Alice's first post

This is my first post. Today I'm throwing my last party for awhile, to hang out with friends before I leave. It's a bittersweet feeling, because for most of these people, it will be a year till I see them again, maybe two. For some, never again, they will have been great friends and life moves on. I can't wait to relax and have a good time, as next week is crunch week as far as packing, final preparations, etc go.

Honduras. Couldn't have asked for a better place. I have felt for years a calling to go to Central America. I think I would have been heartbroken if I had been asked to serve somewhere else. Honestly, I probably would have backed out. Thankfully for Drew, they are sending us to a wonderful place with a great project, and in a country that has had the Peace Corps there for over 40 years. Surely we can pull this off!

What an adventure!

The above said phrase must be amongst the worst things I have had to hear since I started to discuss my plans with people. I suppose I have a different idea about what is an adventure. An adventure is a vaction. Its fun. Your trying something new, but you don't have to like it. When I traveled Europe it was an adventure because we were seeing what the other had to offer, and we enjoyed ourselves, but overall, nothing was expected to change. Now, I am going to accomplish something. This isn't an adventure. I'm not going to observe people from a safe distance. I am going to live as one of them, and I suspect they would find it slightly condescending if they knew we all thought of their daily routine as an "adventure". I would prefer from now on if someone tells you that they are joining the Peace Corps that you proclaim, " What an interesting career move!" If you are the type to ask questions, ask questions like, "Where do you hope to go?" or "What program do you want to do?" I could talk about my assignment or location for hours. I just don't want to be told living a life like millions of people already do is an adventure.

Before we go

There is an incredible amount of things we have to get done, and making time to say goodbye to family and friends is really tough, but we are doing what we can. For the last 9 days we have been on the road visiting family and friends and we traveled over 2,500 Miles going from Tulsa to Sedona, AZ, to Denver, CO to Colorado Springs, CO to Cimmaron, KS and home. The odd thing about that is the entire distance we traveled in 9 days is more than the amount of paved road in Honduras. Since the purpose of this blog is to share experiences of the Peace Corps with as many people as possible, I would like to share two stories about what has happened to us recently.

First story edited out. after having been through staging, and started training, I´ve decided complaining about money and early mornings is really silly. If you read it, good. If you missed it, I´m sorry.

The second story comes from our travels. My grandma had an article for us to read as soon as we got to Kansas (she usually does), but this one may be of the most interesting things she has supplied me with to date. She found that a gentleman from Kansas would be serving that same time as us. As it would turn out he is an older gentleman, but it is nice to know someone in advance. We met with him at his house and it seems he has experienced alot of the same things during the application process.

More later, my attenion span is spent.

It came to my attention...

So most people who will be coming this general direction are well aware that my wife and I are going to the Peace Corps in about two weeks, but it came to my attention recently that there is a community out there that actually enjoys travel blogs, and since what we are doing is relatively unique, I thought I should go ahead and create a method of communication that is easy for me to share with that community as well as my friends. So here it is. Executive Hippie is born.

Our assignment is to Honduras and we will be working on municipal development. To clarify, that means we are assigned to a person in the local government that we will aid and assist with the intention of making that person more effective, and make the actions of the local government better known to the local people, transparency in the government if you will. That's about half of our job. The other half will be working with their projects and local organizations on just about anything. At least that's what I get out of our assignment book, it really could be just about anything.

And because I know your all just itching to ask, Yes, we are nervous, and Yes, We are excited. I have never understood why we insist on asking everyone those 2 questions when the response is so predictable.