Thursday, December 20, 2007

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!!

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

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.