La Vida Hondureña

CIAO HONDURAS!!!!!!!

2009-04-08T09:27:00.000-07:00

Another 5 weeks passed by without a peep from us. If anyone still checks this, sorry about that! It just got difficult to download pictures and write stuff without the computer, and being so busy before leaving, blogging got pushed off to the side. But we have just 4 days left in Comayagua and 10 days left in Honduras. We've had all our despedidas (good bye parties) and have been wrapping everything up these past days. Its amazing how time flies at the end. Its a bit sad but VERY exciting to be going home!
I promise, PROMISE to post pictures and maybe a story or too from our trip we are taking after signing out of here. Like I said before, we've got 6 weeks of beach time lined up in Costa Rica, Panama and Columbia. Should be a nice treat before heading home.
Sorry to flake out here at the end but check back in a few weeks to see if I got my act together for a few vacation photos.

Long time no write...

2009-03-02T07:06:00.000-08:00

I guess its been about a month since we last put something up here. We ran into a bit of a rough patch and sort of didn't want to talk about it.....but since we've put most news worthy things in our lives up on this blog since the beginning of this adventure, might as well keep up with that now that we are almost finished.

We got robbed again, and lost a few of our most valuable "worldly" goods (in Honduras)......again. This time was on a bus going to the capital. We had our laptop and ipod in a backpack in the compartment above us (things on our lap, thus the bag was not right with us). At a stop right outside of the capital a man standing in the aisle asked us to find something for him on the floor and as we looked for it, his buddy grabbed our bag and was off the bus in a second. I knew something was fishy but Javi was hip to the scam right away and ran off the bus looking for the guys before I even knew what had happened. Of course they were gone by that point. The feeling was crushing....complete disappointment in this place and anger.....

Its hard. A few weeks have passed since then and we are feeling better but its a bit difficult to not feel jaded and tired of it all.

But, on to cheerier topics....here is a picture of our close of service conference with the other volunteers who came down here with us.....(those that are still left!)

There were 35 of us left at this time....out of an original 51, so about 68% of us made it to the two year mark. Life happens and things bring people home for a variety of reasons....sometimes, like after the second robbery, you REALLY understand why.......

So we have just 7 full weeks left as peace corps volunteers in Honduras. We are officially done the 17th of April. Many people have asked us...so what is next? First we are going on a little vacation before heading home. We're planning on spending about 6 weeks on the beaches of costa rica and panama. After that we are headed back home for good and we're planning on going back to New Mexico. There might be a little back and forth at first as we visit family and get readjusted, but eventually we will be back in Albuquerque. Besides the scary job situation and downward spiral of our economy, we are super excited to be back home.....friends and family! salad! anonymity!

I'll try to keep this better updated our last little bit here, because we will be signing off the blog once we've returned. Thanks for continuing to check on us!

Yes, another trip.......

2009-01-31T19:55:00.000-08:00

I know it may appear as if all we are doing these days is travelling, but I promise we are definitely still working hard here in Comayagua! (Harder than ever actually, trying to wrap things up before we leave in mid April.) The thing is we had a few vacation days left that peace corps was going to take away from us (no vacation allowed the last two months) and we can't be having that! A goal of ours was to see every country that borders Honduras, so we had just one country left.....El Salvador.

With limited time and budget, we kept this trip simple....just two destinations in the whole country.

First stop was the beach, a tiny little dot on the map called "Playa El Cuco:"

Its largely a surfing town, but with waves small this time of year and not much else to bring tourists around, it wasn't exactly a big destination on the gringo trail. We actually ended up staying right next to the only other gringos around. Here is a pic of our friendly neighbors at the place we stayed:

This guy Lloyd was BIG TIME into making this drum for his female companion, something he had recently learned how to do during a trip to Guinea in West Africa. He basically worked on it the entire time we were there....3 days. Here he is after attaching the goat hide:

Hmmm....

Here is where we stayed:

I was on the phone with my dad a few nights ago telling him about this trip. I was explaining that the room cost $15 night and he was amazed! Here is what we got for our $15 a night.

Shower facilities:

(Hard to get sand out of the swim suit.)

Luxury accommodations:

And beautiful sunrises/sunsets right out your front door:

Our other stop was to a town called Perquin, a former stronghold of the FMLN revolutionary army during the 80's and 90's. The main attraction was an interesting museum describing the salvadorian revolution from a very leftist point of view:

Unfortunately (but not entirely surprising) the exhibits were a bit hard to follow as they were disorganized and cluttered. We left the museum still confused as to what exactly happened, but the sentiment stuck with us and the pictures were very powerful.

This is probably hard to read, but here is a poster from the "solidarity" room filled with foreign country posters expressing support for the salvadorian's situation and denouncing U.S. foreign policy of aiding "contras" in Central America during that time period.

The secret radio headquarters of the FMLN's "Radio Venceremos" was located where the museum currently stands.

Sign says: "Hole from a Bomb of 500 lbs - made in the United States"

Interesting perspective on what happened there, isn't it?

Guate!

2009-01-14T09:34:00.000-08:00

If anyone is interested, here are a few pics from our trip to Guatemala over Christmas.

Lago Atitlan:

Christmas dinner at our hotel on the lake:

A very full belly after christmas dinner:

Volcano hike (near Antigua):

No regulations on these sorts of things so the turistas just walked straight up the lava flow...

"LAVA!!!"

Antigua:

Market day in Chichicastenango:

My mom's visit

2009-01-08T15:52:00.000-08:00

My mom came for one last visit before we are finished with our service here in just a few months. She decided that she hadn't gotten enough of Honduras last time during my family's visit last Christmas. Well, this time she definitely got a feel for it, Honduras "cooperated" you could say. Lights went out while cooking (with headlamp cooking ensuing), she stood in bus aisles when no seats were available, she got to experience the horribleness of when you already have motion sickness from the windy roads on the bus and you get a good whiff of someone's breakfast they have just vomited in the aisle next to you, she hitch hiked on a country road (that's right!) and even got to go to a friend's house and have them make a lunch for her, a meal of the 4 Honduran food groups - meat, coca cola, starch and more starch.

We picked her up from the airport on our way back to Comayagua from our vacation in Guatemala. (Pictures to follow on some later post.) The three of us hung out in Comayagua for a few days, and then to break up the exciting time that is hanging out at our house, we went to the lake (Lago de Yajoa) where we could do a few "touristy" things. This trip was where we took the majority of photos (or Javi took them, as you will see he isn't actually in any of them) so they form the story that follows.

Our first stop was the "fish shacks" that line the highway on a certain stretch beside the lake. (This was the leg of the trip where she stood on the bus because all seats were taken. She stood the whole way - 2 hours. At first she was laughing and telling stories, enjoying the adventure, and then motion sickness kicked in and she was glad to get off the bus when she did!)

She dug into that plate of fried fish and fried bananas (called tajadas). Yum! She even ate the cabbage and onion that are in those suspicious looking jars of colored liquids.

The next day we went on a bird tour with a British man living at the lake, eking out a humble existence doing what he loves best. He was an excellent guide! Here we are climbing into the row boat for our tour on the lake.

Our guide, Malcolm, was a very interesting character. He'd swing his binoculars around suddenly if another bird flew by and say all kinds of funny British sayings. He could rattle off tons of interesting things about the birds and lake.

After that, we dragged my mom down a hot and dusty road so she could see this:

(the famous waterfall!)

This was the only picture we took where she didn't look like she'd been hit by a truck from the heat and walking!

After the falls we were waiting on the side of the road for a ride...bus or whatever came our way, since transportation is spotty out there.

The first mode of transport willing to take us somewhere was a nice Honduran family. Javi waived them down and we climbed in the back. It was my mom's first time to hitchhike!

They took us to the nearest town where we caught a bus to get to the main highway. From there, we were lucky to get a passing bus to take us to Comayagua that had seats available. Mom never thought she'd be so grateful for a simple seat on a bus!

What a fun trip!

Christmas greeting

2008-12-19T14:23:00.000-08:00

I flew home for a few days to see my sister graduate from New Mexico State University. It took me as much time to travel there and back, as time I had to spend with my family, but it was worth it nonetheless.

Here is a pic with my sister and my mom in her professor regalia:

Congratulations Holly and Andy!

I went by myself. Some family members were concerned about me travelling to and from the San Pedro Sula airport solita, but there are many single lady volunteers who do that stuff every day, so of course I survived it.

A volunteer I knew (who has finished up her service and gone home) once told me after a quick trip to the States, she should have never gone back home so close to the end of her service. Although I don’t exactly feel the same, now I understand. I’ve been a bit grumpy since I’ve gotten back. Maybe it’s the lingering resentment from the butt slapping (see below – which by the way, has led me to ALWAYS carry something heavy in my hand while walking around in case I need to peg somebody with it). It could be a form of senioritis – “learned a lot, had fun, time to move on.” Could also be that, with only 3months left here after Christmas that we are starting to see how SO many things we worked hard for are still the same……

Anyway, getting out and changing scenery is usually a good thing so for Christmas we will be in Guatemala. Hopefully, the change up will be enough to charge up our batteries and work these last 3 months with some gusto. On the 30th my mom will be here through the first week of January (yay!) so that will also be fun.

Here’s a parting video for this entry, a “Christmas greeting.” I took it last night right before Javi and I opened Christmas gifts to each other. (Note the beautiful wrapping of the gifts under the “tree” and the “Christmas music.”)

I’ll post some Guatemala pictures later on.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Serenity Now!!!!!!!

2008-12-09T18:17:00.000-08:00

This is one of those stories that is still making me BOILING mad, but also makes me laugh so I thought I’d share it out here on cyber space.

So I’m walking home a few days ago, of course minding my own business and just doing my thing. I come around the corner to a street where there is no one else around except for a young kid (boy) about 15 or 16 years old who is walking towards me. As we get closer to each other, I notice that he is acting a bit strange, but there are lots of strange folks here and I am a blond headed tall gringa so that sometimes throws people off, so I didn’t take much notice of it.

As he passes me, I feel a light slap on my rear end. That’s right, that little shit slapped my ass. Fury rose up in me. Almost 2 years of constant sexual harassment (usually only verbal) on Honduran streets, and my complete resentment and dislike of it, came to a boiling point. I flipped around immediately. He looked at me and started run. Without thinking, I started to run after him!!! Now, get this, I had been carrying my sun umbrella, so I start chasing this kid, with an open umbrella yelling obscenities in English (Spanish had completely escaped me in my moment of fury!). I have to laugh now thinking what that must have looked like. Now, the umbrella was causing understandably a lot of wind resistance, so I wasn’t going to be able to catch up to the kid, also considering he was half my age and a faster runner than I am. (It never occurred to me to drop the umbrella the whole time!)

When I realized I was never going to catch him, I took the water bottle I had been carrying in my hand and hucked it at him. Somehow (and I am the worst shot ever), it got him in the back! Of course, an almost empty plastic bottle did nothing, but I sure hope it scared him. I’m sure it did, because the look on his face when I first started chasing him was of complete surprise!!!

Crazy, huh?! The fury and my reaction was a complete surprise to myself….I seriously just flipped out. I get SO tired of the treatment women get here, so tired of the machismo, that when this little kid went and took that extra step by physically touching me, I just lost it!!!! It’s just one of those times that makes me REALLY look forward to being back home.

Happy Thanksgiving!

2008-11-30T11:46:00.000-08:00

We opted out of the big volunteer thanksgiving gatherings that go on here in Honduras to do our own thing this year. We made thanksgiving dinner at home and invited Conor over...it was my first attempt at making a holiday dinner without knowing and experienced matriarchal figures around to help. It actually went pretty well! Of course, we were greatly aided by the fact that we did not make a turkey, due to cost (expensive import from the States!) and sheer amount of meat that would have resulted (we couldn't justify 16 lbs of meat among 3 people). So, Conor picked us up a delicious Honduran fried chicken (whole) and Javi and I made all the fixins!

Traditions are important to carry on, even more so when you are away from home and in a foreign country. So, we tried to have a day as close to thanksgiving as we could get.

Example tradition 1: Carving the turkey (in our case, pollo frito)

Example tradition 2: Watching "foosball" on the tele (at Conor's house)

Example tradition 3: Baking pies

(I was quite proud how my apple pie turned out...isn't it pretty?)

Next year we will be back home and Thanksgiving will once again be relegated to those older family members who really do it right. Back to cooking all day in the kitchen with the ladies, men on the couch with top pants buttons undone and watching football, etc..... Although I miss the traditional family get togethers now, some day soon we'll be home and we'll always have the fun memories of putting on holidays here in Honduras!

Hope your's was nice as well. Happy thanksgiving!

Wires!

2008-11-14T10:33:00.000-08:00

Honduras has a sort of haphazard infrastructure in some aspects. Roads, public transport, water delivery, etc. are all sort of "random," but one thing that really exemplifies this are electrical wires. They are strung up and around in such disorder and in ways, in what appears to my non-engineering perspective, as extremely dangerous. It seems like it was jerry rigged the first time, and then jerry rigged a 100 times after that, and you get what you see today. Its one of those things that you really notice when you first get here, and then after a while, it sort of just fades off in the distance and you become oblivious to it. For some reason, the other day I was inspired to put something about it on the blog, so I walked around Comayagua and took a few shots.

Check this one out.....holy crap!

This seriously can't be safe!

Wires strung across the front of city hall:

A "telephone pole," on our street:

Growth on wires:

Nicaragua Vacation

2008-10-26T17:09:00.001-07:00

Nicaragua was a great trip! It was actually surprising how much there was to see and do. Here in Honduras there are a few cool things to do, but you can't have too high of standards for all the supposed "tourist destinations," so we weren't expecting the moon or anything. But it was really fun!

Here is a map (although tiny, of course) to look at if you want to see where some of the places we visited are located:
First stop, Leon:

A liberal city, with a good vibe. The cathedral above was one of many scattered around town.

Next, Granada:

(colonial city on Lago de Nicaragua)

The lake at sunset:

We met this painter who showed us some of his artwork:

Granada has a lot of fine places to eat and chill. I really liked this place in particular, with its interior garden, hammocks and colonial architecture:

From Granada, we spent one night on an island in the middle of the lake (Isla de Ometepe). The island was two active volcanoes, and here is one of them:

San Juan del Sur:

(southwestern Nicaragua near the border with Costa Rica)

The view from our hotel in San Juan:

This hotel had a fabulous balcony, as you can see. We loved it! And it was the cheapest place we stayed the whole time...just $10 a night. However, the room also came with ferocious biting fire ants, that bit at night in bed as we slept, and attacked anything and everything in our bags and trash (including dirty laundry and clipped fingernails....gross)!

Another balcony picture:

San Juan had more surfers than I've ever seen in one place. They came from all over the world for the waves that crash on the beaches just north and south of San Juan. Although we didn't try surfing (this trip at least) we took a water taxi north one day to see some of these beaches.

This really cheesy guy came up to me on the beach and started flexing to get my attention. It didn't work!!!

The waves were really big and scary! We both got rocked a few times and after one good scare I decided to keep my distance from the crashing waves while swimming in the water.

Our last stop on the trip, the Laguna de Apoyo, just south of Masaya.

(a small, peaceful lake in a crater)

We spent just one night here, although we could have done more. While out on kayaks on the lake, we could hear monkeys in the trees, even though we didn't get to see any.

In several places on the trip, we met travellers backpacking through Central America. (Central America sort of lends itself to the backpacking traveler - cheap, lots of countries close together and many fun and exciting things to do.) Its always fun to meet those travelling types and hear their stories. You get to meet people from all over the world. We even met two American guys bicycling from Cancun to Panama City. Although we were joining them in many of the same destinations, we couldn't help but feel a little different from the backpackers. Understanding the language, the culture of the region, etc gives us a different perspective. You definitely see the difference between a person who is backpacking through and someone who has lived in the area for awhile. It was nice to be the latter.

Pobre Gallina

2008-09-30T18:22:00.000-07:00

Our friends Glenda and Giovanni came over for dinner this weekend, like they have many times before. We usually cook Honduran food, with them as head chefs and us running around as the sous chefs. Its fun! BUT, this past time Glenda got a glint in her eye and wanted to do something a little different. She proposed bringing over a live chicken, killing and cleaning it and then making sopa de gallina (not to be confused with sopa de pollo).

