Yet another long post, with very little content.

So it has only been 2 weeks since my last post, which means that I am getting better about this. Sadly, it makes me realize I need to start writing things down, because I so many stories are being lost due to a bad memory.

So when I last left you hungry-for-more I was sick and contemplating going to a doctor, which I never did. Luckily I started to feel a lot better really fast, though it took nearly a week after I finished all the medication the doctor gave me, which makes me think the doctor probably had no clue what was wrong. Actually, I have had really bad luck with the doctors here, since most seem to be on the guess and check method of diagnosis, and I have yet to have an ailment correctly identified on the first shot. I suppose I will give the people here a few more trys, since I don't really have any other options.

So I started feeling better and my boss mentioned he wanted some web design done for various locations, but didn't elaborate, which was a problem, since the last time I did web design, I was 12 and I figured things had changed alot. Actually, things haven't changed all that much and thanks to a couple well organized open source programmers, I am getting pretty good at html and css. My first page I am leaving enough of the original code that I will leave his contact info and some credits in the code, but from here on I plan to code my own stuff. After I finish the page from the group I work with most of the time, I already have 5 others I'd like to do/ people want me to do, so I should get really good.

My organizaion recently decided to have an auditor help me with my caja rural stuff, but so far we have made no progress. Sadly, I think this is because no one wants to be audited, but hopefully we can come up with a plan. Our biggest problem is that there are very few people responsible for book keeping and managing the groups, and zero accountability.

We recently had another visitor, a friend of Alice that has been around forever and we went to the copan ruins and to do a rural tourism activity near by the ruins. Sadly I had to leave a day early to be back in time for a meeting that was cancelled 2 hours after it was supposed to start, so I travelled home a day early for nothing. Life eh?

To say that copan ruins are worth the trip is to point out the terribly obvious. Sadly, no picture can demonstrate how awesome it is, but I will put up a couple rather creepy pictures of me.

Now, you're probably thinking that isn't a creepy picture, but you're wrong. You'll notice the begginings of my double chin are gone, a fairly large section of my gut, and pretty much all of my hair. If that isn't creepy, I don't know what is.

This one isn't as creepy, since the background distracts your eyes from the above mention oddities, but you can see one of the smaller structure that is attached to a ball court (mayans were some of the first to play "ball" games, but the rules are vague and vary alot, so no one really explains it.) The tarp on the right is covering the longest mayan hieroglyph known that describes the rules of 4 different kings. I am standing on the top of the tallest pyramid at this site. This particular set of ruins has a lot of different structures. They actually seem to have built copan on top of an older city that is slowly being excavated.

So a few days later we went back to la tigre and this time we made it to the waterfall. The guidebook described the waterfall in a way I was kinda nervous to go, since it said that it "often dries up during the dry season" which we were in the middle of, but luckily, the guidebook didn't take into account the four inches of rain the national park had the night before. I will post pictures of that and more copan pictures when they are off my camera.

Until then

The March Update

So, a few people reponded to my outcry for blog support, and the majority pretty much said to do whatever I want, so I suppose that is what i will do.

Valle de Angeles was, until recently, one of the few places in Honduras where we could rent DVDs instead of buying pirated DVDs, which means I have to wait for the official release and I only get to see movies that offer a Spanish Language audio track (about 1 in 3), but it also means I get to watch special features that can turn one movie into 5 hours of entertainment. Sadly, this store recently closed since it was cheaper to buy pirated disks than to rent real ones, and so I was pretty much every third customer.

I am telling you this story so I can tell you another story. The video store is about a 10 minute walk from our house, and Alice doesn't like to walk around at night since there aren't any street lights, so when we decided we were going to watch a movie, usually I would have to walk
there and back, which was boring and sucked. So I decided that everytime I had to walk all the way there by myself I would stop at a local comedor and have a snack.

