Far Out

Q: What do Martha Stewart, space tourism, and Microsoft Word have in common?
A: More that you think.

Sometimes we make fun of movies for being too ridiculous and far-fetched.... what about when real life is too weird to take seriously?

Introducing Charles Simonyi, former Microsoft employee, and ¨chief architect¨ of MS Word and Excel. Recently Charles paid over $20 million to ride shotgun on a Russion rocket to the International Space Station. That makes him Space Tourist #5, and the self-proclaimed First Nerd in Space. He spent almost two weeks in space, documenting his trip with blog entries, photos, and vidoes, on his website charlesinspace.com.

The Russian cosmonauts he rode up with have awesome names like Oleg Kotov and Fyodor Yurchikhin (pronounced exactly like ¨your chicken¨). In one video on the website, they are asked how Charles performed during the flight up. In an incredibly thick, almost cartoon-like Russian accent, Dr. Your-Chicken responded, ¨Yes, ov course Charlez iz not professional cosmonut…. but ve dunt hav anny problem vis Charles. For us he iz vun ov crew member.¨ (Translation: ¨we don´t have any problem...¨ he´s ¨one of crew member.¨) Classic. If it were in a movie, we´d complain it was too corny.

And the icing on the cake... in Kazakhstan on launch day to see Charles off was none other than Charles´s ¨good friend¨ Martha Stewart. There was talk that Charles might be proposing from space. Yeah. Very, very weird.

PS -- Don´t worry, I´m not done posting about Honduras yet. Check back soon...

It´s a Small World After All

Sorry about the major lack of blogs over the past week or so…. this was my last week at the hospital, so things have been a bit hectic. And last weekend I was away, making a quick trip to the island of Utila… more on that once I’ve had a chance to go through the 500 or more pictures I took over the weekend (I tend to get a little carried away).

In the meantime, here are some more Little Things that caught my attention in the last few weeks…

There are some awesome metallic-looking beetles and wasps around here. Very cool.



This big moth practically smacked me in the face the other night while I was reading in bed… I was annoyed at it, until it landed and I realized how awesome it looked.




Not only did it have awesome colors (for a moth, I guess), but it didn’t fold its wings back like a normal moth…. it would just sit there with them flared in crazy directions.




Personally, I think it might be a mutant super-moth… I wonder if it’s an honorable crime fighter, or an evil monster dedicated to death and destruction….




This guy is definitely an evil monster dedicated to death and destruction.




Speaking of death and destruction..... This huge swath of army ants marched out of the jungle past the staff housing building the other day. They apparently were out for a day of pillaging and plundering, because that afternoon they came marching back past the building into the jungle, carrying lots of ants and ant eggs and various other dead bugs…. the spoils of victory.




These guys were pretty vicious… I stuck a blade of grass down at the line to see what would happen, and a couple of ants went completely nuts, biting and stinging the end of it… after that I was very careful as I stuck my camera inches away from them.



Apparently sometimes the huge swath of ants goes right through the staff housing building… there’s not a lot you can do when a thick line of thousands of ants come marching across the floor and up the wall. Just hide the food. And the babies… wouldn’t want them to get carried off.

I haven’t had a chance to figure out how to post a video right into the blog, but click here if you want to see a clip Jesse took of the sidewalk literally covered in a moving carpet of ants…

Just remember... they´re more afraid of you than you are of them.

Happy (Belated) Easter!

Last week (the week leading up to Easter) was "Semana Santa" here in Honduras.... Holy Week. Sort of. It's called Holy Week, but it's not particularly holy.... it's more like Party-on-the-Beach Week. The secular culture just enjoys a week off, basically ignoring the Jesus-dying-for-our-sins part. You know, the whole point of the holiday. Not that we're any better... be honest, what do you spend more time thinking about during the Christmas season: God or gift lists?

Anyhow, the local church I've been going to with the Harmons held a special "event" down on the beach during Semana Santa. Proper attire for church down here is long pants (for guys) and skirts (for girls), and we assumed that those rules applied for the special service as well. What we didn't realize was that the "service" was more of a church picnic.

So we showed up in our Sunday best...

... only to discover a rollicking....



...frolicking....



...Honduran beach barbecue in progress.



We didn't exactly blend in. ;)

Despite being slightly over-dressed, we still had an awesome afternoon. I made sure to partake of the four basic F's: food, fun, fellowship, and Fotography.








Honduran worship, unplugged.



