And there are even purple rocks here.

Sometimes I feel like I'm in a foreign country. Usually I don't. Yes, my students are all ELLs, yes, I buy food with Spanish labels and wait in long, inefficient lines to buy it with thousand of lempira, but still, everything seems relatively normal. People ask what Honduras is like and I say busy, because right now, for me, Honduras is more or less equivalent to teaching on my own for the first time, which is more or less equivalent to spending all my time at home or school.

This weekend, my roommates, two other teachers, and I went out to Honduras' famous lake to stay for a couple of nights. This was because we had Friday off for Honduran independence day, which was another foreign experience for me. I should post about that too. Man, more to add to the to do list.

Anyway, as we were hiking through beautiful mountain jungle (the next mountain over is home to jaguars, ocelots, and toucans, but ours mostly contained blue morpho butterflies, coffee plants, beautiful flowers, gigantic lemons, and banana trees) to get to a real live waterfall, it hit me. I live here. I live three hours away from jaguars. I live in a county where there are just random waterfalls and you can hike out there and swim in them for free (at your own risk, of course, although, there really aren't any signs). I live in a country of lush green mountains. I live in a country of flowers that we would have killed for at my landscaping job back home. I live in a country where mangos and oranges and guava and avacados grow freely.. I live here!

On our way back to the bed and breakfast, we stopped at a pulparia (small store) to get some more water and chocolate. The little girl there was coloring away, drinking a bottle of 7 up. When she finished it, she threw it out in the grass behind the shop to pile up with previous bottles, chip bags, and who knows what else. This is such a common sight, and it's so sad to see so much trash EVERYWHERE. On the bus, I saw eyes that clearly and obviously only saw me as a foreign object to be oogled. This too happens everywhere, especially to those of us who are gringas. Every man in the country has a right to whistle, stare, or comment, because this country is a man's world. Again, as I was sitting there hugging my roommates backpack to help cover up, I though, this is where I live. I live here.

And I do. It's not always out of the ordinary, because it's becoming my ordinary. Yes, there are surprises. I suspect there always will be. But it's my life. I live here.