So the people who owned the comedor started to get to know me, and the other regulars recognized me as the wierd guy who bought something small, ate quickly and left. About a month ago I wandered in and asked for a drink and a couple pupusas (like really thick tortillas stuffed with cheese) and I hear someone ask me in English where I was from. Now, this is a hard question, since "where are you from" is pretty open to interpretation. I am from Oklahoma, but to answer this way implies I am a standard tourist, which, I am not, so usually I answer I'm from here. Most people dislike this answer, since I speak with a heavy American English accent and my skin color makes people know this is not where I am "from" but rather where I live. Doing so makes me feel better, since it sounds like I have a more vested interest in the country. I especially hate being asked this question by tourists, since they almost seem confrontational when I tell them I am from here. It is like they have some desire to connect to you based on where you live. Before I even had a chance to look around and notice who said it, the person had already repeated thier query and I was forced to answer not knowing if I was talking to tourist or local.
"I live here" I stated, hoping the topic would be dead.
"No, but where are you from?" I hear as I discover I am talking to a local.
"I'm from Oklahoma" I am forced to reply. A Honduran would never let the topic go if I don't answer something.
"Oh, um, cool, I went to school in California" He responded.
Appearantly, he was hoping I was from somewhere more interesting. Sadly, Oklahoma is the best I got without lieing. So we went on to talk for a while and a few hours later I found out that I had met someone who just finished thier Doctorate in commercial law in Europe. He had also done his grad studies in California, and his pre-law here in Honduras. He speaks English, Spanish, French and Italian, and he has since become one of my best Honduras friends. The best part? His name is Fidel. Sadly he is not a very old Cuban dictator, but his name is still Fidel.

A few weeks later we had another volunteer visiting us, and we called Fidel to come hang out, and he said he would, but he got caught up with something else and never made it. The next day he felt bad and invited us to a BBQ, and I finally discovered a Honduran social network of young professionals. We met 6 Hondurans, all college educated, working in various capacities in the capital. We also met a young lady who is visiting for 8 from San Fransisco, but hails from Barcelona, and doesn't speak English. I wanted to ask her where she was from to see if she said SF or Spain, but she was a quiet person, and I didn't want to be annoying. One of the most interesting people I met was a young lady from the states, who works with an alternative education program for people who cannot attend normal school. This is a great contact, and she is helping us bring that program to one of our poor ag communities that doesn't get much educational support.

Sadly, the following day I got a call early in the morning asking me to help make sense of a mess in one of my cajas. I showed up and started reading thier books, and I realized, they had done all my trainings, but had never been motivated to actually apply what they learned, and the books were in awful condition. The most obvious problem was that most of the needed information wasn't there and what was didn't pass as legible. While I thought things were getting better, I learned that day that people were just telling me they were getting better, but not really changing much in some of the groups, so since then I have started working with my counter-part to ensure accountability. This was a hard lesson, but I was glad to learn this now instead of later.

People say that life in the Peace Corps can occasionally feel like a roller coaster, and the next day proved they were probably right. After having a great day, and then a bad day, the rollor coaster theory says I was due for a good day, so when I got another call early in the morning I was afraid the previous day was only the beggining of the down turn. Actually, it was Fidel who wanted to celebrate the second day of Easter week with a trip to the beach. Being in the central part of the country, it is really hard to visit the beach, since it requires 2 different bus rides, 3 if I want to go to a pretty beach, so a day trip is impossible. Luckily Fidel had a car, so we could go directly. The beach was a private beach, and probably the nicest beach in the south. We had a seafood soup for lunch and we made it home before dark. It was a great day.

A few days later, Karen came to visit. For details on her trip, read her descrition below. I think the most shocking thing during said trip was: That so much was shocking. Everything here seems pretty normal now, so all the dogs, chickens, horses, mules, donkeys, and cattle in the street seem like a walk to work. Appearantly this isn't true in the US. I suppose I forgot that. I also forgot that horses aren't a normal mode of transport to work, and that most people use trucks, not donkeys, to haul firewood. I also saw a toucan. That was cool, but said toucan did not gift me with fruit loops as I expected, rather he just looked at me and made a noise that sounds like a frog. It was wierd.

Sadly, instead of being able to go to Copan with Alice and Karen, I got sick, and I still seem to be holding onto said sickness. Hopefully, I'll be better in a few days, but if I'm not, I'll be going to the doctor again.