Steaks, anyone?

Then, on Easter Sunday, the missionary community held a sunrise service down on the beach. Unfortunately, the sun rises at 5:30. That's very, very early.

Mmmmm.....

Living in Harmon-y

And now, for a long-overdue introduction.... (drum roll, please).... I give you... the Harmons!!! (cue trumpet fanfare). And, as an added bonus, you get to meet Grandma, who happened to be visiting for a week when this photo was taken.

From the left: Patty 1 (Tom's wife), Patty 2 (Tom's mom), Tom, Jesse, Peter

For those who don't know, the Harmons are a family from my church who are living down here in Honduras for several months. Tom is working in the hospital as an anesthetist:

... while Jesse and Peter get to spend a semester doing school in the jungle:

Patty and the kids have also gotten involved in various outreach ministries and hospital projects, including using a lensometer (no, I didn't make that up) to sort over 3,000 pairs of glasses for the eye clinic...

The Harmons are basically my adopted family down here. I live in the same building as them, I get rides with them to local churches and missionary get-togethers, I send my grocery list with them when they into town to go shopping, usually I eat dinner with them anyway... they even take me on some of their adventures. The other day we went on a quest across the Honduran countryside for the legendary Bambu Waterfall....

Our romp to get there took us through several little villages, a few river crossings, and many miles of muddy, potholed roads.

Tom plots his course... at one point water actually washed over the hood of the truck. Way cool.



Have burro, will travel.

Interestingly, there didn't seem to be any bamboo anywhere near the Bamboo Waterfall, nor have I seen any in Honduras. The nearest village was named El Bambu, though.... what's up with that? Crazy Hondurans.



We youngsters went for a dip... as you can see, this was before the tragic demise of the waterproof camera.



Sorry, ladies.... he's unavailable. ;)

It's a Small World

(Note: as always, feel free to click on the photo to zoom in for a closer look... you could even go to the online album and watch the almost-full-screen slideshow....)

There are tons of geckos around here, scampering around and making weird bird-like chirping noises. They usually scatter whenever you flip on a light. I cornered this one on a windowsill.... I think he was distracted, admiring his reflection.

I managed to blind him with a flashlight long enough to get a mug shot. Incidentally, I haven't yet tried shooting one with a rubber band to see if it drops its tail, as Ryan alleges.

Jungle mushroom

As I sit in bed reading at the end of the night, my light tends to attract whatever bugs are in the room. I've started keeping a shoe and a camera handy... some bugs get squashed, others get "shot."

I let this guy live. Mosquitos receive no such mercy.

Check out this gal's hairy legs... she could definitely use a shave. And a diet, too... that little spider on the top left is around normal size, so the big spider is almost as big as your hand.

This little thing is stuck to the metal rail outside my room. It's the size of a pea, maybe a little smaller. Who made it? How? What lives inside? Some deadly, previously undiscovered creature from the depths of the jungle? A midget genie for pottery-lovers?

Espanol, y Muchachos

It's a bit depressing how much my Spanish degraded in just nine months. It's finally getting back up to the level it was last September, after 3 1/2 months of backpacking around South America. I'm adding a whole new set of vocabulary, too... church words. Fortunately, most are either common words anyway (el amor del Padre) or ones that you can figure out pretty easily ("gracia" and "justicia"). A few, though, are a bit wild.... I was pretty lost during one particular Bible study until I figured out that "orgullo" is pride, and that "misericordia" means mercy, not "misery cords."

I've also started introducing myself differently. There's no Spanish equivalent for "Travis," so I had just been pronouncing it in a Spanish way (traah-veees). I discovered, though, that the closest Spanish word to my name is travieso.... roughly translated, "mischievous." I thought that it fit, so I've basically been introducing myself by saying "Hello, I am Mischievous." Helps people remember me.

More fun spanish phrases...

• Todo azul -- literally, "all blue." Means everything's going well. Sort of like saying "you're good to go" or "you're golden."
• Sacando las uñas -- "cutting your fingernails." Someone translated it as meaning "coming alive"... kind of makes me think of "letting your hair down."
• My personal favorite.... super-bien. Super good. Self explanatory.

Here are a few more photos of the little muchachos from the wedding.... I'm still intrigued by the different kinds of names these kids have, ranging from the expected -- Juan, Lucio, Ana -- to the bizarre -- Endo, Howard, Guildy (gwill-dee), Lo-urnes, Argentina, Oscar, Orbin...