This is something a city girl like me has never seen before, so it was quite the experience! We documented the event with photos, so here they are -

(Caution - vegetarians and animal lovers beware!)

Here is the gallina that Glenda brought over in a Maggi bag (Maggi makes those little bouillon cubes that are chicken or beef flavored, which is kind of ironic).

"Please don't eat me!"

Next you've got us holding the chicken, which Glenda made us do before killing it. Shortly after it pooped on our floor.

Then Glenda did the actually killing. Everyone was too "chicken" to do the killing themselves (including her husband Giovanni). Glenda is a pretty tough lady!

To kill it, you've got to swing it around by the neck til you break it.

Next, we had to use hot water to pluck off the feathers as fast as you can. This bucket is also a laundry bucket I use, so with the blood and feathers, it was sort of freaky.

To get the rest of the feathers off, we lit some newspapers on fire and held it over the fire. In this picture the chicken almost looks fake!

(Notice the bloody cutting board and machete in the background. Nice!)

The cleaning and cutting:

And finally, the meal. Javi convinced them to make fried chicken, with mashed potatoes, gravy and corn (made by us) instead of soup. Well, we also made a broth soup with the chicken bones.

Man, this chicken was REALLY tough and neither of us could hardly find a bite of meat on the whole thing. But it was a skinny little chicken, not like those fat, caged chickens that end up at our supermarkets. We left a lot of "meat" on there after a good effort at eating it (I mostly got tendens and super super tough meat) but Giovanni and Glenda ate that stuff down to the bone. Later, someone at work told me you are supposed to leave it for a day so it gets softer, but I don't think there was hardly any meat to even get soft.

All and all it was pretty fun (minus the actual meal) and definitely one of those new experiences for us!

Felicidades Gringa!

2008-09-21T20:13:00.000-07:00

So my birthday was just a few days ago and the nice people at work got me a cake:

That's right, it says "Congratulations Gringa." Funny!!!!

My birthday was pretty low key, just a few presents, a few phone calls and a nice dinner at home.

We found out some great news the other day. We wrote a post back in April about a grant we were writing for the microempresa (small business) program we set up with the Escuela Taller. Well, we were actually awarded that grant! Its from the World Bank and for $50,000 - a huge sum for the program, the school or the whole Foundation we work for! There were 5 grants in the WHOLE world of this type being handed out to business incubation programs in the first 2 years of operation - and we are one of them! The money is a "capacity building grant" meaning its a chunk of change meant to improve the program. The catch is that only $5,000 of it can be spent on "stuff" (which is still a good amount) but the rest - $45,000 - has to be spent on trainings, manuals, promotions, etc....not tangible things....and it all has to be spent in a year. Anyway, we are excited about it and so is the Escuela Taller. Peace Corps normally works directly with people and the philosophy is not to hand out money, but help people help themselves. I think that was true in this case as well, as we just helped the director of the Foundation write it, with many of her ideas in the proposal.

On another subject, we are planning on going to Nicaragua in a few weeks to venture out of Honduras for the first real foray. There should be some good photos and stories from that!!!

Thats all we got for now......

We finally ventured out......

2008-09-04T19:32:00.000-07:00

A gathering of all the business volunteers in Honduras finally got us out of our house and away for a few days. We had been a bit paranoid about leaving the house alone after the break in, but eventually things will call you away and you just have to do it! We travelled to the other side of Honduras, to a town called Gracias.

Each project (remember, there are 6 – business, health, water and sanitation, protected areas management, youth development and municipal development) meets each year to talk about what we’re doing and share ideas. Here is a picture of us with the business group:

And this is only 1 of 6 groups! (There are a lot of peace corps volunteers in Honduras –it’s the 2nd largest post in the world.)

After that we decided to attend the “Noche de Fumadores” (Smokers’ Night) in a nearby town, Santa Rosa de Copan. (It’s a festival celebrating the town’s cigar making heritage.) We weren’t the only gringos who decided to go; only about 50 other peace corps volunteers went so we took up a long table at the event:

Getting crazy with Marcus:

Despues….we had to do one more “fun” thing before heading home – hiking Celaque, the tallest mountain in Honduras. At about ~9,000 ft it wouldn’t turn heads back home but that is sort of tall for a Central American mountain. Anyway, it took about two days so we had to backpack in. It was cold and wet up there near the top (its cloud forest up there) but it was well worth the swollen knees and sore calves (and the bit of pica pica that I got into again). The view from the top was amazing.

“TEAM SUMMIT!” (Heading out on the trail with friends Annie and Luke). That is Celaque in the background:

Cloud forest:

At the top of Honduras:

The view from the top:

And when we made it home, everything was fine. Apparently the barbed wire, reinforced door frame, Conor spending the night a few times AND hiding everything of value before leaving worked!

Bolos

2008-08-24T10:34:00.000-07:00

Took this picture today and thought I'd write a little something about it for the blog. In Honduras, this guy is what we call a "Bolo:"

Now if you look up bolo in the spanish-english dictionary, I'm not sure if it would be there. And if you could find it, I'm not sure if it would accurately describe what a bolo truly is. Simply "a drunk" would not suffice.

Bolos are guys (although there a few bolas out there) who get so wasted drunk (usually off guaro which is aguardiente, a kind of moonshine) that they become totally incapacitated to the point where the pass out in the street. They lie there, bodies contorted, and dirty as hell. Sometimes they twitch, or will have a sudden movement of some kind. This guy, as we were walking past him, held up his two empty beer cans and mumbled something unintelligible. Before they pass out they can be seen hobbling around, usually yelling something at somebody (and gringos are especially fun to yell at), but they are on the whole a harmless group since they can hardly walk much less do anything else to harm you. A simple push in the chest would totally knock one over.

The thing that is the most interesting to me is how accepted bolos are here. People walk by, hardly giving a glance. And this from a people who generally look down on drinking (and you can imagine why if all you see is these guys and think that this is what happens to you when you drink). Its both kind of amusing and kind of sad.

The saddest thing is that (I'm told) these guys will often blow a weeks pay on their boozing, with nothing to show for it but a day spent in the streets and hungry family members. Sundays (like today) are the biggest bolo turnout days, with way more in the streets than on other days.

I just thought it would be an interesting thing to talk about, since bolos, at least in this capacity and number, just don't exist back home. You might see a homeless dude passed out with a brown paper sack but you won't see it this way, with this number of people, and with people who otherwise might be working very hard during the week and seem normal. Maybe its the boredom of the weekend, maybe its the desperation and poverty they deal with (and an easy escape) or maybe its just guys being jackasses and making a bad situation worse (i.e. spending a weeks pay when you have so little to begin with). Or maybe its all those things and things I can't possibly understand because I am not them.

Dengue/Robbery Follow Up

2008-08-08T20:02:00.000-07:00

Here are a few follow up photos from the bad luck events I wrote about last time. Things are better (time has a way of doing that) and we've been working at making things "right" again after the break in.

Here are a few pics from dengue fever:

Sick in bed:

Our friend Glenda came over with some Honduran chicken soup and some home remedies. One of her remedies included putting raw sliced onions in Javi's sock.

Javi was enjoying the home remedies:

Glenda and her husband were really sweet. They even cleaned up the whole kitchen for us, since we were in no state for doing chores. We were barely to pour a glass of water or heat up some oatmeal.

Here is the house with barbed wire we had installed since the robbery:

We sort of feel like we are living in prison. Its definitely not pretty, but LOTS of homes have it around here. We knew why before, but now we personally know why. Unfortunately security, and especially getting stuff stolen from you, is a real problem. We know vocational students at the Escuela Taller who have SO little, and they've had stuff stolen from them too, like cell phones and such, and that from people have have nothing.

This picture is a lucky one I snapped off while shooting the barbed wire. We see this cart (or ones like it) coming down our street sometimes. We live in a nice part of town on a sort of "suburban" street. Its just a reminder that although Honduras can seemed pretty developed sometimes, ox-driven carts still cruise around town and down residential streets.

We had a crappy streak there for awhile but these types of things can happen anywhere...getting sick and getting robbed.....so we are not blaming it on Honduras and just getting on with things!

Down on our luck

2008-07-25T19:59:00.000-07:00

Things have been pretty bad lately, folks. We have definitely been down on our luck. Thus, my long absence and no post......

Two crappy things have happened lately:

1. Javi and I BOTH (somehow) got dengue fever at the same time. One person sick on dengue is a mess, but the both of us.....feverish, headaches, eye aches, back aches, sweating, nausea......and all for 5 days was a lot to handle. And one couldn't help the other.

2. Our house was robbed while we were gone (see below) and just about EVERYTHING of value was stolen from us. That includes our computer, iPod, backpacks, memory sticks (with everything from work on it), etc. They even stole things like cords that connect camaras with the computer.

What a mess....

On top of it, we traveled to the United States, sick with dengue, to spend a few days with Javi's family for a family reunion. Needless to say, the trip was hellish, and we were sick for a major portion of the reunion. (Fun to see the fam though!) Our trip was quick, and when we returned home, we were greeted with a kicked in door and all our electronics taken from our house. Makes you glad that you came back here for that.

Looking on the bright side, we are back to good health and we have "stuff" insurance, so our computer and mp3 player will be replaced.

I'll put up something later....just wanted to leave a little word on what was happening.

Javiercito

2008-06-30T20:11:00.001-07:00

Remember how I said everyone at work was making fun of Javi's hair?

This email (a word document) was going around the office today. I couldn't figure out how to post it on the blog so I just took a picture of it.

Every time I see it I laugh uncontrollably. I sent it to Javi's mom and she said she laughed so hard she cried!!!

Funny!

Where did June go?

2008-06-30T09:41:00.000-07:00

June just flew by.

The day after we arrived home from the States, at 7 am, our work (the Programa Comayagua Colonial) started calling. The annual planning meeting was starting that day up in Puerto Cortes and they wanted to make sure we were going with them. For being the "planning meeting," not a whole lot of planning went into actually telling us when it would be happening, since calling us VERY early the day after we got back from a long trip doesn't really constitute fair warning.

We joined them up there in Puerto Cortes the day after. Here is a picture of some of the group, the last day of the meeting when some of us spent the afternoon at the beach:

Puerto Cortes was the site we almost had.... We were supposed to go there but our site was changed last minute to Comayagua when there were too many security incidents on the road between San Pedro Sula and Puerto Cortes (the only access to the city).

We didn't see much of the city since we spent most of the time there at the hotel in meetings. I felt slightly sad that we didn't get the beach town as our site, but not really since I like our set up in Comayagua.

This is a picture of an abandoned boat right off the beach in Puerto Cortes. Apparently the story is it was left by some "narco traficantes" (drug traffickers) and sat in the bay for many years. Then, when Hurricane Mitch (the storm of the century here in Honduras) hit about 10 years ago, it was washed up and now sits in about 3-4 feet of water almost on the shore.

So, after the frantic and last minute trip to Puerto Cortes, we arrived home just to turn around and go back up to the North Coast a day and a half later. A long while back we had promised some friends we'd meet up with them that weekend in Triunfo de la Cruz, a little Garifuna town near Tela.

Here is a picture of a friend we made, named "Vicki Fresh:"

We met Vicki Fresh when he swam up to us in the ocean and just started singing reggae/rap songs in Garifuna and Spanish. He was fun and it's always nice to get to know the locals but he sort of outlived his welcome with us (he spent a lot of time with us), especially when he started asking for money. That, and we were all couples and he was sort of a 5th wheel. Oh well. I'm sure we will all never forget Vicki Fresh....

Here are some other pictures from Triunfo de la Cruz:

Then, as soon as we arrived from Triunfo de la Cruz back to Comayagua, we had something else waiting for us to do.....an intense 3 day workshop with us teaching a majority of the material. The workshop was for other peace corps volunteers who are not in the business project but are working with small businesses in their sites. We gave a crash course on how to write a business plan, keep accounting records, figure product costs, etc. It was a fun experience but at the same time very tiring.

After all the madness, we were sitting at home on Thursday night enjoying the peace and quiet. As we were sitting there, Javi decided, out of the blue, he wanted to cut his hair.....all of it. We did it.

Here are the before and after pictures:

People at work acted like it was the craziest thing ever and literally stared and commented for like 10 minutes the first day they saw him with the new hair-do. It was quite a scandal and they are still giving him a hard time about it.

Well, we are enjoying the return to our normal schedule. Its nice to be back and enjoy a quiet and peaceful weekend at home.

US Trip

2008-06-16T17:52:00.000-07:00

Wow what a whirlwind!

We just returned from a 12 day trip to the States. We went to 5 cities (Las Cruces, NM – Albuquerque, NM – Temple, TX – Killeen, TX – Austin, TX), stayed in 4 different houses and at our best guess saw 50 people. (That 50 people was our estimate of only people we “visited with” and doesn’t include many wedding guests, etc.)

We didn’t take a single picture in Las Cruces while we saw my family and only a few while in Albuquerque with Javi’s family. Sometimes you forget when you are just comfortable and relaxing at home. Both moms cried when we arrived and when we left. Its hard to be away so long...

Here is one of the few pictures we took while in NM - a picture with Javi’s dad, bottling homemade wine:

Some good Albuquerque friends threw a “surprise” birthday for Javi’s 30th on Sat, June 7th. It was so fun!! (I say “surprise” because Javi knew something was up but didn’t know the details of the get together or who was going to be there.) Unfortunately this get together was one of those times we slacked off on photos.

Being home was fantastic and we did not feel that much culture shock at all. We did notice things, but didn’t feel weird about being back. We noticed how POLITE everybody was to each other and noticed people’s respect for personal space. There was also the shopping factor – so many things to buy in the stores, all labeled appropriately and neatly organized.

We also felt the passage of time (the almost year and a half we have been here) while visiting with friends who have kids. They are so much older and bigger!

Things were easy and convenient – not only because of the American lifestyle but just speaking your own language all the time and being in your own culture (you know the cues, the right things to say, how to act in certain situations, etc).

After leaving New Mexico we flew to Texas for our friends’ wedding. First, we had a visit with my grandma in Temple:

My Uncle Keith showing off his new motorcycle and tattoos:

And our good friends Paul, Breanne and their daughter Isabel:

Sebastian and Erin's wedding in Austin was BEAUTIFUL!!!! (and FUN!!!) I felt so lucky to be part of it in the wedding party.

Here is Erin as she came down the aisle with her dad:

She looks fantastic!

The ceremony:

The wedding party:

First dance:

Most all the guests stayed at the hotel were the wedding took place. We stayed up late celebrating. At one point during the evening somebody discovered that on top of the tv entertainment centers in each room there were antique hats in hat boxes. One person started wearing on and it caught on. Eventually lots of people were wearing the silly hats. Here is a photo with a friend (also named Sara).

Sebastian and Erin rented a “party boat” the day after the wedding. (The wedding was actually on Friday evening so they decided to carry on the festivities through the next day.) The boat goes out on Lake Travis and a good group of friends can hang out, swim and have a good time.

The Austin crowd likes to have a good time!

What a crazy trip! Two good things came out of it - 1, We're really excited to go home and get back into the swing of things. We have a wonderful country! but 2 - We are glad to have a little more time down here in Honduras to enjoy those things that are different and unique from back home. Just a little over 10 more months left to enjoy it!

Javi turns 30

2008-06-01T22:20:00.000-07:00

On Saturday we had a party for Javi's 30th birthday. I personally don't know (yet) but I hear the event can be a hard time on some so we wanted to bring in the new decade in style.

First we made dinner with some good gringo friends. A few people came in from out of town.

Afterwords the Honduran crowd (and a few European ladies) started to show up.

We had cake. Javi's face got pressed into the surface of it before we cut it up, and because people were chanting "Que le besa" Javi gave me a kiss and shared his icing

Look at that face!

Later on we played games and there were some water balloons involved....

Here is Javi with Emil, the guy he works very closely with at the Escuela Taller. These kinds of things build camaraderie which goes a long way when trying to get work done here.

We are still recovering from the night's festivities!

