It never did feel like Christmas, but after all of these emails refering to it, maybe we did have Christmas...hmm. Daniel and Ben, I totally sympathize with you. This Christmas was so out of the ordinary that I didn´t miss home hugely (or I didn´t think I did, until I talked with Mom and Kathleen on the 25th).
I have had a great past ten days with my friend Juliana, who has been visiting from the states (we lived together in MPLS two summers ago). She was traveling central America, and decided to come to Planes to pass Christmas with me. Her spanish is quite good, so we were able to do things that I normally do, but it was so much better acompañada! The first few days I talked until I was hoarse. I had no idea that I had learned so much! But with her here I was able to explain everything that we were doing and everything related to my job (from the local dialect, to integrated farming techniques, to the relationships and characters of my community members). It was amazing to have someone to share my life with, because I can´t tell anyone from my community those things, and other volunteers are having their own crazy personal experience that is hard to relate.
As for highlights...we took a hike to Cienegal (the community in which I am doing the latrine project) and spent a wonderful afternoon with Doña Josefa. She was a little penosa (shy) at first, but then she opened up and started telling us about her experience with the duende (the legendary Central American elf that bewitches young girls), anecdotes with her husband (one day she told him she wouldn´t wash his feet anymore to get rid of the althlete´s foot, and so the next morning when she got up to start the fire, he put his feet where his head should have been in the bed so that she would come back and kiss his feet! And she did, on accident...), and finally, her serious question for us: your country is amazing and everyone in my country wants to go there, so why are you two here? I find that question coming from a Honduran very humbling, because I can´t use the same language that I would with my friends and family in the US (well, see, I was born into wealth without doing anything to deserve it, so I feel compelled to help those who just happened to be born with a lot less). I can´t tell her exactly that because I don´t want to tell her that she is poor (although she would say it) or seem like I have great facility to do whatever I want (although I do: options are our blessing and our curse). Juliana and I did a lot of thinking and talking after that. On our way home, we lost the path as the sun set...I knew that all we needed to do was climb to the top of the mountain and then we would be in the road again, but we had to hack our way through brush that was taller than us up a steep slope. That´s the kind of story that´s fun to tell later, but at the time it was rather scary. I´m going to have màs cuidado with that camino...
On Sunday morning last week, we were doing yoga in the living room when Don Alonso showed up at my window, inviting us to go fish for talapia in his ponds so that we could eat some. So we hiking down to his ponds and watched him fish with just a hook on a string, baited with tortilla. Then Melvin and Nata showed up and invited us to go bajar naranjas with them. So we held their horse and burro while they climbed orange trees and threw them down to each other (you have to catch them or they´ll break). We got home in time for church, after which my friend Maria de la Luz stopped by and cleaned the fish for us (thank goodness). I gave her most of the fish as payment, and she told me about how she wants to go al norte when her baby is 18 months old (she´s 9 months right now). She wants to find a home to work in, so that she and her husband can buy a house (and not rent). But wow...she was saying she could wash the clothes and clean, but she has NO idea about what that entials (a washing maching, and vacuum cleaner, many houses instead of one).
On Christmas Eve (that´s the big day around here), Juliana and I awoke to the sounds of squeeling pigs. Everyone kills their pigs for Christmas tamales. We got dressed up and went over to Oneyda´s to help make tamales. On our way a young man, one of my most persistent admirers, called after us ¨con todo gusto la llevo a mi casa...¨ Oneyda returned from cutting coffee (she was working on Christmas Eve! and she had a bunch of family visiting from out of town) and set us to work cutting up red pepper, potatoes and onions and kneeding dough. Tamales are made from a masa of ground corn and LOTS of african palm oil (white vegetable fat). You spread the masa out on a banana leaf, and then put a little dollop of potatoes, rice, and a chunch of partially cooked pork (usually with a bone inside and skin still attached to one side) on it. You dribble a spoonful of broth on the top and then roll up the banana leaf. You make a whole bunch of these (at least 25) and then put them in a pot with a little water and steam them for at least an hour. They´re pretty heavy. But Juliana and I have already been daydreaming about a party we want to have next christmas when I come home for a visit...we want to make a bunch of tamales (without the palm oil and gross pork) of different sytles (sweet thai, spicy mexican, etc) and LOTs of ingredientes. You all are invited. I´m sure it will be delicious.
Even though we were invited to at least four houses, somehow we got off with only eating one tamale! What luck! Oneyda was really excited to tell everyone that she had the only tamales in town made by gringas. She´ll be talking about that forever! We also learned how to make Torrejas, which are amazingly disgusting fried corn cakes soaked in sweet water. Oneyda was very patient with us, teaching us how to cook and letting us (most women don´t trust other people to prepare their entire christmas dinner). She´s an amazing person.
