adding on to drew´s update...

We do have our own place. It is very nice, but much more Honduran then our previous residences. For example, the water turns off every night. Every once and awhile, it just forgets to turn on at all. Annoying, and means bucket flushing at night and sometimes bucket showering. But, it reminds me that I am not just Peace Corps light, just because I´m in Honduras, a nickname people have used for some volunteers but I have yet to meet a volunteer that does not have their challenges, be it different kinds in different places.

It is christmas here, and it has quieted down. I have found Honduras just kinda shuts down for the month, which has given us time to settle in to the new place and obtain an adorable new puppy, I am going to add another photo here...

She has made me very happy, I am like a doting mother. And, I think Drew likes her alright too!

As far as work goes, I did a thanksgiving activity with my sober living girls at the end of last month, and made christmas sugar cookies with them this month. Next week, I am going to bring the girls little bags of candy, since like me they are spending the holiday away from their families and I´d like to give them something to cheer them up.

My community where I work with the Patronatos in Macuelizo is finally getting a water system. I am glad to be part of that process, and I am also helping them make a year plan for next year, to get some other smaller projects going as well. They are one of if not the poorest communities in my municipality.

We are spending Christmas eve with our work counterpart, and I am teaching him how to make a turkey, as I am now an expert after Thanksgiving :) It should be fun, though I must admit I miss home right now. On Christmas, we will have a fellow volunteer here, and I have our stockings and am going to make it as festive as possible. The following week, we are taking our first vacation, to the one big lake in Honduras to celebrate the New Year with fellow friends and volunteers. So, it should be a nice holiday season. Drew and I promise to post more after the Holidays, with some more pics and more info!!

I had a long update planned

I am easily distracted. Example 1: I left the power cord for my laptop at the house because my adorable/terrororizing puppy happen to be chewing on my leg at the time. Example 2: I should have had plenty of time to update the blog, just on battery power, but the internet prevented that too. Example 3: What am I doing examples of?

You may also notice that on the right hand side there is also a link to a couple other blogs by people from my training group. I'll try to get all the ones from my training group there at some point, but not now. I need to update the blog.

So we moved. We finally have our own place, and while we very much liked all of our host families, it is nice to finally live like a married couple again. Alice calls it a 2 and a half bedroom house, I call it a 3 bedroom duplex. We have some disagreement wether one of the rooms counts as a room, because we use it as a closet. It is a duplex, but our nieghbor is half-def and rather old, so we really don't worry about things too much. No matter what we call it, we're both very happy to be living on our own, though I will admit it is a little more lonely not having a family to pester whenever we want.

Alice got her very first puppy and she is learning to be a responsible puppy mom. She is a little basset hound girl and she still is nameless, but we are leaning toward lixet / lizzy. I feel a little bad giving the dog such a normal name, knowing that in 6 months it will develop an awful nickname. I feel wierd having a puppy here since my folks are looking after Mr.Stinky (my dog), but I think that just means when Alice and I get home we will have a happy family. I do miss my dog.

I better put up some pictures before this things dies, but I'll talk about some of the things I have done in an upcoming blog.

To our friend, and fellow volunteer...

Today our sitemate, Katie, is heading back to the states. We are sad to see her go but also very excited for her, because she did her two years and is going back to get her master´s and do some incredible things. So, this is in honor of her.

When we came here, we were absolutely lucky to replace her. Why? Well besides the fact she´s pretty cool to hang out with, she is also relaxed and never made us feel like we had to continue everything she had started. In fact, she emphasized that we should make this town our own experience, and do the projects we liked. For that, I thank her. Some people replace volunteers and feel pressure to do everything that they did or live in their shadow, but with Katie it was a perfect balance of her help as we learned our way around, and our own space to get our own things going. Plus, she left us an awesome house to rent and stuff in it! Peace Corps gold!!

Katie was loved by our town, and her fellow peace corps buds. I only hope that I can build the relationships she did, with other volunteers and people here. That´s what makes Peace Corps worth it, those new friendships! Enough corny stuff! The town people here did buy a Dora the Explorer piñata at her going away party, preclaim it looked just like her, and then beat the @#%# out of it! :) So....our town has a wierd sense of humor.

Anyway, thanks Katie, we´ll miss ya, keep in touch, and now you will always be famously remembered on our blog!

Working on Thanksgiving, and other things I thought I had planned better than I really had.

I call this picture "Please take a picture while I am eating, That makes me happy"