I am planning to take an online class this fall on web design, since I cannot do what I want with the knowledge i have, so if anyone has ever taken such a class somewhere and liked it, let me know.

Karen visits Honduras (pt1)

Dallas to Tegoosygoosy
Security coming into Honduras was gimme your passport, lemme take your picture, see you later. Didn’t have to strip down like coming to the US. Drew was right outside the security gate – well, the old drew less 40 pounds and nearly all his hair!
I’m in HONDURAS! So where is Alice? At the McDonald’s upstairs. Her counterpart and his lovely family – two adorable kids, here’s one

My first fact on Honduras is that the children are soooo beautiful. I know children are beautiful everywhere but these little moon-faced kids are spectacular. You never want them to stop smiling.
Tegoose, as they call it, is pretty modern – the ride to Valle de Angeles took about 30 minutes. It was the first of several E-ticket rides here so far because of the Honduran drivers. Let’s just say rules of the rode are pretty much made up as you go along.
We arrive at Alice and Drew’s place and Jordan and his friend Summar were there. Jordan is another Peace Corps volunteer and he’s stationed in the south, Aramecina Valle where it’s really hot and dry and much more rustic than here. Alice and Drew really have it made in this place. It’s a tourist area and well developed.
We headed out to dinner at the center of the city, a lovely park area and joined a couple of friends for a couple of bottles of Chilean cabernet at a local bar. The park was decorated for Easter week including some sand paintings on the road. The buildings are typically concrete, brightly painted and the streets are cobbled with large stones and foot high curbs. It makes for an interesting walk home in the dark.
For appetizers we had anafre, a melted cheese and bean dip with homemade tortilla chips. Then, I got my first taste of pupusas! Anyone coming to my house for dinner from here on will be served pupusas. It’s a corn pancake stuffed with cheese, beans, or pork and served with pickled onions, cabbage and peppers. A little hot sauce on top and you’ve got yourself a mouthful of pure joy.
The weather is spectacular, low 80’s during the day and 60’s at night. The bar we were sitting in was open to the street and the view included a number of handsomely weathered cowboys on horseback and a few donkeys as well. The horses and donkeys have been a delight for me to see. They tie them up on the roadside to graze or the donkey is just loose and strolling around at his own leisure. On the topic of animals, another fast impression of the country is the vast number of street dogs – skinny hounds always on their way to somewhere, most certainly with food on their minds.

We ambled over to the local spaghetteria (yep, a Honduran Italian restaurant) for dinner, featuring a plato typico which translates into a traditional combo platter – rice, chorizo, beef and beans and a white cheese that was very much like feta but comes from a cow. It was delicioso. Just about the time the bill came, we were plunged into darkness when the electricity went out. It made the Good Friday procession passing by outside that much more beautiful with the candlelight. Here’s a couple of pics.

The first is Jesus in a glass coffin. The angels are life-sized. We walked home after dinner, something I’d love to be able to do more often at home. It had rained earlier in the day but the night was crystal clear and the air was lovely and fresh..
The next day we headed off to La Tigra National Park. Alice and Drew haggled with a mototaxi driver to take us up the mountain and at some points, 1st gear wasn’t low enough so he had to zigzag up the road. A mototaxi is your basic 3 wheeled Yamaha motorcycle with a top and rear seating. At some points, going down the steep road, I was looking hard for the roll bar.
We stayed at Cabana Mirador El Rosario, a bed and breakfast in the park run by a German couple – Monica and Jorge (Yorg). They built a spectacular two story home right into the steep hillside and added a separate two bedroom cabin with a porch sporting a breathtaking view of the valley and the mountains. This is a must-visit place. Monica and Jorge ensured a wonderful visit. Every detail was simply perfect.
We started our hike with the intention of reaching a waterfall about 3 hours away. I think, had Alice and Drew not been nice enough to let me set the pace, they would have made it before dark. It’s a fairly steep climb for the first hour or so. We did reach an overlook and here’s the view .

