Volunteer Visit: Concepción de María, Choluteca

I just got back from my volunteer visit a few hours ago (I’m writing this post on Thursday night), and I am so tired!  Bus travel is exhausting!

We left from Las Cañadas on Sunday morning around 7:15.  I traveled with Emily and Deandra, two other trainees from my group.  Deandra was going with me to visit Melissa, a current youth development volunteer in Concepción de María; and Emily was going to visit Ashley, the volunteer who lives in Namasigue.  Once we got into Tegucigalpa, we took a taxi to the bus station and then took the three-hour bus ride to Choluteca, a fairly large city southeast of Tegucigalpa.

Ashley’s site, Namasigue, is only 30-40 minutes outside of Choluteca, so she met us at the bus terminal.  We walked to Wendy’s for lunch (definitely a nice change from beans and tortillas), stopped by the grocery store to pick up some food, and then got on another bus to Concepción de María (another 3 hours or so).  By the time we got to our destination it was getting dark and we were pretty tired.  However, the feria was going on in the town, so there were lots of things going on.  We met Melissa, the volunteer that Deandra and I were visiting, and Laura, a health volunteer who lives in Triunfo (about an hour and a half away from Melissa).  After a dinner of tacos (Mexican food is so hard to find that Ashley had her parents send her taco seasoning in the mail), we headed out to the feria. 

While we were walking through the feria, we got a taste of what it is like to be a volunteer in a small site (the town has about 1,000 people).  Melissa was super friendly, and greeted and talked to everyone that we passed.  Everyone in her town knows her and she, amazingly, knows almost everyone’s names.  The feria had some sketchy carnival rides, including a ferris wheel that was a little rickety and went at 3 times the speed of a normal ferris wheel (which made it also 3 times more fun!).  There was also a merry-go-round that was pushed by hand by one of the workers, rather than having a motor that makes it go around.  Throughout the night, we rode the ferris wheel twice, played some games, and went into the town hall to the dance, where a band that looked and danced like the Honduran version of the Backstreet Boys was performing.  We had a great time and didn’t get back home until around 12:30.   Melissa lives in a great little house.  It kind of made me jealous because Peace Corps Honduras recently changed the rules so that, starting with my group (H-19), we are required to live with host families the whole time.  It’s kind of a bummer that I’ll never get to have my own place like Melissa does, but it’s definitely safer to be living with a family, so it’s a trade-off.

Feria rides

Early Monday morning, Emily, Ashley, and Laura left.  Some kids from Melissa’s Joven a Joven (vocational training) class at the high school came over to prepare yucca with chismol for the cultural show that was happening that day in the center of town, another event for the feria.  I helped the kids peel the yucca and chop up the onions, peppers, and tomatoes to make the chismol.  I got to practice my Spanish with them, and we talked about our favorite movies.  Once the food was done, we brought it over to the cultural show.  All of the different organizations and schools from the area had little booths with typical foods and crafts.  Before the show started, they called Melissa up to sit at the front table with all of the important people from the town.  It was really cool to see how respected and loved she is in her community.  The show had dancers, skits, singers, and a marching band.  After the show, we hung out at Melissa’s house for awhile.  In the evening, we went back out to the feria, which was much less busy than the night before.  We sat and ate pupusas at one of the food stands.  Then, Melissa took us to a restaurant that had a little room on the third floor with karaoke.  Although none of us wanted to sing into the microphone, we flipped through a lot of the songs (all in Spanish) and attempted to sing some of them.  They had the song from Titanic, in both Spanish and English, and we ended up singing that a few times.  A few other people showed up to sing, and we hung out and sang along, before heading back and going to bed.

