My trip comes to an end

Sometimes keeping up-to-date with your travel blog can be harder than traveling itself. I haven't updated since my misadventures in El Salvador and the mountains of Guate, but not to worry-- I made it out alive and I am now back in the United States.

Between my stalled bus outside of Quetzaltenango, Guatemala and my airplane's touchdown in early February in San Francisco were some of the most interesting and rewarding parts of my 7-month journey. I'll do my best to recount the highlights.

Quetzaltenango, Guatemala (Part II)

On the roof of El Nahual with Enrique, my old English student

Returning to 'Xela' felt like coming full-circle. At the beginning of my trip, I spent a month and a half in Xela studying Spanish, volunteering, and living with a host family. I arrived as a true rookie, with only my high school Spanish skills and a Lonely Planet guidebook. This time around, the LP stayed in the pack. I met up with old friends, visited my host family (including their brand new addition to the clan), and stopped by El Nahual, my amazing Spanish school.

My host mom, Ely, with 2-month old Ricardo

The one thing that had changed dramatically was the weather! Xela is high in the mountains which keeps it fairly cool, even in July. But now in January, my sweatshirt and sweater made their first appearances in a long time. The best part for me was being able to fully communicate in Spanish with all my old friends. Language was not something I had to worry about anymore. It was a great feeling to just sit and talk, whereas before all my conversations felt like language practice.

Reuniting with the Germans

Me, Niels, Marius, and Ben at a gas station in Guate

From Quetzaltenango, I headed North towards the Mexican border, Chiapas, and the city of San Cristóbal de las Casas. At a gas station just outside of Xela, my good traveling karma officially came back.

As I was waiting for the arrival of the tourist bus that would take me to the Mexican border, I ran into three of my good friends from Honduras. Marius, Benedikt, and Niels are from Germany and are doing their year of national service in Honduras. Ben works at an orphanage in El Progreso, and Niels and Marius are stationed closer to the El Salvador border. We spent our winter vacation together in the Bay Islands and had talked about meeting up in Mexico in January, but seeing them was on the of the most random things that happened during the whole trip. To end up at the same gas station, at the same time, in the same small part of Guatemala..... And on we went to San Cristóbal


More updates tomorrow!

Traveling is not easy

The Nasman family likes to say that travel "is only glamorous in retrospect." The past 8 days have been anything but glamorous. I suffered through a bad cold, long uncomfortable bus rides, and in general, just plain bad luck.

My bus breaks down in the mountains between Guatemala City and Xela

Being sick is never fun but it is truly tough when traveling alone. I just didn't have the energy you need to enjoy the fun parts and the challenging parts of experiencing a new country.

I believe that good luck played a large part in my first 6 months in Central America. I got off the plane in June with only a vague plan and yet somehow found a terrific language school in Guatemala and an amazing community in Honduras with OYE and my job at Best American School. So perhaps karma is now evening things out a bit.

I lost a $100 bill somewhere on my first day in San Salvador. I wasted hours trying to navigate the convoluted bus system of the city, being sent to one place then another by my out-of-date guidebook and well-meaning people on the street. On Sunday, I planned on going to the beach. But with the El Salvador national elections being held that day, no buses were in service to the coast, a fact I discovered after searching all over town for the correct bus terminal. I then got on a bus whose driver promised to stop close to my hotel but continued to the furthest reaches of the city until I realized I should probably just get off and figure out where I was.

Leaving El Salvador for Guatemala, my bad luck continued. At the border stop, a money changer jipped me for about $20. Then my express bus to Quetzaltenango broke down in the mountains. After waiting half an hour, my fellow passengers and I flagged down a passing bus and I spent the rest of the journey reliving my chicken bus days (three to a seat in a decommissioned school bus)

I admit the past week put some doubts in my abilities as a backpacker. (I thought I was good at this!!) But you learn to take it in stride and remember that at least in retrospect, this will all seem glamorous.