The next point of interest was a log bridge over a stream. We ventured further but at 1800 meters from the falls we figured we wouldn’t make it back before dark if we kept going. It was a wise decision since, when we arrived back at the B&B, every body part below the waist was aching from the climb. It was worth every step.
A couple of hammocks on the porch were perfect for watching the sun go down and sip white wine that Alice graciously brought along. Monica made a fabulous dinner, starting with a salad made of organic vegetables grown from Jorge’s garden and topped with a lovely yogurt and herb dressing. The entrée was rice served with green chili sauce and a vegetable enchilada finished over a wood fire oven in the dining room. We tried some of their homemade raspberry wine and it’s worth it.
Their dining room window looks out over the valley and the moon was red that evening. Here’s a crummy pic but you’ve got an imagination so use it and go ahhhhh, like we did.

The meal ended with Jorge’s special lemon grass tea and some light sweet cakes.
We slept like the dead that night.
The breakfast was amazing – homemade jams and bread, cheddar cheese, tomatoes and cream cheese and peanut butter with the most delicious cup of coffee I’ve had in near memory. Monica even pre-heated the cream for our coffee which was delightful.
After breakfast, Jorge gave us a thorough tour of the gardens he’s terraced into the hillside. When they bought the property 10 years ago, it was nothing but barren scrub. They’ve planted over 100 trees, some oak, a lot of pine and added yucca and palm as well. His gardens are impressive, raspberries, some coffee beans, a lot of onions and tons of lettuce. His ongoing war is for his carrot crop but the rodents seem to be winning right now. We saw a Toucan Verde sitting in a tree and making a surprising sound much like a bullfrog. Jorge took us back down the mountain on the road which could be an e-ticket ride at Disneyland. Along the way, a Lesser Roadrunner tore across the road and into the brush.
After coming into town, we did a little shopping. The carved wood and veneers here are very nice and the prices are reasonable so I stocked up. So much so that the shop owner thanked Alice for bringing me in!
Off to the pupusaria we went for lunch. One of Alice’s coworkers joined us, Don Louis, and I got to practice a little extra Spanish, more listening than speaking though. Alice and Drew are both excellent at simultaneously holding a conversation and translating back and forth from English and Spanish. It’s very impressive.
The entertainment for the evening was meeting Fidel, a friend of Drew’s, a multi-lingual commercial lawyer and rabid soccer fan. We joined him in the back of a restaurant to watch the Olympic final qualifying round between Honduras and the US. It was being played in, of all places, Nashville, Tennessee. Honduras won so that was quite a treat since 90% of the fans in the stadium were Hondurans.We heading to Copan tomorrow.

February update from Alice

I haven't written since I went to Olancho, so I figured it was time for a small update. First, Lizzie our puppy is getting big, and turning into a great dog! She's figured out the whole going outside to pee thing, and knows how to sit! Her favorite activity is laying and napping in our laps. Here's a picture update...

Workwise things have also been going well. I continue to work with Patronatos, which is like a neighborhood assocation with real ability in the municipality. We have decided that a great need in the community is literacy for adults, so I am going to teach a basic adult literacy class with a volunteer from the community starting this month. I am very excited, this is exactly the type of activity I feel good about doing as a Peace Corps volunteer, especially since there is a desire for it in this community.

I am also going to help them start Educatodos, another education program for youth and adults that want to complete their education but cannot do it in the normal school schedule. It is a program that has worked well throughout Honduras and is made up of volunteers who teach the classes in the communities. Peace Corps volunteers often help teach, which is something Drew and I are interested in doing.

I have also started working with a basic sanitation volunteer group that was started by the previous volunteer. I am doing trainings with them, community and latrine visits, and we hope to do mini-classes on health and sanitation in elementary schools. They are fun to work with and gets me out and about in the community.

In our free time, Drew and I have been playing lots of card games and dice games. It is fun to actually socialize and not be so dependant on TV (which we don't have). I have taken up painting again, which is nice. Drew and I are going to have a visitor in March and then in April, so we are excited about that, having people from home!! It is going to be awesome, and we will get to take them to some of the sites that we haven't been to yet.