Anyway, we are off to the States on Tuesday to spend almost 2 weeks at home with family and friends AND to attend the wedding of two good friends who will be getting married in Austin. We are VERY excited to go home, as you can imagine! If theres a chance, I'll post a little something, but otherwise it'll have to wait awhile til I get home. Of course, thats no different than how we post here. But maybe we might have some interesting things to say and some random insights after being away from home for almost a year and a half now.

Life without a car

2008-05-10T19:41:00.000-07:00

As some of you may know (or may not know), as peace corps volunteers we are not allowed to drive during our service. 27 months of walking around and living at the mercy of public transportation in a third world country is an interesting experience.

While in our sites, we mostly walk around. Even Javi and I, who live in one of the bigger cities peace corps volunteers live in (at least in Honduras) get almost everywhere we need by walking. Right now, because of the blazing sun, I carry around an umbrella for shade. Luckily most women do that here so no one thinks I'm a freak or anything. Sometimes, if we've got a 30 minute walk in front of us, or a lot of heavy groceries, we will spring 15 lempiras each ($.75) for a taxi ride. The taxis here, by the way, scare many foreign tourists who are not used to seeing these vehicles (in such a dilapidated shape) actually functioning. That price only works in Comayagua. (Its different in different cities.) In the big cities you've gotta negociate the price BEFORE climing in and arriving at your destination to avoid getting ripped off.

Moving around the country requires a combination of riding buses, walking and catching a taxi. Buses come in various sizes, ages, state of repair or disrepair, and amount of people riding in them. We've ridden in luxury buses where you got a movie and a snack (okay, that one was when my mom was here and she paid) and we've ridden in "chicken buses" (converted American school buses) so packed with people you've got buckets and elbows and luggage coming at you from all directions....and then everything in between.

On a recent trip, we snapped off some pictures.

Here are some of the guys waiting on the side of the country's main thoroughfare for a bus to stop:

(Nice road, huh? Thanks USAID!)

Normally, the strategy is to put the girls out on the side of the road, with the guys waiting off to the side. This is very important when trying to get a "jalon" (a hitch) in the back of someone's pickup. You can imagine why this strategy works better. However, this day we were tired of waiting in the sun, so the ladies passed the time in the shade:

That's me on the far left, reading a Newsweek. Peace corps provides it for free, so for a lot of us, we know mostly about world events and happenings at home through the pages of this magazine. Thankfully, with the internet, its not our only source.

Here's later on in the trip, "filling the tank:"

Okay, to be honest, this is not how its usually done. Of course there are regular gas stations here. But, there was a diesel shortage the last few weeks - the government subsidizes fuel, so you can just imagine the effects of supply and demand. It was on short supply this day (due to rationing) and we had to stop at various places before anybody had any gas. This gas station attendant had to carry it out in 5 gallon buckets and they filled'er up with a cut off water jug.

In the picture above (with the ladies), two of us were talking about before coming here we used to think of our cars as "rights" and not the privileges that they really are. You feel like you "deserve" a car, and I guess, why not....when everybody else has it? But here, only the rich have nice cars, and SOME middle class folks have decent older cars. Everybody else gets around like we do, and that is a lot of people.

Its been fun to do without a car for awhile, although, don't get me wrong, I miss mine!

Sounds of the Night

2008-04-29T16:45:00.000-07:00

Honduras is a noisy place. They don’t really have the same “respect” for quiet like we Americans do. There is usually someone in the neighborhood playing loud music, there’s people shouting, cars honking, dogs barking loudly, etc. Also, most Honduran homes have window slats (kept open except when it rains) to let air circulate through the house, so all the noise floats in. (Window slats are key when you don’t have air conditioner in the tropics.) When other volunteers come to our house they say we have a peaceful neighborhood, so you can just imagine.

The neighborhood behind ours on the hill is a neighborhood of “escasos recursos” they say here (scarce resources) and they’ve got more farm animals then you will find in our neighborhood. At night, about every 3 hours starting around 11ish, the farm animals get all stirred up and sing in chorus. Dogs, roosters and donkeys will bark, crow and hee-haw for like 10-15 minutes straight.

But Monday morning was the craziest night commotion yet, even beating the THOUSANDS (literally) of firecrackers that were set off here on Christmas Eve.

Javi and I were sound asleep in the wee-hours of the morning (around 4 am) when I awoke to the sound of a parade marching past our house. Yes, a full-on parade at 4 AM…..a school band with drums and xylophones, cars honking, a loud speaker. When I woke up I put my hand on Javi’s side of the bed, but he had moved to the “sofa” since he sometimes can’t sleep at night and needs to change his sleeping environment. I got up and went to find him, but when I looked at the "sofa" I couldn’t see him (it was dark and I was sleepy, after all). All of sudden, he bolts up from the "sofa" and starts running into the bedroom, head down, almost plowing me over. His eyes are wild. He was freaking out because he had just woken up and had yet to figure out what was going on. I’m shouting at him "ITS A PARADE!", trying to be heard over the noise (it was that loud!). They even gave us the courtesy of crossing by our house TWICE.

Of course, later in the day we were asking people what that hell that was all about. Some people didn’t think it was a big deal but there were a few people who thought it was kind of outrageous. Anyway, the consensus was that it was a school celebrating their anniversary.

WEIRD!

Classy Wedding Honduran Style

2008-04-21T19:10:00.000-07:00

The director of the Programa Comayagua Colonial and our main counterpart, Ana Carolina, got married in Tegucigalpa this weekend. It was quite an affair, and one of the more fun weddings we've been to in awhile!

Here she is surrounded by some of the finer looking gentlemen of the PCC:

For the staff of the PCC, it was a big deal to be invited to a wedding like this one. It was a formal, elegant wedding in the capital (Ana comes from a well off family) and many middle class Hondurans just don't get to go to things like that. (Remember - like 65% of the country lives below the poverty line which is about $425 a month).

They obsessed FOREVER about what they were going to wear (for weeks before) and even started freaking us out!

I went and bought a sparkly little number for the event since I did not exactly plan on bringing a formal dress with me to peace corps. Here we are:

I've got a funny little side story about that dress. I bought it in a "boutique" store in downtown Comayagua. It was a new dress, with the price tag from the store that originally tried to sell it in the States, the price still in dollars. Things like that, that don't sell, are shipped off to places like Honduras, where they are bought and sold again. I paid about $20 for the dress, much lower than it origanally cost, and was feeling very proud of myself for having done so well.

Well, the waitress at our table at the wedding would put an end to that! When she came to our table to introduce herself as our server, she explained that she was new and was sorry if she made any mistakes. Well, later in the evening when she was bringing Javi and I our glasses of wine we ordered, she made one of the mistakes she was afraid of making.....she spilled an entire glass of wine down the back of my dress! Here is a picture of the aftermath (if you can see it):

So much for feeling well dressed among Tegucigalpa's finest! Oh well!!!

As a Latin wedding should, the party lasted late into the night. We tried to leave earlier with a few work friends, but the bride caught us and dragged us back. We ended up staying until the end and closing the place down. Here we are, the last table of probably at least 350 guests.

Oh, one more thing, we learned an important cultural lesson when we showed up for the wedding ceremony, which was scheduled for 7 pm. Nothing, not even weddings, start on time in Honduras. The gringos (we were the only ones) showed up at 7 on the dot, a little stressed about showing up at that hour. No worries! The only other people there were about 5 other family members! The actually ceremony did not start until 7:45. Sigh.....when will we learn?

But it was good times and much needed fun after a sort of so-so month.

Oh, you know, the usual

2008-04-18T12:09:00.000-07:00

Wow! Long time, no write…. Sorry about that, but sometimes, there is nothing to say. Life has been, well you know, sort of normal these days. Even living in Honduras it eventually gets to that point. I figured enough somewhat interesting things had happened over the last month or so to constitute a blog entry, so here it goes.

What have we been up to? Well, we found out about a grant opportunity for the Vivero de Empresas program we helped start at the Escuela Taller, so we decided to go for it. $50,000 from the World Bank. We heard about it late, with only a week and a half to pull it together, but we did it and we were proud of the proposal we turned out. The day before we turned it in we worked about 12 hours each, until 1 am, which is not exactly the usual work hours we put in. It was fun and challenging, so even if we don’t get it, we can say we put in our best effort. But since we’ve turned it in, and returned to the normal pace, we’ve both felt sort of weird with out the deadlines and challenges of the project we just completed…..more ups and downs on this roller coaster.

Other things….

Remember this guy?

Well, he has somehow recovered from his skin disease and has grown most of his hair back. He looks so much better (and happy)! Its hard to believe its the same dog.

I’ve been planting a few things with seeds my mom sent me from home.

And theres been more of the usual other random stuff we deal with, like people at work or people we know asking us to get them visas to the States….and trying to explain that we can't exactly do that for them. Theres also been the usual flow of “piropos” of varying levels of vulgarity. (Remember, piropos literally mans “complements” here, but I like to interpret it as “sexual harassment by disgusting men on the street”). I laugh, sometimes I'm angry at them, sometimes I think its so sad that it has to be that way here. I have to deal with it for two years but the women who live here deal with it their whole lives and it becomes ingrained in their psyche....

On another subject, fruit is especially delicious right now with all the heat. Mangos, bananas, papayas (not my favorite, but available), berries, so many tasty things for SO cheap. We were given these beautiful bananas by one of our neighbors….

So, we are coming up on our one year anniversary in site. We have now crossed over the half way point of our time here, and have less time to go then we've spent here in Honduras. Sometimes it seems like not enough and sometimes it seems like ENOUGH and going home is SO far away......la vida hondurena.

Semana Santa!

2008-03-22T12:36:00.000-07:00

Part I - Trujillo

Semana Santa is when all of Latin America takes a week long break. Its like Spring Break, for everybody. Javi and I decided to take advantage of the time off to go to the North Coast of Honduras before the crowds hit and it got crazy up there. We headed to Trujillo, the farthest city on the coast before the large expanse of La Mosquita, which is a huge swath of virgin jungle in Eastern Honduras.

We stayed two nights in Trujillo before heading out of town a ways to a New Zealander owned hotel called Casa Kiwi. Trujillo is a lazy and hot town, the kind of place where prime beach front property is a place where abandoned pick up trucks sit so long they are taken over by vines…..

And where cows watch the sunset on the beach……

We left on Sunday, when masses of Hondurans arrive to spend the week on the beach. We did see a bit of the action on Saturday afternoon and watched the Semana Santa beach ritual with curiosity. They show up in droves, donned in tshirts and shorts, to swim in the water in front of the town beach. Its interesting how women how other wise wear very tight jeans and bosom-revealing shirts become very modest in a swimsuit. Ladies and small children sit in the shade of the restaurants that line that beach. Trash accumulates on the sand, and major drinking goes on all day.

Having had enough of that we headed to the Kiwi hotel for a break. It was a beautiful place on its own strip of beach surrounded by miles on either side of undeveloped and uninhabited beach front property. Here are a few photos…

Part II –Alfombras

(Alfombras = Carpets)

Comayagua is famous for their Easter alfombras and processions. The town lines a path through the colonial center’s streets with intricate and colorful sawdust carpets. On Good Friday, a procession walks the carpet path through town.

People start work on the carpets at around midnight the night before the procession, which starts around 10 am on Good Friday. People work all night, carefully placing the layers of colored sawdust with cutouts, occasionally spraying it with water so the wind does not take out all their hard work. You also have to look out for the crazy street dogs who might race across the alfombra.

There are varying levels of quality, some….hmmmm…had a lot of mess ups and you could tell had a low budget. Others were beautiful and immaculate and were obviously working with more funds.

The Programa Comayagua Colonial made a carpet as well. We came in to help (Javi 11:30 pm – 5:30 am and me 3:00 – 5:30) but they had lots of help from the Escuela Taller kids so we mostly watched.

Here are a few pictures from the festivities -

Working on our carpet:

And the end result the next day:

Some of the prettier alfombras:

And the procession:

Check out our work website

2008-03-10T21:33:00.000-07:00

The Programa Comayagua Colonial has recently launched a pretty decent website:

http://www.comayaguacolonial.org/

Its all in Spanish but that shouldn't deter you if you can't read la lengua espanola.....there are some nice photos.

If you click on "Quienes Somos" you will see a shot of the whole crew in front of Comayagua's cathedral...including two random blond gringos!

On the left hand side, if you click on the Escuela Taller picture and then follow the link to the "Viveros de Empresas," you can read about the program that Javi and I helped them set up.

Another one of our projects is in the name of the site itself....the "Fundacion Comayagua Colonial" (Fundacion = Foundation). They are not quite legally a foundation yet, but this, among other things including a business plan for the new foundation is another thing we are working with them on.

Que disfrutes!

PICA PICA

2008-02-26T10:33:00.000-08:00

Javi and I recently got ourselves a nasty case of poison ivy, or “pica-pica” (itch-itch) as the Hondurans call it. At the moment we are both quite miserable, constantly dosing ourselves in calamine lotion and staying heavily sedated on Benadryl.

I thought poison ivy was only a bane of the Northern Hemisphere, but it is alive and well here in the tropics.

However, HOW we came into contact with the vile plant was WELL worth our current suffering. We saw monkeys, in the wild, and got to talk with them! (well, communicate)

We traveled to Danli (near the Nicaraguan border) this past weekend to spend time with some friends who live there. Annie and Luke set us up on a fabulous trip to head into the mountains with a friend of theirs, a man who owns a coffee farm and a 100+ year old hacienda. We watched as he washed his coffee and we got to ask him all kinds of questions about growing coffee. He would later go on to sell his coffee that day for about $120 for two hundred pound sacks, still wet. ($.60 a pound) It sure does get a lot more expensive by the time you buy a cup at starbucks! Food for thought when you read one of their "fair trade" brochures they hand out at their coffee shops.

Anyway, Rene (the owner) led us through the mountain side (literally straight up the side) to a spot where we could find monkeys. He left to go back to work and we stayed and had a great time interacting with the monkeys.

I took a video as Javi was “talking” with one of the bigger males:

On the way down we got a bit off track and had to end up climbing down the mountain side through vines and jungle thicket. And that is where we found pica-pica, I’m sure.

Honduran Street Dogs….pobrecitos!

2008-02-05T11:48:00.000-08:00

I have heard that pets are often a reflection of the economic status of the place they live, and I think there is a lot of truth in that. For instance – American dogs are generally a happy, healthy bunch. I’ve seen quite a few overweight dogs and some get the royal treatment in many ways. There are dogs who get better health care than some Hondurans do! I even read the other day that some rich lady in Connecticut recently bequeathed to her dog her entire fortune of $12 million.

Well, no such luck would fall on a dog here in Honduras. I’ve seen some that seem to live in a pretty good situation, but I’ve seen MANY that have it pretty rough.

Take this guy for instance…..

I know what you are thinking. Is this even a dog? This guy has no hair and barely enough energy to drag his bony body around the block that he lives on. While I was taking his picture, I was warned to stay away due to all his diseases from a man sitting nearby in a wheel chair. But when I was talking to him, his wrinkled ears perked up and he did a little head tilt. Poor, poor dog. We walk past him everyday on the way to work so I’ve decided I will bring him scraps when I can.

There are lots of dogs always digging in the trash, trying to find a bite to eat. Some are mama dogs who look so malnourished you wonder what kind of milk they are giving to their pups. (…with what appears to be "utters" practically dragging on the ground.) Others are very scraggly beasts with so many fleas, you can see them swarming from a distance.

They almost always run at a "trot" around town, always seeming to go in a particular direction. I always think that is interesting and wonder where they are going with such purpose.

Sometimes you will see a female in heat running away from a pack of 2 – 10 dogs on her tail. In some of the poorer, smaller towns around here, you will often see two dogs "stuck together" (if you get my drift)….which is a very disturbing sight all in its own.

Here are two dogs, "after the fact" (note tongues hanging low). No one wants to see the actual act so and I was fortuante to have missed it myself, so I'm glad we were all spared that!

Here is your usual subject. He exemplifies the classic street dog look - long ears, skinny body, ratty hair.

And here is one lucky dog who happened to be adopted by a dog loving peace corps volunteer!

