I wanted to share with you all a few pictures I took this past Saturday.

As I told you before, I found my father and I went to visit him yesterday.
It was very nice to see him again after 18 years and it is also nice that ha lives kind of close to where I live, about 50 miles south of Tegucigalpa towards the pacific coast.
Mark thinks I look just like my father. What do you think?









This is a neighbor of my dads who likes to spend most of her time in his house.

This is my dad's wife in the kitchen.




This is a river close by my dad's house. I think it's a beautiful place and is a very quiet town too.

We went to the park and Gaby I wanted to tell you that I found some "mangos verdes" green mangoes, and they were very good.

These are some pictures from my birthday:

I wanted to thank Mark for the surprise he prepared for me. Especially after losing my camera and my cellphone. Well if you wanna know about the surprise I will tell you. So I was taking a nap in the afternoon on my b-day and when I woke up Mark had both of our laptops connected to web cams on the table. In one of them was my sister and her husband and a cousin, on the other my in-laws and in the middle was my birthday cake. They all sang Happy Birthday to me. I really appreciated it. Especially because that week was a very long week for me, and I also want to thank every one who sent a b-day presents to me.

The party was wild!!! A little bit of Coke and the boy had already taken his pants off. It was all I could do to keep his father from doing the same.

We also had some friends and neighbors over after that surprise. This was also another surprise because I didn't know we were gonna have people over to sing Happy Birthday to me again.

Some stuff going on with us in Honduras.

Hi! Everyone, I just wanted to update you with our family a little bit more.
This past week was a hard week for our family. Last Tuesday we had our first interview with the U.S consulate and as we were told by our lawyer, this process is gonna take several months after we turn in a waiver that we are working on. We are gonna get our second interview between 6-9 months after we turn the waiver in and hopefully that will be the date when I get my visa, so I can go back to the U.S.

As many of you know, last week Mark went to the U.S for a few days and one of the reasons why he went was because I wanted a Digital SLR camera to star taking photography classes and a computer for me to be able to take online classes. Well I went to pick up Mark at the San Pedro Sula Airport and then we went to my home town to visit and to be at a high school graduation since we were "padrinos"* of a girl, a friend of mine who was graduating. Then we came back home to Tegucigalpa. On the way home, in the bus someone stole my camera with the bag, the extra battery, the memory card and the lens. It was a hard time for us, especially for me since the camera was my B-day present and I was so exited about the camera, exited to start my photography classes. The saddest part was that all the pictures I took at the graduation were in the memory card, and basically I was the only one taking pictures at the graduation.

It's been a very long week, also because the day after my camera was stolen I lost my cell phone. I dropped it while I was in a taxi and we were never able to find it, so I lost all the info in the cellphone. As you can imagine most of us don't keep a address book with numbers anymore, at least I don't but after losing my cell I think I'm gonna start using one in case I loose my cell again.

Not everything has been bad news this week. I also have something good to write about.
Maybe many of you don't know but I grew up with my grandmother, because my mom died when I was three and a half years old. and I knew my Dad but last time I saw him I was probably 6 years old. One day as I was talking to the wife of the owner of the building where we live it crossed my mind that maybe her husband would be able to help me find my dad because he is an engineer. The only information I had about my dad was his name and knew that he was an engineer too.
The owner of the apartments sent an e-mail to all his colleagues and most of the engineers in Honduras asking for Carlos Green. So after a few days someone send an e-mail back saying that she knew an engineer with the last name Green, but she did not know the name, so I got the number and I decided to call and ask for Carlos Green.
When I called and asked for him the person who answered told me that he wasn't there and I asked when he would be back. He said that he was not there anymore and that he did not know where he was but that he could ask his dad. He asked me to leave my name and number and he promised that he would call me back with the info. I told him my name "Keyla Alas" and he told me that he recognized that last name and that he knew a family with the same last name from a town call La Entrada Copan. I couldn't hide myself anymore so I told him who I was, the daugther of Carlos Green and he told me he knew my mom.

