thoughts on travel

To fly is the opposite of traveling: you cross a gap in space, you vanish into a void, you accept not being in any place for a duration that is itself a kind of void in time; then you reappear, in a place and in a moment with no relation to the where and the when in which you vanished.  Meanwhile, what do you do? How do you occupy this absence of yourself from the world and the world from you?  You read; you do not raise your eyes from the book between one airport and the other, because beyond the page there is a void, the anonymity of stopovers, of the metallic uterus that nourishes you, of the passing crowd always different and the same.  You might as well stick with this other abstraction of travel, accomplished here by the anonymous uniformity of typographical characters: here, too, it is the evocative power of names that persuades you that you are flying over something and not nothingness.

from Italo Calvino's  If on a winter's night a traveler

Have you ever felt that daze that comes from airport traveling?  It's an interesting experience, checking bags, and then letting yourself go into long hallways, and eventually onto the plane, where you set aside personal comfort zones and try not to go to the bathroom.  It is accepting passivity, to be directed rather than to direct yourself.  Big signs tell you where to go, guards tell you to take off your shoes, and you have to go along passively.  

Calvino (one of my favorite authors) relates the act of reading to the passivity of air travel.  We let ourselves go, we suspend our critical thinking; we let the text, or the author, be the guiding authority.  I think this is what makes reading great:  it is a break from our normal routine, of telling ourselves what to do.  Getting "wrapped up in a book" seems to be the preferred description.  

Also, the times that I flew to/ from Honduras, there was this shift in time.  Going to Honduras, I would arrive after midnight.  Once I got in at 4 am!  There would be very few people in the airport, and no lights on in the city.  Almost like I was going into the unknown, to wait for people I didn't know to pick me up, to take me to a school that I had no experience with.  It's kind of crazy to assume that all of these different links in the chain are going to connect. 

Coming home from Honduras was almost the opposite:  I would leave late at night, with all the lights in the city gone out, and strangers in the airport, and flying into the states where it would be morning again, and my parents would be waiting.   It's a shift in the emotional experience of time, I think.  Calvino says at the end that we are flying over nothingness, and that a book, like travel, is just a set of conventions that we accept.  Maybe they both are only means to transfer us to someplace different in our lives.  Fiction isn't real, but it can show us something real beyond itself.  And we land somewhere different than we expected, to find a world that is more varied and complex  than we understood before.  

Maybe this is why travel and a good book complement each other... they both carry us somewhere, change our minds, and connect us with other people.

Sold!

First journals sold!

here's the coptic stitch:

rebound books

the logo says "inscribe"... it'll do for now.

New Crop of Books

Let's see... first off, here are some books that have been re-bound.  I've taken old books with catchy covers, cut out the old block of pages, and sewn in new, blank ones.  Vintage books have 

sweet impressions, like this one: 

The maroon book is an old geography handbook... I added the new block of pages, then put maps into the inner-covers for a bit of color.

Also, I learned a new binding method that allows for more pages, and can be used in more complicated bindings, like using the vintage covers... it is called the coptic stitch, and you can see it by looking down the spine of the book... it is composed of multiple signatures (pages folded together), sewn together along the folds.  The Coptic church invented this binding in the 4th century, which is seriously vintage!

Here is a journal, using the coptic stitch ( look at the left side).  On the cover is a screen print of scaffolding.  I think it works well with the bare-bones construction.  (Actually, the original picture that the print comes from is on my photography blog...

obscurelyilluminated.blogspot.com

Screen printing is really involved, since I don't have a darkroom.  I use a photo-sensitive paint on the screen, and then "burn" an image into it with a powerful bulb.  The results are awesome, 

and one screen will make as many prints as you want.  

Recent Books and Prints

a journal with a logo from my school

screen print on a t-shirt, taken from a photo from Chattanooga

journal made from cardboard... I didn't have a lot of supplies!

black and white always go well, and I wanted the splatters to look like they were seeping out, or that they were supposed to be contained.  

travel journal from Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico... made with vellum and old national geographic photos...

Also from the same book- vellum does wonders for photos by reducing them to shapes and colors.

glass monoprint

monoprint

block print of Honduras

another journal...

New Photos!

Here are some links to new photo albums:

http://picasaweb.google.com/brett.bort

1.) Travels: a fraction of the photos I took on the road, starting in Honduras and finishing in Mexico D.F.

2.) Artstuffs: See what I've been doing (while not teaching) over the past year.

