Three weeks in. Yesterday, Saturday the 19th, H18 went to Tegus early and went through Immigration. The 53 of us were there from 9-12, and we almost all were processed. They were open just for us, but their computers went down near the end. We went to lunch and went back afterwards for the last 8 people to finish. We all now have residency cards and a resident stamp in our passports.
Lunch was awesome. We went to a strip where there are 8 or 10 American restaurants. Sam and I had a deep dish Hawaiian at Pizza Hut, while others ate at Popeyes, BK, McDs, or Wendys. Jeff also got a Pollo Spicy and Frosty to go. We spent L230 at Pizza Hut, which is only about $11, but we are only making L58 each a day, so it was a big splurge. 2 days of income on one lunch, but so delicious. (Sam says her stomach disliked American food more than anything else she’s eaten in Honduras)
About 23 of the aspirates are participating in a March Madness pool here. We get two different ESPNs here that pick and choose what they want to show, and one has been showing the CBS feed dubbed in Spanish so we have been able to see a few games. Sam currently has the best bracket. One of my brackets took a hit when Pitt lost, I had them in the final four, but my other bracket is still looking pretty good. We are hoping that the VCU-Perdue game today is the top game in that timeslot so we can watch; the last game we were able to watch was the CAA title game.
This Wednesday, the 23rd, we leave Zarabanda for Field Based Training. Jeff and the rest of Salud will be in Villa de San Antonio, near La Paz while Sam and the rest of Negocios will train in Yuscaran (departamento de El Paraiso). We will be in those cities for 7 weeks of more technical and language training. They are a ways apart, but we will be able to travel one way or the other on several of the weekends to visit each other. Jeff is looking forward to having to use more Spanish at home without Sam around to be the ‘good’ speaker. We are also wondering what it will be like, as we have a great host family here in Zarabanda, with good food, a hot shower and a washing machine. Our clothes are holding up pretty well, but not having a drier means that our jeans are slowly stretching out. We’ll see how we do if we have to actually wash them in the pila at our next house (most people do laundry by scrubbing their clothes against a concrete block).
More pictures up on Facebook. I might figure out how to post them here once we get more regular internets.

Jeff