Feliz Cumpleanos Nehemias!

Nehemias!!

Me and Moises


Hannah and Nehemias



Quickly, we hung out with the kids of Missionaries of Charity because it was Nehemias' 8th birthday! They were adorable!!

Hannah and I also went to visit our friend Erica at Amigos De Jesus about 6 hours away by bus. We can now get across the country, we are set for future back packing adventures?

More to come!!!

Arroz con Pollo

It is hard when I don't write things down to remember the little things. I want to remember the little things, because they are what makes my day. I could be doing something crazy, running around doing things for everyone, trying to get so much done in so little time, but it is normally one little comment, or action that stops me in my tracks and makes me understand so much more than I thought I did. It is those moments that truly snap my out of my do this do that mentality, and get be back in the hey wake up and love on people!

The big thing that happened this week was on November 14th. Yes, it was my 22nd birthday, but that took a back seat because it was also confirmation is our parish. 120 kids getting confirmed. Carol and Rudy were both sponsors of 2 kids which meant that we were inviting their families over for dinner after the Mass. We were told to prepare for 35 people. Oh my gosh. How do I cook for 35 Hondurans when I can't use frozen fish sticks, mac and cheese, and french fries. Aidan and I were on for dinner which meant we couldn't go to the Mass (Sorry God, I was happy, I didn't think I could sit in a church for 3 hours while the Bishop talked in Spanish for at least an hour. I just couldn't do it.), Aidan and I knew that we wouldn't be able to do it alone, so Hannah and Roger stayed home to help us too. Our first though, what are we going to make? Our second though, HOW?! Aidan wanted to cook something with pasta or something, well Carol said no because we should probably cook them something that they know and will be able to eat and enjoy. Okay we were told to cook Arroz con Pollo (rice with chicken), a typical meal in Honduras for important occasions. One problem. Not only did we not know how to make arroz con pollo, but we didn't even know what it was suppose to look like, or what we were suppose to put in it.

To the supermarket we went! In the veggie aisle, we asked a family what we needed and they were so helpful! We got all the stuff we needed and headed back to the house. Time: 12:00
After sitting, eating lunch, and relaxing and 2:00pm we began to cook. Everyone left for the confirmation, and we were chopping veggies for the rice, and for a pico de gallo. sort of like a salsa, with lime and vinegar.






3 and a half hours later. We had two huge tubs of arroz con pollo, a bowl of pico de gallo, 2 cakes, and a table ready to eat dinner. We waited for our results from the panel of judges.
They liked it. They loved it! We were even told that this was better than the Hondurans make it, by a Honduran, who is a prettttyyy good cook! Whew. Fine, I'll take it as a birthday gift that we made a dinner that was loved by the Hondurans. I'll keep this recipe in my back pocket for when I come home so I can impress people with how much I know!


Recently, we have had Charice from the states here working with the Becas program. We have been showing her around and filling her in on the program, what is going on, and what students are doing what. It has been very interesting to be a translator. I sometimes have a lot of doubts in my Spanish, but at last, I have been feeling pretty competent when I am needed for someone else. We took her to CasAyuda which I have talked about before, and we worked with Oscar and Daniel. Oscar use to be stuck in his wheelchair for his whole life. When we walked into the room, we saw a happy 13 year old boy walking around and smiling from ear to ear. We could tell that he loved to walk, because he didn't want to sit down to have therapy! This kid hasn't been able to walk, and now he knows how to, he needs to make up for lost time!

This is so much going on, and much work to be done. This weekend we have the retreat for all the students in the Becas program. It is in La Florida. YEAH! GOING TO FLORIDA, oh man, in the mountains, where it is cold! Should be beautiful though! I am looking forward to getting to spend the weekend with the kids, they are a great bunch and I should remember to work out a little before I go, because I know there will be some soccer playing, and I am not so sure that I can do a full game yet. Playing around, fine, but full out sprinting back and forth should be interesting, oh well, vamos a ver! (We are going to see!)

