A visititor from the US and BOO!

The excitement in October didn't stop just because my b-day had passed, by no means!

Perhaps the most exciting thing to happen to me in my whole PC experience thus far.  My amazing friend Stephenie came and paid me a visit!  Arriving on a Friday morning, I threw her right into the authentic Honduran experience as we headed into Comayaguela (the bad part of Tegucigalpa, where all the bus terminals happen to be located) and boarded a bus to Santa Rosa de Copan.  There we stayed in pretty much the nicest hotel I've seen in Honduras.  Until a few hours before arriving it was unbeknownst to me that some of my Peace Corps colleagues where there for a workshop.   Hence how we ended up in the nice hotel.  Peace Corps splurges when they host work shops.  (Your tax dollars hard at work!)  From the first night Steph got to meet everyone and see a little bit how the Peace Corps life is!


The following morning those of us how were headed on to Copan Ruinas (Mayan ruins) boarded a bus and headed to La Entrada.  At La Entrada we were immediately herded onto a mini bus by the guys seeing $$$ as a small herd of gringos came at them.  On a mini bus that was already full, they somehow managed to shove in six of us and haphazardly tie all of our bags on top.  (Oh, how I would have loved to take a picture of this spectacle.)  Before we took off Stephenie pointed out that there was 20 people in the mini bus, in which by normal standards would seat about 12.  Sometimes Hondurans get kudos for the complete lack of compassion for people and the personal greed of just making more money.  (And here I thought the US was supposed to be full of greedy capitalists!)

After surviving this "only in Honduras" ride we arrived to the beautiful town of Copan Ruinas.  Amazingly touristic and clean.  It seems the only time a city is well taken care of here is when it's a tourist attraction, otherwise no one cares.  The town essentially becomes Peace Corps HQ during the weekend of Halloween every year.  There is a Belgium (I think...) ex-pat, who has capitalized on the number of PCVs in this country (nearly 200) and every year turns his restaurant into Halloween HQ.  It's a great costume party and great reunion with everyone.  The costumes this year were amazing.  I went as the host of a Spanish language dating game show, Penelope of 12 Corazones.  It's the greatest show ever!  My friend Lauren who works as a Health volunteer and teaches a lot of HIV/AIDS-reproductive health stuff went as Sex Ed Miss Frizzle (of the Magic School Bus).  Other great costumes were the girls who were dead on Lady GaGas.  One guy dressed in all black and carried a candle as "Se Fue La Luz" - an ode to the frequency of power outages here in Honduras.  Overall a great turnout and great creativity on behalf of everyone!

We spent the rest of our short trip to Copan Ruinas enjoying Mexican style burritos, a great pizza joint where we caught a World Series game, Americanized Italian style coffees and just hanging out in our very impressive hostel (seriously, it could compete with some of the best hostels I've seen in Europe).  We did some souvenir shopping and less than 48 hours after arriving, we were on the next bus Tegucigalpa bound.  I had been teasing Steph the whole time that she hadn't seen the real Honduras and she would be shocked on the next leg of our trip.

Once we finally got to Teguz we taxied and chicken bused our way to Valle de Angeles (where I had lived for my first three weeks in country).  We made our way to my host family's home and stayed with them a night before heading to another hotel where I had a workshop (aka, waste of time).  My host family's home is very authentic to the real Honduras.  Fogon (wood burning stove), bucket baths, and an outdoor toilet.  Steph dealt with it all very well - from bathing out of the bucket and also flushing the toilet by pouring water down it!  I was so proud.

We spent a few more days in Valle de Angeles while I was in my workshop and Steph got to spend her time in another touristy town for being on her own.  After the workshop we came back to my site, Guaimaca, and Steph finally got to see how I live and work on a day to day basis.  From my small and humble room I rent to the Alcaldia where I work and even meeting my best Honduran friend.  Steph got the total experience!

That about wraps up this time around.  You're basically caught up on my life at this point.  With all the history behind us I hope to get some more interesting blogs done about the particulars of Honduran living and not just mere recaps of what I do.  Here's hoping!

Hasta la proxima vez...

HIV and my b-day in Honduras!

To fill you in on the best month ever is going to take a little while.  I hope you’re ready!  Why was October the best month ever?  Mainly for personal reasons, the biggest and best being that one of my best friends from the US came down and paid me a visit!  The second reason being that it was my birthday month and if I count right, I think I celebrated my b-day about four times.  Who said life after 25 was boring??  Then, on the work side of things Alicia and I were in full blown, HIV/AIDS charla mode.  It was a great month!

