Pics

You guys are out of luck on the whole picture thing, and they just take forever to load. I will ask the other volunteers in the area where has better and faster internet connection.

Week one thru two at site

Let’s see how long it takes me to get this blog up.

I just finished reading a great book Still Alice by Lisa Genova. It is a fictional story told from the perspective of a woman who is diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. It is an interesting story and provides a lot of insight into the current treatment methods and how Alzheimer’s affects people and their families. The author is a neuroscientist, and therefore took great pains to get the science right in the story.

Speaking of books, please send me some. I am already down to one book left from my original hoard. My mailing address has changed; to get it, please call the folks, or email me and I will send it to you. Our safety and security guy brought up the point of how easy it would be to find us if we even just mention the town we live in, so we’ll keep that a secret for now. I’m sure over the two years I will either forget not to say the name, or I will give away enough clues that you could figure it out, but oh well.

I am taking some Spanish time. I don’t really have anything to do in the office so I am reading some, and studying more Spanish. I went into the office yesterday and realized I had nothing to do of yet there, so until work gets rolling, I don’t know how often I will be in there. I have my own office, but really, what am I supposed to do? It’s much more comfortable in the shade under the tree in my patio than in my office. Half of the time we go out into the aldeas to get to know the people there are to get acquainted with the water systems.

Anything I haven’t told you about in the last few months?

Nothing much happened this past weekend. On Saturday I went to the birthday party of my boss’s one year old daughter. It was very cute. They had a lot of games and whatnot for the kids there.

Sunday I was even lazier.

Tomorrow I head back out into the aldeas. I should be in decent shape after two years if this keeps up. The other day we were out walking for four hours. We are not talking about some nice flat walk either, nope, straight up and straight down.

Let’s see, every day when things happen I think “I should write about this,” but when I actually get in front of my computer, I don’t remember them.

One thing I do remember is that I saw a burrito the other day. Not the food (its Mexican not Honduran), but a baby donkey. To imply small or cute here, you add –ito to the end, so donkey (burro) is burrito. I like corny things and the though made me laugh.

I talked to some of the other people in my training group last night. Everyone seems to be doing fine. We are all pretty much in the same boat, just trying to figure out what you are supposed to be doing. In that respect it’s not much different than other new jobs. We just happen to be doing it in Honduras.

I do more ironing here than any other time in my life. I don’t know how my clothes get so wrinkled. No one else had this problem in training, but my clothes looked horrible if I didn’t iron. So, after two years I should be a master ironer too. I will also be a master at fixing clothes. Doing this type of work and hand-washing on a cement slab are rough on the clothes. Then there are the ubiquitous barbed wire fences, I put a small rip in a pair of pants today. I have a count of how many barbed wire fences I have crawled under or through in my time here, I am at 31 right now, so after two years that should be an impressive number.

Just so you don’t think I am stuck in the stone-age, I have cable tv in my room. My family brought in an old tv in my room. I have an incredible collection of channels. I have the speed channel (don’t know if they will play the luge and bobsledding in the winter or not though down here, but I hope so), discovery, animal planet, hbo, starz, and a bunch of other ones. A bunch of them are in English with only Spanish subtitles. This is kind of a mixed bag for me, on the one hand I washed two and a half men in English last night, but on the other, I need to work on understanding Spanish, not English. This should be an internal battle for me, what should I watch.

At work I am having the same internal battle I have always had, trying to be more social. I think I should just tell them that I don’t speak a lot in English as well. They have all been really nice, and I have had the opportunity to work with just about everyone who works with the organization. Oh, be jealous though, on Friday I get to attend an all day lecture on how to prepare a budget. I’m excited! One of the hardest things so far was trying to pay attention all last Friday to the seminar I guess you would call it, and that topic was a riot compared to budgets. Oh well. –Later: I just found out that I don’t have to attend Friday! Yeah! No budgets for me!

There has to be something else to add, if I could get my hands on a decent speed connection I would add some pictures, but everything I have seen here is SLOW. At work we have dial up, yeah, remember that old stuff. It’s all I can do to have the patience of doing the bare minimum online there.

So, be content in knowing that I am safe and happy here, getting to know the culture and the people more every day.

I just came back from quite the walk in the aldeas (it appears that I didn’t get ticks this time). I have had a good time going out to the aldeas. I guess its really weird from me that so many people here know exactly where their water comes from. In the US people just know that when you turn the knob, there is water. Here, it is more complicated. Well, the people that run the water system are your neighbors, and there are meetings for everyone to know what is up with the system. Its funny how little they pay for their water here. There is a big push from the government right now to raise how much people pay because its just not sustainable (big entry on sustainable development coming soon). The thing is, to bring the water, it only costs a little, especially if the plumber that fixes the line when there are problems is a volunteer. There is just not planning for the future, so if something happened to the water tank for instance, there isn’t enough money to pay for a new one. Thus, there is a push to plan a little better for the future. No one is trying to get them to pay US rates for their water, but a little more so that they can handle what comes in the future and still have water is better. Its hard to get people to change their ways, especially in some of the rural and poor areas where the money could be spent on other things. Water is important, but why pay more is kind of the mindset. If they have already had a system for 20 years, without changing the fee, why change now?

Food

So, the other day I had my first no more beans time. I was coming home and was hoping that somehow the supper would not include beans. Luckily enough, it didn’t. It was fried food, and after my time in Pespire I am more addicted to fried food than any other time in my life. Also, addicted to coca-cola. Or pepsi. Love the stuff, and was so excited when my host mom bought a bottle for the house. I am getting better at eating food off the bone. The fruit harvest time is coming up in the next few weeks here, so I will have all kinds of new fruits to try. I’m still not drinking coffee. This is the BIG joke in my organization. We went somewhere the other day and the guy had a hard time believing that someone doesn’t like coffee. Another person thought I was Mormon because I don’t drink coffee. I told that no, I’m not Mormon, I just don’t drink coffee.