Deandra, Melissa, Me at Karaoke

Tuesday, we headed out to the library to help Melissa plan and prepare for her upcoming classes.  The library was a small building with maybe 4 or 5 shelves of books and some tables and chairs.  We prepared for a sex ed. lesson that we were going to teach with Laura in Triunfo on Wednesday, but plans ended up changing so we didn’t get to do it after all.  We went back to the house for lunch.  The other trainee that was with us had some health issues, so she stayed home and napped, and I headed back to the library with Melissa.  The kids got out of school early in the afternoon, and a bunch of them came into the library.  I sat and read with some of them, and then Melissa did a spontaneous story hour and gave them paper and colored pencils to color with, just to keep them occupied so she could get some work done.  Later on in the evening, we headed out and ended up sitting and talking with some neighbors for a couple of hours.  They were super nice and invited us to come back and visit again.  Melissa said that her best advice for integrating into your community is doing just what we did on Tuesday night, spending time just hanging out and talking to people.  It will definitely take the courage to step outside my comfort zone, but it is obvious how well integrated she is into her community, so I will definitely take her advice!

Wednesday we left super early because we had to go back into Choluteca to stop at the hospital and get medicine (don’t worry it wasn’t for me, I’m still healthy!).  After running that errand, we hung out in a café for awhile, then met up with Emily and Ashley again to have lunch at Pizza Hut.  After lunch, we stopped again at the grocery store and the 5 of us (Me, Deandra, Melissa, Ashley, and Emily), headed to Ashley’s house in Namasigue, which seemed to be about the same size as Melissa’s site, although we didn’t get a chance to walk around too much.  Once we got there, we made rice krispy treats (with cornflakes though, because there weren’t any rice krispies at the grocery store), and helped Ashley prepare some of her materials for her classes.  In order to give Deandra and I the experience of helping with a project (Melissa’s projects were put on hold for the week because of the feria), she called the kindergarten teacher and made plans to do a dental hygiene lesson in the morning, so that we could go and help with it before we had to leave.  Before bed, we moved all of the mattresses into Ashley’s living room and watched a couple of episodes of Modern Family on her computer.

This morning, we went to the kinder at 9:00 to do a quick lesson with the kids.  The topic of the lesson was knowing the difference between foods that are good for your teeth and foods that are bad for your teeth.  Afterwards, we hung out some more, then took the long trip back home (first to Choluteca, then the long bus ride to Tegucigalpa, then another shorter trip to Las Cañadas). 

The volunteer visit turned out to be a great experience.  I got to see what it looks like to be a happy, successful volunteer.  I got to ask Melissa a million questions about life as a volunteer, we had some fun at the feria, and we got to help facilitate a lesson with Ashley.  I learned a lot about how to become a part of your community, the importance of being friendly, open, and interested in everyone and everything that’s going on.  One thing I didn’t expect was to become friends with the volunteers so quickly.  I could definitely see myself going back and visiting Ashley and Melissa, and hopefully I’ll be placed at a site close enough that I’ll be able to.

We’re officially more than halfway done with training, and I can’t believe it!  It was great to have a change of pace during the volunteer visit and not be so busy all the time, but tomorrow it’s back to regular training until we’re sworn in on September 22^nd!

¡Exito! (Success!)

Two blog posts in one week!  Imagine that! 

When we got here to Honduras, the Peace Corps training staff referred to training as an “11 week long job interview.”  This week we have had various meetings to talk about our progress, and it seems like they are happy with me and my performance thus far.  I had a meeting with the training director and with the youth development project staff, and they had nothing but good things to say.

But, the thing that I’m most excited about is my second language interview, which was on Tuesday.  The Spanish facilitators worked hard on Tuesday night to review the interviews and figure out our levels so that they could let us know in class on Wednesday.  I was pleased to find out that I moved up not one, but two levels.  So, I am officially Intermediate-High!  It was great to see that my hard work in Spanish class and talking with my family have paid off, but it’s also nice to know that I have met the criteria to be a volunteer.  In order to be sworn in on September 22^nd, we need to be at least Intermediate-Mid.  So, I did it!

