15+ rugs and 32 dead toads later....

Written April 30th

Alfombras: this was a word that I heard more of in the last two weeks than I think I have heard in my life. In English, Alfombra means rug. Yes, everyone was talking about rugs for the last two weeks. Really, they were talking about them for a lot longer than that, but the last two weeks the word trickled down through the population and made it to me and the rest of the trainees - soon to be volunteers.

So, why was everyone talking about alfombras? Apparently these alfombras are very important for Catholics when they are celebrating Semana Santa - or in layman’s terms: Easter. Easter is a very important time for Catholics I learned over the last couple weeks. However, it is nothing like anything I ever participated in or witnessed in the United States. I’m sure there are parts of the county that celebrate Semana Santa in its entirety, but I don’t know where. So, what is it exactly? I will tell you!

Semana Santa is a week long (Semana) celebration of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. The celebration actually begins before the week of Semana Santa with flowers and candles placed outside everyone’s house for four Fridays before the beginning of Semana Santa. The Sunday before “Easter Sunday”- but they don’t call it easter here - is the start of the processions. Everyone walks through the street singing, and on every street corner, they stop and say a prayer, or read a passage from the Bible. In some of the processions, they also act out skits of the life/death/resurrection of Jesus on every corner. Throughout the week there were at least 6 processions - one of which began at 3 a.m. Saturday morning and woke me up from a nice deep sleep! I have no idea why they do it so early, but it sure was load - beautiful music, yes - but certainly uncalled for at that time of the morning.

Thursday night was the first big procession, which started at 11 p.m., and the alfombras are for the procession on Friday morning. This meant that everyone who was making the alfombras had to wait until after the procession was over (which was about 1 a.m.) to start their alfombra. This is because the alfombras are put in the middle of the street. The alfombras are made out of colored sawdust and are pictures of all things having to do with Catholicism basically: Jesus, crosses, doves, Bibles - etc. They were beautiful. Apparently, this year Tegucigalpa was trying to win the Guinness Book of World Record for the larges alfombra, but I don’t know if that is true, and if it is, I don’t know if they succeeded or not.

One of the many alfombras lining the streets!

So, in honor of Semana Santa, we did not have class on Thursday or Friday. You would think most of us would have been happy about this, and in a way we all were, but at the same time it was a bit on the sad side. What were we going to do for four straight days in La Villa. Friday is the most important day of Semana Santa - with all the alfombras. And, in Comayagua, is always a hug celebration with “spectacular” alfombras, but unfortunately none of us could go because the buses do not run on that day. Also we are not allowed to overnight anywhere until August, so we couldn’t go to Comayagua on Thursday and get a hotel room - as awesome as that would have been.

So, what did we do to take up a 4-day weekend - not much! Some of us got together and had an afternoon of swapping photos and movies. I know only have 27GB left on my 500GB hard drive - ya, I already had a lot of movies, and now I just have a ridiculous amount. But hey, two years is a long time, and I will have a lot of lonely nights to watch movies. We did get to go to Comayagua on Saturday, but that ended up being more waiting for buses and riding buses than actually being in Comayagua. I only really wanted to go so I could go to the grocery store to re-stock on fruit. So, we all met at 9 a.m. at the bus stop; it took 45 minutes for the first bus to come - which should have been an indicator for how the day was going to go, but it didn’t phase us. After arriving to Comayagua, shopping, eating lunch, and grocery shopping we headed to the bus stop. We got there at 1:30, and there was not a bus sitting there for La Villa, which every other weekend there had been. So, we sat down on the sidewalk to wait it out - we figured one would show up soon. After about a half hour and a lot of hacky-sack, we asked someone. He said not to worry that one would be along soon, but that instead of the three buses that were running that morning they were down to only one that afternoon. So, at 3p.m., after waiting for an hour and a half, and watching Pete, Jeff, and Jeremy entertain themselves with a hacky-sack in more ways than I ever thought possible, we came to a group decision. We decided there were no more buses for la Villa, which meant we needed a plan B. We ended up walking over to the other - very close by- bus stop for direct buses to La Paz. We loaded onto this bus, which sat for a half and hour, and left at about 3:30p.m.. However, this ended up being the world’s slowest bus that drove literally 20 miles an hour and stopped every 10 feet. By this time my toleration level had reached its limit and I was starting to get really frustrated. I had been pretty relax about everything all day because there was nothing we had control over, so I was just going with the flow. But, when we were finally on the bus basically not going anywhere, I had had it. Obviously, though, there was also nothing I could do about it, so we all just joked about how ridiculous the whole day had been. I will remember never to try and go anywhere on a bus they Saturday of Semana Santa, again.

La Paz is a large town that is about a 10-15 minute drive outside of La Villa. So, we got off the bus at the “desvio” - the turn off- for La Villa, which meant we had to then walk back to town. This took us about a half an hour because we were not walking very fast, and we all had bags of groceries. To entertain oursleves on this tedious walk, we counted the dead frog/toad things (Sapos) on the road. Between the desvio and the edge of town we counted 32 dead sapos!!

Now it is Saturday April 30th - 65 days of training down - 14 to go! However, we leave La Villa on Wednesday, four days from now! I am so excited. I liked it hear in La Villa, and I liked FBT, but I am just ready for it to be over. At this point, I’m pretty sure everyone is. Training is great, and most of the information we learn I understand the reasons behind it and why we need to learn it, but after more than two months, I am done. Once we get back to Zarabanda, it will be pretty much all down hill. Yes, we have our language interview, which I am quite nervous for, but that is about it. We have a lot of technical stuff we will be going over, but the majority of training training, will be finished, and in 14 days we will actually be Volunteers for the Peace Corps.

My final hurdle is definitely my language interview. I really want to end training as an Intermediate-High, but at this point, I’m not sure if I will be able to pull it off.

Just another day in Honduras!

Just another day in Honduras - that is what we have come to say and feel everyday. Everyday we get up and know that our chance of witnessing something weird and unexpected is nearly 100 percent. The bolo (drunk) on the street corner at 7 a.m., the ox-drawn cart with car tires (my personal favorite), donkeys roaming the streets picking at the small patches of grass they are able to find, cows sneaking around every corner, chickens and roosters without any feathers running around like dogs, putting condoms on plantains, drenching clothes in sweat before even stepping a foot outside, oh and I can’t forget the cat calls from every man ages 8 to 70.

Quote of the day (April 18, 2011)
“You can rub my uterus!”

Like I said, you just never know what the day is going to bring. This week we are learning about reproductive health, which explains why on earth we were talking about uteruses! When a woman is hemorrhaging after giving birth, you can give her a uterine massage to try and force the uterus into contracting faster, which would hopefully stop the hemorrhaging! And, of course, being the group of people us health-ers are, we had to try it out on each other!

