Hola!

Don't worry mom and Ashley we have survived the hurricane. All is well, and very wet. This weekend was pretty relaxed just doing homework and getting caught up since our trip was cancelled due to the tropical storm. This is a picture of my room, there is a place to hang up stuff on the side but thats pretty much it. It's pretty sweet and I have an awesome lion blanket! Classes have been going well, lots of spanish readings every night thats for sure. It's definitely a huge change from mainly biology and science based classes. I've started to make some honduran friends from class and eat lunch with them sometimes. It's fun to practice with people my own age. We had chinese food the other day and my mom was very persistent of the fact that we were eating dog and rat. It looked just like the chinese food in the states, and tasted similar so I don't know if I believe her. Last night we went to my mom's co-worker's house for dinner and we ate sandwiches that consisted of bread, cheese, mayo-ish stuff, and cold beans. mmmm mmmm. I'm gunna post soon about all the super strange food I've been eating, like a lot. My spanish is improving but I definitely only understand close to 50% of the things my family says. They speak super fast and have never had a student before. In school, the other hondurans are learning english and understand how hard it is and are very helpful. It's getting better but things are still strange sometimes. My goal for next week is to visit the iguana farm that is like 5miles away. It only costs 10 Limpiras to enter, which is like 50 cents.

All is well, Honduras is fun, God is good.

Tropical Storm Matthew

So this weekend our class was going to Nueva Suyapa to live with families in the rural area to experience poverty on a new level. BUT, it has now been cancelled due to a tropical storm heading our way. I was like "seriously?"

Not to worry though, Tegucigalpa is in the southern central/western part of the country so we wont be experiencing the full effect. Basically there's just going to be a whole lot of super intense rain here. Not sure what my plans are for the weekend anymore. Maybe try and teach my family how to play cards. The only thing my family does for fun is watch endless hours of TV and play videogames. It can be incredibly boring. There is a leak in my ceiling in my room. Wish me luck!

Mi Cumpleaños!

Hola amigos. This week we only had 2 days of class due to Honduras independence day on the 15th. On Wednesday, for independence day, we went to go watch the parades down in the stadium. Apparently they start at like 6 in the morning and go ALL day. Only different schools in Honduras march in the parades. It was very fun to watch and VERY warm outside. The stadium was way packed.

The next day was my birthday! I was woken up at roughly 6a.m. by my host-mom opening up my door wishing me a happy birthday with a huge smile! Around noon my buddy Elvis got us into some sweet country club for the day because his dad is a member. There was a POOL! We swam, played soccer, ate awesome food and relaxed for most of the day.

That night Elvis, Ben and Catherine came over to my house for my birthday dinner. My whole extended family was here and we ate a ton of really really good Honduran food. After Dinner we ate cake and everyone sang happy birthday to me. They sang like 5 different songs and then I blew out the candles. Immediately after blowing out the candles my oldest brother Jimi smashed an egg on my head. It's a tradition in Honduras apparently. That and the birthday boy or girl has to take the first bite of cake before anyone cuts it, and someone pushes their face into the cake. You may be thinking, that's mean. hahaha it was suuuuuper funny and we all laughed and had a great time. Oh, and dad, I brought out the Fish coozies. They were astounded.

Amapala

This past weekend, 9 friends and I went on a trip to Amapala, an island on the southern coast of Honduras. We had a TON of fun and saw some amazing things. It’s not a very touristy place because the beaches are all black sand due to the volcano on the island. I was like SICK black sand! But white sand beaches are definitely way better haha. The island is absolutely beautiful, but it’s beauty has been clouded over due to the outrageous amounts of garbage everywhere. I saw lots of garbage floating in the water and on the beach. It’s different to see garbage on the streets every day, but seeing 2 liters floating in the pacific ocean definitely made me kinda sad. We stayed in a hotel for the weekend with meals included. It was super cheap and had a pool (filled with dead bugs :) but it was a lot of fun.

The first day there we went to La Playa Grande, the larger of the beaches and spent a relaxing afternoon in the ocean, eating fish, and napping in hammocks. It was so great.

My favorite part of the day though was the cave! There was a cave on the north side of the beach that we had to swim to in order to get in. It wasn’t too deep of shore so if you were careful yo could walk holding a camera an a flashlight above your head. The cave was fairly small and FILLED with bats. The whole thing was full of water, so we were up to our chests in water. Super cool.

The second day we climbed the mountain/volcano on the island. We left at 7, before it got too hot, and it took us probably like 3 or 4 hours to climb. The view at the top was amazing! From the top you could see water and islands all around. It was incredible. The trail was way cool too because it was through a super tropical forest with like a million butterflies.

25 and counting...

On the 7th, my parents, Kirk and Wendy Stensrud celebrated their 25th wedding aniversary!! that's pretty cool. Happy Aniversary Mom and Dad!!!

In America today, 45-50% of mairrages end in divorce. In a second marraige 60-67% end in divorce. Thanks for being awesome parents and bringing those statistics down. Keep doin what your doin haha.

This weekend I'm heading with some friends to Amapala, a volcanic island on the southern coast of Honduras. It has black sand beaches and you can see the coasts of El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua all from the beach. I'm pumped!

WWJD

"The biggest scandal of our time is so much poverty amongst so much wealth."

