Frase del día: “A otro perro con ese hueso.” - means go test your tricks on someone else. For example, if a man approaches a sexy woman standing on the street and tries to sweet talk her into going out with him, she can say this phrase.

Last week we built a fogon for a family. It's a stove made out of adobe, brick, mud, and cement. One day was spent practicing making a fogon out of only mud at the university, and the second day we actually constructed one for a family in need, using mostly cement. We started around 9 am and finished around 4 pm. We had several emaciated dogs and a couple chickens/hens/roosters and their chicks come into the room now and again and a few left their footprints in the cement when we were finished. Super cute. But that was my first time working with cement and I loved it! Loved getting my hands dirty too. I didn't have any skin problems following the use of cement, but a few other people got dry skin and their hands started burning up a bit... =/.

Saturday we went to the pool because some of the other trainees from the other site were visiting. Had music, food, and lots of good people. The weather unfortunately wasn't as hot as usual so the pool wasn't as refreshing as it should have been... just cold. It was fun though.

That night, as with all Saturday nights at this site, there was a dance in the Alcaldia. They had a big screen playing music videos, lots of good dancing music, lights, and lots of people. I learned Merengue, Pachata, and probably a couple other dances too. They were all kind of easy since you just let the guy lead, and most of the guys I danced with were excellent dancers. Danced with several people in our group, declined several requests from strangers to dance with me, sweated a lot, took a couple breaks, got confused as to who I should speak Spanish to and who I should speak English to... overall an amazing night and I can't wait for the next one!

Sunday I went back to visit my first host family because it was the birthday of my host brother, who turned 1 year old! Their relatives came over, there was cake, snacks, soda, “Happy 1st Birthday” banner in English, lots of pictures, lots of jokes. My host sister had gotten a medium-sized turtle from someone the other day but lost him in their huge backyard =(.

On Monday my group gave a little charla to some 10 year olds about Exercise and Nutrition. It went pretty well, we had a good sized class of probably less than 20 students. It was a bit difficult to keep them focused throughout the presentation but by using several dinámicas (like ice-breaker games), we kept them interested. We had an activity where we divided them into groups and had them write down as many exercises as they could think of in two minutes and then present them to us, just to see what kind of idea they had about what exercise is. They did well - listed fútbol, running, push-ups, sit-ups, etc. We talked to them about stretching and flexibility, diabetes, high blood pressure, vitamins, junk food, caffeine, water, and played Jeopardy to review. Had some extra time in the end so we took them outside and had several races consisting of running forward, running backward, running sideways, running karaoke style, and hopping on one foot. They seemed to love that the most. I think any game in which they're very actively participating garners their interest.

Three PCVs from the Health program visited us on Tuesday to talk to us about HIV/AIDS for 4 hours. I thought it was going to be another very long lecture, but it turned out to be really fun. We did several dinámicas and a couple condom demonstrations, like each of us putting a condom on a banana, and then being shown how oil will break a condom. One of the volunteers blew up a condom into a balloon and rubbed baby oil on it gently, and it burst. I knew latex only works with water-based fluids, but I had never seen a demonstration like that before so that was interesting. We played a game where we had to spell our names with our hips, and another where we stood in two lines (two teams) and had a pen in our mouths and had to pass a ring down the line transferring it from pen to pen. A couple people including me ended up getting pen on their face from the other person. Super fun. The latter half of the day we were separated into groups and all had time to prepare our charlas for Wednesday, which were to replicate the exact charla that the volunteers gave to us! Yayyyy.

So, Wednesday. Woke up bright and early at 5 am to get ready for our HIV/AIDS charla. We headed about 30 minutes away to another site to visit an Adventist high school. Each group got their own class to give the 4 hour charla to. We each got to say our parts and I think we all had a lot of fun. The students participated and didn't misbehave, other than laughing at some of the sexual words and sometimes not paying attention. At the end of the charla they gave us a huge round of applause and screamed for probably 2 minutes straight.... I think all the classes did that because they like to scream! Fun fun fun.



