Today-

Today was pretty nice. Eloise and I hung out for a while around the studio waiting for Kathryn to come back from St Thomas sans Stephen. She didn't show, so we went up to the farm with our friend Bart for a while. We picked a ton of spinach and arugula (everything that hadn't been totally devoured by bugs), and then came home. Bart proposed a dinner party at his place, so we agreed to come over a little later. When we arrived home, the WWOOFer girls had already started cooking ahuge family meal for everyone. We tried to get a hold of Bart to reschedule, but we never could reach him, so we ended up eating two HUGE dinners. First we had chicken tacos, and then we had homemade pizzas and cheesecake. Bart, his girlfriend Keira, and our new WWOOFer Louis live in this architect's house for free on tortola. He has the most amazingly eclectic and weird house. Tomorrow we head to Virgin Gorda for a night of pampering (by pampering I mean sleeping inside, in a bed) at Biras Creek Resort. We are so excited to pretend like we don't live in tents for a while, and get dressed up for a nice dinner. I'll keep you updated, and maybe post some pictures soon!
xo
Zar

Catching up

Hey guys,
Sorry I haven't even written since I've been here yet! We have been pretty busy with farming and sailing and all that. So far I have been to the farm four or five times. It is a long hitch/walk away, but the view is so well worth it. Aragorn has a beatiful house perched on a super steep hill over the ocean, and the farm is mostly trellised along the hills. We have been planting bok choi, weeding a ton, and picking arugula and spinach to sell at the studio.
Other than that, things around Trellis Bay have been pretty quiet. We have been sailing a lot with our friend Alex, and his dad Tod. Alex has basically grown up in Trellis Bay, and him and Tod live on a 39 foot Corbin. This weekend, they took us sailing. On Friday night we sailed to Salt Island, which is a tiny, uninhabited, very spooky place. There used to be a salt mine on the island, because most of it is comprised of a huge salt pond. Then we sailed to Norman Island, which is owned by none other than Eugene Jarecki (how funny is that!) and hung out and watched a steel drum band. This morning we woked up and sailed over to Virgin Gorda to go to the Baths for my first time. The baths are these HUGE boulders that you can swim through and around. It was really cool. Now we are all back at Trellis, and tonight we are taking Stephen out to dinner.

Will keep you posted,
Zari

Tortola!

We are leaving tonight for Boston so that I can catch my 6 AM flight to St Thomas. From there I will be taking a ferry over to Roadtown, Tortola where Kathryn and Eloises will meet me at around 2. I am soo excited! Keep reading the blog, and keep the emails coming!

xoxo
Zari

Home (Well Boston...)

We finally got back to the US today! It was really sad to leave everyone last night, especially chicken express! We got two free dinners, one from the rotary club, and one from the chicken express crew. Anyways, it is super late, and I am very very tired! We are staying in boston tongiht and then heading home tomorrow with sarah, and then back down here on thursday for the departure flight to tortola!

xoxo
Z

new friends

We have met A LOT of people in the last couple of days. One day at a the park we met Mark who is a postman from Canada trying to escape the cold. We told him what we were up to, and gave him Tom´s number so that he could maybe work with us one day. He called us up and invited us to a birthday party for this british guy named gary at casa kiwi (great hostel run by new zealanders). The next day they joined us at work, and absolutely loved it! Gary is touring central america looking for a place to start a hostel-restaurant-community center. Last night we went to their farewell dinner, and saw them onto their bus to nicaragua. It was great to hang out with all of the travellers there and hear all of their crazy stories.

We are enjoying our last week here, but are sooo sad to leave all of our friends (although gary and mark might come visit us in VT) ! Will write more later!

Love
Z

Tourist Day

It has been raining here for a while, so work was cancelled today. The new guy JD from texas, the girls, Jesus, and I went on a little touristy day. It is so funny because we have been here forever, but still havent seen the cliche trujillo attractions. We went first to this crazy museum outside of town. It was misty, and the place looked more like a horror movie set than a museum. It was full of rusting pre columbian tools and stuff, lit by crazy old street lights from the 19th century in Trujillo. Out back there were five crazy monkeys, and an abandoned water park. It was the craziest thing!