So if it isn't terribly obvious from the title, I really need to learn how to keep things in order, which I do fairly well, but occasionally forget something. When we first got here I was starting to realize that I should make a better agenda for myself and try to actually use it. I went into Excel and made myself an awful monthly calender and started using it, but failed to put any holiday or other important dates on it. The other day the director of the local school asked me to lead a computer class the 19th to the 23rd and it didn't occur to me at any point that would make an overnight trip to celebrate Thanksgiving with other volunteers impossible. So we inquired with our site mate what she would be doing and convinced her it would be no problem at all for her to host Thanksgiving, and she finally decided it could work and organized something close enough to us we could participate. The only problem with said plan is our site mate doesn't have an oven, and even if she did, she is a vegetarian, so I doubt she would love cooking a turkey. Alice and I still live with a host family and we do have an oven, so everything that needed to be baked, Alice offered to cook while I taught class in a village about 20 minutes away. Alice cooked food for 14 people and we still managed to have some left-overs. I turns out people were pretty impressed when we showed up with all that food and it made us mini-celebrities with people, most of whom we had never met. Together Alice and I prepared a turkey, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, and 2 types of stuffing. The other volunteer in the site prepared (in someone else's kitchen) a couple pies, brownies, and a salad. Dinner was great and after dinner we played Thanksgiving trivia which our site mate had made up. It was a blast, which I never expected to find myself saying about a trivia game. Post-trivia, Alice and I decided to call it a night because we were quite tired after cooking all that food and teaching a class, so we left, but festivities raged into the night, when the other volunteers, who won't be here for Christmas this year, decided to celebrate a little early and stayed up until 2 or 3 am singing Christmas Carols. The following day they all went to Teguc for some day after Thanksgiving shopping, despite the fact there are no sales here. They just wanted to carry on the tradition.

Last Saturday I did my first major training with caja rurales (the small bank-like organizations), and everyone tells me it went very well. I don't know how I feel about it, since most of the organizations were doing far better than it had been explained to me I felt I was repeating a lot of information, but everyone gave me good comments on the post training evaluation I did. I think that the difference is before they knew how to do things, and now they understand why a little better. People also worked during lunch and stayed after to do an activity, which from what I have been told is not very common. I had a total of 20 people show up, 14 representing cajas, and another 6 who were there representing the consejo de cuenca, the group that was mostly responsible for me doing the training in the first place. I have follow-ups planned with every community, and I think they all have a little bit more trust in me now. I don't know that I'll be busy with this project everyday for 2 years, but I start doing my new caja training at the first of the year, and that may keep me far busier.

Most of my week last week was dedicated to a computer class, that Alice and I did together. I developed a lesson plan and a set of goals, and Alice assured everyone was doing it right, understood what was going on, and kept people happy. When I volunteered to do the class I had been given an idea of what to expect, but thats not really how it went. The first day, only 4 young ladies showed up, but they were very interesting in the class, and so I proclaimed I would prefer 4 students who cared that 24 who really don't and I agreed to come back the next day. The teacher told me to expect 15 students the following day, and so I prepared, but honestly, found myself shocked when 16 students really showed up. The remainder of the week we worked on a couple of basic microsoft programs, and on Friday about 12 of them came to our office for an internet basics class. The students purchased Alice and I gifts and presented them to us. This was both shocking and awesome. They bought Alice a nice little purse and keychain and bought me a soviegneers notepad, and the coolest pen ever. The odd thing was it didn't feel forced. i know as students the idea was probably someone elses, but they all seemed happy to give up the gifts and thank us. I think its because we tried our best to be patient, and focused more on things they wanted to learn, as opposed to just teaching whatever we felt like.

My Work

Before I start, Alice DID post something for those of you that she refered here, it's just below mine, which is slightly long. I would recomend reading hers first if you haven't already, and trying to read this one another day. I would compare reading the following to a marathon, your going to need your stamina. The above pictures are from the ferria (fair), they couldn't seem anymore Honduran. The young lady on the left is wearing things I could see any given day. he young lady on the right would definitely not dress like that outside of special occasions, just to be clear.

This is my first attempt to explain what I am doing here, and the language barrier is a bit hard to work through on some topics, so ask anything concerning what I write about that doesn’t make any sense. I will start with the basics. All Peace Corps volunteers get assigned to a community partner, and Alice and I were assigned to the local head of CATIE. CATIE doubles as a Costa Rica university and a non-profit that works with the proper protection of watersheds. Unlike most groups, CATIE uses an approach where they look at why it is being damaged and try to reverse the reasons instead of trying to reverse the damage only. This means we don't just plant trees (actually we don't plant trees at all) we do community education and organization to prevent the watershed from being further damaged and get the communities that are affected to take on the project of ensuring proper vegetation to maintain the area. That being said, the sustainable child of CATIE here is the consejo de cuenca or “administration of (the water) source”. This group is made up by 22 water boards, 1 group of farmers, 7 caja rurales, and some patronatos. In total it represents over 200 people and the water source is a major part of our community, the 22 surrounding villages, the capital city, and quite a few more cities from further down. Now, I need to be specific about some of these groups, they are not what someone from the United States would expect. Most of these community organizations are made up of highly concerned volunteers from the community, though some function far better than others. The water boards average 8-20 people per organization, and occasionally they make decisions that affect the entire community. They are the backbone of the consejo and are the best organized (usually). The group of framers is one of the larger groups and there is currently another forming due to the importance of their work. They generally just share information about farming techniques that solve common problems of the area. They are vital to the consejo since often the farmers will just clear more forest to get better soil instead of fixing problems. This group works hard to make sure if trees are pulled out they are replaces by fruit trees to maintain the area, while giving the farmers options to increase the profitability of the land. I am working with the caja rurales, so I will skip them for now, but don't worry, I have lots to say. They are important. Alice is planning to work with the patranatos. Patranatos have no good translation since no such group exists in the states. They are based in either a village or neighborhood within an urban area. Their organization is protected by law, though they have relatively few rights. Mostly they are in charge of lobbying at a city level to make sure a community gets necessary repairs and advances. These groups have a variety of issues, most stemming from years of being ignored by politicians made people think power lies in the hands of politicians. Since these groups are responsible for helping communities develop, the consejo uses these groups to make sure they develop in a constructive way.

