Adjusting to Roatan Life

I'll warn you now, I'm not super-inspired to write this morning, I'm just trying to take advantage of Hunter calmly laying on the couch watching Curious George.  I think I will write about how my adjustment is going.

On the home front, things are going well.  The house isn't 100% unpacked and settled yet, but I would say that we are at 95%.  I've lost most of my motivation so until we get a visitor and need that 3rd bedroom, things are going to be like this.  As far as I can tell, we have everything we need.  I'm not as happy with this house as I was when we first saw it, which, I think, is typical with a rental house.  There are so many things we would do differently if it was our house.

My biggest fear in moving here was how I would adjust to the heat without central air conditioning.  It really hasn't been as bad as I had feared.  I think that in the 2 weeks that I've been living here, we have entered into a new season.  The seasonal changes are subtle here but I feel a distinct difference.  At first, we had almost no rain, but in the last week, we have had almost daily rain.  Its not nightly rain, like when we lived on the mainland.  This rain seems to come whenever and with no warning.  Last night, Rob had to run an errand and the sky opened up as soon as he left the house.  It also seems to rain as soon as I hang any laundry on the line to dry.  The rain has brought some much better weather.  What I've really noticed is that the afternoons have become much more tolerable with lower humidity.  According to our trusty little home weather station, the temperatures are generally in the mid-80's  with humidity over 80%.  The past few days, the humidity has gone down to about 70% in the afternoons which seems to make a huge difference.  Its really not too bad, especially if I lay low rather then running around the house cleaning and chasing the 2 year old.  I think the trick to living here comfortably is to take a nice cool shower whenever I'm getting ready to relax.

Things are going slowly for me on the friends front.  I'm anxious to meet some other mommies but there isn't really a place to meet them.  I assume most of the mommy-types are all working during the day and there doesn't appear to be a playground or anything like that where I can take him.  Hopefully, we will get Hunter into the little preschool down the road soon.  I'm sure that is a good place to meet some other parents.  I have been volunteering at the library which has been great.  The lady who runs it has been here for decades and knows everything about life here as a gringa.  I will report more on the library in future posts.

I have 3 huge frustrations here.

First is my kitchen.  Its horrible.  I love to cook and since I've been staying at home for the last 2 years, cooking has been my favorite hobby.  The kitchen is awful.  Using the stove or oven heat that room up to unbearable temperatures.  There is a nice big door but no screen so if I open the door, I'm inviting in every mosquito in the area to feast on us.  Just thinking about this makes my blood boil.  Obviously, the home owner never cooked a real meal here.

Second are the mosquitoes.  Honestly, we haven't had a huge problem with bugs here.  Our house is far enough from the beach that the dreaded sand fleas aren't around us.  They only seem to be an issue if we are at the beach in the evening, which doesn't happen much. The mosquitoes, on the other hand, are pretty hungry.  It seems like every evening, a single hungry mosquito will come in a devour Hunter or I.  Its amazing that the landlord had the sense to put new screens everywhere but left spaces around the screens where the mosquitoes can fly right in.  Rob brought me house some painter's tape yesterday, though, to seal up these holes.  Its not pretty but it will do.

Finally, my biggest annoyance here is nothing new new for me here in Honduras.  At our house at the mine, this was a bit of an obsession of mine.  Its these stupid, tiny ants.  I know they are worse for us with a toddler constantly dropping food.  They don't bite or anything but they are anywhere where there is food and drive me up the wall.  My normal solution to them is to keep as much food as possible in the fridge and freezer but our fridge is so small here, that is a bit of a challenge.  Luckily, I'm not spending much time in the kitchen so for the most part, they are out of sight.  As far as I know, there is nothing I can do about them.

I had more to write today but Hunter has just let me know that he is ready to play!  Maybe we will head to the beach!

Line Dried Laundry Woes

So far one of the biggest changes in my life is related to laundry.  Our house has a great new washing machine but no dryer.  I, personally, love my clothes fresh from the dryer.  I love how soft and warm they are but mostly I love how DRY they are.  Here we have a clothes line.  It is more economical and environmental.  People keep telling me how much they love hang drying their clothes.  I suspect that these people all have dryers and have forgotten the reasons why they bought that dryer in the first place.