Dogs

This country has a lot of dogs. Its so funny, in the states almost all dogs are fixed, but none are here (none in the aldeas), I’ve never seen so many in tact dogs in my life. We had some interesting some interesting experiences with dogs today. Most dogs here are pretty chill. They just kind of lay there or walk around, without bugging you, but every once in a while there are some dumb dogs. So, at the last house we went to today, there were three dogs that came up to us barking. They really weren’t running viciously, just walking quickly while barking. The puppy of the bunch was the one that barked for the longest time. They made no attempt to bite anyone, just kind of stood there, and when we didn’t move, they sat around. Then later, while we were in the truck, a dog saw us coming and ran into the road to bark at us, and stayed in the road, just kept walking a little bit forward and barking back at us, while we were trying to move forward. It was funny.

two and a half more weeks for you

In this episode of what is Jill doing…

The despedida was amazing. It was a little unorganized in the beginning, it was supposed to start at 5:30pm, but everyone was late. At 6:00pm my Mom and brother arrived, and were very excited to tell me they arrived on time! So, I started off with the introduction, and only slightly butchered the Spanish language which is an improvement for me. My host family and I went first on the good-bye/ diploma give away. So, side note, Hondurans apparently love diplomas, they are very big down here, so we gave them diplomas thanking them for their participation. My Mom yet again retold the story that I am a great older sister because I can’t go anywhere without her.

Later, we gave the facilitators here a small gift of appreciation. Later, we served everyone balleadas (tortillas, beans, cheese, eggs, and chismol). They were incredibly delicious. Later there was dancing. At one point I was dancing with my brother (12 years old), and he wouldn’t be more than one step away from me. I had to use my arm to try and push him away a little. At one point I moved my hip and hit him, which means he was way too close. Over all everyone had a good time.

Today’s Spanish class was really laid back. At one point we listened to a song and discussed the theme’s in it. We had the words to help us out on this one. The song was more poetry to music than the literal American pop junk that comes out, so there was a lot of talking.

Later we finished out FBT training with a review of the reporting system. Now we are done!

Leaving my family was a little hard Saturday morning. My Mom started to cry. I felt really bad, I was leaving while my sister Paola was in the shower, and she came out in a towel, with her hair all lathered up in shampoo to say goodbye to me.

It turns out I wasn’t leaving Pespire quite yet. The bus driver didn’t have the right time to be here, so we left an hour and a half late, but that meant I could talk to friends in Pespire a little more before we said goodbye. Getting everyone in with luggage was fun, and then we got to put the business group in the bus. Since we were really later, we got permission to stop in Teguc to eat, and I ate way too much Burger King. I got really frustrated with my Spanish, I mean I could understand almost everything that was said but when the girl asked me about my order, I couldn’t get a word of it. BAHHHH!!!!!

It was nice to get back to Las Canadas and the cool weather here. I was enjoying it earlier. I can understand my family now!!! Even my host dad, which I didn’t think was going to be possible! They have all commented already on how much more I can speak now and how much more I understand. I got to go talk to my neighbor Annie for a bit which was really nice. Oh, it was really funny with my bag (if I can I will put up the picture). I carried all my stuff down the hill myself, I didn’t want my 55+? Year old mother helping me out, so I carried it down. The thing was really heavy. When I got here, we had problems with my door, so I put the bag down to go to the bathroom, well my parents got the door open while I was away and they moved it for me, and were very concerned that a woman was carrying all that weight because it is “bad for the ovaries.” I am not joking. It gives you an insight into the fun times the health group has. By the way, backpack wasn’t too bad; I managed to carry it, my regular backpack and another bag down the hill without trouble. Later in the night I watched soccer with my host dad. Now it is time to organize my stuff, right now it looks like the backpack erupted.

I was so excited when I got here. I expected to understand my host Mom, brother and sister, but wasn’t so sure if I would understand my host dad. I was so excited that I tried to start a conversation about the immigration of people to Tegucigalpa and the other major cities in Honduras. He didn’t take the bite to get into the conversation. Another trainee always talks to her father about random topics usually involving politics. Her first week here she got into a two hour discussion, and the other women of the house just left one by one until it was just the two of them. I could not have handled the discussion back then, but right then I wanted to talk about it to show off my new Spanish skills. If I had arrived with this level of Spanish I probably would have thought that I was fluent when I got here, and then promptly realized the truth, but I am still happy to be able to talk and to understand now.

The next morning we were going to the local national park. I got up and heard these birds which were very confused little things. Note: In Honduras we have bars on our doors and windows. So, the birds were sitting on the bars and flying into the glass. Multiple times, we are not talking once or twice here. I thought it was really funny. I think it is because of the reflection on the glass, but I am not sure. They returned doing their same trick the next day. My first time here people kept telling me about the birds who lived in the tree right outside my window, but I never saw them and really thought that they had lied to me. Now, I know they were right.

So, the bus to the park was a half hour late and packed. We had to get in through the back and were jammed in there. I was amazed when we kept picking more people up to. Eventually we get off the bus, and start walking. About a half hour into the walk we find out we have to walk like two hours just to make it to the front entrance, and this was no easy walk people. It was steep for an hour and a half. One guy and I brought up the rear of the line. At points I just wanted to tell everyone else to go on without us, and then we decided we would just wait outside the park entrance because we wouldn’t have energy to get in. But, eventually we made it! The hiking in the park really isn’t that bad, most of the path we took was actually level most of the time. We saw the remains of old water systems and old mining buildings. We also saw what appeared to be a toucan. It was in the trees and kind of hard to see, but it had the right shaped beak. I am not a bird person so don’t really know my Central American birds well.

