Honduras? Are you sure?

I was at the airport seeing off the latest group earlier this month and among all the remodeling which continues there (which by the way is looking better and better every time I am there), there was a curiously lonely sign placed in the hall of which I took great note.

Read it outloud with me, won't you? No one will think you are weird, or any weirder than before.

Now, I don't know about you, but there were a few surprises on that list for me, some humurous (oriental veggies from Honduras?), some flabbergasting: the 3rd largest supplier in the world to the USA of apparal? What about the big boys like China, Korea, Mexico....even the USA itself. Wow.

And now we are back in Honduras after spending five days in El Salvador for the CIY conference. If you do not know, El Salvador switched its currency to the dollar several years ago (the currency was called the Colon (Columbus) before that. While this meant less muss and fuss for us (we brought dollars with us), our traveling companions did not have time before hand and ended up changing their Lempiras to dollars at the border, and then we got to have fun explaining how much a dollar is worth...and what those little coins are worth. It was the inverse experience from hosting groups that get Lempiras, and then think they have disposable monopoly money.

And if that were not enough...at the first of many post border stops Silvia went to get some water. The lady selling politely said two bags for a "cora". Silvia then asked us what a cora was, and thus the debate began. Turns out quickly that it is worth 25 cents. The longer explanation (that Brendy, an English speaking Honduran had to point out to us later in the week after yet another Honduran asking about how much a "cora" was worth) is that "cora" is the El Salvadorian way of saying...quarter. Go figure.

(yes, that is a pool...and with the heat at the camp site, many people needed it daily)

The one run-on sentance wrap up of differences between Honduras and El Salvador?

El Salvador has volcanoes, more trees, more moolah (new mint dollars I had not even seen), more factories, more people, pupusas as a national food, a capital city airport that is over an hour from the city it serves, and no Espresso Americano, much to the chagrin of all the Hondurans.