Honduras 101

Well, if you are anything like me, you may need a bit of geography and basic information about Honduras.  Honduras is in Central America, north of Nicaragua, south of Guatemala.  It has a Caribbean coast, and is probably best know for Roatan, off its east coast.  The capital is Tegucigalpa, which is basically due south of about Nashville, Tennessee.  (In my mind, I pictured Honduras much further west than it actually is.  I guess it's my west coast bias.)  Honduras is also slightly larger than Tennessee.  When I travel, I'll probably only be going to Tegucigalpa.  Though I'd love to take a side trip to Roatan or Belize, it likely won't happen.  We'll see...

In 2010, there were only 9 U.S. adoptions from Honduras; in 2009 there were 4. There are a few agencies starting adoptions from Honduras.  My agency sounds like it will be one of the first, if not the first, to get a Honduras program actually up and running.  Honduras is not a Hague country.  (For those of you not well versed in adoption lingo, this has to do with the Hague treaty that some countries signed regarding international adoption.)  You can find more info here about Honduran adoption statistics and information. 

Honduras is one of the poorest countries in the Western hemisphere.  I heard it was the 2nd poorest, next to Haiti.  Honduras has just over 8 million people, about 1 million of them living in Tegucigalpa.  They are 2 hours ahead of the west coast during standard time.  For more Honduras info, click here.

Because Honduras is so poor, many of the orphans are in charity run orphanages.  It is not clear whether my daughter will come from a state run or charity run orphanage. Here are a few random pics of Honduran orphans from various charity websites.  My goodness!  Don't you just want to bring them all back home with you?!