Elders... dancing! in the rain : (

We’ve had some cool experiences the past couple of days. The first is that we had the opportunity of receiving training with two elders who just finished their missions. On Thursday we got to participate as an area Seventy gave them training on how to adjust to life after the mission. We also took the career workshop with them on Friday. The career workshop is the workshop other than the one we teach that is given by the church. It was good to see it and learn from it. It was also amusing to see how the elders acted around us. At lunch both days they were careful to sit as far away as possible from us- it reminded me of Zone Conferences on the mission. We were talking about job interviews at one part of the career workshop, and how to explain your mission experience in terms employers relate to. As we were discussing it, one of the elders mentioned, “and then you ask them if they want a Book of Mormon.” Yep, definitely recently returned missionaries- the same in every culture.

We went to an institute dance Friday night, which was really fun. We found out Friday afternoon that the dress was formal, like prom dress type formal. While K and I have to wear skirts and dresses to our internship all the time, neither of us has a formal dress here. We got pretty in our not so formal dresses, though, and didn’t feel too out of place; well, other than the fact that we were the only gringos there.

The dancing and music was obviously very different. The only song they played that I knew was I Gotta a Feeling by Black Eyed Peas. They played some other songs that had English lyrics, but I don’t think anyone else knew what the lyrics meant because otherwise they probably wouldn’t be played at a church-sponsored dance. I learned that they listen to Punta music a lot here. I also learned kind of how to dance here. No one really knows how to dance here, either, but the style of dance they do is very different from what I’m used to. Also, I’m used to dancing in big circles of people for fast songs, but that is not how they do it here. Pretty much everyone dances in pairs for all the songs, and when a guy asks you to dance, it isn’t just for one song. I only danced with three guys, but I was dancing the whole night minus when we got food.

On Saturday we taught a workshop. To this point we had been lucky in avoiding the rain, but when we left the building Saturday it was raining. We had one tiny umbrella between the two of us. We each had our backpacks full of materials for our workshop including poster paper and workbooks for the participants. Since we didn’t want the stuff to get wet and ruined, we decided that I would wear both backpacks and have the umbrella, and K would have to tough it out in the rain with no protection.

I looked ridiculous, which served also to prevent the usual cat calls. It stopped raining when we were a couple blocks from home, so K took her backpack again, and the usual kissy sounds and “hello baby” started following us once again.

I also have to mention church today. It was interesting, to say the least. It included me being called flat-footed, conducting music to a song when I was not even on the right page, giving an 8 minute talk in broken Spanish, and going to Sunday school with a kid who looked like he was eight. Sacrament meeting was probably most interesting, K wrote about it in her blog if you want to read her description. After Sacrament meeting we asked if we were going to the young adult Sunday school. We had no idea there was a YSA Sunday school class. When we got there we were surprised to see a lot of people who definitely looked younger than 18, including a 12 year old boy who looked like he was 8. K and I thought it was funny- but we were glad to know that it was just because the youth’s teacher wasn’t there today.

Basically, to sum up, Honduras continues to amaze me.