Celebrations and Site Announcements!

            For Honduras, September is full of celebrations.  Last Saturday was “Dia del Niño” (Children’s Day), which is a BIG deal here.  The schools all hold huge celebrations with toys, food, games, cake, and piñatas….lots of piñatas!  On Friday, Julie, Constance, and I went out to the school that we worked with for our self-directed project—Escuela Vicente Chavez in Liquidambar.  When we got there, we found out that there were a bunch of high school kids that would be running the day’s activities.  So, basically, there wasn’t anything for us to do or help with.  We stuck around to watch the games, eat some arroz con pollo, and watch the kids break open the piñata.  Kids doing a piñata in Honduras is like every teacher or camp counselor’s worst nightmare—kids pushing, shoving, almost hitting each other in the head with the stick.  However, the teacher and parents didn’t seem worried…cultural differences I guess.  We were disappointed that we didn’t get to help with anything that day, but the teacher invited to come back on Saturday, which was the actual children’s day.  He was leading the whole thing himself, so he wanted us to come play some games.  Constance had plans to celebrate with her family, but Julie and I decided to go.

            Because it was a Saturday, the Peace Corps was not able to give us transportation, but they agreed to reimburse us for our travel costs.  So, Julie and I woke up early and caught the big yellow school bus to Cataranas, which goes past the school.  We were supposed to lead games from 9 to 10, but we didn’t end up starting until like 9:30 (cultural differences once again…punctuality just isn’t something that exists here).  We played some games, helped hand out food and cake, and supervised piñata.  We suggested to the teacher that they do different piñatas for different age groups so that not all of the kids were scrambling for the candy.  It worked out much better, and there was much less whining and no injuries.  

            Today (I’m writing this on Thursday, September 15^th) was Independence Day!  Graciously, the Peace Corps gave us the day off (except they still gave us a worksheet of questions about Independence day that we were supposed to do), so we all went with our families to Valle de Angeles to celebrate.  The parade was crazy!  Each school in the area marched.  There was such a variety of stuff, bands, some little kids acting like mimes (weird and kind of creepy), little kids in costumes, flags, girls dancing with batons, girls dancing with pom-poms, girls dancing with soccer balls and tennis racquets…really random stuff.  I walked around with Yeisling and her cousin Paola, and took lots of pictures. 

            OK, I guess this is the important part….On Monday, we found out our sites.  The site announcement process was really suspenseful, and Sandra, our project manager, loved watching us squirm.  First, she made us listen to an inspirational song and talk about the lyrics that were most meaningful to us.  Then she made us listen to it again and sing along (after 10 weeks of wondering about our sites, we really just wanted her to cut to the chase!).  In order to announce the sites, she had a powerpoint presentation.  She first showed us a quote from our personal statements, which we sent to her before we arrived.  She read it, translated it into Spanish so that the Spanish teachers could understand, and then made us guess who wrote it.  After some discussion and debate, she showed the name of the site, and then finally showed the picture of the person.

            Of course, I ended up being the very last one, so by process of elimination I knew exactly which site was mine….SULACO,YORO!  We each received a booklet of information about our site and our counterparts, and we spent the next 30 minutes sitting, reading our site descriptions, asking questions, and eating cake and ice cream.  Here are some facts on my site, I’ll try to give as much info as I can, but I’m sure I’ll be able to tell you more once I get there on the 23^rd.

·      It is located in North-ish Central Honduras, and it is the southernmost municipality in the department of Yoro. 

·      Population 15,000 , with about 5,000 living in the casco urbano (main town) and the rest in the aldeas (other villages that are part of the municipality)

·      It is located in a valley with mountains around it, there is a river and hot springs

·      The people depend on small scale farming of beans, corn, fruits, and vegetables, as well as coffee and cattle farming

·      I should have access to internet in my town (maybe in one of the schools or an internet café)

·      Average temperature 85-90 degrees

·      Looks like there’s at least one hotel and a few restaurants

·      My counterparts:

o   Escuela Francisco Morazan (primary school, grades 1-6)

§  Helping to organize the parenting school

§  Working with teachers who have already been trained in teaching English by the previous volunteer

§  Visiting poor families

§  Helping teach how to build home gardens

o   Instituto San Juan de Sula (high school, grades 7-?)

§  Work with the English teacher to do co-teaching

§  Work with the counselor to organize parenting school, drug prevention, teen pregnancy prevention

§  Workshops for teachers on teaching techniques, discipline techniques, positive reinforcement, etc.

§  Work with the Spanish teacher to motivate the youth to read more

o   Baseball team

§  I’m not really sure how this one’s going to go, I’m going to be working with the coach who is the physical education teacher, and I’ll be working with the team…should be interesting!

·      My host family:

o   The English teacher at the high school that I’ll be co-teaching with is also my host dad!  And my host mom is one of the teachers I’ll be working with at the primary school.  They have a 13 year-old daughter and a son who lives and studies in Tegucigalpa during the school year.

So, that’s the scoop!  I’m pretty excited about my site.  It’s really far away from the other people in my group, but there are a bunch of volunteers from other groups that are living and working in the department, so they’ll be within a few hours bus ride away from me. 

           

            The next week is filled with preparation for swearing-in and moving out to our sites.  I already had my final language interview on Wednesday (and it didn’t go great, I’ll probably stay at the same level that I was before) and we only have a few hours of Spanish class left.  We’re planning a celebration on Saturday night to spend some more time hanging out as a group before we’re scattered all over the place.  It’s definitely bittersweet.  I’m very excited to start working and be done with training, but the 15 of us have become so close and been through so much together in the past 11 weeks, that it’s going to be really sad leaving everyone.  There’s definitely a strange mix of emotions in the group right now, but we’re doing our best to enjoy the time we have left together!

            Thanks for reading!  The next time I write will probably be from my site in Sulaco! Ahhh!

(p.s. I tried to post pictures, but the internet was not cooperating, I'll try to post some either here or on facebook soon!)

           

Training is coming to a close…

 …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 4^th 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 3^rd birthday party and not 23^rd, 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 22^nd of September, and then I leave on the 23^rd 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! :-)

I´m still here!

Sorry I haven´t posted in awhile, I have had barely any internet access.  I had written a post awhile ago, but my flash drive isn´t working on this computer right now, so I´ll try again another time.  I had a great birthday, and I´m going to find out my site on Monday!  I´ll try to give an actual update sometime soon!

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!