This week we had two trainings in which we got to go out into the community and work with kids.  The first was for TEAM, which stands for Teaching English and Methodology.  This is a program that the Peace Corps has implemented in Honduras in conjunction with the Ministry of Education.  There was a new law made fairly recently that requires students to be taught English starting in 4^th grade.  However, many teachers are not prepared to teach English to their students.  TEAM is a program in which Peace Corps volunteers teach Honduran teachers how to teach English.  At the same time, we try to model and equip them with better teaching methodology.  Students in schools here do a lot of activities in workbooks and copying from the chalkboard.  Through English, Peace Corps volunteers try to teach the teachers new, more interactive, student-centered ways of teaching.  In my technical interview the other day, I told Ronaldo and Sandra that this is definitely a program that I would like to do.  It seems like a great way to take the knowledge that I gained in my past 3 years at UConn and put it to good use by helping teachers here in Honduras.

For our practicum in this training, we went to the school in our town, Las Cañadas, and implemented some of the English lessons with students in grades 4 through 6.  My group, Jim, Peter, Natalie, and I, worked with 5^th graders, and our lesson was about colors.  Although our first icebreaker fell flat (because the kids were too nervous to start speaking English right away), the rest of the lesson went really well and the kids definitely learned something.  Our group just happened to end up with 4 teachers in it (not everyone in our group is a teacher, some are social workers, English majors, communication majors, etc.), and it was cool to get to teach with other people that have experience in the classroom.  Our group worked really well together!

On Thursday, we had our second visit to our self-directed project site.  Julie, Constance, and I went back to our school, Escuela Vicente Chavez in the alcaldea (small town) of Likidamba (isn’t that the coolest name ever?!). We had hoped to work with the kids at the end of their school day and then get to talk to the teacher, however Ronaldo informed us on our way there that the teacher would not be there.  Even though the kids didn’t have school, about 30 of them still showed up to meet us, which was really encouraging.  We did some icebreakers and played some games, including ship to shore (in Spanish, obviously), and a game where they had to find partners and follow our directions, connecting certain parts of the body.  For example, we would yell, “codo y pierna” (elbow and leg), and they would have to find a partner and one would touch their elbow to the other’s leg.  After playing a bunch of games, we went into the classroom and talked with the students about what they want to do with us when we spend time with them after school.  Some of the things that they seemed interested in included learning English, doing art projects, playing sports, and getting help with their homework.  We sent each of them home with a notice for their parents with the dates and times of all of our meetings.  We will be seeing them 9 times over the next few weeks. 

Constance, Julie, and I with our kids at Vicente Chavez School

Then, we said goodbye and headed up the trail to the road.  All of the kids followed us and ended up standing by the road with us.  It was a little bit awkward at first because we were waiting for at least 10 minutes for our ride to get there, but we started playing some more games with the kids like Ultimate Rock, Paper, Scissors (Piedra , Papel, Tijeras).   We also sang some camp songs with them, like Boom Chicka Boom, The Moose Song, and Wisconsin Milk.  Coincidentally, the three of us have all worked at camps and know a lot of the same songs.  Despite the fact that they had no idea what they were saying, the kids really enjoyed it!

On Sunday, we’re heading out to our volunteer visits, and we’ll be there until Thursday.  I am going with another trainee to visit Melissa, a volunteer who works in Concepción de María in Choluteca.  It’s about 6 hours away, to the south of here.  Melissa said that her town’s feria (fair/festival) is going to be going on, which should be really fun and interesting.  We’re also going to get to help her facilitate something for one of her projects and probably ask millions of questions about what it’s like to be a volunteer.  I’m excited to see another part of the country and to have a change of environment and routine for a few days.

In other news...my sister’s birthday is coming up on the 16^th!  Happy Birthday Emma!

One Month!

So, we’ve officially been here for a month now, and it’s flown by.  Weekdays have been filled with Spanish classes and technical training and weekends are filled with family time, cleaning, washing clothes (by hand) and hanging out with friends.  (Have I mentioned yet how hard it is to wash all of your clothes by hand?  Not to mention the fact that it rains almost everyday, so it takes like 4 days for everything to dry on the clothesline).

