Miqueas 6.8

Miqueas 6.8 is a childrens home located in the department of Yoro in Honduras, and this will be my home and volunteer work for the next three months. And after 4 days, I couldn't be more settled and happy. I am no longer teaching, I am to put it simply, playing with children. But there's a difference, a majority of these children have grown up in enviroments where they have  been seriously negelcted, with many of their parents having drug and alcohol addictions or even just through simple, but devastaing, poverty. And so, 'playing' with these children is actually a way of teaching them basic and more complex social skills that they have not been able to learn in the enviroment  that they grew up in.

The home opened up about 3 years ago and now has 38 children from 1 to 14 years old. Miqueas has stopped taking in children now and the plan is to have these children grow up as part of this BIG family until they are ready to leave and start their own lives after finishing school. The children of school age go to a mixture of private spanish schools and Bilingual schools and the toddlers stay at home with local nannies and volunteers. There is a variety of activities that go on here, and me and Mali's job is to organise and keep the kids occupied while developing their learning.

A normal day here for me would be to get up around 8 and work with two of the older children with special needs for about two and a half hours, we play a variety of memory games, coordination games and drawing. Then it's time for the little toddlers, I help Mali, who has been working with them all morning, until it's time for  the 'pequenos' lunch. We eat lunch with them and then head to the house for a siesta, and to do any planning for the next day. Around 2 I head to the toddlers, they've just woken up from their nap and are ready to play, I spend about an hour and half playing, singing and just having fun with them. After that I go and work with a 2 year old boy called Pedro,who is blind and still learning to walk. I spend a bit of time, doing some physio exercises with him, leg exercises and giving him support as he walks around. We also work together with developing his touch senses by making a book filled with different materials and also tubs filled with rice, pasta and dried foods. It's good fun and very interesting to see his reactions, sometimes he doesn't like to touch at all and others he can't stop touching the object.

It's completely different work here than at New Sunrise. I am no longer a teacher and while I enjoyed my time teaching (well most of it!) I am happy to have a change and this work is so rewarding and just good fun! There are so many little characters here and to work with them and help them learn, not just academicly, but in everyday life is awesome.

So we had a lovely surprise when we were taken to our new accomodation, we  live in a volunteer house with Meldoy and Jacob and any other volunteers that decide to come and help out here. When we walked in we couldn't help but notice the washing machine, cautiously asking Melody if that was a washing machine, she said, yes of course, and you guys can use it! We couldn't beleive it. A washing machine!? Walking into the kitchen we saw an oven, a toaster, a coffee machine. What more delights could this house offer? We foudn out later. Wifi AND an occasionally warm shower! So after living for 9 months in a house with a two hob electric stove, a freezing cold shower and hand washing our clothes, we were amazed and seriously excited. A washing machine, an oven, a toaster, a coffee machine, wifi AND a warm shower. This place is like heaven!! Even though we live in a very small, dirt road aldea, just 20 minutes down the road we have a shopping mall, with a proper supermarket that sells cheese and bacon and jam and everything, and a cinema! A cinema, like a proper cinema that plays english movies. So me and Mali treated ourselves and went to see Iron Man 3. Which, by the way, is a brilliant film. I recommend that you go see it.

There are two other long term, american, volunteers working here. They are both around 26 years old, and enjoy asking me and Mali the randomest questions about where we come from. They find that me being Scottish a good talking point and like to ask if about our 'interesting' culture and about the sterotypes. One even said to me, that if I hadn't said that I was Scottish he would never have thought it cause I wasn't ginger and pale. I considered telling him that a large majority of the Scottish population ran around in kilts drinking whisky and chasing haggis on a regular basis, but I figured that he wouldn't know what haggis was.. I then explained accents, Highland games, bagpipes, haggis, black pudding and ceilidhs. Which was a MAMMOTH effort on my part. But I made it, and there is now one more American in this world who has a wealth of knowledge  about Scottish traditions. And also what not to say to Scottish people..

Here is the link to the Miqueas website so you can have a look at their programme and also some photos!
http://www.miqueas68.org/

BIG changes.