3.) Bottom Drawer Photos: Some photos from my last 2 years in Boone, NC.

4.) Exteriors: Buildings like Dinosaurs. Shots from Chattanooga... before some of the old industrial buildings are turned into offices or restaurants.

End of School Travels

After 4 weeks of travel, I'm back home and feeling a bit disoriented, maybe slightly out of place. It's strange to squeeze my life back into my small bedroom. It's only temporary, but I'll be at home through the end of summer.

I had mixed feelings leaving Siguatepeque after some really nice sendoffs and goodbyes. On the bus out, I felt sentimental about everything that had happened, but ready (and relieved!) to move on to new places. My trip went from Honduras to Mexico D.F., a series of bus rides connecting the dots between Mayan ruins, colonial cities, and volcanoes. I could give a full summary of my month's trip like a swollen journal, but instead I'll prune it down to some of the highlights.












1.) Mayan ruins: I saw ruins in Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico. They were fantastic, but after seeing my second and third sites, they lost their initial charm. I saw Copan Ruinas in Honduras, which have retained the original engravings. Guided tours give more insight into the history and symbolism, because at first glance, they're just stacked rocks.
Tikal in northern Guatemala has the really tall pyramids, and from the top you can look over the thick jungle and watch howler monkeys.




2.) Lago de Atitlan, Guatemala: a lake ringed by seven small villages, and scattered volcanoes, it was the most stunning spot that I visited. I rented a little kayak and paddled around with another traveler named Peter.





















3) Antigua, Guatemala: tourists everywhere, from everywhere. There were lots of Europeans, Asians, Australians, South Americans, etc. It was vaguely reminiscent of smaller towns in Spain, with arches, heavy wooden doors, and terrace cafes. It's hard to tell from the picture, but there is a giant volcano behind the arch. Antigua is a dramatic place: there are active volcanoes, and earthquakes have left the city in heaps several times. Here, there are ruins of a different sort. Colonial churches and convents from the 1600's and 1700's were destroyed by earthquakes except for the main walls, and I loved exploring the mazes of split arches and crumbling waves of brick and mortar. The statues of saints are missing heads and hands.

I stayed in Antigua for a whole week, more than any other city. I took classes for a week to polish my Spanish a bit, but I needed that much time to see the city and surrounding area.




4)Taller Leñateros, San Cristobal de las Casas, Mexico:




I found a Mayan papermaking/ bookbinding/ artist cooperative in San Cristobal, called The Woodlander's Workshop. They publish local Mayan poets and make some incredible prints of local artists. It's quality stuff. They make an annual magazine called La Jicara, and they're hard to find, but the ones on the shelves go for $60-80. Take that, McSweeneys. Even better, they make most of their own paper using local fibers and flowers (along with recycled white paper). In the picture, my friend Senan is holding some of the more colorful varieties. In the big photo, we are on a tour with Victoria, left. On the wall are some of their projects. If you're interested, click Taller Leñateros above to see their website.


I loved this place because of its emphasis on local arts. Through their books, they are keeping the Mayan language and narrative alive, which is a rare trend. It is literally a grassroots movement, because, well, they use grass to make the books.
















5) Oaxaca, Mexico:

This was one of my final stops in Mexico, along with the capital and a few others. Notably, Oaxaca is considered the gastronomic capital of Mexico, and though there's good food throughout the country, Oaxaca wins with its eccentricities. First of all, there's the chocolate. Chocolate is a large bean, and they grind it into a sludge with cinnamon, almonds, and sugar. I had my first 100% cacao and it is an acquired taste. Chocolate comes in all forms, in bars, nuggets, hot cocoa, chocolate milk, mole sauce (chocolate sauce + 30 some spices... also an acquired taste). In the market, big chunks of chocolate pile up like unrefined coal.

Then there are the grasshoppers. Hardly ten minutes goes by without someone trying to sell grasshoppers cooked in chile and lime. Worth a try!

concerning the morning sky

Shapes push into the horizon, forms separating themselves from the charcoal dusk. The mornings are the nicest time of the day here. The end of the year has come, and I notice a full-circle effect a bit more every day: the rainy season is here again, turning the streets into tacky mud each night, and they will dry up again the following day. It reminds me of when i came in august, when the rain flooded the streets and knocked the electricty out.
New teachers are coming, old teachers are going. I am going. I am going. I am going.
There is a sweetness hanging over our conversations: We made it!
And there is anxiety: How do we leave just as life begins to settle? And what will come next?
How did another year just happen? Surely it should've been longer; I should've given up at some point.
Summer leads into a new summer, a full circle. It's time for something new.
And yet there's something incredibly unsatisfying about the 'full circle', about life arcing from point a to point a. there is so much gained and too much lost, and I'm not sure where the starting point is anymore. A better metaphor would be falling leaves: they don't go in circles; they dive back and forth like wide, invisible, cursive L's.