She is sweet but how quickly they get spoiled!

David does the laundry

2008-01-28T07:56:00.000-08:00

All guests to our house, if they stay long enough, eventually have to wash some laundry. I recently showed David the ropes.

Step 1: Soak in laundry soap for at least an hour.
Step 2: Take out of bucket and scrub (extra soap on the pits and dirty areas). The pila has a great cement washboard for scrubbing
Step 3: Rinse several times till all soap is removed.
Step 4: Hang to dry
Step 5: Repeat with all other articles of clothing that you dirtied that week.
**Extra step (not always necessary): Remove clothing from lines (or move to protected area) if there are dark clouds looming on the horizon.....rain is not good for clean clothes!

Javi took a quick film of him as he was getting the hang of it....

Transcript (if you have trouble hearing it):

(Me talking in the background about girls at work who asked if I do my laundry by hand.......)

Sara: They were surprised and they said I bet you didn't do that before you came here..... and I was like hell no! I had no idea!

David: Well, its new stuff for me! (pause) I tell you this sucks.

Well,
David has left us now, back to the States. Our house is quiet again and seems lonely without a visitor. After almost a month of visitors, it seems strange to not have anyone at the house!

Its been great fun. I can't wait for who visits us next!

Pictures from Rafting (See post below)

2008-01-18T12:14:00.000-08:00

The drop I didn't want to do.....

Another shot of the drop.....

David sans tooth......

With the guide.....

David is here……and he already has lost a tooth

2008-01-14T13:30:00.000-08:00

Javi and I got back to work on Monday, the 7th. We are pretty busy trying to get the kids (and ourselves) organized to open the store through the vocational school we work with. After our 3 month business training, about half of the kids have decided to stay on with the school and try their hands at entrepreneurship. They are finishing building their shop and where the store and reception will be. The administrator of the program is busy working with us on how this all will work. Its fun and we are enjoying ourselves. As auditors in Dallas, we didn’t get much experience on starting and running a real business, so this is new for us as well. A Spanish girl working at the school for 9 months as a business “consultant” is also working with me on making a business plan for the store.

But, moving on the title of this post….what you all have been waiting for. What is this business with David’s tooth???? For those readers who don’t already know….David is Javi’s brother. He arrived last Friday and he will be here with us for two weeks. We picked him up at the airport on Friday afternoon, and because we were already up in the part of the country where most of the “fun” stuff is to do, we decided to head over to Pico Bonito National Park (near the coastal town of La Ceiba) where we thought we would try out a little white water rafting.

Pico Bonito is said to have some of the best white water rapids in Central America. The three of us spent two nights in an Eco Lodge called “Omega,” which also arranged various trips in the area, including a white water tour with a guide. The rapids were class III – IV, and being our first time, we were all a bit nervous. On Saturday morning we set out for our trip. After a quick survey of the “drops” on the river (and our subsequent approval to move on with the trip) we were given a quick run down of safety tips while rafting. A few minutes later, we were paddling down the river. My memory has already gotten fuzzy, but on only the first or second drop (I can’t remember!), only about 5 minutes in, David and our guide were violently tossed out of the raft in a very crazy rapid/drop. They both quickly climbed back in, but as David was climbing into the raft he yelled…. “Well, lost a tooth on that one!”

I was like you lost what?!!!!

Apparently, recent crown work on the tooth had not had enough time to “settle in” and it came off when he was thrown from the raft. I couldn’t believe how well he was taking it!

After that, I lost my nerve and decided not to do the last drop in the river. I took pictures with our water camera from the sidelines, but David and Javi pressed on. I climbed back into the raft AFTER we had passed the craziest part of the river.

The good thing is we all had a great time and it was a fun introduction to Honduras. Javi and David have gotten some recommendations for good dentists in Comayagua, and they are out looking for a dentist to fix him up as I write this.

When the pictures are developed I will see if I can post a picture of the three of us smiling from the raft after we finished the trip, David missing tooth and all.

Visitors for Christmas!

2008-01-06T09:39:00.000-08:00

Wow, it has been quite a long time since we have posted anything. (Almost a month!) Hopefully that has not disswayed what few readers we have from continuing to check up on us, but we have a good excuse. Javi and I had a total of 6 visitors here over 15 days, all coming and going in different shifts. We crisscrossed the country (several times) trying to show our guests the best of Honduras, while celebrating the holidays at home. We had fun but man, are we exhausted! Here are a few highlights from the last few weeks.

My mom, her husband Clyde, my sister and her boyfriend Andy came in on the 19th of December. We took them right away to Copan Ruins (Mayan ruins) in western Honduras. Javi and I had already been with the kids from the Escuela Taller, but this time was a little more relaxed without 30 eighteen year old Honduran dudes.

We hired a quirky English speaking guide who told us stories about the ruins and the Mayans.

It was beautiful....I don't think you can go enough times.

We also payed a visit to the bird park, where many species of tropical birds like toucans, macaws, and parrots are on display.

Toucans were my favorite!

One part of the park allowed visitors to "interact" with the birds. Here is my mom with a few, right after the blue and yellow guy had finished chewing on the buttons of her shirt.

After Copan we took the family to Comayagua to spend Christmas in our home.

Clyde got comfortable right away in the hammock.

Mom and Holly washed some laundry in the pila (that big cement area you see.) I think they had a new found respect for laundry washing in Honduras.

We made Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve..........

And opened presents on Christmas Day. (Do you like our tree?)

After a sad goodbye, we left my mom and Clyde in San Pedro Sula to catch their flight home, and Holly, Andy, and Javi & I headed to the coast to catch a ferry to the island of Utila. We met our good friends Sebastian and Erin there. They took a scuba certification course and the rest of us spent a few relaxing days on the beach.

This is the view from Holly and Andy's room. Our hotel was built right on the water. A beautiful spot!

After an awesome time there, Holly and Andy went to San Pedro Sula for their flight home, and we took Sebastian and Erin down to Comayagua. We spent New Year's here and a few days around the house.

Here they are on the "couch."

And here is Erin doing laundry too!

It was so fun! Thank you all for visiting us....we hope you had a good time!

We hope everyone had a nice Christmas break as well!

Happy New Year!

Feria! (urgh)

2007-12-09T09:14:00.000-08:00

Javi and I have put some long hours in lately at the Escuela Taller, helping the kids get ready for their product and service exhibition at Comayagua's annual feria (fair). There was lots of coordinating to do, logistics, inventory tags, fliers to make, etc, so it has been pretty hectic. To add to the stress, there is the "Honduran way" of doing things that always makes things a bit more complicated and last minute.

For example, take this picture to the left. See the variety of products displayed? This is not what we had planned for at all. Javi and I had planned for the students to have 3 - 4 weeks of shop time to make more feria like products (small, cheaper things) but because of the hectic and random way things go down at the school, 4 weeks turned into 3 days. We pulled out projects they had worked on in previous shop lessons, cleaned em up and shipped out to the feria. We added some products from the artisan group and then even pulled some stuff out from around the office from years past, dusted it off and set it out. It's not ideal, but we got it together.

The idea more than anything is to show Comayagua what the student's can do and inform the area who they are, so that people know in the future where to go if they would like custom made furniture, doors, etc. I think we accomplished that at least.

Friday we were supposed to have everything over to the fair grounds before 5 pm, after which no more vendors/exhibitors were to be allowed in. We were ready at 3 pm, but the guy who arranged our transport didn't get our truck to us until 4:30, at which time we were sweating bullets. No worry on the Honduran side, though....this is how it works here, they said.

Sales have been slow to put it delicately - we have actually sold about 120 lempiras worth of stuff ($6) in 2 days, not counting the 60 lempiras we took out to feed some hungry Escuela Taller kids on Friday night! But the kids are getting experience talking to customers about their products, probably the first time they've ever had a professional experience in their lives, so that is good. They seem to be enjoying it too.

We have another week in the exhibition, so we might just sell some stuff yet. However, the stuff is expensive for Honduran standards. All being made by hand makes it more expensive then the Chinese-imported goods that many prefer to buy on their limited budget. This has been a learning experience for us as well - how things are here in Honduras and the deep seeded problems start to reveal themselves to us. But there is hope and these guys are leaning, and that's all we can ask for I guess.

Missing home on Thanksgiving

2007-11-24T09:31:00.000-08:00

Yesterday Javi and I were in a bit of a depressed mood. We started blaming work and living in Honduras in general, but later in the day we figured it out - we just missed home. Holidays we knew would be tough and this is the first real family holiday that we have passed away from home. (And at least we have each other! We were thinking of all those single volunteers in rural Honduras, passing the holiday on a lonely mountain top somewhere.)

To combat this feeling, volunteers generally join up and celebrate Thanksgiving together. Javi and I joined one such gathering (volunteers were meeting up all over the country). We met up with about 30 others in a nearby town called La Paz (The Peace, apropriately). Everyone brought something and we had a full on, traditional meal. Even cranberry! And the turkey was delicious.

Below is a picture of the spread......

And the devestation that followed.......

Some of the attendees.........................

And Javi with his plate.......

Being that the gathering consisted of mostly 20 somethings, the atmosphere wasn't that of the traditional family get together. Later that evening, there were several non-traditional Thanksgiving activities.

Instead of Thanksgiving day football, we had a feats of strength competition, followed by acrobatics.....

Marachis stopped by and played a few favorites, and then, for reasons unbeknowst to me, the guys started taking their shirts off........

All in all it was a fun evening, but it didn't take the place of being with family and friends from home. We missed you all!!!!!!!!!!!! Hope your Thanksgiving was nice and that you appreciated the people you were gathered with.

Suegro activities

2007-11-05T14:04:00.000-08:00

Javi and I took the suegros to Lake Yojoa this weekend. (Oh rather, I guess they took us since they paid.) We stayed at a beautiful lake side hotel where we were treated to beautiful views of the lake and the surrounding cloud covered mountains that surround the waters. They needed a break from Comayagua and our house as we were busy most of last week with work. It was actually rainy and cold this weekend (in the tropics!) but we enjoyed ourselves immensely!

The hotel where we stayed is the nicest on the lake but we chose the cheapest method to get there......the bus! Deb and Jesus got the whole Honduran public transport experience. We took a bus from Comayagua to a town called La Guama, where we needed to catch another bus to the lake. On the bus to Comayagua, the bus drivers packed as many people on as possible (which is completely normal here) and people were crammed into our bus, standing in the aisles on top of each other, carrying bags and buckets of this and that. Javi and I made sure that we all had seats at least! When our stop came, they had to fight their way through the aisles to the exit.

Once in La Guama, we caught a yellow school bus (public buses in rural parts) to the entrance to the hotel. Deb and Jesus grimmaced as the bus flew around blind curves into on coming traffic to pass other cars and buses. The bus dropped us off at the entrance to the hotel, but it was still a mile walk to the hotel. We only walked a few minutes before the hotel owner drove by in her truck and offered us a ride. Deb grabbed the front seat and Javi, Jesus and I took the back with a few other Hondurans. This hilarious picture is Jesus holding on for dear life in the back of the pickup as the driver picked up speed.

Most people who can afford to stay at the hotel have cars, so I think they thought it amusing that the gringos were walking.

It was a very nice weekend.

The next pictures are from the World Map project that I finally finished last week. TWO MONTHS of work!! Deb came with me to help finish up, and seeing as how she was both a teacher for 30 (?) years and completely fluent in Spanish, I'd say she knew what she was doing.

It was really satisfying to finish the job and I think we did great! We still need to label the map (a whole other project) but because their "summer" break starts next week until February, we will have to wait til then. They will be in 8th grade when I come back.

We drew the map by hand (with a grid system) and I tried my best to make sure it was proportionate.

Here is the class:

Painting:

Deb helping direct the painters:

Deb and Jesus want to go to Tela next weekend before they leave. I'll post a few pictures when we get back.

Work, work, work

2007-10-29T16:11:00.000-07:00

Hace mucho tiempo que les he escrito!!

Sorry for the long delay in a post. Things have gotten quite busy around here. The last couple weeks at work have had us working a full 8 hours a day (Yes, actually a full work day!) and then we have the added burdens of daily life here which easily fill up the extra hours in a day. Walking to the market and carrying heavy bags full of goods, washing laundry by hand, etc….all those things take more time than you think. Then, yesterday the SUEGROS (in-laws) arrived for a two week visit.

Several things are in full swing at work. The “vivero de empresas” project with the students of the Escuela Taller began 2 weeks ago. This is the business training program that Javi and I designed to teach 30 kids with carpentry, metal work and electricity backgrounds the fundamentals of business. This summer we were busy arranging the methodology for how this program was going to work, and lining up Honduran organizations to deliver the business classes. {We could teach it, but I don’t think these poor kids want to listen to MY Spanish for 4 hours a day!!!} Our counterparts at the Escuela Taller have thrown us for several loops (read last blog post) where things were changed at the last minute or we were not told vital pieces of information. But, the program continues and we are surviving the unforeseen bumps in the road. So far the students have been through a “How to get a job” orientation and an introduction to business and now are in a 4 week program where they will make business plans based on their skills and the products/services that they can offer. Our role through this time is to assist after class hours to answer questions and help students who might be falling behind in the curriculum. These kids are 16 – 20 years old, with varying levels of education from some of the poorer areas of Comayagua, so concepts like target market and fixed/variable costs don’t always come as easy. Our next step with this project will be to help arrange the “Feria de Productos” (Product Fair) where they will show off what they can make and manage it all with their new found business skills in Comayagua’s annual town fair, the first week of December. After that, we will wrap up the education side of the program, and the kids who want to stay will have the option of selling their products and services through the school in a small store. We also are supposed to set up how the shop will function, which is another project on our plates right now.

Here is a picture from one of the sessions that Javi and I coordinated. We set up mock interviews and prepped the students on how to give answers to key questions. This student (one of the “tougher guys”) is nervously sitting though his first interview:

At the Chamber of Commerce Javi has been busy helping our university interns organize their work for upgrading the website. Although he is no webmaster, he is good at organizing people and ideas and he is great at getting people motivated. I have been working with the interns to upgrade the Chamber’s business resource library, which has not seen much attention in a long time. Most of the information they have is old and a lot is not very relevant to the needs of the community, so this has been a challenge to upgrade the content without any money. I have been organizing the students to identify areas where we need new stuff and getting them to solicit the information. We also have someone creating a digital database of the library’s content.
There is also the world map project I have been doing in a small town school near here which is almost finished! Its been a pain in the arse to get out there every Wednesday afternoon, since the buses that take you there are not always running. I never know how I will get to and from Valle de Angeles where the school is; usually a combination of bus, walking, waiting on the side of the road or catching a ride with someone. But we are down to painting the last countries which hopefully can be done in one more session. I will post the finished product when we are finally done.

Conor, our site mate who works in health has asked us to attend meetings for a group he works with, a group of people who live with HIV/AIDS. They would like to think of ways to generate funds to pay for transportation for some of the harder up members (who cannot pay the bus fare to get to the meeting in Comayagua) and would like to generate some money to pay for prescriptions and other expenses if possible. We have only gone one time, so we will see where the group takes us.

And now we have the in laws visiting as well, although they are pretty low maintenance. Mostly they are interested in seeing our lives here and what we do, so we don’t have to spend too much time entertaining.

Here is a photo I took today of Deb, Jesus and Javi in front of Comayagua’s beautiful cathedral.

I am trying to get something together to post about Honduran emigration to the States which is a HUGE issue here. I will post that soon.

Hasta pronto!