Half of the world currently lives on less than $2 a day, defined as poverty.
1% of the most rich have the same amount of money as 57% of the most poor.
The inequality is astounding and the gap between the rich and poor only continues to grow.

My question is...
What is the Christian response to poverty?

We spend roughly 2 hours talking about this in class the other day. Our assigned reading was from 3 different Christian philosphers and their take on our calling as Christians in response to this. The first author could probably be summed up as, Helping others should not get in the way of delight. Another argued that christians should give up everything they have and give it to the poor emphasizing our responsibility to others.

A passage in acts talks about christian communities that gave up their belongings to give to the poor, but later on we find that some still had houses. It´s pretty safe to say we need to help, but to what extent. Can we justify buying a brand new car when a used car works just fine? can I buy new clothes when so many children have none, if so how expensive? Where do we draw the line? These are the type of questions we tackle every day in class.

Churches in America have been silenced on these issues because whenever they attempt, hundreds upon hundreds of complaints are made I wanna hear a sermon about this that angers a bunch of rich people.

Please comment below, i'd love to hear what you think.

Classes

That's a picture of my family when we went to the zoo---->>

Today is the first day of classes. I just turned in my final essay for our introductory 2 credit class that ended on Friday. Lots of things are changing now. I don't ever have class on fridays which is awesome and I have 18 credits now. I'm taking Latin American Culture, LA literature, Poverty & Development, and Cultural Contact. As of today, I may have added one more called Música Latinoamericana Contempoanea. It will count for my arts core at Calvin so 2 others and myself decided we are going to check it out. It's taught in the local University here and the entire class will be a bunch of Hondurans and 3 gringos. I'm quite afraid to do this actually haha. The course syllabus actually says that we have to do presentations in front of class. The class meets from 7-8pm monday-wednesday. We're going tonight to check it out and see how much we can understand.

What else is new...

OH, yesterday I went to see a fútbol game in the stadium! It was INTENSE. The fans were literally insane. They had awesome cheers and pretty much were screaming the entire game. Once in a while you would see a gap open up in the crowd and then hear a SUPER loud BANG which was a firework and then everyone would rush back into the gap and jump in the smoke. When a goal was scored everyone rushed to the bottom off the stadium and then back up to the top. After the game, fans for Montagua and Fans for Olympia always fight (Hundreds of people). The sections for the diehard fans aren't allowed to leave until like 30 minutes after the game so that normal people can get to safety. Some people just come to the games to fight afterwards. Tons and tons of police surround the stadium to prevent people from getting hurt, but it can be pretty bad afterwards. My host-brother says he's never been to the championship games because it's too violent and people always get hurt. I don't know if anyone has seen the movie Green Street Hooligans, but no joke that movie is real life here in Honduras.

Pobreza en Hondruas

• 70% of population lives on less than $2 a day (Poverty)
• 40% lives on less that $1/day (Absolute Poverty)
• Minimum salary - L5,000 ($250) for mom w/4 kids
• 27% illiterate
• 21% enrolled in high school
• GNP of %1,000 (US $28,740)
• 40% of children malnourished
• 35% don't have access to potable water

Cusuna

To start, the teachers strike is over and Tegucigalpa is a much safer place. No te preocupes mom J

I just got back from a 5 day trip to Cusuna, a small little village on the north coast of Honduras without electricity. They are a community from Africa who live a very different life from anything I’ve seen. I feel like I was in Africa the past week because everyone looked African and spoke Garífuna (Spanish too) and it was swelteringly hot.

The Bus ride to Cusuna was mas o menos 13 hours in a yellow school bus across flooded roads and around winding mountains. The girls slept in a house with bunkbeds, misquito nets and a bathroom while the guys slept in a different house on the floor with bug spray haha.

The first day we were there they people performed a presentation for us about their culture, which included awesome tribal dances and singing. It was all in Garífuna so we couldn’t understand anything. During the day I taught a bunch of the Garífunas how to play ultimate and we had a game on the beach. The ocean was crystal clear and full of gogos! (jellyfish) The kids followed us around everywhere and were hanging on us like crazy. We did a lot of swimming and playing fútbol with the Garífunas. During the night we had a bonfire on the beach, watched the stars, and had a big dance party by the fire where 2 guys played drums, the locals sang and everyone did this weird dance where you basically just shake your hips back and forth.

I saw tons of sweet animals like an iguana, tarantula, praying mantis, a million crabs, 2 scorpions, and a HUGE sea turtle; Our neighbors caught it and chopped it up for dinner. It was kind of shocking.

On Sunday we went to a church 30 minutes away by Lancha, which is a big canoe with a motor on the back. We went through a crazy river that apparently is filled with crocodiles at night. The service was pretty nuts. The people got super into the music and were shouting in Garífuna and dancing the whole time. We sang a few songs in English too where I got to play a drum and a turtle shell. It was sweet.

I really enjoyed the trip, especially learning about the people. The community was very content with what they have. No one owns any land, but they share gardens and use the land they live on but it doesn’t belong to them. A lot of trading goes on with food instead of purchasing with money. Although it was cool, I couldn’t live there. The poverty was pretty extreme. I saw a lot of emaciated kids that looked like they hadn’t eaten in a long time. No one owned clothes without holes in them and a lot of young kids only wore underwear. I’ve felt malnourished with the food I’ve been given here but it’s a ton more than anyone who lives here. When I go back to the states I'll definitely have a greater appreciation for everything.

A few more pictures...