I've been waiting for the 3 big mango trees in my yard to announce the end of the year with armloads of fruit. I've had my eyes on the trees for a while now, at least since Christmas, waiting for something to happen. But the branches are still empty and disappointed like the cub scout that never earns any gold arrowhead patches. The neighbors have mangos in their yards, so it doesn't make sense that on the other side of the brick wall, I have none. Where's the completion in the turn of summer? -and similarly- Where's the fruit to show for the time I've been here at school? I've dreamt so long about finishing this school year with a great finale, like a brilliant sun-rise (you know, the kind that Sigur Rós is always mewing about). Instead, the end of school comes like any other day: exceedingly normal. In fact, I have plenty of boring grading to fill up my last week.

It's like waiting for the sunrise; you don't necessarily see it happen, because houses or hills block the east, but gradually you see it everywhere. The sky turns from ash to blue, undramatically, but it's nice to be feel it happen.


It's unrealistic (and generally unsatisfying) to have high-resolution endings. Things just end, heavy and unresolved. Maybe it's our task to create the meaning, to piece together disparaging and contradictory aspects of our life. Our experiences are like white dots on black paper, and like constellations, we have to decide where and how to draw the lines.

The act of waiting defines us more profoundly than the object of our waiting. It has been more meaningful to me to wait for mangos that never come, or to wait for an ending without trumpets and fireworks... and still more meaningful are the people that i have experienced this year with, other teachers and friends: waiting, keeping our eyes up and interested, concerned with the morning sky.



Photos: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2142511&l=59826&id=29705820

La Moskitia, Fin

Our arrival left us with a great sense of relief. We were in a small tropical town called Brus Laguna. One of the guys from Tegucigalpa was born there, and we all stayed in a hostel that his family runs. They bent over backwards to serve us, especially during the meals: typical Honduran beans and rice and platano, but with big bowls of shrimp. They even went out and shot a buffalo for us (which they pronounced boofalo), and we ate it practically three meals a day. We also chopped open coconuts to drink every day.
I woke up Sunday morning at 4:45 to church bells. I can't imagine that the service was actually beginning. I think the bells were significant in some aspect of holy week. We did make it to church that morning, but after breakfast and some hammock time. The church was clean and white, with green, yellow, and red ribbons, and palm branches were scattered on the floor. The service jumped between Spanish and the local language, Miskito. The Bibles and hymnals were all in Miskito, and the children's choir sang the Beatles' Let It Be in their native tongue. The women wore head coverings. The service felt increasingly hot and uncomfortable, and the wooden pews squeaked as people began to fidget.
On Monday, we left on lanchas again to the family's farm, Bella Vista.
How far away? I asked.
Close, they replied.
I've heard this before. The boat ride was three hours long, but incredibly scenic. We passed through more tight canals, and then into the choppy lagunas. We passed small canoes with men paddling bananas and coconuts back to town. We landed on an absolutely deserted muddy coast with small shrubs and tall grasses. The farm was about 3,000 acres, but this is difficult to say for sure; I wonder if there are actually property lines, or if it is all just empty, uninhabited land? That night was, in Moritz Thomsen's words, 'furiously beautiful'. The horizon was smudged orange with fires. The moon was out, and we walked out to a swamp to spot crocodiles. With a flashlight, their eyes have a red glint, and they don't move at all. One of the farmers took a noose to catch one, but was never successful. The crocodile always zipped off.
Within minutes of walking back, it began to pour. Evidently, getting wet was unavoidable on this trip. We had a tarp set up with mosquito nets strung beneath. I slept fitfully that night, because I was wet, and the storms moved in and out dramatically. There was a consistent drizzle, with intermittent sheets of rain and thunder. Rain funnelled down from the tarp as if in gutters, and into our shoes and clothes.
I woke early that morning, put on my Chacos and went to the little mud hut kitchen. The women worked inside in darkness, and they revolved around a pan with a wood fire. They gave me a cup of coffee, and I went out through a strip of coconut trees. The morning was still trying to push through the sluggish cloudcover like a yawn that just won't come. I found a group of men milking cows, and they told me to bring my cup over. They filled it up with raw milk, which is warm and frothy. It is primarily a dairy farm, and they make cheese, since there is no refrigeration, and milk wouldn't survive the long ride back to Brus Laguna. For meals at the farm, they served us big squares of crumbly cheese to go with our beans and rice. Not the best food, but at the time it felt so solid and elemental. Like vitamins, it goes down with a satisfying gulp.
On our last day in Brus Laguna, we met up with the health director of the community. She gave us a tour of a neighborhood and introduced children who had medical problems that could not be fixed without outside intervention. She said the AIDS rate in the region was 45%, but the effects haven't set in yet. There's much work to be done. I don't have much more to say about this now, except that it makes teaching English seem unimportant.
We stayed up late that night, playing soccer on concrete courts and drinking our last coconuts. We got up at 5 a.m. in the morning, stuffed our bags full, and went to the dock to meet our boat. Just as the world at Brus Laguna appeared for us a few days before, it was now setting beneath swampy forest as we sailed away.