So finally, I cannot avoid it any further. I have to explain what I do. Caja Rurales are a form of micro finance based LOOSELY on the Grameen bank model. Assuming everyone is familiar with Grameen, the primary differences are: The Honduran model is open to both men and women; there is no oversight like grameen provides; low interest is relative; default rates are more problematic. Assuming everyone is not familiar with the micro finance model, the idea is that with small loans at low interest rates to very poor communities people will be able to remove themselves from poverty and create sustainable businesses. The Grameen model focuses its efforts on communities of women and has very low default rates despite lending money to the poorest of people mostly because of the community aspect. The money for the loans is provided by Grameen and Grameen provides training and continued oversight with every organization, so falling into a state of disorganization is relatively difficult. Hondurans live in a far more machismo social organization, so the truth is the model would never work here depending solely on women. While women are completely competent (and then some) to run the organizations, it would undermine the tradition gender structure in this country and lead to embarrassment for the men, followed by a lot of drama, and a probable discontinuing of the organization. While I am all for a furthering of gender issues here, trying to force such idea on people would probably lead to the reverse effect. Some issues can be encouraged, but not forced. The banks themselves are community funded, though occasionally non-profits lend or give money. They generally depend upon money from within the community. Hence there is an additional 2 services Grameen doesn’t have to deal with. The first is called actions, which all "members" of the bank pay annually and gives them the right to receive a fair portion of the banks profits every year. The other service they offer is savings, which is open to anyone from anywhere. It earns about 1% a month (depends on the constitution of the organization), no compounding. They just multiply 1% and the total savings, and there is the total interest. I cannot tell if all the banks even understand that interest should earn further interest, so it is the most basic of models. Most groups that want to help cajas don't really "loan" money, they just use a "savings (account)" (sorry translation there is poor at best, but I think it gets the point across) and accept the 1% as the interest and retire the money at the end of the designated time they offered. Obviously the primary function of these organizations is to offer credit. Now before I explain this system, I want to preface it by saying: These organizations are about the only option for credit for people here, and are truly revolutionary for the sustenance farmer. They are finally given the option to better things, because as they were, things were not going to develop, at least not any time soon. What little credit was available labeled the area as highly risky and they charged 20% interest… per month. That being said interest rates range between 36% and 48% a year, 3% or 4% a month. It isn't perfect, but it allows the cajas to grow, distribute some profits to the members, work on some projects, and pay the interest on the savings. Same as savings, there isn't a complicated amortization schedule or anything like that. Things are a simple as possible.

So my job with them is organizational strengthening. In other words, I am trying to get their ducks in a line. I am starting with training on accounting books and interest rates. I am trying to get them to 1. Be more organized with their book keeping, 2. Figure interest monthly instead of one time 3. Create an oversight body for transparency and the ability to help other communities with problems. Point 2 needs some explanation. The group that gave the training to organize these banks didn’t really teach the banks what interest is in the most basic terms, so most people see interest as a phantom concept. So the group taught them that it was totally fair to figure interest for the whole loan for a month, divide the total of the loan by the number of months the person planned on paying, add the numbers and that was the payment every month. As I see it, that is really not fair to people, since they are paying interest on capital they no longer control. I don’t know if I will get that point across or not, but I am going to try. So I am also planning on starting to go to their meetings and addressing issues other people seem to want to control instead of fix. Most meetings consist of 4-6 people of a 35 member organization, because instead of planning the meeting when most people can come, they plan it for whenever.

We are also working on a couple other things. I am going to a local high school in two weeks to teach a basic class on Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. I’ll be there for 5 days, 5 hours a day and I am just supposed to give a basic class on how they can use them to better present reports and such. I am afraid of teaching excel, as I myself am a beginner, but I know far more here than anyone else willing to teach the class, so I guess they will learn as much as I know.

That class is part of a getting to know students, with whom I would eventually like to a civic education project. The project is called “project citizen” and it came from Texas. It basically teaches kids about city governments by making them pick a problem and come up with a proposal to fix it with a public policy solution.

Alice is working a lot with a sober living home for girls and trying to teach the young ladies some arts and crafts they can sell during the holidays to raise money for the home. She has also recently got involved with “youth without borders” and has helped with some HIV/ AIDS training recently. I plan on helping out some as well, hopefully to bring a mature male’s perspective to the presentations.

My boss would also like us to work on disaster mitigation and planning, which I know nothing about, but the truth is, that is the kind of project I like the most. I can’t think of another opportunity in my entire life I will be put in charge of implementing a project I know nothing about.

I also plan to develop some sort of sports activities for youth here, specifically girls, since nothing exists for young ladies, but since this has nothing to do with my project I have to do this on my own time, though that can be whenever I want it to be. I’ll probably do a small soccer league, like 5 on 5, but it depends on how many girls are interested. In the future, I will probably be found begging for people to send me some soccer balls and some vests I can use to differentiate the teams. The biggest problem right now is finding a field that will let me use it without having to fight for it week after week. I really need a spot I can guarantee will be open, if I can’t find one this year, I’ll get some kids to build one, and use it next year. I’m sure that won’t be too much work at all.