Today also sporadically brought an afternoon of dancing. Amanda, Nina, and I walked to Amanda’s house because Nina was in search of a notebook and Amanda’s host family owns one of the largest pulparias in town. Before making it into the pulparia we saw Amanda’s neighbors and went to chat. Somehow we ended up talking about dancing and how I wanted to learn all the different Honduran dances. About this time Tricia and Brian walked by and joined in on the conversation. They both also wanted to learn the daces, so we just turned the afternoon/evening into a dance lesson. I couldn’t have been more happy! The Punta - the dance of Honduras - is a dance all about shaking your booty and getting down with your bad self. But, there is a proper way to do it, and it is actually rather difficult. We also worked on the Merangue (spelling) and the Bachata (spelling). I LOVE the Bachata. It is fun and I really want to get good at it, so I can actually go to a discoteca and know what I’m doing. The Bachata is all in the hips. You take two steps one way and then sort of pop the opposite hip, then repeat going the other way. I don’t know why it is so fun to do, but it is - especially with a partner that knows how to dance. When you have a good partner, you can do all sorts of turns (vueltos) and other fancy moves, and it is a lot of fun.

We also had a question and answer with a Doctor here in Honduras, Dr. Jesus Villalobo. He was very young, and had already witnessed more than 1,000 births. We got into talking about the differences between health care in the United States and Honduras, which of course brought on a conversation about how much things cost. Here in Honduras you can deliver a baby for 40 Limpira, which is about two dollars, and if you have a c-section, which is not something a woman can just decide she wants to do, it is about 60 Limpira ($3). When we told him that it cost probably around $10,000 to deliver a baby in the United States he said something that will stick with me forever:

“Why does it cost so much for something so normal?”

I think this is what most people in the United States think every time we go to the doctor and have to pay $300 to be told that we have a cold. But, Dr. Villalobo was genuinely shocked. He couldn’t believe the price or why on earth it would be so expensive. We explained to him about how everything in America is based on commercialism and how much people can make off of things - including everything that is needed for basic human life. Thankfully this doctor could speak practically fluent English, so we were able to have these conversations without a language barrier. Some of the other differences between here and the US is that all women delivering babies are in the same room, which is one of the reasons that the fathers are practically never seen in the delivery room. If they went in, they would not only be seeing their wives goods, they would be seeing the goods of about 10 other woman, too. Something that made all the women in the room squirm was that here in Honduras, they do not give epidurals - they just don’t have them. So, every women gives birth with all the pain. The doctor told us of a woman who he had helped deliver her 17th baby, someone mentioned how that must have been painful - having 17 kids all without epidurals, but the doctors response was priceless:

“The more kids you have the easier they get - they just start popping out like popcorn!” (Quote of the day - April 19th, 2011).

Prevention

Written April 15th

This week did not have the greatest start. Monday was a typical boring Monday, but was also the Monday of a full week, which made it even more tedious - the previous Monday we were on our site visits, so we didn’t have the blues that are usually associated with Mondays, so this week started extra slowly. On top of that, Monday and Tuesday our technical sessions were about behavior change, mentoring, monitoring and evaluation. You can probably imagine how those sessions went. They were about as exciting as waiting in line at the DMV (or in our cases, as exciting as waiting in the immigration office in Tegus!) We had the session on behavior change and mentoring because obviously those are going to be big roles for us here in the Peace Corps. We are going to be trying to change peoples behavior whether it is to encourage people to use condoms to prevent the transmission of HIV and STIs, and to prevent teen pregnancy. We are also going to be trying to change people’s behavior by changing their eating habits. We want families to have a healthy balanced diet so they (especially the children) are at less of a risk of malnutrition. So, yes, behavior change is something we are all going to be working with a lot. And in addition, as Peace Corps volunteers we are placed in the position to be mentors. Whether we want it or not, our behavior is monitored by everyone around us so we always need to be conscious of what we are doing. We will have plenty of opportunities in our sites to be actual mentors to someone. In the case that we decide to be someone’s mentor, we went over all the qualities that we will need - Active Listening being the most important! So, after two days of wanting to pull our hair our, we were able to move on to the exciting part of the week.

Wednesday marked the beginning of training for the health initiative: “Ya Te Diste Cuenta” - this initiative is about HIV/AIDS and how to prevent transmission! So, what goes along with teaching about how to prevent the transmission of HIV - using a condom (condón). So, Wednesday and the first part of Thursday afternoon, two volunteers presented the initiative to us. They gave us the charla as if we were a group of high school kids, who the charla is intended for, so we could get an idea of what the information was and good ways of presenting the information for when it comes time for us to give the charla.

The condom demonstration was definitely the most fun activity in the charla. We were paired off and given a condom and a plantain, which here in Honduras are quite gigantic.

Just in case you are unaware, there are ten steps to using a condom!

1 - Make sure there is air in the package, and check the expiration date.
2 - Open the package with your fingers (not your teeth or scissors or anything that could damage the condom).
3 - Take the condom our of the package and make sure it is not dried out.
4 - Make sure is right side out.
5 - Pinch the tip so you leave some space.
6 - Leaving that room at the tip, unroll the condom little by little over an erect penis until it is at the base.
7 - Have sexual relations
8 - Before pulling out, grab the base of the penis where the condom ends and remove it from the women while the penis is till erect.
9 - Take the condom off be rolling it back up the shaft of the penis, being careful not to let the semen spill out.
10 - Wrap the condom in toilet paper and throw it in the Garbage.

There you have it - the 10 steps to proper condom usage!

So, how it works here in training, we are given charla as a training method, which then prepares us to give that same charla to other people! So, the second half of Thursday afternoon, we were broken into four groups and given all the materials we needed to prepare to give the same charla to a group of high school students. We had three hours to create all the handouts for all the activities - words, definitions, drawings, etc. We also had to make our charla papers (basically posters) with all the information about HIV/AIDS, how it is transmitted, and how you can prevent it. We broke up all the sections of the charla so we each had an equal number or tasks we were in charge of.

Anyone who knows me, knows that I don’t like getting up in front of people, and when you add not feeling confident in my language abilities, that means I am REALLY nervous to get up in front of people and talk. So, Thursday night I spent hours writing out what I needed to say for each of my sections of the charla and practiced it many times.

As all the luck would have it, Brian and I were in charge of the condom demonstration! OK, in reality he and I both offered to do that one. I don’t know what I was thinking. I thought it would be fun/funny.

So, Friday! We had a class of about 20, 14-15 year olds. I personally think that we really lucked out. Our group participated and had a lot of energy, and seemed to enjoy all our games and activities. We went through all our activities fairly smoothly. I had some trouble with my first one because I had to coordinate the discussion at the end of it, and after asking the questions I needed to ask, I was not able to actually understand their responses due to my limited Spanish. So, that part of the charla was a little bit rough, but we made it through. Everything else was great, I think.

When it came time to teach the correct condom usage, I had my doubts in the beginning. We had the 10 steps to use a condom cut out and they had to try and put them in order, which proved to be quite a difficult task. The four of us in my group all ended up helping them get it in the right order. Once they had it in the right order, they read each step allowed and Brian and I re-enforced why each step was important. We realized once we had finished that one of our steps had actually disappeared, so there was only 9, but I read what the 9th step was (that was the one that was missing), and it seemed to work out ok - meaning they understood why it should be there and why it was important.. After this activity Brian and I had them all sit down, and we told them it was time for a demonstration. We posted charla paper with the steps, and brought out our condoms and plantain. We read each step and demonstrated step by step. There was a lot of giggling, from Brian and I, and from the students, but we made it through - and they didn’t have any questions at the end of it, which in this case was a good thing because they all understood the steps.