Okay, Enough for now, hopefully I will be able to do small updates here and there, but I have been slacking on the writing!!

Love to everyone!

Te quiero con limon y sal

The best thing that happened to me during this time period being in Honduras, happened this past week. Hannah and I traveled to our local post office to see if a package came. We didn't have high hopes because the mail takes forever to get here. We were happily wrong. We got our package and it was huge! Moey, a friend from school got a package together, filled to the brim with goodies for a little taste of home. She also went out of her way to get others to write us letters and put whatever they wanted into the box. We were like kids in a candy store! There was chocolate, cards, pictures, letters, food, clean and new t-shirts, and so much more! It really meant a lot to us, so thanks every one who put stuff in it!!

We are on our second stay-cation.. Last week some were in the capitol for a lecture series, some others were somewhere else.. and some were in the mountains. There were 4 of us at home. Hannah, Aidan, Roger, and me. It wasn't very relaxing. We found out that a girl in our neighborhood died of cancer and we needed to go to the store for the family to make sure they had food for the time period. They came to our house and the mother, in between sobbing, told us the last few moments she had with her daughter. She was happy that she wasn't suffering anymore, but having her daughter died was still so hard for her. Her daughter was only 19 but had 2 children. We went back to their house where the body was and a group of people visiting the house. They do wake, type services, in the house in which the body is there and people can come as they please. We went to the store and got rice, beans, coffee, and other little foods in order for them to get by and be able to share while people come over. When we came back the house had many people and the mother asked us to pray. We prayed the divine mercy chaplet and just sat and paid our respects to the family. It was difficult to see the body and just think how hard this girl fought. She was finally at peace.

We went on home visits with Yadira who works for the mission with the Becas program and we got to meet a lot of families and finally understand where a lot of these kids come from. It was very eye opening, and a lot of walking! Every family was very welcoming and the kids all in all seemed very happy to see us.

Last weekend we went to the volunteer hours with the Becas program and all the kids. They all came with their Christmas cards ready for their sponsors in the states. They put a lot of time and effort into it and they were so cute. We not have a stack of a ton of cards ready to be translated. We just got done the last ones and now we have more. Sometimes it is very frustrating, but then I think to myself, "I am translating from Spanish to English," pretty impressive. Don't get me wrong, I struggle with Spanish beyond belief, but some times I just have to take a step back and be impressed with what I do know. Not just focus on what I don't know, but rather how far I have come. Animo! (Encouragement! something they say here very frequently!)

Just a quick thought: It was really cool when Hannah and I ran to the supermarket one day and ran into people that we knew from the Army base, makes you feel a little more at home when you are running into people you know..


I don't want to get use to going on home visits when someone has died, but today I found myself doing the same thing. We got a call around 8 this morning when we were sitting down eating breakfast. A little boy had died and it was the younger brother of a girl in the sponsorship program. We asked who it was and they told us his name is Christian and he is Milagro's little brother. We knew exactly who it was. They live about 5 blocks away and Christian was 7 years old and had Down's Syndrome. We would always see him waiting for his bus for his special ed school and he was always so cute. Hannah and Aidan actually were just at his house last week when doing home visits. We knew that people with Down's didn't live very long here because of problems with heart conditions so we figured it was that. We went to the store to get the food for the family. We then picked up Yadira and the social worker who workers for the organization, and headed to the house. While on the short trip, they told us that he died last night of dengue, most likely caused by a mosquito. It was sad, but while in his house and looking at him so peaceful, there was no way that he was suffering, he was such an innocent.


There is a lot of work to do this week and we have the Becas retreat next weekend. It is hard to believe that my birthday is coming up, I am not use to being so hot for my birthday. It is normally a nice fall day but this one will be a little different.

There is so much more to say, but the time has come to end this for now and hopefully rest my head! (I apologize for all grammatical mistakes. I blame it on speaking Spanish most of the time, speaking in English gets hard, I forget sentence structure.)
Love to you all. Animo!

All is well that ends well...