Packing up a house that you've lived in for 9 months into one rucksack is a serious challenge. You gather so many things, that are not even that important, but you feel the need to keep them. And SHOES. I don't even want to count how may pairs of shoes I've accumulated over the past 9 months. And I swear that my clothes in the wardrobe have doubled in quantity since moving here. It's like magic or something. Good job I'm starting a week before I leave, this process could take a long time!

I suppose I should mention why I'm packing up the house 3 months before I fly home, I'm not that organised! It's because, this Saturday, me and my Project Partner, Mali, are moving away from our teaching voluntary work in New Sunrise School, Trinidad to another project, elsewhere in Honduras, where we will be working more in a scoial care aspect of volunteer work. We are going to be working in an orphanage with children who have grown up with drug and alcohol abuse early in their lives and who have lost their parents.With 38 children in the orphanage, a mixture of boys and girls from 1 to 14 year olds. We'll be organising activities for the toddlers of the orphanage in the morning and then tutoring and helping with the homework of the older children in the evenings. 

I guess you're wondering why this move is happening, and happening so suddenly. During the past few weeks there have been some issues with the school that we've been working in. Issues that I will not go into, but after discussion with Project Trust it was decided that we would be moved to another Project for the duration of our stay in Honduras. 

And so a new chapter of my story in Honduras will be starting very soon! 

Our last weekend in Trinidad, wasn't really spent in Trinidad. Unfortunately we had to go to do a visa run to Guatemala, which involves getting many buses, crossing the boarder, staying the night and then hoping that they'll stamp your passport for another month or three months if you're lucky..

So we made a nice little trip to Guatemala for the ngiht and sucessfully got our passprots stamped for another three months!

The next day we decided to go to, what we think is, the best comedor in Honduras. It serves grilled chicken, beef, pork all served with avocado, refried beans, cheese, rice, pickeled onion and tortillas, grilled fresh fish with tajadas and beans, or Seafood soup with rice. All this for only $5 or £3. And the food, wow, it's delicious. After you've filled yourself to bursting, you can then walk down to the river for a relaxing swim or less relaxing, but definitely more exciting cliff jumping into the river. And that's exactly what we did, chilling by the river, jumping swimming and having a good laugh! It was a lovely last weekend in Trinidad and to top it off, parcels from home arrived. 

I got two parcels from my lovely Granos and one from my parents. They were filled with easter treats, somewhat squashed and melted, but a few hours in the fridge sorted all that out and the were just as good. An array of eggs were sent, Cadbury caramel, mini eggs, cream eggs, choclately eggs, and galaxy eggs. And cute little bunny rabbits. Me and Mali were in HEAVEN. Along with the choclately treats Granos also sent DARJEELING TEA and MINI CHEDDARS. The darjeeling was the first cupof tea I've had in the 9 months I've been here, and I seriosly appreciated that first cup of tea, so much that I had serveral more throughout the course of the day! And the mini cheddars, a stroke of genius from dear Granos, a blast from the past and one of my favourite snacks to have. I'm savouring every packet of them! I also got an array of Scottish memoribilia, a keyring, a tartan ribbon (which is now tying up my hair), a Proud to be Scottish sticker and a few other things. To top off my Scottish weekend, I watched Brave. And I loved it. to anyone who is Scottish and lives abroad I would highly recommend watching it. It reminded me so much of home, but never made me cry, it had laughs around every corner and the Scottish accents we're terrible. Mostly beacuse the people in it are actually Scottish! Shock horror. I would actually recommend anyone who like a good cartoon movie to watch it. Although I did have to translate some parts of it for my English friend.

So ends my time in Trinidad, with darjeeling tea, mini cheddars and a scottish movie. 

I've really enjoyed livng in this little town, and the experience in the school has taught me a lot and has been unforgettable, but now it's time to start a new experience and a new chapter in my time in Honduras. With just over three months left there will be plenty of stories to tell and experiences to be had. And I look forward to sharing them with y'all. 

A week in Paradise..

I have just returned from, what I can only describe as, one of the best weeks of my life. It was the Easter holidays and everyone was looking forward to a little time to relax and chill out. Mali was heading off to Cancun with some friends for 'Spring Break' and I was off to Utila, an Island on the Caribbean coast of Honduras to complete my dive course.

