle to it because the are overflowing with energy this morning so I try and get rid of some of it by playing the Bean Game. (It doesn't work.) I give it one more attempt to do something productive, practising numbers, before giving in and singing Wind the Bobbin Up to finish. A lot of days are something like this - it can be quite hard to keep this many small children on track!

8.30am - I leave slightly early in despair. We finish anywhere between 8.30 and 8.40.

8.40am - I start walking to the primary school.

8.45am - Exactly on time, I arrive at school and start 1st grade's lesson. We're working on phonics with them at the minute so we recap long and short vowel sounds. Then we learn the rule that one vowel in a word means it's a short sound. We have a workbook that we work through with this class so we fill in the appropriate page.

9.30am - Recreo a.k.a. breaktime. I sit around talking to some kids, most of whom just keep telling me not to go! Stop, you're breaking my heart!

9.45am - Time for 4th grade where we are learning about body parts. I draw a monster on the board that has extra arms, legs, two heads, basically a very weird looking guy and they have to write down a list of all of Mr Monster's body parts. When they finish they get to draw their own monster. Towards the end of the class I pass around a notebook that I want them all to sign before we leave.

10.35am - I'm a little late to my 6th grade class because signing the book took longer than expected. 6th grade are also doing body parts so I do the same lesson as with 4th grade but more streamlined. I limit the amount of things they have to write about Mr Monster so they don't get overwhelmed. I also pass the book around from the start so it isn't a mad rush at the end.

11.15am - That's me finished with my classes for the morning. At this time the kids get their merienda (snack, but it's more like an actual meal).

11.20am - I go back to my 4th grade class as promised so they can decorate their names a bit more  in my book.

11.28am - I leave to go home for lunch.

11.29am - I remember I have forgotten to get homework from Amy's 4th grade so she can still mark it so I turn around.

11.40am - Second time lucky right? Homework in hand I trek up the looming hill to the house.

11.45am - Dying from the heat and the extra weight of a pile of jotters, I arrive home.

12.10pm - Lunch is rice, pasta, cheese, salad and a tortilla.

12.45pm - I have a bit of time before my class in the high school so I watch some Netflix.

1.28pm - Another minute and a half walk takes me to the colegio.

1.30pm - My only class this afternoon is 7th grade. I taught some of the students in this class when they were in 6th grade. They are practising a dance for a competition next Monday when I arrive but only take a few minutes to finish up. This class like listening to a lot of English music so one of their favourtie things to do is to translate songs. Because this is our last class, we're doing one they've been asking for for a while - Closer by The Chainsmokers. At the end I have them all sign my book too.

2.25pm - I walk back the way I came to the house.

2.35pm - Even though it's only six days until I see her again I FaceTime Amy at home and we chat for a while.

4.00pm - I read for a bit and play with our baby host sister, Antonella. She's just learned to roll over but isn't feeling like putting on a show for me just now.

5.00pm - Amy's feeling better so we both go to the river with our other host sisters, Daniela and Jamie. The water is freezing but some splashing gets me accustomed pretty quickly!

6.10pm - Tacos for dinner!  I requested this as they are one of my favourite Honduran meals and I wanted to have them at least once more before we leave.

6.30pm - Because we've only got a few days left I start taking down letters and drawings from kids from the walls.

7.10pm - Amy and I went to a BBQ at the weekend and had some leftover biscuits and marshmallows so Jamie and I make use of them by making smores (or as I call them in Spanish, the marshmallow sandwiches)!

7.30pm - More taking things down and actual packing! Ordered piles of clothes! Clothes in the backpack! It's now half full but there's still a whole lot left!

8.45pm - I sit (or rather lie) down on my bed to write my journal. I am proud to say I have written in it for every day I have been out here!

10.00pm - I relax a little bit, watch some Netflix, read a little more.

11.00pm - Bedtime!

¡Viva Lempira!

¡Viva Lempira! Second only to Independence Day in terms of celebrations, it feels like we've been waiting for Lempira Day since we got here! The celebrations were very similar to those of Independence Day back in September. Amy and I marched with the primary school through the town and up to the central park and then hung around watching the traditional dances, the songs, the exhibition of all the beautiful costumes until the big finale, the re-enactment of the death of Lempira! We also sampled some of the food and drink our classes in the high school had prepared and were selling from booths they had constructed around the square.

