Leala in Honduras!

This has been a pretty intense week: a hike up this gigantic trail (for me anyways), various trips to Tegus, language lessons, long training sessions, lots of homework, pulling my hamstring, vaccinations, and the harried process of getting a cell phone. In addition to that, the weather has been gloomy & rainy for the past couple of days. Good news is that I took many pictures this week! Alright, so let me tell you about 2 of the main events of this past week.

On Sunday, a group of us decided to hike up towards the television antennas that were above Santa Lucia. Of course, I did not realize that we were going to hike up 2 or 3 mountains in order to get there. I totally thought it was the little antenna right above the center of town. Anyways, after doing much anaerobic exercise just to get up most of the trail, we ran into this very interesting character along the way. I saw him first talking to the group of us that was ahead of me, and he was so loud. I could hear him saying things in English like, "China, Thailand, blah blah blah!" When I heard that, I just knew I was in for it when I approached with my group.

Being nice, all of us introduced ourselves. He was like, "Oh, Leala! Beautiful name!" God, I wanted to run up the mountain! He was absolutely harmless, but he was obnoxiously loud, and he would speak in Spanglish with most of his English being the names of television and movie stars. More specifically, he would ask me if I knew of "Jet Li, Lucy Lui!" or "Arnold Schwarzenneger, Kevin Sorbo!" Geez, I hadn't heard the name Kevin Sorbo in years! When we tried to ditch him along the way to the top, he said, "I'll go with you!" When we got to the top, he said, and my favorite line so far, "Leala, beautiful name! Beautiful from the bottom of my corazon!" My friend, Jarryd, actually became my novio (boyfriend) for the day after that comment! Don't worry mom & dad, he is a pretend boyfriend! Crazy man, the dude was getting really interested in me just because I was Asian. Later on, he even asked some other members of the group if Jarryd and I were really going out. HAHA! Anyways, he wasn't too completely bad. He actually took some pictures for us! Just check out my pictures. I surreptitiously took a picture or 2 of him!

This past monday, half of the group got sent off to Tegucigalpa in order to visit the market and use/try to understand the transportation system in Honduras. I almost missed my bus from Santa Lucia to Tegus even though I was there on time! What a great introduction to buses! Buses get really crowded in the morning, and adding 15 or so PC trainees into the mix did not help matters. Very interesting though, but the buses in Honduras are (in general) older school buses from the States, so it was like going on a field trip again! In Tegus, taxis are EVERYWHERE! I have to say that my little group did great at getting good deals for the taxis. However, that just might be because the taxi drivers acted like they had never seen an Asian person before and kept staring at me. Actually, they probably hadn't seen an Asian person before.

These two events really made me think about what it would mean for me to be Asian in Honduras. Though I had thought about it before, and my Project managers here have warned me about how I would be perceived as Chinese or Japanese, una "chinita," rather than as an American, una "gringa," it was not until this week that I began to feel the full implications of being Asian here, and not Chinese or Japanese. However, I would have to say that even if the questions get persistent about me being Chinese or not, I would definitely relish telling people who I am. That I am Thai and American, and I would not have it any other way.