May 12 2009

(If I cannot get my space bar working properly, this may have to be an abbreviated post)

I slept outside in my hammock, under the stars last night. Awesome. My hammock is meant to be easily slung between two trees, and I just yesterday saw some that were a perfect distance apart. There was a slight chance of rain, but I don’t think that there has been a night since we got here that we haven’t expected rain, so I decided to go for it. To silence concerns, I also have a bug net that goes over the hammock, which prevents anything from joining me in my hammock. As much as I liked sleeping outside, I might not enjoy it quite as much if I woke up cuddling with Fred the frog.

Another side bar here. Fred the frog has become a kind of de facto compound mascot. He is a bullfrog that likes to hang out at the compound at night, and we are all pretty sure that he is large enough to eat the neighbor’s roosters. He is almost always in the same place, unless somebody has already scared him off, so we always say hi on our way by. We like Fred because we are pretty sure that he is the reason that there aren’t many bugs on the compound.

Today was another long day of working on protocols and procedures, although I think that we have almost everything written out. Everybody coming down will get to look forward to a 12 page booklet explaining everything that they would ever need to know for what we will be doing. Kelley and I worked through this for most of the afternoon, and she helped to fill in all of the things that we forgot to put in there the first time. Unfortunately Derek, Alex, and Jose had other business which they needed to attend to, so they were gone for most of the afternoon.

At 4:30 this afternoon a bunch of the 6th graders from the bilingual school came over. They will be one of the groups that will be translating while we give the surveys. Kelley and I picked up 16 oranges from the fruit stand across the street, and everybody sat around eating oranges and getting to know each other. At first, they were extremely shy, giving only one word answers to any questions that we asked them. However, after a little while, they realized that there was no reason to be nervous around us. Once this happened, they opened up, and we ended up being late for dinner because we were sitting around talking with them. They are really cool kids, and I think that they are going to make working a lot of fun. I can already see that many of our good memories of the trip will probably include them, whether working with us in the field, or hanging out at the compound and playing sports with us at the end of the day.

Tomorrow a group of us will be going back to the school to talk to the 7th grade class, who will also be helping us. We have already met quite a few of them, since they seem to be generally more outgoing than the younger kids. On Saturday, everybody will come by so that the entire group of American students can meet the entire group of Honduran students. We will also be going through many of the procedures on Saturday, and hopefully doing practice rounds of the interviews.

After dinner was more procedures, we are finally working on editing them, which means that we are, hopefully, getting close to having them completely finished. I finally got a chance to talk to Lindsey tonight on my new cell phone and, even though I feel badly because it is 2 am back home, it was really nice to talk to her for the first time in a while. As always, I planned on going to bed at 9 tonight and, as always, midnight is quickly approaching. It is a nice night tonight, we actually got to see the stars for one of the first times. I think that I am going to sleep in the hammock again. Until next time, adios.

Patrick