Lempira (lem-peer-ah) was the war chieftain of the Lencas in the 1530's, at the time of the Spanish conquistadores.  The Lencas inhabited the western regions of Honduras and there are still 100,000 in the Honduran departments of La Paz, Intibuca, Lempira and Ocotepeque with a further 37,000 in El Salvador. The name Lempira comes from the Lencan words 'lempa' (lord), 'i' (of) and 'era' (hill or mountain). It was under the leadership of Lempira that the Lencan tribes united to fight the Spanish, with a reported 30,000 men from over 200 towns under his command.

The 20th of July commemorates the death of Lempira. There are two different accounts of his death, the more widely recognised account which is the one taught in Honduran schools, and another that was not discovered until the 1980s and tells a very different story. According to the popular version of events, Lempira was lured by the Spaniards to negotiate when a concealed soldier shot him.  The other version contests this by claiming that Lempira died not in an ambush but in combat, by having his head cut off.

Nowadays Lempira is remembered though the celebrations on 20th July. In 1931 the Honduran currency was renamed in his honour and 1943 the Gracias Department, where Lempira was from, was renamed the Lempira department.

We absolutely loved being part of this day, I think it was my favourite of the many celebrations we've had the honour of participating in this year. The costumes were absolutley beautiful. Amy and I were just going to wear jeans a Lempira tshirt but at the last minute our host mum Saida managed to find us some traditional outfits! Among the usual gorgeous dance dresses and traditional outfits, many of the girls had used grains of rice, pinto beans, frijoles and corn kernels to decorate their dresses in various patterns, with flowers, even with outline of Lempira, the man or department, and the word Candelaria! They were incredible! Many of the boys also dressed up as Indians, which involved covering their bodies in black paint (completley unacceptable at home but just how they do things here) and wearing a skirt made of strips of material or sometimes bin bags and a bow and arrow.

For me, this was the perfect way to start what I'm sure will be a very emotional week of goodbyes, to our friends and family here, to our students, to our home and to this beautiful country.

Cheers!

11 Months in the Making

Once again I've been quiet over the past few weeks but prepare yourself for the new wave of blogs as I get all my remaining ideas out of my system in the two weeks that I have left!

The start of this month has been very busy because I've had a few more visitors - guess who? No, sadly the queen couldn't make it out but Amy and my mum did manage to make the day long trip over the ocean just see their favourite sister/daughter (delete as appropriate). It was a very tearful reunion at the airport after 11 months of messages and FaceTimes having to make up for actually seeing each other. 

This was a long time coming

Amy (Lynch) and I (the two Amys thing gets very confusing) had just finished a week of exams meaning that we had a week of holidays. Seeing as (twin) Amy is slightly obsessed with fish and coral we took her to Utila to do some diving. We met Jesse and Lucy there who also had a week off and (twin) Amy, Lucy and I embarked on our PADI Advanced diver course. 

Jesse, me, Amy (Lynch), Lucy (twin) Amy and Lauren on our fun dive

I had a a great week - we dived at a wreck, did what was basically an underwater assault course and got to do another night dive. My mum also got to celebrate her graduation from uni with the largest smoothie known to man on a tropical island while everyone else was stuck in cold and gray Edinburgh. (Twin) Amy had a slightly harder time of it. After four out of seven dives were done she became quite ill, probably from a mixture of jet lag and severe dehydration so missed out on doing one of her remaining dives. 

We left Utila on the Friday after Amy and my mum had arrived to head to Gracias, an 8 hour bus ride away. Once we arrived we just about had enough energy left to eat some food, shower and collapse into bed! 

Number one on the list of things to do while in Gracias was head out to do the zipline at La Campa. Amy (Lynch) wasn't feeling great and decided to skip it so it was just the Morrison gals that traveled for an hour along a 16km stretch of road to confront the highest zipline in Central America. 

K, gracias, bye

I'm an old pro at it by now, with this being my third time, but I must say there weren't many nerves from the other two either. Lots of other people had had the same idea as us so it was very busy meaning we missed our bus back but that just gavethe two newest 'gringas' the chance to hitch home in the back of a truck! 

