Spanish, Spanish and more Spanish

Written on March 4th

Yesterday, I had officially been in Honduras for one week. This one week, though, has felt like three. I am not the only one that feels that way - most of us feel it. Something about the extremity of constantly having to pick our brains to pull out what little Spanish we have in our brains to communicate with people. It makes the ability to comprehend time slightly more difficult. We seem to have all settled in now, though. Compared to my first couple days in Honduras with my host family, I am already so much better at talking with them. It is not that I have learned more Spanish or anything along those lines, I have just slowly been getting better at using the Spanish that I already knew. When you are forced to use it, it thankfully comes relatively quickly.

So, for the Peace Corps Honduras, in order to be sworn in after training, you have to have reached an “Intermediate Mid” level in Spanish. So, the first couple days of training, we had interviews (entrevistas) with the language facilitators. My interviewer, was actually the director of the language program here - Manuel. He is really nice, but that didn’t make me any less nervous when I went in for my interview. Of course mine was on the second day of interviews, so I couldn’t just get it out of the way right off the bat. I walked into the 10 by 10 classroom and sat at the table across from Manuel. He turned on the tape recorder and began! It started simple - say your name, where you are from, where you are living here in Honduras. Then he asked questions about Alaska. He also gave me a card that I had to read in English and then do what ever it said, which was to ask him about his life. I ended up asking him where he lived, if he had a family, how long he had been married. Things like that. I tried asking him what year he moved from where he used to live to where he lives now, but that did NOT work. He told me just to move on and ask a different question! When I made that screw up, I thought for sure I was going to end up in a really low language class.

The levels are as follows:

Novice Low
Novice MidNovice High
Intermediate Low
Intermediate MidIntermediate High
Advanced Low
Advanced Mid
Advanced High
Superb (or something like that)

Later in the day, I looked over the descriptions for each one of the levels and I was really shooting for an Intermediate Low. I felt like I was better than the descriptions for the Novice levels, which basically said you could ask just the basic questions and that you were hard to understand because of your accent. The following day, our language levels were not posted yet, however we were broken up into smaller groups of 10. We were put with people of similar levels for the language facilitators to get another view of our Spanish skills. Then, the following day, we were broken up into our levels. Turns out, I am an Intermediate Low, which I was super excited about. I am in a class with four other people, and our language facilitator is Carlos, who is great. These classes are basically set up to get us talking. We haven’t learned a lot of new material, we just practice talking and end up copying down a lot of new vocabulary words. Apparently, the best way to learn is to describe things and to defend your ideas and opinions, which is exactly what they have us do. Then, each night, we have homework - which so far for my group has been different questions to ask my host family that basically just starts up a dialog and again, gets us talking.

Training has been semi-intense. We have fours hours of language class, followed by four hours of either our technical training, which for me is technical training for HIV/AIDS and Child Survival - there is also a business group and a water and sanitation group (Salud, Nagocios, y Agua y Sanamiento). So, we either have technical training, medical training, security training, or cultural training. The cultural training sessions are always fun because the staff does skits for us that tend to be pretty comical. The security training sessions always put a lot of people on edge. They are a little nerve racking. Juan Carlos, who is the best security facilitator in the Peace Corps (I mean officially), is always full of important, but scary information. He has to tell us about all the thefts, robberies, burglaries, assaults and rapes that happen in the country and to PC Volunteers. He also told us all the national statistics for the same things as well as murders and such that happen in Honduras. Apparently the last few years, crime in Honduras has escalated, which severely limit’s the locations that PC now sends volunteers for safety purposes.

Yesterday, we participated in a drill for security purposes. We were all on a bus, which was held up by two men with guns. They took peoples back packs, and tried taking some women with them as well. The point of this demonstration was for us to always be on guard. We need to not have all of our expensive belongings with us, it is best to put our backpacks on the floor with our foot through the straps, women can put phones and wallets in their bras, and don’t try to fight back - just give them what they want. The Peace Crops main goal is preparation and keeping their volunteers out of those kind of situations. We are not to ride buses at dark - we are not allowed to ride city buses in Tegucigalpa; we have to take a cab. But, there are only certain cabs we can take because a lot of fake cabs are roaming the streets. And always, women should not to travel alone!

Yes, the days that Juan Carlos comes are always so uplifting! He is an awesome instructor, but the material that he always has to share with us is just slightly on the depressing side. Like hearing that there have already been three rapes against PC Volunteers in Honduras this year (2011 - January was only 2 months ago) - Like Honduras has the highest crime rate in Central America. Like we are not supposed to travel to San Pedro Sula because it is Soooo dangerous, but any bus that we take to the Northern, Western, or Eastern parts of the country, will HAVE to stop in San Pedro Sula.

I don’t want to talk too much about what Juan Carlos talks to us about because I don’t want to worry anyone in the States. For the most part, PC volunteers are usually only the victims of thefts - with no violence involved! I can live with my iPod or camera getting stolen just as long as I don’t get hurt in the process!

Today, in my technical training class for Health, we learned all about immunizations in Honduras and then we had a session on breast feeding. Apparently, a lot of women in Honduras don’t breastfeed long enough, which is the best way to keep a child from being malnourished for those first 6 months - as long as the mother’s nutrition is good as well. Working with pregnant woman and women already breastfeeding may be something all of Health people will do at some point, so we needed to know all the details that go along with it. Women in Honduras will often be seen feeding their infant a coca cola! I know right, what are they thinking. But, they want their baby to be fat and happy and when they have cokes, they get fat - lots of sugar. What the women don’t understand is that by not giving them breast milk, the child is not getting any of the nutrients that it needs. Also, apparently many women feed their infants formula because they think it is better, when again, breast milk is the key! So, at some point, I will most likely be giving charlas (small talks) about the importance of breast feeding children for at least the first 6 months.

In this session, Hector brought in a breastfeeding mother, who was able to give us a real visual. I’m sure every one of us have seen someone be breastfed before, but after going over all the parts of the breast and the importance of how the baby latches on, it was actually pretty cool to be able to see it in person. The girl looked like she couldn’t have been over 18 or 19 years old, and her little boy was four months old! So cute. There are four, maybe five men in the Health program this time around, so this session, I’m sure, was a little bit weird for them, but joining the Health program, they knew what they were getting into. The med are going to have to get used to uncomfortable situations like that. We are all going to have to get used to uncomfortable situations like that. We will all at some point in out two years of service be giving talks on how to use condoms to high school children. We will be giving talks to men and women about the risks of STIs and HIV and how to prevent the spread of both. We will be put into awkward situations, so it is better that we get used to it now.

On a completely different note, I did my laundry for the first time the other day. In Honduras, they have Pilas, which is where laundry is done. A Pila is a large concrete hollowed out slab with a washboard built in. So, to do laundry: First, the clothes need to be inside out. You grab one article and place it on the washboard surface and get it wet. Then, you soap it up and with a lot of muscles (muy fuerte) you scrub the article of clothing on the scrub board. You need to be very careful of your knuckles at this time, though. I ended up with some skinned ones, because, like I said, it is made of cement. So, after you feel that you have adequately scrub the piece of clothing, you rinse it out and ring it out. You have to really make sure and do a good job rinsing and ringing because otherwise the soap is going to stay in the clothes and it makes the clothes a little more on the stiff side, so it is no bueno.

All in all, the first week was very successful for me, I would say anyway. I’m getting better at Spanish and I know how to do my laundry by hand. My newest goal is to learn how to make the tortillas the my host grandmother (abuela anfitriona) makes most mornings and that we have with basically every meal. The food is a topic for another day.