As for the rain, good lord. Everyday, and it's getting worse and worse. Just Wednesday night I was watching on the news and it said there were 5 hurricanes occurring and affecting Tegucigalpa. We've already had the kitchen and living room floors of our house flooded twice. Luckily none of the water seeped into my room, but things will probably get worse. They say another big hurricane like Mitch is coming...



A few of us played Texas Hold 'Em using little crumpled bits of paper to bet with. No money! It was fun, definitely should have more poker nights.



Friday we gave another charla to a class of 9-13 year olds about business fundamentals. We read a story about a woman who tried to start her own business but failed at the beginning because she didn't consider several things like competition, skills necessary to sell her product, etc, but who later with help from her friends, succeeded. We then talked about saving and how important a practice it is, at any age especially. We put it in terms of what they know, like how many snacks they spend their money on a day, and then see what would happen if they had just saved their money for a week or a month, they could afford to buy some shoes or clothes or something. Most of the students said they wanted to start their own business after we were done with our charla. We had probably an hour of extra time left so played a couple of learning games, sang, played telephone, took pictures...



During Spanish class that day too, we made brownies and banana cookies (which were delicious by the way!). We also unfortunately had a death that occurred while we were making them. Spanish classes are usually held in a host family's house, and one of the dogs of the family had accidentally eaten rat poison (people here use poisoned pellets or something to kill rats instead of traps, so it's common for dogs and animals to die from consuming these....I would think traps would be easy to manufacture and sell too, and then this problem wouldn't exist). He puked some of it up and the family tried to make him throw-up by putting lime and milk down his throat (does curdling cause the gagging reflex?) but he wouldn't throw-up anymore... it was super sad... it looked like he suffered a lot and they even took him to the vet but by that time it was too late. This was one of the families that actually treated their dogs well and had them in the family for a long time.

Later that day we walked to a smaller aldea to visit the families of some of the houses that were affected by the landslides caused by the torrential rains the past few days. One house was completely demolished, others had holes in their walls, and others were at risk of being destroyed. We're going to see what we can do. This will be an interesting project for me since I really have no idea how to even go about helping these people but one trainee suggested digging trenches and getting food donations, so I guess we'll begin with that.



A couple of us have also started a math club but haven't had too many classes due to the electricity going out nearly everyday and heavy rain about the time we want to hold the classes. Going to try to get the older kids here motivated to continue to help the other children who might need tutoring in math so that it lasts long after we leave.

Other things... I've been using the same plastic shower cap I got from the hotel in Houston back in June. I'm surprised it hasn't torn yet. I have a back-up shower cap that's much stronger if it breaks, but I'll try to make this one last. I use it almost everyday and only wash my hair like every 4 days. Yeah yeah, gross, I know but it takes me forever to wash my hair using a bucket. Usually I just wear it up in a ponytail or something, and when I do let it down, since it's so rare, everyone always thinks I cut my hair or did something different >_<.

The electricity has been going out EVERY.SINGLE.DAY. I honestly don't mind it, and actually kind of like it sometimes because it means I can go to sleep earlier. It usually happens when it's raining, sometimes when it's not, and it stays out for a few hours or longer. I think the longest we've had it out was maybe a day. It's a great chance to sit and talk with my host family by candlelight in the living room. Here in Honduras it's tradition to tell ghost stories whenever the lights go off. None of my host families have been very traditional or conservative so I unfortunately haven't been told any stories yet by them, but I'm sure if I ask, they'll tell. Or I can visit the grandma that lives a few houses down. She always has a lot to say :).