We have started putting up postcards sent from home, feel free to send us one to add to our collection! It is fun to have them around and they remind us of friends and family. Also, feel free to leave comments after reading our updates, we love hearing from other people and it is nice to know that people read and enjoy the blog! :-)

Back to the blog

I am attempting to revive my blogging spirit after a month away. I wish I could better explain my absence, but unless you get my e-mails, I really can’t explain it without making a bad situation worse. I can only imagine what the involved parties would say if they had hard copies of my opinion. I now understand why before we are even in country the Peace Corps starts to tell us not to tell about some topics publicly.
I don’t have a lot to say about my work of late, since I am keeping up on projects I started and explained a while ago. Some communities are hard to keep up with than others, but I try to make contact with everyone regularly, and they seem to be happy knowing that I will follow-up on my own. Volunteer organizations don’t usually stay for two years, so it is taking some time for them to adjust to me.
I have recently trained one new micro-finance group (caja rural) and I get to train another one this month. I did 5 days worth of training in 2 days, which ended up being surprisingly short. This makes me nervous, but I feel like the training resources that had been developed before me were long and wordy. I almost feel like the organization that designed the training want it to take 10 days to better justify why they were getting paid so much to give the trainings. Being able to follow-up with them will make help me improve my training, since I will know what I did a good and bad job training.
This month was reconnect which is a meeting we have within our project groups 3 months after training. The nice part was the food; the bad part is there really is not a lot to do there. Lately, Peace Corps staff has relied more on our site, Valle de Angeles, to host events, so I was just glad that I didn’t have to stay in a hotel 6 blocks from where I live. I learned a fair amount about what the more senior municipal development volunteers have focused on during their time, and all the newbies gave a quick talk about what they want to do. A couple people from our group have really done a great job getting started. Others are finding that the people who requested them didn’t really think their ideas through, and are going to have to look for other sources of work.
My time before vacation is filling up, and I am getting better at filling up my free time. Recently some other volunteers have come to visit and we traded media files, so I now have over 10 gigs of new music. I am deleting a lot, but listening and organizing gives me something to do.
I do want to note I have learned how many people can comfortably stay at my house, and the answer is less than 14. The Super bowl was the Sunday before our reconnect and the Sunday after Youth development’s reconnect, so when word got out I was having a party, a whole lot of people showed up. The second night 3 people got a hotel room so they didn’t have to sleep on the floor again, but even after that we had a lot of people on our floor (especially since 3 more showed up, and so we really broke even on the number of people).
I also got my hair cut here for the second time. The first time was so bad, I decided to let another volunteer cut it, so I pretty much have a buzz cut. No pictures yet, since I am still adjusting, but I'll try to post some soon.
I suppose that’s all for now, I will try to keep an eye out for blog worthy stories.

Training in Olancho

Olancho is supposed to be the wild west of Honduras. Or something like that....it is the biggest state in Honduras and as we rolled into the department, I saw a sign, with Olancho greatly magnatized and huge arrow pointing saying "you're in Toyota country", ahh...reminded me of a good ol Texas or OK billboard. They produce the meat, cheese, and a lot of agricultural products for the country, and they love pickup trucks and eating well. There were cattle and men in cowboy hats herding them as we rolled down the highway. Made me think of home, in a Honduras'y kind of way, as there were still mountains, palm trees, and lots of Spanish.

What was I doing in Olancho? I had been invited by my counterpart (CATIE) and the Consejo de Cuenca to participate in a week-long training with them and other invited community members regarding conflict resolution and water source management. Drew decided he'd rather stay home, take the week off and watch the puppy, so I signed up to go and the adventure began. It was one of the best trainings I have attended, led by young, energetic and intellegent former students of the Universidad Nacional de Agricutura, and they taught us a lot. It was also nice to talk to young professional Hondurans my age, as there are few people my age in my site. So kuddos to them, and I think our group even learned a bunch of new diagnostic tools, resource information and practical experience to better manage our water sources.

Here are some pictures of the group and the training.

CATIE paid for the training and took good care of us, put is in a nice hotel and fed us well. I haven't eaten that much since I left Oklahoma! They eat well in Olancho and I like it!

A few other exciting things about the town we were in was the central park. They had a tree bigger than an SUV, branches bigger than tree trunks, and it was spectacular. Catacamas is a very pretty town with several large trees such as this.

