Brotherly love

So last week literally flew by and now I have less than a week to go and I cant believe it! Life has been really fun the last few weeks and I now also feel like my brothers are my brothers; its taken a while to get to this stage of acceptance or closeness but now we are always laughing and joking, its great. Even when I always get introduced to people and sometimes they seem to get left out! Ooops! They find it hilarious though so its ok.

The rhinitis is back again unfortunately, so I havn`t been feeling my best recently. Although having said that I cant complain because one of the other volunteers has Dengue Fever. They were telling me that to have Dengue once is horrific, but to have it a second time is often fatal. (Its only her first time though so dont worry!) I never realised there were so many perks to living in England until this year!

I`ve now finished working in my project, and I had a really good time there. I wasn`t as emotional to leave it though as the blind school because I hadnt been there that long and because its harder to connect with the children that cant talk. But it was still an awesome experience and i`m glad I was there. One of the teachers there made me two pairs of earrings as a thankyou present, thats alot more than anyone else has done in any of my projects so I was really touched. Saying my goodbyes when everyone was eating though was really not a smart idea....I left smothered in chicken grease!

I have now more than just started saying the goodbyes. Friends and family have been gradually leaving to go the various other places where they are going to spend Christmas so I dont know whether thats easier or harder than saying goodbye to everyone in one go. I had to say goodbye to Oscar who went back to El Salvador, to my good friend Sandra who went to Guatemala, to Chi who has gone to Siguatapeque (and who I will miss the most after Carlota) and now Jade because tomorrow she leaves for England, and although we are going to meet up again I know it wont quite be the same. Sad times.

My last weekend in Honduras has now gone but I had such a good time and now have so many great memories and photos to take back with me. 5 days feels both like a long time and nothing at the same time. However its going to go by so fast because there is so much I have to do, here is the plan for the final five days;

* Going to Andres` (private) university

* Going to the public university where Patricia works

* Going to buy the rest of my presents and souvenirs

* Going to visit the lady taylor as she has been making a jacket for me that Carlota wants me to have to remember her when its cold in England

* Having my final evaluation session with ICYE (2 hours instead of a 3 day camp, how they can get away with that i`m not sure!)

* Sorting out all that needs doing before I leave like closing my bank account and packing obviously

and will probably end the week with a trip to the salon so that I am beautified for the journey home.

Perfect :-)

Elections in Honduras (and horse picture)

So first of December. Big day meaning only 20 days left to go before I arrive back in England! A day I would normally be celebrating by eating an undersized chocolate but they dont have that custom over here. No this year is different. This year I celebrated in style by falling spectactularly down the stairs! And so I didnt go to work today, its not really painful but mainly because in my project I have to lift and carry children around and that would definately not help the healing process. So I`m just going to rest till tomorrow. I am still feeling Christmassy though because yesterday we went to the mall and they were playing xmas music, so I decided to buy a CD of christmas music in Spanish. Alot of the songs are the same just in Spanish but there are some cool different ones. I already sing them in my head.

You probably want to know about the elections then? Well despite them finding a few bombs in the weeks leading up to the elections, but please dont worry im safe, the day of the elections passed by really peacefully. So many people went to vote that didnt last time apparently. It took Andres 45 minutes when we went with him, and not because he was indecisive! I went along just to see what the fuss was about, but apprently I shouldn`t really have been there because when a photographer tried to take a photo of me Carlota freaked out `Nooooo its prohibited for her!`. haha, she is like my body guard. I fell asleep before they`d finished counting the votes that night but I found out the next day that Pepe Lobo of the National Party won with over half the votes. I think everyone is fairly happy with that. Although I think some countries are saying that its wasnt a fair vote or something. Wow I really cant express myself properly in English anymore! The really interesting thing about the voting though which I think is a major difference to the UK is that everyone talks about who they are voting for and ask others that question and then they will tell people who to vote for. It would be rude to tell someone who to vote for back home right? Its like `thankyou but I have a right to my own opinion im not going to do what you tell me!` Plus everyone knows who supports which party, its like `oh well shes going to vote for Pepe because shes a nationalist`. Things are just a bit more private in England aren`t they or am I wrong?

In my project they`ve now stopped going to the horse therapy thing for the year but thankfully I took some photos before I left. Above you can see me with one of the kids. He would always say `brooooooooooom moto moto` which means motorbike, and we`re like `moto no, cab-a-llo` which means horse. He doesn`t seem to get it though. :-P