Día de acción de gracias y más

So things have been extremely busy these past 2 weeks full of papers and presentations. I don't know who invented group essays but it was definitely a horrible idea. Dumb. So i wrote an essay every day of the week starting last monday until today. Thats 7 essays. yikes. On friday I had my final presentation about my ethnographic study - a comparison between the public and private hospitals in Honduras. It went very well and I'm glad to have it off my chest.

A picture of us at the hospital all scrubbed up

On thursday after classes we had a thanksgiving feast! (my 1st thanksgiving that I went to school haha) It was SO great. We took a bus and went to Norma's house, our administrations person. We ate on her balcony and had a blast. Definitely not the same as thanksgiving with family and friends at home, but we tried. On the way I called home and talked to my family as they passed the phone around and I got to talk to everyone. For dinner we had 4 TURKEYS!, a bunch of pasta salad, mediocre stuffing, garlic bread, gravy, potatoes from a box, punch, corn and a few other things. It was really good to have some american food, but it just can't compare to the home cooking...and cause we were missing ingredients.




This is my good friend Ben and I doing some strange dance moves Ben had up his sleeves.

Saturday night we had Kennedy game night at my friend heather's house. Her family taught us some hilarious Honduras games and I taught everyone the post-it note game. It was so funny that my cheeks hurt from laughing at the end of the night. There was one game called "reconoger objetos" where everyone went out of the room, came in one at a time and Heather's dad placed an object in your hands and you, blindfolded, had to tell him what it was... the 4th object was an egg and while we were feeling it he had a crumpled up piece of paper he was pouring water onto. As we handed him the egg he smashed what we thought was an egg on our foreheads but it was really just water and paper. Everyone was like did he really do that!? very funny. We played 3 games similar to that that left you feeling very embarrassed. I guess that's just the Honduran sense of humor.

Papers & Projects

So I'm doing an ethnographic study in Hospimed, a private hospital in Tegicigalpa for class. My final presentation topic is a compare and contrast between public and private hospitals here in Honduras, so Tuesday and Wednesday I visited a public hospital. So our surprise our contact worked in the la sala de maternidad and we watched a woman give birth. It was quite the experience. Definitely something I don't really ever want to see again till my own child, and even then maybe not haha. The main difference here is that there is little to no privacy for the patients. I'm going to save you all of the details though. The following day we went to the room where the newborns were. Much cuter babies the day after haha.

This was an incredibly busy week full of homework, papers, and presentations. On friday I had a group presentation on Latin American literature that lasted an hour and a half. The same day our final paper for the class was due (24 pages) I have never had to write such a ridiculous paper in my entire life. It had an index, glossary, appendices, i mean really stuff that were unnecessary. Definitely my least favorite class. Only like 8 more days of class left! and like 20 more pages to write... and a few tests.
Yesterday to celebrate being done with our presentation, i took a fantastic nap and we went to the movies. We figured there would be a huge line for Harry Potter so we left super early. To our surprise less than half the theater was full the day the movie came out. As for today, I am going to hopefully pound out a paper or 2 before tomorrow so that life is easier next week.

Utila/Jewel Key!

I really have no idea where to begin with describing vacation. This past week has been unbelievable and nothing I can say or write will do it justice. Well, on Friday last week we left Tegus and took an 8 hour bus ride to La Ceiba. It turned out that since the weather was so bad the ferries hadn’t been going out to the islands for a few days now. It poured like crazy, literally a monsoon. We found a hostel for pretty cheap in La Ceiba called “Banana Republic Hostel” The cool thing about hostels is that you see such a variety of people. We met people from Denmark, New Zealand, Australia, US, Israel,etc.
The Israelis were nuts and invited us all to go smoke pot with them but we declined. Basically they got baked like every 2 hours and listened to crazy techno called Dub step all night.
The next day was the first day the ferry went out because apparently the waves were now safe enough to take a boat out to the island. Either that or they were just losing too much money cause the waves were huge. Tickets came with a motion sickness pill and a bag incase you had to throw up. I honestly felt like I was in the move perfect storm and was honestly scared for my life for a little while in the boat. We tipped forward/backward and side to side as the waves washed over the top of the boat for an hour an 15 minutes. The waves were so large that when we went over them you got butterflies in your stomach. Basically a never ending rollercoaster. Some people started puking 10 minutes in. I made it to about 45 before I tossed my cookies. At least 1/3 of the people on our ferry threw up. Pukefest.