We had so much funb wandering around. I kind of felt like Indiana Jones. Afterwards, we went to William Walker{s tomb (not much to see) and the Fortaleza Santa Barbara. All in all it was a great day!

Then about thirty new volunteers from NH showed up, and we had another great chicken express dinner. I can{t believe we leave here in a week! its almost tortola time!

Love,
Z

Fun Day

We have been working hard on digging the foundation for the 2nd classroom at the Pech Village. It is by far the most strenuous work that we have done all trip! Yesterday, Lincoln took us to the naval base and we went on a super fun boat ride. Basically it was the navy guys trying to see how much they could scare Emily, Alex, and I as we sat on the front deck. It may have been the most fun I{ve had all trip. I think I screamed the entire time.

HOLY DONATIONS!

Got word from my dad today that our clothing drive donations totalled 15 boxes! Those are full of donated clothes from our closets (and my very deep crawl space/secret lair) and also a ton of donated clothing from the Patagonia stores in Boston, Westport Connecticut, and New York! Patagonia has donated a ton of clothing that has been returned, but cannot be resold in their stores. It was such a pleasure to do business with all of the enviro coordinators from the different stores!

Gracias Patagonia!!!

I will try to post pictures of the distribution once the boxes arrive, and I get a blank CD or two so that I can transfer to the blog!

All is well here,
Keep writing and reading!

xo
z

Up to Date

I guess i will bring you guys up to date on the last few days happenings! Yesterday was sunday, so we had the day off from work. We hung out on the beach for a while in the morning (I am starting to look almost as tan as a honduran!) and then started walking up to the waterfall with the whole group. On our way there we saw a soccer game in progress at the little stadium, and decided to stay behind and watch while everyone went swimming. It was well worth it! Soccer here is HUGE, and a lot of people turned out to watch. I have been getting really into it lately. After the game, we walked into town and got lunch at chicken express, watched some more soccer, and sat in the park to people watch. Last night we went to Cocopando again to watch the Garifuna dancing. We do this with every group of new volunteers, so we end up going every sunday. All of the dancers know us by now, and always drag colleen and I up onto the dance floor.

Today we woke up and ate bagels that lincoln brought us from La Ceiba (one American food that we all miss ALOT). We dropped off our laundry and went to Buenos Aires for the first day of school. We were all very nervous about how the playground would turn out because the last time we saw it, it was kind of i shambles! Marco pulled through and got everything done on our structure and also put up some new swings. It was a great treat for the first day of school and the niños couldnt get enough. I am very proud of the outcome and think that TOm woill be as well. He has stressed to us how this is the first time in Hands to Honduras history that a group has been able to complete their own project with no oversight from the program. I am so proud that we completed this thing right!

I think we are all starting to feel like we live here now. Our room is so homey, and we always see people we know in town. It is really cool to feel so connected to this place after only three weeks. I don{t think people here are used to seeing the same group of Americans here for longer than ten days or so.

I{ll keep you all posted on the progress of San Martin, and any fun cultural hhappenings that go on!

xo
Z

Tamales!

Today may have been our best day yet! We worked at San Martin with Giovanni and Walter in the morning. Lately a guy named Osmond has been workin g with us also. Osmond lived in the united states for threee years i think, working as a car dealer in HOuston. His english is perfect, and it is great to finally be able to fully understand what walter and G are saying with the help of his translations.

Afterwards we were picked up by Isis, the principal at Buenos Aires and brought to the hotel. We worked on our tans for a couple of hours and then Isis picked us up again. We went to her beautiful house up in the mountains and cooked tamales with her beautiful daughters Elba and Carole. The tamales turned out great, and we decided to have another cooking lesson this wednesday night. Isis will teach us how to make a typical Honduran Barbeque meal and we will teach her and carole how to make american apple pie. We are all looking forward to it.

It has been so great being able to make these personal connections. Isis always wants to show us things that we wouldnt otherwise see, and make sure that our experience is completely authentic. She even offered to take us to La Ceiba for a weekend at the end of February! She also want to show us Roatan sometime. I am so excited to see other parts of this beautiful country!

Anyways, Happy Valentines day!

Love
Zari

I forgot!