After a very early start, hot buses and screaming children I eventually arrived in paradise. Getting to the dive shop was like coming home again. Ecomarine Dive shop is like one big family, the instructors, Tara and Daddy-o (the owners) and their kids, and the guests. As I started off my week with a nice swim and a BBQ. I could tell I was in for a great week.

My course was starting on the Monday so the next day I headed out on the dive boat with the divers and did some snorkeling around the North side of the island. It was so good to get back into the crystal clear water and swim, watching all the sea life and from then on I was even more psyched to get into the water as a scuba diver! After the two dives we head to the Cays, a beautiful group of small islands with white sand beaches and good food. After stopping for food, a swim, some rest for seasick members of the group and of course some more time to chill. We made our back to the dive shop for some more chilling and music.

The next day I was up early and ready to do my Confined water part of the dive course. As I had done all my theory back in December I had time to relax and admire the beauty of the place before we did our equipment setup and got into the water. For those who are not familiar with scuba diving I'll give you a quick run down of the equipment. The most basic are your fins, mask and snorkel, after that you have your weight belt and weights, (the amount of weights you have completely depends on you and how heavy you are and sometimes it can take a while for you to get them sorted so you're comfortable in the water) after this you have you're BCD with which you control your buoyancy under and on the surface of the water, your BCD has your air tank attached to it and attached to your tank is your regulator, which has your regulator, your alternate regulator, a low pressure inflator hose which attaches to your BCD to inflate it, and your gauge consul, to check your air pressure. Once you have all this set up, you check it all works, going through all the parts, checking the regulators, air flow, pressure and smell, BCD inflation/deflation and the you gear up. Get into the water and do your buddy checks. Now you're ready to dive. 

At first you start in water that you can stand up in and see how you are breathing underwater, your instructor watches you, making sure you don't hold your breath. The most important rule of scuba diving is not to hold your breath. After that you go through a few exercises, taking out your regulator and finding it again, clearing your mask of water, using your buddy's alternate air source, removing your goggles and swimming without them, putting them back on again, and various buoyancy exercises. Once you've done all this you're ready to head out into the Open Water. This was the bit I was most excited about. 

And it was awesome. First dive you go down to 12m, and just swim around, slowly and just admiring the beauty of being in this underwater environment. After the next dive you go through all your skills you practised in confined water but this time much deeper. My buoyancy finally felt right and i was able to swim and move in the ways I wanted to. It was so much better than I had expected. 

With the course you get two fun dives and we went out the next day to two great dive sites, Black Hill and Airport Caves. First stop was Black Hill, a massive underwater hill covered in coral and all sorts of sea life. We swam round it, there was a pretty strong current  and the visibility wasn't perfect but that didn't take away from the fact I was 18m under the ocean swimming with the fishes. The next dive was even better. Airport caves is some of the instructors favourite dive site, It has some impressive caves and a wall along the reef that you can follow, the visibility was amazing, and we saw an eagle ray, giant lobsters, a family of squid, a MASSIVE moray eel and a porcupine fish. This was what I came to see. It was at this moment I truly fell in love with diving. So much so I'm going back to do my advanced course in June. And who knows in the future I might become a full time Dive Instructor in the Caribbean. 

We had some pretty good times outside of the diving. One beautiful day we got the boat Captain to take us out to the Cays for some swimming, snorkeling and a bit of party. That day turned out to be one of the best days of the trip. It's such a beautiful place and I can easily see how people go there for a few weeks and are still there 6 months later, or even living there indefinitely. 

I also got to swim with dolphins. None of that paying a silly amount of money to hug a dolphin held in a captivity in a swimming pool. But actually swimming with a wild, free pod of dolphins. And that was fantastic. They're much bigger than you imagine, and so graceful. Their clicks and sounds fill your ears under the water and you  struggle to keep up with them. If they wanted to they would just disappear into the depths but they stay and play with you. They're curious and gentle. And wow. It was incredible. 

Utila take 2 was a week I'll never forget. I fell in love with the island, with it's beauty, atmosphere and the people. It's a place I will most certainly be returning to in the near future and possibly many more times throughout my life. 

Water Cay

Map of Utila and the Dive sites.

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