Sept. 2 – Sept. 14, 2010

For our last night in our FBT site, our Honduran friends rented out the pool area for us so we could hang out as a group one last time before going back to our first training site and reuniting with the other project groups. We danced the night away, a couple people went for a swim, took many pictures, and had a lot of fun. The next morning we all met in the park with our luggage and hopped on the bus to Tegucigalpa for Immigration stuff. That took foreverrrr, but we were able to get back on the bus after our forms and fingerprints were done and the bus took us to the area in Tegus where there’s a Pizza Hut, Wendy’s, McD’s, BK, Dunkin’ Donuts, and a supermarket. I went to Wendy’s with some other people and MMMmmm, Oreo Vanilla Frosty tasted so damn good. I wasn’t able to finish it though because before going to restaurant central I had eaten a bag of platano chips (they’re sliced thin length-wise and fried like chips and salted – delicious) and drank a carton of apple juice since I didn’t know that we were going out to eat later….So I wasted my money on that snack and on Wendy’s. They should have mentioned something to us, but that’s something we all learn here, is to deal with bad planning… I guess I’m a bit bitter about some things as most of us are but moving on.. We had a couple hours to kill after lunch so walked to the supermarket La Colonia, which is actually owned by Wal*Mart, as is the case with most of the supers here, like Paiz, and some other one called Tutti Frutti or something. After that, sat down at the patio outside Dunkin’ Donuts with some other trainees, found out that wifi internet was available at all the American chain restaurants, and finally we left to go back home to our first host families for one last week.

Our last week of training was mostly administrative stuff. Only had 2 days of language classes, took our final language proficiency interviews (I moved up another level – to Intermediate-High, next one after that is Advanced-Low), some safety and security sessions, OH and this one volunteer came to talk to us and I knew I recognized him from somewhere… He has the Youtube channel of his PC experience and I had watched that before coming here and his videos actually kind of got me excited for service, plus he has a Podcast as well so he’s somewhat a celebrity amongst new people like us. So yeah he came to talk to us about mental health, and was super cute and smart and confident that it’s a shame he’s leaving soon and lives uber far from me but…… =P. Hmm what else.. We received our PC polos, received super yummy different types of bread from this one family that sells it.. I got banana and carrot.. Oh yes, Morgaine, Amanda and I went to Santa Lucia to visit a tea café that’s supposed to be really popular there. When we got there we saw that they really didn’t have a great selection of tea but the sitting area outside had a spectacular view of Tegus and they had the best guava granita. A granita is a drink, like an ice-blended smoothie but here I’m pretty sure they use the real fruit to make them, and my guava granita tasted like heaven. Also got a slice of the cheesecake there, which wasn’t bad, and we helped Morgaine practice her Spanish because her interview was the next day. That wasn’t too successful though because we spent almost the whole time laughing. Later that week we found out we went to the wrong tea café… Oops. Amanda and I and some other trainees went back to Santa Lucia after training to go to the right café and were amazed…. It was Buddhist-themed with incense, a Buddha statue, very nice relaxation/meditation music, decorative pillows and a lot of wood furniture, but the real surprise was how amazing the tea tasted! Brad ordered Jasmine tea, which just blew away the stuff they serve at Chinese restaurants, Jenifer had the cinnamon tea which was also tasty, and then the other three of us had a fusion of mint, cloves, cardamom, milk, and tea. Each one of us had a cookie to accompany our tea too. That night I made banana cookies with the family, and this time instead of trying to ground the cinnamon sticks by mashing them as we did in our FBT site, I used a knife, which worked so much better and almost made it appear as ground cinnamon. The cookies were delicious and by the end of the next day were all gone (and no, I didn’t eat them all -____-).