Here are some highlights since my last post:

• We had our first visit to our self-directed project site.  Julie, Constance, and I are working with Vicente Chavez School, which is located about 30 minutes away.  It is a very small school, with students in grades 1 through 6 all in one classroom with one teacher.  When we went there, we observed the classroom for awhile.  The students were mostly copying work into notebooks or using workbooks.  The teacher went around and gave each grade level their assignments.  Seeing a classroom with 40 students of such varied ages was really different than anything I’ve seen before.  I’m looking forward to working with the kids this week.  Besides observing, the major reason we were there was to talk with parents and use our community analysis tool to help us learn more and gather information about our project.  This part was kind of a flop.  There were 7 or 8 moms that showed up, and they did not have anything at all to say to us.  We asked some questions and sat in awkward silence for awhile.  We had Carlos, one of the Spanish teachers, with us, and he helped a little with the language stuff.  It was a little discouraging that the parents didn’t really want to talk to us, but on the bright side- it means that we can pretty much do whatever we want with the students for our project.  We’re going to be going there again on Thursday to talk to the kids and meet with the teacher to get a better idea of what we’re going to be doing with them.

• This week we had a training on dental hygiene.  In conjunction with Colgate, many of us will be implementing a dental hygiene program once we get to our sites.  Sandra, our Project Director, is a licensed dentist, so she did the training along with a current volunteer who has implemented the program in her site.  I learned more than I ever needed to know about teeth and dental health (and learned how to say it all in Spanish).  Then, on Friday morning, we all went to the school here in Las Cañadas to give charlas (short presentations/trainings) on dental hygiene.  My group gave our charla to a class of enthusiastic first graders.  It went really well and was a great confidence boost.  I felt really good about my Spanish and I think the kids actually learned something!

• This Saturday, we participated in a race that went through the huge national park, Parque Nacional La Tigra, that is near where we’re living.  We went into Valle de Angeles around 7 to register and get our numbers and t-shirts.  There was a 25K and 10K.  We did the 10K and planned to walk the whole thing.  There were some pretty intense athletes there, which we didn’t really expect.  The walk was beautiful.  There were great views of the mountains, and as we got higher and higher it was more like a jungle.  At the top, we were literally in the clouds, which was super cool.  To say that this hike was difficult would be an understatement.  However, we had an awesome time walking together (and pretty much came in dead last- haha). 

• On Sunday, my host family threw a baby shower for Patty, the cousin that lives behind us who is having a baby girl and is due on August 22^nd.  We spent the whole morning decorating, and I helped chop up vegetables for the food.  I think in all there were probably about 50 people there, which was crazy.  We had set up lots of chairs outside for everyone because the house is really small.  Luckily, the weather was great.  All week, my family had been asking me to help them with baby shower games.  Baby showers are a U.S. phenomenon, as demonstrated by the fact that there isn’t even a word for baby shower in Spanish.  When they told me about it, they said, “Vamos a tener un baby shower.” Haha.  I told them about a couple of games that I had heard of.  One of them involves people tasting baby foods and guessing what kind they are.  Something must have gotten lost in translation, because my host mom had both the person eating the baby food and the person feeding them be blindfolded, which turned into a crazy, funny, messy game.  We had a piñata and ate some great food: chilaquiles and jello with fruit.  After the baby shower, my family told me that I did a great job all day and was really a part of the family—helping to set up, run the games, and clean up afterwards.  Now they said I just have to start learning to cook!

There are a lot of things coming up.  This week we have our second language interviews.  Mine’s on Tuesday morning.  In the first interview, I was Intermediate-Low.  Two weeks ago, I got moved up to the Intermediate-Mid class.  I’m confident that I’ll get Intermediate-Mid on this interview, and I’m going to do my best to try to move up another level to Intermediate-High.  We’ll see how it goes!

On Sunday, we are going to be heading out for our volunteer visit.  From Sunday through Thursday we’re going off to visit a volunteer, work with them, and stay with them in order to better understand what life will be like when we finish training.

