Graduation, Semana Santa, and back again

OK, I know the gaps are getting longer, but that trend should reverse now. The week before last I was busy finishing teaching my renewable energy class, then last week Basilia and I went to Honduras for Semana Santa (Holy Week), where we were happy to be far away from computers and the internet.

The last day of the course, March 25, I had invited fellow Fulbrighter Rich Cairncross to bring his renewable energy students over from the Universidad de El Salvador to watch my UDB students give their final presentations on their group research projects. The timing worked out nicely, as the last week of my class was the first week of Rich's class, and his class meeting times were coincidentally the same as ours - Tuesdays and Thursdays starting at 2 pm. This gave my students an enlarged audience and hopefully gave Rich's students some food for thought. My students worked in six teams and tackled the following topics, all with a focus on El Salvador:

• connecting small renewable energy systems to the grid
• generating energy from solid waste
• incentives and subsidies for renewable energy
• ocean energy
• biomass energy
• the future of renewable energy in El Salvador

I was impressed with the students' presentations, though they nearly all went on quite a bit longer than their allotted times! This plus the last-minute addition of an engaging presentation on biomass energy by a visiting professor from the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid made the class end much later than scheduled. But it was a happy end to the course. The university kindly provided a bit of a party with snacks and drinks after the four-plus hour marathon of presentations.

Class photo on graduation night (a few folks had to leave before we took the photo)

Two days later Basilia and I set out for our week off in Honduras. We took a bus north to the border at El Poy, then another on to Santa Rosa de Copán, where we happened upon a coffee festival on the town square with some beautiful live music. After a couple hours our niece and nephew, Celenia and Hernán, showed up on their bus from Tegucigalpa, just in time for us all to catch the last evening bus to Gracias.

Musicians at the coffee festival in Santa Rosa de Copán

We spent three nights in Gracias at the pretty, comfy Guancasco hotel, terraced onto a hillside below an old Spanish fort. The first morning we hitch-hiked out to the Lenca village of La Campa and caught the Palm Sunday outdoor mass. The next day we hiked up into Celaque National Park, seeing a bit of cloud forest that's similar to but much more intact and extensive than what remains in Guajiquiro. In the evening we took a moto-taxi out to a municipal hot springs a couple miles outside town.

Palm Sunday mass in La Campa

Next day we caught a bus to La Esperanza, a small highland city with a cool climate that's always been a favorite Honduran town for me. We just spent a couple hours there before getting another bus on to Marcala, another place I'm always happy to hang out. We spent a night at Basilia's sister Argelia's house, then caught a ride up to Guajiquiro with Argelia's family in their pickup.

Guajiquiro was tranquil and pretty as always. We spent three days there, not doing much but a couple of hikes in the surrounding countryside and sitting around talking with Basilia's family and eating. The highlight was an invasion of the town's new pool hall. Pool halls in Central America are almost universally understood to be off-limits to women. I said to Basi half-jokingly that she should take her sisters and nieces over to play pool. She thought it was a great idea and organized the womenfolk. It turned out to be a great success. Her sisters Argelia and Oneyda, who had never played before, especially had a wild time. The men all seemed to either get a laugh out of it or tried to ignore the fact that one of the two tables was being dominated by women. Argelia's and Oneyda's husbands came by briefly to check it out and were supportive, which I was happy to see.

Basilia takes a shot while her sister Argelia, niece Lourdes, brother's girlfriend Marta, and niece Edy look on

Basilia and I headed back through Marcala, where we got to visit with our old friend Gloria Urquía, whom I used to work with at the nonprofit INADES when I was a Peace Corps volunteer a dozen years ago. She's still doing good work in the community.

Basilia's mom accompanied us back to El Salvador and is here visiting with us now. I'm back on the job, heading into uncharted waters now that the class is over.