Honduras Part III

Here is the last part of my study abroad trip to Honduras. If you missed the first couple parts they are here: Part I and Part II

Day Nine: Friday, March 21st

This was my favorite day of the whole trip. We woke up at 7 am and got ready for the health volunteers to come visit our site. These people volunteer in their small communities to help people  stay healthy. Even if it was the smallest thing of providing a vehicle for a person to get to a clinic check-up. We sat around in a half circle and our professor, Karen, who is also a midwife, taught the volunteers what to do if a woman was in labor and they had to transport her to the hospital. However, hospitals can be 3 hours or longer away, so we had to teach the volunteers what to do if they baby came before they made it to the hospital. We taught them positions to give birth, how to massage the uterus after the baby is born to avoid the mother from bleeding out, and how to do rescue breaths on a baby in case of an emergency. One of the volunteers shared how to had to  do rescue breaths on a baby and she ended up saving the babies life. I was the dummy for the class. We stuck a backpack under my belly to make it look like I was pregnant. 

Next the 5 students from honduras did a play that they made up on blood pressure. Us 5 students from the US came up with a play but ours was really bad compared to theirs. It's a good thing we did not have to do it. Instead the 5 of us got up and reviewed the highlights of the play and how to lower your blood pressure. Not only were we teaching the volunteers, but they would then go out and teach their community. It was a really cool experience doing this part because it was like we gathered everything we learned from the whole trip and got to teach it to someone else. 

Then we separated into groups of one student and two volunteers. I taught two volunteers the steps of taking someones blood pressure. It was one of those things that you do every day but you didn't realize it could be so complicated until you try to teach it to someone else. One woman that I was with said that her community had the blood pressure supplies but no one knew how to use it. She was excited that she could now be the person to take everyones blood pressure. Overall working with these volunteers made me feel like we were leaving a mark on the communities around us and our presence in Honduras was going to be forever useful. 

Over lunch we talked with the volunteers and heard about their experiences in the communities. They told us how people would come to them with any health concerns no matter how small, such as needing a some wound care or just needing Tylenol. Many people in the communities do not have access to this kind of materials so they go to the volunteers. One volunteer said that she was considered a Midwife and had delivered over 40 babies at homes in the past 13 years. 

Next we took another ride in the trucks to a school near by that one of our translators, Becca, teaches english at twice a week for 5th and 6th graders. It was nice to get away from health care and teach the kids our language. We started with a game of Cat and Mouse which is similar to tag to break the ice. Then we split up into two groups to do some english teaching. Our group learned the alphabet and animals. It was cute when they tried to say "butterfly" or "turtle" because they totally butchered it. 

After that, some teens were suppose to come but only 8 of the 30 showed up. Apparently the teacher said they were scared of us. I don't know what that really meant but he said that he saw them come and then leave. So we talked a little with the 8 that showed up about "Autoestema" or self esteem. We made it into an acronym to see what words the teens could come up with. After that we did the human knot which did not work out the best because there was so many of us. Next they sang a song in spanish that was also a tongue twister so I was completely lost but it was fun watching everyone else try to do it with out messing up. If someone did mess up then they had to do something embarrassing in front of everyone. The video on the left shows a little bit of the song and the video on the right is Michael doing something embarrassing when he messed up.

That night we played the game skip-bo which I ended up winning (because I am awesome). Then I decided to make a phone call to Jason. In the middle of our conversation the power went out so it cut off the call and I was not able to call him back. A couple of us went out and laid in the front of the building in the pitch black looking up at the stars. They were really bright with all the street and building lights off and not to mention we were in the country. It took a couple hours for the power to get back on. But once it did we watch the movie Mean Girls since the whole week we kept quoting "She doesn't even go here".  And that wrapped up the night!

Day Ten: Saturday, March 22nd

This day we were talking about all week. It was the day of rest. Well at least rest from health care and teachings. We woke up at 445 am to do a hike up the mountain side. It was still dark out and all the roosters were crowing left and right.  Now, when ever I hear a rooster, I immediately think back to that day, because the crowing was so profound. I didn't think the hike would be that bad for me since I walked a lot at work (Averaging 8 miles a shift), but the incline is what killed me. It was 20 to 40 degree incline the whole way. We made it to the top at 7am. We just missed the sun coming over the mountains but we still got to watch it while we were hiking up the mountain and it was gorgeous. 

Taking a break

The sun coming over the mountain

You would think walking down would not be as bad as walking up. But with the steep incline and the fact that we were walking on a rocky road made it difficult. Every 5 seconds someone would slip because the rocks would start rolling down the hill and our shoes couldn't grasp onto anything. It took us longer to go down then climb up because we had to take baby steps in order to not fall. But it was late enough in the day we could take out my stereo and listen to music the whole way down. 

