honduras part 1

after a 3 hour flight and a 4 hour bus ride up and down mountains, i am finally in la esperanza, honduras. i woke up at 3:30am-ish and prepared to leave. we got to tallahassee at 5 and after saying good-bye to my parents i flew to atlanta. i ran to catch my next flight and as i was sitting there waiting for my plane i could make out at least 3 mission teams who were on the same flight and i wondered which one i was with. i was to meet up with a medical team and since i didn't have a phone i couldn't call them when i got to atlanta. to see how well i prepared for the trip, when i got to the airport my mom asked me what the address was to where i was going. i forgot to get it. and i didn't have a number for my contact either.... probly not the best of planning. well, i flew 3 hours from atlanta to honduras and the flight was so nice! mainly because we flew along the cancun and belize coast which looked like paradise. i got excited for a moment thinking that this was how honduras would be but i was wrong. cloudy sky made it all look somewhat dreary since it had rained, but the small homes and lush palm trees made it look somewhat better.

i got off the plane, found my bags, and went out into the craziness of people waiting for their family and friends who had just flown in. that's when panic set in for me. i had no ideaz what my team looked like, i had no way of contacting them, and better yet, they had no idea what i looked like. so for about 5-10 minutes i walked around trying to not cry and panic and praying that someone would hold up a sign with my name on it. being in a country where they don't even speak your language and not knowing where you should go; it's a scary feeling. anyway, as i was walking i was praying asking God for some sign to where i should go. i notice this woman in a group next to me ask a girl to pull out a paper so she can write a name on it and in my mind i was like "God, please PLEASE let that be my name that's on that paper". and what do you know, the woman holds up the sign and it says stephanie on it. oh my goodness, i about died of happiness!!! i was like " are you going to la esperanza?" and she was like "are you stephanie?" and when i said yes we both freaked out, but in a good way :)

we got on a bus that looked like trusty rusty from australia, only much nicer. as we drove it was rain, then sunshine, then rain again. the view was absolutely wonderful. mountains everywhere, lush with greenery, and most time you couldn't even see the top since fog and clouds surrounded them. it was like a scene from the movie mighty joe young. it reminded me so much of indonesia with the banana trees and the fields of crops on sides of mountains. fruit stands crowd the side of the road and the driving... lets just say it's better than indonesia but i would still never drive on the roads here. semis passing semis on a narrow mountain road with you in a bus speeding towards them. it's great. the last 2 hours were hard with me praying the whole time that i wouldn't be sick. zig-zagging around teh mountains while at the same time swerving to avoid big potholes in the road; i would have slept in a shack if that meant that i could get off the bus.

i'm learning all the cultural things here in honduras. the big one is that toilets do NOT take toilet paper. you have to throw it away in the trashcan next to the toilet. the water is hot for like 3 minutes and since we're in the mountains it's pretty cool. you can't drink the water. last night after dinner we had a short meeting. next week we're heading out to villages up in the mountains to bring medicine and doctor the people as well. last week alone they saw 1600 people with 2 doctors, one PA, and another doctor. one interesting thing: dogs are everywhere here. at home we have compassion on dogs and try to pet them and feed them since most times you can count the ribs on them. but we were told to not feed the dogs because while you're feeding this dog there could be a child a few feet away who hasn't eaten in days. so how does that make us look. dogs here are seen as dogs, animals, nothing in their eyes and as horrible as that may be, we can't help the dogs.

this morning we labeled and sorted through hundreds of medicines that we're taking to the villages. all the labels are in spanish. many people can't read so when they come to the clinic we have to draw pictures on the bottles of when to take the medicine and how much. like, if they have to take it twice a day we circle the picture of a sun and the picture of a moon; then we draw a picture of a spoon and how much is needed.

i'll try to keep you all updated as much as possible! special thanks to my awsome office at home for giving me toothpaste samples, butt paste, and soap- my contact was so excited about them, especially the toothpaste! thanks also to emilee- ms. lavearn about died when i pulled out the home magazines for her :) and of course, BIG THANKS to my supporters who got me here and who allowed me to get the supplies i needed :)