Every step that we took away from Siguatepeque was just another step to be retraced, another dot on the map that we would pass through again. A mirror image bent around five days. And I realize that my time here in Honduras is just a number of steps from home. I am waiting, waiting with the patience of those long, wet boat rides, to retrace my steps back home. The school year is closing quickly (9 weeks and counting), and then Siguatepeque will disappear on the horizon, too.

The ride home was different, in fact. I got quite dehydrated since we had no water, and came down with a fever and chills. At first I thought I had malaria, which I was happy to not experience.

Here's the link to the photos again-
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2129838&l=f7019&id=29705820

La Moskitia, Part Two

There are a few points that I missed in the last entry, so I will begin by backtracking. The chance to travel out to La Moskitia just fell into my lap. I heard about the trip through another teacher here, who is friends with a guy named Alfredo. Alfredo, who is Honduran but was born in Chicago, heads up Providence Ministries here in Siguatepeque. He runs an orphanage, and hosts lots of medical missions groups from the States. Alfredo wanted to see what medical needs were in La Moskitia, and figure out how to get a group out there.
I tagged along with Alfredo and a few members of his church, not knowing exactly what our plan was for the week. We met up with another group from Tegucigalpa, and so I was thrown in with lots of people that I didn't know previously. This was a good thing, of course. They spoke a very clear Spanish, and I had little trouble in keeping pace with the conversations.
There were a few North Americans tagging along with the Tegucigalpa group; young guys just out of high school. There was one in my truck who had just arrived the day before, and he looked utterly confused with everything that was happening. The thick clouds of dust gave him a nose bleed, and he had to wear a big hooded sweatshirt to keep from getting sunburn. He tried to wash the dust off of his face at one point, but it only redried in thick rivulets under his eyes like muddy tears.
We were bouncing down the road, which cut through perfect rows of stocky African palms, and all eight of us would pop off the wooden boards when we hit a bump, hover for a moment, and then land in more or less the same order. About two hours into the drive, the back bench gave a loud crack and split in half. Four of us were scattered into luggage and bags of bananas. The ride continued uncomfortably as we tried to do surfing numbers on the piles of sleeping bags. Eventually, I climbed out to stand on the back bumper and hold onto the side bars, which was the best way to ride.
The Caribbean was always close, but never in sight. We took a sharp left turn, and we were right on the sand, with an absolutely empty cerulean sea in front of us. We drove along the hard-packed sections of sand at around 50 miles per hour. We were sprayed by the sea, and the sand made us swerve and drift. There are endless miles of untouched coast. We drove for an hour and a half without seeing a single building. Only a few wirey Garifuna fisherman wandered the beach.
We drove as far east as possible. Where the road ends, the rivers begin. There were three boats waiting for us: long wooden lanchas with motors that held about 15 people. They are similar, in shape and thickness, to a platano. We began what appeared to take 20 minutes; I could see the other side. Once again, the horizon stretched out further and further. We navigated through swampy channels under a canopy of trees, and then into open lagunas with land just barely discernible on the other side. And instead of a destination at the opposite end, we only found more channels. Look at the map below, the lagunas are above where it says 'Gracias A Dios'. After 4 more hours on the boat, we reached the town of Brus Laguna. Completely soaked and dehydrated, we dragged ourselves onto the dock. After a 12+ hour day of traveling, we had arrived!