El Salvador

I don´t have anytime left at the internet cafe to say much, so I´ll leave you with pictures of the Palacio Nacional, the inside of a cool church with stained glass windows and one of my favorite foods and an El Salvador specialty, the pupusa. Also, I don´t know why this is typing in underline mode. Sorry.

Nicaragua

The Cathedral in León, Nicaragua; the largest in Central America

It has been a bit of a whirlwind but in just 7 days I traveled from El Progreso in Honduras, south to Nicaragua where I visited León, Managua, and Granada; then back North to see San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador. A bad cold sapped my traveler´s energy a bit but I persevered to check out Nicaragua´s colonial cities. León and Granada both have the stone-paved roads and old churches that I saw in Antigua, Guatemala. But unlike the air-brushed beauty in Antigua, in Nica I got the sense that real people lived and worked here in these cities. It meant that things like trash, street dogs, pollution, markets, and general life were out in full view.

Parque Central in Granda, Nicaragua

Nicaragua was not too big of a change after 5 months in Honduras. The poverty is about the same, although the border town in which I entered was very underdeveloped. The Córdoba is worth a bit more than the Lempira but not by much. The food is better in Honduras, perhaps because they don´t make baleadas in Nicaragua. I only spent a total of 4 nights here and I didn´t get a grasp on what Nicaragua is about but I caught a glimpse. The national sports are baseball and boxing. The country is gorgeous but with many environmental problems. Definitely a place I´d love to go back to, but next time without the head cold.

On the road again

I have once again joined the ranks of the backpackers. After 5 months in El Progreso, Honduras I left my job, my friends, and my community behind on Sunday and hopped on a bus towards Nicaragua. For a wrap-up of my time in El Progreso you can check out the OYE blog: oyehonduras.blogspot.com

My pack (much heavier than before) and I now find ourselves in León, Nicaragua, a colonial city about 2 hours from the Southern Honduran border. As usual, my plan is a bit short on details but I want to hop around here for a few days and then backtrack north to travel through El Salvador (checking out the pacific coast surfing on the way). After some time on the beach, I will pass through Quetzaltenango once again to visit my host family and then it´s on to the real adventure: a stint in Mexico City.

Some friends have asked me, why Mexico City? To this I can safely answer, I don´t really know. I have a job connection there which will hopefully lead to me teaching English and making a bit more than the 7,000 Lempiras ($350/month) I was raking-in in Progreso. I also have friends there that I want to see, and I believe I miss the culture, the bustle, and the crowds of people that I experienced in NYC. I´m definitely not going to Mexico City for the air quality.

I already miss the life I left behind in Honduras, but I hope that this part of my trip turns-up just as many adventures as the last.

Feliz Navidád desde Roatán, Honduras

Yo pasé el primer Navidád sin mi familia en la isla de Roatán aquí en Honduras. Aunque extrañe mi familia, me sentí feliz para estar con mi amiga Erin y su familia en un lugar tan bonito; relajando y tomando el sol por las playas blancas. Les deseo a todos mis amigos un feliz navidad y prospero año nuevo. Nos vemos en 2009!

El arbol navideño artificial que llevamos al hotel. Santa nos visitó!

Final Days in El Progreso

I arrived in Honduras in August planning to stay one month. Now after five months in El Progreso I will be leaving in January for Mexico City.

Earlier in December I said goodbye to my teachers and students at Best American school and on the 20th I spent my last day as an OYE volunteer. OYE held it's "Entrega de Becas," a welcome event for our new crop of scholarship students which brings our group to a total of 75 youths.

At the event, my radio students provided me with one of my proudest moments at OYE. The group planned their 6th radio show to be a year-in-review and also coverage of the scholarship event. With only a little prompting from me, the radio crew scoured the room for interviews with new students, parents, and OYE staff members, and interviewed themselves about their experiences in the program. The group of audio editors took care of the sound and our music group presented their top 5 songs of the year. After months of teaching them what I know about radio (in Spanish, which was no easy task) I was overwhelmed to see them put it into practice with such ease.