At around seven thirty, we saw that there were lights in the church so we went over for Christmas service. It was pretty much like normal, except by candlelight. The sermons are done by lay people, and generally just sound like a collection of platitudes: you should be fishes of men...loaves and fishes...invite Mary into your home, that way you will have strength...people are bad and need Jesus. They are so confusing that I generally daydream. On Christmas Eve, though, Fermina, Oneyda´s mother, gave the sermon. She had a confusing speach she made up on the spot (I think that was supposed to be focused on Mary), but halfway through she started talking about what an amazing person I am, about how much she respects me, that I talk with everyone and am always happy. It was a wonderful compliment and also wildly innappropriate. I am glad I am generally used to things like that here, otherwise I would have been very embarrassed.
After church we went back to Danilo and Oneyda´s for a little dance. It was fun (I´m glad I´m used to Honduran men...), but it was broken up around 10.30. I felt like I was in college again. The policeman that broke it up told everyone that someone had died in the next community, using scare tactics to make everyone go home. It was a lie. But I understand more than I did before--Honduran men from the campo drinking guaro is kind of scary. Nothing happened, I have just heard too many stories.
Besides all of that...in the last week I have had two attempts at meetings with my library committee. But we´re having trouble with the committee; only two people consistently arrive. The two people are amazing (Doña Ana and Alonso) and really fun to be around (together they tell jokes and tease and laugh, using vos--the central american familiar verb form--between each other). But the lack of the rest of the committee is frustrating--it´s hard to help people that don´t want to work on something. We´re going to try one more time, on the eleventh of January. Hopefully we can have success.
Now Juliana and I are in Valle de Angeles to spend a few days with the host family there. I am so glad to see them, and they are still as welcoming and amazing as ever. Juliana is leaving on Tuesday to go back to Nicaragua to work on a documentary about organic coffee, and I will be going to Agua Azul (near the Lago Yojoa) to spend the New Year with a bunch of Volunteers. I´m pumped!
I love you all. Thanks for your emails (Daniel especially) and for the packages and letters.
Jennifer
So, I haven´t sent pictures in over a month. The first ones I´m sending are from the day I went to cut coffee (they call it cortar café). It´s rather like picking apples--you tie a bucket around your waist and then just pick the red berries until it´s full. Then you dump them into a bag. The girls I went cutting with are Kelin, Juliana, Julisa and .... I hang out with them sometimes in the afternoon around 5 pm...we sit on this plastic drainage pipe they call los muebles, or the couches, and just hang out and joke for a while. They always ask me, when I see them, if I´m going to come to los muebles this evening. I can´t really deal with the picture of me, but I wanted you to see the process. I´m just picking the red berries. It´s hot and sunny, but the long sleeve shirt is kind of necessary because of the bugs and the close branches.
The last picture is of the tambo, or tumbilla that I´m filling with coffee berries. 
Here´s a picture of me in case you forgot what I look like. And so that you know I don´t always look as bad as I do when I cut coffee. My hair is wet--I just took a shower. 
This picture is of Eulalio, my landlord, making a pila (water cistern) out of bricks and cement. He finished it, and this week when I filled it the water drained out within only a few hours. it is not supposed to do that. I let him know and he´s going to patch up the leak.
This next picture is just greenery, but it´s to give you a taste of what the hike between Planes and Cienegal is like. The village is in the valley between the picture and the next mountain. It´s very wooded, with pine trees. When it is nice out I love the hike. It´s very steep, though, and when Danilo decides he´s late I can´t keep up with the way he runs down the mountains. He´s like a mountain goat!
So, I was pretty nervous about the meeting. I think understandably, because I don´t have that much experience conducting meetings even in English.
They don´t even make their houses of adobe, but just use wood slats. They all have dirt floors. I have gotten used to the way things look, there, but the first visit was tough. So that´s how I spent my Thanksgiving. (give thanks for you water system and your indoor plumbing).
And here we are at the celebration afterwards, eating enormous quantities of food! (unlike Grad parties in the US, people serve your food here. And I was invited to numerous parties, so I had to chose between feeling enormously full or wasting food. I was feeling rather ill from some juice I had been given in Cienegal the previous day, so I was able to turn down food). You can see Alayda standing in the background (she came for the party, and then left again...boo). And her daughter is in the dress nearest to us. 
The last pictures are of my decorated house. In the first one, you can see my hamock, my big work table, and my maps.
Then you have my pictures on the walls (thank you Ben and Kathleen and Jacqueline). I have another wall full of pictures on the other side.
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