Skiing

Lemme just say something about using a language a lot when practice has been intermittent for a while... it feels like skiing. What you know comes back to you, like riding a bike, and the first day feels pretty good but definitely is a good workout. Then the second day, getting back out there on the slopes, you think, "Ooh, I definitely feel the burn from yesterday," so you don't push yourself as hard. Then there's a day or two when you think, "I need a rest day." But then you find a happy medium of enjoying the mountain but not overdoing it for your current skill level, and you realize how much more you could get out of this trip if you could only afford a private lesson... Awesome, because that's where this analogy ends! Language school starts on Monday, and it's a lot more affordable than ski school.

Let's see, where'd I leave you? Friday... we got our first look at the MCC office! We went over some of the CCM Honduras-specific policies and sat down for un cafecito to meet the other team members who work in the office, Rudi (program assistant, second from left) and don Marcos (admin assistant, right).

My brain still calls it fika

My desk

Reviewed how our personal bookkeeping will work, then went out for lunch close by. I had chuleta & remolacha (pork belly & beets). Pretty tasty! More meetings after lunch, including setting up our phones with new SIMs and local numbers, and talking about vacation policy. We went back to Caesar & Lizette's that evening, but this time, for dinner. We had some typical Honduran tostadas with beef, refried beans, lettuce, tomato, guacamole... 😋

Saturday, we had a treasure hunt in SPS to help us get to know the city better. It was SO HOT, but a useful exercise to get a feel for using rapiditos and taxis and to see some of the landmarks. Elieth, nicaragüense and YAMENer from last year who has extended her term with MCC, joined us for the hunt.

Electrolytes

Statue of El Forjador (The Blacksmith) - SPS es la ciudad del trabajador

We ended up at the Saturday Bazaar at the expo center and enjoyed the air conditioning during a late-ish lunch. The afternoon was for napping and cooling down from the day. Over dinner, we finally got to meet the reps, Jenny & Joel, just back from language school!

Sunday we received a warm welcome at the Mennonite Church. In the afternoon we had a pool party with the reps and their kids before heading over to their house for dinner. Keyla and I each made one of our favorite recipes for the team.

Colorado pie and crema espinaca for twelve

Yesterday we started our visits to MCC's partner organizations by visiting a couple sites that are drivable from SPS. Today, we embark on a road trip to visit several more!

In Country!

We made it, safe and sound! Kara and I flew from Philly to Fort Lauderdale and then down to SPS.

Waiting to board the plane in Philly

The first leg was a bit delayed due to wind/rerouting, but we made it up in the air. The second flight was also a bit delayed because of the incoming aircraft, but only by about 20 minutes, so we still landed in Honduras on the 21st! Overall, everything went quite smoothly. Baggage took some finagling on the front end, but the agents were gracious with us and didn't charge us as much as the fee schedule for our overweight bags (Spirit Air's policy is 40lbs, not 50!). When I'd been doing online check-in the night before, I was shocked that the exit rows were still available on both flights. (For no extra charge?! Sign me up!)

Ahh, the lap of luxury

Our layover in FLL was about 3 hours long, so we had some Steak n' Shake for our last American meal. I slept almost the entire flight to SPS, and we landed just before midnight. The line for migration was quite slow, but everything went well. Our bags all made it, and customs was easy -- just turned in the forms, had our bags X-rayed, and went on our way! I'm so grateful for how smoothly the travel day went. The Connecting Peoples Coordinator for MCC here in Honduras, Lars, was there to meet us at the airport and take us to our lodging for the night. We loaded our bags in the team pickup and headed to our Airbnb apartment! By the time I was finally laying down, it was about 2am, but I was so excited to be here that it took me awhile to fall asleep.

View from our balcony

Mountains in the west make me feel at home

In the morning, we got to meet Keyla from Colombia. She'd arrived about 12 hours before we had. We each made ourselves some eggs in our own style as we were ready for a little breakfast protein. Lars stopped by with some baked oatmeal, over which the four of us shared what brings us to Honduras. 