Eventually we hiked to a large waterfall. It is not the big, lot of water falling down, but instead a big cliff with a little water sprinkling down. It is the beginning of the wet season, give it a few more weeks and I am sure it will be more impressive. We met a bunch of Americans there that were volunteering in Honduras. We actually saw more gringos in the park than Hondurans. Maybe the Hondurans are smart enough to use the other entrance which has to be easier to get to. The walk back to the bus stop was just as pleasant because the sun had come out and after a while my boots have no shock absorbing abilities. The bus back home was just as packed.

Monday was in general pretty boring. We have a lot of core, which means going over a lot of policy. Now, I know that most people love to sit around and learn how many rules they are gong to have to obey, but really my attention was slipping. Most of them I can understand why they have them, but to be honest, most people don’t have a lot of motivation to be in classes. We all just want to start to work.

Tuesday was more of the same. I bombed my last Spanish interview. But, the good news is I get to be a volunteer, and I scored low enough that peace corps is going to pay for a tutor for me. They may not know this yet, but they are.

Wednesday morning I finally dragged myself out of bed early enough to get my laundry done in the morning. We didn’t have water in my house in Pespire for almost a week the last week of FBT, therefore I didn’t do laundry because I didn’t want to use up all their water that they had. So, I had a bunch of laundry to do (correction, still have a lot of laundry to do, I just did the essentials earlier.

In the afternoon we had a despedida for the families here. Ahh, we had one day to plan so it had a few kinks, but still worked out well. I got to do “Cotton-eyed Joe” yet again in front of a large group of people. I later realized for the punta (traditional Garafuna dance) my tevas just don’t cut it.

So, Garifunas if I haven’t already explained it are Hondurans with a complicated story. The group started from a group of slaves that survived either a shipwreck, or mutiny or something. They lived on the Bay islands and along the north coast for a while. Eventually there was some heavy American influence. Also, they are part of Honduras, so there is a mixture of several languages and so are their culture represents it all too. The punta is a very fun dance that should not be done in tevas. And neither should the meringue, you just can’t move your feet well enough in them.

I had an excellent conversation with my family at night (after a little time relaxing in Valle de Angeles).

On to Thursday:

Thursday I tried just to keep telling myself that it was the last day of classes over and over again. I didn’t like the way some of the things were handled, so I was trying hard not to think of them. Luckily enough, my family is awesome, so when I got home, I just hung out with them and practiced my Spanish.

Friday (otherwise known as the big day):

Today was great! But a roller coaster of emotions. My sister did my hair for me this morning, eventually I will post pics, so keep this is mind when you see the pics. I had to run out the door to be on time, but climbing these paths in heels was a little interesting. Why was I wearing heels you ask? Well, because today was swearing in day. So, we saw everyone really dressed up for the first time. It was funny to see everyone like that though, although we did make the jokes that the counterparts are not going recognize us tomorrow in our normal garb.

We get to Teguc, and are told that some of our counterparts (people we will be working with) were already there. This provided a little bit of a panic for a lot of people who were trying to decide if our Spanish was up to the task, and trying to think of what you talk about for an hour with someone you have never met, again this is done in Spanish. So, I waited for a little bit and met my counterpart, and I have two years to describe him, so I won’t do it now. I did see some adorable pics of his daughter on his phone though. After an hour or so at the Peace Corps office, we went to the US Embassy. My counterpart had a little problem getting in because someone forgot to put his name of the list, and therefore he had to go talk to people for a while.

The ceremony was nice though. A few people talked, we got to sing the Honduran and American national anthems which was fun. One of us gave a speech which was very good, he was the only superior in our group, and we all appreciated it. He had some people in tears. Before and after the ceremony there was a lot of picture taking going on, and thanks to a friend, you will eventually see a bunch of pics. She forgot her camera therefore she used mine since I have not been very camera happy since arriving in Honduras.

After the ceremony, we went to the training center with our counterparts. There we had a very nice catered lunch. Afterwards we had counterpart afternoon. At times I was just very, very tired. I didn’t mean disrespect, but all I wanted to do was sleep. I did talk to my counterpart some more and he has a lot of plans for me. I really have little choice but to be fluent by the end of the next three months. I will be doing a lot of work, but it also looks like there is a bunch of free time in the schedule as well. Striking a balance of working and having enough but not too much free time will require some effort and a little experience. I’m very excited to leave tomorrow morning. I will miss this family a lot though.

Saturday

I said good bye to my family this morning and finally got pictures of them all. Like I said, I haven’t been very camera happy here. My counterpart came to pick me up and we drove to Teguc to pick up his wife (daughter was already in the car). We went to the mall to have lunch. Now, I don’t like crowds normally, so crowds who speak Spanish and where I stick out so bad are nice and interesting. I can’t understand Spanish very well when there is a lot of background noise, so the subway guy and I had a good time trying to talk. That’s right, I got subway. Nice little chicken sandwich. Reminded me of home. The entire time in the mall I was pretty much just looking at the little girl because she is very cute. She is not quite sure what to make of me though. The mall is an interesting place, it has a lot of American stores and is pretty up-scale. I felt little an idiot though because I was trying not to gaulk at everything, I mean its not like I have never seen a mall before, its just that its so different than the poor villages I have seen. Its had to put the two together in your mind when they are at times only an hour away from each other. Oh, so there is a creole fast food place in the food court, and on the menu they had po-boy big daddy sandwiches. No joke, that’s what it said on the sign, in English. I love the mix of English and Spanish you get sometimes.