Funny things – in Spanish class, we're learning the Subjunctive and we had to come up with examples of things we expect of the people in our sites when we go there, and my friend said, “Espero que mi familia me introduzca a toda la gente en mi sitio”, thinking that the verb 'introducir' (where the introduzca comes from) meant 'to introduce'. Our teacher cracked up and showed us what 'introducir' really meant by sticking her pen into the big potato sack against the wall, and that's when we realized 'introducir' meant to put an object into something else. We laughed for probably 10 minutes after that, and I just had to mention that it's a good thing that my friend is a girl because if she was a guy, it'd be so much worse >_<, to which our teacher said, “¡Nancy, que gráfico!” and we all laughed until our stomachs hurt. Good fun, and I'm sure we will never forget what 'introducir' means after that. Then during one of our other charlas, one guy was presenting his activity to our class of high school kids and they were talking too much. He heard someone say “Callate” so he repeated it, not really knowing what it meant, saying “¡Callate por favor!” and I told him later that he just told the class to “Shut-up please”. Another silly story – my friend and I were practicing our Spanish at my house, and I was talking about what I did my last weekend before I came to Honduras. I mentioned that I went to the cemetery with the family for Father's Day to visit my grandfather, and that “aunque no soy religiosa, mi familia es Budista entonces oriné con ellos” (“although I'm not religious, my family is Buddhist so I peed with them”).... when I meant to say “oré con ellos”, which means “I prayed with them” -_______________________-. Ah, the joys of learning a new language! I totally knew “orar” was the verb for “to pray” because I just used it a few sentences before that but “orinar” is always in my head for some reason. Maybe because I always need to go to the bathroom when it's inconvenient and there's either no light, no time, or no bathroom available. Anyway.

There's a trainee here who contracted both Dengue and Malaria at the same time. That trainee is totally fine right now but was in the hospital for a couple weeks. Scary...

Good song, one of my favorites here: Camila - “Mientes”

Hello hello.

Here's something new: Phrase of the day! Or rather, blog, since I don't think I'll be updating daily... =] These will be cultural phrases, so I don´t know if they´re used in other Spanish-speaking countries.

“El mal anda, mal acaba” - essentially means “What goes around comes around”

Things have been pretty boring around here. It might be because I have absolutely no energy to be going out after training and on the weekends. The days here are long and hot and all I want to do is stay in and not sweat, not get bitten, and just watch my tv shows and movies on my computer. I love this netbook by the way. It's a Toshiba NB305-N410, blue. I upgraded the RAM to the maximum 2 GB before I left the states and it runs pretty good. Has Windows 7 Starter, which is not bad, just can't change my desktop background, but I can live with that.

Anyway, the paletas here are delicious! The tutti-frutti is my favorite. It's basically like real mixed fruit juice poured into an empty yogurt cup with chopped up bananas, mangoes, apples, watermelon, and some sugar, with a popsicle stick in it too, frozen, and then eaten. Delicious! Only 4 Lemps, or about 20 cents.

We had a guest speaker come talk to us about climate change, global warming, and the greenhouse gas effect, and in her talk, she briefly mentioned that one of the peoples of Honduras called the Miskitos are excellent tree climbers and climb up trees to harvest the batana (sp?) plant, which is used in Ojon brand products. It was so strange to hear because Ojon sells their products in Sephora, and I've actually used their shampoo and conditioner before (they're insanely expensive and I'm not too fond of the smell, but it does wonders for your hair), but I hadn't realized that the ingredients come from the Miskito people of Honduras! Small world...

One thing I've found I really miss here is Asian people. I'm the only Asian in my Muni D group!! And I'm not even full Asian! Well there is one other guy but he's being mysterious about his ethnicity so I'm not counting him until I know what he is. But yes. I miss Asian people. I got so used to it over the past 6 years being at UC Irvine for college (which is like almost 50% Asian), working at a lab where almost everyone was Asian, living with my relatives who are Burmese, and all my friends were Asian too... Le sigh. I feel like a big chunk of my life is missing without a single Asian person here. There are two other girls in the overall training group but they're in different project so I never really see them. Anyway, just thought I should share that v^_^v.

I miss the piano too. I have a terrible habit of always needing to do something with my hands and can never sit still, almost like I have a beat in my head at all times, and I would really like some instrument to play to get it out. I play the guitar, piano and flute, but I lost my flute my fourth year of college, and didn't bring a guitar here, and definitely don't have a piano... Just afraid of losing whatever skills I had over these two years. Maybe once I get my own place I'll be able to track down an inexpensive keyboard somewhere.... Ha, yeah right.