Now it came time for big question: Did any of them what to try it out? Initially, we were only allowed to show them, they were not actually allowed to try it themselves because the director of the high school said so, but apparently he/she changed his/her mind and said that if the students wanted to try, than they could. So, we asked them after we demonstrated it, and we actually had two volunteers. I was so surprised. I did not expect any of them to have the courage to stand up in front of the class and put a condom on a plantain. I sure wouldn’t have when I was in high school. Also, it was two guys who volunteered - another shocker. I would never have expected two guys to demonstrate it together. Muchismo is such a large part of the Honduran culture that I would have expected them to refuse to do it with another guy. But, to my surprise, we had two guys that were willing and able to demonstrate it. Obviously there was a lot of giggling, but they made it through with no troubles!

Overall, I was actually really happy with how the charla turned out. I was really nervous going into it because that is just how I am, but other than the frustration with my first section of the charla and not being able to understand the kids responses to my questions, everything else went pretty smoothly. We gave a pre-text and a post-test, and for the most part, the questions that were answered incorrectly on the pre-test, were answered correctly on the post-test, which means the kids actually learned what we were teaching them. One question on the post test that some people still marked yes was shocking for us - It was that peeing after having sex would lower your risk of being infected with HIV. So, obviously we did not enforce quite enough the ways of transmitting and preventing the transmission of HIV. However, they got the important aspects correct. Por ejemplo: There are only four fluids that can transmit HIV (blood, semen, vaginal fluids, and breast milk) and that there are only three ways to transmit it: Sexually, maternally (mother to baby), and by blood. I don’t know where they got the idea that peeing after sex was a prevention method, but, not we know for next time to specify that particular detail. One question tat most of them marked as true for the pre-test was that mosquitoes can transmit HIV, but thankfully on the post-test, they had marked it is as false!

Now, it is Friday again. Which means we only have 18 days left here in La Villa. And, next week we only have three days of classes because it is Semana Santa - a 4-day-long celebration of Easter for Catholics. Apparently, here in Honduras Semana Santa is huge. Right now, because it is the last Friday before Black Friday, there are people walking down the street singing and reciting prayers on every corner. With the Virgin Mary being carried on a cart through the street, people joined in the procession as she passed their house. Next Friday, Black Friday, processions and reenactments will be going on all day. There are a lot of things the catholic do in preparation for and during Semana Santa, but I have yet to learn everything about it. I know though, that alfombras (rugs) made out of flowers are a very important part of the celebration, but don‘t know yet why that is. This year, Tegucigalpa is trying to beat the record for largest rugs for Semana Santa in the Guinness Book of World Records.

No buses run on Black Friday, which is quite disappointing. I would like to go to Comayagua to see the celebration they have their because I have heard it is pretty fantastic. But, alas, I will not be able to. Here in Villa, a smaller version of all the same events will be taking place, and I’m sure it will be just as beautiful!

Yo Puedo Hacerlo!

Written April 9, 2011

Yo Puedo Hacerlo!!!

Since arriving in Honduras, I have wanted to learn how to cook typical Honduran comida (food). Granted, the food here is not very complicated and pretty much consists of tortillas, frijoles (refried beans), rice and fried plantains, but still, I wanted to learn the Honduran techniques. Today, I finally had that opportunity. My first week here, I mentioned to my host mom that I wanted to learn how to make tortillas. I was actually talking about the corn tortillas in that particular conversation, but she thought I was talking about flour tortillas, which I also did want to learn how to make. However, I had heard from almost everyone on the Peace Corps staff, some volunteers and community members that making flour tortillas is an art and is very hard to do!

Despite the rumors, I asked my host mom if she would be able to teach me, and she said of course. With my improving Spanish skills, I was able to ask her if I could invite some of my friends who I knew also wanted to learn how to make them! She happily agreed. So, after a wonderful morning and afternoon in Comayagua, Damarise, Jenna, Melissa and I all met at my house to try our luck at making flour tortillas. The famous saying here in the Villa is “Que Color!!,” which means - HOW HOT! So, when we arrived at my house it was 4:30 p.m., and according to my host mom it was entirely too hot to turn the stove on and start making tortillas. We waited for a half hour, watching a Spanish movie starting Penelope Cruize. As my Spanish is still very limited, I could only catch bits and pieces of the movie, but from what I did understand, it was very weird!

At about 5 p.m. we started the adventure that was to be making tortillas!

Tortillas de Harina

2 libras (lbs) Harina (flour)
1 huevo (egg)
1 large pinch of sal
1 very large cuchara (spoon) of soda
About 1 cup of manteca (butter wannabe, more like Crisco)
Somewhere between 1 and 3 cups of water

Watching my host mom put all these ingredients in the bowl was an experience. She didn’t measure anything. She has made flour tortillas so many times that she didn’t need to measure anything, so we were just sort of eyeballing what it looked like she had added, and I asked her how much flour she thought she had put in the bowl. Once all the dry ingredients and the egg were in the bowl it was time to get down and dirty and start mixing it by making fists with one hand in the dough. Once the egg is mixed in a bit, you add a little bit of water (about a ¼ or ½ cup) and continue mixing by making fists and squeezing the dough through your fingers. Once that water is mixed you just keep adding more little by little until it is the right consistency. I would equate it to when I made cinnamon rolls once - the dough seemed a lot like that. I guess the one time I made cinnamon rolls it was out of pre-made white bread dough, so I guess this dough for flour tortillas is done when it is the consistency of bread dough (the dough should not really stick to your fingers anymore).

Once you have the dough mixed and at the correct consistency, you plop it on the counter and roll it into a log and then use your palms to pull the log apart from each side to make it flat. You keep repeating this for about 5-10 minutes to get it good and mixed up. My host mom said you do this for so long so that when you are actually cooking the tortillas they won’t shrink up (like when you cook a hamburger. You put the patty in the pan but it always shrinks up a bit!) So, after this form of kneading the dough, you roll it into a log and cut it into four pieces. Each of those four pieces you then cut into two pieces and form them into balls of equal sizes. Each one of those balls is then formed into a small log and cut into three pieces of equal size. One at a time, you take each of these balls in one had and make a little cage around it with your hand and roll it around in a circle on counter. Jenna told me she always did this when she made rolls, but I had never done it before. After you have a very smooth looking almost dome like formation under your hand, you pat it to make it flat and put it back into the original mixing bowl. After all the dough balls are in the bowl (not stacked on top of each other, you want them to sort of sit all around the wall of the bowl), you let them sit there with a cloth over them for 15 minutes to raise a little bit. While the dough is raising, start heating up your tortilla pan because you want that puppy to be piping hot!