So again, no related pictures, mostly because I haven’t done anything where taking pictures would serve a purpose. I am going to an average of 4 meetings a week to introduce myself and I am gaining entry into the community slowly. It is harder here since we have so many tourists in and out, most people here still think we are missionaries, but we are working the people and teaching them not all white people come on church related projects, though even I have a hard time believing that myself.

As a disclaimer, not all Peace Corps volunteers are this busy after thier first month, and nights here are still painfuly boring at times, though we send thanks to everyone sending us things to do. It has been a great help. We are currently in the period I am calling the post training lonelyness. We spend so much time bonding to people in training, not to have them around is really wierd. If your looking for a different perspective there are a couple other blogs from people in my training group, just let me know.



So be safe and protect the water source, or I will send man-frog after you.

Alice's first post

This is my first real contribution to the blog, and of course it is going to be about Halloween. I have started working with a group of girls that live in a sober living type house here, which based on my past job makes a lot of sense. Plus, they do not receive a lot a support for their program and doing activities with the girls once a week gives them something fun and productive to do. I’ve just started, so we’ll see how it goes. So, my first visit with them was Halloween, and I had a mini-history of the holiday that I read to them (in Spanish,,,but they were really patient with me ;). I also passed out little bags with candies, which was a huge hit. And then we did arts and crafts making traditional Halloween symbols such as cats and pumpkins. It was really a simple activity, but they seemed to enjoy it as much as I did, so I was happy. Especially because I was expecting my favorite holiday to be pretty lame, but here it was getting a bunch of teenage girls to draw bats and pumpkins and talk about Halloween, and it was pretty fun actually. That evening, we went with our host mom (I prefer host sister as she’s in her 30’s and we get along really well) to an artist friend’s house and enjoyed stuffed grape leaves, bread, cheese and wine, and had our little Halloween masks and it was awesome. Again, the whole day went really well, one of the best Halloween’s I have had.

Some have asked about how we live here, so I am also going to talk about that. Laundry. I know we've mentioned we wash clothes by hand, in a thing called a pila. But, I figured, you may be curious what that thing is....so here's a pic. OH, ya, that's how we wash clothes. All you in America, respect that washing machine, it makes washing so much easier.... and for drying we hang the clothes up outside, which is simple enough it just takes longer.

I went recently to one of the villages about an hour from where we live by car up a tiny winding mountain road. I did AIDS HIV charlas with an NGO group here called Jovenes Sin Fronteres (youth without borders) who focuses on AIDS ed in this country in the areas with the biggest problems. I spent the night up there with the girls from the NGO and it was awesome. They don't have electricity, just water, but the view they have is worth it. Plus, the family we stayed with had papaya, mandarine, avocado trees, tomatoes, and other vegetables, with which I left with bags of fruits, veggies, and a mandarine tree plant. The people outside the city have hearts of gold. Our class was fun, and they really knew nothing about the subject prior to our class which made me feel like I accomplished something by helping.

It is cold here right now. Well, I bought a hat. I know, I am a hat person in winter....but really it is in the 40-60's right now! BRRrr! It only last for about a month, but so you guys know, the Honduran mountains do get cold....Other than that, I think we are doing pretty well. We had our site visit with our boss, and he seemed pretty impressed by what we are doing. And, it was nice to sit and chat and drink hot coffee with him! Drew and I are both working on trainings we are doing with different community org's for this month, and we will fill you in as they are accomplished....hope everyone is as cold as I am right now! :) and I hope you enjoyed some new pics~ (pis I know the pic is crooked the blog wouldn't let me rotate it....)

Settling In

So we are adjusting to life here fairly well, and we are learning the flow of work with relative ease. We have been in country now for 3 months, so that is the longest we have been out of the country. Alice's studies abroad may have been a little longer, but since we don't know exact dates, we've decided this definitely feels like the longest we've been out of the country. It is interesting the differences between the two experiences. In Spain we had just enough time to adjust before we were ready to go home. This time we are adjusting to the culture just in time to start working on our real reason for being here.

And start working we have! Now some volunteers arrive in site and spend the first 3 months making contacts, and not really getting a whole lot done. Others get to site and get pummeled with work. We have a fine mix between the two. We have definitely started working on something, but we are looking for other opportunities as well.

I've started meeting members of the local Caja Rurales that I have been assigned to strengthen, and Alice has started meeting members of patronatos. This week I will be attending my first two meetings in different villages to find out what I can do to help out. Alice is going to one on Sunday. Finding work won't really be a problem it seems, but rather deciding what work we want to do and where we can be most effective is going to be the hardest part.

We've also met with 2 directors from local high schools and we are probably going to lead civic education classes in both of them. We have one more high school to introduce ourselves in, and we'll be doing that sometime in the future, but I don't really know when we will be doing that.

So a friend here in site (the other volunteer) told me the other day about a great way to get news. Podcasts. It hadn't ocured to me I could do that, so I have started searching podcasts for good ones to gets news and entertain myself. Right now I am listening to Democracy now!, wait! wait! don't tell me, Car talk, fresh air, Diane Rehms, SModcast, and talk of the nation. Please let me know any suggestions if there is a radio program worth listening to that does a podcast version. I am also occasionally getting videos of the daily show off comedy central, which is nice, because the fake news seems to be a lot more fun than the real stuff. Please, let us know. We don't have a lot to do at night, so we watch a lot of movies and listen to lots podcasts.

