…which means a lot of mixed feelings and anticipation. Although I am excited about finding out my site, being sworn in, and officially becoming a volunteer, it is bittersweet because the 15 of us have been together for the past 10 weeks, and now we will be scattered all over the country.
We had technical interviews this week, and Ronaldo (the training director for youth development) and Sandra (the director for youth development) gave us all a bunch of clues about our sites. Because we’ve all received a list of the 15 sites, the past few days have been filled with lots of speculation as people shared their clues and tried to figure out where each of us will be. Here are my clues:
· Not a really big site, but not really small either
· There aren’t many trees, a lot of deforestation (which was a really weird clue)
· One of the poorest places in Honduras
· They haven’t had a youth development volunteer before, but I will be replacing a volunteer from another project
· My counterparts:
o A colegio (high school)
o An escuela (primary school)
o A mystery third counterpart that they didn’t tell me the name of because “then you would be able to figure out which site it is”
· My projects
o The teachers at my site have already had TEAM (Teaching English and Methodology) Training, so I will be working with a teacher at the high school and one at the primary school to co-teach classes, which can open the door for me doing more professional development work with the teachers
o The school wants to start some kind of summer school/camp program for the kids, so I will help with that during the “summer vacation,” which is December through February
o My mystery third counterpart will give me the opportunity to work with promoting volunteerism in the community, but I don’t know anything else about it yet
All in all, I’m really excited about all of these clues, and I’ll know for sure on Monday what my site is!
I haven’t posted in awhile, mostly because we haven’t been going into Tegucigalpa to the Peace Corps office (where they have wireless internet). Our technical trainings are pretty much over now. In the past few weeks we have had a two-day training on school gardens and environmental education and a two-day training on HIV/AIDS.
With the school gardens, we met with a volunteer who developed a science curriculum and started a bunch of school gardens at her site. After learning lots of gardening information, we went down to the school in our town to do some hands-on projects. We learned about how to compost (which I already knew lots about from Silver Lake!) and planted a bunch of vegetables. The next day of the training, we did some environmental art projects like making planters out of old tires (you cut them and then flip them inside out—it’s really neat!), crocheting with plastic bags (which I was absolutely terrible at), and making recycled paper (another thing that I already knew about from SLCC!).
Our HIV/AIDS training last week (VIH/SIDA en español) was really informative. Melissa, the volunteer that I visited for my volunteer visit came to do the training, along with a health volunteer who lives up north near the beach. The first day of the training, the two of them did all of the different activities from the training manual with us. We learned lots of new vocabulary and terms in Spanish.
The second day, we went to INFOP, a vocational training school, in Valle de Angeles to give the training to the high school students there. I worked with Peter (a fellow trainee, who just happened to have been in the same program with me at UConn), and we taught a small class of 6 students. We thought there were going to be 16, but only 6 were there. In addition, 3 of the students had special needs and couldn’t read or write. Needless to say, we had to adapt our plan a little bit, but we did really well. I was impressed by my ability to explain difficult, scientific topics in Spanish. The kids had a lot of misconceptions about how HIV is spread, so I definitely felt like they learned something and changed their way of thinking. We also got to practice putting condoms on bananas, which every kid said was their favorite part (haha). Afterwards, we reflected on the experience and also heard testimony from 2 girls who are living with HIV. It was really powerful to hear their stories. The older of the girls had a more positive experience, whereas the 15-year-old faced a lot of discrimination from her family and peers. Both of them are currently volunteering with an organization that helps people living with HIV. It definitely helped us realize how important it is to educate people about HIV-AIDS. Some of the kids that we taught thought that HIV could be transmitted through kissing, hugging, or sharing cups. It’s this kind of misinformation that causes discrimination in communities in Honduras. HIV-AIDS is a huge issue here. There are more cases in Honduras alone than the rest of the countries in Central America combined.
As far as non-training-related news goes…I celebrated my birthday last weekend! It is crazy to think that this is only the first of 3 birthdays that I’ll be celebrating here. I was a little sad the week leading up to my birthday because I knew it would be weird being away from my friends and family, but once September 4th rolled around, it ended up being great. In the morning, I headed in to the internet café to Skype with some friends. After quite a few technical difficulties, I was finally able to talk to them, which really made my day. I couldn’t stop smiling after that. Then I came home and the patio in front of my house had been decorated with streamers and balloons and a piñata. My host family was busy preparing and cooking and wouldn’t let me help, so I showered and watched a movie on TV. In the afternoon, all of the other trainees and some extended host family members (aunts, cousins, etc.) came over for the party. We ate some yummy arroz con pollo and hung out on the patio. Then we had some party games. My host family had put little slips of paper into some of the balloons. My friends and I took turns sitting on the balloons to pop them and then doing whatever it said on the piece of paper (silly things like acting like a monkey, singing happy birthday, etc.). Then we played piñata, which was a lot more intense than I expected. We had to be blindfolded and spun around. I went first, and barely hit the piñata at all. Everyone was screaming directions at me. Afterwards, when I was watching everyone else try, I realized that all of the Hondurans were screaming the opposite directions to the person, which they thought was HILARIOUS Like yelling, “¡Arriba!” when it’s actually down low and “¡Abajo!” when it’s actually up high (no wonder I had so much trouble hitting it when it was my turn). . After piñata, I gave out goodie bags (I do realize that this sounds like a 3rd birthday party and not 23rd, but I swear we all had a great time) and then we had cake. Afterwards, everyone hung out for a while longer before heading back to their host families. All in all, it was a great day, and everyone kept remarking how much my host family really cares about me. I’m definitely going to miss them, but hopefully my next host family will work out as well as this one did.
OK, well, training’s almost done, and I get sworn in on the 22nd of September, and then I leave on the 23rd for my site (wherever that may be). I’ll try to post again after I find out my site. Hope the beginning of the school year is going well for everyone, especially all of my friends who just started their first year of teaching! Oh, and congrats Stacy and Matt! :-)
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