Once you wait the 15 minutes, you are ready to shape and cook them. To shape them, you put some manteca (butter stuff) on the counter and plop the dough in that spot. You flatten it out fairly thin and in a circle formation. Then you peal it off the counter and toss it onto the hot pan, which has also been greased. Because the pan is already extremely hot, it only takes a minute or so to cook each side. You can see the color changing while it is cooking, so you can learn pretty quick when one side is done. Now is the tricky part. Hondurans don’t seem to know what an amazing invention the spatula (pancake flipper) is. So, when it comes time to flip tortillas, they just use there fingers, and remember how hot I said that pan is - piping hot! Luckily my fingers have been burned and worn in pretty well throughout my life, so I didn’t have too much trouble, but some of the other girls struggled a bit - and rightly so; it was damn hot. My host mom got a good chuckle out of our reactions to the heat and our mini cries of pain when we had to flip the tortilla and then grab it and add it to the stack when it was done. But, we succeeded in making all 25 of them with no sever burns to commemorate the experience, which for me is shocking. I tend to always burn myself - I guess that is usually when baking, and this is not technically baking.


When we finished, we got to make baleadas, which has quickly become my favorite Honduran food. It is the most simple meal you can have in Honduras, but they are killer. It is simply a flour tortilla with refried beans and a tiny bit of cheese inside. When you buy them, they often have mantequilla in them too, which is like mayonnaise and disgusting in my book, so I always order them without, and when making them at home, I certainly do not include mantequilla. You can make all sorts of variations of this original masterpiece. You can add scrambled egg, avocado, chicken, beef, chismol (salsa) - you can basically add anything that sounds good to you. I usually go with beans, a tiny bit of cheese, chisol and avacado - it will rock your world. I know it sounds basic, but when you try one, you will understand!



To make this whole day and evening even better, after we all finished our bleadas, I did dishes, the girls went home, and I remembered I bought peanut butter and jelly in Comayagua today. I pulled them out and put some on a hot - fresh- homemade flour tortilla, and seriously was in heaven! It is the simple things in life that you just have to love!

Tonight, in about a half hour, we are all meeting back up with a few other people to watch a movie. I must say that this Saturday is quickly becoming my favorite so far in Honduras. Shopping, cooking, peanut butter, and a chick flick - how could it be any better?

Site Visit Continued!!!

Written April 9th

Site visits were a success all around, from what I have heard. Everyone had he opportunity to ask all the questions they had been wanting answered, and we were all pleased to have them answered openly and honestly. I liked visiting Marcala. Like I think mentioned previously, it is a pretty big town - a city if you will - with a grocery store and a pretty large market. Kristin - the volunteer I went to visit - had a lot going on. Like I said, we were able to help with a charla about nutrition, and I really enjoyed it. I liked finally seeing one of the charlas that we have had given to us - in action. The women at the nutrition charla had legitimate questions and concerns, but also had a lot of fun with the charla. I was able to see the women in that small aldea open up and not be afraid to ask questions or voice their concerns. I know that is a challenge I will face when I get to my site, but I am prepared to keep meeting with women groups until they feel comfortable enough with me that they feel they are able to ask me anything and bring up any topic.

The second day of the site visit, we went to Kristin’s other counterpart, which is the Office for Women (Oficina de la Mujer). This office focuses on HIV/AIDS prevention with women in the community, as well as working to stop domestic violence. Apparently Kristin is working on trying to organize a support group for women with HIV/AIDS, but has been running into a few walls. It is hard to gain the confionza with people that you need in order for them to join a group to talk about having HIV/AIDS. People in Honduras - I’m sure in most countries- do not want to learn they have HIV, let alone go around and tell people they have it. The stigma of having HIV/AIDS is very negative, and for this reason, it is hard to convince people to join a support group, or come to a charla about it. During our site visit, Kristin’s boss took us to different locations around Marcala to get an idea of some of the places they go and some of the work they help with. We went to the centro de salud (health center), a home for pregnant women - sort of a safe house of sorts when they don’t have any money and are soon going to be giving birth - and we went to a house for recovering alcoholics. When we were at the Centro de Salud, we were able to see the nurse completing and HIV test with a small blood sample. She said that every pregnant women has to be tested for HIV/AIDS when they come in. Since the nurse had began working at the center in September, she had seen two positive HIV tests (two in five months is not that bad, but there is a fairly large population of people with HIV/AIDS in the area). When a pregnant women is positive for HIV, they can’t give birth naturally because the body fluids could be passed to the baby in the birth canal, for this reason, they need to get a cesarean.

The home for recovering alcoholics was started by a single man in Marcala. He opened his home up to recovering alcoholics to come and live there. They have a daily schedule posted on the wall, which included meetings basically all day long. They are a support group to keep each other from returning to the street and drinking - and in some cases to work on other drug issues as well. This program is not strictly for men, women do participate as well, but not as frequently. Kristin’s boss wants to get involved with this group to give charlas about HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention. Even though they work for the Oficina da la Mujer, Kristin and her boss still want to show support for the men at Casa Hogar (house home). And, through supporting these men at Casa Hogar and teaching them about HIV/AIDS prevention, women will also be helped in the long run!

These site visits are supposed to be a time for trainees to get a look at an actual volunteer working in their site, to get an idea of what really goes on once you become a volunteer. It is also an opportunity for trainees to decide what kind of site they think they may want to end up living in for two years. Yesterday, Friday the 8th, we were given a site placement questionnaire that we have to fill our and turn in next week. Our APCD and PTO (the two people in charge of the health group) will look at the questionnaires and take what we say about our preferences into consideration, but they can not guarantee anything. I can definitely see myself in a site like Marcala. I would love it. It was a bigger site with a grocery store, which is a total plus, but what I really loved about it was all the aldeas that are around Marcala. There are so many opportunities when you are surrounded by small pueblos. I love to keep busy and being in a site like that would give me the opportunity to really work as much as I want to and to help more people. I would be fine in a smaller site too. There are benefits to either. At a large site with surrounding aldeas, I can help a wider variety of people and work on a lot more projects, but if I were to end up in a smaller site, I would form more relationships and probably would be able to help the community on deeper levels. So, I am right in the middle on that particular question: do I want a small site or a large site? I simply wrote on the questionnaire that I want to be able to keep busy and that I need to be with in an hour or two of a grocery store, so I can be sure and have access to fruits and vegetables once a week (at most once every two weeks.)

The questionnaire also asked about how close you want to be to other volunteers - as in do you feel the need for a site mate. I don’t need a site mate. I feel like if there was someone in my site that spoke English, I would be a lot more likely to always spend time with that person rather than integrating into my community and mastering my Spanish skills. I would however like another volunteer to be within an hour from me, so I feel like I have someone close by incase I start feeling the need for a break and some human interaction with another English-speaking person.

The only other thing I mentioned was that I would physically not be able to handle a site any hotter than where we are doing our FBT right now. The Villa is really hot. In the middle of the afternoon it is pushing 100, and I know there are plenty of locations in Honduras that can get even hotter than it does here. I would physically not be able to function in any hotter weather - I have enough trouble here in Villa. I would of course love a site a little cooler than it is here, but I at least I know I can function in the temperatures we have here, even if I am pretty miserable during the hottest part of the day.

