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....)