After our fun times at the mall we left for my town. It took us what felt like forever to get out of Teguc though. The way here wasn’t too bad. There are parts of the highway where construction trucks come and just dump the site trash along the side of the road. A system of solid waste management is needed in what seems like the entire country, and most people know this, its just such a big undertaking. There was a stretch where half of the road got washed away in three places, I didn’t understand how long ago this happened when my counterpart tried to explain it to me. By the way, my counterpart’s name is Walter. He is Honduran, just happens to have an English name. The trip here after we left teguc was only 2 hours or so. It’s a really pretty drive.

I didn’t get nervous until I got close to my site. Then I started worrying, but just as fast the nervousness got replaced by excitement. My town is really nice. It has 20,000 people more or less. There is a central park and plaza. And from what I have seen so far, seems to be really active. There are a bunch of other volunteers in the area as well, so that is pretty cool, once I can leave my site, I can easily crash with them for a little while.

So, for the first three months I cannot travel outside my site for “personal reasons.” This is to make sure that we integrate into our site. For the first two months we have to live with a host family, although really, I think I will live with mine for longer. I’ll get back to this later.

Anyways, I arrived at my house and fell in love immediately. The house is awesome. Inside the exterior walls there is a lot of sitting places. There is an inside living room, a living room under the roof, but without surrounding walls, and a place to sit outside under a huge green mango tree. Right now is mango season, so its kind of a game of Russian roulette because the mangoes are starting to fall, and the chairs are right under the tree. Obviously this isn’t too big of a problem or they wouldn’t have the chairs there. There are also two hammocks outside which make me very happy.

My family is very nice and very relaxed. I have my host Mom, my host grandmother, a host sister (around 35) and the housekeeper who live here. Oh, yeah, I have a Japanese volunteer who lives here was well, but I only saw him for two minutes the other day and he has left for the week. There is an organization like peace corps in Japan, but really I will have to ask him about it later, which means you will get more details later.

This morning I met with other volunteers from the area and explored my town a little bit. They pointed out some of the nicer places to eat and where had the best internet, etc. So, I have heard a lot about places to go in Nicaragua as well, and the border is very close to here.

Speaking of that, so, let’s discuss visitors. I can’t have visitors until August, and then can have them until Feb. of 2011. So, if you want to visit, let me know, there is plenty of time, but things kind of need to be planned in advance, especially if I take vacation time. Oh, if anyone wants to go the Bay Islands, I can go with you no problem if you pay. Apparently they are expensive, well, in comparison to the rest of Honduras, not to the States. I don’t know when I will be visiting the States yet. I’ll talk to the volunteers to see when is the best time to have visitors, and if they have any suggestions for you folks.

Oh, so mail, I will be opening up a mail box in my town this week, so hold off on mailing anything for right now (I know you all have letters waiting to be mailed). I will still receive mail that has been sent recently, but I will get mail quicker if I have a mailbox here.

Now that I am at my site I should have internet access more often. When I go to my office tomorrow I can see if I have it there, or if I need to go to an internet café. Hopefully you will get updates a little more frequently from now on. I know you love reading these huge two weeks at one go blogs, but for those of you who don’t have lot of free down time, it might be easier.

My Spanish seems to be holding up pretty well. I even had a discussion on sustainable development today all in Spanish. I got a really open ended question when I was talking to my cousin though, he pretty much asked me what I though about the problems of the world. How do you answer such a question, especially when it was pulled out of the blue like that?

Tomorrow I go to introduce myself to my counterpart agency and I think we are going to one of the villages I will be working in. Like I said, my counterpart has a lot of plans, so only time will tell what I will be up to.

Hmm, I think that is all for now. If I have internet access tomorrow, I am going to post this, if not, well, there is more to follow.

Jill

Aka Julie in my house because Jillian is too hard to say.

Ok, obviously I did not get to use the internet, we are going to have a day at the office tomorrow so hopefully I can either use the internet there or I can get to an internet café.

So, the first two days working have gone well. The first day I sat in on the orientation meeting for a bunch of contractors they have brought in to give training sessions to the water boards in the area. The thing about Spanish (for me) is that I can’t zone out and still get the gist of the conversation and I definitely got trapped in a situation when I had no clue what they were talking about. Later in the afternoon I went to an aldea (village) which I want to write nearby but it takes an hour to get there. The roads aren’t nearly as bad as the roads near Pespire, so you can actually do an acceptable speed (for a dirt road). We went and saw the source of water for that community. Then we ate dinner with the family of a co-worker in another aldea.

Today, we went in the morning to another aldea. This one was a little closer. We went to the dams and then walked the conduction line (water from the dam to the water tank near the houses). This took four hours. I am not lying. No one brought food. What I did learn though was which type of vine you can cut and drink the water from. Always good to know. I still haven’t broken down and decided I am going to drink café (coffee). In this area there is a lot of coffee, like most places in Honduras. So, people generally drink more coffee than anything else, and you start drinking really young. Eventually I am going to be a coffee drinker but I am putting this off for as long as possible, and it is kind of a joke in my office, how long is it going to take before I start asking for coffee? I was talking to my host Mom tonight and she agrees that it’s a little by little process. Maybe tomorrow I will put five drops of coffee in a cup and try to drink it.

So, what have been my food adventures lately? I am having more quantity issues right now. Especially in the aldeas, where there is no variety of food, you just eat what is in front of you, which can be a very odd cheese creation. Oh, now I remember, I had a meatloaf muffin. Not joking. Now, had it been my Mom’s meatloaf, I would have eaten it in two bites and asked for seconds, but it was Honduran meatloaf muffin. The meat here is always a little questionable, now but in some unidentifiable spices, some vegetables, and in the middle (your going to love this) wrap some really low quality cheddar cheese in a slice of not so great ham and stick an olive in the middle of all that. Well, I know some of you are now thinking that you will try to make American meatloaf muffins, and let me know how that goes. Who knows, maybe by time I return to the States, meatloaf muffins will be all the rage.