The questionnaire did ask about what I saw my role as once I get to my site. That question is hard. At this point, we still have not learned about all the initiatives the health program has. But, at this point what I see myself doing is working with a women’s group and with pregnant women, teaching them about nutrition and doing weekly cooking classes. I know with this particular type of project a home garden element is usually involved, but that is not something I have much interest in. I am not the type of person that can start a garden from scratch and keep it going. To be honest, I have never tried, but it is not something I can see myself doing. To be honest, I guess it is just something I don‘t want to do. Who knows, maybe that will change over the next two years, but I doubt it. I would have no problem helping women who already have gardens started - to try and improve them, but starting from ground zero is not something I can see myself doing.

A couple of the other health initiatives caught my attention in training and they were teen pregnancy prevention which is focused on high school aged teens. The others are the boy and girl initiatives for ages 9-11. These two initiatives teach about safe sex, HIV/AIDS prevention, pregnancy prevention, abstinence, self esteem, role models, and much more. The program for the younger kids is a fuller package that gets the kids thinking about their life and how getting pregnant would cause their life to go down a totally different path than they may want, but then also teaches them about self confidence and picking good role models. Where as the teen pregnancy prevention focus on the teenagers who are most likely already having sex. This is to promote safe sex and the use of birth control and condoms and to teach about STIs and HIV/AIDS. This initiative also incorporates the idea of picking good characteristics in a partner and self esteem.

So all in all - I have a good idea about what I want to do and what kind of site I want to end up in. But at the same time, I’m really not that picky. I’m sure I will find good things about where ever I end up. There will inevitably be bad things too, but nothing I won’t be able to handle!

Countdown tell site announcements: 24 days!

Site Visit

Satruday was a day of complete bliss. Thirteen of us took a trip to Comayagua to get out of the Villa for a day, and to do some shopping. We had fun; i bought some clothes that were much needed. I bought two pair of capri pants. I have a feeling that they are not going to last a very long time because of their quality, but they will last me a little while, and I will use the heck out of them while I can. It is so hot in the Villa that I just really needed some shorty-pants. After we were done shopping, we took a bus to a restaurant that is between Comayagua and the Villa. We had lunch and then sat by their pool. Yes, that is right, they had a pool. That is why we chose to go there. It cost 40 Limpira to go in the pool, which is about $2, so its nothing. But, alas, I didn´t go in. I was still getting over my sickness and a couple people got me freaked out about fungi, so I just enjoyed the breeze and sat in the sun with everyone else. Sunday, we all had to make our ways to different towns. It is site-visit time. Everone, well mostly everyone, goes to different sites to visit current volunteers in their project. So, I am currently in Marcala, La Paz. I am actually here with Amanda and Jenna, and the three of us are sharing a hotel room. The people we are visiting in this area don´t have room for us at their houses, so we are being put up in a hotel. We were given money for a double room and a single, but we decided to save a little bit and all bunk up together! It ended up not really saving Amanda and I any money, but Jenna saved a bundle! It didn´t end up being very dificult to get to Marcala. We got a ride in the back of Jenna´s host family´s pick-up to La Paz (the city), then from there we waited with Tricia who was headed to Santiago, then after she was on her bus, we went looking for ours. While waiting, we sat in the shade and I went on a mission to find some water. I went into a mini pulparia where the guy there was extatic to see me and my blond-gringoness. Thankfully I didn´t get the "creeper" vibe from him, so I talked. He asked if I was just passing through and why I was here, so I explained that I am in Cuerpo de Paz and all that. He ended up complementing me on my Spanish, which completely made my day! Once we were on our bus, we realized that the bus-simulation that our Safety and Security advisor demonstrated for us, was completely accurate. Thankfully nobody got on with automatic wepons, but an uncountable number of people got on trying to sell us anything and everything. They just hop on, walk down and then back up the isle, and then get off. The whole time they are yelling what they are selling, and telling you how much it costs. Candy, soda, water, paletas; there was even a lady who got on selling sissors and nail clippers - you just never know what you are going to see. Once we started going, the kid sitting in front of Amanda and I stuck his head out the window, and he proceeded to keep it out the window the whole hour-and-a-half-long trip. At one point an old guy came leaned over and told me I should roll up my window. From what I could understand of his Spanish, with the help of his hand gestures, I think he was worried the kid in front of me was going to vomit, which would mean it would all come through my window and get all over me. He sertainly had good intentions, but I didn´t think the kid was motion sick - he simply just liked acting like a dog or something along those lines? Marcala is a very beautiful city. It is a city, too. Kristin, the girl I am visiting said the population in the urban area is 15,000 and that with all the aldeas, it is 30,000. So, that is very lager. There is small supermarket - nothing like the large ones in Comayagua and Tegus, but still it is much larger than a pulparia. And, there is a street market, which I love. I don´t know why, but I have always been fasinated by street markets. I just love them. Today we got to go through it very quicky because we were just grabbing some lunch from one of Kristin´s favorite vendors, but I hope to get a better look tomorrow. So, for the site visit: Today, Amanda and I met Kristin at her counterpart´s office. A counterpart is the person you are "assigned" to in your site. Some counterparts end up being better than others, and Kristin´s seems to be a good one. They organize groups for her to give charlas to, and do a lot of work with women in surrounding aldeas! Today, we went and gave a charla about nutrition to a group of women in an aldea about a half an hour away. Amanda and I didn´t do much. We helped pass things out, but it was good to just sit in on it. We were able to see what a real-life charla was like, we heard the questions that were brought up, and how they went about answering them. For nutrition, the thing that came up that struck me the most was a woman who didn´t like that Manteca (butter/oil/margerine stuff) was in the "other" catagory, meaning we are not supposed to eat much of it. She said that she fries everything and that she only likes the flavor when it is fried and that she has always used it. The way Kristin when about answering it was great. She simply said that all the food in that catagory (sugar, oils, candy, churros) are things that should only be eaten in moderation. They are things that you can maybe add to your already balanced diet, but none of those foods should replace the other catagories, which are very important for having proper nutrition. In Honduras, it is not uncommon to see a 3-month-old baby being fed Coke in a baby bottle, or to see 3-year-olds snacking on churros 24/7. So, our nutrition talks are based around the food "rainbow" and making sure that you eat things from all the imporant catagories. Rather than talking about protiens, carbohydrates and those fancy big words, Kristin talks about it in a different way. Her three catagories of food that she teaches are: foods to grow (basically protiens), foods to run (foods that give you energy), and foods that make you glow (all the fruits and vegtibals that are vital for life because all their minerals and vitimans). The women were able to understand these three catagories fairly well, and all in all, I think they enjoyed, and understood the charla. I am staying in a hotel here in Marcala and someone else needs to use the computer, but let me just wrap up by saying that it is actually a realy nice hotel, and I definately feel like we are living like queens right now, lol! We could have ended up in a ver different site, with very diferent living arangements. However, this might give us a little bit of a false impression for when we actually become volunteers.

Let the Fun Begin!