Basically Honduran

The other activities of Gracias, namely the hot springs and Fuerte San Cristobal, were all ticked off before hopping onto the dreaded chicken bus back to Candelaria. Seeing our project was highly anticipated so it had a lot to live up too. 

Over the course of two full days in Candelaria, my mum and (twin) Amy got to meet all of my classes in the primary school as well as Kinder and my 7th grade class in the high school. 5th grade were a favourite for Amy because they latched on to the fact she's studying marine biology and asked a ton of questions about sea animals. My mum liked seeing 2nd grade because they are roughly the age her P3 class will be next year.

'Wait, you're not Sara!'

Outside of school they met our two families. Jamie and Daniela, the girls we live with, worked their charms as did little Samuel over at Lety and Victor's. I think everyone in Candelaria enjoyed there being two Saras (and two Amys!) in town and the phrase of the week was '¡Sí, se parecen mucho!' (You look so alike!). The best way to tell us apart was because (twin) Amy is 'tan blanquita' (so pale)! That didn't stop Walter from 6th grade from asking me how I managed to find a clone of my body!

Mi familia Hondureña

Mi otra familia Hondureña

The last stop on the two week tour of Honduras was Copan Ruinas. We looked around the main archeological site, which even the second time was incredibly interesting and popped out to Macaw Mountain for the mandatory guacamaya (scarlet macaw) photo and even went back to the ruins to have a look around the museum there the morning we left. 

Our guide Virgilio next to the part of the ruins that he discovered

We said goodbye in San Pedro Sula on Saturday morning but to be honest, it wasn't that big of a deal. It's only two weeks until it'll be Amy (Lynch) and me at the airport!

FIVE. WEEKS. LEFT.

FIVE. WEEKS. LEFT. Excuse me while I subdue the multitude of mixed emotions flying around my head right now... Ok that's better.

Two big updates from the last few weeks or so, starting with Amy celebrating World Health Day. The focus this year was mental health but Amy decided to tackle the much more pressing issue we face here of dental health. Back towards the start of the year Amy emailed out to a number of dental health charities, asking for a donation so that we could buy enough toothbrushes and toothpaste to give one to every pupil in kindergarten and the primary school. Luckily enough Dentaid emailed back and have given us enough to do this for six months, so two lots of toothbrushes. 

Happy days!

To celebrate the day itself we gave each class a lesson explaining, how to brush your teeth properly, what is good and bad for them and how we can look after them better. We also set up and interesting experiment using three eggs and three cups, two of Coca Cola and one of water. You leave the one in water and one of the ones in coke alone but brush the other egg in coke. The shell of an egg is very like the enamel on your teeth making it a great way to demonstrate the damage that sugary drinks can do. 

The plan now is for the kids to keep their toothbrushes in school and use them every day after merienda, their lunchtime. We're aware that this one extra brushing session will not change everything but hopefully we've made more of a change to their attitude towards sugar and their teeth.

Next up was our last visa run to Belize that we just got back from. There was supposed to be 10 of us travelling together but after an incident involving (or rather lacking) a passport and another one where a bus top was missed by five hours, our number dropped to 8. 

We were staying in a beautiful Air B&B house just outside of Spanish Lookout, a Mennonite town 45 minutes away from the more touristy San Ignacio. We spent one day just lounging around the house and ventured into San Ignacio another, coming back with a few spontaneous tattoos (not me this time!). We were also invited to spend one evening with some of the owners of the house at a church youth group which was an interesting experience. 

Murals on the streets of San Ignacio

On leaving Spanish Lookout, the plan was to get down to Livingston in Guatemala in a day but a slow start meant we had to stop halfway, in Hopkins, where we went for our last visa run. We stayed a night there and eventually made it to Livingston. 

Back at the Funky Dodo

Hitchhiking 150km does great things for your hair

We're now back in Candelaria, dealing with our last ever set of exams (one thing I'm not going to miss!) while I count down the agonisingly slow seconds until Saturday morning when twin Amy and my mum arrive! I've decided to focus on that at the minute rather than the fact we've only got FIVE WEEKS LEFT!