The other night there was a huge soccer game on. Honduras was playing Costa Rica. Emily and I went to Chicken Express with the NH girls and our friend Raul to watch the game. Raul said that chicken express was full and that they wouldn{t let us in... but we are super good friends with the family that owns it. We walked to the door and the guard stopped us and then Miguel waved us in and his father in law set us up with a couch directly in fron tof the TV. There were over 100 people crammed into this tiny little area that is covered with a tin roof to watch the game. It was a great time until Honduras started playing really badly and lost two to zero. Anyways, It was great!

Friday the 13th

Hey guys,
Today was a pretty good day except for the fact that our van got stuck in the most gigantic lake today and i guess tom{s van broke down too! We just found out that coll got into the college of charleston!!! I am so excited for her and we are going to have a fiesta tonight to celebrate! Today and yesterday were great days at work at san martin. After many days of rain it has finally cleared up. Today we worked with a few more guys than usual and we all had a really great time joking around and things. We have become great friends with our crew and we are all going to play soccer tomorrow after work. They both play on a soccer league and so we are going to the stadium to watch them play on sunday morning! We have a really great week planned. Tomorrow after soccer, Isis and Carole are teaching us how to cook Comida Hondureña Tipica, and next week we have cooking lessons with two rotarians Thelma and Florinda. I feel like we are starting to fit in here really well. We know everyone in town and have grown really familiar with the area. As homesick as I am, I am going to be really sad to leave Trujillo. Sunday night we will go and see the Garifuna dancers at CocoPando. We have been two times already and twice last year, and it is still just as mesmerizing. It doesn{t matter if the women are three or ninety three... they all shake it like shakira. It is such a cool cultural aspect of trujillo and honduras. We have to go and eat dinner now with the six new volunteers that got here last night. We have four girls from Brandon, VT and Jim and Joyce who are a couple from Texas.
Time flies so fast when people keep coming and going!

Also... This week i found out that I got into Seattle University and The Savannah College of Art and Design! I am so happy to know that I don{t have to worry anymore!

Sam Bove and Daniel Summers might come down and visit us next week, so that will be great! I am excited to introduce people that I know into our great community and projects.

I{ll keep you all posted on news and developments!!

Keep the emails coming!!! Seriously!

xo
zar

First week con voluntarios

Hi Everybody!

This week was our first week with other volunteers! We welcomed Amy, Taylor, and Britney from Hopkinton, NH. They are our age. Dennis and Jim are from VT. They are super funny and always wanting to get our opinion on everything! Two very sweet guys. Also Jim, Ed, and Frank from Texas. They are working on wiring a lot of the schools and are also super nice. It has been great to have more people along!

Construction on the playground went pretty well, I was sick for most of it. Towards the end, our contractor Marco started to slack off a little bit. He would show up, sya he had another project to do, and then leave... giving us nothing to do without his guidance. After he blew us off one day, the teachers took control and called in another contractor. He arrived and told us that he advised that we put the playground in the ground so it was more stable. He proceeded to dig eight holes on the schoolyard. We accidentally struck a water pipe, so it was a huge mud pile! So then, Marco shows up... three hours late! They start fighting about who{s project this is, and how Marco thinks that these holes are pointless. It is starting to get really funny and they are calling eachother stupid bitches and stuff. It was really really funny, and we ended up firing marco on the spot. We put the playground in the newly cemented holes tomorrow.

School started today at one of the projects we have been working on. The NH girls and Texas Jim (Jimbo) had brought a lot of toys and clothing, so we distributed everything and sang happy birthday to Colleen. The kids were so happy and would not let go of us. At one point I had a child attached to every finger, and they were all pullig different directions. Jim had brought some of his daughter{s baby clothes... so coll al em and I walked through their village looking for babies to give clothes to. It was really fun and rewarding to see the niños so happy.

We have also made a lot of friends our own age here. The principal of Buenos Aires school has a daughter named Carol who is seventeen, and she helps us translate. She is very shy, but suyper nice also. We met her friends Daisy, Raul, and Carlos too. They are all very nice. Daisy goes to a bilingual school in La Ceiba which is two hours away. Yesterday she threw colleen a surprise party at her house! It is beautiful! She left for school tday for the next two weeks. Next year daisy will move to Fort Meyers to attend college. Raul is also super sweet. We are going to play tennis with him tomorrow at the hotel. He is in college in La Ceiba right now, but is transferrig to a school in michigan this fall. Everyone speaks very good english.