Written March 30th

So, I thought Monday was bad - its got nothing on Wednesday. I woke up at 5 a.m. and my stomach hurt. I didn’t think much of it - just rolled over, ignored it, and tried to sleep for 30 more minutes before I was going to go on a run. My alarm went of at 5:30 a.m. and I was prepared to suffer through my little bit of stomach uneasiness, but that didn’t happen. Not that you all need to hear about certain things, but I’ll just say I ended up spending some time in the bathroom. I decided against running because I thought staying near a toilet would be a good idea, which ended up being the best decision I’ve made in a while. I had to rush back to the bathroom (remember it is outside, it is close, but not super close) three more times. I could only eat half of my breakfast because my stomach was just not feeling right. I went to class, but I felt miserable, and I couldn’t pay attention. Everything went in one ear and out the other. We were learning about the boy version of “Yo Meresko” that I talked about yesterday. It is called “Yo Tambien Meresko.” It teaches boys about puberty, what safe sex is, what a good role model is like, etc. But, like I said, I couldn’t pay much attention. I felt bad for the volunteers that took their time to come here and help us with this program, but I just couldn’t focus and was not participating much. I definitely was trying. Everyone could tell something was wrong because I was not acting my usual self. Hector asked me if I wanted him to call the Medical Officer and I said no, but if I started feeling worse than we could call them. It took me about an hour to make that decision. Unfortunately, it took about an hour for the Medical Officer to call us back. They had someone take my temperature, which thankfully I didn’t end up having - even though I felt like I was totally burning up. It was just really hot today I guess. So, the doctor on the phone told the guy helping me, he is the technical director here at our training site, he also happens to be a parametric and our medical go-to guy. They gave me Pepto for my tummy and to help stop the diarrhea, and they gave me something called Enterogermina, which is spores of polyantibiotics. It is in distilled water, so I just had to take the little canister full. I’m not entirely sure what that is for. It is to help settle my stomach and to get rid of bacterium I might have. They also had me put four rehydration salt packets in a liter of water and drink the whole thing: rehydrations salts + heat + diarrhea = not a good mix…I felt miserable.

So, by this time it was lunch break, so I took all the meds they gave me, chugged my rehydration salt mixture, which was absolutely disgusting, and then laid down for a nap. I actually was able to sleep and woke up to my alarm at 12:50 right before classes were supposed to start up again. I went and used the bathroom again, and then called Hector to see if I could stay resting for another hour and a half and then meet them to practice our charlas that we have tomorrow. He didn’t have the authorization for that from the medical office, though, so I had to go to class. My stomach still hurt, but not nearly as much as I did in the morning. The medicine definitely helped. Lasting four more hours was fairly difficult, though. I hadn’t eaten anything since my breakfast. Thankfully I brought a banana with me (the Medical Officer also told me to only eat “soft” foods for the next 2-3 days, and to stay away from grease). That made me really happy actually because I could use that as an excuse to get my host mom from using so much oil when she cooked. For now, though, I’m sticking with some fruits and I went out and bought the Honduran version of Saltines. They are a little more buttery - kind of mix between Saltines and Ritz, but they are comforting! My host mom had also made me something special when I got home after afternoon classes. It is cream of rice basically and it had some cinnamon bark in it. She said it will help my stomach. It is soft and not oily or sugary, so I went ahead and ate it. By that time (5 p.m.) I was actually pretty hungry. Now it is 6:30. I am feeling a lot better, but my bowl movements are still not quite what they should be, and my stomach is still a little off. I’m hoping that I will wake up in the morning just fine. I have to take the polyantibiotic for 3 days, so if it is a bacteria causing me problems that should deal with it. If I would have had a temperature or been vomiting, they would have taken me to the hospital for a urine sample, or just had me give them a sample here. Thankfully I didn’t have a fever and even though I was pretty nauseous, I never ended up actually vomiting.

My first experience with sickness down here in Honduras. Thankfully it was nowhere as bad as most people that have gotten sick. A couple days ago my friend Brian ended up in the hospital for 2 days with a really bad amoeba, and that was what Glenn had too - she was the one in my group for the presentation on Monday that was sick. When we were still in Zarabanda, so many people got bacterial infections in their stomachs, one guy even ended up with Ecoli! So, I’m definitely counting my blessings that I haven’t gotten that sick, but I definitely shouldn’t count my chicken’s before they are hatched. I’m sure my time will come, and I must tell you - I’m not looking forward to it.

Written March 31st.

Because my bowl movements were still not what they should be, I had to give a sample to Luis to send to our Medical Officer. I’m not going to explain that, but I am going to say that it was not the most pleasant experience I’ve ever had, and I certainly hope I don’t need to do it again. So, I just got off the phone with the Medical Officer and found out that I actually have Girardea (spelling) and an amoeba in my stomach - hence the diarrhea. I wasn’t excited when I heard that news. As relieving as it is to have a reason behind my stomach issues, hearing that I have Gerardea was no bueno. I don’t know much about Girardea, but I’m pretty sure that in the states it is the one that is known as “Beaver Fever.” I was always warned not to drink out of streams when out in the woods because you could get it from animals using the streams as their bathroom - and it causes diarrhea - and now I can certainly confirm that.

So, tomorrow someone from the main office in Tegus is driving up to visit us, so the Medical Officer is giving him some medicine to give to me. I will have to take two tablets for three days, but apparently they can cause nausea. I have to take them after a big meal to make the side effects not as strong, but I’m not really looking forward to feeling sick for three days. I’ve already been going through that and it is no fun. But, if it gets rid of the Gerardea and the amoeba, obviously, I will suffer through it. Apparently the amoeba that I have is in the same family as Gerardea, so they will both be able to be killed with the same medicine - the only good news out of this: I will only have to take one type of medicine.

My only big concern out of this whole ordeal is that I will end up just getting sick again. If three of us have already gotten amoebas in the one week that we have been here, what is causing it. Probably, more of the students have ameobas too, but don’t know it yet. I don’t want to take the medicine and get better just to get sick again. I wish I could know how exactly I got sick. Is it the water here that we are all drinking. Is it because people are not washing fruit and vegetables correctly, or possibly washing them with contaminated water? There are a whole mess of reasons that could cause us to be getting sick, but with out knowing what it is, I can’t control it from happening again. I think I’m going to pay close attention to how my host mom prepares her vegetables for the next couple days.