So, the first day out while we were walking and looking at a fantastic view after discussing the water system, I definitely had “I’m really here moment.” This is me, I am really in the Peace Corps and I am really working in Honduras.

So, there is not a lot of speed to this internet questions, so I will have to write. Lets see, the training with the SANAA tech was actually informative. His slide presentation had over 300 slides, most of them with very large paragraphs, so it was definitely boring at times. THe thing with spanish is that while I could understand everything he said, I couldn't do it if I wasn't paying attention. I don't remember what I put in the last blog, so forgive me if I have repeated that little tid bit.

We are leaving Pespire Saturday, so I packed the last night. My bag is huge, I only left the barest minimum out. Before packing I reread all the letters I have received which was very nice (I was trying to cut out weight, so they had to go). It was nice to have so many to read. I was packing up in my room because I thought that only my brother was home, but as I later found out, my parents have arrived very quietly. I really think this family is made up ninjas because I never hear them. I do love my family though, my Mom has said many times that I am her fourth daughter, and the oldest.

Not sure if I told you this story, but here it goes;
A while ago now, before Semana Santa, I had been invited to go to San Lorenzo with my sister. Well, I had no idea if my mother was going, so I had to ask her. Note: We can't travel without parents during training. Well, my mother made a huge deal of it, saying that I was an example for my younger sisters, that I wont travel without her. For me it was a little uncomfortable, and I had to explain to everyone why I had to ask. Last night she repeated this story to other people, so I know she wont mind me sharing it with you.

Ok, we have our despidida (going away party) tonight and I have to get going.

Jill

Updates

Two days in a row, you should feel lucky!

The past two days we have been undergoing training with a SANAA technician. SANAA is the government organization that deals with water and sanitation. So, it was interesting to see that I can now understand more than 95% of it. Then, we had to give a small charla to a local water board. I realized then that I am ready to go to my site. I still have a lot to learn, but it is enough for now. The final interview is next week, so we'll see what level they put me at. I am happy though, in the beginning I didn't think i would make it to this point.

Yeah, so I don't feel like typing a lot right now.

Take care,

Jill

two weeks at one go, i hope you are ready

Ok, folks, lets see what I can think up for you all this week. I received messages from a couple of people this week that they have been following the blog and are excited about my adventures, so in their honor, I will try to see how much I can write about the last few days.

Monday-
Monday felt like a bad day because I didn’t have a lot of free time over the weekend.
That afternoon, we discussed the progress of the La Palma water system design. It turns out we will be delivering a report that says their idea, really has very little chance of working. There is a lot that has gone into this decision, and if you really are interested in the details, let me know and I will pass them on in an email.

So, that question a while back about who won the superbowl, wasn’t rhetorical. So, if someone did post a comment with the answer, sorry, I didn’t see it, but if no one has, can you please let me know? Thanks.

Monday’s tutoring session went really well. I’m not sure how much I have described the tutoring system here, so I’ll describe it now. Twice a week I get tutoring sessions in Spanish. Like the classes, they are 100% in Spanish, because most of the Spanish teachers don’t know English, and if they do, they are trained not to speak it ever in front of us (or so it seems). This is actually a very good thing. Complete immersion into Spanish. In the beginning it was hard because you are trying to talk with no grammatical knowledge and only a very few words. Now, it is not quite so hard, although I still need to exponentially improve my Spanish vocabulary.

The difference between classes and tutoring sessions are: tutoring sessions are one on one, there is no blackboard therefore there is no new grammatical learning (or very little), and it is more like an hour long conversation. You can ask to go over a specific thing, or review a specific tense, and they will steer the conversation into areas that need those tenses. I have felt that a lot of people don’t have the attention span for an hour long conversation with a beginner, so it’s a great help to have these times. The way the language program here works is they “grade” you on how well you speak Spanish. It does not matter how much you know, but how much can actually escape your mouth. So, right now I still have troubles pronouncing a lot of words, and getting complex sentences out without stopping to think, so even though I can write fairly well, that doesn’t count. And if you think about this, it makes sense because we need to TALK to counterparts and to family members, so that is how they judge everything. The interviews really are just interviews, you are sitting there with a tape recorder having a conversation in Spanish. I like it though, and the system has taught me a lot of Spanish in two months, so I have nothing to complain about.

So, the tutoring session Monday went well. I was trying to explain in Spanish about a book I had read, Under the Banner of Heaven, which is about the fundamentalist Mormon church. Seriously, they must have picked the world’s most patient people to be Peace Corps language teachers, because some of those topics were a little fun to try and explain. And, the best part about the tutorial was that as I was leaving, my parents drove by the park and I got a jalon (ride)! I am so sick of walking my hill. At those random times when I am not sweating (Monday evening was actually kind of cool), I didn’t want to start sweating buckets because of the hill. I was very happy to see my family!

Tuesday

So, a lot of things happened Tuesday. We started leaving the subjunctive. Also, I found out that two more people are no longer part of the Peace Corps. They have different stories, and we are sad to not see them in classes. So, we are down 4 people from the original 49.

In the afternoon, we went to a local village to look at the water system and talk to the people who run the system for a little bit. It was a good time. So, just to note, after about one week here, my host Mom told me that a baseball hat was not good enough for the sun, and suggested I use an umbrella as a parasol. Well, I felt a little dumb the first few days, and occasionally I still do, but a parasol is so much better. But, everyone once in a while I get comments on how ladylike I look walking around in the woods with my little umbrella. All comments are said in good fun, and those of you who know me know that I will trade fashion in for comfort any day, so a bright blue umbrella makes a gringa stand out more than normal, but I don’t care because I have portable shade.

