Weekends here are relaxing! Whereas in Ecuador, Allison (my sister) and I traveled almost every weekend, life here during the weekend is much more laid back. After the gym on Saturday (where I met Victor Montoya, the owner and Central American Body Building Champion), I watched a few soccer games with Don Carlos and then Lucy picked me up to watch the Honduras/U.S. game. Unfortunately, it had rained all day so the traffic was terrible coming to pick me up and on the way back to her house so we listened to the entire first half in her car. Upon arrival at her house, darkness greeted us because the electricity went out. So we returned to "The Falls Mall" (yes, they stole the name from the Mall in Miami) and I happily watched the U.S. win 2-1. Here's a picture from outside of Pizza Hut at the mall where we watched part of the game:

From Honduras

On the way back to my "house," the road was flooding and the car almost turned off because of the nearly foot-high water. That being said, we returned to Lucy's house (the electricity had returned) where I thought I would have to sleep on the couch. Fortunately, Lucy's brother-in-law has an SUV and he took me back home safe and sound.

As for Sunday, I went to the gym and missed going to Catholic Mass with Don Carlos but later in the day I went with Carlos and Elia to their daughter's house in the suburbs of Tegucigalpa. It was definitely the nicest area I've been to yet. We rode there in Carlos's 1972 Datsun:

From Honduras

After that, I spent my Sunday night watch the Magic lose game 2 of the Championship :( and chatting with Donald who lives upstairs and knows more about American basketball than me!

Today, after my third day at the office in Pedregal, I am finding that business is very slow for Prisma Honduras right now. Susan, the office manager keeps apologizing that we can't go out to do new client evaluations because right now they don't have any new clients. Unfortunately, almost all of the "field trips" we take are for "cobros" to tell people or their avales that they need to pay up. It's sad to see that these people can't pay, but it intrigues me that I have yet to go into a house that didn't have a TV. (So far I've been inside between 5 and 10 houses in a very rough area called "Colonia Flor del Campo".) Today Dilsia showed me part of the process of evaluating loan applications through spreadsheets showing costs and profits of a few small businesses. She also showed me how she writes the descriptions for Kiva.

The next few days we will be out all day doing street marketing for Prisma/Kiva loans which should pretty interesting. According to Susan, it's very hard to find a person who hasn't already received a microloan, so we'll see!

If anyone reading this has any questions, feel free to ask me!