The computer lab is closing, so I'll have to stop here. I promise these things will get briefer.

La Moskitia, Part One

Semana Santa began with an escape. I had set plans to leave Friday for La Moskitia, the remote eastern end of the country. However, my director decided our big Easter/ Father's Day/ Pool Day should be on the following Saturday. So I left with a mixture of excitement that comes with going somewhere new, and the anxiety of leaving some obligations behind. I wouldn't have stayed for anything, though. The opportunity to see the Moskito Coast was too rare and too tempting.

The bus came to my school an hour before classes ended, and I said to my assistant "Me voy!" as I ran out. I told Mr. Rodrigo, our P.E. teacher and forever-loyal Honduran, where I was going. As I stepped onto the bus, he said, "Mr. Brett, La Moskitia es Honduras." As in, there is no place one could go to find a better picture of what this country is, or what is once was.

The region gets its name, not from the bug, but from the natives' pronunciation of musket. However, the rumor is that there are sheets of mosquitos there, and it is an at-risk zone for Malaria. The Moskitos are a mix of natives and Spanish slaves. They have their own language, and have been largely unchanged unlike some other parts of the country.

We drove north to a coastal town called La Ceiba on Friday. It's hard to see on the map, but it is in the dip of coastline. Thinking that, being with a group of Hondurans, we would certainly take a Honduran pace on this trip. But no lazy morning at the beach; we got a wake up call a little past three A.M. We drove the bus as far east as we could, to a small town called Tocoa. By 8 o'clock, we had loaded all of our gear into 4 x 4 trucks. There were smelly gas cans tied to the back bumper. We sat on 2 boards, eight of us squeezing together for the next leg of the journey. Our drivers were Garifunas, escaped African slaves that made their own villages along the Caribbean. They drove fast, and would deflect any comment about our progress. The unchanging answer: just a little further. A little further, it turns out, was another 5 hours of some of the most incredible countryside I've seen.

And so the trip began. I had no idea how far we were going, or what to expect as a destination. Every leg of the journey contained several endless segments, but I got lost in the absolutely beautiful scenery that was flying by us peripherally. All I knew: we were close to the Caribbean, and we would arrive in La Moskitia by boat that afternoon.

Check back soon. The story continues.

See some of the photos here:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2129838&l=f7019&id=29705820

Velocity

Here's the latest:

Every weekend, we've been tearing up the highways on bikes: Carlos, the Canadians Noel and Mark, and myself. The mornings lie low and quiet, the mountains are covered in clouds, and there is less traffic. Since the region is mountainous, we go up in order to go down. Last week, we rode out to Lago de Yojoa, which is a giant lake right on the major route between Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula. We stopped at the lake, ate fish (fried with head and tail attached), hung out in hammocks, and acted pretty lazy. To avoid the arduous ride home, we caught a chicken bus that would let us stuff our bikes on board. A chicked bus has no chickens, but stuffs lots of people inside, so I guess it is like a chicken coop in that sense. They are generally hair-raising rides through the mountains.

This morning Carlos and I finally made the full ride to Comayagua, which is the old colonial capital of the country. The cathedral and park are popular for tourists. On the downhill sections of the ride, we were passing big buses and semis, which was satisfying after some hard riding earlier. When we got into the center of town, we cruised around the street market for a bit, eating cantaloupe, tortillas, and cheese. The ride was about 40km, so not too terribly long, but we're working up. It's amazing how long a day feels after a ride. We got to Comayagua by 9:30, and I felt like it must already be after noon.

Living in Boone got me stuck on the idea of human-powered pursuits, and right now that is most accessible through bicycling. I want to see much more of this country, and this is how I am doing it. I'd like to throw out a tentative offer on that note: I think I'll be here through July, so if anyone would be interested in coming for a visit, I could provide a place to stay and a bike. There's alot to see in this country, and traveling is pretty cheap (the exchange rate is 20 Lempiras to 1 dollar). So email me if you'd be interested!

In other news, Semana Santa is approaching, and I get a whole week off, which I welcome.
Finally, I've written a little about how it feels being here, a poem I guess.