This is what I love about doing laundry in my island home:

Here are my top issues with hanging dry my clothes:

1.  Rain - I feel like I need to do my laundry first thing in the morning so that it has plenty of time to dry.  Granted, when the sun is out, most of it dries in about an hour with only some thick shorts and towels taking longer.  So far, I've done about 4 loads of laundry and despite the fact that we have been told that its the rainy season, it has been amazingly dry here (that is without rain...not without humidity), it has rained twice while I had clothes hanging to dry.  The first time was just a brief shower but today was torrential rain all morning and it still looks pretty dreary.  My clothesline looks like this:

And my laundry looks like this:

 Needless to say, it is not drying like I had hoped.

2.  My second issue with hanging laundry is the crunch.  No matter what I try, my laundry ends up lacking in softness.  Google had a few suggestions for remedying this situation.  I've tried them with a slight improvement but I still think my laundry is not nearly as soft as from the dryer.  Some of the suggestions that I've been trying:

1. Use less detergent
2. Add some white vinegar
3. Shake out the laundry before hanging it

There were some other suggestions that I have no control over like hanging them only on windy days.

3.  One of my favorite thigs about clothes from the dryer is how the fabric becomes tighter and everything fits like it did when I bought it.  When I hang my clothes, they seem to keep getting a little looser and more stretched out.

4.  I've realized that I have limited space on my clothes line.  I cannot hang a full load at one time, especially when that load contains a dozen tiny pairs of underwear and a dozen more tiny shirts.  This leave me 2 choices, I can try to hang it in shifts, which only works when it is really sunny or I have to do laundry more frequently in smaller loads.  The problem is that electricity here is extremely expensive and it seems so inefficient.

I would welcome any suggestions on how to make my line-dried clothes soft and fresh like the ones I see on TV and hear about in people's memories.


As I am finishing up this post, I realize that my Roatan posts are more negative than positive.  I try to be a "glass-is-half-full" type of person.  I also don't ever want my friends and family to worry that I am unhappy.  Please keep in mind that I live on a tropical, Caribbean island.  This is paradise.  This has been our dream for years.  As with most dreams, the reality is not exactly the same as the dream.  A week and a half into living our dream, I am still experiencing some culture shock in learning how to live here.  Most importantly, if I only made posts about how beautiful it is to live on this wonderfully green, lush island that is ringed in white sand beaches and surrounded by the clearest, bluest water in the world, populated by colorful and delicious fish, everyone would hate and resent me.  I save that stuff for facebook.

I started this post last week.  I was feeling horribly low and very much regretting our decision to move here.  I was hot, tired, lonely and overwhelmed with organizing our house and the new and different challenges of life here.  Since I posted this, a lot has changed.  First of all, I went to check out the library that is just down the road.  I suspect that this library will be the subject of many posts in the future.  I have also visited the preschool down the street and have hope that Hunter might be spending his mornings there, giving me more time for myself, my projects and maybe even some paying work.  3rd, we finally got our cable tv and internet.  Finally, the heat has broken a bit.  Its pouring rain today and even almost cool.  I'm feeling excited about our future here

**********  Written October 1, 2013  *********

Thank goodness, Hunter and I got here on Saturday.  Sadly, Rob has been expecting the cable and internet to be hooked up since Thursday.  The guys is supposed to come today....this will be my first lesson on living on a tropical island.  Therefore, I am writing this offline.

It looks like I will be busy all week cleaning and organizing our house.  I have a game plan, though.  My goal is to unpack every box.  I am finding locations for everything that we will be using and repacking things that we will not be using.  I've already repacked a box of Hunter's baby stuff and have started packing us each a suitcase of winter stuff so we know where to go when we pack for somewhere wintry.  In the mean time, I don't even want to look at sweaters, jeans, long-sleeve shirts, gloves, jackets, socks or anything else of the sort because, guess what????  Its hot here.

This brings me to lesson number 2 for living on a tropical island:  Its hot AND humid.  Due to the high price of electricity here, we are only running the AC at night.  During the day, its fans and sweat.  Honestly, its not terrible.  I'm showering 3 times a day and we are saving a ton of money since our water heater is off and completely unnecessary here. I'm hoping the sweating will burn a lot of calories because there is no way in hell that I will be working out here.