So I hadn't planned ahead today with a specific story with pictures and detail, and I am kinda feeling a bit silly now, like I should have been leading up to somthing, but I am not. I suppose for now this wil have to do, but we are working on pictures of our house and pictures of where we live, and I will start thinking of stories I can tell.

It has been a while

Well, I am working on the worst computer known to man, and I am paying for it, but besides that things are going well. Very well actually despite a bad day. You see over the last 48 hours I have been developing 40 or 50 little spots, that would seem like bug bites if I hadn't been using my bug spray like a shower. So, today I decided (rather my wife and counter-part decided, but they were right) to call the doctor, and since telling someone you have red spots all over your arms, torso, and legs doesn't mean much over the phone I got to go to the hospital today. Awesome! Well if ever there were a cultural experience this was it. Very it. I was shocked first because it was empty. One would think a hospital here would have at least one other patient, but the entire time I was there, I only saw a few staff members, and as we were leaving, I saw 2 other people at the pharmacy. It was also spotless. American hospitals have nothing on this place. People were cleaning rooms that I don't think had been used for a couple of days. It was comforting. So I did my best to explain my problem in Spanish, and everyone seemed okay with how things went, and I left with a script for a pill, a cream, and a huge shot. Now I was hoping that the big shot was going to be a little shot in my arm, but it wasn't. It was a huge shot in the butt. And it hurt. A whole whole bunch. And I passed out. In the lobby of the hospital. This was my own fault, but I like to think the peace corps has thier part to play as well. You see, I know I pass out after shots. I am usually very careful, but since I have had almost 12 shots over the last month, and not passed out once I was semi-confident I was going to be fine. I was too, until I stood up and walked out the door. Thats when it started, the good news I remained awake long enough to see my way to a bench and lay down. I think they were confused until they noticed I was out like a light. I warned them though, I really had. So I decided to take the afternoon off. The first such afternoon where I have had some time off, and so I want you all to know, thats what I went through to be here today. Don't worry I am just fine, just some red spots that came from who knows where. They all tried to ask if I had eaten anything new lately, and the problem was I have eaten SO many new things, the question was impossible to answer. In the last 4 days I have eaten 2 new varieties of orange, a seafood soup that was great, but who knows what was in it, at least 2 new fruits I can't even identify, plus a variety of foods they serve at restaurants where they may use a hundred varieties of anything. So for now, I am on a limited diet and some alergy pills.


And all that was this morning after I went out to an aldea met some people, saw a project where they are installing solar panels, and saw a beautiful view. This is why telling the story of my being here is so hard. I do something new pretty much every day.

So I suppose I will do my best to hit the high points of what I have done over the last 2 or 3 weeks, but I am sure I will miss something interesting. Here is the summary. We moved to Santa lucia. We met our counter-part. We went to visit site. We came back. We swore in. We moved to our site. We started work. The above story happened.

My counterpart is excellent. He has lots of work, and I am already trying to get into it. I am not exactly prepared to do the projects he wants, but I am working on it. I've never ran a caja rural before, and we had a day of training in it, but it was more to identify it than to learn how to run it. Thats what I am doing now, reading alot, making contacts, but I am getting ahead of myself, more on my job later. So here is how Valle is. There is an urban area that is fairly developed and very touristy, and 29 aldeas that ack some organization or utility (like telephone, water, electricty, or social organizations, which are really the back bone of getting things done here). So the good part is we have all sorts of stuff available to us, including cable TV in some areas. This is nice because it means on Monday nights I can ask to watch Monday night football, and they usually have the Sunday night game on ESPN too. Life is very different and conditions are still different than home, but overall, I do have it pretty good. Going out to the aldeas is interesting, because it is the same city as the urban area, but it is like walking into the past. 2 hours from me are places without running water or electricity. Most of my work is out there. My counter part is a published engineer, and he wants me to write articles for publication once I have more experience becuase he says not alot of people write on the effect a rural bank has on local water sources. It is a thought, but it is hard to say how that will go. When the Peace Corps tells you things are an exchange, what they really mean is you have alot to learn. I am pretty happy about that though, I came here to learn.

Swearing in was alot of fun, though due to bad behavior and budget cutbacks, groups no longer get to stay the night in a hotel. Apearantly people were too rowdy and about the same time peace corps was trimming the budget, so it was done away with. No big deal though, I actually had a very good time back in Santa Lucia. So swearing in was apearantly quite the production here. We were on national news, and some of us were interviewed (not me). There was even a picture in the paper. They invited the directorfrom the ministry of education, the head of a university, the ambassador (so he swears us in, he has to be there, but it makes it sound more important), and our country director. It was nice and short, and after wards we got mexican tacos, and that was awesome.






























So those are pictures of our boss, our group, my close friends and fellow trouble-makers, and my Spanish class.

Thats all for now, I could talk all day about my site, but I am nicer than that, and I have two years to tell every detail.

A quick little update

If you've been on the edge of your seat trying to figure out where we were going, you can relax. I know. Alice and I have been placed in Valle de Angeles. It is a little town about 20 minutes from Santa Lucia, the training site. It is bery nice, with all the things that we need, interent, electricity, water, and all sorts of restaurants and markets. So far we have met our counterpart, and I am in the midst of my site vist, which has definately not been boring.

More to come, just wanted to let you all know.

