Honduras: Week 3

Allergies? Seriously? Other than mild seasonal allergies, The Kid has never shown any sign of allergies. Until now. Of course, at home, I could think about what new thing had been introduced just recently. But here, there are lots of new things. Where would I even start?

We'll probably have no idea what caused the crazy rash that covered most of her body. It was red and itchy, started slowly on Friday and by Sunday was covering her. At that point, we went to the pharmacy and asked for something for allergies. There is no wandering the aisles of a pharmacy here like at home. You walk in, there is a counter, you tell them what you want (in whatever Spanish you have), they give something to you, and you pay. As it turns out, what they had was liquid loratadine (generic Claritin) with dosing instructions in both Spanish and English. I would have preferred Benadryl, but took what I could get. Whether it was the medicine or the rash resolving itself, it did get much better in the days to follow.

After a cool weekend, the weather heated back up. I like the warmth, so no problem for me! The Kid was happy for the excuse to go for ice cream in the park. Ice cream bars cost around 15 lempiras (US$0.75) and a small ice cream cone costs 5 lempiras (US$0.25). Tuesday was hot enough that the ice cream would have melted before it could be eaten, so we opted for licuados instead. Licuados are fresh fruit, sugar, water, and ice blended together and absolutely wonderful.

Climbing trees is a great pasttime no matter what the country!

As before, school is great but uneventful. The Kid is learning to conjugate irregular verbs. I'm learning how to use the past tense. We get a lot more practice now in our homestay. We talk to people at the table over meals. The Kid plays with the seven year old. (The seven year old goes to the bilingual school and is reasonably fluent in English, but happy to operate mostly in Spanish with The Kid, so it works well. They start with Spanish and if there is difficulty, they try flipping into English.)

On Saturday, we headed to the hot springs. Soaking in warm water for three hours was a bit much for The Kid, who kept wanting to move around and splash, so I felt like I spent all my time trying to corral her and zero of my time relaxing. The night before, it rained, making the rural roads muddy and difficult for the van driver to navigate, meaning the "40 minute ride"each way turned into an 80 minute ride each way. Overall, I have to say between the long ride and corralling The Kid, this excursion was more of a bust. We did both like the natural mud bath.