Happy Thanksgiving and a few other thoughts

We had a very nice Día de Acción de Gracias. It is, of course, not a holiday here, since the Pilgrims landed elsewhere, so you don´t have to worry about buying last minute things that you need any time of day on Thursday. We had an excellent turkey dinner with several other PCV´s and a Honduran friend. It was an amazingly successful effort to recreate a pretty traditional Thanksgiving dinner, with most of the same things, turkey, stuffing, potatoes, vegetable caseroles, cranberries, pies and more, that we would have had at home. It did seem a little odd that the rest of the community was paying no attention to the event, but we felt very thankful nonetheless.

Please don´t worry about whether or not John was able to see a couple of football games for the holiday, including the Texas victory over the forces of darkness. Santa Rosa has a very extensive cable tv system, with more than 100 channels, including networks from Honduras, Mexico, Chile, Argentina, Guatemala, El Salvador, Germany and the U.S. Included among the U.S. networks are a couple of ESPN channels and Fox Sports. Most of them are in Spanish, but one of the ESPN networks and one of the CNN networks are in English and several of the movie channels show a mix of movies in English. This was something that we did not expect in our Peace Corps experience.

Another thing that we did not expect to find was decent Chinese food, as it usually does not translate well in most of the Spanish speaking places that we have visited previously. But Santa Rosa has a good Chinese place that we like. There is also another one that is supposed to be pretty good which also has motorcyle home delivery which we will have to try soon. So far we have not gotten any menus under our door, but perhaps that will be coming soon. There is also a Cuban resturant here that we like and we celebrated our recent anniversary there with a very good meal.

Thanks to Peace Corp, I have now read War and Peace, which I might not have gotten through back home. It offers quite a lot of insight on many topics and a huge story. While I can´t be as quite effusive as many, and may not call it the single greatest novel of all time, it is certainly worth reading the next time you have time for about 1400 pages.

This is the election weekend, with the voting for President, Congressional deputies and mayors on Sunday. We are hopeful that this will provide an opportunity to end some of the on-going political problems. We do not sense much tension in our area, but there are concerns that there may be some actions elsewhere in the country. We have been directed to stay near our homes this weekend, not to travel on the highways and to be prepared for possible curfews again. It does not seem likely that the elections will really be disrupted, but there may be some sporadic violence or demonstrations. Former President Zelaya, who has been living in the Brazilian Embasy for more that two months now, would seem likely to do something before too long, as well. The candidates were all selected long before the change in government last summer, have seemed to run pretty unimpeded campaigns with very heavy tv advertising, and seem likely to get a pretty good turn out. We don´t expect much to happen, but we are becoming more accustomed to the unexpected, the longer we are here. We will let you know what occurred soon.