The Roller Coaster Ride

2007-10-15T09:03:00.000-07:00

Life can sometimes be like a roller coaster out here. The highs are so high, but the lows are so low. At first a lot of our ups and downs came with the living situation, but now we have control of that in our own comfortable house away from host families…the ride mostly has to do with work. (Who knows what else will be affected in the future.) We were in for a bumpy one this past week. Sometimes it can be SO FRUSTRATING here, where all can seem in vain and you wonder why you have left a good home to be here. Then there are times where you are connecting with people, ideas are flowing and you feel like some good is coming about from your being here. Phew……

I went to a meeting on Thursday here in Comayagua promoting the first year of the Millennium Challenge project in Honduras. The Millennium Challenge is one of many poverty reduction strategies of the UN, in Honduras focusing on training and education for farmers to help stimulate economic growth. My project director asked me to go (I wasn’t quite sure why while I was there) but I guess it was good to have a Peace Corps representative. The president of Honduras, Mel Zelaya, was there, and so was the US Ambassador to Honduras. If nothing else, it was very interesting to see the interaction between the Ambassador and the President and to see Mel speak. They were pushing lots of hoopla about how many farmers had been helped by the project, and there was lots of media attention and smiling politicians. Below is a picture I took (a bad one, sorry about that) of the ambassador and the president at the event. They are the guys in the black suits.

Now as a personal source of those numbers for such reports (we write how many people we “helped” in our 6 month reports we send to Washington), I wonder about those projections of results. It is hard to quantify results and “development” (as far as I’ve seen in my experience) is a pain staking slow process, requiring extreme patience. There are SO many international aid organizations here in Honduras, governmental and NGOs, with their signs and banners displayed all over buildings, flyers and programs in every corner of the country. Many of us volunteers have wondered….what would happen if they (and we) all just pulled out one day? What would Honduras and Hondurans do to make their country a better place? Would it inspire them to do it themselves and finally see some real results? Or would a country already on the brink suffer even more?

We ended this work week on a good note, after a few ups and downs on the roller coaster. This week we had a run in with people flaking out on us and people not owing up to the promises they made. Break downs in communications were a problem. Also - extreme procrastination and (dare I say it?) laziness. Things that we can take for granted at home, things that make things WORK and get things DONE.

Where does the complicated root of the problem lie? Why is this country (and so many others) so poor? Wow, that is a question I am not qualified to answer. Some that come to mind.....Hunger and poor nutrition, lack of access to education, disease, dirty water (or no water access at all), corruption, lack of capital, inept government, violence, general feeling of helplessness, centuries of exploitation by foreign countries, crumbling infrastructure, emigration…the list goes on and on.

Small successes are our personal goals as volunteers. We are each one person and can only make small (very small) impacts. Mostly these come with the few individuals that we make connections with at work. We can impart some of the skills and habits we have acquired simply from being American and coming from an educated and privileged background. Organizational skills, planning, and idea generation help, not to mention a free, college educated worker to help get things done in financially strapped organizations. And we are getting experience too. Not only all the organizing and planning skills I just mentioned, but exposure to new areas we are asked to lead and projects where we are asked to come up with ideas. Some of the projects we are asked to work on, we have absolutely no experience in and have no idea where to start, but we are the best they’ve got to get something done, and we give them the all we’ve got.

Now are you starting to understand the roller coaster????…..

La Primera Vez a la Costa Norte

2007-10-03T14:53:00.000-07:00

Javi and I left Comayagua last Friday to spend a few days on Honduras’ north coast. Our official purpose for going up that way was to spend a few days in Tela to work on a peace corps business project. A group of nine volunteers met to work on a manual for a business simulation done during pre-service training for future volunteers in the business project. We had been putting the manual together over email and met to review and revise the first draft in person. We spent two nights in Tela but only part of one morning was spent on the manual, so it wasn’t too bad as far as “business trips” are concerned. (Getting to Tela takes several hours on the bus, thus the two night stay). Below is a picture of Javi and another volunteer, Marc, after we finished up our morning meeting.
Tela is a nice beach side town – Javi and I really liked it, and felt a twinge of jealousy because Tela is home to two lucky peace corps volunteers. Tela is small and relaxed with a mix of mestizo (what you normally think of as Hondurans) and Garifuna inhabitants.

Side note: Garifuna are black Caribbean people with an interesting story. They came to live on the Caribbean coasts of Belize and Honduras several hundred years ago after a series of historical events led them this way. The Garifuna are basically the product of Black Caribs (Native Americans from South America) and escaped/shipwrecked African slaves. They lived on the Caribbean island of San Vincente for many years where these two groups intermixed and created a unique race with their own language, dance and music, food and customs. They were deported off the island by the English in the late 1700’s to Honduras, where they established communities all over the Honduran North Coast region. Most speak Spanish, but there are still isolated communities where they only speak Garifuna.

Long before the Tela trip was to happen, Javi and I had been discussing checking about a national park near Tela called Jeanette Kawas (named after in advocate who was assassinated for working to save the park from developers). This park has a peninsula called Punta Sal, where I had read you could camp on the beach. After Tela, we made plans to camp two nights on Punta Sal with our friends Sean and Kate. We arranged a combination of taxi and boat travel to reach the peninsula (only reachable by boat) and made sure we had enough food and water. We were told two families lived on the peninsula on the beach, so we would be camping near them, and they could make us a few meals if we liked. The picture below is what we saw as we pulled up to Cocolito beach on the boat, where we camped.

Punta Sal, and especially Cocolito beach, was amazing. It is truly a very special place. The water was a clear green (like emerald) and combined with the green of the jungle it was absolutely beautiful. There was amazing animal life – we saw monkeys, tropical birds, colorful crabs, and some sea life (which we didn’t really get to see too much of because we unfortunately had no snorkel gear). We heard the monkeys howling in the trees within 30 minutes of getting there and were lucky enough to catch several glimpses of them, one time from the beach as we swam. The water was clear and warm, so we spent a lot of time in it. The first night when we sat on the dock after dinner, we could see glowing jelly fish swimming by. The second night, because the currents had taken away the jelly fish, we went for a swim where something beautiful and unexplainable happened in the water. Anytime you moved, glowing “sparks” of light would come alive under the water. They would stick to clothes and to hair long after you came out of the water and you could even see them sparkling on the beach. One of the guys who lived there, Alex, who was swimming with us that night said it was from the reflection of the moon, but we’re not sure about that. We couldn’t come up with an explanation for it, although I’m sure there is one.

Below are more pictures of Punta Sal:

It wasn’t all perfect at this place – in return for the amazing beauty and specialness of this place, you had to give one thing in return……bug bites. The bugs were relentless. Probably the most annoying were the sand flies – tiny, vile creatures that bit and left itchy red marks. When there wasn’t enough wind to keep them at bay we had to take refuge in the water. I fell asleep the second night to these guys biting me – they had found their way in the tent and would not let me fall asleep in peace. The second were the mosquitoes. The mosquitoes were so big, you could feel them landing on you. We all returned home yesterday with several HUNDRED bites from mosquitoes and sand flies that are still itching.

The usual way for the tourist to see Punta Sal is through a day trip from Tela, which is understandable due to the fact that the average tourist does not have camping gear, several free days to spend there or the inclination to put up with the bugs. We were lucky to pass a few days on Cocolito beach, not just to fully appreciate the place and see more wildlife, but also to hang out one night with Alex (who ran the restaurant) and the park ranger. Those guys told us stories and facts about the place, something the average passerby does not get to hear.
Leaving Punta Sal on Tuesday morning, we stopped in a traditional Garifuna village called Miami. Miami is built on a thin sliver of sand; on one side is the beach, on the other a lagoon. The four of us had a quick bite to eat on the beach. We had a friend with us as we ate, who was quite the ham when I asked him if I could take his picture with his pet crab. (Apparently I was not the first tourist to ever take his picture.)

Here is a picture of Miami from the beach side.

We made it back to Comayagua yesterday afternoon – tired, nasty from beach camping and covered with bites, but with a greater appreciation for this country that we are temporarily calling home.

Post script to "What we do"

2007-09-19T09:57:00.001-07:00

Just FYI, the last post was not actually what Javi and I do personally. (Oh my God that would be crazy.) It is a list of what EVERYONE in the BUSINESS PROJECT (Honduras) does, which includes almost 30 people. I had a few people emailing me saying that we must be pretty busy down here with all those projects that we have going on. We have about 5 projects right now between the two of us. I'll write something about that later.

cheery-o!

What we do

2007-09-08T13:52:00.000-07:00

I wrote this summary a few weeks ago, after all the business volunteers (both old and new) got together for our the annual "reconnect" meeting. I know some of you may be wondering what we actually do down here as so-called “volunteers” in the very vague area of “business.” Maybe this will help clear some of that up. We all had to give brief presentations of what we are working on, so I took notes of what people's projects are.

I’ve arranged this list by project, versus person, since you wouldn’t know people by names and there is some overlap with some people working on similar types of things. Most people are working on more than one project. So, without further ado, THIS IS WHAT WE DO:

Support Caja Rurales (rural banks) and local Savings and Loans through trainings of members and staff in banking concepts and other types of organizational support
Website development including design, content and maintenance
Business Plan trainings, especially at the lower levels of Honduran society (ladies who make coconut bread or farmers for example). Javi and I are organizing a business plan curriculum to be taught to the students at the Escuela Taller here in Comayagua (we will actually end up teaching bits and pieces of it as well).
Marketing and promotion for artisan groups (including many native peoples) and local tourist initiatives.
Business simulations (like we did during training) for students in local middle and high schools
Computer classes for all age groups, from everything on “this is how you use a mouse” to advanced programming courses. One volunteer is developing curriculum for a high school computer class in advanced computing topics.
Supporting small business co-ops and groups on everything from trainings in how to organize and manage your business to support to find funding and get started. Many are women’s groups who make artisan goods or food items.
Needs analysis and strategic planning for start-up NGO’s
Implementation of databases (using excel) for organizations ranging from the local Health Center (to look up medical information) to collecting taxes at the local municipality
Support to local coffee growers – including promotion of their product and improved fertilization techniques
One volunteer is working with a water/sanitation volunteer to bring a landfill to his town (trash is currently thrown on a mountain side and is blowing into the town’s water source)
Support to business youth groups (marketing surveys, product improvement techniques)
Tourism development – including websites, tourist literature (tour guides, brochures, posters), cultural programming, even cutting trails for new ecotourism projects
Support for an initiative that wishes to turn trash collection into a small business, with recyclables being sold off and organic items being turned into fertilizer.
Building libraries in small towns and in schools. One volunteer has been recruited to become an elementary school’s part time librarian.
Solar ovens (not yet started)
AIDS charlas (lectures) to men’s only groups and school aged kids
One on one computer training
English classes
Local town newspaper published by high school students, taught through a computer class
Baseball teams
The “colgate” project (How to brush properly)
Why to stay in school charlas
“Odyssey of the mind” (creative thinking competition among school kids.)
The world map project (paint a giant map of the world on a school’s wall ---I am starting this one on Wednesday…..yikes! kids and paint!!)
Someone started a rugby team (is that really considered development?)
Pen pals programs with kids in the US
And….this one is great so I’ll put it last….one girl has started heading up “Ladies Night” at her small town’s new gym. This might not sound legit, but actually, educating about physical fitness and teaching appropriate ways to work out definitely has its place.

There were a few more….but I was getting tired of typing them up and ome were hard to explain in a single bullet point.

Honduras has six areas that volunteers work in. The other five are Municipal Development, Youth Development, Health/HIV-AIDS, Water/Sanitation, and Protected Areas Management. Other peace corps countries may have the same projects, or may have different ones depending on the needs of the particular country.

Sometimes day to day, you can feel as if what you are doing here isn't making much of a difference. But I was inspired (at least temporarily!) when we all got together and I saw what our project is doing here in Honduras.

Hurricane Felix

2007-09-05T15:50:00.000-07:00

Well Javi and I thought we were in for our first hurricane, and a category 5 no less, yesterday evening. I checked the internet midday yesterday to see an image of a massive hurricane, the eye of the storm which was supposed to pass right over central Honduras! Mild panic and excitement set in!!

Up until that point, I thought the storm would only affect those on the north coast. We got a call from our project manager to tell us to "stead fast," or as we interpreted it, "hunker down," so we went around town in a frenzy buying food and stocking up on water. Hondurans, to the contrary, were pretty laxy dazy about the whole thing and continued on with their usual, laxy dazy pace. We figured this was due to one too many hurricanes passing through their country.

Anyway, after we were all stocked up, we waited. Some heavy rains came, but nothing worse than we had seen before. Turns out, (we found out this morning) Felix turned into a tropical storm by the time it hit land, mostly dumping rain on the swampy region that lies between northeastern Honduras and Nicaragua, the vast jungle wilderness of the Mosquitia.

Many had been comparing this hurricane to MITCH, a storm that wreaked havoc on Honduras in 1998, killing 11,000 (?) people and damaging the already feeble economy. I thought the most interesting part of the whole thing was when a guy at work told us that there were some people who were praying that the hurricane would bring that kind of damage, because then Honduras would get international attention again and the aid money would come poring in. That is crazy.

Another interesting antidote was a story I read on weather.com before we knew Felix would turn into a tropical storm. This guy had been evacuated from Roatan and was waiting for a flight back to the States. He was quoted as saying something to the effect that he hoped all this mess was worth it, because he had only gotten 7 dives in so far on his vacation, and he was a bit put out. SEVEN DIVES. And absolutely no thought for the rest of the people who actually live there on that island. Wow.

Well, thats all I have to say about that. Next time I will be posting something about the different kind of work business volunteers do here. Bye for now!

Parque Cental

2007-08-29T09:32:00.000-07:00

We were out of town last week for the annual reconnect of the business project. Reconnect was a meeting of the PCV business groups of Hondu 8 and 10 which took place in a beautiful spot in the hills of Parque Cerro Azul Meambrar. We were initially not super excited about attending because of the all too close memories of times we had during training. Reluctant as we were about going (we had no choice as it is required of us) it ended up being a great experience gaining insight and new ideas from business volunteers from the class before us.

Reconnect added another benefit of allowing some friends a mas comoda (cheaper) opportunity to visiting us. They were our first planned on and “invited” friends to come and visit us in Comayagua. There are a handful of things for visitors to do here and most of it involves walking many hot hours around town. During the first half hour of walking around our group was separated resulting in the guys of the group looking for their wives for more than an hour.

After some time searching for them we ended up in Parque Central baffled about what our next step should be. Being off guard trying to come up with ideas of what to do, a crazy lady (very mentally ill person) who I have seen before around town, approached us slowly asking for “besos, pesos”, and then as nearing my chest “pechos”. This four foot something inch women attacked me, like a savaged animal with an open, mostly toothless, mouth going straight for my chest. She was trying to grab at my arms when in doing so made me turn back to her. At that moment she reached her hand into my rear crevasse area and jingled the family jewels. Keep in mind, Parque Central is a big plaza with the town cathedral in front of it. I turned around and told her trying to save face, “Basta! No enfrente de Dios!” A spark jumped into her eyes and she proceeded to go after each one of the three of us guys where we were so alarmed that we proceeded to high step around in a tight circle flailing our arms in all sorts of directions. In one of the circlings I caught a glimpse of other Hondurans sitting on benches in the park looking and laughing their asses off at us. Some how the gringo show ended and our lady friends, Sara and Kate, came strolling in to Parque Central minutes after the little psycho women had her way with us. I was extremely flustered from the incident and they were as calm and cool as could be excited about various used clothing prospects they had found around town.

In all we had a really good time with our first visitors, but plan on being more prepared for when family or friends come and visit us from back home, hopefully soon

--J

Random Photos

2007-08-29T09:03:00.001-07:00

All photos except the last two are courtesy of our friends, who actually remember to take photos when we go places and do fun things.

Hummingbirds at Reconnect:
Kate tried very hard to get this picture...its not easy to get a shot of hummingbirds that isn't a blur. The cabins we stayed at during our meetings had several feeders which attracted some of the most colorful hummingbirds I've even seen. Beautiful!

At lunch one day during reconnect the kitchen staff surprised us with a meal of gigantic tilapia from the nearby lake. It was quite a feat to get through the whole fish, I don't think anyway managed to eat it all. Here Javi is getting friendly with his fish.

A few of us went on a hike through the beautiful Parque Nacional Cerro Azul Meambar. Here was the highlight of the hike, a beautiful waterfall tucked away in the jungle.

Sean and Kate came to visit us after Reconnect before heading back to Santa Rosa. Here are the guys eating helados in parque central.

Javi and I just got bikes from peace corps so we can cruise around Comayagua much faster. We are supposed to wear helmets (even if it will lead to rocks being thrown at us or intense harrasement) so here is Javi trying his on for size.

