Happy Hala-mel-weenie as my late, great father used to say with an impish chuckle. No pictures this post. I will be traveling to the North Coast tomorrow for Halloween. Five days in La Ceiba visiting friends and five days of solitude in Tela relaxing on the beach at a seaside hotel enjoying the white sands, palm trees and the beautiful, blue Caribbean lapping at my feet. I last stayed in Tela about four years ago at a Peace Corps workshop. For my money it’s the most beautiful of Honduras’ beachside municipios. Although Trujillo runs a close second simply because it is so far away: 12 hours by bus from La Paz. Tela is just 4 and a half hours from La Paz. Cheers!

Orphans Outreach is a Stateside group that periodically sends norteamericano volunteers to Honduras, seen establishing the foundation for a soccer field lawn for the children. The Outreach Coordinator based in Tegucigalpa, Austin, pushing the wheelbarrow above coordinates the activities for each group that arrives for a 4 to 5 day period in-country. They are one of many norteamericano volunteer groups who donate their time providing hands-on assistance to Honduran development projects as the country mobilizes native resources utilizing home-grown talent from their nascent educational system. The new Hogar San José was designed, developed and built by Hondurans.

Sister Edith and I visited the new building site last weekend with the children jumping into the proposed reflecting pool that they see as their new swimming pool of course and Sister Edith joined them in the cool water on a hot day. Afterward I drove the kids to an ancient 3,000 year-old Lenca indigenous site where exist buried pyramids 25 minutes from La Paz just waiting to be excavated, explaining to them their ancestors’ heritage and the pride they should feel at their place in the universe. We climbed buried mounds I told them were filled with Lenca treasures and they wanted to begin digging right away!