YALTers - fast friends

Keyla, Kara, and I went down to enjoy the pool while Lars went to the MCC office to take care of some paperwork. Around 1, the four of us went out to lunch at a local restaurant and I had a delicious steak -- about half a centimeter thick -- with rice, salad, cooked veggies, and a tasty sauce.

Back at the apartment, we had a little time to look over some of our readings for this month before heading to the home of Lizette and Cesar, the area directors. They welcomed us with watermelon around the dining table before we took to the living room for our first session with Lizette. We shared our "Rios de Vida," which was a very meaningful way to share our stories and get to know one another. We also talked about how to be "wounded healers," the different kinds of trauma, and being aware of and breaking circles of violence. There is much we will continue to delve into on these topics! To finish the session, we made journals to help us remember our roots and values -- and process our growth and the fruits we see this year. The covers are sandpaper -- the journey will not always be easy.

Mine has the yellow square in the middle

We'd been considering cooking dinner in the apartment, but it was already 7 so we decided to head to another local restaurant and get baleadas. I had one with chorizo, refried black beans, and avocado. Yum!

I slept quite well last night.

Almost all of the conversations yesterday were in Spanish. It's the first time I'm able to say I spoke more Spanish than English in a given day! Although I have to think a fair amount before I speak, I'm understanding most things and was fairly happy with how well I was able to communicate, especially as a starting point for the growth I'll go though this year on the language front.

SPS Bound...

On Monday evening, I got to spend time with Emma and Ben! It was wonderful getting to catch up with them and hear some of their stories from their adventures this summer.

As they were asking about my travel plans, I realized I didn't know where I would be sleeping on Wednesday night.

Now that the day is here, Luke 9:58 has been rattling around in my brain all morning: "Jesus replied, 'Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.'"

Now, I'm sure I will have a place to sleep tonight, but it's just an odd feeling not to know what kind of accommodations they will be. I think up til now in my life, I've always had at least an idea of what the plan was for the night. "We'll find a hotel along the highway," or "you kids will lay down on the seats and sleep while Dad drives," or "I may go home, but if I get too tired, I'll just crash here." Anything I can come up with for tonight is only a wild guess. After the MCCers pick us up at the airport, are they taking us to a guest house? The Mennonite Church? Our host families' homes? (I don't have any info about them yet, either.) Are we couch surfing at the Reps' apartment? Will our Spirit Airlines flight be so delayed that we just end up "sleeping" on the plane? We'll see!

So far, the lead-up to my SALT term has been an exercise in moving forward without all the information I'd like to have. For example, a travel question I would have liked to have had the answer to back in early July (and would have, had I been the one booking) was not answered until a couple days ago here at orientation. Of course, MCC has sent service workers to Honduras many times before so everything was in order, but I didn't technically need to know about it until recently. It's good practice, I think, to stop trying to have control over so much, whether it's letting go to let MCC take care of me now or, during my assignment, trusting that God is working with me to accomplish end goals I might not be able to see at the time.

Transom

Our time together yesterday morning started with optical illusions. The best reactions from those gathered were to this classic:

The Young Woman / The Old Woman

Some of us had seen it before, but there were audible gasps from those who hadn't when they saw the old woman for the first time (or vice versa). The staggered nature of the gasps was what made it priceless.

Our devotions focused on Jesus helping people see things differently. Think Emmaus Road, Peter's vision of a sheet with animals, or "You who have not sinned, throw the first stone." The scripture we read was Acts 9:1-5.

To be greener, the houses at the Welcoming Place don't have air conditioning, but they do have three whole-house fans, one in each wing. In the lounge area of the house, there are posted instructions that recommend running all three of them at night while the rooms' windows and transoms are open. I remember thinking a couple days ago, "Well, of course, the transoms are always open. I just have to open the outside windows at night and close them in the morning."