Well to end the story he is my cousin and he helped me contact my dad, and the day before my B-day he called me and it was very weird to talk to him, it was like talking to an strange person. I have not seen him yet, he lives about 2 hours away from Tegucigalpa and I'm planning to go see him sometime next week.

(*padrinos are a latino culture thing were someone who is going to have a big event, wedding, baby christening, graduation, etc... they will ask a friend or family member to accompany them in the event as well as to help with the cost of the event or to buy them a gift. This still exists in American culture with godparents of a new baby. Padrinos is the spanish translation of godparents.)

This was about two weeks ago, and I'm sorry I don't seem to keep the promise of blogging at least once a week, but I try.
This is my friend Enma, she came to visit me for a few days and we had a good time.
We decided to make lasagna because she thinks my lasagna is good. We made it one time when she went to the U.S and visited me for a week, well the lasagna was good but was expensive to make. Here in Honduras food is cheaper but when you buy American products i very expensive because they import all the American products from the U.S and the price is at least double from what it is in the U.S.
We also went and had a facial done and it felt really good. To tell you the truth I had never have one done.


This is me wearing a Mexican hat.
And here we are under the hat with Isaac.

Here is Isaac with his hat.

The mama is trying to get a kiss.

The mama getting a kiss from the boy.

He is not a happy boy
I don't understand why Mark can't be serious at least in photos

A little bathroom humor - you may want to skip it if you think like my mom...

Ok, I'm gonna tell you the story because Mark wants me to tell you:

We were back in my home town and one day my cousin invited us to go to some "swimming pools" in another town close by and let me tell you that this was a very very small town and the swimming pools were almost like regular swimming pools except they didn't have a filtration system and the water came from the mountains which means the water is very cold.
Before I go on let me tell you that in Honduras we have a lot of water issues, which means that you get water in your house every other day if you are lucky or every 2 to 3 days. We also don't have sewer systems in some places because a lot of areas are really poor.
So we go to the swimming pools and because the water was so cold I didn't get in. I had some stomach issues and I went to the bathroom and found out that it was just the seat with a hole in the middle with a very deep hole in it and a bucket on the side to flush the "toilet", so I decided to just wait until we got back home.
We were in our way back and a couple of minutes later my cousin realized she forgot the parrot she took with her. We went back to get her and then I really wanted to go. It didn't help that the roads weren't paved and ahead of us the police were stopping every one. Of course they wanted to get some money from us because my brother didn't have his license. So the police made us wait there to see if we would decide to hand over some money. I couldn't wait anymore.
I went to the first house I found and I saw a little girl and ask her If I could use her bathroom. She goes inside the house and comes back and she says: WE DON'T HAVE A BATHROOM" and I said, WELL WHERE DO YOU USUALLY GO? and she said "WE GO BEHIND THE HOUSE BY THE FENCE" and I said WELL, CAN I GO THERE TOO?, CAN YOU SHOW ME WHERE IT IS? She took me and I did my business basically on her backyard, so I left and thanked them for letting me use their bathr... I'm sorry their backyard. ( I also had some company back there, the dog came to say hi to me).
I'm sorry this might not be a funny story for some of you, but for Mark it is.

Keyla

(PS from Mark - I'm sorry I enjoy bathroom (er..backyard humor) and trust me this was way more funny for me from the spectator position than for Keyla. And if you don't enjoy a little bathroom humor please know that it's my fault and not Keyla's and just skip on down to the pictures of the boy.

Isaac on the phone

Isaac has a lot of hobbies, one of them is dancing and the other one is talking on the phone.
When he talks he kind of says"ao" trying to imitate his mama when she's talking on the phone and says " alo". He is 16 months and he has learned a lot, now he can say "ojo" which in English means "eye" he also knows where his "pancita" (belly) is, and his "nariz" (nose). He also has a lot of hair and a lot of curls that we don't know where they come from, according to Mark those curls are not his, but they are definitely not mine.

Isaac and the turtle

Isaac and the chickens

Isaac goes to the "farm"

This was more than a month ago, but I wanted to show you pictures of the fun day we had with Isaac and all the animals there where in our friend's parent's house.







This is a turkey getting ready for Thanksgiving.