A long overdue update.

Sorry it took so long to me to get to this. I know all of you check this hourly, anticipating my experiences. Anyways, I appreciate all of your comments and support, lately it has been a big help toward keeping me sane. Things are coming to a halt here in training, and we find out out site Monday. I also am tutoring some people in English Monday night, so you may or may not hear from me that day. I would cancel, but we leave the next day, and that hardly seems fair to them.

Training is a very busy time, as pretty much any of the trainees will tell you, and the last 2 weeks have been no exception. I think I'll leave some things out this time, and I am still betting on having a lot of information. First, I want to say hello to my boss, who has been reading this, and tell let her now I really think that her and Jorge have really developed the best training program. Self-directed projects were probably the closest we could get to a real volunteer experience during training. I've talked to people from both of the other groups, youth and protected area management, and both have said their training lacked them having to organize things, and they have felt like they haven't gotten to finish a lot of the projects they start since they usually only have a day to work on things. Self-directed projects were a great solution to both of these problems with training. Bravo!

As I said before we went to visit a cigar factory, which was awesome. I have a video that sums up pretty much everything, as it is a woman rolling a cigar, but the internet is too slow here to upload it. I am going to try again in a few days when we are back in Santa Lucia. I hope it works, as it is super awesome.

So as I said previously we finished up our projects, and the last 3 days were a good mix of success and learning experiences, that I feel more prepared to do my job. Wednesday we finished a very difficult analysis of a community-based-organization. It was especially hard since, we didn't get the intended one group, but rather 3, and had to change the activity entirely that last time we were there. So this time, things started off a lot smoother, until we got the "so what are you going to do for us" question. It was a hard question, because we didn't really have a lot of opportunities left to offer any time, and we don't give anything else. Fortunately our training manager was there, and helped us out of a hard, awkward situation. Our goal in Peace Corps is complicated. We don't get money to do our projects, we're expected to use our resources, so most people start to wonder why we're here. Well, we're here because a lot of times just because a community has the resources to do something, they need a motivated person to help get things started. That is what he explained to them, and he gave them some names of local volunteers who would be willing to help them if they had a project in mind they would like to work on. It was a good experience to have, because that may (will) come up again, and I will know what to do. The people we're not aggressive at all, and they were endlessly polite, but understandably, they were confused why we were there giving them a training, but probably not coming back.

Thursday and friday We did work with people who were equivalent to high school seniors. Thursday we had planned a HIV AIDS charla, but we learned they were probably a bit old to get it. They had all had the lecture before, so they really didn't want to listen, but they played along. After that experience we decided we needed a different tactic. They needed something that fit thier age and maturity better. It isn't strange at all to find people ranging from age 16 to 24 in high school classes, so we had the good idea of using some team-building exercises we had done a few weeks earlier. It worked perfect. They had never done anything like these excercises before, and they all loved it. This time, instead of leaving early, all the students were asking if we had anything else they could do. We did acid river, where they have to work out a bridge with wood over an area without touching the ground, the human knot, and activity where they are all holding hands in an odd arrangement, and have get into a circle, feather tube, where they can all use one finger, and they have to put the tube down at the same time, A game where they have to fit all thier feet in a circle, then in a smaller circle (the cmaller circle is supposed to be impossible, so it is alot of fun to watch, and finally a game where they have to hold a string with one finger each and make a shape, with thier eyes closed.

The picture on the left is from day 1. They wanted to answer a question so badly, they often pushed people over to get into a spot during this game. They actually seemed to enjoy it, but not for the right reasons. After watching this, I started to think maybe American football should be bigget here. The picture on the right was right before they finished feather tube. It took them nearly 10 minutes to set down the tube, which is honestly about normal.

These 2 pictures are from the circle on the ground game, where every person has to either get thier feet in the center of the circle or not have it off the ground. They didn't believe me it was invented to be impossible when we talked about it, and tried for another 10 minutes before they accepted I really made them try something impossible. I think they actually got alot out of this activity, and if they didn't, I sure did.

Last weekend was unpleasant, due to digestive issues. That is all I have to say about that. But if your reading this as a potential volunteer and your concerned about your health, don't be. The Peace Corps doctor literally made a pharmacy open on a Sunday to sell me something to clog up the pipes. I was happy to not have to wait.

Monday was Cultural day. It isn't a real holiday, but the Spanish teacher organize it, and it is lovely. We do demonstrations of American culture, and they do local to do Honduran demonstrations. One group taught the hokey pokey. It was so much fun, I am posting a picture of someone that isn't me. Usually I don't do this, since I always find discovering pictures of myself a little creepy, so I extend that to others, but I have to make an exception for this. First, because we found pictures of ourselves on his wife's blog, and second, because the world deserves to see this. This man is the definition of a good participant. He doesn't care how silly something may be, he just does it, and he always seems to enjoy himself. Kudos to him. We followed all this up with some traditional honduran food we prepared with our families. So much good food, and fun. I really love being here.

Well things were soon to get even better, and it is so nice that I can say that. So often things like that are followed up with something disappointing or boring, but Tuesday and Wednesday were awesome. We did a rural tourism demonstration in a local village, to understand a learn a few things, and have a great time. Basically we did the "tour" and we learned the business side of things at the same time. We started with a sugar cane demonstration where we cut some cane with a machete, then ground it into juice and drank it. It was tasty with lemon, and less sweet than I expected, but it was still very sweet. Heres a picture of me with a deadly weapon, and one of Alice using the juicer.