Once we reached Utila, we did some shopping for a dive shop. We went to about 7 different ones finding sweet packages until we decided on Captain Morgans. Our package came with the scuba class, 7 nights stay, free snorkel & cayaks, and a free T-shirt. The best part of the deal is that Captain Morgan’s is located on Jewel Key, one of the super tiny islands on the west coast of Honduras. We shared our little island with our other scuba buddies and like 50-100 people that live there. Jewel key and the one next to it are connected by a bridge and walking from the far end of one key across the bridge to the far end of the other key took roughly 4 minutes. Very small. Needless to say we got to know the 2 local restaurants pretty well.
Sunset we got to see every night
The crew & Chacon
Pizza night!

Our dock. we spend all sorts of time just hangin out here.
This was our classroom where we learned all about the physics of scuba.

Just right off our our dock we were able to see all sorts of crazy things like this squid, needlefish, octopus, lobster, etc.

SCUBA

Our Scuba class started the first day we were there. Our Guide’s name was Chacón and he was the coolest. Chacon is from spain and so outside of our class we talked in Spanish. First day we watched a video and started our confined dive practice. Our confined dive consisted of learning how to set up and use the equipment as well as what to do in emergency situations. We learned all about worst case scenarios and how to stay calm to make sure you don’t get messed up.. In one exercise, chacon turned off our tanks underwater so we would know what it feels like to run out of air. It gets super hard to breathe and then the Oxygen cuts off completely. Then you signal to your partner and use their alternate.
Scuba in incredible. There is no way I can describe the feeling of breathing underwater. It’s amazing. What some people don’t know is that in scuba you make yourself neutrally buoyant, meaning you can just float 60 feet down without going up or down. To do this Neutral buoyancy comes from wearing a weight belt and inflating and deflating your vest (BCD). This feeling is kind of like being on the moon, underwater. It is SO COOL!
Utila and the keys are surrounded by coral reef. In only 2 minutes of scuba I saw more species of life that I would in a whole day on land. Coral reefs are the most beautiful things I have ever seen. I felt like I was in finding nemo a little bit. Tons of different colors and more types of fish that I can count. Our very first real dive we saw a 4 foot green moray eel, a giant ermit crab, gerden eels, trumpet fish, and so many more. On our second tank we found an upsidedown jellyfish, squirrelfish, angelfish. More fish I saw this week were parrotfish, lionfish, rockfish (huge, looks like a rock), pufferfish, barracuda, cowfish, tuna, the list goes on… The coral and sea anemonies are amazing too. All sorts of red, orange purple, blue I mean just God’s creation at it’s finest.

Lionfish are super crazy looking with all sorts of fins that stick out and are an invasive species creating huge problems in the carribbean. So, we took spearguns with us on one dive and I shot one!
One day, when we were going out to the north side we saw dolphins swimming near the boat. Our captain stopped the boat, told us all to put our mask/fins on and to go try and swim with the dolphins. It was awesome. I got probly like 5 feet away at one point as the dolphins swam al around us. We could hear the sonar under the water. Super cool.
That same day we saw some huge spotted eagle sting rays and a tuna that was just massive. O and later in the afternoon I went snorkeling and found a school of squid. I decided to scare them and they did in fact shoot out lots of black ink as they shot off.

Our last night on the Key we went on a night dive. Night dives are cool cause all sorts of animals come out at night to eat that aren’t normally out during the day like octopus, squid, lobsters, eels. Each of us had a sweet underwater flashlight, but it was still super dark and kinda creepy. Little fish swam at the light and would try and nibble on my wetsuit. It is real easy to lose each other at night so we had to stay close. We saw pretty big octopus and my favorite were to toadfish. Toadfish are these huge ugly things that kinda have the face of a frog and are very well camouflaged. They make loud croaking noises underwater so you know when you are close. They are super hard to find cause sound travels 4X faster underwater making it super difficult to identify the source of any sound underwater. We saw 2 of them that chacon found, definitely startled me when I realized it wasn’t just a rock.