Friday the 10th, our counterparts from our sites came to the training center to meet us for the first time. I was afraid mine wasn’t going to show because a few of us were still waiting while the others had already gotten seated for the initial speeches, but two people finally arrived for me – the mayor of my site and the director of all the schools in the municipality. Mayor is young, probably mid-late 30s and was just elected to position at the beginning of the year. The director is an older guy and both of them seem friendly. We did a couple counterpart-volunteer activities like write up a plan for the rest of the month after moving to site, write down our expectations of each other and also what we can offer to the other (as separate groups – future volunteers, counterparts), and had a very nice catered lunch of seasoned chicken, mashed potatoes, salad, and a very moist cake.. maybe tres leches? After that, we got on our own bus while the counterparts either got into another or drove their own cars to the US Embassy in Tegus. We were insanely lucky it didn’t rain that afternoon because before that day, it had rained everyday after lunch. The Swearing-In Ceremony was held outside, with seats under tents and the podium and flags on a platform/stage in front of us. The Ceremony began with a couple of speeches and we sang both national anthems. After the US Ambassador spoke, he had us all raise our right hand and recite an oath to become official Volunteers. Some of us cried after, I had to fight back my tears because I didn’t want my make-up to smear haha =P. After that, two now official volunteers gave speeches as well, in Spanish – Patrick gave his to talk about our training experience and our strong friendship within the group and also to show how far he had advanced in Spanish. His command of the language after three months really was impressive since he hadn’t even spoken a word of it before coming here, but he still does have a very strong American accent so we were impressed but had some good laughs too. I think we have all gotten comfortable with everyone’s language level and have realized that everyone makes mistakes and at times it really is laugh-til-you-cry hilarious (I have never laughed so hard nor so often as I have in my Spanish classes), but we are all learning and have all progressed a great deal, so I am really glad that he was one of us to give the speech. After him, Jessica, a native speaker, gave her speech and moved some of us almost to tears. It was beautifully orated, and the poem she wrote was inspirational. I wish I had gotten a copy of it. After the closing words, the ceremony was over and picture-taking began! I also met my mom’s friend who works at the embassy, because we had talked over the phone a few times and to finally meet her in person was nice. We then headed back on the volunteer bus, which took us to Valle de Angeles to an outdoor restaurant we had rented out to celebrate our swearing-in and as a final goodbye since that would be the last day we were all together as a group. A lot of dancing, a lot of pictures, a lot of laughing, and delicious food! I had a baleada with beans, mantequilla, eggs, chismol and avocado, and a papaya smoothie.. couldn’t even finish it all but it gave me enough energy to dance a few hours. Ended around 8:45 pm and the bus took all of us back to our houses/areas where our houses are and it was sad saying goodbye to some of my closest friends, but I know we’ll see each other again, and will definitely keep in touch.

Next morning, woke up early to get ready to leave. My counterparts came to pick me up from my house and then we started the 4-5 hour drive to site. They dropped me off at my new host family’s house and then went home. I spent the rest of the day unpacking a bit, and talking to my host family. It’s a small family, only a married couple with no children, but their house is one step away from where the wife’s parents and brother live so I go over there to use the bathroom and anything related to water or food since their house doesn’t have a toilet yet. Their house is actually pretty nice, there’s a front “porch” with tiled floor, a hammock outside, tiled floor inside, huuuge screen tv which doesn’t work, kitchen with stove that is not in use, and a huuuuuge dirt backyard with ducks, ducklings, chickens, roosters, hens, and chicks. There are also two dogs, Dusty and Rex. My host dad lived in the states for ten years before doing logging in North Carolina and Miami and just came back I think either last year or two years ago. They’re both very sweet, humble people and have had volunteers stay with them before. I taught them and their two nieces a couple card games like Uno (with regular cards), Go Fish, Spit, and then the card trick with 7 cards each in three columns. They enjoyed Go Fish the most because it’s a bit different from the way they play it and they said my version was more fun >_<. In their version, they don’t mess the cards up in the middle to make a lake, they just keep the pile stacked and draw a card from the top. Went to sleep, had a fan on the entire night because this town is HOT and HUMID like crazy!! It will take some getting used to but it’s not that bad. I’ll survive. I talked to Amanda and she said the weather is the complete opposite where she is. She was wearing pants and a long-sleeve shirt and was fine. Sigh. Well, sweating a lot is supposed to be good for skin as long as I stay hydrated right? We’ll see how that goes. And I’ll be able to get even more tan too, yay! But honestly, I really miss our FBT site. I think we were all spoiled with it. Here the houses are more spread apart, nobody plays in the park which is super sad, and there are no paletas or chocobananos!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I’m so glad I got the recipe for the tutti-frutti paleta from that pulperia lady during FBT. God. I think I would die if I couldn’t make them here.