Anyways, that is the news from this week. We have to go and prepare for Colls birthday dinner!

Keep the comments and emails coming, I love to hear from you guys!

xoxo,
Zari

Week 1

Hola!
THis last week has been crazy! We have been trying to figure out what to do with the $1200 that we raised last year for our school Buenos Aires. There was a huge fight about what to do with the money among the teachers and the rotarians. Some people thought they needed a new roof, others thought a playground would be good. I was on the roof side personally, but anyways... I guess the teachers came to a concensus that they wanted a playgound, so here we are. We are building one super cool structure with slides and a climbing wall and stuff, and then we bought a pretty standard swingset too. Everyone is very excited about it.

About 4 days ago I woke up with a super bad sore throat. I thought i just had a cold, but then my throat started to swell up like crazy, and i couldn´t swallow. So after two days of spitting into a cup every ten seconds, they took me to the doctor. It was kind of scary to be honest, just because there were people sitting there with like fingers falling off and stuff. Basically he just told me I had an infection (laryngitis) and he prescribed me some pills and throat spray. I am feeling a lt better actually, but it still was kind of a bummer.

Last night we went to a new restaurant called casa kiwi. It is a hostel run by a very sweet woman from new zealand. We were all getting a littl esick of honduras food, and there menu was a lot more americanized. It was great to see other people who spoke english and were traveling too, and to read their huge guest book full of hilarious stories. I thnk we will definitely be going back there in the future. If I ever come back to Honduras that is where I will stay.

Thats all for now, we will keep you posted on next weeks happenings!

xo
z

TRUJILLO

I appologixe in advance for typos, this key board is shitty.

SO we made it here safely, and have been workign and relaxing for almost a week! Yesterday and today, we worked on a water filtration tank in san martin. THe guys that we work with are great, adn they all have very funny names. Vidal is the leader, and looks kind of like wyclef, and the others are Darwin, Giovanni, and Walter. They are great, but they think that we are babies, so they make us sit in the shade a lot and drink water and coke.

Our spanish is getting better every day. I can understand most things, but am having a very hard time speaking. Colleen is slowly catching on, and alex and emily are trying too. We have posted cards all over our room (which is very cozy) with spanish words on them so that we can learn.

We hasve lots of work ahead of us, but every day is a great adventure.
We have made soo many friends in trujillo, and we today we met a guy from Oregon who works at Finca Del Ninos, which is an orphanage in christales. We may try and go help out there on one of our days off.

Sorry I cant write all that ,uch, it is getting dark and we need to go back to the hotel. I will write much more later on, with much better description. I was sooo rushed! Hopefully i can get some pictures up as well.

If anyone want s to sen dme anything (THE NEW YORK TIMES)
they can address it to

Room 208
Christopher Columbus Beach Hotel
Trujillo, Colon
Honduras

Hope all is well in the US

Love

Z

Honduras

I leave for Honduras in approximately 2 weeks and there is SOOOO much to do before we go. The organization that we are working with, Hands to Honduras, was hit hard by the economic crisis, and so donations are down... ALOT. We have had to cut down from building 9 schools to building 4 schools. If anyone has ANY extra cash, please let me know, and I can tell you where to send your donations.

Hurricane Felix has also affected our trip. In 2007, Felix brought heavy rains to Honduras, and this in turn
caused massive mudslides. We are trying to get together clothes before we go to send down for flooding and mudslide victims. Again, if anyone has anything that they think they can spare, donations are super appreciated.

We are all trying to get everything together for our trip, while studying for mid-terms at the same time. I just keep imagining myself on the beach in two weeks and it is all worth it.

Also today, I had my first meeting with Eloise, Kathryn, and the parents about our trip to Tortola in April. We will be working on a fruit farm in Trellis Bay with this amazing sculptor Aragorn and a bunch of other WWOOFERS. Check out Aragorn here: http://www.aragornsstudio.com/




All of the travel guides say that Aragorn's Studio is the place to be, and he seems like a great guy so we are all VERY EXCITED!

That's all for now, check back later for more news!