Tomorrow my friend and I have to give a mini-charla (presentation) on recycling to some students and we have no idea how recycling in Honduras works because we haven't had a talk about it yet. We asked around and it seems like there is no solid recycling program other than in the larger cities, so the best way to make use of recyclable items is to reuse them. For instance, with plastic bottles, people have been painting them or filling them with sand to create benches and even walls and houses with other materials as well. I'm not really sure what else we can do with the other things but I'm going to do a bit of research online today to see what Honduras does...

The park this past week has been celebrating like cultural stuff, so they had karaoke and dance contests between the high school kids, and a food festival with so many different things.. Best food I've had here in Honduras so far were the Tacos Mexicanos at that festival. I also love that fresh passion fruit juice is widely available here, as well as coconuts and some other exotic fruits that I never heard of until I got here. There's one fruit called Nance (pronounced pretty much like my name) and it's the ONLY fruit that I hate with a passion. They taste like rotten fruit and smell terrible too, and cause body pains in some people, so I don't understand why anyone would ever eat them.





Hmm what else... had a little theft issue with some of my small items like chapstick, face stuff, candy.. that's very resolved though. Very, very resolved...

Guess that's all for now!

I think I'm already getting lazy. I haven't updated this in a while, but it doesn't mean I haven't been writing. There are a few people I'm writing incredibly long e-mails to regularly, and by the time I'm done with those, I don't have the energy to write anymore.. but I think taking a break and writing when I have the urge to write is better because at least then it's not forced..

Or maybe I'll do bullet points since I don't quite remember everything that happened since my last post:

• Went to another town close to the training center to have our technical class in the morning. We each had to go out and interview 4 different people about services the municipality offers. Great opportunity to practice my Spanish and meet different types of people. I interviewed a waitress, internet cafe manager, tourist shop vendor, and some old women who lived in an old worn-down wooden room. I thought they had a pulpería in their house but now that I think about it, they may not have.... Oops =/. It was interesting to see the stark contrast even in a touristic location like that where there are really nicely built buildings there and across the street a very old shack that has only two rooms including the kitchen (that I could see) for at least 4 people.

• Not sure if I wrote about my trip to the capital yet. We had to get there on our own, and after all our safety & security sessions, I was a bit nervous at first. My friend and I got on the bus that heads to Tegucigalpa and got off at one of the main stops, then from there had to take a taxi directo to a certain bus terminal and there wait for the rest of the group. Not too bad, and it was fun haggling with the taxi driver, who initially overcharged us for being Gringas. Rest of the group arrived and we had half an hour to kill so we walked around the streets and bartered with the fruit/veggie vendors, and I bought myself some small locks for my luggage and backpack. We then headed to a market, which is very different from your typical supermarket (such as Albertson's). Within this market were several different stalls set up for produce, meat, cheese, and there were pulpería-type stands and small cafes lining the walls. Reminded me very much of how the vendors at a fair are set up, except this was inside a building. Bought a few fruits and veggies for my host family, and then we all headed to the Peace Corps office building and met up with everyone else from the training group who had traveled to Tegus that day. Got a tour of the building, and saw a map hanging in one of the corridors that had several quotes on it from PCVs and some famous people. Out of all the beautiful portraits and landscapes with PC quotes on them throughout the building, that map was the most moving of all. The quotes were amazing and some gave me goosebumps. I wish I had a copy of that poster, because it would give me the continuing motivation I need to get through this...

