...When You´re Having Fun

Tonight I was in the mood to have friends over for dinner. Last week I was busy helping Alfalit host a successful visit from a student chapter of Engineers Without Borders. All weekend I was in Ceiba for Carnaval. And last night I spent quality time with Sandrita since she’s home from university on a short vacation. After all that running around, tonight would have been the perfect night to catch up with my four fellow single 20-something volunteer girlfriends here in Olanchito. A night when I would make my specialty, Italian food (well, um, spaghetti and garlic bread), and we would drink a bottle of bad wine (the only kind of wine you can buy in Olanchito) and revel in single-20-something-volunteer-girlness. A “rotic” night, as Christy likes to call them: romantic without the man.

But Christy is sick with the stomach flu. Leah teaches dance classes Tuesday nights. My new German apartment-mate Fabiana is in Belize for the week. And my French friend Elisabeth is in Tegus figuring out her visa. That’s what happens when all your friends are foreigners – they’re usually either sick or traveling.

No matter. I bought a baguette (French culinary tradition has indeed infiltrated this far, even before Elisabeth or former French volunteer Stephanie arrived). I made the spaghetti, er, pasta primavera. I did not buy the wine, since Christy is really the big bad-wine drinker. I’m more the bad-whiskey drinker. But no whiskey tonight, I just made the food and pulled my plastic chair out on my porch to get out of the apartment’s heat and enjoy the twilight. In the blue-greying sky, no clouds moved. Strangely for this time of day, none of my neighbors nor their kids were around. My landlord’s air-conditioner hummed dully. I savored the garlic in the pasta sauce that I had made particularly well. Compliments to the chef, Leah would have told me. In the distance I watched a warning light pulsate redly at the top of a cell phone tower. I heard water dripping out of the spigot of my pila.

There’s nothing like listening to dripping water to make you realize how slowly time is passing.

Officially, my last day as a volunteer is August 12th. I will do a little bit of traveling in the country before I fly back to the States on September 1st.

Will those dates ever come?

Will I ever have time to listen to dripping water once I leave Honduras?