Side note: Shout out to Julia, who had a birthday recently! I tried to call you but never got through. I was thinking about you though!

Tuesday night we had a lot of fun. See, Monday was an instructor’s birthday, and Wednesday was an aspirante’s birthday, so we had a joint party Tuesday night, but made it kind of a surprise party. Trying to detain the trainee for a little bit was a whole lot of work. Someone called her and said she couldn’t leave on time, so we waited for here for a few minutes. She started walking like she was running from a fire so I made up a lie that I had twisted my ankle and needed to walk a little slower. That barely slowed her. Then people were trying to stop to light cigarettes just to waste time. I should note that someone called her and told her to bring her laptop to play the movie, so knowing we were late, she wanted to make up time by walking quickly.

The fun part was that we wanted to the two people to walk in at the same time. So, another person tries to detain her by asking her all sorts of pointless questions (at this time she is getting aggravated that she is really late) and the teacher finally arrives. We couldn’t get them to go in together but it wasn’t too off. To set the scene, you walk in this kind of garage door kind of entrance, and there is a large building in the back on the far side of a really small field. So, all the lights were off, and as she opened the door they flicked on all the lights and yelled “Surprise!” She really appreciated the surprise and somehow we had managed to get everyone coordinated without letting the secret out.

We had brownies and soda. There is an abundance of soda here, I have never drank this much soda in my life. Not that I am complaining, because I definitely accept a whole lot of soda without a battle. We watched Anchorman after a few technical difficulties.

Wednesday:

Well, after the party, I went back to my house and the back door was locked, but the shower is back there, so I was just thinking I’d shower in the morning and it would be fine. I was wrong. I could not sleep, I could not cool down because I was covered with a few hundred layers of sweat and dust, and was kind of on a sugar high. About midnight I fell asleep and woke up at 1:30am. I was productive though, I was reading technical handouts and doing exercised is my Spanish grammar book. Then I go and spill a bag of water on my bed to make the situation a little worse. A little after 3:30am I finally get back to sleep so my alarm could go off at 5:30am. Good times. I was fighting all morning to stay awake.

In class, we had a good time. It was definitely very lively.

I also had my tech interview. Now, tech interviews aren’t like language interviews where you have to pass them. Its just a few minutes to talk with the PTS and APCD (hey this is a government organization, there are a ton of acronyms), about what you want to do, what kind of site you want. I think I was pretty clear that I want a larger site with a site mate. We find out in a week and a half where we are going.

Carlos was very mean though in the afternoon, he said that half of us have already been assigned to sites, but we can’t find out until later. The other half they are still discussing. Oh, I was told that in the teachers’ round table discussion yesterday that everyone is very happy with how my Spanish is coming along and my enthusiasm for class. I like to hear these types of things, so this news made me happy.

In the afternoon, I skipped out on the second day of hiking and looking at another water system to stay in town and help a friend give a charla to the people who work for the environmental organization in town about ArcGIS. So, I am not sure how much I helped. At one point a woman asked me why she needed to click on something, and the only thing that entered my mind was “Because I told you so,” but that wasn’t acceptable to say, so I don’t remember what I said, but she did it anyway. I got a little bit of experience with training adults in Spanish and got refamiliarized with ArcGIS.

Sorry for those of you whose conversations with me got cut out while I was online. I had been kicked off twice in a row and decided it wasn’t worth the aggravation, I can use an internet café later.

At night we went over to the friend’s house for her birthday. It wasn’t too long after dinner so I was still stuffed to the gills, and her host mom comes out with plates of arroz con pollo. I felt really bad but I had to decline. I forced myself to eat cake though so that it wasn’t a double whammy of declining.

Thursday

The morning started off really well, I had fried tortillas con queso with chismol on top. Muy ricisimo (very very very delicious)! I wasn’t a big fan of breakfast foods in the states, so the fact that I get food like that for breakfast makes me very happy.

Instead of having a normal day, we had a charla on HIV/AIDS. The peace corps has a policy to work on HIV/AIDS in any of the countries it is in that has a problem with it. Well, Honduras has the highest prevalence of it in Central America, so all volunteers get trained on HIV/AIDS. The training we got is what is called a training of trainers. This means that they are training us to be trainers. So, today we got the charla, and tomorrow we go into the high school to give the charla to the students there. It should be interesting. All through the training I just kept thinking, these volunteers are so good at Spanish, I really hope that I am that good one day. So, during the charla there were a lot of activities, some just plain fun, some with strong messages. So, tomorrow should be good. More details to follow.

But, about the charla practicing. So, the first few things were to get the participants involved, in this case it was us, but tomorrow it will be the high school kids. The first one is “I wash…” You go around in a circle and say your name and favorite fruit. The second time, you say “The first thing I do in the morning when I get up is wash my (fruit).” Well, the thing is, there are a lot of slang names for parts of the body which are fruit names, so it gets people laughing and involved and introduces the fact that there are a lot of slang names for parts of the body. So, the next thing is you have them list slang names for a lot of body parts and other themes. One was “menstruation.” So, there are things listed like nature’s monthly gift, the curse, etc. But one stuck out “shark week!” I loved it, so that’s now the name I use. Everyone laughed at this one, the men thought it was a little more appropriate than the women, but everyone laughed. A few were more fun than others.

At night I got my brother to practice Spanish tongue-twisters with me. I thought I was doing fairly well until my host sister came along and smoked us. She is very good at them.

So, let me just tell you how much fun it is to write in Spanish on an English program. I had to type up a resume in Spanish, and it is all red underlined, and I had to go through several times to stop auto-corrections.

