A House is Almost Built

We just finished our project with Habitat for Humanity. We didn´t get to finish the house, but we did make a big dent and were definately a huge help to the construction team. It was hard manual labor, but I´m so glad I did it.

OK. I have to vent for a moment. One thing that drives me CRAZY is the staring and the talking about me in Spanish as if I don´t know they are talking about me. It happens ALL THE TIME!!! For those of us in the group that don´t speak Spanish, it is driving us NUTS not knowing what they´re saying about us. It´s so obvious they are talking about us because when we look at them, they are staring at us and quickly look away as if they weren´t. It´s starting to get on my nerves. But... what do you do? Do I really want to know what they are saying? Probably not. But I swear if I am ever in the situation where I´m the native with foreigners about, I will not talk about them. It´s flat out rude!

Yesterday we went to this extremely poverty stricken neighborhood. It was heart wrenching. Our driver has his hand in all these local humanitarian efforts. One of them is this partnership with a friend of his from the States who send him $500 a month. He takes this money to buy food to feed the kids of this neighborhood every day. It´s this long dirt road of 1 room shacks made out of scraps of wood. Most of the shacks are maybe 5 feet by 5 feet. Some might be a little bigger, but not by much. The Peace Corp volunteer in the area said that it´s hard because they try to help these families escape the poverty, but a lot of them just end up taking what is given them (clothes, land, homes) and selling them for money and remaining in the same conditions the volunteers were trying to get them out of. It´s what is familiar. It´s sad.

Today while we were working it started to pour down rain. But what was a little rain when we were already drenched with sweat. But I have to point out that the 7 women in our group were out in the rain shoveling dirt and gravel and moving it in the wheelbarrel while our token male was hiding in the alley way under the awning trying to stay dry. SERIOUSLY!?!? Hats off to all the women (myself included) who weren´t afraid of getting dirty and getting the job done.

I´ll have pictures to post when I get home. But for now I should sign off because the guys in this Internet Cafe are having a field day at our expense. We are off for our last day in Honduras tomorrow - river rafting and swimming under the waterfalls.