Why I love Latin America

Yesterday was a fantastic day. There was a rally in the town center (check out pictures and the article that appeared in the national newspaper La Prensa http://www.laprensa.hn/Pa%C3%ADs/Ediciones/2009/07/04/Noticias/Tela-marcha-y-ora-por-la-paz-y-la-democracia). Several people talked about peace and justice, shouted "VIVA HONDURAS" and they sang the national anthem several times. During this there was a man who was handing out free bags of water. I didn't want one because I already had a bottle of water but when I said no thanks in English he told me "free take, it's free".

Miguel called us a little after the rally and asked us if we could meet him to take some pictures. When we met him a meeting was just ending and they wanted us to take pictures of the group. They were called ORMA and were similar to the PTA in the States. At the end people were milling about and Miguel was explaining that he had just been appointed a new position in this organization a few days ago and then a few minutes ago was told it was because the guy who had the job died and no one told him. As he was telling us the lady in charge was telling everyone to stand up so we could have a moment of silence for the man who passed away. She then asked me to time a minute exactly with my watch. I thought maybe I just had the uncanny ability of never knowing what as going on and usually being unprepared in Latin America but Miguel made me hopeful that I'm not a complete disaster.

Then while we were doing interviews the woman in charge of everything would not stop talking over our interviewees. Another woman wanted to know if Matt and I were siblings or if we were dating and another one told me I had excellent spanish (but I'm pretty sure all I told her was that the tamales she gave us were good).

Another reason I love Honduras when I went to the beach the other day the guards asked us if we were from the US and when we said yes they proceeded to tell us that the US was going to save Honduras. And today these two girls ran after us in the town center and where like hey hey are you tourists? Then they asked us these questions about hotels and what they should include (resturant,view of the beach, offer tours etc) and how much a night should cost. When we asked us what it was for they told they were doing a project for university but one of the girls had already graduated and the other was studying architecture.

This weekend we may try to go the Mayan ruins in the city of Copan but we'll have to see if it's safe enough due to Zelaya maybe trying to come back to Honduras.

Happy 4th of July!!!