My mom sent me a few puzzles to work on, which has been keeping me entertained on slow nights (oh, the excitement!) Here is the progress so far....Thanks mom!!

Unexpected visitors and other news

2007-08-13T11:53:00.000-07:00

There is an unwritten rule among volunteers in this country that you have total and complete access to stay at any other volunteer’s house. Of course, we don’t make much money so if you are passing through on your way to somewhere else or have business in town, you wouldn’t think of spending any of that precious little living allowance on a hotel, you’d call the local volunteer! With almost 200 of us in a small country, there are many volunteers and the possibility of a free night’s stay almost anywhere, especially in the west. Now that Javi and I have become established here in the house, we have begun to see a number of volunteers staying with us. We don’t even have a guest bed yet, but this is a hardy bunch and it doesn’t detract them one bit. The hard floor is fine with them. Some have come and gone without helping out with the cost of food and drink we provided (bad move) and some have been very gracious and generous. I know a couple who while living with the host family in their site, would allow passer-byers to sleep with them in their own bed (queen size) since there was no other place they could put them up. I personally would never do that, but you get the picture…free nights stay.

So last Thursday, Javi and Conor were planning on doing an AIDS lecture in a neighboring town and because of transportation logistics and the start of the talk, they had to spend the night the evening before (with a volunteer of course). It was the first night, I believe since arriving to Honduras, that I would have a night alone, so I was planning on enjoying a quiet evening to myself. Javi and Conor said goodbye at about 5 and not 30 minutes later I get a loud knock on the door. Upon opening the gate I see 6 gringo faces, all wishing to stay at my house, completely unannounced. Apparently there had been some emails exchanged among other people about them staying, but it was all news to me. I am normally completely fine with volunteer visitors, even when they push my patience I am normally okay with it, but this time I was pissed. They were on their way to do translating for a brigade doing health surveys in some nearby mountain towns, so what was I supposed to do? Turns out the guy in charge of coordinating the thing didn’t communicate fully that they would need a place to stay, so I held him accountable for the whole thing, forgave him and then let everybody in. We ended up having a good time that night hanging out, but sometimes I get tired of the attitude that my house (or anyone’s house) is a hostel or a frat house.

Below is a picture of some friends who were over that night:

Here is a picture of Javi, Conor and Marc (business volunteer in Cane, La Paz) after the three returned from the AIDS talk they did. The three of them were walking around the house shirtless that evening for some reason.....

In other news, we had our TWO year anniversary on Monday. The entertainment budget for the evening was less than last year’s in Dallas, but it was a good time. I made a quiche, Javi bought a bottle of Spanish wine (BIG SPENDERS!) and we had a nice dinner. Being the “Cotton anniversary,” I bought Javi a towel, and he bought me a shirt.

In the picture below, you can see Javi hard at work starting on our garden. He spent an entire weekend sifting through the dirt to get rid of all the rocks. Soon as we can get some fertilizer from a guy at work, I will plant the seeds that another volunteer (pictured above eating spaghetti) was kind enough to give us. The seeds are kind of old, and intended for a milder climate, but it will be interesting to see what grows.

Waiting is Doing

2007-07-31T17:00:00.000-07:00

Well, its hard to keep the posts going (and even harder for you to read them, I'm sure!) but we are trying to not slack off. This post is going to be a simple one with photos from another recent trip we took. On Thursday, week before last, we were asked to go on a trip with the staff and some of the students from the Escuela Taller. Good thing we are flexible because they were leaving the following Monday!! The premise of the trip was to visit two other Escuela Talleres financed by the Spanish development program. One is in Antigua, Guatemala, the other in Gracias, Lempira (western Honduras). In between the two, we stopped in Copan to see the famous Mayan ruins there. We had a fabulous time and enjoyed rollin around on a chartered bus with 50 Hondurans for five fast and furious days. Of course, our luck, the camera memory card went on the fritz after all the pictures we took in Antigua, but we will be back to get more!!! It was beautiful, even if it there were more gringos there than I have seen in all of Honduras in the last 6 months!

The best part of the trip is how much better we got to know the kids and the staff at the school. Relationship building with Hondurans is half the battle to getting work done here. We also learned a very important lesson about Honduran culture....waiting is doing. This Javi-coined phrase very accurately describes the amount of waiting we did with these guys on the trip. Any time we were going to do anything, or go anywhere, there was a lot of waiting involved, small group or large. But waiting was not an inconvenience, like waiting in line at the post office or the like, it was more of an activity which involved lots of talking and joking as we waited. This is a good cultural lesson for us fast paced, ultra-convenient demanding American types.

So, the first two pictures are the ruins at Copan, the last 4 pictures in Gracias with the staff and students from the Escuela Taller.

I promise we will get better about posting about life here in Honduras. (Some might be interested----) I already have some topics in mind......step by step pila laundry washing, a whole segment on PIROPOS (cat calls), the market, WORK, etc..... Hang in there with us!

Santa Rosa de Copan

2007-07-18T12:39:00.000-07:00

This weekend, Javi and I went to visit some Peace Corps friends (Sean and Kate) in beautiful Santa Rosa de Copan. Man these guys have a great spot. Its a charming city, nice weather and people actually SMILE at you around town. We've just recently learned that we here in Comayagua happen to live in one of the most notoriously UNfriendly cities in Honduras. The other two are supposed to be Tegucigalpa (capital city, no surprise) and another city called Danli close to the Nicaragua border. Go figure!
Anyway, below we've got some shots of our visit.

This first one is of Kate, Sean and Javi strolling down the sidewalk. I thought Comayagua had uneven, chaotic sidewalks but Santa Rosa has it like this all over town! One that we walked down had a 4 foot drop off where the sidewalk just ended. We had to turn around and walk back, with amused locals looking on.

Here is a view of the city as you walk down the street. The whole town is built on gentle rolling hills, with pine forest on mountain tops in the distance.

Javi and I tried some of Santa Rosa's famous Copan Dry. People there are REALLY proud of it.

Santa Rosa is home to the one and only Peace Corps house in Honduras, so we went to check it out. It reminded me of a dirty college house but it had a certain charm to it. Stacks of books, games, maps and random items left by volunteers over the years were all over the place. Unfortunately the new country director has decided to shut the house down. Area volunteers are pretty upset since they use the place to crash quite often. We personally won't be affected out here since we are not likely to ever use the house, but its sad to see a peace corps tradition end.

On Sunday morning we went with Kate and Sean to the market for their weekly fruit and veggie purchases.

People were quite friendly and were actually making sure you got the right amount for the money you were handing over instead of trying to squeeze a few extra lempiras out of you. I'm normally kind of scared to take pictures at our vegetable market here in Comayagua but Santa Rosa is small and safe so I decided to bring the camara out.

Here is Kate picking through tomatoes at the market. They made us a delicious homemade spaghetti later that night.

We had a great visit. And when we got here to Comayagua, even though it was back to the HOT weather and hustle and bustle, it was nice to be back.

Our new digs

2007-07-01T12:10:00.000-07:00

Well, the time finally came….we’ve moved into our own place. And how sweet it is! Here are some photos of the new house: The front of the house is surrounded by a wall, which is nice for relaxing in the hammock without being stared at. There is only so much staring and piropos a person can take in a day.

And here is Javi relaxing in the hammock. That is a prime spot (especially after work) and it is our most prized piece of “furniture.”

As this next picture illustrates, we don’t have much by way of furniture. Actually, what you see here is all we have, plus our bed and stove. The guy in the photo is our site mate Connor.

Not having a lot of furniture is actually nice so far. It makes cleaning easy and nothing feels cluttered.

Here is the kitchen. We won’t have a fridge until next weekend, when the owner of our house can bring one for us. We’ve managed to cook without it so far, but it’s a lot of work since we must cook everything that is perishable right away and eat everything we make.

Man has it been nice to have a clean kitchen again, which is OURS. The last host family we stayed with here in Comayagua had the kitchen that was being “remodeled” and was in a serious state of disrepair. There was also a whole ecosystem of wildlife in there. Besides the cockroaches and geckos, there were mice (a perfect hole in my ramen noodles cup was evidence of that), bees (on one occasion Connor was actually stung by one) and there was even a huge sapo (toad) that would wander in at night from the indoor patio.

This last photo is of our pila area. (A pila, if you remember, is where you keep water if you do not have running water. We do have running water in Comayagua, so our pila is where we do laundry.) The various buckets in the background and the scrubbing surface on the left hand side of the pila is where all those clothes got clean today.

And so, our 7 month stint living in the homes of other people has finally come to an end. Since we left our apartment in Dallas last November, we have stayed with friends and family in New Mexico, Texas and Tennessee, and then on our Christmas trip to Europe in Spain, France, Germany, and Italy. Then, since February, we have been guests in 3 different homes here in Honduras. There was the host family in Santa Lucia, Cantarranas and the last one here in Comayagua. It feels great to unpack our bags, listen to music again (on speakers at least), decide what food to make, walk from the bathroom to our closet without a towel and just feel relaxed in our own house!

Winter in Honduras

2007-06-15T13:48:00.000-07:00

Hi there!

As I write this a torrential rain is coming down in Comayagua – thick sheets of water, like you were inside a car wash. We are working at the Camara de Comercio this Friday afternoon and I sure am glad to be inside. Javi, unfortunately, went to the post office to pick something up for a volunteer in a small town close to here – poor guy I hope he found somewhere dry! It is “winter” here in Honduras right now, which means it rains a lot but it definitely does not get colder. The tropics haven’t different definitions of seasons than we do in our temperate climate in the US. They have two seasons here – rainy season and dry season.

The rain has been coming down especially hard here this week. Tegucigalpa had some flooding (darn trash in the streets blocks the drainage) and a rush of water here in Comayagua swept through a home and washed away two young children in the river. They haven’t been found yet. On Wednesday in our host family house, it was raining so hard water started leaking from the ceiling in small streams forming puddles here and there in our room.

Here is a picture from La Prensa of what the rains did in Tegus Yesterday

Oh….Javi just made it back in. He sprung for a taxi to avoid the rain. He just took off his shirt to let it dry, and now he is sitting in the Chamber of Commerce’s Board of Director’s meeting room shirtless. Sweet!

The rain has also brought on a surge of nasty mosquitoes. They are relentless right now. I say that as one circles my feet and arms waiting for the moment I get too distracted to swat at him (wait…aren’t the mosquitoes that bite female?). Accordingly there has been an increase in dengue cases here and in El Salvador in recent weeks. Javi’s well fortified now that he is immune to “dengue clasico” but I better keep up the bug spray!

In other news things have been going great at work. On Tuesday we sat with the President of the Camara and the main administrator to discuss our ideas that came of our investigation into their new website. They loved our suggestions and have taken an active interest in moving on many of the things we talked about right away! In addition to improving some of the content and quality of information they provide, they were very interested in other ideas – such as highlighting an affiliate of the chamber once a month on the website and organizing networking opportunities such as “business over brunch” or a golf tournament. (There is a brand new golf course in town and the Prez is really big into golf so he liked that idea.) It feels good that our ideas have been so well received by them. We feel like we are of use to them here!

Our house situation has finally been settled – we are getting the place we really wanted! We will start cleaning the place soon and moving in very shortly. As soon as the place is in decent shape, we will post some photos.

Well, that mosquito I was talking about got me. Other than reapplying the repellent, we better get back to work.

Marcala Visit

2007-06-04T15:32:00.000-07:00

So we made it out to Marcala (a small town a stone's throw from the El Salvador border) to celebrate Javi's 29th in style. Marcala was beautiful but didn't have much in the way of "entertainment." But of course, that is Honduran style, especially small town Honduran style, so we were prepared for that and enjoyed ourselves immensely. Saturday we went for a 5 hour hike in some mountains overlooking Marcala. The goal of the hike was to make it to a waterfall (which we never found) but the stroll through green hills, coffee fields, banana farms and pine trees made it all worth it. The photo below is Javi overlooking a coffee farm. Supposedly some of the best coffee in Honduras comes from this area, and when the temperature drops in the evening and the clouds roll in to hang over the forest, you can believe it.

This interesting character was another highlight of the hike. We first saw him as we were climbing the dirt road on the way to the elusive waterfall. He was sitting on a log in front of his farm, banana trees swaying in the wind behind him. He was like something out of a lonely planet book and I was overcome by the urge to take his photo. I'm glad we waited however because Javi snapped this one off after he offered us some of his home grown bananas. He told us he was 87 years old and when Javi said he just turned 29, he said he was just starting out in life. Looking inside his house was like stepping back in time 100 years - there was no electricity or running water.

Before we left town, some new friends of ours (an American couple living in Comayagua) made Javi a birthday dinner and baked him a cake. We were extremely grateful, especially for the cake since we still have no way to bake. They were also able to track down some Dr. Pepper and 2% milk (not 98% as you find a lot of out here). It was delicious!!!

Housing, food, work update...

2007-05-30T16:55:00.000-07:00

We’ve been on the hunt for a new housing situation. The host fam thing is starting to get old, REAL OLD (even to Javi who has been cool with it almost the whole time). We’ve looked at some houses in a safe neighborhood that is near the center and our favorite sitting spot, Plaza San Francisco (see photo at right). We’ve got our eye on one that has a high wall (i.e. undisturbed hanging out in the front yard), a place for a hammock on the front porch and flower-planting potential. There are already some purple and pink flower bushes that grow along the wall which practically sold me before I even saw the inside of the house. We are waiting on Peace Corps before we can make our next move.

We are still eating out almost every meal (or making PBJ) to avoid the kitchen and we’ve definitely scoped out the good eating spots in town by this point. The other day I was craving a salad big time, and because Hondurans are not the salad eating types, it can be hard to come by (impossible, really). Wendy’s however, one of our fast food joints here in town, does have salads. We’ve eaten there a couple times just so I can get my green leafy vegetable fix. Well, iceberg lettuce fix at least, which reminds me its kind of sad when Wendy’s is your only option for salads in town. While we were eating there for lunch, a rather large overweight American man (presumably from the base) could be seen eating 2 large hamburgers with Biggie fries and drink. Its hard to escape that image, even in Comayagua, Honduras. DISCLAIMER: WE DO NOT PLAN ON EATING AT WENDY’S ONCE I CAN GET GREEN LEAFIES AT HOME IN A SANITARY KITCHEN. (Its kind of embarrassing to admit that we have eaten there while in Honduras.)

Work is going well. We attended our first Chamber of Commerce (Camara de Comercio) meeting last Thursday. We’ve gotten our first project with them, which is to evaluate their brand new website and help them with the placement of advertisements on the site. Today we spent the day looking at other Chamber of Commerce websites in the States doing a comparison between whats out there and what their site has, and we came up with some decent suggestions. Their site is at http://www.camaradecomayagua.hn/. Maybe in a few weeks it might look a little different.

At the Escuela Taller/Programa Colonial de Comayagua, we’ve been hard at work on the two projects we’ve got going there right now (see left, Javi "hard at work"). One project involves us looking at the administration process and flow of cash through the organization. We are interviewing different employees to get an understanding of what they do, and then we are mapping out their different processes. This not only allows us to get a closer look at their operations (and therefore understand what goes on there) but helps us to identify areas where they might streamline operations or do things more efficiently. We’re still on the understanding bit, since that process takes awhile (especially in Spanish). When we work on that project we start to feel like auditors again, Javi as the senior and me as the associate. Its kind of fun.

The other project is working on the business incubation program the school wants to set up for the students. (Reminder: the school teaches kids from the marginal neighborhoods of Comayagua in a trade – carpentry, metal work, electricity and construction – for free. The PCC then uses the students to complete some of the restoration work they are doing on the colonial buildings around town). The school wants to teach them entrepreneurial skills in addition to a trade, in the hopes that some might open their own businesses, therefore creating jobs for themselves and for others. We are there to help them set up the business curriculum and facilitate a “business incubator” where students would receive support and resources from the school in their second year of training if they were interested in starting a business. We have been busy researching the subject and making contacts with people who can help us create a methodology for this thing.

