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.