The OYE radio group

There were times when the radio students struggled to keep their focus and when our weekly meetings were not as productive as I would have hoped. But on my last day I could feel the energy and passion of the kids and I wish that I could spend another five months helping them towards the goal of a live over-the-air radio broadcast.

OYE was what brought me to El Progreso and although i also found a job teaching at a local high school in the mornings, OYE was where my heart is, and I will miss my radio students the most.

Last Day of School

After four long, hard, fantastic, challenging, frustrating, joyous, and certainly interesting months teaching at Best American School in El Progreso, Honduras, I now arrive at my last day of school! Tomorrow I will say goodbye to my students and fellow teachers and leave behind a community that I never imagined I would find here in Honduras.

Riding the x-ray bike at the San Pedro Sula Plantetarium with BAS

Since my first day of work in early September I had to overcome plenty of hurdles for example:

a lack of textbooks, no prior curriculum, no teacher guidebooks, zero experience teaching high school on my part, 200 energetic P.E. students from pre-kinder to 11th grade, communication problems within the school, and apathetic 10th-grade students doing their best to resist my efforts to communicate why sociology and psychology (and later physics and chemistry) are worth studying.

But the joys have outweighed the hardships:

wonderful teachers to help me along, $7,000 Lempiras/month to help pay my expenses and extend my stay here in Honduras, 200 energetic P.E. students from pre-kinder to 11th grade, slowly learning the name of each of my students and then greating each one when I see them throughout the day, running into teachers, students, and parents everywhere I go in downtown Progreso, my wonderful 11th graders,reliving high school (albeit it from the view of a teacher in a central american country), and experiencing all the things that make Honduran culture different, vibrant, and alive.

It has been an experience that I will never forget.

Stephanie and Dulce (in the background) on the bus to Zizima water park

Two of my 10th-graders, Ivis and Noam

OYE el Ritmo update

Every afternoon I arrive at the OYE office to help with homework, give English lessons, and just do whatever is needed. But Fridays are when the action really gets going with the weekly meetings of OYE el Ritmo, OYE´s youth radio program. I am the head of the project--teaching the art of radio to 15 scholarship students and helping them put together internet radio programs. So far we have a total of 5 pilot episodes and the students are starting to make visits to a local radio station to get aquainted with live radio and even join the DJ on the air.

Two weeks ago I planned an audio scavenger hunt for the class. The students split into two groups, each with an audio recorder and a list of 30 sounds to find, ranging from a dog barking, to a toilet flushing. On the OYE blog you can read (in Spanish) the students´ own accounts of the ¨busqueda de tesoros¨ plus see some of the pictures they took as well. In addition, on the right hand side of the blog, you can listen to streaming audio of our pilot episodes!

The OYE blog: oyehonduras.blogspot.com

Progress in Progreso

Some photos from recent happenings in Honduras.

The last day of school for one of my best friends in El Progreso, Alicia. She got me the job teaching at the Best American School and left for her hometown Chicago, and then Portugal. Her 10th graders now have me as their chemistry and physics teacher.

Because I am now teaching 10th grade science I am no longer the school´s P.E. teacher! I´m going to miss my kindergarten class but not so much the roudy 1st and 2nd graders...

Nima (in the black shirt) worked with OYE in 2007 and came back for a month this summer to help out with the transition process into 2009. Nima speaks 5 languages, is originally from Iran but his family lives in Sweden, and he was basically broke after traveling around Brazil for 4 months. So he decided to enter a baleada (Honduras´s official snack food) eating contest to vie for a prize of 500 Lempiras. He managed to eat 4 1/2 in 2 minutes but the big guy on the right ended up winning with a 3 round total of something like 23!

I was a bit politics obsessed (just ask my roommates) for the last months of this year´s election. Although we dont have cable in our house, my fellow volunteers andI used a projector and an internet connection to watch the live feeds of the presidential debates and of course the election night coverage!