The town also has natural caves in the mountains about 5 km from the University. They were amazing and reminded me of being a kid exploring Carslbad Caverns. It was a nice finish to the last day of training, to see a famous Honduras natural tourist spot.

After week of Spanish and time away from Drew, I was definitely ready to go home. But I went home knowing more of Honduras, more knowledge to work with the community groups in my area, and a bit better with the Spanish as well.

December

I am going to start with a hugely popular cultural event. Let me stress, while it's appearance may be misleading, it is a cultural event and exchange. And Volunteers are encouraged to participate.

We started off the month in the cute little town of Yuscaran, for Donkey Polo, an event that has happened for at least 10 years (or so I've been told). What fun! What laughter! What stubborness from the donkeys! Each year, it is the hit of the annual Yuscaran fair, and it is Catrachos (Hondurans) vs. Gringos (uh...white people). Drew got to play and did pretty darn well. He watched the donkeys the first round to figure out which one would cooperate and chose that one. It was a short, exciting trip, and our first escape from site of any length at all, and was totally worth it. Check us out!

Next came Christmas. As good volunteers, and as instructed by our Country Director, we stayed put in site for the holiday and enjoyed the cultural experience. The week before, we were invited over by our old host mom to make Torrejas, the most Honduran holiday desert. It was really yummy and I am including the recipe here:

a loaf of some kind of sweet bread. Like you'd use for sweet french toast
6-10 eggs (separate yolks and whites)
olive oil

(syrup) ( I am not exactly sure, but a combo of sugar, alcohol and cinammon, simmered till syrupy)
cinammon sticks

sugar syrup

1 small little bottle alcohol (white, like rum, vodka or similar)

sugar (2 cups ish)

water (2 cups ish)

Cut bread into 1 inch slices, beat egg whites till foamy. Add yolks and beat and mix together. Dip bread into egg mixture. Place bread pieces in pan filled with oil and cook on each side till browned. Cool on paper towel. Add to syrup mixture, and serve! Yumm! Sweet!!

Okay, back to Christmas. We went to our counterpart's house for the night before, the big day here in Honduras is Christmas Eve. We baked a turkey, taught his wife how to make stuffing and gravy and she served us tamales and a few other Costa Rican dishes (she is from there) and played with their kids, watched bad 70's videos, and exchanged presents. It was very family oriented and a good time. They are a nice family and it was very wonderful to be invited into their celebration.

The next day our old host family came up for the evening, and we talked and laughed and cooked and had a generally nice time. They also brought us Torrejas, which was great, just as yummy with a bit different syrup but tasty. Also that day, but in the morning we did our little present exchange and opened our stockings. I had of course brought them with us to Honduras, and was glad I did. A quiet, but fun Christmas, and I thank God that we were not alone and were surrounded with our new friends since we couldn't be with family.

On the 28th of December, we were finally past our three-month stay-in-site policy and allowed to leave. And we did! Off to the one and only real lake in country, Lake Yojoa, grand and beautiful and breathtaking with the mountains as its backdrop. We had been already told by people in our site that we should leave for New Years anyway, that it would be more fun than staying at home. They were all so impressed we were here for Christmas, that they felt it wasn't fair for us to be here New Years, as well. It was a fun experience, with fresh fish, shrimp, amazing views, a brewery owned by an American who made fresh beer and burgers, and lots of volunteers and sun. Well, after three days, 30plus volunteers was a bit too much for both Drew and I, but still worth the trip. It was a fun reunion.
The lake at night....

Drew and I (everyone commented how thin and good lookin Honduras made him ;) he does look pretty good....

Midnight, and sparklers!!

So, December was a busy month, therefore a long update. We are now midway through January and back at work. Back to the real world, the confusion, speaking Spanish and trying to get projects going. But I am glad for it, while last month was fun, I am glad for some normalcy again. Wait..?! Normalcy?? I am not sure if I know what that is, but we are doing well, settled in to our bright yellow house, the puppy is growing and learning, and Drew and I cook lots of rice and beans and eggs, and show up with smiles for meetings and the office.