Photos of Copan

House at the end of the street..........View from the the roof...............View to the right from the
in the middle is where I stayed........of the house where I stayed....................roof.








Roof-top café serving................... The little 3 wheeled taxis.......... View from the mountain across
Café Welchez with a view................. used in the town.................. the Copan River, towards town









Copan River (color cafe) ..................Copan River .......................................Copan ruins

More ruins ......................................Wild Macaws outside ..................This was in the bird park
.........................................................the ruins








Also in the bird park .....................The river going through ..............Macaw in the park
...............................................the bottom of the bird park

Last Day in Copan

I am enjoying my last day of vacation here in Copan. Today was the rainiest day yet here. I rains just about every afternoon late in the day or evening but today it started about 2.30 pm. There is no colin on this keyboard! So today was a good day to enjoy Cafe Welchez in a cafe and check the score of the Hokie's game on the internet. Hokies won!
I went to the ruins yesterday and enjoyed walking around on 1300 year old rock building formations. It is amazing that they really don't limit you from walking on most of the ruins, only a few are off limits. I did not make it on the Cafe Welchez tour this week. They are charging $30 now and I was told it is not coffee season so you won't see the harvesting and processing part anyway. But I did spend pleanty of time in the Cafe Welchez cafe here in town. An interesting observation: I am in the town where Cafe Welchez is located and their coffee plantation is only a short distance from here, yet they sell their Cafe Welchez for more than it costs in the stores in San Pedro Sula. 65 lempira here vs. 50 lempira in SPS. This is really a touristy area and everything seems to cost more so that is probably the reason but I was expecting a bargain at the outlet store which was not to be.
I head back to the Casa tomorrow in time for the kids to have 3 days vacation. Monday is independence day, Sept. 15, Tuesday is also a holiday for independence day, and Wed. is the day of the teacher. Given their strike for almost the entire month of July and some of August I was surprised they still got a day of celebration, but go figure. Thankfully most of the kids at the casa get to go to private school for free so only a handful are affected by teacher strikes and days off. I will get some photos posted soon after I get back to the heat. It has been enjoyable here with lower temps due to the mountains, but I am looking forward to seeing all the kids again.

Futbol (soccer)

There was a great celebration here and around the country last night when Honduras beat Jamaca in the first world cup qualifications. Honduras won 2-0. The game was broadcast on a large screen in the center of town here. You could hear a very loud cheer each time a goal was scored. After the game was over, you could hear lots of fireworks and there was a spontaneous parade of cars and taxis, about 10 minutes long driving around the town up and down all the streets honking their horns and yelling. The parade of cars passed our house twice.
Honduras beat Canada 2-1 last Saturday so they are now solidly in 2nd place in their bracket with 6 points where the top two teams advance to the next round. Canada and Jamaca each have one point and are tied for 3rd place. Futbol is the national passtime here to this is huge for them. Ironically, the Honduan star of both games and new national hero, Ramon Nunez, who scored 3 goals, was born in Honduras but has live most of his life in the U.S., going to school and college in Texas and playing a few years in the MLS before returning here last year.

I`m in Copan

After being here in Honduras for more than a year without doing any traveling other than my visits to see Maynor at the other orphanage, NPH, near Tegucigalpa, it was time for me to get away for a little bit. Juan was sick two weeks ago and thus I was sick last week and Masbey told me to take a vacation to rest so the time was right. I decided to finally visit Copan, the town of Mayan ruins everyone goes to visit except me in the past 6 years. I took the chicken bus to get here. They call it that because it is very slow, stops all along the way, and occasionally people carry livestock onboard. Yesterday I was thinking it was just the slow bus to Copan when about half way through the trip a lady got on the bus with a box full of baby chickens cherpping away. So it literally was the chicken bus yesterday.
Copan is really quaint and pretty in the mountains. I am staying with a family that I just met yesterday. $12 a day for a room in their house with 3 meals included. When you are living on donations from other people you can´t go staying at the Mayan Grand Plaza. They are very nice and the house is very nice and modern also. Rob will appreciate this one: This morning for breakfast they made Folgers coffee. Here I am staying in the prime coffee growing area of Honduras where Cafe Welchez and Cafe Copan are both produced and they serve Folgers! I plan on going to the Cafe Welchez plantation for the tour and sampelling on Wed.

During the mornings I am studying Spanish with a lady here in town and I will be using my afternoons to be a tourist for the first time. I did not bring the cable to hook up my camera to a comuter so I will have to post photos after I return to the casa this weekend.

Van Resolved

The insurance company finally settled the claim for the van that was stolen in February. The original van was a large Nissan that could carry just about all of the kids. It was exactly like many of the local bus routs use all over town, thus was a high theft item. We had it exactly one month before it was stolen. The insurance company paid 70% of the purchase price for the insurance claim. Insurance here is not what it is in the U.S. While my former employer GEICO would have probably deducted a little from the cost, they would have paid a lot more than 70% for a one month old vehicle.
The one nice thing the insurance company did was to give a list of vans sold here and which are high theft ones and which are not in demand for theft. They indicated the smaller vans are not stolen nearly as much because they are not big enough to use for he public buses. Thus the decision was made to buy a smaller Hundai van as the replacement. We do not have it yet, but my understanding is that while it is smaller, it can still carry the kids that go to school in one trip and will serve all the needs for transporting them. It won't be big enough to carry all the kids from the casa at one time, to the beach for example, but it is rare that they all go out at one time. We rented a school bus the one time we went to the beach this year and it worked out great so that will be the plan for the future.











What the New Van Will Be

Van Same as the Stolen Van
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New Painting

This is the newest addition to the wall paintings in the main casa. This was done by Alesia, one of the summer volunteers from Notre Dame. They returned to the U.S. in August after spending 8 weeks living and working at the casa with the kids. Included in the photo is my ever present shadow Juan-Fernando.

My Plant Project

This weekend I parted ways with my Papaya plant project. Back in March, as an experiment I planted some papaya seeds that I took out of the fruit that we bought and ate. Mama Laura told me that it would only take about a year for a papaya plant to become fully grown and bear fruit. I thought it would be a nice agricultural project for the boys to help out with and learn a little about planting. The first two photos are of our plants taken on April 11th when they were in a 2 litre coke bottle and clorox bottle.












Recently, the plants had gotten too big for the new pots they have been in and were ready to go in the ground. We don't have an area at our house to put these where they would be safe so I decided to give them to Masbely, Eva and Sandra to put in the yard of their house, reserving all rights to the first fruit. The photos below were taken on Sunday before we took the plants to their house.













This is the yard where we planted them. The other plant is a little farther up in the yard out of the picture. Papaya plants with fruit are usually only about 6-7 feet tall. So if Laura's projection for 1 year is correct, we should be eating some sweet papayas in March.