This weekend is Javi’s birthday, so we are thinking of getting out of dodge to celebrate the first day of his 29th year and get a little R&R away from Comayagua. Where we are going is still up in the air, but where ever it is, we’ll be sure to post a few pixs and write a little something.

2007-05-20T16:57:00.000-07:00

Javi has made a full recovery from his bout with dengue fever. He’s been back in action since about Sunday of last week (that would be the 13th). If it comes up, many people here in Comayagua say that they’ve had dengue once before, and what they remember most was the way their body ached. I think Javi would agree.

We had a great week at work. This past Thursday, Friday and most of Saturday we attended the PCC’s (Programa Colonial de Comayagua) annual planning meeting which they held at a charming hotel in Valle de Angeles. (Valle, if you remember, is where we would check internet and make calls while we were in Cantarranas last month.) The meeting was supposed to be held at the lake but plans were changed last minute on Wednesday night due to some scheduling issues with the conference room we were going to use. What’s funny is no one told us, and we had packed clothing for the hot and humid lake, and lots of bug spray. Valle is in the mountains, there are few bugs and it gets quite chilly at night. We’re not sure if Ana Carolina, the director and our counterpart, was too busy (she is an extremely busy and overworked woman) or if no one thought to tell the random gringos that had started showing up at their office recently, but we didn’t find out until we were on our way out of town, and the driver started heading south on the highway, instead of north. We are pretty flexible people and were not too offended by their oversight, but having only tank tops and sandals wasn’t fun at night in Valle. However, we learned A LOT about the PCC and the people who work there. We have meaningful projects and we really think the work they do there is valuable.

(Photos - top right, in front of the fountain at the Valle de Angeles hotel. Bottom left, us sitting on the planning meeting.)

We were given our own room at the hotel and three solid, tasty meals, all courtesy of the PCC. This was EXTREEMLY appreciated by us, since we could not have paid for it otherwise. We were also happy to use the opportunity to catch up a bit on our budget. You see, we are each “paid” 4000 lempiras a month by Peace Corps, which is about $200 a month, or $6.67 a day. (This amount is in addition to what they pay for our housing.) In Honduras, $200 a month is both a lot of money and next to nothing to different groups of people. The people that we work with at the PCC would be considered part of the small middle class in this country. They have a decent standard of living and can afford apartments in the historic center of town, go out to eat and go to the bar, some drive cars and they have stylish new clothes. We are not exactly sure what they make, but we can definitely tell you that $400 a month between the two of us does not buy this lifestyle. Then there are many people in this country who live off of much less, and you have only to walk a little ways out of the central district of Comayagua, look out the window of the bus on the highway, or walk the streets of Cantarranas to see how obvious that is. A lot of things cost the same as in the States, maybe not housing, but lots of food, toiletries and housing items do. Plus, we have the American base near by, which we hear adds to inflated prices for both food and housing here in Comayagua. We have been having trouble staying within this budget, especially since we have to eat out most meals due to the less than sanitary condition of the kitchen in the host family house we have to live in right now. It seems like all we do is eat and use internet (and occasionally call our moms) and we spend more money than we are given. So we are stuck in a strange socio-economic limbo here in Comayagua as Peace Corps volunteers. Many people think we are “rich” (at least in a Honduran context) contractors from the base, since that is the situation of most all the other gringos in town. We also work with people who aren’t super wealthy by any means but definitely have more disposable income than we’ve got to work with. But then you’ve got the ultra-poor, so we ourselves are not truly poor, especially when you consider that we have the Peace Corps to pay our medical bills, generous family members to send us packages and who would help us out in a bind, and a small savings. There are stores full of imported household goods (25,000 lempira refrigerators, stoves, couches) which some Hondurans can afford, but many can’t, including us. We are feeling what it is like to have so many things for sale in front of you, but not be able to buy them.

In training, some of us would joke that we were Peace Corps “lite” here in Honduras, compared to other countries peace corps works in where volunteers work in physical conditions much more extreme than we deal with here. In some places, we have running hot water, cable tv, refrigeration, electricity and American fast food. Of course, there are volunteers here who do not have these things in the smaller villages, but we do here in Comayagua. But I don’t think we are Peace Corps lite, by any means. It is a different kind of a challenge to live in a place where there ARE things to buy (unlike the sticks of Africa) but not be able to buy anything. It’s also quite a different story to live in a country so affected by its giant neighbor to the north. 1 in 7 Hondurans are illegally (a few legally) working in the US, many sending money home. This leads to a myriad of economic and social factors in this country. One I notice every day are “piropos” (“compliments” in Spanish but really catcalls) that are 80% of the time directed to me in English (“Hey baby, I love you…etc) learned in person or taught by a friend who spent some time working in the States. So while we might not have to eat dinner from a communal food plate like volunteers in Morocco or carry water from a well to our house like my step sister Chelsea did in Guinea, it is definitely hard and different and a challenge everyday.

Well, I got off track there and wanted to talk a bit about the PCC – what they do and what our place will be in that organization - but that will have to wait until another entry. This one has started to get long.

Last thing, I wanted to post this picture from our swearing in ceremony the day we officially became volunteers. The other two are our friends Kate and Sean. They are in the western part of Honduras (Santa Rosa de Copan) and we really miss those guys. But they've got a nice site so we will definitely have to visit!

My First Week of Work and a Visit from Dengue

2007-05-11T08:42:00.000-07:00

Sara and I started our work as volunteers in Comayagua this week. This is what I recall:

I had been sick for a couple days with a sore neck, back, and joints, headache behind the eyes, fever, some vomiting, and lots and LOTS of diarrhea. I had resisted going to the hospital because I was convinced it was something I got from making food in our not very ‘hygienical’ kitchen and I wanted to fight it off since we had another 7 weeks to live in the house. Being sick like this also reminded me of the time we were sick in Nepal for a week and all the weight we lost from it and after 3 years of Dallas and 3 months of Manteca, a six pack was in my near future again if I could only hang on a little longer.

On Wednesday, realizing that I could no longer fight this stomach bug nor miss another day of our first week of work, we decided to check out the Honduran Hospital system. We had already heard some horror stories about the medical system, but heard it was standard procedure to give blood and a stool sample for stomach illnesses and a buddy of mine told me that he got an IV when he went in which sounded really exciting that morning in my very dehydrated state.

Sara came with me first thing in the morning and after a blood test, a very awkward stool sample (Sara had to hold my IV bag in the men’s bathroom), 3 IV bags, and seven hours we found out that my plaquetas were very low and that I might have dengue fever. The doctor asked me to return the next day to see if the plaquetas (platelets) bounced back. He said if they didn’t it could be a very severe kind of dengue which results from bleeding from all orifices and patients have to be hospitalized so that they can monitor them. He gave me a bag full of pills and some bolsas of floura (the stuff that gives you the good bacteria back, segun Sara) and I went home plumper from the IVs but not feeling that much better.

I was impressed with Comayagua’s hospital care it was very clean and had a friendly staff. I have been told that Honduran doctors shoot first with the needles and ask questions later, but in my case they didn’t give me anything until they gave me some IV’s and took the appropriate tests. I thought it was unusual that during the whole time there they did not use gloves at all not even for IV inserting or collection of samples.

And so it’s Friday now and the first week of work is done. I can honestly say I only worked about 3 hours all occuring on Monday before the diarrhea began. The 3 hours consisted of an awkwardly short meeting with the mayor and another very dengue sweaty meeting with our counterpart. I thought it was a very unlucky, unproductive start here, but my lovely wife reminded me last night that I have already been infected by one of the four types of dengue in the first week of two years (there are supposedly only 4 kinds of dengue and you are only able to get infected once by each one). Pretty productive week afterall :)

Photos from Comayagua

2007-05-06T15:09:00.000-07:00

Here are some photos we took this afternoon of Comayagua. Of course, these are of the nicest parts of our new city so it doesn't look this good everywhere. These photos are of spots around town that the taller (shop school) we are going to work with has fixed up with the help of the Spanish government. They have done a fabulous job.

City hall with Honduran flag:

Parque Central:

Plaza San Francisco:

La Catedral and Parque Central:

Caxa Real:

We will post another update of how we are doing here soon.

Comayagua, Baby!

2007-04-27T15:45:00.000-07:00

Well friends, we FINALLY know where we are living and what we will be doing for the next 2 years. Our new home is Comayagua, a city of about 100,000 on the highway between San Pedro Sula and Tegucigalpa. It doesn’t look like much from the highway at first glance (i.e. the makings of a big, dirty city) but that is because this is the outskirts and it’s not fair to judge any city from the highway. It is actually quite a charming city in the central district – with Spanish colonial style churches, plazas and buildings. The homes and businesses are colorful and there are shops bursting with things to buy. (This is quite a change from Cantarranas, where there were only small pulperias – convenience stores – and you were lucky if the milk or water truck had come that day to restock their meager inventories.) The streets are busy with cars and pedestrians, but not in an overwhelming way, and the city streets are relatively clean. There are several supermarkets with all kinds of types of food (we even saw turkey pastrami lunch meat in one – wow) and there are two vegetable markets. Again, this is quite a change from Cantarranas where we had one vegetable store with half way rotten produce and one entrepreneurial farmer who sold vegetables from his truck in the streets. He would drive around announcing incoherent promotions through his loud speaker and we would run after him with the hopes of buying a fresh avocado. But I digress. We are very excited to live here in Comayagua and we feel very lucky to have been given such a nice site.

When we were first told our new home at our "site announcement luncheon" on Monday afternoon, we weren’t sure what to think. At first all we knew is it was a big city, and we hadn’t seen too much to get excited about in big cities in Honduras so far. Some of our friends here got some beautiful spots in the mountains of western Honduras, some people in the health project even got sites on the Caribbean coast (lucky bastards!) so we slightly jealous. But that was before visiting Comayagua and realizing that we too were given a great spot. Many were given Cantarranas-like towns, which aren’t bad for their tranquility and the fact that everyone knows your name, but we have to admit that we are pretty happy that we have stores where things like turkey pastrami can be bought. There is even a movie theater here.

We are close to an American military base, so people in Comayagua have had exposure to gringo faces. There are about 500 soldiers at the base, not including the contractors who support the operations out there. We’ve already seen a few around town, and I already got hit on by a few at the supermarket last night. (yay.)

All this talk about the city and I haven’t mentioned our new jobs yet. We are REALLY excited about the contacts Peace Corps has set up for us here. We have each been given main counterparts but we plan to work together in the beginning as we learn our way around the different organizations and as our Spanish improves. My main counterpart is the Escuela Taller de Comayagua, an organization that teaches vocational skills (carpentry, electrical work and metal work) to youth and men and women from the marginal neighborhoods of Comayagua. The really interesting part about the school is that it is using funds from a Spanish government endowment and funds from the Honduran Institute of Anthropology and History to repair and refurbish the wealth of colonial monuments in Comayagua. Several buildings have already been repaired with these funds (all through the work of the students in the school) and the results have been spectacular. We toured the main cathedral in town and it looks absolutely beautiful. It reminded us of a church in Andalucía (in the southern part of Spain) but with a Honduran colonial flare. They have given us a long list of things we could help them with at the school, including teaching students basic business skills, helping them form a foundation for the school, several research projects and possibly some projects in our old lines of work involving compiling financial statements or assessing internal controls.

Javi’s main counterpart is the Chamber of Commerce in Comayagua and an organization called FIDE. They have mostly expressed an interest in us helping them give technical sessions to local businesses (again teaching general business topics) and helping them with the exportation process of several different types of fruits and vegetables to the US, Canada and Europe. We have a lot to learn about exporting produce to the United States, but we are really excited to understand more and look for ways we can help.

Both our counterparts have been extremely professional and have also been very understanding of our situation (i.e. Spanish difficulties and being foreigners). During our visit to Comayagua, our counterparts have treated us with great respect showing us around the city, introducing us to integral people of the community and offering their help and support in any capacity that we could use it. It seems like we have stepped back into the professional world here in Comayagua, and we are both going to have to step it up a bit after a laxy dazy school environment in Cantarranas. We both have a lot to learn about our different organizations and Spanish wise, but we are excited for the challenge.

I know this entry is starting to get lengthy but I wanted to write one final note about Comayagua. We will be sharing this city with another volunteer who we have been in training with from the health project. He is actually from Albuquerque believe it or not, and we are excited to have his company because he is a really interesting, smart and funny guy.
We are here in Comayagua until Sunday, and then we will head back to Santa Lucia for a few more days of training with all the projects together. We have two more days of language class and a few more meetings about general stuff, and then we will be sworn in as Volunteers Thursday, May 3 at the US Embassy. After that, we will be coming here to Comayagua for good!
Obviously internet access will not be problem like it was Cantarranas so we should be posting a bit more regularly again, as long as we have something interesting to say. We'll also post some pictures next time, too.

Bye for now.

Almost there

2007-04-14T10:41:00.000-07:00

Buenos dias friends and family! I wanted to leave a quick update for you on our status in Cantarranas. There isn’t a whole lot to report since things have been moving along pretty slowly. In the last two weeks we had Semana Santa (week of April 2), which meant a half week of work and then a whole lot of sitting around waiting for the rest of the week to pass. Cantarranas doesn’t exactly have a lot of activities, so time moved slowly that week. As you all already know, there isn’t internet, there is no place to see a movie, theres only a few options for places to eat, and theres only one bar that isn’t a scarry ¨bolo¨ hang out (Honduran drunks are called ¨bolos¨). Theres the river, but it has a whole lot of trash and pollution so its not the greatest for swimming and cooling off. We did fine and had a nice relaxing Semana Santa, but its hard if you have lots of free time and are not in your own home to enjoy it. Javi is actually a lot better at the host family thing than I am, and he had less complaints about the long weekend than I did. But, we handle things differently. Mostly I am looking forward to being in our site, having a project, having independence again and having our own house. That is why we came down here, and we knew this time would be tuff and trying, but sometimes it is overwhelming and we get caught up in the tuff times we have right now.

Thankfully this past week (April 9) moved a bit quicker. We gave another charla in the schools on Friday. Part of the Peace Corps world wide initiative is HIV/AIDS education and recently they’ve asked everyone to participate regardless of where you are located and what your project is. We got a day’s training on Thursday on how to give the talk and then we were thrown right into it on Friday to give the presentation to a bunch of 7^th and 8^th graders. Although I thought it was random and I didn’t feel I was technically qualified nor did I feel I had good enough Spanish to give the talk, it actually went pretty well. I think the kids learned a lot and we survived talking about AIDS, condoms and sex IN SPANISH in front of PRETEENS for FOUR hours. Yes, four hours.

Next week is more language training and a business simulation with kids in the middle school. This will be the last hoop they make us jump through before we are FINALLY told our sites and projects on APRIL 23. After that we get to go visit our sites and then make the trip back to Santa Lucia for a few last days altogether. Then, on May 3, we are sworn in as volunteers at the Embassy and we will go off (all 51 of us in the three projects – health, business and water/sanitation) to our sites all over Honduras. We are going crazy waiting to find this all out.

So, my next posting should be where we will be living for the next 2 years.......

Until then....hasta luego.

2007-03-31T14:04:00.000-07:00

Greetings from Cantarranas!! (Well, actually a few towns over in Valle de Angeles, where there is actually internet.) The pic to the left has been our new home the last 2 weeks. If you follow the long road on the far right of the picture, you'll see a white building at the top of the road. This building is the entrance to the town cemetary, and we live very close, just a few houses away.

Our new family is a young grandmother, her grandson who is 4 years old, and her daughter who is home only on the weekends. (She goes to a university in Tegucigalpa during the week.) They are a sweet family and their home definitely has a cheerier and more welcoming atmosphere. Its not that our Santa Lucia family wasn’t nice, but they have had aspirantes (trainees) stay with them several times a year for the past several years. With this family, the experience still has the novelty factor. We have a small room (maybe a 1/3 of the size in Santa Lucia) and although we’ve been cursing having a lot of luggage at the moment, we know we’ll be thankful when that wonderful day comes that we get our own house.