Friday

So, the big charla went a lot better than I thought it was going to. It was a four hour event. I messed up quite a bit with my Spanish, but still managed to keep it understandable, and I had to read a bit of technical words surrounding HIV/AIDS. (Whoa, it took me four times to get it right in English, the first time I typed it all in Spanish). Sindrome de inmuno-deficiencia adquirida (AIDS) is a handful to say. The game I lead went really well, I think it is because I decided to do an example instead of trying to explain what was going on.

There were some rough parts, but as a group we got through it.

Later we had a processing time. We were told by the volunteer that was there to guide us that we did a good job, and that our Spanish was coming along fine. I liked getting the evaluations by the Spanish teachers this time because there was a spot for what you did well as well as what you did wrong, and they didn’t write down every mistake that we made. They also said we did a good job and that we made mistakes, but that mistakes are to be expected and that everyone could understand us, which is the most important part.

Also in the afternoon, we had a man with HIV come to talk to us about HIV in Honduras. There are a lot of stigmas associated with people living with HIV/AIDS here. Although it is illegal, a lot of places make you get an HIV test before they will hire you. If people know you have HIV, they won’t talk to you or touch you in anyway. So, a lot of people keep their HIV a secret, or don’t get tested because nothing good can happen for them for getting the test. There is the number of reported cases in Honduras, and then a projected number which accounts for the people who don’t get tested.

I learned a lot about HIV in the last two days. I consider myself an educated person, but I didn’t know a lot of the things that were presented today.

Ahh, I just saw my first scorpion! I think I am going to shower tonight in my boots! Just kidding, but stepping on the floor is not on my priority list right now. The scorpion by the way is in the crack between my wall and the ceiling. Still, I didn’t really need to see it.

So, what was I going to say before the scorpion came along? Oh, the betting pool. We have put together a list of potential sites that we might be moving to. This list has been patched together by current volunteers and occasional hints that are passed down (although who knows if the hints are right because the staff likes to drive us nuts like that). So, each person gives 10 Lempiras and writes their list of who is going to go where. Each person that guesses who is going to go where, and the person with the most right answers wins and gets all the money. It will be interesting to see how many sites are right.


Saturday

Normally Saturday means weekend, it means happiness, it means a chance to enjoy yourself doing something fun. Not this Saturday. We spent all day Saturday in the immigration office in Teguc. It stunk. The people there were very nice to open specially for us, but only one of the computers for preparing the residency cards was working so the process took twice as long as normal. We left Pespire at 6:30am, the bus had a very hard time with the uphills, so it took us over an hour and a half to get to the business group (we were supposed to be in Teguc at the time we picked them up). We get there and the health group is already there so it was nice to see them again. Annie was very intelligent and brought her cards and cribbage board. We played, then a little while later had a 4 person game going. Good times. I now miss cribbage again.

Around 12pm, it became evident that we were not going to be done any time soon, so we all went to lunch at restaurants. A lot of people went to pizza hut. Then, back to the immigration office. It was funny though, as I was getting my fingerprints taken, the guy asked me if were staying in Teguc, and when I told him Pespire, his reaction was priceless. I them made some joke about the heat and he laughed. We were all happy that it was only 80F in Teguc, it never drops below 90F here, even at night.

We finally managed to get out of the office around 4:30pm, or a little later. Then a few people wanted to go to a supermarket, so we went there. The gringos definitely swarmed around the alcohol section. So, its kind of bad to buy a lot of alcohol at your town because the thinking around alcohol here is different, there is no recreational drinking, or there is only a little of it. Most of the time the only people who drink are the drunks, so you have to be careful not to buy a lot, so this was a chance for people to buy some without looking bad in their community. We have been told that volunteers will leave their site to go out and drink occasionally because their reputation is completely reversed (from good to bad) with only one beer. Therefore, although it sounds bad to say the gringos swarmed around the alcohol, it’s actually kind of a sign of respect towards our towns.

We got back to Pespire after nightfall. I missed the mango festival party because I was so tired. I must have been really exhausted because I fell asleep when it was still 96F in my room.

Sunday:

I was really good Sunday, I did all my homework and even a little extra. The day was really relaxed, and hot. Most days it seems like the sun is the problem, but it was overcast all day or at least most of the day, so you couldn’t blame it on the sun. I have a dress that I brought which is very thin, and I was still sweating just sitting around. Every time I got up I could feel the back of the dress was wet from sweat.

Monday:

So, I will apologize here for the long lapse in time between entries. It is now Monday and I don’t see a time to put this online in the near future. It’s like this, on Mondays and Tuesdays, I usually have tutorials after classes, so there isn’t time before dinner to go to the internet café. Wednesday I will probably have a friend cut my hair, which may seem like a less important activity from your point of view, but you are not in the crazy heat. So, hopefully Thursday I will remember to bring my flash drive and money to go to the internet café.

What did we do today? Well, we have a meeting every Monday morning to review the events of the week. This is because it was getting really confusing for a while there, and the facilitators agreed to our request for a group meeting every Monday. We learned we will be doing the sanitation charlas in a school in the aldeas (small small small towns in the mountains- remember this word, it will come up often). The problem is we have to change our plans, or at least I do; speaking of which, I need to do that before I go to bed tonight. Try describing hand-washing in extreme detail, then try doing it in another language. We don’t have a new charla for this week, we only have to talk to the people in the afternoon about prevention of dengue and other related illnesses.

So, in the afternoon, we started to build pilas (I’ve mentioned these before, imagine large concrete water storage tank). Playing with concrete is hard. There is a lot of bending over and shoveling, and that is after we pawned off the sifting of gravel to the local kids. We now have the base done, it feels like we did more than that, but nope. Tomorrow we start with the sides. Hopefully this lasts longer than our stove which cracked in the first week.