Back to lesson 1.  The cable guy just came and left and what a surprise, even though the lady in the office scheduled us for installation and took our money, it turns out that there isnt service to our house.  That was the best option for cable TV and we are still without internet.  Back to square one.

I suspect that my expectation for my first world life is impossibly high.  At the moment, I am feeling pretty frustrated and negative.

On a positive note, our house is really coming together and our view is breathtaking.  Hunter is as happy as any 2 year old can be, as long as I don't try to feed him anything he doesn't want or make him stop doing things that I don't want him to do.  So far this morning, he threw tantrums over the following:
- I tried to feed him yogurt with his cereal instead of milk.
- I took away his wooden machete because he kept slapping me with it.
- I dragged him out of my bathroom for wasting toilet paper.
- Finally, I tried to put a diaper on him before his nap.

Top lessons learned so far about life on Roatan:
a.  Nothing, it seems, will get done when a person says it will
b.  Its hot and sticky

Another new beginning

I'm writing from sunny and warm Montreal.  2 year old Hunter is napping peacefully and Rob is finishing up his first week of work at his new job and getting ready to start a busy weekend moving us into our new house.  Nope, its not here in Montreal nor in Dallas.  We are really excited to finally be trying out life....drumroll please.....in ROATAN!  For anyone who doesnt know, Roatan is a little island in the Caribbean right off the coast of Honduras.  The truth is that Roatan is where it all began for us.  The story goes that we had just returned from an amazing little vacation with some dear friends to Jamaica.  As usual, we agreed that one week (or 10 days, I can barely remember at this point) just wasn't enough.  We started dreaming up details to remedy this "too short vacation problem".  One year seemed like it might be enough.  (I love hindsight....almost 4 years later we still haven't returned). 
We thought it would be fun to live in the Caribbean for a year so I googled "cheap caribbean island" which somehow led me to Roatan.  I'd certainly never heard of it but I liked what I saw online.  We started to talk seriously about spending a year there.  Many discussions later, my mother, who was probably terrified that if we did that, we would never come back, suggested that we travel for a year. (See robanddebourway.blogspot.com).

Lets fast forward now, throughout central america lugging our backpacks fromone town to the next, 3 more months living at the D &D brewery, 2 1/2 years living at the El Mochito mine in Honduras which included the birth of our son and countless long weekends back to Roatan which in no way resembled our backpacking year.  With Rob employed and baby in tow, we got to know the fancy resorts.  We swam in fancy pools and sat around in comfy suites through many naps.  Our love of Roatan grew.  White sand, clear blue water, lush green foliage and a population that always made us feel welcome.  Well, our time at the mine ended and this new opportunity appeared...an interesting new job for Rob, where else but our favorite tropical paradise.

I think that pretty much brings this blog up to date. 

I have a new plan for this blog.  My life is so different than when I started blogging.  I am 100% domestic.  I have a new name....Mommy and it sounds like mommmmyyyyyyyy.  I cook and clean and search for play dates and toddler friendly restaurants and activities.  I carry a backpack almost as big as the one that i lived out of for a year but this time just for a morning outing.  My new life will have new challanges.  Our skin is not island brown and I will need to be vigilant with sun screen (or sour cream as Hunter says it).  Electricity is really expensive so I will be using completely different cooking techniques than at the mine where we didn't even have an electric bill.  We have a few friends already on the island but I need mommy friends and fast.  I need to get into bathing suit shape.  I need to get my little guy potty trained because in the last 2 months of insanity, he keeps asking to poopoo potty.  I want to blog about all of this.   Welcome back.

Bye Bye Blog

To my loyal followers....I'm sorry.  I've decided to discontinue my blog.   In its place, Hunter is now on facebook.  He is a modern baby and blogs are just so yesterday.  Not really. Its more that writing in the blog has started to feel like a chore and 99% of our friends are on facebook and dont even read the blog so it just seems like a better place to post quick updates and photos.  I know that a few of you really hate facebook and for you, I apologize.  I will also be posting pictures to my picassa web album as I always have so at the very least, you can follow his progress there.

The blog has been nice and maybe I will pick it up again if I feel like my life is interesting enough for it. Thank you so much for reading it and taking an interest in me.