Later that day we went horseback riding, and after lunch we made our own fishing poles and went fishing. Both of those activites were as much fun as they sounded, but about what one would expect, so I won't elaborate.

Wednesday we did alot of exploring in mountains. It was alot of fun. We even got to see the Nicaraguan border, but we didn't get to go.

Friday, we did our presentations to our boss over our experiences, and they started doing Independence day parades. Actually, they just started the last parade 10 minutes ago, so I am going to have to cut out early. Thanks for following along. Monday will be the day I finally know where I will be living for 2 years. I am excited.

A little bit of catch-up

I really wanted to do an update this weekend, because we are just non stop, but I had to cancel my usual ciber-sunday, due to digestive problems. This is Honduras, and I have been lucky to have not had problems earlier. So far I am just happy to not have had any major problems, but these too will come. The bad news is I am unprepared today. Usually I prep everything before I come, especially the pictures I plan to use, and today I have nothing but boring stories, so i will be brief in hopes that pictures will bring some of these stories to life.

Off the top of my head, Last week was interesting for alot of reasons, most specifically, field trips. We went with our Spanish classes to a Tabacalera, or a cigar factory, and to the house of a woman who makes coffee wine. Both were unique experiences, and a whole lot of fun. I have a ton of pictures of the cigar factory, because I have never seen anything like it before. There were mountains of tobacco, and hundreds of people hand rolling cigars. The coffee wine was unique as well, though was well described as "like kahlua, only not as sweet and creamy" The reviews were mixed, but Alice and I decide it was ok, but improved with some cream.

We also did a trip to see some productive projects, mostly agriculture based, which was good information. I hope to work with a project similar to one of the ones we saw, since basically they are government funded ag projects, that are supposed to earn money after the initial investment and that money is usually appropriated to help schools of libraries update materials. I like it because it sustains itself, and the benefits are long term. It may or may not work out, but I liked it.

Thursday and friday were the last days of self directed projects, and I can honestly say I will miss my training site. It was awesome. Thursday we went back and finished a very stresful analysis of a community based orginization, but I loved the project, since it was so challenging. I hadn't expected something so simple to be so hard, so the first day I didn't do so well speaking or even thinking, but this time I was ready, and got alot better results. Friday was another one of my famous lessons. This time we were talking about leadership, communication, and team-building. All worthy things to talk about, but it was mostly hilarious, fun, intereactive activities. We did get our point across too, which is nice. The best part was I really seemed to communicate well during the last couple activities. My Spanish went from survivable to workable. That is a good feeling.

I will expand on all of this with photos, I just didn't want to send the message I was forgetting about the blog.

Hurrican´t

Since people have expressed concern over our safety, today´s update is just to let you all know, there is nothing of interest to tell. Our experience with Felix was rather lame. We had a training class scheduled for 3 pm that got cancelled because they closed the building where we usually have class, and it rained lightly for about 8 hours. That was the only effect it had on us. The Peace Corps reacted in a totally appropriate manner, some volunteers had to go to a rally point, but that was it. The rest of us just couldn´t leave site. Security is priority number one during emergencies, and they take every precaution, and then spare no expense to take care of any problems. If something had gone wrong they literally call in the army, and they send out the blackhawks to find us.

I will do my usualy weekly update this weekend, I just wanted to let you all know Alice and I are just fine.

Another week

So we are still in training, but it is going really fast. It won't be long before we are real volunteers. This week went unusually fast, mostly due to the fact we hardly have a minute to ourselves, and we have been spending more time with other trainees, and less time at home. It just seems to make time pass a bit more rapidly. Monday we were supposed to be doing field based work, which means I was supposed to be in Jacaleapa, but there was a major strike, and the highway was blocked where we needed to go, so we did not. This is nothing to be concerned about, it just happens from time to time. The Peace Corp security officer issues a travel warning, and no one ever gets hurt, because everyone here knows better than to intentionally put themselves in harms way. So Monday was a lost day, except I found the cleanest bathroom in Honduras. It was a Porshe of bathrooms, and it was just in a regular looking Comeador (place to eat). Tuesday we did an analysis for a community based organization, which didn't work out great, but it was no one's fault. We just had a failure of communication with the person, who was nice enough to organize the meeting for us. We were only prepared to analyze one group, but 3 showed up (she though we wanted every group in town) , and we just did the best we could to change the activity. They were all very nice, and very cooperative. They even took us to see their water well, which is actually very interesting concept wise, since very very few villages have water sources like that, but to tell the truth, it just kinda looked like a water spout, since the pump is under ground. The area we were in was positively beautiful, as demonstrated by the picture, and the people we were with were world-class hosts. A lot of municipal development volunteers will go to the small villages when they get frustrated, because typically, they don't see a lot of Americans, and they are gracious and polite.

Wednesday was a pretty normal day. Spanish class for 4 hours, followed by 4 hours of project design. It was a long day, and very demanding since tech sessions are now in Spanish too.