And I am glad to be walking... more explained a little later on..

Okay highlight of the week was going to Pollo Campero (a fast food place around here) with 7 kids who were under the age of 7 all of which are HIV positive. They live with the Missionaries of Charity and they are legit adorable. We ate fried chicken and french fries and drank coke until we were blue in the face. Legit one little boy, Moses, who is 2 years old, probably drank a liter of coke. We then played in the jungle gym thing and i couldn't take how adorable it was. These kids don't get to act like kids a lot, and they most of them have lost their parents to AIDS and so they don't get to do special things like go to fast food a lot. You would have thought we took them to Disney World they were so happy. After that, we took them to the mall and ate ice cream. I am not a fan of sticky kids, but even I will make exceptions! Holding sticky hands is not my favorite, but when it is these kids there was no way I could say no, there was no reason I would want to say no!!!! Needless to say, after all this, we had 7 happy, tired, and very full kids.
We had 5 adults and 7 kids, we were still out numbered.

Another day, after the volunteer hours for the Becas program, the head of the program had a party for her triplet daughters. It was adorable. We had a pinata and tacos and cake and soda, all in all just a great party. They are really cute kids and it was really great being able to share a party with all the kids in the program.

So, having to do with the title of this blog, our community event this week was taking a walk. I was told we wouldn't be doing a lot of walking so i was in flip flops. Bad choice. While doing a rosary walk through the jungle (maybe a bit exaggerated.) i got a splinter in my foot. After getting back in the car and going to get ice cream we tried to get it out of my foot. We legit were digging in my foot with a needle for a good hour. I cried. Multiple times. We tried hot water, cold water, and everything in between. It was not coming out. It was hard because it was in my foot vertically not horizontally. They made me go to the clinic to get it out. The doctor, whom later I found out is not the best of people, gave me a shot to try and ease the pain, but the thing is, he didn't wait for the numbness to kick in, he just started at it digging in my foot with a needle. I felt everything. After 5 mins. which felt like 5 hours, it was out, and finally my toes were a little tingly from the meds (Thanks for waiting, Doc!) . He gave me a prescription for an antibiotic, and pain killer, and sent me on my way .


(More to come but I have to run now)

Things to do in Latin America: 1. Learn Spanish. 2. Learn how to drive stick shift.

Well it is very interesting that now I can be asked to drop people off different places since I am slowly but surely getting the hang of stick shift. It is a little difficult to have a 100% smooth ride, but we don't have pavement so it wouldn't be smooth anyways...

This week has been hot. This is the rain season but in the last week there really hasn't been that much. Just heat. heat. heat.

I got a little nervous in the beginning of the week because I was having some problems, we won't go into too much detail, because i want people to keep reading my blog and not get grossed out. Anyways, the director here, Carol has typhoid and also had salmonella. I was a little nervous that I might have had it to, but as of now the problems have pasted, so we will keep on keeping on.

The other day a woman came over to our house with her twins who both are HIV positive, along with their mother. It is sad to think about, but they were great people and really funny babies!

Wednesday we went over to a house to do physical therapy and when the mother wasn't there right away her daughter, who is 2 years old, played hostess. She offered us water and told us to come in and sit down. We didn't know if the water was safe so when Hannah had the cup and the girl looked away we dumped it!

I know there is so much more, but I think my brain is fried.
I miss you all! Feel free to e-mail 94szczepania@cardinalmail.cua.edu

p.s. I haven't thanked people yet, but honestly everyone who helped me get here financially, spiritually, or any other way, it means a lot and I am truly thankful!!

p.p.s GO PHILLIES!!!! Let's make it 2!

Rice, Beans, and how to live the dream.

Where have I been, where am I going?