One of the largest goals of the Peace Corps on a global level is to deal with the prevention of HIV/AIDS.  (Honestly, I didn’t want anything to do with this.  I even said during my initial interviews, I don’t want to go to Africa, because I’m sure that’s what most the work will be dealing with.)  Being a Business Adviser, I thought I would get off without having to touch this subject.  But, of course there is always something that happens, takes your plans, throws ‘em out and you are forced to change your mind.  That is certainly what happened in my case.  When Alicia first got to site her counterpart and her had some different ideas of what work was to be done and she seemed a little stressed out.  I too was feeling a little down because my work had slowed down, so I suggested we do a whole month and just dedicate it to the HIV/AIDS charla.  That way we would both have work to keep us busy, we would both be practicing our Spanish and she would get involved at the schools she may work with anyway as a Youth Development volunteer.

To get ready for this we had to brush up on our “Ya Te Diste Cuenta” (Loosely translated: Have you already realized?  Don’t ask me about the name…I didn’t translate it to Spanish!) manuals about how to teach the charlas.  (Because this is a global PC initiative we’re all required to give the charla during our training.  I did mine back in April and Alicia’s had been even more recent.)  It was only slightly confusing because they had issued an updated version of the manual between my training class (H16) and Alicia’s (H17).  Being the highly intelligent college graduates that we are, we were able to figure it out.  Having the differences straightened out, we sat down made a list of the materials we would need and how to get them.  Luckily the mayor’s office has a fund for HIV/AIDS education and we were able to request the funds from him.  We bought sheets of large poster paper, markers, masking tape, construction paper, had copies made and were on our way.  After taking about two days to prep the materials and practice up on the Spanish specific to the charla, we were ready to start.

Our first day we were going to the high school where I’d already given my business charlas and were scheduled to present to the III de Ecologia.  As we got to the school and spoke with the director she informed us things had changed and we would instead be giving the charla to the III de Commercio.  That was super exciting news because those were exactly the kids who I’d worked with before and they’re a great group!  I was right, the charla went very well, the kids were well behaved and we even modified the presentation to have Q&A at the end instead of a game that’s normally played.  Day two was presenting to another class, this time about 40 of them and they were little demons, but I think it’s a numbers thing.  The following week we were at the elementary school working with five classes of about 40 6^th graders.  Due to that age we went over the course of three days and did an hour a day with each class, therefore five hours a day!  After the 6^th graders we went to work with some junior high kids at yet a third school and taught the 9^th and 8^th graders.  Our last day was scheduled to be with the 7^th graders, but that was before the teachers went on strike again.  So for all those presentations we taught around 300 kids.  Needless to say that in a city of at least 25,000 we’ve still got lots to do next year, but this year we did pretty well I’d say!

Now on to the social life and why October was truly AMAZING!  My birthday fell in this month and all the new friends in my life made it truly wonderful.  The coolest of all is that my friend (and fellow PCV) Lauren came down to visit me all the way from the North Coast.  This is so special because she pseudo-surprised me and traveled really far (about 12 hours in bus) to get here!  Showing my site to another PCV and having her meet all my in site friends was really exciting.  Everyone got along and it was a grand ‘ol time.  While Lauren was here my local friends threw me a birthday party in typical Honduran style, carne asada and tajadas (plantain chips).  Oh, and they made me dress up.  Hondurans are very into clothes and looking good.  It kinda cramps my own personal style, but when in Rome…While Lauren was here we went into Tegucigalpa to visit the mall and I was able to pick up a graduation gift for my host sister who is soon graduating high school.  We enjoyed some US style food and coffee then came back to my site again.  The actual day of my b-day was almost crashed by a call at 10AM from my counter part telling me I needed to be in a meeting that no one had told me about!  I had to go and suffer through until lunch when I was able to explain to them that it was my b-day and I had friends from out of town visiting, sorry no can do!  My counterparts being amazing, completely agreed and sent me on my way telling me to stop back by the Alcaldia (City Hall) at 5PM for cake.  I’m loved! :)

I showed up for cake at the Alcaldia with Lauren and Kathleen in tow.  (Kathleen is a Protected Areas Management volunteer who lives in a rural community about an hour from my town.  She’s also awesome!)  Typically for birthdays in the Alcaldia we all pitch in and buy a cake that way.  I have a feeling they used petty cash or the Vice-mayor just bought the cake for my b-day since he was the one who told me to make sure I was back by 5PM for the cake.  (See, really loved!)  Honduran tradition, like many Latin countries, involves trying to smash the b-day girl’s face into the cake.  Most people realize that these days, so it has morphed into swiping the icing off the cake and proceeding to smear it all over the b-day girl’s face.  Needless to say, they got me in the Alcaldia.  Not too bad thank goodness!  Honduran frosting is different from that in the US.  It’s not light and airy.  It’s denser and much stickier.  Post cake at the Alcaldia we went to dinner at my friend’s house and took the leftover cake to share with them.  When we got to round two with the cake my Honduran friends were not as forgiving with the frosting as my colleagues in the Alcaldia had been and at the end of our battle I was literally wearing a mask of frosting.  Oh well, I suppose the more frosted you are the more loved you are, right? ;)