Now ‘m back to school for an awful 3 weeks full of classes and close to 30 pages of papers to write. I miss waking up and walking out on our dock, sleeping with the sound ocean waves crashing outside our window, and all the tropical fish and coral surrounding our hotel.


Captain Louis. Sometimes he drives with his feet.

Us doing our buddy checks before going under

Just like the movies.



Awesome stingrays we found just gliding around



The lionfish that I killed!!

A great week

Stensrud Victory!
My dad won the State Rep 42A election spot!!! I satyed up clicking refresh on my computer like amillion times waiting to find out. The website said we were up by .35 for like 30 minutes, Then we were down by like .04, then up by .04 I was on the edge of my seat with the jankiest internet ever haha. Scott got a call from my mom (we were talking on facebook) so I called home. I talked to my dad and he said that we won by 70 votes and that there would be an official recount. Then, I woke up and someone told me that we won by 107 votes and that it is official! Definitely a happy day for the Stensrud family. Thanks to everyone for your votes, prayers, and support.

Way to go pops!

Tomorrow is the LAST day before vacations!!!! We are going to Utila, one of the Bay Islands on the northern coast of Honduras. I CAN'T WAIT!! 3 of my buds and I are going to be getting SCUBA certified. Utila is apparently the cheapest place to get certfied in the entire world. Also, we will be visiting the cays on the south side of the island. All the books I read say that the cays are the most amazing islands ever. They say if you close your eyes and picture the most beautiful island, it's water cay. Water cay is uninhabited so you have to bring your own food, tent, whatever but it is the most beautiful place ever apparently.

Our wek is going to be SUPER INTENSE followed by us being super bums on the beach. We can't wait.

Life in the mountains

This past weekend we had a class trip to a rural community in the mountains to see how life functions in the country. We have been focusing on this lately in my poverty and development class. How do you develop a community that lives way high up in the mountains, 85% of children malnourished, all sorts of diseases, closest doctor is 30 minutes by foot, roads are inaccessible, poor education, etc. I mean life is rough for the campesinos. The topic in class this week was NGO’s and how they can be successful or unsuccessful.
On Friday we first visited a farm. The farm is being helped by American engineers to better use their land and resources. With the help of the engineers the people have gained knowledge among pther things of how far apart to plant certain plants optimum growth, what to plant near each other to spur on the development of other plants, etc. Best of all, these farms are completely handled and controlled by the campesinos. They have a lot of pride because everything they have comes from hard work, it was not given to them from the states.

We also visited a mothers group where they make sure pregnancies go well and that kids aren’t malnourished. They have a primitive system of weighing children and keeping records that works well for them. Something that shocked me a little which I haven’t seen since Guatemala was public breastfeeding haha. The very first thing mom’s do when a baby is crying is pull down their shirt and push the baby into the chi-chis. I’m pretty sure what we do with pacifiers they do with actual nipples. Our bus got stuck trying to get up a hill so we had to walk a while in the pitch black to get to where we stayed on Friday night. Pretty intense, the roads here suck haha.
Saturday we had some free time to do a little hiking and see a small waterfall. Honduras is absolutely beautiful and I see all sorts of crazy new plants every day.
















Halloween was pretty fun. I went to a gringo Halloween party during the day where we carved pumpkins and had typical autumn food. It was a lot of fun. In the afternoon I carved a pumpkin with my family on our roof. It was strange cause it is so hot and sunny here. Then, I had a great video chat in Dunkin Donuts with my parents. I came back home, ate some real sketchy soup and my family was like “Donovan, vamos para la casa de Jimi” So at 8:45 we left for my older bro’s house where I taught everyone the post-it note game(they are horrible at it) and ate some more food. It was a little weird for a while when the women were all inside watching a scary movie and my brothers were out taking tequila shots and telling crude jokes. I rode back in the truck bed and got home at midnight and started homework that was due today. Today is a sleepy day.
4 MORE DAYS TILL VACATION AND SCUBA DIVING!!