Natural Disaster Awareness Training

Dear friends, family, and whoever else is reading this blog,

I'm setting a new record for the speed of my blog posts. Going through all of the effort to actually write a blog post generally dictates that I ought to write it about something, however. Herein lies the problem. I don't have anything specific about which to write, or at least nothing is really ringing a bell.


I think I'll talk about my experiences with how Honduran institutions operate.

The largest source of my interactions with the Honduran government are typically somehow associated with the school, La Escuela San Pedro (St. Peter's School).
We're currently in the process of government-offered (mandated? I'm not sure) natural disaster training.
These meetings are scheduled to start at 8 am and run until 4 pm, and they happen during the school day, so we've obviously gotta cancel school.
A typical day in disaster awareness training:
8: arrival to the school.
~8:40: arrival of the government group
8:50: The European Union and some organization in Norway have kindly offered to sponsor these events. As a result, we'll focus on getting comfortable in our seats while several posters are pasted up on the walls.
9:00: It's time for the icebreakers!
9:20: Okay, let's go ahead and turn on the projector and get down to the real gig. Assuming there's electricity (60-40 shot), we're going to open with the all-important faith-based motivational powerpoint.
9:30: We're splitting up into groups now to discuss the possible natural disasters we might experience while living in Honduras.
9:50: A debate has now been brought to the table: a tsunami is or is not a viable possible natural disaster here in the bay?
10:00: Let's assume that it is. Given that, we've got documentation saying that in the event of a tsunami, we'll have about two hours of warning... or wait, this other thing says 20 minutes. Well I guess that concluded whether or not there's a possibility of tsunamis. Good. Let's move on.
10:15: Great, well, it's been quite a while since we started now, so let's go ahead and have the merienda (snack).
10:45: Okay guys, let's go ahead and make and then give our presentations on the possible disasters available in the area. Group 1, you guys can start. Okay group 2, you guys, although you've got the exact same list, should probably go up and present as well. Let's take a pause to paste those presentations to the wall as well.


I'm really excited about this post, so I'm going to continue it later, but for the time being, you get the gist, and I gotta run.

- Kevin

Hanging with the Teens

As always, it has been an absurd amount of time since my last blog update. I think I've finally come to peace with that. Perhaps keeping a more well-updated blog would be more conducive to donations and providing prospective Finca applicants with a better sense of the experience beforehand, but there's also something to be said for living the experience in the present. I don't often have enough time to make the trek required to get to the internet, and as someone living in rural Honduras, I think that's alright. If I'm really living in solidarity with my Honduran neighbors, the less-fortunate of those neighbors have access to the internet even less often than I do.

About a week ago I realized that three weeks after returning to Honduras from my vacation I had yet to make it to the internet. I also checked a statistic that Google keeps for you on how often I checked my email when I was in the states. I averaged 12 times a day. I don't know about the rest of the world, but I'm very bad about self-moderation and the internet, so I find that living in a place that makes it kind of difficult to use the internet is a very good thing for me. I was thinking recently about the way I spent my free time in the states or in Honduras, and I can't help feeling that the way I spend it down here is closer to how God intended us to live... or at the very least is much healthier for me. Reading, spending time with kids, living the life that's currently around me, and occasionally maybe even having the presence of mind to reflect on my life as I'm living it... those sorts of activities seem to be much more conducive to personal growth than television and the internet. I really do have it good down here.

Anyway, the main reason I sat down at the computer this morning was to give a bit of a spotlight to Fase II (Phase II) of the Finca, so after that long digression I'm actually going to get down to it.

Probably substantially less well-known than the farm itself, Fase II is essentially the point at which our kids, some of whom have spent nearly their entire lives at the Finca, have the opportunity to go to high school in La Ceiba, a much bigger city with better academic resources than Trujillo can offer. They live in La Ceiba in a boys' and a girls' apartment under the supervision of two of our second-year long-term volunteers, Sara and David. It serves as the place in which they transition from Finca kids under constant supervision into a self-sufficient Honduran young adults.

Right now I'm sitting in a Burger King/Church's Chicken in La Ceiba, about thirty feet from the apartments. I just purchased a Biscuit Helado (a Church's Chicken biscuit covered in Strawberry syrup and with two scoops of ice cream on the sides) for 29L (lempira) or approximately $1.45. I borrowed the aforementioned Sara's computer and am taking advantage of the opportunity to pay 29 limps for the use of the free wifi provided by the place for as long as I'd like rather than going somewhere else to pay 28L per hour for internet that doesn't come with a Biscuit Helado. This is absolutely the better deal.

While I'm here at the internet, Arturo and Angel David, the two current inhabitants of the boys' apartment, are off to Pais (the Walmart-owned supermercado), to purchase food for the coming week. Afterwards they're headed to el mercado (the market) to buy cheese and then back to the apartments to make corn tortillas with which we'll be making mexican enchiladas for lunch.

I've been in La Ceiba since yesterday morning, on a trip to:

(1) Finally receive the card that shows that I'm a resident of Honduras (so I don't have to either leave the country every 90 days or apply for 30 day extensions)

(2) Drive back with Erin Lucia (Erin Bradley) to Trujillo (we're not allowed to travel alone and the person with whom she would have otherwise be traveling, Harrison, is staying in La Ceiba for the week to stay in the boys' apartment while David is on vacation in the states)

(3) See off three wonderful summer Finca missionaries, Jamie, Carolyn and Krista, who stopped in for the summer to fill in gaping holes left by long-term missionaries who've vacation in the states. These three awesome members of our community more than filled those roles! If you happen to be reading this and know any of them, please thank them for us!

(4) Hang out with Arturo, Angel David, Marina, Nolvia, and Nelly, the five teenage Finca kids living in La Ceiba.

Speaking of hanging out with Arturo and Angel David, I ought to go. They guessed they'd be done with the tortillas about 12:30 and it's already 12:50 pm. I'd need to head up there so that we can get started on the enchiladas... if not, we may not have enough time to finish both Risk and Settlers of Catan today. I knew we should've started Risk yesterday after Monopoly instead of playing ping pong on the kitchen table!