Monday from HE Double Hockey Sticks

Written March 29th

The last couple days have been quite interesting, to say the least. I guess I’ll just start with yesterday. I know I’m skipping the weekend, but to be honest, nothing that great happened. I went on a mission to the city near by, but was unsuccessful in my mission to buy some new clothes. So, yesterday was Monday, which is just never that great of a day in general, but to make it worse, this particular Monday was extremely terrible - starting at 7:30 in the morning. Monday was the day for our second language interviews. Like I have already explained, in order to become a volunteer, you have to reach an “intermediate-mid” level in Spanish. So, after my first interview, when I first arrived at our training site, I was an “intermediate-low.” I really want to be at the “intermediate-mid” point, now. I feel like I have improved a great deal with my Spanish - enough so to make that jump up one level at least. So, obviously I was nervous about my interview. I really don’t feel that great about how it went, either. During the interview there were some scenarios that we had to act out, and mine was not that great and I feel like I wasn’t able to fully demonstrate my speaking abilities with the scenario that I was given. My language teacher told me that the difference between intermediate-low and intermediate-mid is the ability to ask good questions. So, I had kind of prepared some questions I was going to ask, beforehand. But, when I got my scenario, it was telling me to pretend my interviewer was a director of an organization. I had to introduce myself and tell about me, and then ask questions about her work and the organization. I was not ready for that, and the questions I pulled out on a whim were really not that great, which makes me nervous.

So, after the interview, you would think I would be able to settle down my nerves and go on with the Monday and try to make the best of if, but that was not the case. To make this particular Monday even more miserable, I had to give my first charla. It was going to be just fine, but one of the girls in our group - the one who could actually speak and understand Spanish well, was sick. So, for our charla, my group had three intermediate-low Spanish speakers. I was terrified. Our chrala was about making a map of your community to identify different places where men and women spend their time. For us, this is a useful tool to use to prepare for a charla. We can decide where we can recruit people for our charla. But, for the group of kids that we were giving the charla to, who were all mini-journalists, this was a good activity to think of places where they could go to find people for a story they are writing. So, we had to give our charla with out Glenn. In the end, it went well. The kids, who were ages 8-13, had fun and I think they understood why it was important afterward. During the question and answer we had after our charla was over, I had some trouble because I couldn’t really understand a couple of the questions, but after having them repeat it about three times, the three of us in my group could usually figure out what they were asking. After we answered all their questions, we went outside and played cops and robbers with them, and then tried to teach them Red Rover, which was my favorite game when I was their age. But, the language barrier was a bit of a challenge and they didn’t quite understand the idea behind the game, so we quickly moved on to tag (landa in Spanish).

So, that was my Monday from down under, and to top it all off it was in the mid 80s by 8 in the morning, and got up in to the high 90s very quickly afterward. I think that it got in the 100s, but I actually don’t know for sure. So, I had my interview, gave a charla, and suffered through some serious heat. To make the day actually end well, after dinner, my host mom and I talked for about 3 hours. It was nice. We talked about the differences in schooling in Honduras and in the USA, which lead to the differences between becoming a doctor, which lead to the differences in the health care systems in the US and in Honduras. From there, my host mom started telling me about a movie she watched once about a kid who needed a heart transplant in the states, who couldn’t get it because the family didn’t have any money. She explained this movie to me for a good half an hour (not even exaggerating) - which I probably understood about 75 percent of. The movie sounded really good actually. After her explanation, I told her that that was the way health care was in the states. There are people with insurance that can usually go to the hospital when ever anything is wrong, but then there are poor people or people without insurance that simply can’t afford health care. She said that was terrible and then brought up Obama and how he was going to change all that. It surprised me how up to date on current events in the Unites States she is.

So, Tuesday. Today was not a crazy/terrible day like Monday, but it definitely had its moments that stood out. To start, I have to say that it was even hotter today than it was yesterday. And, in addition to it just being ridiculously hot, we didn’t have any electricity, which means no fans in our classrooms. The morning was more tolerable because the house my language classes are in thankfully has an outside patio in the shade where we can sit and have our classes. It was hot, but I could handle it. But, it just kept getting hotter. When it came time to go to our technical session, which was about one of the projects we could be implementing in our site - “Yo Meresco” (which means I Deserve). It is a program for 9-13 year old girls about safe sex, abstinence, teen pregnancy, and self esteem. So, for this session, we were in our large classroom, which has no sort of air circulation at all, and the power was still out, so we didn’t have our two fans. It was dreadful. All of us had paper out folded into fans - we were miserable. During one of the breaks one of my friends asked me “how are you doing my Alaskan friend,” everyone laughed when I said I actually felt like I might die, but at that moment - I felt like it was true! We suffered through the technical session, which was actually interesting, but really hard to pay attention to when it was 100 degrees. So, the interesting part. Right as class was ending, a storm started, with the works: thunder, lighting, hail, and a lot of rain. One of the ladies said it was the first time in four years that they had hail. It was more like big chunks of ice falling from the sky. Hail to me is small little chunks of snow-looking stuff. This stuff was clear ice chunks. Half of the people made a run for it right when the rain started and got to their houses, but the ones of us that stayed to watch the rain ended up getting stuck in our classroom. It was some of the hardest rain I have ever seen in my life, and for any of you that know Sitka, Port Alexander, and even Seattle, know how hard it can rain in those places. But, this was even crazier that that. Me, and two other people decided we wanted to run around in the rain. We had been sitting inside all day long sweating profusely, so we went for it. About 20 seconds after we started running through the street, the big ice chunks started falling again. Wow, those things sting. We took shelter under a gazebo-type thing in the center of the park. Just standing there, we started getting a little cold so we took our chances and ran back to the classroom. Like I said, man those ice chunks hurt. So, we all waited in the classroom for about 30-40 minutes for the rain to stop, which it eventually did.

When I got back to my house, my host mom and her empleada (lady who helps cook and clean), had mops and were trying to clean up the house. The whole floor was flooded from the water that came through the gap underneath the front door. In the kitchen and sitting room, there are no windows, and they face the direction the wind was blowing, so there was even more water, and all the furniture was soaking wet. When I saw that, I got a little worried. I pulled out my key and opened the door to my room. I had of course left my window open to keep some air circulation going, which caused a lot of damage. The floor was soaking wet, but the only thing directly on the floor was my backpack with nothing in it. But, my bed was completely drenched as was my language notebook that was sitting on top of my bed. I felt really bad for leaving the window open, but a lot of the damage also came through the rough, not just my error, so that made me feel a little better. But, it still was a total bummer. We took the mattress out of my room and swaped it for the one in my host sister’s room (she is only here on the weekends), and we mopped up all the water on the floor. I need to wash my mosquito net because it is covered in dirt and mud that seems to have come down from the roof.

So, that damage was minimal, but the work to get all the water out of the house, and to get me a new mattress was a bit of a chore. Also, to top this all off, remember, we didn’t have any electricity. And, by this time it was 6pm, so the sun was down and it was definitely getting hard to see in the house. I went to my friends house to see if they needed any help cleaning up water, which they didn’t. So, I stayed and visited a bit and then went back home. My host mom had candles around the house and was cooking with a little gas-operated, one-burner camp stove. She wasn’t using her fagon (an inside cook stove, that is actually bad for your health when made improperly, which hers definitely is not), like she did in the morning because all the fire wood had gotten soaked by the rain storm.