I'm not going to lie – I've been pretty homesick, and it hit me hard a few weeks ago, but I'm feeling a bit better now. It's just hard to think that I still have 26 more months here, 2 years and a bit. I mean, when you think of it like that, of course it's a long time. It's not that I don't enjoy this experience though. Honduras is amazing, and there's so much green everywhere that I will probably be sick of seeing green by the time I return to the states. At the same time, it is difficult not being able to see my friends and family or a familiar face other than on Skype, and even then the connection is terrible and makes video-chatting utterly useless. It has only been a month though. They say it takes 2-3 months to get settled into another country, and I do feel it's getting easier. I just can't wait to get my own place though. I've got to wait 4 more months for that though. My host families have been great, but nothing compares to having your own place, cooking for yourself, eating what and when you want to eat, privacy, and doing what you want when you want without feeling like you're neglecting your duty to speak Spanish and integrate into the family after an exhausting day. Which brings me to my next bullet point:

• The volunteer visit. We all were assigned a current PCV and had to travel to their house a couple weeks ago to see what it is they do. I rode a bus for about 3.5 – 4 hours with a couple other PCTs and we met up with our volunteers at the bus stop. Headed to lunch and watched the Holland vs. España match. The pulpo is always right! There was another group of Gringos there.. (that's what we've taken to call other white folk, it's not derogatory in any way here) but they were with a missionary group I think. After that I went to drop my stuff off at my volunteer's house, and daaamn she has it good. Granted, it's not what you would expect and it still has a pila instead of a washing machine, but her place is super nice. She has a site-mate who lives up the street and we hung out there most of the days since he has a tv and more sitting area. We made this interesting dish for dinner the first night. Bought and chopped up onions, broccoli, green beans, a green pepper (I think it was a bell pepper...) and stir-fried them, cooked noodles, and then poured this sauce made of peanut butter, orange juice, soy sauce (I think) and some other things in it. It was DELICIOUS. I'll post the recipe as soon as I receive it from the volunteer. Next morning we made banana pancakes! Had a chocobanana (frozen banana dipped in chocolate), baleadas, enchiladas (which are actually fried tortillas topped with meat and coleslaw..), and just a lot of food during that trip. I feel like I gained 5 pounds over that weekend. Aside from food though, another PCT and I went with our volunteer to meet her counterpart and see what she does in one of her working days. Her counterpart is the head of the women's organization of that town, which works against domestic violence and promoting gender equity. They are also working on setting up a space for women to sell the crafts they make. One woman makes jewelry and these incredibly durable pine needle baskets. We met the former mayor too. Later that day we headed to the colegio (kind of like high school, I'll get into the educational system in another blog) and stood in one of the classrooms while the volunteer asked the students to be prepared next session because they will be participating in an HIV/AIDS presentation. Toured an old fort later that day, glad to get *some* exercise. We headed into the larger city the next day to have lunch at Pizza Hut, and I also bought a second phone there from Digicel since it's much much cheaper to call the states with Digicel than Tigo. Rested the remainder of the day and headed back to my host family the next!

I really feel like I am going to have a lot of downtime as a PCV and it's a bit discouraging because I don't want to feel as if my two years are going to be wasted doing small projects and working a couple days out of the week. I know that it really depends on the site and the volunteer, and some people do really want to work but the opportunities just aren't there. I'll definitely be proactive and get to know as many people in my site as I can, but I don't feel like I am as well-prepared with the skills and knowledge that other people in my program have. I have no experience with NGOs, governments, municipalities, GIS, urban planning, politics, and other things along those lines like the other MD PCTs. It's probably nothing to get down about, and I actually got excited when one volunteer came to talk about a cultural museum she was working with and how they participate in festivals with these elaborate costumes and all that goes into planning them. Another volunteer has worked on eco-tourism and reserves. As an MD PCV, I'll be able to really work on anything I want since the municipal structure includes all the different departments like womens, environmental, youth, etc, so I guess I got that to look forward to. Back to bullets:

• Moved from our initial training site to another site about an hour and a half away from Tegus for Field-Based Training (FBT). All the different groups split and went to different locations so I'll be spending the next 7 weeks with only Municipal Development trainees. It's very different here. The houses are much closer together and the weather is insanely hot. It didn't rain much at all the first week, which is surprising because it stormed everyday at the first site. It did start to rain over the weekend of the first week and into the next though. My new host family is very nice. I'm living with a mother and her three children – two daughters and a son. Her daughters are 12 and 10 and her son is 9. Her husband is living and working in the states. She has her own cafe here where she sells snack-type items and also cooks meals. She's known for her pupusas and tacos, but her baleadas and everything else she cooks are super good too. Training is a bit different here. We switched teachers for our language classes and the classes are being held in a host family's house. We get an hour and a half for lunch, and I just walk up to my host mom's cafe and she gives me lunch... I had the most delicious pupusas con queso the other day, with a sort of coleslaw without mayo on the side, as well as chopped up onions and carrots and hot peppers. Very delicious. The meals here are pretty heavy, but my host mom is really open and I can be honest with her... so I mentioned that I prefer something light in the morning and not too hungry at night too, so I was able to eat just a banana with some peanut butter and milk for breakfast one day! Yeah doesn't sound too exciting but when you've been eating heavy oily carbs and fat for a while, fruit is a welcome change, which is why I can't wait to get my own place... I'll be having fruit and veggies for almost every meal and probably cereal and that's it. I tried something new for dinner too.. it was like a warm corn pudding. Good for the first few bites but slowly grows tiresome. After training today, I went to visit some other trainees and their families. One girl lives literally like 5 steps in front of my house and the others just down the block. I taught everyone including some host family members how to play “Uno” with regular playing cards and it was quite fun. We weren't sure what the name for “Spades” was in Spanish and one girl said “tiene spad?” and then we started calling them “espades” and then “corazones negros” for black hearts. Dictionary told me the correct word is “espadas”. Heh, at least I was close. Apparently the word for “Ace” is pronounced “Ahs” so we had fun with that.. Later we went back to our homes and then another trainee from down the street came over to get a couple of us to go to his house to play real Uno with his family. LONGEST. GAME. EVER. We only played one game and it took about an hour. Le sigh.




• Learned how to dance the Punta! After playing several games of a variation of the card game “Spoons” (we didn't have spoons so we stuck out our tongues instead), my host mom put on some Punta music and two of the other PCTs came over to learn how to dance. We soon had an audience of 13 people! The neighbor's children came over and stood outside the open front door to watch. It was really tiring and I was completely sweaty by the end of it, but it was a ton of fun, and now I know how to Punta!
• Visited the Rio Grande. There's a smaller river near here and a much larger one that takes some walking to get to, but it's HUGE. Probably could go canoeing or tubing in it, although I wouldn't even go swimming in it since it's filthy and carries all sorts of diseases. We do plan on having a picnic out there one day. It's very tranquil over there.
• My neighborhood here and host family in the first location all thought I contracted Classic Dengue over the weekend. Turns out it was some weird viral infection, NOT Dengue. Friday night my entire body started hurting, and then I had this intense headache and fever, no energy to even sit up or open my eyes, and in the middle of the night had chills but then the fever broke and I was sweating heavily for a very long time. Diarrhea began (and not the normal kind), fever came back, still no energy, headache didn't go away, body aches even worse and now pain behind the ears, no appetite and everything I did try to eat just went through me, sweat, etc etc...Fever kept coming and going but I did get better on Sunday, lower back was still in a lot of pain and still had a minor headache and diarrhea and couldn't eat but got my energy back. Went to the hospital on Monday for some laboratory testing of blood and other things and only medication I was given was probiotics (?), antibiotics, and oral rehydration salts. Mmmmm....
• There's a fruit here called “Nance” (nahn-say, I think, not too sure of spelling either). It is probably the only fruit I've ever tried that I don't like. Nancy doesn't like Nance. How ironic.
• Advanced one level to Intermediate-Mid! That's the level required to pass training, so hopefully I'll have advanced even more within the next 5 weeks. We'll see! :)
• We went to La Tigra yesterday. It's one of the national parks here and it's absolutely stunning. Had to walk uphill for about 2 hours to reach the entrance, and from the entrance about 4 kilometers or 1 and a half hours to the large waterfall. We encountered several small waterfalls along the way, and experienced changes in altitude and ecosystems (or at least that's what it felt like). Pictures below!






I guess that's all for now. More when more interesting things happen.