Sunday, I didn’t have any plans but the mayor called and said he was going to take me to this place from like 9:30 am to 2 pm so I was like whaaaa, que barbaridad that I have to work on Sunday! and got ready in capris, t-shirt and sneakers because it sounded like we would be visiting an aldea and there might be a lot of dirt roads and mud, but as it turned out we went to the grand-opening of the biggest food court in Honduras, called Tio Dolmo. They have a few locations all over the country, but I guess this was the biggest? There were balloon-making clowns, live music, lots of food, and the mayor was interviewed for a news station that airs worldwide. We also sat with the owner of the brand/company “Selecta” and his wife. Selecta is a company that makes corn flour and tortillas, and the owner also invented some tortilla-making machines for industrial use and smaller ones for residential use. It is also the only brand that Tio Dolmo uses for their tortillas. Apparently the guy is also very good friends with the President of Honduras himself. He kept joking to me that by the time I’m done with my two years in Honduras, I’ll have a Honduran husband and two kids, and he’d even host the wedding for me on the beach if I wanted and I was like, fine, but you have to find husbands for my sister and cousin too (because I have their picture as the background for my phone and he saw it). Part of me doesn’t know if he was joking because he would repeat it throughout lunch and I would just laugh but yeaaaaah. And then my host dad also says I’m going to find a Honduran boyfriend and that he knows some guys who are super nice and honest in my site -__________________-. Not that I have anything against Honduran guys. I have some really great Honduran guy friends, one of which said is going to visit me and then we’ll go out and do some real dancing (if you’re reading this, you better! Hahaha). It’s just that I hope they’re not super serious in trying to hook me up and that they only said it in good fun. Other than that, it’s been good. My site has a park, several soccer fields and basketball courts, several cows and bulls and oxen (I think) in the soccer fields, even a cow right across the street from this house, and now I have a trophy-looking glass for the World Cup 2010 that the mayor gave to me. I like seeing the animals everywhere, it’s just so different from what I’m used to and it makes things interesting, especially if it’s in the street and won’t budge. They’re so cute. I wish I could go up and hug a cow but it would probably head-butt me. I want to learn how to milk one too but I probably wouldn’t even be able to squeeze a drop out. One day!

First day of work - pretty boring… Mayor introduced me to everyone who works in the Alcaldia, then sat in his mayor’s office while he met with several people/groups of the community, like council members, soccer team representatives, etc. They explained their problems to him and offered suggestions while he tried to help them out and also made a few calls to get stuff done for them, so at least he did seem to be doing a genuine job. It was just super boring to sit there for a couple hours without a break because I’m a pretty restless person and I need to be moving around to have more energy but sitting on his incredibly comfortable couch in his incredibly decorated and air-conditioned office made me feel so sleepy. It was nice to see what he does on his Mondays though because the other days I guess he’s never in the Alcaldia (or so I’ve heard), most likely out doing other things in the community. I’ll get to see the rest of this week! Rather than sitting in his office the rest of the day, I went to the Catastro (Cadastre in English?) and Public Services offices to talk to the people I would be working with and to fill out some forms due in a month that Peace Corps gave us. One guy had just given me the answer to how many people receive water in their houses and then like half an hour later I went to the Public Services office to introduce myself and get more answers for the forms and asked the same guy the same question because I didn’t remember that he was the one that gave me the answer earlier >___<. He was understanding though, said that with time I’ll familiarize myself with everyone there, so that was nice…. Lunch today was a little frustrating because I couldn’t go home for lack of time, and I couldn’t manage to find a good place to eat for a while.. but I finally found a place that made baleadas and had a delicious lunch. After lunch there was supposed to be a meeting in the park and a bunch of patronatos were invited (town councils) and the Junta de Agua (water board) and some other committees and community leaders but only about 13 people showed up in total and then half of them left because the meeting still hadn’t started after like 40 minutes from when it was supposed to, and also the 3 main people who were supposed to head the meeting weren’t even there… so the remaining half started talking amongst themselves about whatever issues and it was extremely informal and then they left after an hour. I hope all the meetings aren’t like this…. Oh, and now while there aren’t paletas here (or at least the cheap kind that I love, there is regular ice-cream and popsicles), there is this woman who sells sliced up fresh fruit frozen in a large cup for 20 Lemps, or about a $1. That was pretty tasty but not something I could buy everyday like the 4 Lemp paletas. Sigh. The only exciting thing about my day was the walk home. Nevermind the intense heat, but as I was walking, I heard children shouting words in a very structured manner and thought I recognized something about that, and when I looked up to see the building I was walking past, I saw a Karate sign!!!! Karate classes were in session!! Aaaaaaah <3. So I figured I should go check it out, climbed up the stairs and introduced myself to the instructor and told him I have a Black Belt in Tae Kwon Do and I would love to help him out, but would have to learn some Karate first and he gave me a flyer and said whenever I want to drop by, he’s “a la orden”, which is something people say here a lot to say they’re like “at your order”. It’s a courtesy thing.