Best American School

According to my original travel plans, by now I should be standing on the sidelines of a high school football game in New Jersey. But the cool thing about traveling by yourself is that you can go where fate takes you. I first came to Honduras in August planning to volunteer for a month and a half with a youth program. But after being here for a bit, I realized I wanted to stay longer and I found a job as a teacher at a bilingual school here in El Progreso. So at least for the time being I have made the switch from TV sports reporter to sociology, psychology, physics and P.E. teacher.


The school is called ¨Best American School,¨ a private bilingual school with about 200 students. I teach all of my classes in English--psych, physics and sociology to the 10th grade and P.E. to the entire school including kindergarten. This could turn out to be one of the toughest things I¨ve done. The hours are long and early: I wake up at 5:30am every day to be at school by 7:00. Classes end at 1:00 and then I work with the OYE radio program from 2:00-5:00. And the job is demanding: i'm teaching subjects I haven¨t studied for a long time, plus trying to get 22 1st graders to pay attention to you in P.E. class in a second lesson is a challenge to say the least.


But Im happy I made the decision to stay longer. Not everyone gets the chance to just put everything back home on hold and although I miss everyone back in the states, I know I made the right choice.

First Pilot

Let´s see if this works

OYE la Radio

OYE Radio is on the air!

I arrived in El Progreso, Honduras on August 9th and last friday I helped the OYE radio program record their second pilot episode. The broadcast included an interview with famous Honduran singer Guillermo Anderson, commentary on the Honduran education system, local news, national and international sports, and the top 5 songs in Honduras.

We have about 20 kids in the program, including a handful learning the production and editing side of radio. I helped the sports department write their report, tought proper vocal delivery and a few warmup exercises to the news and commentary crew and gave my perspective on how to put together a radio broadcast. It's amazing to find a way to volunteer with something that I am so familiar with, but there are times when I wish I could express what I want to say in English!

The kids are all very dedicated and have lots of talent. We'll be recording an episode every two weeks and by mid September we should be ready to make our debut on Radio Progreso, the local radio station, and on the internet.

The OYE sports department

More from Guatemala

I spent 5 weeks in Quetzaltenango learning spanish with 4 amazing Spanish teachers. (from left to right, Mariela, Angel, Mariana, and Juan Ramon) On my last day they handed me a certificate of graduation from my school, El Nahual. It definitely doesn't mean i'm fluent--i'll be practicing even more during my month in Honduras--but it was a concrete sign of my progress. None of my teachers knew more than a few words in English which made my 4-hour, 1-on-1 classes challenging but all the more rewarding. Each had their own strengths, accents, teaching styles, and topics of conversation. Overall, I couldn't have asked for a better team to learn from!

OYE! ...In Honduras

Mayan ruins in Copan, Honduras

I have left my friends and Guate-family behind in Quetzaltenango and I am now in El Progreso, Honduras.  I will be here for at least the next month volunteering with OYE's many projects here in Progreso, mainly their radio program.

The first thing I noticed about Honduras is that it is HOT.  During the day it is consistently about 95 degrees with humidity.  Sweat, sun, and heat are a part of life although somehow the Hondurans manage to wear jeans, shoes and long sleeve shirts while I soak through my shorts and t-shirt.  It will definitely be a transition from the

 cool climate of Xela.

But so far I love the culture, the food, and the people here in Honduras.  There is a lot of work to be done with OYE and I can't wait to dig in.

Reggaeton group performing in San Pedro Sula, one of the biggest cities in Honduras.  The group was promoting positive messages and safe streets in Honduras.

The sign that greeted me when I entered a bank in Copan, Honduras.

3 hours, 1.5 liters of water, and 10 tortillas after we started, some friends and I scaled the tallest volcano in Quetzaltenango, Santa Maria. The peak is about 2 miles above sea level so we were all struggling to catch our breath and had to make several rest stops along the way. From the top we had amazing views of Xela, surrounding towns and mountains plus we watched as a live volcano nearbye erupted. Well worth the sore legs the next day.