Thursday and Friday were A very nice surprise. For 2 solid days we took part in Aids training, which sounded long, and awful, but was not at all. Thursday morning we were participants in the Charla, and Thursday afternoon we put it together. Friday morning we gave the charla, and Friday afternoon we talked about it, and did a couple of follow-up exercises. Thursday was boring, but the trainers we had were good, so they kept me awake. After 7ish weeks of training, I give that a lot of credit. Friday morning was hilarious. It is hard to describe why, as no one knows what kati flauti is, who hasn't had to do it, but it is hilarious to watch middle school students forced to do it. Trust me. My favorite part however is an activity known as "white blood cells", where we make 9 people put sign around there neck (with pictures) representing the human body, 3 white blood cells, aids, HIV, diarrhea, parasites, and a cold. The the white blood cells lock at the elbow around the human body figure to show that they protect it. Then we tell diarrhea, parasites, and a cold, to attack the human body. The point is that they can't because the white blood cells are protecting it. But if you ever tell 3 middle school students to attack another, be prepared. They do with all the force they can manage, and it is hilarious. I wish I had recorded it. The world would be a better place with a recording of this, but sadly, no luck. I will have to do this charla again, and be better prepared to capture how awesome it is. We finish off the activity, by having HIV break up the white blood cells and the the infections get in, and then HIV and AIDS switch. They are supposed to understand from this the difference between HIV and AIDS, and they do, but I know that I would do this activity just to watch them try and kill each other.

And now for pictures.

I kinda look like I am talking about important things in this part, but the truth is, I was setting up a really bad joke they say helps set the mood, and it did. The activity is called wash the plantain, you can figure it out from there.

Alice always takes pictures with her whole class, which is smart. She gave 4 charlas this week. This picture is of number 4 after her group gave out certificates. She also gave one on self-esteem, and 2 on business fundamentals.

This lovely picture is Alice actually teaching. Unlike me, she usually maintains a far more professional manner while teaching kids. It is not that I am unprofessional. It is more that I am not really good at connecting with kids unless we are having fun, so I try to make a lot of jokes and have fun. She does a much better job teaching.

It has been a good weekend.

This week has been pretty busy for both Alice and myself. Alice Met with a Patronato (her and I have yet to decide if there is an equivalent, they are most like neighborhood associatations, but they are important, so I don't know if such a thing has ever existed at home, but I dont think so), and everything went great. They loved her group, and since they just got internet, they invited her group back to teach small internet classes. Which is super cool. The picture above is from the town of Alauca where she is working, and it makes me giggle, so thats why it is there. Chickens actually spend alot of time here crossing the road, but I've yet to ask one why. I'll let you know when I find out. Thats a picture of the great event. Alice was the one who wrote down all the information the Patronato gave them about thier organization. One of our training projects is to analyse a community based organization, and they got thiers done early. My group is supposed to do ours on Wednesday, and I can only hope it goes half as well.





Friday I gave my second Charla, and I have rarely had more fun in my entire life. I don't believe for one minute they actually learned what I wanted them too, but sometimes, you just have to live with knowing that you had a good time. One of our other projects is give business fundamentals charlas, and got to teach production, and to do as such, we made paper airplanes. First, I had 5 kids make whatever they could by themsleves, while 2 tested. Then I had a different group make it in an assembly line style. All that to demonstarte the difference between line and individual production. It was a huge mess. airplanes where everywhere. It was the awesome.


Friday afternoon the whole group helped start a tree nursery at a grade school, which was great fun. Kinda. I can only put so much dirt in bags before I lose interest, but the project was good, and I finally got out putting dirt in bags by rubbing the hard seeds over sandpaper, which I actually found more interesting. Some seeds need help breaking the shell, so thats why you do that. Here are a couple of random pictures of that.

And heres a cute picture of Alice doing Laundry.


And finally, A picture of me, looking like I was actually teaching kids, when what I was really doing, was having a whole lot of fun, of debatable educational value. The other American is the youth volunteer from that town.

A weekend to remember.

So friday's Charla was a learning experience, and I am glad it was part of Spanish clas, as my teacher very effectively made his point that I still need alot of work, but I can make it through if I try. I now see why it takes so long to become fluent in a language, as I have been working on Spanish on and off for a long time, and I still have so much that I just have on clue what is going on.

Friday afternoon we talked to the mayor for the first time, and all the great project ideas people said he wanted to do seemed to be about half true. He really didn't want to the Patronato, he had just been talking about it. Which I am sad to hear, since obviously I wanted to do it. More so, his real desire was to get a volunteer, not a group of trainees. I think since he had a volunteer in his community he just went under the idea we would work there like she does, not just a short time. Honestly I don't know what happened, thats just a guess, as he seemed quite suprised to hear we were only there a couple weeks. But all is not lost, we still have more work to do than we know how to tackle.

Last night we went out and celebrated Alice's birthday, which was a ton of fun. Añice had a great time, and everyone had made her a cute little card and got her some tasty deserts. We went to a café that has live music every Saturday, and the guy is realy very talented, and draws quite the crowd. We even go to stay out past our curfew to nearly 11:00pm! I admit, I was tired.

Alice told me I needed to start puttin up some pictures, so Heres a couple, as you can probably tell, things here are very pretty. She goes a couple times a week to one village while I go to another. He group is working on some pretty cool looking projects too, and she has high hopes things will go well.

Never fear friends and family, she does plan to let you all in on the fun, but we forgot her password, so when I have time I will have to get her all fixed up and she is ready to share the fun.