Estoy bien!

Hi everyone!

I figured I’d post something now to let you know how I’m doing and what I’ve been up to.  I don’t have internet on a regular basis right now.  After training is over (in 11 weeks), I will probably buy a portable modem to have wireless, but I need to wait to see which service I should use, which depends on where I am placed for my assignment.

Right now, I am sitting in front of my host family’s house, looking out at a beautiful view of the mountains, which are covered with tall trees (I’m typing this in a word document to save to my flash drive so that when I can stop by an internet café, I can post it quickly).  

 We arrived on Thursday in the afternoon, and we headed immediately over to the Peace Corps headquarters in Tegucigalpa, the capital city where the airport is.  We met the staff, did some brief training (mostly an overview of our training program, tips for living with host families, and some “survival Spanish”). 

After that, we met our host families.  I am living with an older woman named Marina Eluvina Chavez.  She lives with her sister Sonia and Sonia’s two daughters Yesling (21) and Norma (18).  There are also other family members that have been visiting a lot, so it’s a lot of names to remember. 

My room is pretty great (bigger than my room at home).  I have a twin sized bed, a place to hang some clothes up, a table and a big chair.  The door locks (a requirement for host families) so I do have some privacy, although I feel bad going into my room a lot, so I spend most of my time with the family.  My room is attached to the kitchen and everyone else lives in a different part of the house, through a separate door (which I haven’t seen yet).  The bathroom is outdoors and there is no running water, which means bucket flushing and bucket showers.  For some of the people in the training group, this is a huge adjustment for them, but luckily I’ve used these kinds of bathrooms during my trips to Mexico, so it’s not that difficult.  My host mom even heats up my shower water, which is pretty awesome.

Mi Cuarto

Mi cuarto otra vez

The view from the porch of my house

I have been going to bed super early here! (the latest I’ve stayed up is 9:30).  Part of it is that I’m still catching up the sleep that we lost during travel (we are two hours behind Eastern Standard Time here, and we had to wake up at 1:30 a.m. to head to the airport when we were staying in DC).  It is also extremely exhausting trying to speak Spanish all the time.  My family speaks no English at all, and I feel bad when I can’t understand them.  However, they have had many Peace Corps trainees live here in the past, so they are used to it.  At this point, I need to learn some more Spanish, because we have run out of things to talk about, but our language training begins tomorrow (Monday), so hopefully that will help.

We had training in Tegucigalpa on Thursday, Friday, and half of the day on Saturday.  We have learned things about the culture, how to stay healthy (I started my weekly malaria medication on Friday), safety and security (which was a little scary), and various other things.  Yesterday, after we came home for lunch, a bunch of us went into the nearest town, Valle de Angeles, to buy cell phones.  So, I have one now.  I posted the number on my facebook if anyone is interested in calling.  The evening or weekends are the best times to call, since we are going to have training all day during the week.  I’d suggest using an international calling card because it’s probably expensive.  Because we´re doing everything in Spanish, it´s a relief to be able to talk to someone in English.  It is free for me to receive calls and texts.  It’s a pay-as-you-go type phone, so I have to keep adding minutes to it.  I think I´ll try to avoid making international calls on it as much as possible.

I was a little nervous about what I was going to do with all of my free time yesterday and today, but we found stuff to do.  After walking around Valle de Angeles for a few hours yesterday with the other trainees, I came home to find the entire extended family was visiting.  Friday was Sonia’s birthday, so they were celebrating on Saturday night.  There was great food and tons of people.  They even made me dance…although I’m not sure if they were laughing at me or with me haha. 

This morning, I went with Kelvin, Marlo, Kenneth, and Sesa (grandsons or nephews of my host mom- there are so many people, it’s hard to figure out how they’re all related) to the campo to play futbol (soccer).  Poor Kenneth fell in the mud right away (it has rained pretty much every evening I’ve been here) and the rest of us got pretty dirty too.

Los chicos

Walking back to the house

There are lots of really interesting things that I’ve been learning in training…here are some tidbits:

• ·        Macanudo!  This is my language class’s new favorite word.  It means something like awesome or fantastic.  I’ve decided to use it as much as possible.

• ·        This one’s for Chelsea—when someone sneezes 3 times, you say “salud” the first time “dinero” the second and “amor” the third (health, money, love)…our language teacher Angelica likes to teach us these fun things

• ·        You never throw anything to anyone if they ask for it…it’s seen as disrespectful.

• ·        The safety guy told us ladies that we should keep our money tucked into the side of our bra.  Apparently this is a good hiding place because many Honduran women hide money in the front of their bra and a robber will check there.  We’re also supposed to carry some “throwaway” money in our pocket to give away if we get robbed.  (but don’t worry, so far no robberies!)

I’m really excited to start our intensive language training tomorrow.  On Friday, we had language interviews to see what level we are at so that they can put us into small groups.  We have to reach the intermediate-mid level by the end of training in order to be sworn in as volunteers.  I think I did alright on the interview, but I’m looking forward to seeing how close I am to the goal. 

Well, that’s all for now.  Hope everyone’s doing well!

Hasta la proxima vez,

Sarah