Yes, I am alive

Note, i can´t seem to add pictures in the text, so they are all in the beginning, but there are captions to follow

Written 3/14/09

So, I know this is the first thing to be posted, but it far from the first thing to be written. I don’t want to rewrite all of that, so I will just give a little overview.

First, I am alive; publication of this post should have told you that. We arrived in country three weeks ago without any problems. The first few days were really crazy. We got into the airport in Honduras around noon. I think I wrote about the landing, if not, it is definitely worth the explanation. Tegucigalpa (Teguc) is surrounded by mountains and foothills. To land an aircraft, you have to swerve around said obstacles. I was way too busy staring at the lush green mountains to care that the plane is narrowly avoiding hitting objects. So, if you are contemplating visiting, you must be able to be ok with this, because it will only be your first shock into Honduran life.

View from near my house (above)

My family here is great. I am certain I have written a lot about them, but here are the basic facts. I live with a GREAT family. My first few days here I barely spoke a word of Spanish, and they are strong enough to be able to get past that. I have a hard time understanding some of the family even now, and at the beginning I was nervous about using my horrendous Spanish. Now, my Spanish has improved, all those things I learned are starting to play in, and most importantly, I said I really need to learn, so I started talking even though I do make mistakes (and often), but I can now say a lot more and say it faster. Back to the family. The mom and dad are great. My Mom, Francisca is a great cook. The food has been a little of a gastrointestinal shock, but for the most part I am doing well. There are still a few things I don’t like, but I have eaten a lot of beans and rice. I like whole beans a lot more than refried beans.

Training is going really well. I really like my project training specialist, and APCD, which are the two guys who head the water and sanitation (WatSan) group. I am excited to head into field based training, and really to start working on everything. Oh, we had a competition in our group to see who could build the best hand pump, and my group won. Yeah!
Los Ganadores, and our precious pump- threading galvanized iron is a pain

Language classes are going strong. I know that I have learned. Because I am in the bottom of the barrel as far as language goes, I get twice a week extra tutoring. Those hours are great because it is one hour of one on one instruction, but its mostly them having you talk for an hour and occasionally they chime in when you make a mistake. In the language classes, there is a lot more instructor talking (about grammar or key words) and three people learning. The extra hour is great, and so are the classes. I don’t forsee a problem at passing the language proficiency test. I just need more practice and vocabulary.

Day One- our first bus ride in country

Ahh, so, I live not too far away from Teguc. I like my town. It is very small. Everyday I have my packed lunch and I get on the yellow school bus with the other gringos and we go off to school. It is very reminiscent of grade school. Yellow buses by the way are the buses that go from city to city. They are usually pretty full, and are blaring some type of music, and from my little experience, it is usually reggeaton. The buses are a fun time though.

I am in a group (Honduras 14) with 49 other people. We are an interesting mix of people. There is really every type of person, we all have different backgrounds, likes and dislikes, but we get along very well as a group. We get a long so well that we have a little punctuality problem. We are late for everything because we talk to much. Within my project we have 17 (?) people. We have 2.5 out of the 4 married couples. In a week when we split up for FBT, we are going to be by ourselves. We are going to the HOT part of the country.

(At the airport trying to get to Honduras at 4:30 in the morning!)

Speaking of which, I live in the mountains. The weather here is perfect. In the beginning, the mornings were pretty chilly, but it has finally warmed up here, and it really just is a perfect temperature all the time. The mornings are fresh, not too cold, but enough to be refreshing. The days get warm, but not too hot. Then the evenings are a prefect mix. It is the summer here, so this is as hot as it gets. I think I will definitely be requesting a spot up in the mountains. It is funny, my host mom was raised in a hotter part of the country, and now is cold all the time. Well, that’s a little bit of an exaggeration. But she is cold a lot, so we laugh at each other.

More on the food. Most of the food is great. I like all the fresh fruits and veggies. For a while I had stomach problems (which are now all resolved), and got soup a lot, which thankfully gave me a break from beans. Going from never eating beans to having them at every meal is a shock to the system. Now, I can eat them and my stomach is more prepared. My mother by the way is awesome when I don’t like something. At our first meeting, before we met our host parents, we were told to shut up and eat everything they put in front of us. My host mom is really good about not making me eat things I don’t like. I have tried to adapt a more culturally appropriate way of living, and part of it is eating what was made for me, but my host mom asks me if I like it or if I would like to have something else. The funny part about meals is that I eat very little according to my family here. When I took the meds for my stomach they completely wiped out my appetite. One apple and I was very full. Even now though, what she calls a little tiny bit of soup is a whole bowl. So, my family jokes that I don’t eat a lot. Meanwhile, I am stuffing myself at every meal to eat everything that they put in front of me.

Food that I have liked (no spellings are guaranteed): chorizo ( a hot dog/sausage mix that is fantastic, I could eat it every night), manthatha (greens plus veggie dish), panqueques con miel (pancakes with honey), papaya, mango, fresh juices (most days I get fresh squeezed juice for lunch). Ok, there are def more, but I am tired and still have to pack before my trip tomorrow, but more info on that later.
The lemons here are huge! These grow outside my bedroom. They are the size or a child’s head!

I love you. Also, letters seem to be taking forever to reach here, just an fyi. Don’t send anything that needs to be seen timely. Starting in a week I should be getting fairly regular access to the internet, so I should be posting blogs more often.

Take care and love you all,

Jill


My mosquite net, I’m real Peace Corps now! My room is really sweet! It is a separate building, which is great when I want to be alone, and is just plain great.