Honduran Spanish

Streetlights bored yellow,
waiting every night in blurry loops
strung like cobwebs around lightbulbs

Taxis well-worn and seam-stressed
maneuver with the creak of old wood floors,
dip like rocking chairs over crushed asphalt

Damp Spanish,
damp heavy h's hang
on words, pull them head-
long like a stack of papers
spilling from a countertop
in a unified flop and scatter

Cacahuates, alcitrones, fresco:
toted through shaky aisles,
suspended baggies of fruit
bulging and knotted

Spanish thick and wet and sticky
like bubble gum it pops all over lips,
chewed up, blown again
into a tremedous, soggy pouch of air.



Check out some pictures of the excursions here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2125016&l=c4c0b&id=29705820

Serenades

Friday was Women's Day in Honduras, and most schools make a big fuss about it. At my school, we have about 15 women on staff, and an unbalanced 5 men. There were flowers and cake and speeches. Earlier that morning, I got up at 4 a.m. to meet two other teachers, Rodrigo and Ronmel, in a borrowed taxi cab. It rained the night before, and leaving my house in a hurry, I slipped off of my porch and fell into a stack of roofing tiles down below, breaking a few. I was fine. Ronmel brought his guitar and lyrics to songs with him. Our mission was to sing serenades to all the women from school.

It was a silly affair, due to our lack of sleep and tiptoeing around houses. We ruined some perfectly good songs that morning, but I think that's part of the fun. Spanish love songs are ridiculous by means of exaggeration, and it's hard not to laugh when you're singing about roses at dawn. We would serenade outside of the gate, and then run to the cab, giggling and dodging puddles.

I really like all of the teachers at this school. They are impressive people, and it's exciting and different to share these times with them.

Returning to Honduras

My plane flight back to Honduras didn´t go as planned. I made the mistake of flying late on the Sunday before classes started. The schedule said that I would be in San Pedro Sula at 12:40 AM. As it turned out, I walked out of the San Pedro airport terminal at 4 AM. Never trust Spirit Air to be punctual.

My hostel was a tremendous help, however. The owner, Luis, picked me up at the airport at 4 o´clock and didn´t complain a bit. He and his wife Blanca run the hostel. In the morning, they made me coffee and got me to the bus station. San Pedro Sula is the city where you don´t want to be lost or alone, and I am incredibly grateful for Luis´help. I imagine he slept a few hours that night on account of me, and they only charged me $16 for the airport pickup.
The busride back to Siguatepeque was arduous... it took about 4 hours, and I would drift in and out of sleep, waking each time to some new eccentricity. One time it was a man standing in the aisle making a long sales pitch about some miracle vitamins that cure high blood pressure and body odor at the same time (only 100 little Lempiras!).

I succeeded in missing the first day of school, and took a short nap that afternoon. But I have a class assistant now! No more 27 vs. 1. Really, two teachers are so much better than one.
This past Saturday I went on bike ride towards La Esperanza with my friend Carlos. It is a difficult ride, with steep and sustained uphills, but we rode back down to Siguatepeque in a quarter of the time. The downhills were of the sort that make tears stream out of your eyes. ¡A la muerte!

Later that night, I rode out to a party at a discoteque/ cafe to meet some friends. The guards wouldn´t let me chain my bike up inside the front yard, so I chained it to a metal post just down the street. Later that night, I went to get it, and there was nothing on the post. I frantically searched, as if it could be somehow hidden in the shadows, but it was gone. I came to Honduras expecting to be robbed, but all the same, it came as a shock.
The walk home was about 50 minutes. 15 minutes out from my house, a thin guy, maybe 25 years old, ran up to me. I thought this was strange, so I asked ¿Qué tal?...What's up? He said, after some small talk,

"My two friends back there want to rob you."
"What? Are you serious?"

The strange thing was how he was telling me about this. Was he trying to warn me, or what? I tried to stay calm, but it was an uncomfortable situation. I told him that I was going to a friends house, and cut down the next street close to where Carlos lives. The thin guy said something like "No, walk with me," but he didn't follow me. One of his friends threw a rock, which bounced off the ground and hit me in the leg. They all ran off giggling. I think they were drunk and wanted to play around.
It was enough to shake me up emotionally. And if my bike wasn´t stolen, I wouldn´t have been harrassed. Oh, well, new lessons and new stories to tell.

Feel free to keep in touch!
Email: brett.bort@gmail.com

Letters:
Brett Donahue
Del Sol Montessori Bilingual School.
Calle 21 de Agosto, Aptdo. #194
Siguatepeque, Honduras, C.A.

I will try to upload a video from the bike ride soon.
It was great to see some of you in December!