Welcome to the world, Hunter! Part 2

This is a continuation of the last post so you will want to read that one first.


I barely slept that night.  I was so uncomfortable and I spent a lot of the night timing contractions which were between 5 and 15 minutes apart but still not overly painful.  I was grateful to be in the city knowing that I could wait to go to the hospital until I was much further along.  Well, I got up and had breakfast and after a while, Rob pulled into the hotel in a truck that the mine let him have.  The mine was so great!  They offered us some drivers for the day which we happily accepted and we hopped into another truck to pick my mom up from the airport.  After all of my stress, by 11am I had my mother and husband with me and was feeling a lot better.  My contractions had slowed down and I was thinking that we would be heading to the mine after my 2:30 appointment and that maybe all of this drama was for nothing.

We had a great lunch, which I am still thinking about, and then did some shopping until the appointment.  No big deal.  Rob got a day off and a chance to get to some stores that he had been wanting to go to, and I was feeling a little silly.  The doctor was surprised to see my mom and we had a nice laugh about it and then I went for another pelvic exam.  There had been no change in my dilation so we started discussing how to proceed.  We would head home and I would go to the hospital here twice a day to have my blood pressure checked since it was kind of high that day.  Before we left the office, we all crowded into one of the little rooms and he put me on the fetal monitor again.  He hooked it up and had me roll onto my left side.  The heartbeat slowed to 80 and the doctor had me roll back onto my back.  We were all talking and discussing and the doctor very calmly said something like, "I'm not comfortable with this, I think that we should go ahead and do this now."  Basically, that was it.  He said he wanted us to head to the emergency room and that he wanted to do a c-section.  Rob asked, "When?" and he said "Now".  Oh....crap....we all kind of looked at each other.  God I was glad that everyone was with me.  It was amazing how calm we all were.  We went to the doctor's desk where he wrote up a paper for us to give to the emergency room and off we went.  Rob and my mom quickly formulated a plan that during the surgery, my mom would go check into the hotel and then return to the hospital.  Rob would have to wait outside and I would go in for the c-section.  Before I knew it, we were in the prep room and they were asking me questions and Rob went into admissions to fill out some forms.  They put me on a gurney and wheeled me to the operating room.  I'd never had surgery before and was trying to stay calm.  Thankfully, I'd done that lamaze class the day before and boy did those breathing techniques come in handy as I started to realize what was happening.  You have to keep in mind that my Spanish is still terrible and that I am in Honduras.  Most of the doctors speak English and thankfully, the wonderful anesthesiologist spoke a bit of English, too.  The whole surgery was fairly terrifying and I'd rather not relive it so I'm going to brush over it fairly quickly.  I was awake but pretty numb.  My doctor did the surgery with a good friend of his and they seemed to have the time of their life while I tried not to look at the reflection of their work in the light above my head.  Eventually, I heard the women in the room all say "oooh"  and then I heard "varon" which basically meant that its a boy!  I didn't hear any crying or anything and got a bit scared.  Then the pediatrician stepped up and grabbed the baby and took him to a table.  Finally I heard my son screaming his little head off.  It was as though I wasnt there.  Finally someone looked at me and let me know that everything was good.  I heard my doctor tell someone that the umbilical was wrapped around his neck and that was the problem.  I started to feel better and after a while, they brought my screaming baby over to me and held him to my cheek for about a minute.  I couldnt move my arms to hold him or touch him so all I could do was lay there and cry with relief.  Then they took him away and the surgery continued.  I was numb but it still was uncomfortable and there was a lot of work to do before it was finally over.  The rest is unimportant.  At about 3:30 on July 6 my doctor made the decision and by 5:45, Hunter was in the world.  We are all healthy and happy.  It is now Sunday night and after 3 days in the hospital, we are settled in at home.  I'm still very sore and trying to get into the swing of things.  My son is gorgeous and funny and we are all so happy that he is here.

Welcome to the world, Hunter! Part 1

Yep, thats right a lot has happened since my last post so here it is.  Brace yourself, this will be long so I'm going to split it up into 2 posts.