The grandmother (her name is Belinda) is a sweetheart. She treats us fantastically!!! She is a great cook and will very patiently tell us anything we ask about Honduras, as well as patiently listen to our (okay my) broken Spanish. Her grandson, Eric, is wild about Javi and can't wait for him to get home from training everyday. He doesn't have any male role models around so his favorite thing is to play fight with Javi or have gun fights. He has a small speech impediment and has troubles saying his ¨r's,¨ so he calls me ¨sayita.¨

Cantarranas is a very tranquillo town. There are palm trees and colorful buildings, with a beautiful white and yellow catholic church in the middle of town. The people are friendly and it definitely has the feel of a community. Chickens run around free, as do many street dogs, and there are donkeys, horses, ox, and occassionally a fat pig in the unpaved streets. Some of the kids in town have learned our names so they will shout them out at us as we pass by. Eric has recently just gotten three baby chicks. The first day we got them I got very excited and wanted to hold them all the time. Right after this particular picture with the pollito was taken, it pooped in my hands. Nice.

In addition to the language training and normal business sessions we have on weekdays, we've been doing a few activities in the local schools as well. As an advanced Spanish speaker, they've placed Javi in the local high school to teach a series of 7 clases about goal setting and professionalism. (Javi speaking now -->) There are 22 students in my class ranging from 16 to 25 years old. Many kids go to school for a while drop out to work and help the family and then sometimes go back to school again. I have done four classes to date and some have gone well and then others not as much. We have covered how to resumes, cover letters, and different interpersonal skills that could help them professionally. It has been a great experience getting up in front of the students and trying to relate with them.

(Sara again) As an intermediate speaker, the Spanish teachers had us give a 30 minute presentation to a class in elementary school. My grade was 5th grade. I survived as far as my Spanish goes, and I think they had fun. We played 2 games and then talked about the cultural differences between Honduras and the US. I felt like a movie star in there. They wanted me to say things in English, just so they could hear someone speaking a different language, and they would jump and clap. They were surrounding me before and after class asking me a million different questions and lavishing me with compliments. Like I said, movie star!!!

I know this is getting long, but I've got one more topic I wanted to write about. We don't get to post that much right now so I want to make it good.

Cantarranas has problems with water – basically that it comes infrequently and randomly with it not coming at all sometimes. When I say infrequent and random, I mean every few days; when I say not-at-all, I mean after the usual few days have passed and water still has not come. We have not yet experience the not-at-all, but I figure that will eventually happen while we are here since we will be here a little over 5 weeks in all. To deal with water coming every few days, Hondurans use something called the “pila.” I have not yet explained the pila phenomenon. We had one back in Santa Lucia too but our host family had back-up tanks so that you didn’t notice your water use as much. The tanks provided running water, showers and flushing toilets. The pila is where you store your water if you do not have running water all the time. It is a big cement box that comes up to about the waste level. It’s open at the top, with a cement scrubbing surface to the side. You wash your dishes here with this water, you wash your clothes, you wash your hands, you fill your pot of water to cook with, you flush the toilet with this water (with buckets), and you heat this water to take a shower (also with buckets).

When you see how much water you use, because you can see the water level going down every day in the pila, you realize how much fresh water people need to conduct their daily lives. And we are by no means big spenders of water in this house. Take for example the bucket showers I mentioned above. We take our showers outside in a brick bathroom that has an open ceiling. It’s actually nice (except for when it is a chilly morning) and kind of feels “natural.” There is bucket of stove-heated water in the shower with a smaller bucket next to it that you use to pour the water on your body. The larger bucket can’t hold more than 7 or 8 gallons of water, and this bucket is enough water for Javi and me both to take a shower. I was asking the other day to a friend in one of my Spanish classes how much water the average shower-taker in the States uses. He said 22 gallons. Also, according to him (Sean is his name), the average toilet flush uses 2.5 gallons, versus here I can’t see us using more than 1/2 - 1 gallon to flush with a bucket, unless someone has had a particularly nasty episode of diarrhea. Our outside toilet is the picture to the right and shower to the left. Its super clean because Belinda cleans the bathroom EVERY day, it just looks a little rougher because its not what we're used to back home.

Well thats it for now, kids. Thanks for your continued readership and we will post again when we get the chance.

Internet will definitely be iffy

2007-03-17T14:18:00.000-07:00

Hey all. Just wanted to let you all know that posts may be far and few between for the next 5 weeks. Our next town for business training, Cantarranas (aka San Juan de Flores) is internet-less. Right now, as trainees they have us on travel restrictions which would make it hard to travel to the next town over for internet. Our project director is trying to work on lifting the travel ban so that we will be able to communicate with the outside world during our training, so I'm hopeful. My guess is that they'll let us, so check in on us in a week or two and I will definitely post if I have the opportunity.
Our lives there in Cantarranas will be a bit different from here. We've had a hot shower and washing machine here in Santa Lucia, and apparently we will have an outdoor latrine and cold shower (shared by 5) in our new host family's home. I've heard rumors about dirt floors and bucket showers, so I will let you know when we can if that is the case. Either way, we are excited for a change of routine from here in Santa Lucia.
More later.........

2007-03-13T17:19:00.000-07:00

Quick Facts on Honduras:

Population of Honduras – 7 million

Real GDP of Honduras - $8 billion dollars

Annual Remittances from Honduran emigrants working in EEUU and Spain - $2.2 Billion

Emigrants in EEUU – One million

Percent of Hondurans under the age of 18 – 50%

Exchange Rate 19 Lempiras to one dollar

Minimum Wage – 1,300 Lempiras per month (40 hr work week)

Daily Salary of a waiter in Santa Lucia – 80 Lemps a day

Middle Class Income – 8,000-12,000 lempiras a month

Avg Mortgage Rate – 18% (2005 number quoted by US Embassy charla)

Average Education – 4.7 years

Some prices of items we have encountered so far (mostly in Santa Lucia):

Baleadas (Flour tortilla with beans, eggs, pico de gallo, and cheese) – 7 Lemps

Hamburger with fries – 50 Lemps

Fresh Fish Dinner – 130 Lemps

Cup of coffee – 5 Lemps

News Paper – 6 Lemps

Beers at bar – 15-20 Lemps

Bottle of Rum at Mini Market – 100 Lemps

Hour at internet café – 20 Lemps

3 hour bus ride from Tegucigalpa to Yojoa Lake – 90 Lemps

7 hour bus ride from Tegucigalpa to La Ceiba – 175 Lemps

Bus ride from Santa Lucia to Tegucigalpa (approx 30 mins) – 7 Lemps

Taxi fare in Tegucigalpa - 50 to 80 Lemps

Entry fee to Cataratas at Yohoa Lake – 30 Lemps

Guided Tour of waterfall – 25 Lemps

Night stay for 6 at Yohoa Lake – 750 Lemps

Call to the U.S. – 2 Lemps per minute

Stamp to send letter to U.S. – 25 Lemps

Loaf of freshly baked artisan bread – 25 Lemps

Lunch at a food stall on the street - 25 Lemps

Daily walk around allowance of PC trainee – 55 Lem

Here is another picture from training. This one was a business trip to a local farm here in Santa Lucia. This farmer grew lettuce, cabbage and corn, and we talked about problems and challenges he encountered. (This photo is courtesy of our friend Cliff).

Las Vegas and the Waterfall

2007-03-13T16:59:00.000-07:00

Javi and I returned from our volunteer visit yesterday afternoon (Sunday, the 11^th). Our trip to visit the couple in La Ceiba on the north coast was cancelled last minute due to rain and weather complications (i.e. washed out bridges) so we were sent to Las Vegas, Santa Barbara instead. This turned out to be a great visit and we really enjoyed ourselves. Although the couple works in youth development, it was nice to see their house, talk about their daily lives and get some advice. Seeing their set up brought out my longing for our own place again but we know the host family stay is part of the deal so we are trying to roll with it. We just found out today that our total family time will be only 5 months instead of 6 (woo-hoo!) but that is still 4 months and 1 week away. Anyway, after the visit with the couple in Las Vegas, we met up with some other volunteers and aspirantes (volunteers-in-training) and did a few cosas turisticas. With the aide of experienced volunteer “jaloners”, we hitched a ride north from the Las Vegas area to the biggest waterfall in Honduras, Pulhapanzak Falls. (Moms, don’t worry about the hitching. Catching a “jalon” is a perfectly legitimate means of transportation in rural Honduras, and with 8 touristy-looking gringos, we definitely had safety in numbers.)

The waterfall was an incredible experience. Guides hang out around the falls, and for 25 lmps a person (~$1.25) we were taken down a path that led to a spot where we could stand right behind the cascade. I cannot explain how exhilarating it was to first of all get to that spot, and then look up, completely soaked, at water rushing down just in front of you from 43 meters (140 ft) up. The picture above is of our friend Kyle jumping into some water pools after we had gone behind the falls. After the waterfall, we stayed at a decaying (but still charming) hotel on the lake called Agua Azul. This place is famous for bird watching, and I had a chance to walk around Sunday morning to check out some birds. Without a good camera lens, binoculars, a bird book or any knowledge about birds, I wasn’t too sophisticated out there, but I enjoyed it. We had fun on Saturday night talking with other volunteers from the Lago de Yojoa area, listening to the “chisme” (gossip) and generally having a good time. We feel like we picked up a few good pointers from those guys.

So now we are back in Santa Lucia for our last weekend in training as a big group. On Sunday morning we will be heading off to Cantarranas (with no internet access, bummer) for our field based training which is business specific. This will be for 5 weeks and involves, of course, moving in with another family. Maybe we’ll get less Manteca? Probably not…our host mom right now is actually pretty good with that so it might get worse. By the way, the diarrhea has calmed down again. However, according to some volunteers, a poorly chosen diet of street food and other no-no’s can lead to two years of diarrhea. Yikes!

On a side note having nothing to do with the above, Javi and I decided to compile a list having to do with the subject of travel. This is just random stuff we’ve noticed which is slightly interesting:

Many buses in Honduras are actually old US school buses. Some of them still have the school district painted on the side. One aspirante summed it up beautifully. He sad “Central America is littered with the school buses of my childhood.”
Speaking of buses and litter – apparently the kosher thing to do with trash on the bus is to toss it out the window. This is unfortunate since the roads are littered with churro (chip) bags and various and sundry bus food items. In Tegus, the capital, there are MOUNTAINS of trash – in the river and every which place.
Nursing two year olds on the micro-bus, with many aspirantes standing right over, is apparently not looked down upon.
From our experiences to date, there are no real bus stations, even in the capital. It is random parking lots or spots on the side of the road.
There is no such thing as dotted lines or passing lanes. Buses, trucks and cars pass each other in a literal free for all, with blind curves on the nation’s most popular highway being a favorite with the bus drivers.

Well, that’s all for now. We will have to figure out something with the internet situation in Cantarranas, but we will figure it out and post an update as soon as we can.

diarrhea and other things of importance

2007-03-01T16:41:00.000-08:00

Hi there! Just a few things to update you on. First of all (these are not in any particular order) the "no problems with the stomach" issue no longer holds true. There is definitely some activity going on and lets just say, things are loosening up. Is that too much information? Hey - you guys asked for it, so we just tell it how it is! Our mama has been feeding us a lot of beans lately with a whole lot of manteca (lard) in it, so that adds to the problem. Good thing is, we are learning more and more about our mama, and she is a very sweet lady. She knows that we like liquados (drinks with fruit and milk) and she has been making them for us at every meal.
Second thing of interest is we found out today where our "volunteer visit" will be. This is a Peace Corps tradition where they send volunteers out to spend a few days with a current volunteer to aide in our "learning of the ways" here in Honduras. We get to go to La Ceiba, which is Honduras's biggest city on the beach! Woo-hoo, el Caribe! Its not all glamorous though, since La Ceiba is poor and has some rough areas. Not to worry though, we will be taken care of by and staying with another PC couple who has been living there the past few years. We hear they are a fun couple. We go next Thursday - Sunday.
This coming Saturday morning, the business group is going for a hike in a nearby protected area. Javi and I are excited for that and we'll definitely take some photos for the blog.
Thats all for now.
HASTA LUEGO!

2007-02-25T16:56:00.000-08:00

As promised, here are a few photos. I know most people would rather look at a few pictures then read a long narrative, so we'll work on getting more. I'll also try to keep up the narratives for those who have the time and patience.

2007-02-25T16:53:00.000-08:00

Santa Lucia is dripping with beautiful flowers, but this tree takes the cake.

2007-02-25T16:49:00.000-08:00

Saturday morning, Javi and I and a few other trainees walked to the top of a nearby mountain for a view of Tegucigalpa and the valley. In this photo you can see Santa Lucia in the background.

2007-02-25T16:46:00.000-08:00

As we got closer to the top of the mountain, the road had more horses and cows than people.

2007-02-25T16:43:00.000-08:00

Our training center is located in a beautiful building on a steep hill. This patio is where we like to hang out during our breaks and chat.

2007-02-25T16:35:00.000-08:00

After the business walk around, we talked about the things we learned at this café with a beautiful view over the valley.

2007-02-25T16:31:00.000-08:00

The business trainees got to walk around Santa Lucia on Friday afternoon and talk with local vendors. This picture was taken at the front gate of a pulperia (local general store) where we got to ask any question we could think of about their business.

Aqui estamos en Santa Lucia

2007-02-21T18:20:00.000-08:00

Greetings! To our readers (if there are any), this is our first posting DESDE HONDURAS…woohoo! We have been getting used to our new lives and schedules here in Santa Lucia. After traveling 16 hours Sunday to get here from Washington DC, we were exhausted. We met our host family who we will be staying with for the next month, and although they are nice and their house is comfortable, we were both thinking to ourselves…what the hell are we doing here?!!! This is natural of course, and that unsettled feeling has lessened with each passing day. Our first night here, our anxieties were making us question our decision to be here, but already we have started to appreciate this new way of life. Although I’m sure everyone goes through this, especially the first couple days when you are still working through the awkwardness of living with complete strangers who don’t speak your language, but it was a bit hard on us as a married couple. Some might say it would be easier, since we have a “buddy,” but it is also more challenging, thinking about our friends back home who have started building their lives around children, professional jobs (that actually pay) and new homes. This new adventure has not been a step in that direction, and you naturally will question sometimes. HOWEVER, that is not to say we are not enjoying ourselves immensely. We are having a great time practicing our Spanish and we are really looking forward to our business projects . We haven’t found out what those are exactly, but we’ll keep you all (or the ONE person who actually reads this) clued in when we find out.

Our host family has a nice home here in Santa Lucia and we even have a hot shower. Some of our fellow trainees have different situations. MANY do not have the luxury of hot showers, and one guy has 4 burros that live just outside his window, who hee and haw and serve as his alarm clock. Awesome!!!

Our stomach health is still good (although we hear its coming), we’ve made a few friends and life is generally going pretty well for us.

We have a pretty little spot of Honduras here, and we promise to get some pictures up next time we post something. We have yet to take a picture here, but it has been very hard to get much time away from our training and from hanging out with Alba Rosa, our host mom. She is a great cook and they do actually eat chile and other spicy stuff here, so as you can imagine, we are very content.

That’s all for now. We’ll check in a little later. Ciao amigos!

Our Address

2007-02-17T19:14:00.000-08:00

If you'd like to send us any goodies (especially books in the near future) use these addresses for now:

For postal service (USPS) mail/packages:
Javier or Sara Prada, PCT
Voluntario del Cuerpo de Paz
Apartado Postal 3158
Tegucigalpa, Honduras, America Central

For FedEx, UPS, or DHL mail/packages:
Javier or Sara Prada, PCT
Voluntario del Cuerpo de Paz
Avenida Republica de Chile #401
Colonia Palmira
Tegucigalpa, Honduras, America Central

February 17, 2007

2007-02-17T18:59:00.000-08:00

Well, we're finally off (fingers crossed) tomorrow at 3 am. Washington DC has treated us well but we're ready to get this party started. We hear Santa Lucia (our training site for the next month or so) has only one internet cafe with so-so speed so we will update you on our arrival as soon as it is possible.
Spending the last week here has allowed us to get to know our fellow PCT's better than a "usual" staging would allow. They're an intelligent, adventurous and accomplished bunch and we are both proud and humbled to be in their company.
Hasta pronto.