Día de la Independencia . . . un poco tarde

This morning, we celebrated a belated Día de la Independencia (it really is Sept. 15) by having a big parade down the middle of one of Honduras´major highways. We all piled into yellow school buses and got dropped off about a mile down the road in La Venta at a military batallion. From there, we had a pretty impressive parade complete with girls twirling batons, kids dressed up like national heroes, a bus decorated with a styrofoam map of Honduras on the front, and lots of drums.

The soldiers stood around, gaping at the female volunteers and holding machine guns. They helped us stop traffic and, so, most of our audience was unwilling, trapped in buses and pick-ups, unable to get where they were going, annoyed at our untimely celebration. It took us 2 hours to walk the mile from the batallion to the Ranch. Then, we had a program at the school that lasted another 3 hours complete with the new principal leading the students in a salute to the flag which made everyone (Hondurans included) uncomfortable and prompted many whispered references to Hitler. He tried to get the kids to salute and scream three times, "Viva la republica!" Half of them weakly joined in--the other half stood with looks of confusion and repulsion on their faces. Needless to say, the German volunteers were very uncomfortable.

I spent my afternoon doing laundry by hand, which is how it is done here. I decided that the first thing I do when I visit home in November is to throw all of my clothes in the washing machine. Mostly to get all the soap out. That seems to be the problem. We end up looking tie-dyed under the black lights at the club. It is a never-ending process, laundry. It doesn´t help that we are washing our clothes in water the color of weak tea.

With this, I am off. The computer lab is noisy with password-less kids trying to hack into the internet. I should kick them all out, but I don´t have the heart to do it right now. Let them figure it out the hard way. I will go and seek a few minutes solitude in my room before heading to hogar.