That’s one thing I’ve noticed about Spanish, is it seems like a much more courteous language than English. I mean, there are different ways to say “you” depending on who you’re saying it to – someone super close to you, children, people older than you, people with a higher status than you.. and then all the different ways to greet and say goodbye – people say “Que le vaya bien” to mean something like “that you go well” when someone is leaving to someplace else, and “cuidese” like “take care of yourself”. While in English we do say these things, usually it’s like one phrase or the other but here the people say all of them at once so it’s nice.

Also got the chance to hang out with the volunteer here whose house I plan on getting after my 2 months of required host-family lodging. It’s pretty huge for PCVs. Huge living room with dining room space, tiled floors, two bedrooms, huge bathroom, good-sized kitchen, and enormous backyard with hammock, banana tree, and avocado trees. And the shower has an electraducha or whatever it’s called! So basically I can take normal hot showers if I wanted. I’m excited. I can actually have an office or a guest room if I wanted. <3. Yaaaaaaay. But it’s not all perfect. The house has a bat in the rafters that lives there and every morning I’ll have to clean the poop out of the corner of the house. There are also termites that might make the roof collapse at some point in my service, and ants in the kitchen if I don’t keep it clean, and sometimes cockroaches. We’re going to have the landlord fumigate the house before I move in, which would rid it of its termite problem and probably kill the bat too sadly…..

Met my other site-mate on Tuesday. He seems like a pretty chill guy. I was at the Alcaldia doing nothing except looking up vocab words because se fue la luz (electricity went out) so nobody was really doing anything, and he showed up and he showed me around town a bit then showed me his house which isn’t too bad either. If the porch floor was filled in with concrete that would be pretty sweet because then he could hang up his hammock. He’s got a tamarind tree, an orange tree and mango trees. I’m glad I have a site-mate, it’ll be nice to collaborate on projects and have someone to chill with.

Saturday – Aug. 21, 2010
Went to a soccer game at the largest sugarcane factory in Honduras. Our friend was on one of the teams so a few of us joined to see what a Honduran soccer match is like. The players all seemed to have nicknames, like “Gringo”, “Chino”, among others. During half-time we kicked a soccer ball around in a group circle, I even hit it with my head which didn’t hurt as much as I thought it would.. Lots of girls like to play soccer here and they’re actually pretty damn good. I think there’s a women’s team or a couple in this country..

Monday – Aug. 23, 2010
Planted trees! Well, more like created a plot, made a mix of dirt and sand, created baggies filled with this mixture out of old paper cartons, black plastic bags and platano leaves, and planted the seeds in these baggies and placed them in the plot. It was raining a bit the entire time we were doing this and I was already a bit sick but that made it even worse…. Ugh. Good experience though.

Thursday – Aug. 26, 2010
Cultural Day! After lunch we got together with our host families at their homes, or in my case in her café and learned how to create a traditional Honduran food dish. We brought all the food, enough for 40 people, to the Alcaldia and met up with all our host families and some other members of the community. The event included dancing, each of us reciting in Spanish the dishes we learned how to cook, and each Spanish class taught an activity of something American. My class taught swing-dancing. After we demonstrated how to swing-dance with each other, we asked for volunteers but nobody came up :( A few seconds later though, we had little children standing in front of us so we danced with them, and they had a great time.

Friday – Aug. 27, 2010
Day was normal until about lunch time when we saw that the Alcaldia was insanely crowded with people. When we went to check it out, there happened to be another volunteer group there called Global Brigade. They were giving free aid to the people of the town like checking their blood pressure, temperature, medical issues, giving them meds, dental check-ups… A few of us offered to help during our lunch break and it was extremely fun. I got to meet some new people, and was WAY too happy to see Asian people there…. I almost asked to take a picture with them all but decided it was probably better not to... And a couple of them had British accents so I was giddily happy being around Asians and British accents. We helped them by using our Spanish skills to get information from the people concerning their medical needs since our Spanish was a bit more advanced than theirs, but they had a couple of people who spoke it almost fluently.
After training I hosted a Tae Kwon Do/Self-Defense class in the large open area in the Alcaldia. Some other trainees joined and then some of the middle-school aged girls who were hanging around there decided to join too. Everyone enjoyed themselves and were asking when the next class would be, so hopefully some time later this week before we leave on Saturday for good! I was surprised at how much I remembered, and realized that I could potentially have these classes in my site because they would totally help with self-esteem (especially for girls) and help them protect themselves in case of an attack. I’ll have to look online and get more resources to jog my mind even more and set up a more structured plan but it’s definitely something I’d be interested in doing. I already assisted in teaching TKD to elementary and middle school students when I was in high school so have some sort of idea of how to begin.