This morning, I was stretching on my foam roller when, with my head upside-down, I noticed the hooked stick hanging by the hinges of the door that could be used to close the transom. I think I actually said "Oh!" aloud. It had taken me five nights in this room to notice something so simple, but that I didn't know was an option since I lack experience with such things.

In our small groups today, we reflected on how we could keep our eyes open to seeing God's presence where we're going, even when it might look different from what we expect. We can ask others—who have experience in a particular context—for their perspectives. But sometimes, we don't even know what questions to ask. In that case, it can help if we force ourselves to look from a different perspective... perhaps by hanging our heads upside-down.

Mad Libs

The [adjective] MCCers were [verb, past tense] by the bales of [plural noun]

young, astonished, comforters
new, entertained, book pages
glazed-over, intrigued, clothing
and many more!
Play with your family and friends; whatever sentence you create will likely be truthful!

Where can you see weaving looms next to an indoor baler? I'll give you a hint: it has a cannery parked in the back lot.

It's the MRC, or Material Resources Center, for MCC in Ephrata. Truly a fascinating place! After dinner this evening, the IVEPers/SALTers coming from/going to Africa and LACA boarded a Hinkletown Mennonite School bus and took a field trip (cue the music). Check out some of the sights:

We had several options for working in the warehouse. We could stack cans of meat and seal them in boxes, wrap comforter bales, slice the spines off old books so the paper and cardboard could be recycled, or put together/QC school kits. I chose to sort books and pile them nicely for the person operating the slicer.

After volunteering for about 30 or 45 minutes, we got a light snack in the kitchen area. Frederick, from Zimbabwe, and I struck up a conversation, and we soon discovered we have in common our experience in web design and interest in coding. On the bus back to Akron, we talked about his idea for a platform that would make it easier for SALT, IVEP, and YAMEN participants to share their experiences with one another. Back at the Welcoming Place, I showed him some of my code projects and we explored online programming class options that he may look into while he serves in his IT assignment here in PA this year.

Camel Souls

Our orientation schedule was packed full today, including sessions on managing expectations/goal setting, a deep-dive into MCC's vision and mission, an investigation of peace theology, a crash course in MCC history, and a gamified look at culture-hopping. This last one included looking at proverbs from around the world and trying to suss out their meaning. My small group was intrigued by, "A good guitarist will play on one string," which is a South American proverb. We thought it meant that a competent person can still be successful even with few resources, but then we got caught up on the use of the word "will." It may have been a mistranslation, or it could mean that a person should conserve their resources and not use everything available if the same goal can be accomplished with a sparser toolset. A Middle Eastern proverb that was offered to the whole group was, "The soul can only move as fast as a running camel," which hit a chord for a lot of us. It explains the feelings I was expressing in my post yesterday. Even though I left Colorado almost a week ago, my soul is still probably somewhere over Nebraska or Iowa at this point. It might reach Pennsylvania after I've already left for SPS. We'll see.

In conversations with other SALT and IVEP participants, a lot of the conversation has revolved around how we found out about MCC and what sparked our interest in serving. I grew up making school kits and going to the Rocky Mountain Relief Sale, so MCC was always on my radar. Mom and Dad had at one point tossed around the idea of doing a term of service during my middle school years (maybe that would've spared me the horrors of adolescence in the US, but maybe tweenage years are just as bad everywhere). Twelve years ago, a guy from my church served with SALT just out of college, so that too I feel like has always been in the back of my mind as an option for young adults. A year or two into a software engineering career, I found myself feeling unfulfilled by the espoused company goal of "make the customer happy." Happiness, in the capitalistic context of the business world, is usually a euphemism for money. And to make the most money, customers try to squeeze the most work out of us that they can get away with while paying the least that they can get away with. And although software engineers tend to be less exploited than workers in other positions, there still is that aspect to the work. I'll stop here before I wax Marxist. Long story short, I was making plenty of money, and the company was making plenty of money, and the customers were making plenty of money, and I found that I couldn't care less. The products weren't necessary for human survival or edification. A term with MCC came to mind as a pursuit that would help humanity, at least in some small way. I thought about applying to SALT in February of 2018, but due to some medical issues, decided to wait a year and ended up submitting my applications this past winter. The timing worked out quite interestingly, as my three-year anniversary at my job was on the 25th of July, and my last day ended up being the 26th.