In other news, it’s August, which means you have 4 weeks to buy your international phone card so you can call me on my birthday.  Which also means that birthday cards need to be put in the mail soon. Haha Just kidding!  (Well, sort of)

Miss you all and hope everything’s going well!

p.s.  In reading over my blog posts, I’ve realized that my vocabulary in English is going downhill.  My writing is definitely not what it was before I left.  It must be a side effect of learning so much Spanish so quickly.  My apologies!    

"You Sound Really Happy"

This Wednesday, I finally called Chelsea to catch up.  It was so nice to talk to her, and one of the first things she said was, “You sound really happy.”  I think it took me hearing her say that to realize that I’m finally feeling more comfortable here, and definitely feeling happy.

This has been an important week in that I am finally feeling settled in and have more confidence in training, Spanish classes, and talking with my host family.  On Monday, Chris, Natalie, Deandra, and I had our last class together with Angelica.  She gave us a progress report, and her comments really gave me a confidence boost: 

“Tal vez usted necesita comunicar más sus conocimientos ante el grupo.” (Maybe you need to communicate your knowledge more in front of the group)

“Usted es una excelente alumna en actitud, participación en la clase, y presentación de tareas.” (You are an excellent student in attitude, participation in class, and presentation of homework.)

“Usted es brillante. Cada error que se le corrije, usted y no vuelve a comentarlo.  Cada dia su español es mejor.  Ahora usted va para otra clase más alta.  Yo sé que usted lo hará muy bien.  Confio en usted y su capacidad.” (You are brilliant.  Every error that I correct, you don’t make again.  Every day your Spanish is better.  Now you are going to another, higher class.  I know that you will do very well.  I have confidence in you and your ability.)

I was very nervous going into my new class on Tuesday with Carlos because I am at an Intermediate-Low level, and the other girls in my new class are Intermediate-Mid.  However, I think I’m doing pretty well.  This class is more discussion-based and less grammar work, which I enjoy.  We also have a lot more homework, some of which is a little…..interesting (like having to write a song using the random vocabulary words that we learned in class, including plumber, feminist, a type of cheese, etc.).  My challenge for the weekend is to use our vocabulary words from today’s class in a poem.  I can’t really say I could even write a poem in English, never mind in Spanish using words from our lesson on transportation and giving directions.  Should be interesting…

Tomorrow we have a big task ahead of us.  We are going to Tegucigalpa, which we do every Friday, but this time we are taking the public transportation.  We are going in groups of 5 and taking the public bus into the city and then taking taxis to a bus station where we will meet up with one of the Spanish teachers.  From there, we are going to the market to buy some fruits and vegetables for our host families.  Other than taking mototaxis (little motorcycle things with seats in the back) to the nearby tourist town, we really haven’t had much experience with public transportation.  However, we have been given enough information from our Spanish teachers that we should be just fine.

Our technical trainings this week have been up and down.  We had a safety and security training with a panel of volunteers, which was a little scary, and a training on coaching sports teams with a volunteer that was super-intimidating.  On Tuesday, we practiced using community analysis tools in our town, Las Cañadas, which was really helpful because we’re going to have to use these same tools once we get to our sites.  This afternoon, we had a really fun, interactive training with a current volunteer about working with youth doing dramatic arts.  We played lots of improv games and got a dance lesson too.  Speaking of dance lessons…we were also lucky enough to get a dance lesson on Tuesday from Sahadia who is the host family coordinator for the Peace Corps.  She grew up in a Garifuna community on the northern coast of Honduras.  The Garifuna people are of African descent, and their traditional dance is called “punta.”  It basically just involves moving your hips really fast, which is pretty difficult.  We had a great time learning and got some serious exercise.  Sahadia had fun too, so we’ll probably be having a few more lessons before training is over.

In the next few weeks, we have some exciting things going on.  We are going to be starting our self-directed projects, which are mini-projects where we work with schools and organizations close to where we are living now.  I am working with Constance and Julie and we are going to be working with a small school, grades 1-6, that has only one teacher and about 30-35 students.  Our task is to work with the students, teacher, and parents to design some kind of project based on the needs of the school.  Also coming up, during week 6 of training, is a 5-day volunteer visit where we get to go visit a nearby volunteer, see what their job is like, and help them out for the week.  Very exciting!