The last b-day celebration for the month involved a special dinner in Tegucigalpa with three of my other Peace Corps buddies, two of which also had b-days in October.  We splurged HUGE and went to an amazing sushi dinner.  For four people we dropped about L. 1,400 on this dinner.  If you convert that to USD it turns out to be around $73.  Not too bad for a sushi dinner for four people back in the US right?  Let me briefly explain how much a typical Honduran meal out would cost here in my site.  For example, today at lunch I had two baleadas (tortillas with refried beans, eggs, queso seco and mantequilla[mantequilla is like an odd combination of sour cream and butter, when heated is liquid and cold is about sour cream texture, slightly salty]) and a liquado (milkshake) for L. 38 ($2).  Just analyze that for a little bit and you can see how much we really splurged on that meal.  It’s also interesting to see that some people in this country live in Tegucigalpa and eat like this regularly, while most are poor and live in the areas us PCVs are in and can’t even afford to eat what I did at lunch today.  Anyway, random side note.  I also used that time in Tegucigalpa to buy the ingredients for my Thanksgiving dish: green bean casserole with cream of mushroom soup and French’s fried onions!  (Yes, Tegucigalpa really is mini-America in the good part of the city.)

I believe this post is sufficient for my b-day.  I’ll include the details on Steph’s visit and Halloween in my next post!

Hasta la proxima vez…

Recapping September

To retro date this a little bit, I’m going to take us back to September. About an even two months to be exact, just about the time my computer crashed the second time around.

As I’d mentioned in a previous post I got a site mate in mid September. There had been talk of it since I got here and that was in May. All I knew is that it would most likely be someone from the Youth Development project and I was hoping for a guy, ha-ha (sorry Alicia!). After our Reconnect I was anxious to get into site and meet her (I had already found out it would be a girl. The ratio of girls to guys in the YD project is about 3 to 1.). I had to do some research to find out who they had placed her with as a host family, but that wasn’t too hard. Everyone knows where the gringas are in town! So, on a Sunday afternoon in mid September I met Alicia and we are now the coolest girls in Guaimaca (ok, I’m slightly biased…)

The Honduran Independence day was September 15. Exactly the same as Mexico’s. Pretty much exactly the same as most of the Central American countries. Just part of the story as to why independence has still yet to be achieved here. The day was filled with parades, kids doing skits in the park and I’m not really sure what else. September is the official month of Patriotism here. Boy, are they brimming with it! (More on that later.) A few days after the 15th they celebrate the day the Mexican version of the Declaration of Independence arrived to Honduras and was ratified here. This date was really special to me because the teacher of half the kids I gave my business charlas to had to start micro-businesses and set up shop there in the park. Seeing kids putting to use what I’d taught them was an amazing feeling. Yet, in retrospect, getting off my high horse, they only did it that day because they were assigned. What would be really cool, would be if they were to keep selling long term. Oh, well!

As September drew to a close I was beginning to feel a little depressed/stressed out. My work had slowed down and not having anything to do in this country is fatal to many in terms of service in the Peace Corps. Not wanting to become a statistic and drop out, I made plans with Alicia to kick off our “HIV/AIDS Tour 2k10”! We got to work planning it, requested the funds from the Mayor, made all of our materials and set up dates with various schools in town.

Hasta la proxima vez…

I know you've missed me!

This may seriously be one of the hardest things I set out to do. Trying to catch my blog up on the last couple months of my life will be intense. Mid September the “newbies” (H17) swore in and one of them became my site mate! Then October my site mate and I started what we dubbed our “HIV/AIDS Tour 2K10”, in which we taught approximately 300 kids how to protect themselves (abstinence is the only manner 100% effective!). Naturally, October brought my birthday, same as every year. My friend Stephenie came for a visit and then there was Halloween. There were two back-to-back workshops and a Farmer’s Market I’ve been planning since getting here is finally getting started! Thanksgiving and Honduran graduation season is just around the corner and then there’s Christmas and New Year’s. To keep up with my cliché filled writing: Time is FLYING!

(Side note: I’m pretty sure I never bother to tell anyone that my computer crashed a second time. This time it was about two weeks after I had just gotten it back from the US with a brand new hard drive installed. I have no clue what it is about Honduras that makes computers just want to die, but they do. I now have a brand new one that my parents so graciously bought for me [after my insurance refused to cover my other computer]. Stephenie brought the new one with her when she visited and took the old one home. Luckily I bought it at Costco, so hopefully they will take it back! I’m just trying to not be too cynical and hope this new one lasts me the next 18 months.)

Anyway…due to slow Internet and multi-tasking on nearly a dozen different things, I’m just going to leave you with this for tonight. Look for the other updates soon!

Hasta la proxima vez…