A few more fotos of my familia

Luisito, my guatebrother, is in the spiderman outfit. Yoshi, and his other cousin are usually over at our house playing on the terrace.

¡Buen Provecho!

In Spanish, ¨buen provecho¨ basically means bon appetit! This phrase involves one of my favorite customs in Guatemala. At the dinner table, when you´re done eating you say, ¨muchas gracias¨, and everyone else responds ¨buen provecho.¨ Everyday at breakfast, lunch, and dinner, I´ll thank my family for the meal, and they´ll always respond with ¨buen provecho!¨

Also, in Guatemala, lunch is the main meal of the day. At about 12:00, the streets are full with kids returning home from school and people walking from work to make it home in time to eat with their family. Stores close for a few hours and everyone sits down for a big meal. Then at about 2:30, things go back to normal. It is a bit like the Spanish siesta, but people actually do go back to work here.

The picture is of a food cart near Xela´s soccer stadium. (I was going to post a picture of an entire roasted pig, but figured this one was a bit more vegetarian friendly) I ordered a plate that came with tortillas, carne asada, grilled onions, salsa and a Gallo (Guate´s national beer) and it all cost about 30 Quetzales, less than 4 bucks.

My Guatefamilia

While I may have left behind my family in California (hi mom!) I was lucky enough to meet an amazing Guatefamilia here in Quetzaltenango. As part of my Spanish studies, I am living with a Guatemalan host family: Elyda, 30, Luis, 29 and their two kids, Ale, 10, and Luis, (above) 5.

In many ways, they are similar to a typical American family: Luisito loves to play soccer and videogames, Ale watches Disney channel religiously, while Ely and Luis give homework help, cook delicious meals and send the kids off to bed.

However with current economic conditions in Guatemala, my family, like others here, still struggles to pay the bills. The $40 per week that I pay for food and lodging is the main source of income. Luis, though very qualified, has trouble finding consistant work, while Ely stays home to care for the kids, cook, and take care of the house.

My Guatefamilia is well-off compared to others. They have a nice TV, stereo, computer, and a three story house (I share the top story with two other language students). But despite the nice things at home, my family can´t afford to go out to eat, see a movie, or take weekend trips.

At first, with my rusty Spanish, I felt like an outsider but now after two weeks I´m more like the American cousin. Ale and I watch ¨Patito Feo¨ together (on Disney Latino channel) and Luis, Luisito, me, and a group of neighborhood kids play fùtobol in the street every weekend. I still have a bit of trouble decifering Luisito´s spanish but otherwise I am right in the middle of the daily dinner table conversations.

Hasta luego!

From high school football to Fùtbol Guatemalteco

While most of the SportsTime crew is busy preparing for the upcoming high school football season, I am in the middle of the Guatemalan fùtbol season. To be more precise, I´m in Guatemala.

This summer I am traveling through Central America with month-long stopovers in Guatemala and Honduras.

Currently, I am in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala´s second biggest city, brushing up on my Spanish, eating plenty of frijoles with my host family, and volunteering as an English teacher at a local high school.

On August 8th, my next adventure begins in Honduras.

I will be working for OYE, Organization for Youth Empowerment (www.oyehonduras.org), as a volunteer with their after school soccer, art, health, and most exciting for me, radio programs!

In order to participate in Honduras I need to raise $1,000. OYE relies on private funding and requires all volunteers to help them in their fundraising endeavors. A $25 donation would be a tremendous help to the Guatemalan youth that OYE serves.

Tax deductible donations can be made payable to “Organization for Youth Empowerment” and sent to 3351 18th Street N.W.Washington, DC 20010. Please note “Carl Nasman” on the memo line. You can also donate on-line at oyehonduras.org

Also, check back here for updates, pictures, and stories from my summer in Central America.