Saturday – Aug. 28, 2010
Another dance in the Alcaldia. This one wasn’t as fun as the other because there wasn’t as many people, music wasn’t as good, lights weren’t as good… But we all had a good time. I am slowly getting better at dancing and letting the guy lead (which is super fun if he knows how to dance!) especially since my Honduran friends are such good dance partners. I’ve grown quite fond of being twirled around and dipped =P.

Sunday – Aug. 29, 2010
Morgaine, Amanda and I made banana cookies for our families using a toaster oven. They turned out extremely well, considering the minor modifications we had to make. We had no ground cinnamon so bought bits of cinnamon bark instead and mashed them up a bit. The dough was too thick and dry so added milk which was a bit chunky because it was VERY fresh milk.. used this weird thick creamy oil instead of vegetable oil… and the toaster oven only went up to 250°F and we needed it to be 375°, so we just baked them a little longer. I’m going to have to make these cookies when I get to my 2-year site… and I’m going to find out my location on Wednesday!!

Monday – Aug. 30, 2010
Gave a charla about Disaster Mitigation and Global Warming to a patronato and the junta de agua in an aldea. A patronato is a community council made up of representatives of all types of members of the community like men, women, old, not too old, religious background, political affiliation, etc. It went fairly well. There were a few women breast-feeding their babies pretty openly which didn’t bother me and actually made me think it’s a good thing they’re not letting something like their kids prevent them from coming out to the charla.
The rest of the day after training was spent bonding with another trainee. We probably talked for 3 hours and lost track of time…

Tuesday – Aug. 31, 2010
This morning during Spanish class we did an activity in which each of us had to step outside individually while the rest of the class (there’s only 5 of us plus the teacher) came up with a story for a future day in our lives. I was the first victim and when I came back, I had to guess what day everyone had chosen for me and then describe it in detail. I first guessed birthday, but realized that was too boring, so then said wedding and I was right! Most of what I had guessed and narrated was correct – that it was on the beach, my sister was the Maid-of-Honor, all my family and close friends were there, reception afterward, honeymoon after that… but according to their story, the music was live and it was trance music >_<. They know me too well.. but I don’t know how that would work. I think they decided the music would be live before they had decided on trance. Whoops! I would have preferred classical though, or hip-hop or oldies or something fun for everyone. For the other trainees we had stories about giving birth to a first child, winning the lottery, first day back in the states after Peace Corps, and being awarded a medal for Best Volunteer in the World by Obama, and our teacher became President of Honduras and led the educational system reform for her country. All in all, a fun exercise.
Today was also the day of our last charla, thank god!!! It was about Transparency/Corruption and Municipal Structure. My parts were pretty short and I just read what was in the informational packet because it was a lot of specific examples of what public/personal information is and there was no way to memorize that.. the language facilitator who watched us gave us feedback and said to everyone what they need to work on in terms of speaking Spanish and when he got to me he said I talk to fast with no regard to commas and periods and punctuation in general >_<. Yeah yeah yeah…. I will remember for next time – commas mean I need to pause. Ha. =P
After training, a bunch of us hung out at my house to learn how to make taquitos de pollo, chismol, and pupusas con quesillo/frijoles/chicharron. Super fun, the kitchen was pretty crowded but we made a montón de food. Everyone left full and happy.

Wednesday – Sept. 1, 2010
Found out our sites!!
It´s a relatively large site compared to the others. Climate is hot and very humid and rainfall throughout the year. My work will consist of implementing a training plan for the patronatos and CBOs (community-based organizations for example school boards, womens groups etc) and the elaboration of project profiles. Catastro office needs to be improved too (they work in zoning and infrastructure stuff) so I will be using GPS/GIS. I will also be doing topographic studies, designing budgets and plans
Giving training in health topics to rural communities like in schools and to parents of families for better community development, and training the patronatos in the topics of project profiling, environment, risk management. My other work is with a high school that needs help on grant writing, acquiring more books for the library, and construction of a gym. It´s close to one of the main tourist beaches and a main airport so I´m super lucky! Plus there are a couple of volunteers living in site so I´ll have people to talk to. I´m very happy.