Pizza, Parades, and Mail Campaign Updates

While the skies are still overcast in Southern Honduras, this Friday the rains let up long enough for Choluteca´s 165th anniversary parade. Lasting over 5 hours (!!), the parade ran through the whole of downtown and was televised on national cable! I was in town to meet up with Southern Peace Corps members for pizza, and was lucky enough to catch this marathon celebration. Entries ranged from pick up truck to flat bed floats, to soldiers in the Honduran infantry, to full scale marching bands. Probably my favorite groups were the marching bands. I have to admit that I haven´t ever seen marching bands with as much rythm as yesterday´s highschoolers. Moving in and out of formation, every band member´s hips were moving as if they were a back up dancer for Shakira. Even the band director/marshall was working it while he blew his whistle. Another great thing about Honduran bands are their instruments. To get that great Latin beat, bands carry all sorts of different instruments beyond our standard tubas, trumpets, and drums, the most interesting being a turtle shell.
I don´t think I have ever seen so many Cholutecans out and about at the same time. Even in crowds of over 100,000, I happened to run into some Canadian friends. (Us ¨Gringos¨can spot each other a mile away :) ) After the parade, we headed to Pizza Hut for a yummy lunch splurge. My food was so good that I forgot to take pictures inside the building, but here´s an idea of the US¨esque¨ building... the inside is just as nice if not nicer than Pizza Huts in the states! Maybe for this reason the prices are the same as the states as well(!) Pizza Hut, Wendy´s and other US fast food restaurants that have made their way down South bring US prices which make them ¨higher end¨ restaurants that are mostly frequented by the well off... imagine a Big Mac costing like $15 in the states and you´re in Honduras.
After lunch I made what will hopefully be the first of many trips to the post office to send off letters! Anna, the mail attendant, greeted us and hand glued $1.50 stamps to each of my letters. She was amazed when I said I had been here for a year and never come in... ¨yes it is ,¨I told her, ¨I don´t get much mail... but that is about to change!¨ I also stocked up on postcards, to be mailed out on my next trip to Choluteca.

I got home, exhausted and ready to climb into bed, only to be invited over to the neighbors for soup and music videos. Before long my neighbors/little sisters were teaching me how to dance Punta, a Carribean booty shaking dance that could also be turned into a cardio workout DVD. While I have a LOT more practicing to do, I had a blast... I guess the band members weren´t the only ones shakin´ it yesterday :)