I went into my room and pulled out my flashlight, headlamp, and found my other lamp-type light. But, the second I stepped out of my room, the electricity came back on. My host mom was relieved,, and was able to finish dinner on the regular stove. I had fried platanos, frijoles, queso, and some lunch meat stuff, with tortillas of course. I finally was able to get up the guts to tell them that no I did not want juice. I get juice with every meal. It would be fine if it was actual juice but it is gross juice that is pure sugar and tastes usually like fruit punch or Sunny D. Sometimes they make some homemade juice which is awesome, but then they add an insane amount of sugar to it. I also got up the courage to say that there was entirely too much food on my plate, so she took away one of my cheese wedges. I am the type of person that will just eat everything that is set in front of me, but they give me way too much. I started stopping myself before I finished and having them rap up a bit of it for a snack later, which works pretty well, but I think I really just need to get them to stop putting so much on my plate. They don’t eat that much, but I’m a gordita, so they think I want a lot.

In Honduras, people are very blunt. You are called by your physical attributes quite frequently. I have not actually been called a gordita to my face, thankfully, but I’m sure it has been said. (It means a little bit chubby girl basically). But when ever someone is talking about someone else or describing someone, they pick what ever trait is most obvious about the person and just call the person that. One or our facilitators comes and buys a paleta (homemade popsicle things) from my host mom almost every day, and the way she described who it was, was by saying the bajo gordito (the short chubby one). Our director person was described as el musculo (he is really buff). Another teacher was rubia gordita (blond chubby one). When someone is a teacher and widely known as that, a lot of people will just call that person maestro (teacher). A couple of my friends that have come over who are really thin and pretty, my host mom refers to as delgadas (skinny). Those are just some examples, but like I said, Honduras are very blunt. It doesn’t seem like they even take offence to being called what we in the states would think of as derogatory remarks. If someone ever calls me gortdita to my face, I don’t know what I would do. It is definitely not something I am used to, and I don’t think I would ever be able to get used to.

Oh, to add another story - this is actually from Sunday. I think my host mother is trying to set me up with her cousin. He is 29 and has a daughter, who I think looks about 8 years old. My host mom had him come over to help me with some of my homework, which I appreciated. He is a teacher and I had to learn about one of the departments in Honduras, and my mom didn’t know anything about it. Jose Enrique did know about it, and brought a couple books about Honduras that were very helpful. But, after we were done talking about Gracias A Dios (the name of the department), he stayed for about two more hours and we just talked about the states, I showed him some pictures, and I found out he is an artist and a “romantic.” he went home and got his sketch book and showed me some of the things he has done, my host mom actually has a painting he did on the wall, which is pretty darn good. He also wrote down a poem that he wrote a couple years ago. The poem is actually really beautiful. I asked him if he wrote it about a someone, and he said no - he is just a romantic guy, he likes to listen to music and gets inspired to write poetry. He gave me the poem, too. After this, he started telling me different leyendas (legends) in Honduras. The only one I understood completely was “La Cartera Sin Turros” - the cart with out bulls. It is a cart that rolls around places with out any bulls pulling it, and there are skulls attached around the top of it. I didn’t catch why that is, but it was still creepy. It would be fun to learn the whole leyenda to tell as a ghost story some time. At about 9:30, I finally told him that I had to get to bed, so he left, but I heard him and my host mom talking and he said he was going to come back the next night. Which, he did, but my mom and I were having our talk about schooling and health care in the states. He sat in the living room waiting for us to finish for about an hour and a half, but then left. I didn’t realize it was him until after he left - I thought it was the husband of my host sister. I asked my host mom why he didn’t come in and join us. Apparently it is a sign of respect for a man not to come and interrupt a conversation women are having? She said he would come back tonight, but he didn’t because of the flooding/no electricity. So, I’m guessing he’ll be back tomorrow, which is slightly awkward. I want to be nice and it is actually really helpful for my Spanish to talk to him. He is a teacher and knows how to talk slow and enunciate, which is muy bueno. But, I don’t want to encourage any sort of set up that may be happening. I don’t know for sure that that is the situation, but it seems like it to me. Maybe I’m wrong, and he is just a really nice guy that wants to help this gringa with her Spanish!

Field Based Training

25 de Marzo del 2011

I have been in the Villa for 60 hours. These last 60 hours have been excruciatingly difficult. This is not because we are working hard physically or because we have a ton of work to do. It is excruciating for me simply because of the heat. The mornings are not too bad, until about 9:30 or 10, but then it quickly begins to heat up, and it just keeps getting hotter until about 2 in the afternoon. From 3-5 it is just stays hot and then finally, about 6pm, the temperature begins to drop. Thankfully by about 7 the sun is almost set, so the temperature drops quickly. However it is currently 10pm and I am lying in bed sweating, so saying that the sun went down and it cooled off does not by any means, mean it is cool. It is simply less-hot. Being from the rainy/cold climate, I’m currently being tortured, but I’m just going to have to deal with it. And, everyone else is just going to have to deal with seeing me glimmer with sweat and having pit stains in all my shirts. There is absolutely nothing I can do about it. Being in Honduras, an extremely hot country, and working with an organization like Cuerpo de Paz, I have to dress professionally, meaning I am not aloud to wear thin strapped tank tops or shorts. I would be able to tolerate this heat if I could dress for it a little bit more. I have definitely decided I need to take a trip to the near by city to buy some more clothes. I don’t have enough “business causal” tops that are cool enough, and I need a couple more pare of Capri-length pants that are LIGHT weight.

Currently, the thing I want most in the world, is a fan. My bedroom would be perfectly fine if I had a fan blowing on me right now. I have heard other trainees talking about their fans and I am so jealous. It actually does get cool in the middle of the night, though - as in like 2 or 3 in the morning. I have woken up a few times around then and decided I would actually get under my sheet.

Besides the heat, the Villa is really nice (Villa de San Antonio). It is a small town, with about 3-4,000 people in the community - but there are 7 aldeas around the town. (Aldeas are small clusters of families/groups around a town/city). And la Villa is very close to a large city, which I like. I like being able to go do things on the weekends with other volunteers. When you are in a really small community with nothing to do, the heat just seems so much harder to tolerate. But, when you have things to do to keep busy and just keep on truckin’, in my opinion, it is easier to deal with the heat. Water is also KEY. We have been informed to always make sure and drink enough water. Our families do have potable water that we can drink, but I always feel bad drinking all their water because I drink a lot. But, our classroom always has jugs of potable water, too, so it makes it easier to stay hydrated. However, we were informed that we will only be supplied with 2 or 3 jugs of water a week, so we are all going to have to ration just a bit - there are 17 of us.

We are just beginning out technical training about HIV/AIDS (VIH/SIDA in Spanish). Today we had our second technical session, which was about STIs. If we want to, or end up in a community with a high prevalence of HIV/AIDS, we will most likely be giving lots of charlas (little talks) to members of the community about HIV/AIDS and other STI’s that often times tend to go hand in hand with HIV/AIDS. We saw a lot of pictures that were not that fun to look at. But really, what better way, when giving a charla, to get people to have safe sex in Honduras than show them gross pictures of different STIs. There is one here called Trichomoniasis that I had actually never heard before. That one is a protozoan rather than a virus or a bacteria. If I have to give a charla to some community members, or to a group of teenagers, about STIs, I will probably include pictures because I really think that is one of the best scare tactics to keep them from partaking in un-safe sex.