For dinner I heated up homemade refried beans in the microwave. They were hot, hot, hot, but let's suffice it to say that heating them forever in the microwave does not kill whatever needs to be killed when you bring them to a boil on top of the stove. I thought I'd be okay because they were frozen until I microwaved them. I was NOT okay. I could have won a burping contest. I didn't know my body could hold that much gas. It was a new and horrible experience. Disgusting, but not painful. It literally gave me nightmares.
I am starting to understand on a small scale how Walter and Jairo must feel. This week I have been a taxista to a few different people. I am not saying this as a complaint. I just have never been responsible for other people's transportation before. It has been nice to give Marcela's Aunt a ride. She never asks me to go a single block out of my way - although I would. She has been so caring for the past 6 months that it feels great to be able to give back to her in this manner. Plus it's nice to have someone to open and close the porton (huge metal gate) so I don't have to get out of the car and do it myself. I always worry that the emergency brake is going to slip or that somehow someone will figure out a way to steal the car while I'm locking/unlocking the gate.
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Yesterday I visited Lourdes for a few hours. It was really nice to sit and chat with nobody else around and no place to go. I told her I was going to bring Tapioca pudding for Jairo (his favorite!), but then my stove died, so I had to cook it at their house. Jairo was resting, but she said he is getting better every day. I told her all of the kids are doing really well at the Breakfast Program. A few more have been coming this week. We are getting near 50 kids every day instead of mid 30's. They are having fun and being good. She said she feels really blessed because she has complete peace about leaving them with me. We talked about how the Breakfast Program will always be her baby, even if I am the one who is there.
I told Lourdes I did see one of the girls trying to test my limits. Lourdes gave me advise as to how I should handle it - be firm, but don't crack down on her yet unless she tries something else. Today she was good, so we had a perfect day. The older kids have now learned 4 new verses by heart. Even the 4 year olds know 1 or 2 of the four verses. I am proud of them. One boy (Chirstian (Conejo)) learns so quickly! He only needs to hear things once or twice and he retains them. Samir and Bryon work really hard at the memorization too. We have fun with it so it's not a chore for them. The girls are not as strong in their memorization. They are insecure about it. Maybe because the boys are amazingly quick. Or maybe because many of them prefer to whisper and giggle.
I am still feeling out my freedom. Since I have a broken stove, I dropped it off to see if it can be fixed by my landlord who is an electrical engineer. (Thank God, or I would still be without power since Tuesday. The transformer box out on the street melted, but nobody can come fix it until Sunday. He hooked up my power somehow until they come to fix it.) I spent this afternoon running around the city going to stores to check prices on stoves. Walmart doesn't have a gas stove. Since I think this one was ruined from a power surge (Eunice said the news has been warning about power surges) I'd rather get a gas stove and not have to worry about power surges. Plus I can still cook when the power goes out, which it does often, especially in the rainy season. Everyone agrees gas is best. So I shopped around. Missed an exit once and had to figure out how to get back to where I was going, but it ended up fine. I was in a good part of town. I did go to a store which is located a few blocks into a bad part of town. Eunice was against it, but I knew exactly where I was going because I had been there before and Walter said it was fine, so I went. I was a little pensive, but the worst part was crossing the road in heavy traffic. Otherwise it was very uneventful. I did notice a LOT of military trucks today. Many, many more than usual. I miss my conversations with Jairo about those things. He would have been very interested to see all of those military trucks moving about.
I learned that a decent stove here costs about $500. I could get a used stove made in Mexico or Costa Rica for $250, but the brackets that support the pots over the flame are so flimsy they would collapse if I tried to boil a pot of water on top of them. I'm thinking if something that obvious is poorly made, the stove is probably not a good investment overall. Normally I am not one to care about brand names, but I think I'll stick to something I've heard of when buying a stove in Honduras.
I've been meaning to write about the scariest part of driving here. I no longer worry about the steep corner where I have to come to a complete stop with stick shift. That is old news. I purposely let my car roll back a few times if someone is behind me at that corner so they give me some space, then look carefully for the blind spot and watch out for the huge hole that follows the turn. That corner is not such a big deal anymore. It is the buses that really freak me out! They have spikes instead of hub caps so if they come too close to you they rip the side of your car apart! It's like in cartoons or action movies. I have never seen anything like this before in real life. To think I have been riding around here for a year and never noticed those insane spikes sticking out of the bus wheels seems implausible. Now that I am driving and I have to avoid them it feels like those spikes are everywhere, waiting to tear into the side of my car. It gives me a heart attack when they pass me on the mountain roads. The streets are so narrow I just hold my breath and drive as close to the ditch as I dare. I don't know if I will ever get used to the spikes. I will have someone take a picture so you can see these spikes. But I wanted to write about it before I forgot again. Beware of buses when driving in Honduras!