On Tuesday, I headed into San Pedro.  First of all, we got about halfway there and I had to have my driver pull over so that I could be car sick on the side of the road.  It was actually the first time that I was sick like that the whole pregnancy.  I really puked my brains out, though, and I think that maybe it kicked up my braxton hicks a bit.

I had an appointment in the morning with a lamaze coach to get some information about what to expect at the birth.  The appointment was great and I got a lot of great information about the birth and breastfeeding and what I can expect at the hospital.  It was something that I wasnt too excited about and I only really did it to appease my mother...well she was right, as usual.  There were some interesting little hints about what was to come but they didnt mean anything at the time.  We were talking about contractions and I mentioned that I was having very frequent braxton-hicks.  She dismissed it that some of it was probably the baby moving.  Based on my past experiences with having no clue of what is going on with my body, I believed her.  No biggie.  I was still feeling ok and after the appointment, ate a quick lunch and then headed to Pricesmart (like Sams) to stock up on as much good meat as possible realizing that I probably wouldnt feel like doing big shopping in the last 2 weeks of the pregnancy.  I got a ton of stuff, filling up the cooler and didnt have time to get to the grocery store before my doctor appointment.  I told the driver that we would go ahead and stop at the grocery store after my appointment on our way out of town and went into the doctor.  He had been out of town for over a week so the place was very busy.  He sent me into the directly into the little room and hooked me up on the fetal monitor while he saw a couple of other patients.  I dont know if they use these in the States but they put some sensors on my belly that track his heartrate, his movements and any contractions.  They also give me a button that I'm supposed to push when I feel the baby move.  The machine blasts the sound of the baby's heartbeat which put me to sleep instantly.  I never pushed the button and when the doctor came in 20 minutes later, I'd had about 4 contractions.  No big deal, they were braxton hicks and not painful at all.  After that, we went in for my first pelvic exam.  He felt my cervix and told me that I was about 2 cm and as he pulled out his hand, I felt liquid leak out.  He looked at me and said, "I expect that I will hear from you in the next day or 2."  WHAT????  Yeah, he asked, "Is your husband here with you?"  WHAT????? no, Rob is at work 2 hours away.  Oh my god, oh my god.  The rest of the visit was a blur.  He sent me to clean myself up and we went for the ultrasound.  The baby was in position.  At my last ultrasound, the umbilical cord was near the baby's neck but the doctor wasnt too concerned as it didnt seem tight.   We checked that again and the cord was still there but he still wasnt worried about it.  I'm sure that he told me many things during that visit but in my head I was freaking out.  My thoughts were something like this....I'm not ready....I need to call Rob....I need to call my mom....I need to get a hotel room and stay here in town....I'm not ready....I dont have any clothes....I dont have my toothbrush.  I told the doctor that I would get a hotel room and he was very happy to hear that.  He told me that he wanted to see me the next afternoon if he didnt hear from me sooner and we would decide at that point if I would go back home or stay longer in the city.  No problem.  I can do this.  I wont cry.  I went outside and told the driver the new plan and I called Rob.  "You ready?"  "For what?"  "For the baby" "Whatever.  Stop messing with me."  "No really, I'm freaking out and heading to a hotel."  My poor driver, who by this time must have been really worried, kept his cool.  He drove me to the Hilton since I had already decided that I was going to stay in style.  Well, the Hilton only had Executive suites available which was not quite in my budget.  Thankfully, the driver took me to a great hotel that the mine uses.  When I checked in the nice girl at the counter asked how many days I would be there and I got to explain that my doctor thinks I will be having a baby any day now.  I'll tell you what...if you want good service at a hotel, make them think that you are about to have a baby.  While this was going on, I also called my mom and let her know that she needed to change her plane tickets and try to get down here.  She quickly changed her ticket to the next morning and let me know that she would be flying in the next morning.  I then headed to the mall to kill some time and buy some clean underwear, pajamas and a toothbrush.  So there   I was, wandering the mall in San Pedro Sula Honduras, having contractions, by myself.  After a little while I decided that if I was going to have this baby tomorrow, I would go to a restaurant and eat a meal.  I went to the Applebees and ordered and appetizer and as I was eating it, I had this thought....I must be totally crazy, what the heck am I doing?  I quickly headed back to the hotel to call my family and friends and try to find a little sanity and eventually I went to sleep.