Honduras - Day 2

It's been a pretty light day. Woke up twice in the morning, once at 4 AM because I was cold and shut off the AC, again at 6 AM because the sun had risen. I finally woke around 8 AM, showered and proceeded out in search of breakfast.

We attempted to hit varisous restaurants and small shops, but most of them were closed because it was Sunday. We ended up going to the town plaza where there were a bunch of street merchants selling various kinds of food. Most of the food consisted of cheese pancakes, fried tortillas with a bean paste, nachos, or tequitas. I had two pancakes and a bean paste tortilla and a bottle of sprite. The whole thing only cost 1$ USD.

After breakfast, we headed back to the hotel and spent some time doing my devos.

Around 10:30 AM, Orlando came and picked us up for church. It was a short ride through some rock and puddle filled dirt roads. We met a few people there and everyone was very gracias. We set up a screen for us to do our little puppet show and waited for service to begin.

Most of the people at the service were kids. We sang a bunch of kiddie songs and everyone was really in to it. Then it was our turn to perform. We were introduced and went in to our thing. It was interesting because the power went out a little before we were supposed to perform. After the performance, We sang a few more songs and, interesting enough, there was another group ready to perform. And oddly enough, they had puppets too. It was all very fun and great to talk to them in spanish and then suddenly switch over to english. You could see the relief on their faces that they ran in to more people from the states. It must've been really odd for them to see two Chinese people speaking spanish to them.

After service was over, we hung out a bit at the church and then headed over to Orlando's house for lunch. They provided some chinese food that was more of a fusion of chinese and mexican. It was pretty good, different, but good.

After lunch, we had a meeting with Orlando and some of his people to figure out what we would be doing during the week. We talked about the children's ministry that we would be doing at various schools and also the technical work that needed to be done.

The meeting lasted a good few hours as we were trying to get everything squared away. I understood some of it from a high level perspective, but by then, I was already pretty tired from trying to understand a different language. It takes so much mental capacity to parse the language and try and translate it in realtime. In the end, I was encouraged that we had not only a plan A of action, but a plan B as well.

We went back to our hotel and found that the power was still out. Aspirations of going to the internet cafe were pretty much shot because the power had been out for most of the day. We figured a lot of the shop keepers would have closed for the day anyway.

Not too long after we settled in, the power came back on. We did some preliminary work and actually formulated a plan C. Now this is the kind of thing that I'm up for. Multiple plans in case different things fail.

Before dinner, we managed to find a small place with internt that was still open. A lot of the shops had closed for the day due to the power outage. The connection was really slow and I found it difficult to visit sites that I was so used to.

Apparently, there's something in the header information that tells the servers that we're from central america. I tried using the Java applet of AIM, but couldn't find the link because it was in spanish. I did manage to send out a few emails and blog a bit.

There are actually a good number of internet cafes in the area, so finding connectivity shouldn't be that difficult.

For dinner, we went to this chicken place. The menu was really simple. 1/4 chickens, hot dogs, and burgers. Nice. The chicken was fried and it was actually pretty decint. Not only was it flavorful, but the white meat was fairly moist too.

One of the things that I've noticed is that everything is really sweet. They had some ketchup and it was exceptionally sweet. Even the soda is at least a teaspoon sweeter than normal soda.

The people here are also very keen on either slaw, as in cole, or pickled onions. It might be because of the poor or lack of refrigeration or that the slaw/pickling process "preserves" the veggies longer. The various pickled vegetables are pretty good, but the slaw is so so.

After dinner, we went back to the hotel and debriefed a bit. It was great hearing what everyone had learned/experienced throughout the day. Even though we pretty much were in the same place, doing pretty much the same thing, there was a vast difference in what everyone experienced. The things that everyone was concerned about or were praising God for were just so varied.

Then we spent some time going over the music that we would be singing with the kids. By the end of our session, Linshuang had become fairly proficient at the music while I was still tripping over my own tongue trying to piece the words together.

These next two weeks are going to be long. A lot of work during the day and a lot of work at night. Hopefully we'll all have the energy to get things done and to rely on God for all of it.

This is the second night in a row that I'll fall asleep to the pitter patter of rain against the metal ceiling. It's actually quite soothing over the loud blaring fan of the AC. Let's see if the rain will keep up in the next few days.