So sorry to leave you all hanging with my lack of posts. I know you probably live for my blog - just kidding. Things have been a little hectic for the past few days!
Let me back up to Thursday. Janet and I went down to El Amatillo, which is about 5 miles away from the El Salvadoran border to buy pottery for the Mi Esperanza store. We had such a great time! I realized on Thursday that I may or may not have a shopping problem. Imagine going to a store, and just saying, "I'll take everything you have, and let me place an order for more as well." That's exactly what we did! Keep in mind, the most expensive item we bought was $5.00 - things are very cheap here in Honduras.
For those of you who don't know, I'm an experienced potter - I've been known to throw a pretty sweet pot or two. Again, catch the sarcasm. Either way, I took about 80 pictures while I was there because I was extremely excited! I won't make you look at all of the pics, so here are the highlights.
This is a whole hut full of greenware, which is pottery that has been dried out, but not fired.
This is the first kiln that you put the greenware in. Janet told me that in order to make this kiln, they pile up a huge mound of cow manure. Then they pack wet clay on top of the big mound. Once the clay dries on the outside, they light the mound on fire. All the cow pooh burns off, and they're left with a kiln! How resourceful!
After the first firing, different colors of slip are used to decorate the pieces. The pieces then go into the kiln that burns green leaves. Just as a side note - it was extremely hot here because we're way down in the valley. Add to that the heat from the kilns...so hot!
This is what the pieces look like once they go through the second firing.
This woman's job was to scrape off the ash from each piece.
Finished product! Such beautiful pottery!
One of many rooms filled with pottery - I wanted it all!
Name of the place we bought the pottery. The store and the workshop were on both sides of the street.
Only some of what we bought...
The Mi Esperanza crosses - specially made for the store!
A random lizard a woman took about five minutes to make while we were there.
Elsa! She's the head woman of the pottery co-op. She was so nice and incredibly excited about the amount of pottery we bought. Since we were such good shoppers, she let us pick out a gift for ourselves :-) Oh yeah!
Cute little skittish puppy! I swear there's a dog everywhere I go...I think it's a sign that I need a puppy in my life.
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