So, all in all, it’s been a very happy week.  I’d be lying if I said that I never felt homesick at all over the past 3 weeks.  Feeling homesick is kind of new to me, because I never really had much of an issue with it before, whether it was leaving home for the summer to work at the lake or studying abroad in Cape Town.  However, I’ve realized because this is a very new experience, it’s natural to miss family, friends, and certain luxuries like not needing to sleep with a mosquito net and having a toilet that flushes.  However, I talked to both Mike and Chelsea on the phone this week, and both conversations just made my day better rather than making me feel sad about being so far from home.  I think, in order to be here for the next 2 years, I’m going to have to get used to dealing with a little bit of homesickness.  However, this experience is too cool to let any of that get in the way.

Miss you all.  Hope you’re staying cool! (I hear it’s been pretty hot). 

Learning and Having Fun

It’s Friday again!  Which means we are at the Peace Corps office for the day and have internet.  This has been a pretty typical week.  We’ve had lots of time in language classes and technical training sessions as well.  We got the chance to talk to some current volunteers about what it’s like to work in schools, and we also got to talk with some youth from a nearby school about what challenges youth in Honduras are facing.  There were 2 exciting things from this week:

Exciting thing #1: ZIPLINING!

On Sunday, it was Chris’s birthday (one of the other trainees), so 11 out of the 15 of us decided to do a canopy zipline tour in the nearby tourist town, Valle de Angeles.  We had a great time, and it was a great bonding experience for us.  It’s crazy to think we’ve only been together for 2 weeks, because it feels like we know each other so well.  The zipline was fun and exciting.  The scenery wasn’t too special (nothing like the zipline tour over the waterfalls that I did in South Africa), but we had a great time.  After ziplining, we met the rest of the group in Valle and had cake.  It was a great day!

Exciting thing #2: COOKING!

On Thursday night, after playing some futbol (soccer) with other trainees, neighborhood kids, and some Peace Corps staff, I came home and my host cousin (who lives with me), Yeisling, taught me how to make flour tortillas.  They came out great, and we used them to make baleadas, which are flour tortillas with refried beans (but obviously homemade and not from a can) and queso.  It was really cool, and they said that next time I can make them all by myself (we’ll see about that!)

Me, Norma, and Yeisling making flour tortillas

All in all, another good week.  We’re supposed to be switching Spanish teachers next week, which is a real bummer for me and everyone else in my class.  Our teacher for the past two weeks, Angelica, has been great.  She’s super funny and full of energy.  I’m sure the other teachers are good too, but Angelica is awesome.  I’ve already learned so much already, and, hopefully when I have my next language interview during week 5 of training I’ll be at the intermediate-mid level and the pressure will be off a little.  For now, I just have to keep practicing.

Hasta la proxima viernes! 

One Week!

So, it looks like internet access will probably be a weekly thing.  Some of the other PCTs (Peace Corps Trainees) have internet in their homes, but I don’t.  Although some others are dying to use the internet, I actually enjoy not having it all the time.  It makes going to an internet café and checking my email an extra fun treat.  So, today marks one week in Honduras (I’m writing this on Thursday 12/14), however it feels like we’ve been here much longer.  The 15 of us are getting along well, and despite a few who have had some stomach issues things are going smoothly.  Our days are still very busy with training, and that’s going to continue for the next 10 weeks.   I figured I’d let you know what a typical day looks like.

Un Dia Tipico de un Aspirante del Cuerpo de Paz (A typical day of a Peace Corps Trainee)—we’ve been practicing describing our daily activities in my Spanish class, so it’s weird right now to be writing everything in English

6:30- My host family told me that I should wake up at 6:30.  Because I didn’t want to argue it/didn’t know how to in Spanish, I wake up at this time, even though I would still have plenty of time to get ready if I woke up later.  Usually our training starts at 8, but on Fridays we leave at 7 to go into Teguz (short for Tegucigalpa, the capital city, about 30 minutes away) to the Peace Corps office.

