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.