This week was my first week of my own work.
Saturday We did volunteer work with the kids that are in the scholarship program. We went to Martita´s house and cleaned up. Martita is a woman who lives in our neighborhood who is as thin as a pencil, she is 70 something years old, no teeth, and very simple. (If you have facebook I posted a video of Martita in our house) When she is happy, she legit will make you smile, some times Martita is not so happy and its a sad day when that happens!
(I can´t remember all the days of the week and what i did each day so i´ll just skip around!)
I worked in the library one day and at first there was no one in it and I got a little feeling of what am I doing? But then 3 girls showed up and needed help with their homework. It was a really neat experience to just sit and hang out and figure out what causes hurricanes and where they happen and all that, in spanish.

Sunday- The Feast of St. Francis!!!
We went over to the Friars house and had a huge feast. We watched them kill the pig a couple days before, then we ate pig at the party! It was delicious! It was good to talk to the Friars and get to know them more and more. They are amazing men and we are lucky to have them so close! The neighborhood loves them, for good reasons, they do amazing things for the people here.
I got to hang out with a bunch of the girls from the neighborhood and they were cracking me up. They also thought I was very funny because i´m not scared to make a fool of myself by dancing or learning games that require directions in spanish. Oh well.

Another day when I was in the library, translating letters that some of the kids had written for their sponsors, 5 little girls came in and we ended up having story time. It was pretty precious to just sit around and read clifford the big red dog.It was also very good practice with my pronunciation! After we read, the girls startd to ask me about America and what it was like. They told me that their dads live there and they want to go.
Then they told me a story about one of their step dads and how he was killed because he was trying to rob a house. They are very open about their personal lives, it all still hurts them, but they are very willing to share and to ask for help.

My favorite day was when I went to Casa Ayuda. A guy (Lenin) that helps us out also does physical therepy. Casa Ayuda is for special needs kids and Lenin does physical therepy there too. We worked with a boy who has CP and then I tried my sign language out with all the deaf students. They were so happy that someone was trying to communicate with them. American Sign language and spanish sign language is different, but I could get by with the basics, and finger spelling. I went into their art class room and was blown away. One boy, Roberto, has a painting that is something that could very easily be sold. He is 15 years old and hopefully when he leaves >Casa ayuda he will be able to have his work be with his art. I really am going to look forward to going there every week. Hopefully we will be able to get some of those kids in the sponsorship program, because they need so much help!

As always, it is little by little and one step at a time.
Miss you all!

The First of Many (?)

So the first blog, only about 8 weeks into my central american trip. Better late than never!
After 5 weeks in Spanish language school, which included almost dying on a volcano, puking in the streets, eating as much gucamole i could get my hands on, playing with kids all the time, having a host family who were amazing, and much much more, we took a 15 hour bus ride to our new home in Honduras.

Since then we have been trying to orientate ourselves with the area, the people, the work, and all that comes with it. It has been good, and soon we will not be know as the new gringos but rather just part of the community. I am looking forward to when I can walk down the street and know the people just like the people in the community.

We each have different jobs and my main focus will be with the sponsorship program. Since a lot of the kids here can´t get to school or don´t have supplies, or other various problems, I will be in charge of helping them with funds from the states. I am also responsable for checking up on them, looking at their report card, helping with social work and all that. If the kids get help through our Becas program they have to do community service so every saturday we will be going some where and helping in our neighborhood. Its really amazing to have them give back as well.

The other day was the first time the poverty really hit me hard. We took our trash to the dump and we were told that it is very dangerous so we aren´t even suppose to roll down our windows because of the insects. (A side note: we don´t flush toliet paper, we throw it out, the flushing can´t handle in, very common in central america) There was a little girl who took all the trash out of the back of our truck and starting ripping open every bag, trying to find anything that would be helpful to her. Here we were in our truck worried about the bugs, when this little girl has nothing and is in the dump looking for anything that could possible help her life. Words can´t really explain what the dump was like, but I understand poverty and it is something that is hard to explain without seeing it.

The spirits here are high and the people are amazing. Our neighborhood really likes our community and they are really just thoughtful caring people.


There is much much more to say but this blog for the first won´t have it all. I hope now that I have made it, i will write in it!!!

Keep us in your prayers, you all are in ours!