6:30-7- Bucket showering, brushing my teeth (with water from my water bottle of course) and getting dressed for the day.

7-8- I go out to the kitchen and eat breakfast.  Usually my host cousin, Norma, makes breakfast.  I’ve had everything from tortillas with quesillo (basically quesadillas) to pancakes to corn flakes (with warm milk) for breakfast.  I also usually have a cup of coffee.  The coffee here usually has a lot of sugar and never has milk.  It’s actually really good, and I’m definitely going to be a coffee drinker from now on, even though I never really was before.

8:00-12:00- All of our training days are different, but most days we have language class in the mornings.  Although 4 hours seems like a long time, it goes by fast because we learn so much and move so quickly.  So far we’ve been doing things like practicing how to introduce people to each other, describing our daily activities, and describing people.  In my first language interview (the second day I was here), I was graded at the intermediate-low level.  We have to reach the intermediate-mid level in order to be sworn in at the end of training (September 23^rd).  We have 2 more interviews to reach that level, one in the middle of training and the other at the very end.  I’m not at all worried about making the cut because I’ve already learned so much in my classes this past week.

12-1- After Spanish class, we all head home for lunch.  My other host cousins, Yesling and Patty, usually cook lunch.  It seems like lunch is pretty much the biggest meal of the day here.  Most of the time, I do fine with the food.  I’ve eaten a lot of tortillas, beans, rice, and fried plantains.  Everything here is fried, which gets to be a little much, but I always do my best to eat almost everything on my plate.  My favorite lunch so far was chilaquiles, which we had today.  It was basically fried tortilla strips with a creamy sauce and chicken.  Patty’s son Amir, who is 2 years old, is usually over, so I play with him for awhile before I go back for more training.

1-5- In the afternoon, we have more training.  They cover topics like safety and security, culture, and technical training.  Today we visited different types of organizations that PCVs (Peace Corps Volunteers) work with.  Each one of us, at the end of training, will be assigned to a site somewhere in the country.  Along with the site, we will have 3 counterpart organizations, at least one of which will be an NGO.  In order to get a feel for counterpart organizations, we visited a high school, primary school, library, and the regional education office.  We got to talk with students, teachers, and other employees about what they do, their work environment, and what struggles they have.

5-9- After training, sometimes I hang out with the other PCTs, and then I head back to my house for dinner.  I try to talk with my family as much as I can in order to practice (even though sometimes I feel like we’ve run out of things to talk about).  We have dinner around 7 or so.  My favorite dinner so far was catrachas, a crispy fried tortilla with refried beans and cheese on top.) Usually I have some kind of homework for Spanish class, and I also rewrite and review all of my notes from the day.  Around 8:30 or 9, I get ready for bed, and then I’m always asleep by 9:30.

Here are some fun things I’ve learned in my Spanish class:

·      There are certain phrases that are used here in Honduras (Hondurenismos):

o   Cheque=OK

o   Cheque-leque= same as cheque, just more catchy

o   Macanudo= great

o   Maca-cheque-leque-nudo= a random combination of words that mean awesome or great (another PCT learned this from his Spanish teacher and taught it to me, I don’t know if I’ll ever use it in real life)

o   Piropo= “cat calls,” when guys say things to you when you walk by them on the street

o   Puchica!= Wow!

·      Other fun words that I’ve learned this week:

o   Perlas= jellybeans

o   Sonambulo= sleepwalker

o   Panzacervezera= beer-belly

o   Cejas de gorilla= unibrow

Miss you all and hope you’re doing well!  I wish I could be on skype or facebook more to talk to people, but it doesn’t really look like it’s going to happen, at least not until after training.  Once I move to my site, I will be able to buy a modem so that I can have internet access.  Hopefully I’ll get to post again next week!

If anyone would like to send me a letter...here's my address until September 23rd:

PCT Sarah Stockmann
Cuerpo de Paz
Apartado Postal 3158
Tegucigalpa, D.C 1110
Honduras, America Central

Hasta luego!

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