In the expectation management session, we reflected on our personal goals for the term. I noticed that one of the things I'm hoping for myself is a sense of purpose or direction going forward after this year. I don't think that qualifies as a SMART goal, and it might be a tad selfish or hubristic, but my prayer is that I can be open to where the Spirit is calling me to be in the world, whether that's in LACA, Longmont, or a location yet unconsidered.

This evening, after the Jumping Cultures activities, I headed back to my room to have a snack and answer some emails. Best laid plans. The IVEPer from the room next door, Joyce from Nicaragua, peeped her head in my room and asked me if I could help her figure out the washing machine. It took some doing, but we got the load of laundry going. We really hit it off, and spent the wash and dry cycles talking about our assignments, language learning, Central America, our churches, and our friends; looking at photos; eating snacks; and practicing different dances - she taught me some Bachata moves I might see during my time in Honduras, I demoed the Shirley Temple, and we tried some shuffling tutorials from YouTube. After a few other housemates helped us finish up the bowl of popcorn, we decided to call it a night.

Day One

Welcome to the story of my adventures with Mennonite Central Committee! For the next year, I'll be serving through the SALT program as the Digital Media Specialist for MCC Honduras in their San Pedro Sula office. Since I'll be serving in the Latin America/Caribbean region, I've decided to name my blog after the feeling my friends and family back home are experiencing... 😉

I arrived in PA on Saturday morning and spent the last several days with family in the area, but today marks my first day as an MCCer. We SALTers were asked to arrive at the Welcoming Place starting at three this afternoon. There are 39 of us and 25 IVEPers at orientation this week. My grandparents dropped me off around three-thirty, and I had some time to explore the beautiful campus, settle into my room, and get to know a few of my housemates.

Dinner of groundnut stew and snap peas was at 5:15, then we played get-to-know you games including Giant Dutch Blitz and getting-in-groups-based-on-what-we-have-in-common. My guess is you'll see some videos of Dutch Blitz pretty soon on the @mccpeace Instagram story! I got acquainted with the one other SALTer who's going to Honduras, Kara. She'll be serving in Tegucigalpa. She was worried that she'd be the only MCCer there, but I was able to tell her about Keyla, the YAMENer who will be in Tegucigalpa as well. (I met Keyla on the FB group for IVEP/SALT/YAMEN and we've had a fairly extensive conversation over Messenger - I'm really looking forward to meeting her in-country!) Since I'll be working in the MCC office in SPS, I'll have the support of the Country Reps and Connecting Peoples Coordinator on a daily basis, which will be nice. I'm glad Keyla and Kara won't be alone, but it's hard not to wish that another compañerx from one of MCC's young adult programs would be serving in SPS with me. This past term (2018-19), I believe there were 7 YALTers in Honduras, three in Tegucigalpa and four in SPS. That must have been a blast! But a smaller group can be good for forming close connections with one another.

Each morning during the next six days of orientation, we'll have devotions and hear music from a different region. Tomorrow morning will be music from the US and Canada. Anyone who wanted to stay and prepare was welcome, so I stuck around for a few minutes to help pick songs. We were pretty unanimous about "Be Thou My Vision" and thought we'd also do another hymn and one praise song. There seemed to be enough singers in the group, so I left it to their capable voices... and then decided to start a blog! So here we are.

It still hasn't entirely sunk in yet what's in store for me this next year. My last day of work was nearly three weeks ago on the 26th of July, but it almost still feels like an extended vacation. Picturing the renters living in my house is the thought that hits home the reality of all this the most. Eso, y extrañar fuerte a mis amigxs.