Once we got back we all passed out through out the house. Gabby, Tiff, and I passed out on the porch floor with the sun beating down on us. We lounged around all day and just hung out and talked about life. After lunch we headed off to the river at 1:30. We hopped in the trucks and started driving. Once we got to the river, the trucks drove through the river to get to the other side. Welcome to El Salvador. Our teachers did not like the fact that we crossed over the boarder with out our passports so we were going to cross back over the boarder by using a bridge. Only one or two people could go at a time because it was so narrow and unsteady. While we were waiting to cross our teachers changed their minds about letting us cross because it was too wobbling. Buzz Kill. But we understood so we walked through the river. Later on, however, we saw a motorcycle drive across it. 

We walked along the edge of the river until we found a deep calm area of the river to hang out. There was a drunk guy hanging out around that side. The whole trip we were warned about these drunk guys that drink too much and can be dangerous. Of course when we started swimming the drunk guy wanted to swim with us. Edward and Alex, our two translators would talk to him every once in a while and acted as a wall between us and the guy. We thought that he would try to swim by the girls but for some reason he really like Micheal and would follow him where ever he went. 

We were all excited to get back to our place to take a shower to get all the river water and sweat from the hike off of us. To our luck, there was no running water. I started to not feel good by the end of the day. I wasn't eating very much the whole trip and it started catching up to me. So I laid in the hammock to soak up the last minutes of the beautiful spot. 

Later on we saw our first giant bug. With Becca's luck it was crawling up her back. And of course, just like any sane person would do, we all ran away from Becca while she was trying to get the bug off of her. The bug was easily 3 inches in diameter. 

At dinner time the Cook surprised us with a cake for us to celebrate our last night with them. Even though the water was out we had to shower somehow. There was back up water at the bottom of some steps so we filled up buckets and walked up and down the steps to get the water to the showers. We used buckets to dump over us that night in order to wash up. For the rest of the night we just played a bunch of games and watched the movie Escape. 

Day Eleven: Sunday, March 23rd

We woke up at 7 am to pack up, have our last breakfast, and set off for our long journey home. The van that we drove us had 007 on for us to watch. It was in spanish but there was enough action for us to understand what was going on. After driving 3 hours to La Esperanza we stopped at a gift shop where there was a bunch of souvenirs that had "Honduras" on it. Then we killed some time while the bus driver was doing some errands in a local park.

Once the driver came back we headed to Siguatepeque where we spent the first night also. We arrived around 3pm and we finally got to stuff our faces with an amazing buffet. The building had WiFi so we could finally check our phones, text, and surf the web again (1st world problems). I face timed my sister, Alecia, since I couldn't call her Friday because the power went out. She wanted me to call every other day to make sure I was still alive. Hopefully she wasn't too concerned when I didn't call her for 4 days... Then after lunch we went up to our room and took a WARM shower (1st world problems again).  At 530 we got together as a large group to go over the trip as far as our favorite parts, what you learned most, and where the trip could have improved. Then we went back to stuff our faces for dinner. None of us were really hungry but at the end of the day we were still American. 

That night we were SUPPOSE to stay in our rooms and just wind down for the night. We invited all of the Honduran students in our room to play some games. We played sheraids and other games that involved coordination. And if you messed up you had to do something embarrassing. It may have gotten pretty personal with the embarrassing stuff... Poor Michael. We did not have a translator with us but thank God for Google.

The 10 Students Hanging out in our hotel room

Day Twelve: Monday, March 24th

We woke up and had another buffet in the morning then packed up and headed off to the airport. Once we got there, we gave a bunch of hugs and said goodbye to the Honduras students. I remember walking into the airport and looking back at all of them standing there watching us walk until we couldn't see each other anymore. It's a weird feeling how we became so close with them, but will probably never see them again. 

We got on the plane and landed in Atlanta. Welcome back to the USA, now wait in this long line to verify you are welcomed. They asked you a million questions about our trip which I thought was just small talk but they actually needed to know everything I did to make sure you weren't bringing  anything back with you.  After waiting an hour in that line, we had to wait in another line to go through security. We were all starving but time was running tight for our lay over, we were not sure if we were going to be able to eat. Luckily there was a McDonalds right in front of our gate. Everyone was talking about how gross they felt from eating the greasy food. I was thinking about how good it felt. Does that make me a bad nurse? 

Next stop Minnesota. We landed around 11pm and said our goodbyes. Jason picked me up and I realized that talking about everything wasn't nearly as cool as experiencing it. The first thing I did when I got home was take a nice warm shower.