I had a pretty cool tutoring session today. I had it with my first Spanish teacher here, who I have not talked to a lot since I stopped having classes with here. So, we worked on the subjunctive for a while, although we have only just started when to use the subjunctive so we didn’t do it for too long. Eventually she told me that for the interview I need to master the preterite and imperfect, so although I am trying to practice other tenses, I need to keep going with them too. So, she had we tell a story in the past, and she never corrected the tense, so either I nailed it, or she was just letting me talk. But, at the end she said I have done a good job learning the language and I enjoyed it. My goal is to make advanced low in the last interview, but the jump from intermediate high to advanced low is a little hard to jump.

Wednesday

So, for two days in the afternoon we have been working on these pilas. It is hard work in the sun. There is no autumn here, a time where it cools down between summer and winter, so we are still full steam ahead summer down here. Last night it finally went below 90F!

Today my group gave a small charla on hand-washing and teeth-brushing in a school in a poor community. It went fairly well. There were only 7 students (poor and small community) in the 4th grade. There were four of us and two teachers observing us, so it was a little interesting almost outnumbering the students today.

I spent a good deal of time today in the pila. We had to apply the concrete mixture into the insides, so I climbed (was picked up and put) in the pila. Problem: It is already hot, and I was inside a concrete container. No air movement whatsoever. It was definitely hot in there. Every time I would stand up, I would think how nice it was outside since there was a little breeze. Needless to say I was soaked in sweat. Later, our volunteer supervisor climbed in there to finish some work and he was in there for over an hour. Good times.

Thursday:

The good news was since we stayed so late yesterday, we were able to leave early today. Afterwards I went to try and use the internet to post this, but couldn’t get online because there was no electricity in most of Pespire. Hence, this is a superlong blog and it has been a very long time between posts.

Since I couldn’t get to use the internet, I went over to some friends’ house and Kalin cut my hair. It feels a lot better now that it is shorter. It was really funny, her host sister has an 8 month old baby, so spending time with babies is always fun, but his Mom gave him a sip of Gatorade and his face was pricesless. This baby rarely cries, so he is cool, and I’m a little jealous that they get to play with a baby every day.

Friday:

Vacation day! Carlos being the incredibly smart man that he is, planned in a vacation day, and kept it a surprise up until Monday. So, we all had to bust buns to finish the pilas Thursday, but it worked out because we got to go to the river! Not the river in town, but the river further downstream that is cool and deep and has large rocks to jump off of. I won’t lie the first reaction when we got to the hacienda was “where is the river?” because we had to walk through the cow pastures to get there. We had a great time though. It felt so good to finally be cool and to swim. It was a total day of relaxation. It was also a day of sunburns for some people (I managed to squeak by with the faintest of burns).

Saturday

It rained, it actually rained! Winter is coming! So, in about a month to month and a half I will be complaining about the rain. But with the rain came a little cooler weather. I was in the garage which is a long corridor with doors on both ends. The ends were both open which normally creates a little bit of a wind tunnel, and it was so nice and cool out. I read almost an entire book while sitting in a hammock. Speaking of books, once I get to my site, and decide whether I am going to live with a family or look for an apartment, I will be asking for books, so save any good ones that you read for me. Wait until I give the word to send them though. I am going to follow the lead of many of my PC companions and make a list of all the books I have read in Honduras. A lot of people say they read a lot while in the peace corps. I read a lot normally, as Kelsey can attest to since I always gave her a ton of books when I visited her.

Saturday night was pretty fun. Both my sisters from Tegus were down. With Saydi comes her novio Juan Carlos. Anyway, to start the story: Jorgito had asked me if I wanted to play cards, so he was teaching me a few Honduran games. Then after dinner we were playing at the table and Juan Carlos comes in and starts asking if I know the game UNO. Well, I brought uno with me, so I got them out. Then starts the games. Luckily he knew how to play so he could explain the rules (although I have the rules in Spanish so could have read, but that’s no fun), and it was very interesting at first trying to explain to five people how to play UNO. It was a lot of fun. I don’t remember the games being as long though, in one game I really think I shuffled the used cards four or five times because we needed more. Later, some neighbors came over and we played some more.

Sunday

Two cool days in a row! Talk about one happy Jill!

I slept in really late this morning because it was cool enough in my room to do so. I just couldn’t see getting up when I could lay around for two extra hours and not be sweating, you just have to take advantage of these situations as they come.

I played some more cards in morning, did some more letter writing, studied some Spanish and just had a rather tranquilo day.

What else is fun though to add. No interesting food adventures lately. I have almost become completely adapted to Honduran food, withstanding their spaghetti, they use some kind of oil while cooking which makes it rather interesting.

I saw my first scorpion here the other day. He was in the small gap between the wall and the tin roof. That was fun, I was just happy he was far away.

We played more UNO later that afternoon. After my sisters left to return to Teguc, the family returned to its normal tranquilo state.

This week our plans are to give small charlas to water boards and the local plumbers who take care of the water systems. Everything this week is in Spanish, the tech sessions are all in Spanish because we need to get used to discussing everything in Spanish. The advancados and other more advanced people in Spanish are having their final language interviews this week, and those of us who struggle a little more are having ours next week. Not that it matters too much though because there is only one real Spanish class between now and then. The last week is filled with what we call CORE classes, which are a mixture of things like safety and security, general development, and anything else we need to know about that doesn’t include language or tech classes.

Although I am excited to see my family in Las Cañadas again, I am a little sad to be leaving this one. They have been very good to me. I feel very at home here. I am leaving on my brother’s birthday (no cake for me), and the day before mother’s day. That reminds me:

Happy Mother’s Day Mom!

Ok, so i just found out my site. I am happy because it sounds like it has a lot of work, and a bunch of amenities in the town, the only thing is that it is far from everyone in my group now. I will have two site mates though and two more 20 minutes away by bus.